6 ms·

> Regressions are introduced all the time because Linux developers spend very little to no time checking that their code changes don't cause regressions or brea

by imiric 2y ago

> Regressions are introduced all the time because Linux developers spend very little to no time checking that their code changes don't cause regressions or breakages outside of the problems they're trying to fix or features they're implementing. Wow. Such sweeping generalizations make me not want to pay attention to anything this article has to say. But let's entertain the possibility that parts of that statement are true. It's practically impossible for "Linux developers"—whatever that means—to ensure that a change they make doesn't break something downstream. Unlike proprietary operating systems, the Linux ecosystem is not maintained by a single company, so it's impossible to know and account for all the environments a piece of software will run in. Distro maintainers work tirelessly to ensure bugs don't make it to users, but it's simply impractical to test every single combination of hardware and software that exists. This is extremely difficult even for proprietary operating systems where development is centralized, let alone for a distributed environment like most software for Linux, and Linux itself, is developed in. When you think about it, it's a miracle of modern software engineering and a testament of the power of collaboration and the free software movement that the Linux ecosystem works as well as it does, and in many areas matches or exceeds the functionality of other operating systems, all the while preserving important user freedoms. GNU/Linux is a stronghold for user-friendly computing among alternatives from companies that want to control how you use your computers, or profit from your data or attention. It's not perfect, but it's one of the few options we have (besides the BSDs, but I wouldn't consider them to be as user-friendly).

