Fred Langa contends that some Linux proponents harm their cause by hiding from the facts–it’s just as buggy as Windows XP: “As much as the partisans wish it were so, open sourcing isn’t a magic solution to the problems of bugs and security issues. As Linux and other open-source software grow in popularity and extend into a fragmented, uncontrolled mass marketplace, they will inevitably have their own full share of bugs and security problems, same as with any other software. Anyone who tells you differently, or tries to convince you that their favorite operating system is somehow immune to market forces, human error, and plain malice, is doing both you and the operating system they espouse a disservice.”
Langa Letter: Linux Has Bugs – Get Over It
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
“..hiding from the facts..”. rriiiigghtt…
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/
People do hide from the facts. People who troll don’t really use bugzilla. They just make sure that they hype Linux enough, no matter if what they say is real or not.
Bugs in terms of stability issues though put Linux and Windows XP (which was compared to in the article) on a roughly equal par…
Does Linux have bugs? Yes! Is it as buggy as Windows? Helll no.
The fun of being number one is that you become everyone’s favorite target. With the explosive growth of Linux on corporate servers, more holes will be found for those of malign intent to explore.
No viruses for Be (sniff…)
So you basically equate Linux Proponents with Trolls. You must be a lawyer to compare proponents with trolls.
The difference between Linux and Microsoft is that if you want to find out what know bugs there are you can find out pretty easily. If you want to know what bugs MS has forget about it.
>Does Linux have bugs? Yes! Is it as buggy as Windows? Hell no.
I find my WinXP box to be way more stable than any of the linux distros I have ever installed (and that should be more than 15-20 so far). And I mean, the whole thing as a desktop. I always get crashes on Linux, no matter which box, no matter which distro. Mostly X-related crashes, but overall, I find my WinXP box much more reliable for day to day use.
The other very crash-resilient OS would be MacOSX. Very stable for me as well as XP. Then, it would be FreeBSD.
But Linux distros or BeOS, are really crashy for me. I could crash BeOS with closed eyes.
Gotta agree with Eugenia on this one-my XP box has crashed 7 times, total, since January 2002. Buggy it is not. My Red Hat 7.2 box has crashed four times (freezes up at random) in the last two weeks since I did the initial install.
Any suggestions?
Hiding in plain sight is more like it.
Sure, GNU/OpenSource/FSF/linux software has bugs and security issues and they get fixed and people get notified about them. Distros with update software sends out the updates and people pick them up, blah…blah…blah.
Only idiots say that linux or unix for that matter do not have security issues and for the most part the same security issues you are patching on your Sun box in terms of any software beyond the kernel are the same security issues you deal with on a linux box. When Openssh has a issue everyone including OpenBSD has to deal with it.
I like the open, get a bug, find a security flaw, announce it, fix it, and send out a patch approach most Opensource Gnu projects take.
Where is all the wild screaming linux zealots hyping linux around here anyway? There are a few people posting around this site who like Linux and are content to spend most of their posting time exchanging quick bits of information and arguing about Desktop Environments. Once an awhile that making a quick laughing swipe at Windows. Still…
The majority of the people on this site are not raging linux zealots. I have gotten the impression in fact that most of the people here are Windows folks with a smattering of screaming mac fans piping in with a just a splash of BeOS people.
The only people I know walking around talking about how linux is bulletproof next to NT are idiot pundits who smack around about how linux is ready for the desktop. It is not yet. It is making progress but it is not there yet.
Yes, there is bugzilla. The bugs, the security issues they get put out in plain site and they are either fixed or the software gets dropped from distros (this has happened BTW).
Even MS admits their main focus has not been security and they are trying to turn that around. Most linux distros admit they are not as secure out of the box as OpenBSD. So what… All platforms have problems, zealots, bugs and security issues that have to be addressed. Pick the best platform for the job you have. The homogenous server environment Unix/Linux or NT is rarely if ever the best solution. Choose what does the job best for you.
When you make this comparison you are talking purely about the desktop. If you look at MS’s server market share which is around 20% and the amount of security exploits that their server software endures, it really does show that MS Server Software is the most vulnerable to exploits.
More than 80% of attacks targeted at servers are targeted at MS Servers yet they account for a mere 20%. How often do you hear about huge attacks on BSD, Solaris, HP-UX servers??? Almost never. Linux? The odd one or two.
Fred, in future look at the numbers before coming up with this drivel.
Eugenia,
You have dual celerons? Is this an Abit BP6 motherboard? Those are notoriously bad with Linux (though YMMV). In fact, I think it’s even documented in the kernel sources.
I worked for a firm that had our main NIS/NFS/DNS server on one of these boards, it was a nightmare, I was not responsible for this mistake, however, I came up with the obvious remedy, upgrade to a Tyan Tiger 100, problems went away.
I constantly see you talk about how much more responsive XP is for you over Linux, for me, XP is about the most unresponsive UI I’ve ever used, my girlfriend’s 1.5 p4 with XP is a great less responsive than my dual p3 800 system running either win2k or
Linux+KDE3 (even if I opt to only use one cpu). Maybe this is why FreeBSD is more responsive for X with you, for me, FreeBSD+windowmaker is a great deal less responsive than Linux+KDE2/3 (and of course, windowmaker on FreeBSD is more responsive than KDE on FreeBSD).
Just because you can run dual celerons doesn’t mean it will work perfectly, especially if you’re using some hacked configuration or a terrible bp6.
I will say that BeOS 5 pro is REAL responsive on my system.
Thanks.
