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An article complaining about a single failure mode, which I personally have never experienced, and how that makes all of Linux completely unusable. I have to wo

An article complaining about a single failure mode, which I personally have never experienced, and how that makes all of Linux completely unusable. I have to wonder, if the author is happy with Windows and its gold plated video stack why does he feel the need to try Ubuntu?

derefr 17y ago
A comment—complaining about an article that complains about a specific X in Y, and compares it to a better X in Z—suggesting that the poster use Z instead of Y. (I have a theory that this template covers about 10% of IT-related blog post replies by weight.) I have to wonder, haven't you ever used something that's better in almost every way, but worse in one important one? You don't spend time writing a blog post about Y's failures unless you love Y, and want it to get better (or are getting paid by Z, but that's only applicable to very well-known bloggers.)
- apotheon 17y ago
  That's only relevant to the discussion at hand if the person in question actually seems to believe that Y is better than Z in all ways except one. Instead, he appears to believe that Z is better than Y in all ways, period, and uses Y just to have reasons to complain.
planckscnst 17y ago
But it's not a single failure mode. Indeed, any time the X server crashes, every open X app is lost.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Right, and every time Microsoft Windows crashes you lose all your applications as well. Sorry, but Vista does not solve that problem, I don't have any experience with windows 7 so I can't comment on that. All I know is that even if I do something simple on a windows box it requires a reboot. Which pretty much happens every couple of days when you really work a lot with windows, which will reset the counter but will not count as a 'crash'.
  - planckscnst 17y ago
    Yeah, but I didn't say when Linux crashes, I said when the X server crashes. When the equivalent happens in Windows, well, if you read the article, you know what happens.
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      For those rare cases when a windows display driver crash will not take the whole machine with it (usually by freezing or bluescreening) you might get out of it that way. But for the majority of those cases you'll have very little choice but to reach for the power button and keep it pressed for 10 very long seconds. Again, this is anecdotal, but I have never seen windows recover from any kind of crash in a graceful way. There are several layers to this stuff, hardware, driver, display server, window manager + applications. If any layer 'below' your application crashes you're lucky to keep your data (whatever the operating system). Now, I don't do the things the author refers to (switching screen modes to full screen and back and stuff like that), which might easily be why I never see these issues and for him they are common. But to suggest that in windows (where the lines between the layers are much more blurry than they should be) is 'crash proof' in any way shape or measure has me chuckling a bit. My linux machines (servers & desktops) go down when: - the power fails - I have to move - I upgrade kernels - hardware failures (mostly disks, occasionally a power supply or a memory bank) Other than that they're on, up & running 24x7 year after year.
      - thras 17y ago
        My graphics driver crashed on Vista just yesterday. The screen flashed and I got a nice pop-up in the bottom right corner telling me that the display driver just had to be restarted. How many machines are you running Vista on, anyway? Now, I have lots of Linux crash stories. But I run a lot more Linux servers than you do, so of course I would.
        jacquesm 17y ago
        I'm happy to hear you run lots more linux servers than I do, as I said before, it is all anecdotal evidence, and so should be taken with a lump of salt. We have exactly one machine running vista here, it's fairly new and it has crashed more than all our linux machines combined. So, just out of curiosity, how many linux machines do you have ?

derefr 17y ago

A comment—complaining about an article that complains about a specific X in Y, and compares it to a better X in Z—suggesting that the poster use Z instead of Y. (I have a theory that this template covers about 10% of IT-related blog post replies by weight.) I have to wonder, haven't you ever used something that's better in almost every way, but worse in one important one? You don't spend time writing a blog post about Y's failures unless you love Y, and want it to get better (or are getting paid by Z, but that's only applicable to very well-known bloggers.)

apotheon 17y ago
That's only relevant to the discussion at hand if the person in question actually seems to believe that Y is better than Z in all ways except one. Instead, he appears to believe that Z is better than Y in all ways, period, and uses Y just to have reasons to complain.

planckscnst 17y ago

But it's not a single failure mode. Indeed, any time the X server crashes, every open X app is lost.

jacquesm 17y ago
Right, and every time Microsoft Windows crashes you lose all your applications as well. Sorry, but Vista does not solve that problem, I don't have any experience with windows 7 so I can't comment on that. All I know is that even if I do something simple on a windows box it requires a reboot. Which pretty much happens every couple of days when you really work a lot with windows, which will reset the counter but will not count as a 'crash'.
- planckscnst 17y ago
  Yeah, but I didn't say when Linux crashes, I said when the X server crashes. When the equivalent happens in Windows, well, if you read the article, you know what happens.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    For those rare cases when a windows display driver crash will not take the whole machine with it (usually by freezing or bluescreening) you might get out of it that way. But for the majority of those cases you'll have very little choice but to reach for the power button and keep it pressed for 10 very long seconds. Again, this is anecdotal, but I have never seen windows recover from any kind of crash in a graceful way. There are several layers to this stuff, hardware, driver, display server, window manager + applications. If any layer 'below' your application crashes you're lucky to keep your data (whatever the operating system). Now, I don't do the things the author refers to (switching screen modes to full screen and back and stuff like that), which might easily be why I never see these issues and for him they are common. But to suggest that in windows (where the lines between the layers are much more blurry than they should be) is 'crash proof' in any way shape or measure has me chuckling a bit. My linux machines (servers & desktops) go down when: - the power fails - I have to move - I upgrade kernels - hardware failures (mostly disks, occasionally a power supply or a memory bank) Other than that they're on, up & running 24x7 year after year.
    - thras 17y ago
      My graphics driver crashed on Vista just yesterday. The screen flashed and I got a nice pop-up in the bottom right corner telling me that the display driver just had to be restarted. How many machines are you running Vista on, anyway? Now, I have lots of Linux crash stories. But I run a lot more Linux servers than you do, so of course I would.
      - jacquesm 17y ago
        I'm happy to hear you run lots more linux servers than I do, as I said before, it is all anecdotal evidence, and so should be taken with a lump of salt. We have exactly one machine running vista here, it's fairly new and it has crashed more than all our linux machines combined. So, just out of curiosity, how many linux machines do you have ?