edoceo 2y ago
And if the assertion was true, I'd be feeling those regressions at least monthly on my leading edge, unstable (~amd64), Gentoo box, that is my daily driver desktop I use at $DayJob. This box has been stable enough to make money. But not as stable as my backup (also Gentoo) which runs stable and updates weekly. Edit: my biggest source of stability issues are Nvidia drivers mis-matched from kernel. Takes a whole reboot to fix.
- foobiekr 2y ago
  No coder should ever, ever be shocked that broken code mostly kind of seems to work, especially if you don't notice things like file corruption because you're not looking, or memory corruption that doesn't happen to matter at the moment. A lot of the failures and bad code are in the unexpected path.
  - edoceo 2y ago
    When this box does have issue (rare), it's right after I've done some upgrades to packages that the distribution has told me aren't ready. I know I'm standing on the edge (of glory!). Also, I use ext4 since like forever, ext3 before that and have never had issues. To be clear, my point is that these open source devs (I'm one too) are very careful to not regress. I think the software quality is very high.
    - foobiekr 2y ago
      Your experience is selection bias. And if you never had issues with ext3fs, I assure you it's because you never checked.
      - edoceo 2y ago
        You've lost context and appear to be going after a weak interpretation with the implication I don't know how to sysadmin. The context was the sweeping generalisation that Linux devs and that they don't care about regressions, see up thread by @imiric. In that context I've not had regressions. More explicitly, for this narrower context, I've not had regression bugs in ext3/ext4. I'm not making a claim that I've not had never had ANY issues or never have to fsck my drives; nor am I making claims that nothing has ever appeared in 'lost+found', nor am I claiming that ext3/ext4 are perfect. Nor that Linux is perfect. Just claiming that the software quality in the Linux ecosystem is very high. I'd say better than many closed-source solutions -- which couldn't be proved anyway. I've only been at this since 1994 and still have a lot to learn. However, I don't learn much from the "you're wrong and not good" type of conversation.
        2y ago
kelnos 2y ago
> It's practically impossible for "Linux developers"—whatever that means—to ensure that a change they make doesn't break something downstream. Unlike proprietary operating systems... That's exactly the point, though. Linux will "never be ready for the desktop" because of the problems that this causes. Developers of software for Linux, not to mention kernel developers themselves, do not have the kind of funding that Microsoft has to test on a truly staggering number of hardware configurations. And on the opposite side of the spectrum, they don't have the luxury of supporting a comparatively small set of hardware combinations like Apple has.
- ryao 2y ago
  It is impossible for Microsoft too. To name one example: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2020/02/15/microsoft-acknowledges-serious-windows-10-update-bug-that-removes-your-files-and-profile/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2020/02/15/micro... Also, Microsoft does not do internal testing of various hardware configurations anymore: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140806183208-12100070-why-did-microsoft-lay-off-programmatic-testers/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140806183208-12100070-why-d... They rely on end users to find problems for them: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2018/12/12/microsoft-admits-normal-windows-10-users-are-testing-unstable-updates/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2018/12/12/micro...
  - coffeeaddict1 2y ago
    It's far easier for Microsoft to test on different devices than it's for Linux volunteers. I have seen countless times where KDE and Gnome developers couldn't reproduce the issues mentioned because they didn't have to the hardware on which the problem was reported. This doesn't mean Windows doesn't have hardware dependent bugs of course.
    - ryao 2y ago
      While it is not out of the question, Microsoft’s employees are disincentivized from testing on various hardware, as spending time to do testing does not contribute to their performance evaluations.
gjsman-1000 2y ago
“it's a miracle of modern software engineering and a testament of the power of collaboration and the free software movement that the Linux ecosystem works as well as it does” It can be a miracle, and yet still not be good enough. Even as a business user, knowing that if I build an app and it probably won’t work in 5 years, is all I need to know about this hobbyist toy. Linux is fundamentally not ready for anyone who has needs more than a Chromebook (which also runs Steam, by the way). It’s like pointing to a skyscraper made out of sand. Sure, it collapses every time the tide comes in, but your robots can rebuild it in 5 minutes flat, so it’s clearly ready for tenants.
- acaloiar 2y ago
  > this hobbyist toy. Linux is fundamentally not ready for anyone who has needs more than a Chromebook Wow, piss right off you to you, too. Linux is ready for me, and has been for decades. By your logic, I need nothing but a Chromebook. Linux is imperfect, like you, but it's never been an ass.
  - gjsman-1000 2y ago
    I’ve used Linux since 2011; I know all about it; and I would recommend it to nobody because the community can hear no criticism, bear no criticism, and self-rationalizes everything. Sometimes it takes a bold stance to make a point against one of the most toxic, delusional, and self-righteous communities online. For my part, I’m back on Windows and Mac. Screw the community’s arrogance more than the project. The community, as even the comments here show, does not deserve a victory.
    - __d 2y ago
      I think it’s clear that today’s “desktop Linux” distributions are not what you want. That’s ok. Your criticisms come from the point of view of a usage that is poorly supported. Android is perhaps the closest to what you seem to want, although even it is much more aggressive about deprecating APIs, ABIs, and features than Windows. The is no Linux distribution today that even attempts to deliver the interface stability you appear to want. And given the development model and business structures involved, I think it’s unlikely there ever will be. You, and the many computer users like you, will probably never have a suitable Linux distribution. That’s an unfortunate reality. It’s not your fault: what you want is reasonable, but Linux isn’t set up to deliver it.
foobiekr 2y ago
Working for a vendor that ships Linux code, we find regressions all the time. Because we actually test things. We do try to be good citizens, and Linux is the right answer, but it isn't a false assertion on the part of the author at all. In a previous job, 20 years ago, we found that the Linux USB stack was so bad that it was full of deadlocks and unprotected shared memory on 2.6. Just atrocious. And subsequent releases broke it again and again. About 5 years after that, working for a different company, I had a well-known kernel developer tell me point blank that as long as we release our code to the kernel, they will "keep it working." When I probed what that meant, he genuinely saw no difference between "compiling" and "working." There are various efforts to add testing/tests. Those are good. But we lost a lot when Solaris, Irix, etc. all died, and Linux has never quite gotten there, and I doubt it ever will.
- ryao 2y ago
  OpenSolaris still lives in illumos: https://illumos.org/ https://illumos.org/
  - LeFantome 2y ago
    I am sure what he means that is we lost a lot when it become unprofitable for companies to offer solid UNIX offerings that were supported in the way he would like. Other than the fact that it evolves glacially, Illumos is in an even worse position than Linux when it comes to offering support. If we are being honest though, in the terms that this article is arguing, "Linux" as an ecosystem is the wrong label. When it comes to stability and support, we need to think of each Linux distro as an Operating System. In that sense, things like RHEL are certainly well supported--including on the desktop. If your app targets RHEL, you pretty much have none of the problems discussed in this article. You still have a smaller universe of applications than Windows of course which is to be expected. So, the problem boils down to "nobody is making sufficient money off desktop Linux to steward a desktop Linux distro". That is not careless devs or bad design decisions though--no matter how chicken-and-egg you try to paint it. It is simply the network effect. Decent desktop operating systems exist and they already have large application universes and large, monetizable user bases. They appeared into a vacuum that lacked such operating systems but that vacuum no longer exists. That makes it almost impossible to economically introduce a new desktop platform. Certainly none of the commercial attempts have succeeded in the last few decades. In fact, the system that has been the MOST successful is Linux. By that metric, saying that Linux is doing it all wrong does not ring very true. Valve is doing a lot to make Linux gaming a reality because, when it comes to the network effect, it is largely true that Steam ( not just Windows ) is the true platform. So, if you can bring Steam to Linux, you can move the users there too. It is still early days for that but it appears to be working. On the mobile side, the network effect is very much alive as well. This is why Windows, using of course all of Microsoft's tricks, strengths, and knowledge, completely failed while the Linux kernel ( in the form of Android ) has totally dominated. And that is not for any of the reasons cited in the article. Do you think an Android app from 2008 will run on Android today unmodified? An iOS app from 2008 on iOS today? I don't think so.
BoiledCabbage 2y ago
You spent a whole lot of words to effectively say that you agree with the poster. Your entire post begins with a weak "no that's not true", and then the entre rest of the post is explaining why it is true and will never change.
itvision 2y ago
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues Just check this bug tracker. Just this one. Bug report on top of bug report caused by a fix which was caused by another fix. Sadly it's not just one bug tracker, I keep an eye on many of them. Of course in the magical Linux land if "It works for me", then the author is lying. Never mind that the author of this "click-bait" article is a ... Linux kernel bugzilla maintainer. Yeah. I can vouch for every letter in the article. It's written with my blood.
- wakawaka28 2y ago
  >Sadly it's not just one bug tracker, I keep an eye on many of them. How many Microsoft or Apple bug trackers do you have access to? The fact is that we have to consider that open-source work is largely done by volunteers and commercial developers with their own use cases in mind, and we only know about the drama because it's out in public. The drama inside big tech firms could be worse and on a larger scale and we would likely not know about it. Even if an insider told you something, it would be only a small part of a bigger picture you can't see.
- lumost 2y ago
  I suspect that the unspoken bit here is that hardware qualification is extremely important. On the desktop, Linux is an afterthought for the vast majority of consumer hardware vendors. Many Linux desktop users run configurations which could generously be called “alpha”. With MS windows, this burden is shouldered by every hardware manufacturer. It’s nonsensical to release a peripheral which doesn’t work on windows. Laptop/desktop makers then qualify common applications to make sure everything works as expected. If any of the above doesn’t work out, then MS will get a call, or the hardware vendor.
- ryao 2y ago
  Does that guy seriously maintain bugzilla for the Linux kernel and yet cannot decide whether Linux is an operating system or not: > Linux is not an operating system > While Linux is unrivaled on servers and has been the world's most popular operating system for over two decades, the situation on the desktop is quite bleak. It either is or is not. It is illogical to claim both true and false to be true at the same time, yet that is what he did.