I average about 3 blue screens a week in Win2K (which is sadly a lot more stable than WinXP). My Slackware 9.0 *beta* box hasn’t crashed once in 24 days of uptime (so far).
im an utter linux n00b..and i tried it because i got tired of win98s spotty performance.. and just thought that winXPs price was blatant extortion. In 6 months of using MDk8.2 and now Mdk 9.0 i have yet to ever experience a system crash. Ive had Galeon evaporate once or twice, but thats it. I have yet to ever ever experience anything like a bsod, kernal panic or any other kind of lockup.
My close friend of mine for years had a windows 98 computer that didn’t crash on her once.
You can interpret that how you want… though I still am not sure how to interpret it.
>You have dual celerons? Is this an Abit BP6 motherboard?
That’s only two of our machines here. I have 8 *different* machines here. I have several different Linux problems on all.
All in all, I do not consider the Linux platform “stable” for my workstation or desktop. It is pretty ok when it runs on text mode as a server though. But not as my desktop. I lock it up easily running either KDE or Gnome or even blackbox and X.
I’m sure most of you have seen this, but it’s hilarious.
http://www.ubergeek.tv/switchlinux/
I constantly see you talk about how much more responsive XP is for you over Linux, for me, XP is about the most unresponsive UI I’ve ever used,
Ditto for me. XP is so slow for UI response. Yes it is much easier to install software for XP, and there are like 100times for commercial software but UI responsiveness on XP is a joke. I am using SuSE to write this and it is far more responsive.
P.S. At work Windows 2000 is very good on an PIII 667 256 meg ram. I would choose Win2000 over XP.
What are you doing when it locks.
The only time I can lock X is when I try Xine. Otherwise no locks. Is Xfree configured to use the correct driver?
Anyway at least when a program hangs in Win2000 you can end the task. When Xine crashes X, it is immediate meltdown.
Maybe FBSD is more “stable” on a desktop because there really isn’t any DRI. All my crashes are DRI related.
What about the speed and responsiveness on those other machines?
That was seriously funny.
m an utter linux n00b..and i tried it because i got tired of win98s spotty performance..
Of course, you were using an OS that’s … what, 4 years old now? Go to the archives and grab a Linux distro & assorted apps from 4 years ago and let us know what you think.
and just thought that winXPs price was blatant extortion.
If you own a copy of Win98, I believe you could have went to XP Home for $99. Not exactly cheap, but far from extortion, IMHO.
For those of you who say XP is unresponsive …
Assuming you have hardware that isn’t in the stone age, install fresh and then do these:
http://www.monroeworld.com/pchelp/xptweaks.php
Then come back and let us know how unresponsive it is.
>All in all, I do not consider the Linux platform “stable” for my workstation or desktop.
That is funny because the 10 developers we have running linux as there main desktop do not have these issues and as developers writing, testing, compiling and otherwise screwing with their systems (as much as users can without root) they tax the systems pretty well. I have had two instances so far in nearly six months of our linux trials of an X lockup and the user have had to pull the linux version of the three finger salute and do the CTRL+ALT+Backspace.
Sure, if I am running odd off versions of apps I can get application crashes 1.299 version of Abiword crashes on print for example.
I had another crash on print issue with Evolution due to the fact I did NOT upgrade using the packages available from Ximian but some rpms off someone’s people.redhat.com dirs. Using the Ximian rpms I have not had such trouble.
If I load up my box with alpha and beta software where even the maintainers warn you not to use on any box you care about, I get crashes. If I keep off the compile a day, grab the latest of everything track I am fine.
Upgrade on even realease numbers (usually signifies stable versions) if and only if the new version has features you want. This advice goes beyond linux though to any free software for any platform. I can crash a windows box pretty quick loading up with beta shareware/freeware stuff that comes in those little winzip install packages.
by real crash, I mean totally unexpected – while testing an app doing fax related stuff.
the other few I enconutered
1 ran a win2k usb tv driver on XP
2 failing CPU fan caused over heating
3 ran an app on win2k partition that’s bind to win2k speech drivers
while 4 crashes in 18 months is nowhere near “mainframe”, it was solid enough for me. Since last August, I tried .NET CPP preview on two PCs, only one of them crashed once. My SO’s PC has been running XP since 2001, and didn’t crashed once.
on my linux box, if I use opera for some web sites using CJK fonts, X will be crashed to text mode in 5 to 10 min., every time I try an old scsi card with a cdrom drive will bring down the kernel.
You sound like a linux advocate, suggesting a fresh install and some tweaking.
Actually I installed XP on my machine at home again. I had to for work. I immediately did the 3 first things suggested in your link.
1. Classic start menu
2. No themes.
3. Effects off.
Still slow.
I am running a 1 gig PIII with 256 ram. SuSE 8.1 is very fast and I have far more GUI stuff going on. Personally for me my PIII 667 256 meg ram at work with Win2000 maintains responsiveness under almost any load. I mean it gets ridiculous how many tasks I have running at times and nothing seems to slow down.
Basically I like Win2000. Although I would rather use and pay for software on alternate platforms in order to encourage choice. My next computer is likely a Powerbook.
“The homogenous server environment Unix/Linux or NT is rarely if ever the best solution. Choose what does the job best for you.”
Agree 100%. After a few more years of Moore’s law, desktop PCs will be running in the 12-15 GHz range. This means that you will be able to run multiple OSes for your environment (via VMware, etc.) just like you multitask multiple applications now. In fact, I predict that a lot of us will be doing just this – having live sessions of Solaris x86/Linux/Windows/BeOS/QNX/etc. running simultaneously so that we can do our jobs in whichever tool best suits the task at the moment, without ever having to reboot to do it.
