5 ms·

Even with those caveats, it's unclear whether the premise is satisfied. The Linux kernel is old (old enough to drink!) large (and getting larger!) and supported

Even with those caveats, it's unclear whether the premise is satisfied. The Linux kernel is old (old enough to drink!) large (and getting larger!) and supported by many people. Has its quality declined? I don't think so. It supports more hardware than ever. Kernel panics don't happen nearly as often as they used to. New features (BPF), make kernel programming easier. It's difficult to say that the Linux kernel's quality has declined over time.

timhrothgar 5y ago
I had this specific example in mind. How has Linux done it? Was it ultimately due to the benevolent dictator for life (BDFL) management practice?
- xxpor 5y ago
  The kernel isn't working on commercial deadlines. Maintainers don't have to worry about their stack rank at the end of the year. They don't have to justify their head count. Some of this happens internally I'm sure, at places like IBM, Red Hat, and Intel, but none of it is coming from Linus.
- ssdspoimdsjvv 5y ago
  Probably that, and the average Linux contributor being a lot brighter than your run of the mill programmer.
  - 6510 5y ago
    If someone was to design a good small set of opcodes we could go back to rolling machine code by hand. While at it we might as well fill the atx box with cute tiny isolated computers that talk over ip addresses. They have to be small enough as to not leave space for an OS. Some ROM is fine ofc.
peakaboo 5y ago
People being up the Linux kernel on the same way they bring up Oprah as an example of being successful in America. 99.99999% of software in big corporations will not have even 5% of the quality of the Linux kernel. The reason the kernel has such a high quality is because of Linux being a dictator, training everybody in not always so nice ways to write code that doesn't break anything and that is maintainable. He cares about the code and he has the status and the mandate to prevent it from becoming shit.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > 99.99999% of software in big corporations will not have even 5% of the quality of the Linux kernel. Having done a lot of work on the kernel, I think you’d be surprised at the relatively low quality of a lot of kernel drivers. The core code is generally quite good, but it’s not true that the kernel is full of pristine code. I’ve worked at multiple companies where code quality standards exceeded a lot of the weirder stuff I’ve seen (and often fixed) in kernel driver code.
- quanticle 5y ago
  The Linux kernel is an easy example, sure, but it's not the only one. You can say the same thing about proprietary operating systems and software as well. It's been a long time since I've had misbehaving applications blue-screen Windows. That's something that used to happen daily when I ran Windows 98. Or if you prefer MacOS, I remember MacOS Lion being incredibly unstable, with beach-balls and crashes galore. That's all been fixed. Applications have gotten better too. Browsers have gotten significantly more robust against misbehaving pages. Microsoft Office doesn't eat my work (even if I forget to hit ctrl-s). In fact, I would go so far as to say that the only software which has gotten worse is video games. Used to be you could put in a disc, install the game, and be reasonably assured that you were getting a playable final product. Today, you put in the disc, install the game, and then have to download multiple gigabytes of patches... and the game is still often buggy (Bethesda, I'm looking at you!). >99.99999% of software in big corporations will not have even 5% of the quality of the Linux kernel. That is true. But it was equally true when Linus Torvalds dropped the first version of the Linux kernel all the way back in '91. It's not clear to me that things have gotten worse since then.
sllabres 5y ago
>> Kernel panics don't happen nearly as often as they used to My earliest kernel I have used in something one might call production are 1.2.12 around 1995. I must say even then, with this early kernels I had no panics at all and much higher uptimes (patching for security wasn't as much of an issue at that time ;-) )
- not2b 5y ago
  There were many exploitable remote root holes then, but no one was attacking them because Windows was a much juicier target.

timhrothgar 5y ago

I had this specific example in mind. How has Linux done it? Was it ultimately due to the benevolent dictator for life (BDFL) management practice?

xxpor 5y ago
The kernel isn't working on commercial deadlines. Maintainers don't have to worry about their stack rank at the end of the year. They don't have to justify their head count. Some of this happens internally I'm sure, at places like IBM, Red Hat, and Intel, but none of it is coming from Linus.
ssdspoimdsjvv 5y ago
Probably that, and the average Linux contributor being a lot brighter than your run of the mill programmer.
- 6510 5y ago
  If someone was to design a good small set of opcodes we could go back to rolling machine code by hand. While at it we might as well fill the atx box with cute tiny isolated computers that talk over ip addresses. They have to be small enough as to not leave space for an OS. Some ROM is fine ofc.

peakaboo 5y ago

People being up the Linux kernel on the same way they bring up Oprah as an example of being successful in America. 99.99999% of software in big corporations will not have even 5% of the quality of the Linux kernel. The reason the kernel has such a high quality is because of Linux being a dictator, training everybody in not always so nice ways to write code that doesn't break anything and that is maintainable. He cares about the code and he has the status and the mandate to prevent it from becoming shit.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> 99.99999% of software in big corporations will not have even 5% of the quality of the Linux kernel. Having done a lot of work on the kernel, I think you’d be surprised at the relatively low quality of a lot of kernel drivers. The core code is generally quite good, but it’s not true that the kernel is full of pristine code. I’ve worked at multiple companies where code quality standards exceeded a lot of the weirder stuff I’ve seen (and often fixed) in kernel driver code.
quanticle 5y ago
The Linux kernel is an easy example, sure, but it's not the only one. You can say the same thing about proprietary operating systems and software as well. It's been a long time since I've had misbehaving applications blue-screen Windows. That's something that used to happen daily when I ran Windows 98. Or if you prefer MacOS, I remember MacOS Lion being incredibly unstable, with beach-balls and crashes galore. That's all been fixed. Applications have gotten better too. Browsers have gotten significantly more robust against misbehaving pages. Microsoft Office doesn't eat my work (even if I forget to hit ctrl-s). In fact, I would go so far as to say that the only software which has gotten worse is video games. Used to be you could put in a disc, install the game, and be reasonably assured that you were getting a playable final product. Today, you put in the disc, install the game, and then have to download multiple gigabytes of patches... and the game is still often buggy (Bethesda, I'm looking at you!). >99.99999% of software in big corporations will not have even 5% of the quality of the Linux kernel. That is true. But it was equally true when Linus Torvalds dropped the first version of the Linux kernel all the way back in '91. It's not clear to me that things have gotten worse since then.

sllabres 5y ago

>> Kernel panics don't happen nearly as often as they used to My earliest kernel I have used in something one might call production are 1.2.12 around 1995. I must say even then, with this early kernels I had no panics at all and much higher uptimes (patching for security wasn't as much of an issue at that time ;-) )

not2b 5y ago
There were many exploitable remote root holes then, but no one was attacking them because Windows was a much juicier target.