by imiric 2y ago

edoceo 2y ago

And if the assertion was true, I'd be feeling those regressions at least monthly on my leading edge, unstable (~amd64), Gentoo box, that is my daily driver desktop I use at $DayJob. This box has been stable enough to make money. But not as stable as my backup (also Gentoo) which runs stable and updates weekly. Edit: my biggest source of stability issues are Nvidia drivers mis-matched from kernel. Takes a whole reboot to fix.

foobiekr 2y ago
No coder should ever, ever be shocked that broken code mostly kind of seems to work, especially if you don't notice things like file corruption because you're not looking, or memory corruption that doesn't happen to matter at the moment. A lot of the failures and bad code are in the unexpected path.
- edoceo 2y ago
  When this box does have issue (rare), it's right after I've done some upgrades to packages that the distribution has told me aren't ready. I know I'm standing on the edge (of glory!). Also, I use ext4 since like forever, ext3 before that and have never had issues. To be clear, my point is that these open source devs (I'm one too) are very careful to not regress. I think the software quality is very high.
  - foobiekr 2y ago
    Your experience is selection bias. And if you never had issues with ext3fs, I assure you it's because you never checked.
    - edoceo 2y ago
      You've lost context and appear to be going after a weak interpretation with the implication I don't know how to sysadmin. The context was the sweeping generalisation that Linux devs and that they don't care about regressions, see up thread by @imiric. In that context I've not had regressions. More explicitly, for this narrower context, I've not had regression bugs in ext3/ext4. I'm not making a claim that I've not had never had ANY issues or never have to fsck my drives; nor am I making claims that nothing has ever appeared in 'lost+found', nor am I claiming that ext3/ext4 are perfect. Nor that Linux is perfect. Just claiming that the software quality in the Linux ecosystem is very high. I'd say better than many closed-source solutions -- which couldn't be proved anyway. I've only been at this since 1994 and still have a lot to learn. However, I don't learn much from the "you're wrong and not good" type of conversation.
      - 2y ago