Basically, OSes are going to become ‘just like any other application’ as far as our environments are concerned and the distinction between OS and app will blur somewhat as far as how they are operated, and I say the more the merrier. All that extra processing power will be used, and running multiple OSes simultaneously to do a wider variety of work is the most obvious thing we will start to see happening. We won’t always need to choose just “one OS to rule them all” when we can have every OS we want running (with overhead that isn’t bad enough to stop us from doing so) and probably won’t even think twice about it when the hardware starts getting fast enough.
When I pay hundreds dollars for software I SHOULD expect it to be bug free – Microsoft’s marketing have managed to change that to something along the lines of “Oh, theres a few bugs – it’s OK – thats normal”.
It’s my right as a cunsumer to expect the highest standards.
Linux is FREE – hey for free I’m happy, I have stability and the software I need, and I get to use it for free. Bugs are fixed quickly,and I’m happy with that also.
But giving Microsft money for a CD full of bugs seems somehow wrong.
Microsoft is the “Big Boy” and as we all know the tallest tree catches the most wind. But lets not forget Microsoft have earned a hurricane!
When I pay hundreds dollars for software I SHOULD expect it to be bug free – Microsoft’s marketing have managed to change that to something along the lines of “Oh, theres a few bugs – it’s OK – thats normal”.
It’s my right as a cunsumer to expect the highest standards.
Linux is FREE – hey for free I’m happy, I have stability and the software I need, and I get to use it for free. Bugs are fixed quickly,and I’m happy with that also.
But giving Microsft money for a CD full of bugs seems somehow wrong.
Microsoft is the “Big Boy” and as we all know the tallest tree catches the most wind. But lets not forget Microsoft have earned a hurricane!
don’t use system restore, auto update
What? Linux has bugs? You can fix it easily.
What? Windows has bugs? Well, nothing you can do except waiting.
Get over it!
Yeah its buggy, but you can fix it
or hire someone to fix it, most of the time its allreaddy fixed since someone was faster in fixing it….
Thats the difrence.
“Anyway at least when a program hangs in Win2000 you can end the task. When Xine crashes X, it is immediate meltdown. ”
Not quite true.
Did you totice the SysRq key on your keyboard? It’s “system request”
(usually it’s the same key as “PrintScreen”),
and the only OS that puts that key to good use is Linux. You can use
it to kill apps, to do emergency syncing of the filesystems, remount
them read-only when a hard reboot is imminent, etc.
When X locks up, you can still kill it by setting your
keyboard to raw mode:
Alt + SysRq + R
then hit:
Alt + SysRq + e
(this will send “end” signal to all running processes)
If that didn’t work, use:
Alt + SysRq + i
(this sends “kill” signals to running processes. It’s much more effective.)
from there you will be dropped to a shell. Restart your services with:
init 1
and then
init 5
to let all the processes restart cleanly.
and voila, your uptime gets to endure. :o)
Have you reported your problems to bugzilla? Have you forwarded the crash information to GNOME or KDE so that they could fix the problem?
Curious.
someone said :
“Yeah its buggy, but you can fix it
or hire someone to fix it, most of the time its allreaddy fixed since someone was faster in fixing it….
Thats the difrence”
Did you read the article ? Because the whole point was there : this argument has no real meaning today.
Someone also said that he wouldn’t buy anything with bug : well, you cannot use any computer or even electronic stuff without any bugs ! Maybe critical parts of a car’s ABS have no critical bugs, or another products like that. But I seriously doubt that linux kernel or windows cannot have any bugs : the language used itself implied there will always be some bugs.
Maybe Tex can be considered having no bugs. But, well, it is 20 years old, and isn’t comparable to any other products. It is a exception, I think
Sure Microsoft has a better security rating! But, how many worms/virues related to Windows have almost shut dowm Internet Access in the past 2 years…. Code Red …cough…cough…cough…. Nimda…. cough….cough…cough….SQLSlammer! Hell Microsoft can’t even keep their on Personal Incompany Servers secure… do ha want to bet that’s why the Windows and Office XP Activation service was down!!!!!
what’s with everyone hating win98? I loved that OS. If I wasn’t running a dualie, that’s the os I’d be running right now. None of this certified driver nonsense. Solid for gaming, relatively small installation (for a MS OS). I haven’t played around with BeOS (it sounds awesome) but on a single processor, that win98SE is it. Sure it was buggy. If you’re just screwing around, installing and uninstalling apps all day, everything going to be buggy. I’ve crashed variations of linux, win2000, winxp, my old amiga, etc… I don’t know why I’m so proud of this. Yeah man, win98SE, that OS needed some loving to keep it happy… ugly ass interface though. Windowblinds back then was a dog to run.
I dual boot RH8 and WinXP Pro now… You turn off all the eye candy in winxp: the shadows, persalized menus, new start bar, etc… it’s quick and responsive, which is something considering 1.85G of bulk it’s shifting around. and stylexp makes it pretty without the slowdown, but it aint no win98se
Your totally right maybe linux has bugs but they get fixed very very quickly so usually they are fixed before the exploit is posted. We in the opensource community don’t have to sit around and wait while 3 people try to fix the bug we have many people viewing it and fixing it when they want.
juice
Perhaps you have had some problems with Linux, Eugenia–I can’t dispute that. However, to claim that your experience speaks for Linux/Windows as a whole is another matter. Many, many studies (some more reliable than others) available on the ‘net have demonstrated that Linux is at least as stable as the NT-kernal-based versions of Windows, if not more so, both in desktops and servers. I have a dual-boot with Win98SE and Mandrake 8.2. I use both professionally, and I’ve had Mandrake crash just once in the eight or nine months I’ve been running it–and I’ve had to train myself; no geeky friends to turn to. Win98 crashes AT LEAST twice a week. And my machine is an old K6 II/500 on Tyan’s least expensive board at the time. Yes, XP is (it is generally understood) quite a bit more stable than 98–to argue against that would be idiotic–but for the vast majority of people who have used both, it is no MORE stable than Linux.
