3 ms·

Yeah also when was the last time a WM exploit was relevant?

dom0 9y ago
The statement misses the point. Linux desktops are not terribly stable and something always crashes sooner or later; that's why all of them ship with watchdogs that restart crashed stuff quickly. The advantage of desktop components that don't crash is just that, they don't crash-and-restart.
- lscotte 9y ago
  > Linux desktops are not terribly stable and something always crashes sooner or later Simply not true, my Linux desktops have an uptime (system and desktop processes) of weeks to months. I've never seen a single Linux distro "ship with watchdogs" perhaps you can provide more details about what you mean.
  - dom0 9y ago
    Both KDE and Gnome automatically restart the desktop shell if it crashes. systemd includes a watchdog that instantly re-locks the session if the session locker crashes. D-Bus activated services are automatically restarted as well, when in use. There are probably more of these mechanisms.
  - aaron_m04 9y ago
    I know Fedora 25 + GNOME will restart gnome-shell if it crashes. Not sure if it's implemented using a watchdog or if there's some listener for segfault events. I know this because I have an unfixed and reproducible crashing bug in gnome-shell: 1) unplug my 4K monitor from HDMI 2) start up the Display tool in system settings
- morganvachon 9y ago
  > Linux desktops are not terribly stable and something always crashes sooner or later One's experience on the Linux desktop depends on the distro choice, the applications used, and the hardware itself. I once had a Slackware box that ran non-stop as my daily driver with no crashes or odd behavior; I only rebooted it for kernel upgrades. I've had Debian and Ubuntu boxes that were crash-happy turds, but I've also had stable Debian-based machines. In my experience, the most stable machines are name-brand pro workstations that use fully open source GPU and audio drivers, running stable branches of conservative distros like Slackware. If you're running a bleeding edge distro like Arch on a self-built Kaby Lake or Ryzen beast with the latest and greatest GPU using closed source drivers, yeah you're going to have stability issues.
  - dom0 9y ago
    On all distros and computers I always had the occasional PDF or image that crashed the document or image viewer. OpenOffice or LibreOffice also crashes from time to time, especially if it's used for long, or has to handle big documents, and especially if those documents were imported. I've seen all sorts of stupid interactions between media software, e.g. pausing a video in Firefox while running mplayer in the background somehow corrupted buffers on one machine. More than once I saw Flash, when it still was a thing, show garbled frame-buffer contents etc. I think your general observation is correct, though. Most spurious crashes are likely incorrect combinations of software by the distro that are only very slightly incompatible. This is way more likely on a distro that in principle just ships "the latest of everything". Many are in software that handles complex formats or interacts with the graphics / audio system. Many/all of the former have a very poor security track record which matches up with the crashes: a parser full of vulnerabilities is more likely to choke on the occasional flipped bit or on a slightly incorrect file.
- wcummings 9y ago
  Then they're missing the point because they specifically mention security, not stability.

dom0 9y ago

The statement misses the point. Linux desktops are not terribly stable and something always crashes sooner or later; that's why all of them ship with watchdogs that restart crashed stuff quickly. The advantage of desktop components that don't crash is just that, they don't crash-and-restart.

lscotte 9y ago
> Linux desktops are not terribly stable and something always crashes sooner or later Simply not true, my Linux desktops have an uptime (system and desktop processes) of weeks to months. I've never seen a single Linux distro "ship with watchdogs" perhaps you can provide more details about what you mean.
- dom0 9y ago
  Both KDE and Gnome automatically restart the desktop shell if it crashes. systemd includes a watchdog that instantly re-locks the session if the session locker crashes. D-Bus activated services are automatically restarted as well, when in use. There are probably more of these mechanisms.
- aaron_m04 9y ago
  I know Fedora 25 + GNOME will restart gnome-shell if it crashes. Not sure if it's implemented using a watchdog or if there's some listener for segfault events. I know this because I have an unfixed and reproducible crashing bug in gnome-shell: 1) unplug my 4K monitor from HDMI 2) start up the Display tool in system settings
morganvachon 9y ago
> Linux desktops are not terribly stable and something always crashes sooner or later One's experience on the Linux desktop depends on the distro choice, the applications used, and the hardware itself. I once had a Slackware box that ran non-stop as my daily driver with no crashes or odd behavior; I only rebooted it for kernel upgrades. I've had Debian and Ubuntu boxes that were crash-happy turds, but I've also had stable Debian-based machines. In my experience, the most stable machines are name-brand pro workstations that use fully open source GPU and audio drivers, running stable branches of conservative distros like Slackware. If you're running a bleeding edge distro like Arch on a self-built Kaby Lake or Ryzen beast with the latest and greatest GPU using closed source drivers, yeah you're going to have stability issues.
- dom0 9y ago
  On all distros and computers I always had the occasional PDF or image that crashed the document or image viewer. OpenOffice or LibreOffice also crashes from time to time, especially if it's used for long, or has to handle big documents, and especially if those documents were imported. I've seen all sorts of stupid interactions between media software, e.g. pausing a video in Firefox while running mplayer in the background somehow corrupted buffers on one machine. More than once I saw Flash, when it still was a thing, show garbled frame-buffer contents etc. I think your general observation is correct, though. Most spurious crashes are likely incorrect combinations of software by the distro that are only very slightly incompatible. This is way more likely on a distro that in principle just ships "the latest of everything". Many are in software that handles complex formats or interacts with the graphics / audio system. Many/all of the former have a very poor security track record which matches up with the crashes: a parser full of vulnerabilities is more likely to choke on the occasional flipped bit or on a slightly incorrect file.
wcummings 9y ago
Then they're missing the point because they specifically mention security, not stability.