kelnos 2y ago

> It's practically impossible for "Linux developers"—whatever that means—to ensure that a change they make doesn't break something downstream. Unlike proprietary operating systems... That's exactly the point, though. Linux will "never be ready for the desktop" because of the problems that this causes. Developers of software for Linux, not to mention kernel developers themselves, do not have the kind of funding that Microsoft has to test on a truly staggering number of hardware configurations. And on the opposite side of the spectrum, they don't have the luxury of supporting a comparatively small set of hardware combinations like Apple has.

ryao 2y ago
It is impossible for Microsoft too. To name one example: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2020/02/15/microsoft-acknowledges-serious-windows-10-update-bug-that-removes-your-files-and-profile/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2020/02/15/micro... Also, Microsoft does not do internal testing of various hardware configurations anymore: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140806183208-12100070-why-did-microsoft-lay-off-programmatic-testers/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140806183208-12100070-why-d... They rely on end users to find problems for them: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2018/12/12/microsoft-admits-normal-windows-10-users-are-testing-unstable-updates/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2018/12/12/micro...
- coffeeaddict1 2y ago
  It's far easier for Microsoft to test on different devices than it's for Linux volunteers. I have seen countless times where KDE and Gnome developers couldn't reproduce the issues mentioned because they didn't have to the hardware on which the problem was reported. This doesn't mean Windows doesn't have hardware dependent bugs of course.
  - ryao 2y ago
    While it is not out of the question, Microsoft’s employees are disincentivized from testing on various hardware, as spending time to do testing does not contribute to their performance evaluations.

gjsman-1000 2y ago

“it's a miracle of modern software engineering and a testament of the power of collaboration and the free software movement that the Linux ecosystem works as well as it does” It can be a miracle, and yet still not be good enough. Even as a business user, knowing that if I build an app and it probably won’t work in 5 years, is all I need to know about this hobbyist toy. Linux is fundamentally not ready for anyone who has needs more than a Chromebook (which also runs Steam, by the way). It’s like pointing to a skyscraper made out of sand. Sure, it collapses every time the tide comes in, but your robots can rebuild it in 5 minutes flat, so it’s clearly ready for tenants.

acaloiar 2y ago
> this hobbyist toy. Linux is fundamentally not ready for anyone who has needs more than a Chromebook Wow, piss right off you to you, too. Linux is ready for me, and has been for decades. By your logic, I need nothing but a Chromebook. Linux is imperfect, like you, but it's never been an ass.
- gjsman-1000 2y ago
  I’ve used Linux since 2011; I know all about it; and I would recommend it to nobody because the community can hear no criticism, bear no criticism, and self-rationalizes everything. Sometimes it takes a bold stance to make a point against one of the most toxic, delusional, and self-righteous communities online. For my part, I’m back on Windows and Mac. Screw the community’s arrogance more than the project. The community, as even the comments here show, does not deserve a victory.
  - __d 2y ago
    I think it’s clear that today’s “desktop Linux” distributions are not what you want. That’s ok. Your criticisms come from the point of view of a usage that is poorly supported. Android is perhaps the closest to what you seem to want, although even it is much more aggressive about deprecating APIs, ABIs, and features than Windows. The is no Linux distribution today that even attempts to deliver the interface stability you appear to want. And given the development model and business structures involved, I think it’s unlikely there ever will be. You, and the many computer users like you, will probably never have a suitable Linux distribution. That’s an unfortunate reality. It’s not your fault: what you want is reasonable, but Linux isn’t set up to deliver it.