Now, OS X: aaahhhh!
Eugenia, I find that very odd. KDE crashes on me all the time but I’ve never brought down BeOS or Gnome, ever. Then again, that could be just me.
” it’s quick and responsive, which is something considering 1.85G of bulk it’s shifting around. and stylexp makes it pretty without the slowdown, but it aint no win98se”
Speaking only to the issue of installed size, I have a few
OS installed and I got win98se down to 80 MB.
Of course, I had win95b down to under 40 MB.
That is a far cry from 1.85 GB. What a beast!
Of course, Internet Explorer being the pig that it is got gutted. Ditto MSN, Outlook, Exchange , and any MS mail stuff.
Let’s look at the facts:
Langa brings up CERT, we can safely assume that he knows about CERT, and that they report known bugs.
Langa counts number of patches released and calls it number of bugs when he could have looked at CERT for number of bugs. He is counting one thing and calling it another.
Since Langa uses RedHat’s and Microsoft’s released bug fixes, he knows about when patches were released.
Since Langa knows about CERT’s bug reporting, he knows about when a bugs became known to the public.
Langa brings up the subject of timeliness of patches, and claims that Linux’s advantages in this area “take much longer to appear, and longer still to become generally available to all affected users” ignoring the fact that the data is available to him in the sources above (all of which he brought up within the same article). He could have easily looked up when bugs became known (CERT) when patches were released (MS and RH patch pages, resptively) and compared minimum, maximum and average times. Did he do this? No, instead he fell back on generalisations.
Langa has also failed to look at the data sources he mentioned to compare how many known bugs have actually been patched.
The two obvious conclusions I can see are:
1) Langa is stupid and should be ignored.
2) Langa is intentionally spreading FUD that favors one of his biggest advertisers.
Ultimately, neither what we say, or what the author says matters a whit. The only thing that matters is track record. To this day, Linux has got the good track record, and Microsoft has the bad one. Linux boxes hitting years of uptime are nothing special. When Windows can prove this track record over a number of years, then it can be considered stable. No “initiatives” or marketing-gimicks is going to nullify the requirement for this time-consuming, painful buildup of a good track record. Microsoft did a serious desservice to the computing world with the general crapiness of its previous products. If it’s overcome that, then great. But their behavior should be akin to that of someone who commited a crime. There is a period of repentance during which you keep your head bowed, your mouth shut, and work hard to prove to everyone that you’ve genuinely changed.
What? Linux has bugs? You can fix it easily.
Oh I’m glad to hear bugs are easy to fix on Linux. Please fix this really annoying and basic one that has been around for years: copy & paste between Qt & Gtk & X11 applications just does not work.
Of course, I’ve just said that what I say doesn’t matter, but I’m going to say it anyway. On the desktop, Linux is stable. Maybe I’ve just got phenomenally good luck (or, I do a better job picking distros *cough* Debian & Gentoo *cough*) but I can remember almost every Linux crash I’ve ever had. In all my years of using it, they don’t amount to more than half a dozen. Of course, user-level crashes more often, but even then, the only thing that has crashed on me in the last few months is the 2.5 development kernel (once), Konqueror (twice), and Noatun (a million times). In comparison, on the WinXP box across the room from me, IE has crashed three or four times just this week. Overall, I feel totally safe throwing a big compile or render at the system while I’m trying to listen to some music and get some work done in the foreground. I just don’t feel that kind of safety in XP.
I use XP and Linux and I can only say that so far Linux has proven more stable to me. For example when I unplug my USB modem XP reboots spontaneously. Also Windows Explorer and the taskbar hang often. Overall XP is a great improvement to Win 98 and ME, but for somebody who bought 95, ME and XP I really feel like I’ve paid too much for the first two. One of the top reasons to upgrade to XP (according to Microsoft) was the increased stability (wasn’t it 17 times more stable or something). So they admitted that I actually bought 2 unstable OS’es and instead of they FIXING IT, I have to buy a whole new OS. I can also say that KDE doesn’t crash on my PC (I’m using Mandrake). I’m not a zealot, it’s my experience, get over it.
>>>Overall XP is a great improvement to Win 98 and ME, but for somebody who bought 95, ME and XP I really feel like I’ve paid too much for the first two.
But Microsoft hasn’t raised OEM price for Windows for something like 5-6 years.
My personal experience with Linux is that performance, especially in X, can very widely and unpredictably from computer to computer.
Today I setup an older Athalon 550 MHZ computer with 128 MB RAM with Red Hat 8 and it was a terrible experience to try and use the default GNOME desktop. And the ATI video card is well supported in X!
As a counter point I set up a 330 MHZ laptop with RH8 and it was more usable.
Just a few days ago I was working on two computers with fresh installs of RH8 and the 550 MHZ box was very snappy, even more so then the 1GH box next to it. This was in part due to the 550 having a TNT2 video card that has great acceleration support under X while the 1GH box had some Intel card that has poor support in XFree.
Their are many factors that impact Linux performance. I suspect that if X86 boxes where not all tweaked for Windows that it would be just as unpredictable. Though much of this, at the X level, is driver support.
That’s only two of our machines here. I have 8 *different* machines here. I have several different Linux problems on all. All in all, I do not consider the Linux platform “stable” for my workstation or desktop. It is pretty ok when it runs on text mode as a server though. But not as my desktop. I lock it up easily running either KDE or Gnome or even blackbox and X.
That is very interesting. I have run debian on at least 10 different machines since 2.1 and have never had a lock up or crash of any kind (with the exception of one dual Athlon MP 1800+ machine with a Tyan motherboard. Windows was also extremely unstable on that machine, so I replaced it).
I’ve had Linux applications screw up on me a couple of times, but never a system instability of any kind. In fact, the machine I’ve had the longest has been running non-stop since the day Debian potato was released, and it has been running with a fairly heavy load.
On this particular machine, I have written, compiled and tested some very large programs written in C/C++ code, Java code, Python code, and some Perl. I run Apache/Tomcat and Zope and serve data driven web pages from my workstation. I have about 50 people logging into my machine at different times to listen to mp3 and ogg files. I serve a bug tracking mysql database off of my machine. On top of all that, I do all the other common workstation type tasks, like surfing the web, reading email, etc.
Anyway, Linux (particularly Debian) has been rock solid for me. FreeBSD is the only other OS I have tried which has provided me with an equal level of stability. I use Windows all the time (I’m posting from my Windows machine right now) but I cannot say that Windows is even half as stable as Linux has been for me, and Windows XP is utter junk. I have completely removed it from my machine and am currently running 2000, which is much more stable.
I guess we all have different experiences to base our judgements on. But it is interesting that ours vary so drastically. Oh well, to each their own.
EVERY OS I’ve ever used has crashed on me. I’ve lost work in Mac OS X several times. And that was on a dual 1ghz G4 running the latest Jaguar. Even had WinXP crash on me several times. Mostly related to running non-WinXP-ready applications, but I’ve had the very latest commercial software crash on it. Sim City 4 being the most modern thing that wouldnt keep up for more than 10 minutes. After that, only a reboot would save me. In terms of stability, if you can handle setting it up, Linux beats everyone else. It has it’s “weirdnesses” and you must know it pretty well to get over and around them but it’s possible. So use it, learn it, optimize it, BEFORE you troll about it.
That goes for you too, Eugenia!
Linux is not ready for newbies. It never was and it wont be in a few years. Once KDE reaches 4.0, maybe then. Meanwhile, I vote for less bloat and more productivity, which means SciTE and WindowMaker for me.
Today I setup an older Athalon 550 MHZ computer with 128 MB RAM with Red Hat 8 and it was a terrible experience to try and use the default GNOME desktop. And the ATI video card is well supported in X!
Gnome sucks (sorry Miguel)! I used to really like Gnome, but after a two year sabatical from both Gnome and KDE, I tried Gnome 2 on both Debian unstable and FreeBSD. It was a nightmare on Debian. It only seemed to work right when you didn’t touch anything (of course it is listed as UNSTABLE, so I shouldn’t be so shocked). KDE 3, on the other hand, seemed quite stable; although there’s something about KDE that just pisses me off when I look at it. It’s like an asthetic wedgy or something.
Gnome on FreeBSD was a lot better, but there are still far too many aspects of it that just don’t work. So, I’m back to WindowMaker; building brick walls with my dock icons.
There’s nothing like home.
There are two ways to bring a Linux machine back on line if there is a problem with the interface to the machine.
In the rare case of a total X lock, it’s possible to go Ctrl+alt+F1 and bring up a text console where you can kill the process that is locking up X.
If the worst happened, total X lock, no keyboard, no mouse, you can ssh in from another machine and sort it out.
The first method is impossible under windows NT+2000+XP etc, you cannot drop to a console. The second may be possible, but I think it would be very rare for someone to set it up.
Under Linux both ways are easy to do. That is the difference, under Linux the machine can be brought back on line if there is a gui problem, but as windows runs large parts of the gui at ring 0 with no proper memory protection, a crash is normally fatal.
It’s the difference between a desktop OS, and one like Linux that can be used for mission critical apps.
Meanwhile, I vote for less bloat and more productivity, which means SciTE and WindowMaker for me.
I had never heard of SciTE before now. I usually use vim (and gvim on Windows), but SciTE looks really good. Thanks for the inadvertant tip.
>That goes for you too, Eugenia!
>Linux is not ready for newbies.
I am not a newbie Mr. I am just someone who expects MORE from the OS he/she uses. Stop making assumptions. You assume that I am a newbie, while I first ran Unix in 1993 and Linux in particular since 1998. Give me a break and be careful how you talk when you mention my name. I am not your box bag. I am not some kind of actor or singer which everyone is using his/her name wherever they want because they believe that this person doesn’t really exist, and that is a “virtual” person. I am here, alive, breathing.
I tried to email you that, but your email.ee server said that you are over quota.
I don’t like GNOME or KDE that much ether. I always install ether XFCE or ROX-Filer as soon as I can. I’ve been running a combo of the latest ROX and selected components from the XFCE4 CVS on my main system and all I can say is SWEEEEEET! and FAST!!!!!!!
I’ve got RH8 running on a Asus Dual 233, with an old ATi 4mb card. Work like charm…
Application startup times are really long because of the slow harddisk (5mb/sec :-()
But when started, everything works great, even when I have multiple applications running, it still works great without any hitches.
My other system, single athlon 1400 with a geforce 2pro, also has no stability problem except when I install nVidia’s own drivers and when i actually use 3D acceleration. The system always crashes after 10 minutes. But it’s at least consistent about it.
Usually when Windows (XP) crashes, I don’t know why. On Linux I find I way more easily to isolate the problem, because Linux’ bug seem more consistent to me…
> I’ve got RH8 running on a Asus Dual 233, with an old ATi 4mb card. Work like charm…
I guess that 550MHZ box I set up today must have something really wrong with it. It was so bad that I could see the title bars of the windows being redrawn a line at a time!
Odd about your 3D, I have the drivers, well the 7.3 driver set recompiled on 8.0, and its run perfectly. Does XP crash very often on this box?