foobiekr 2y ago

Working for a vendor that ships Linux code, we find regressions all the time. Because we actually test things. We do try to be good citizens, and Linux is the right answer, but it isn't a false assertion on the part of the author at all. In a previous job, 20 years ago, we found that the Linux USB stack was so bad that it was full of deadlocks and unprotected shared memory on 2.6. Just atrocious. And subsequent releases broke it again and again. About 5 years after that, working for a different company, I had a well-known kernel developer tell me point blank that as long as we release our code to the kernel, they will "keep it working." When I probed what that meant, he genuinely saw no difference between "compiling" and "working." There are various efforts to add testing/tests. Those are good. But we lost a lot when Solaris, Irix, etc. all died, and Linux has never quite gotten there, and I doubt it ever will.

ryao 2y ago
OpenSolaris still lives in illumos: https://illumos.org/ https://illumos.org/
- LeFantome 2y ago
  I am sure what he means that is we lost a lot when it become unprofitable for companies to offer solid UNIX offerings that were supported in the way he would like. Other than the fact that it evolves glacially, Illumos is in an even worse position than Linux when it comes to offering support. If we are being honest though, in the terms that this article is arguing, "Linux" as an ecosystem is the wrong label. When it comes to stability and support, we need to think of each Linux distro as an Operating System. In that sense, things like RHEL are certainly well supported--including on the desktop. If your app targets RHEL, you pretty much have none of the problems discussed in this article. You still have a smaller universe of applications than Windows of course which is to be expected. So, the problem boils down to "nobody is making sufficient money off desktop Linux to steward a desktop Linux distro". That is not careless devs or bad design decisions though--no matter how chicken-and-egg you try to paint it. It is simply the network effect. Decent desktop operating systems exist and they already have large application universes and large, monetizable user bases. They appeared into a vacuum that lacked such operating systems but that vacuum no longer exists. That makes it almost impossible to economically introduce a new desktop platform. Certainly none of the commercial attempts have succeeded in the last few decades. In fact, the system that has been the MOST successful is Linux. By that metric, saying that Linux is doing it all wrong does not ring very true. Valve is doing a lot to make Linux gaming a reality because, when it comes to the network effect, it is largely true that Steam ( not just Windows ) is the true platform. So, if you can bring Steam to Linux, you can move the users there too. It is still early days for that but it appears to be working. On the mobile side, the network effect is very much alive as well. This is why Windows, using of course all of Microsoft's tricks, strengths, and knowledge, completely failed while the Linux kernel ( in the form of Android ) has totally dominated. And that is not for any of the reasons cited in the article. Do you think an Android app from 2008 will run on Android today unmodified? An iOS app from 2008 on iOS today? I don't think so.

BoiledCabbage 2y ago

You spent a whole lot of words to effectively say that you agree with the poster. Your entire post begins with a weak "no that's not true", and then the entre rest of the post is explaining why it is true and will never change.

itvision 2y ago

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues Just check this bug tracker. Just this one. Bug report on top of bug report caused by a fix which was caused by another fix. Sadly it's not just one bug tracker, I keep an eye on many of them. Of course in the magical Linux land if "It works for me", then the author is lying. Never mind that the author of this "click-bait" article is a ... Linux kernel bugzilla maintainer. Yeah. I can vouch for every letter in the article. It's written with my blood.

wakawaka28 2y ago
>Sadly it's not just one bug tracker, I keep an eye on many of them. How many Microsoft or Apple bug trackers do you have access to? The fact is that we have to consider that open-source work is largely done by volunteers and commercial developers with their own use cases in mind, and we only know about the drama because it's out in public. The drama inside big tech firms could be worse and on a larger scale and we would likely not know about it. Even if an insider told you something, it would be only a small part of a bigger picture you can't see.
lumost 2y ago
I suspect that the unspoken bit here is that hardware qualification is extremely important. On the desktop, Linux is an afterthought for the vast majority of consumer hardware vendors. Many Linux desktop users run configurations which could generously be called “alpha”. With MS windows, this burden is shouldered by every hardware manufacturer. It’s nonsensical to release a peripheral which doesn’t work on windows. Laptop/desktop makers then qualify common applications to make sure everything works as expected. If any of the above doesn’t work out, then MS will get a call, or the hardware vendor.
ryao 2y ago
Does that guy seriously maintain bugzilla for the Linux kernel and yet cannot decide whether Linux is an operating system or not: > Linux is not an operating system > While Linux is unrivaled on servers and has been the world's most popular operating system for over two decades, the situation on the desktop is quite bleak. It either is or is not. It is illogical to claim both true and false to be true at the same time, yet that is what he did.