Usually when Windows (XP) crashes, I don’t know why. On Linux I find I way more easily to isolate the problem, because Linux’ bug seem more consistent to me…
This has to be the funniest comment yet, now people are claiming even the bugs in Linux are better than in windows 🙂
I haven’t found a system I couln’t bring down yet, but win2k is most stable for me but tha’s because I know where the pitfals are and have learned to avoid and fix them. It’s my guess it’s the same for the people who run mostly Linux.
Hi folks.
Just wanted to say that I’ve installed and used a number of machines over time and have come to various stability conclusions.
Linux is very stable. The base kernel itself is very stable, once you start playing with it, it can be a different matter. I am relatively good at this and I run “cutting edge” stuff and on my normal everyday use it doesn’t crash on me. the only software that has brought me some problems at some points is X and some video cards. It has crashed on me a few times over the years, but not many. I’ve also dealt with dev kernels a bit and even on oopsen (?) I’ve had the kernel survive sometimes.
FreeBSD has crashed on me once. I killed an nfs tcp mount (since the server was experimental), which locked my freebsd client, that shouldn’t happen.
I mostly run FreeBSD and Linux.
The few times I’ve run BeOS, it never crashed on me, neither did QNX. Solaris has crashed on me a few times too. Even Palm and WinCE have crashed on me.
Win9X crashed on me quite often.
I never really used NT or 2K much, but it did crash on me once or twice. I have a XP partition which I use mainly for 2 games, NWN and CIV3. (And hopefully NWN will get a linux client soon). I’ve had XP crash on me more than I’d like to think, though I must admit is pretty stable and most times handles application crashes nicely. Then again… I don’t like applications crashing on me, so it’s still not fun, but I guess I can’t blame M$ for OpenGL problems.
So in short, I find that for my normal use, XP crashes more than Linux. XP->games, Linux->everything else. I don’t play games that much anyway.
Nacho
A lot of the packages that RedHat updated for 7.2 should not be counted as the OS. They are updating MySQL, Apache, PostgreSQL, GCC, Python, Perl, etc along with OS things. I don’t really think his comparison is valid.
Eugenia did give credit to Linux’s stability as a server. I’m confused that XP is more stable for her than Linux as a Worstation, however. Quite Mysterious.
Also RedHat I believe may run slower on some NEWER hardware for strang reasons, like the fact that all software is defaultly compiled for 386 and not 686.
XP more stable. Seems we have a mystery on our hands. Is there any piece of hardware that is uniform on all your machines?
I run WinXP here and at home, no problems. Rock solid and wonderful. I have no problems with speed or crashes or anything. Yet there are people having huge troubles with XP. And some people run different versions of Linux problem free, while others can get no luck.
I somehow get the feeling that there must be a large amount of factors that are screwing with people. Different hardware, different usage patterns, different applications, and people having no other life so they can put down hours upon hours to fix this and that.
I’d say that XP and Linux are stable (X on the other hand…) and what we need is less unstable and changing hardware.
(And to the neverending argument about “you have the source, then you can fix it”. I am a developer, this is what I do for a living, yet I wouldn’t go in and fix things left and right, putting massive amounts of hours on this (I can’t stand many things about *nix for instance, and I do develop on Linxu) or that. I would consider sending good bug reports (because I am a nice person), but I simply don’t want to swap out girlfriend, work, aikido, or spare time just so I can fix a whole bunch of bugs. Stop with the elitist comments, which I hardly think many live up to, and those putting in all the hours (kernel, kde, apps, etc) seem to be far less hostile anyways. Good job boys and girls, but keep the fanboys at bay.)
I don’t care about kernel-security-patches. Really. The main problem with the big-news-story-bugs is that everybody uses exactly the same system. Monopoly-stuff aside, if the environment would be more diverse, a virus or hacker wouldn’t get as much chances as today. That’s why I like things like OpenOffice, Linux and Mozilla. Diversity. And diversity comes with more offerings. Darwin.
And the difference still is that you can patch your Linux-system if you want and are ready for the effort.
From my point of view, he was simply stating that you constantly.. CONSTANTLY look at everything with the point of view of an idiot who just bought a computer yesterday and doesn’t know his or her right from left. Now this point of view works in some cases.. but not for everything.
You need to step your virtual Joe user scale up a notch and add a little knowledge. Not everything needs to be looked at from that point of view, or just that point of view.
Lets not forget a few things here.
The growth of linux is growing at a steady rate, bugs may be found but not at a huge fantastic rate like with windows. Difference with windows is that its growth exploded and anybody who used win95 will tell you that on its first release it was a load of rubbish, but people still bought it.
Linux also admits it has bugs and people can find them easily.
This thing also about linux crashing on hardware, lets not forget that alot of companies don’t support linux so its hard to find driver support, i think its wonderfull that coders in their part time have got so far compared to MS’s efforts.
Anyway, Linux as it is, is FAR more stable if it wasn’t then it would be IBM trying to run clusters using windows or supercompters.
Comparing a Linux distro and *BSD distro as wholes in stability (which, I’ll admit, you really didn’t do, as such) is like comparing apples with oranges.
I’m not at all surprised that you find FreeBSD to be more stable than your Linux distros, since with Linux you get a massive amount of various software going at different directions and doing different things all the time. It is a big mess of all sorts of things, tied together by a third party (distro provider).
With *BSD, you install it, and you get, at least what comes to desktop and the like, nothing. You need to piece the whole thing together by yourself, and in the end you get a coherent whole. Of course it is more stable. (And that is why use *BSD [Net, that is]). And the stability also comes from the fact that you need to tinker to make it work.
And I really gotta wonder how on earth you can get your X crashing and locking up (on regular basis?) on Linux but not on FreeBSD. It is the same X, after all, isn’t it.
Or would you happen to be running kernel mode (or whatever) drivers on Linux, but not FreeBSD. If yes, then it hardly makes Linux, in and of itself, unstable.
Well, I’m not a Window$ fan — far from it — but I must confess I’m very satisfied with XP, provided you clear most of the “bells and whistles” the UI can provide : no crash, and better responsiveness than Linux + X + KDE, on the same machine.
Concerning Linux, it suffers more and more the same pressures as Windows : the “Marketing Dept” takes more and more precedence on the “Technical Dept” : the new versions have to be published at that date, even if the “product” is not technicaly OK.
One of the reasons I very much like NetBSD is that, until now, they really don’t care the dates and “marketing” considerations : they issue a new version… when they think it’s ready. Result : a very, very stable system, even if it lags a bit driver-wise (there is always a price to pay…)
I’m interested to know how NetBSD has now changed more to care about dates and “marketing”.
I think they have changed a bit, but the dates still don’t really matter to them (there’s no idea when 2.0 will be out; maybe NetBSD Foundation/developers have some idea, but they haven’t told us mortals). And the “marketing” stuff seems, to me, be just about a bit more “press releases” and the like about new features etc. And, invariably, the new features end up in -current, so you won’t see them in a release for a long time.
And considering the 1.6 release, the had some “marketing” about the release engineering process and stuff like that going on last spring, and what happened. 1.6 was delayed two – or was it three – months, and NetBSD really didn’t care, since the issues they were fixing were important security fixes.
But anyway, since it’s nice to have all sortsa geewhizz features and so on, I decided to ditch 1.6 some time ago and move to -current… And I believe many desktop oriented people really run -current rather than some release. (Now if they only could get the SA/pthreads stabilized, and I’m off to some serious upgrade work
Li*ux is bullshit.
And it’s getting even more shitty with IBM’s help.
At IBM they are laughing all the day about the idiots
of kernel coders working for free on Open Bullshit.
IBM is making big bucks and Open source coders getting what they desserve: bullshit.
We can’t take people who claim that Linux is perfect seriously. We can’t take people who blame the user for the linux’s problems seriously. Any such person should be considered a troll.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
8:03am up 105 days, 21:55, 1 user, load average: 0.14, 0.23, 0.22
Your turn. See my screenshot for proof..
http://www.geocities.com/andrew7005
You know what you´re doing!
How many distros the author has played with?
Debian is rock-solid stable, don´t blame all linux distros just cause you can´t get KDE to work right with your easy-to-use-all-user-friendlyness kind of distro, these are pure crap.
Just an example… I can get KDE to run better in my iBookG3@500Mhz wiht Debian3.0 than in an Athlon@1Gz running Mandrake8!
Last time I checked Linux has lose the desktop, so it means that you´re supposed to know what to do if something goes wrong AND supposed to know how to get your system more stable by recompiling the kernel and base system.
If it´s broken, fix it.
Hi Aitvo. I shut down my computer every night, because I’m not interested in wasting electricity when I’m using my computer. I have not had a blue screen on this computer (Windows XP). If you are wondering why others think Linux users are childish, please re-read your comment.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Uptime is like penis size to Linux users. It has to be longer, not matter what else suffers (lack of blood circulation to the brain maybe?)
I’m only teasing, don’t take me too serisouly. 😉
Thanks for the advice. That is definitely nice information. I am going to forward that info to my email account for reference. Will probably crash my computer deliberately to test it it out.
Thanks!
Works for me in KDE. Sometimes I need to use klipper to choose the buffer I want to use.
There is also a standard now for copying and pasting that Gnome / KDE and compy with. If it doesn’t work its the app developers fault.
http://www.fewt.com/desktop/
Geocities has a really BAD transfer limit.
(/me braces for the OSNEWS effect)
“Uptime is like penis size to Linux users.”
I shut mu notebook off every night too, but your statement is 100% correct. Why is it a big deal? “Because we can”. I posted that only to prove that claiming Linux is unstable is a lie, which it is.
Screenshot proves nothing.
And BTW, I had some Exchange 2000 server used by 130 people that did over 200 days (it runs on private IP space, no NAT, so I dont necessarily to keep up with patches). So what.
As I said earlier… Microsoft expects people to pay for their bugs.. And the bug don’t come cheap!
It is just plain wrong that they can get away with sub-standard software in the first place and charge for it!!
If you bought a TV or CD player that only worked occasionally you would soon take it back for a refund. But noooo, they bind you with an EULA that says that once you have used it you are stuck with it. Trouble is you only find out that it doesn’t work until you do use it – a bit like opening a can of beans and finding mouldy contents and eating it anyway because the liscence agreement says so… Daft!
My Linux bugs are FREE! ;o) As is the software and I’m happy with it!
Does your particular distribution use devfs? I just started messing around with some USB and PCMCIA devices today on FreeBSD 5.0-current, and I think it’s pretty amazing.
No, devfs is disabled in my kernel. I haven’t spent enough time with it to be able to have any opinion of it.
Linux for sure is buggy. However, the suggestion that MS is so buggy because, it is so widely deployed is not quite sound. Look at webservers. Apache still runs the majority of the websites, but IIS has certainly had more bugs.
That said, I think MS will eventually get their acts together, in terms of security. Which is nice, and one more reason why linux advocates should not rest on their laurels and live in past glory.
“I think MS will eventually get their acts together, in terms of security.”
Doubtful, unfortunately. Read this:
http://www.austin360.com/shared/news/technology/ap_story.html/Techn…
Look at webservers. Apache still runs the majority of the websites, but IIS has certainly had more bugs.
Apache != Linux
IIS != Windows
Here is my opinion about redhat and windows xp:
1)XP bugs affects the whole windows NT family and are not XP specific
2)most people use redhat ‘Personal Desktop’ installation, not full 5giga installation!
3)vulnearable services are not usually enabled by default (instead of port 139/445)
4)avanced users may uninstall any software or kernel module they don’t need
5)debian 3.0r1 ‘base installation’ is about 35mb…
6)my computer has 2081768 bytes of software
7)stability? here is my $ uname -a; uptime
Linux blademaster 2.0.39 #1 Son Apr 14 09:53:28 CEST 2002 i686 unknown
17:34:20 up 891 days, 2 users, load average: 0.02, 0.05, 0.03
maybe it is not a desktop computer but i’m browsing internet and listening mp3 with this
)))))
“load average: 0.02, 0.05, 0.03”
With a load that low, an uptime of 800+ days isn’t much to brag about.
Whenever you see someone suggest the number of exploits for Linux is as high as Windows, look a little deeper. They are always using one of two false comparisons.
1) # of Windows security issues vs # of Linux security issues on _all versions of linux_ added up. This nets around 2.5 “bugs” on linux per actual security issue, due to it being reported across multiple distributions.
2) # of Windows security issues in Windows vs # of Linux security issues in the ENTIRE distribution. Given how much is in the entire distribution, this is closely akin to comparing the number of security issues in IIS, Office, the rest of backoffice, advanced SQL server, all your normal desktop utilities, all your added on network applications, etc. etc. etc. to the number of security issues in just windows. Guess what, there’s more when you count all the software on an entire platform!
Most articles employ both lies at once to even get Linux security issues anywhere close to the windows numbers. And after all that’s done, you still get security patches for Linux faster than windows. For example, if you run Debian, you will often get fixes for the security issues before they even hit the lists.
Oh well, another day, another troll.
One of the big problems in the article is its claim that the “fragmenting” of Linux is slowing down the applying of bugs. This makes no sense. A Linux bug gets reported on BugTraq, CERT, or whatever. Red Hat, Mandrake, Debian, SuSE, etc. hear about it at roughly the same time and start patching their distros. As Red Hat is applying its changes, Mandrake is also applying changes, as is Debian, SuSE, and all the rest. They are working, for the most part, without consulting each other, and are patching bugs roughly at the same time (realistically within a few days of each other). Fragmentation is a non sequitor.
The diversity of Linux distros is a problem for other issues, hence things like the FHS and LSB, but it makes little difference to fixing bugs.
“Oh I’m glad to hear bugs are easy to fix on Linux. Please fix this really annoying and basic one that has been around for years: copy & paste between Qt & Gtk & X11 applications just does not work. ”
What kind of linux are you using? I can just highlight some words and paste it using midle mouse easily. Between emacs, xedit, kate, any editor and apps I have with ease. Just select with mouse and click midle mouse button!
SuSE Linux Professional 8.1 (kernel 2.4.19), KDE 3.1 QT3.1 GTK2.0.6
GCC3.2 XFree864.2.0 NVidiaGLX/kernel0.8
Copy and Paste across apps? Not a known bug for me 🙂
It’s a bug because CONTROL-C and CONTROL-V don’t work! (it’s a joke)
I know windows 2000 is supposed to be the most stable of all windows distrobutions, but I have really ran into problems. My desktop running windows 2000 won’t let me log correctly. Here is my boot sequence –
Power up
Wait till HD stops thrashing
immediately after HD light goes off, log in as admin
wait until HD stops thrashing
Log off
Log on as self
Works about 50% of the time
I’ve tried about every patch and update I could find. Stopped all unnecessary services. Tried every combination possible. I even tried win2k SP4 beta to see if that worked (it didn’t)
I’ve never had any problems like that on linux. (3 years of use) I even use an old laptop as an X terminal to get an extra “computer” at home so my wife can do homework while I am playing games. (remote desktop won’t allow that on XP, you can only use one display at a time) I’m not what you would call a linux zealot, as I do use windows, but I am rather fond of linux.
Langa’s comparing the number of patches applied on RedHat 7.2 versus Windows XP and saying XP wins because it has fewer patches. But he’s forgetting that the RedHat distribution contains far more software that plain ol’ Windows XP does. RedHat contains a web server, web browser, SQL databases (2 different ones!), office suite, mail server, and a slew of other applications that don’t come with XP. While it’s hard to tell which patches from https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/rh72-errata.html belong to the core OS (glibc counts, but what about fetchmail or rsync?), he should really look at a subset of what’s listed there. Or, better yet, total up all the patches from XP, Internet Explorer, Office, SQL Server, IIS, Exchange, etc.
The comparison also doesn’t measure the severity of the bugs. Most of the Linux bugs are to address “buffer overflow” problems, which are often more of a theoretical rather than actual security problem.
I’ll finally add that, as a Linux sysadmin, patches are easy to apply because, unless it’s the kernel that’s being patched, I don’t have to reboot the system. Windows administrators have to schedule downtime to apply patches because, more often than not, they have to reboot to have them take place. Is that really “enterprise-ready” software?
I agreed with the author that Linux is not free from bugs. However, the way he wrote give the wrong information, especially to those who doesn’t understand Linux patching system. He isolate the problem in the application level for XP but list everything that listed in Redhat patch list. The amount of patches provided in Redhat list is true but can he guaranteed that MS didn’t hide something? Can anybody here guaranteed that list in the MS site is all complete list?
With regard to Linux stability, my experience shows that it varies for different hardware and different distro. I’ve had X crashed quite often on my cheap 1.8GHz Athlon mobo which run Debian 3.0, that many claimed the most stable distro. However, when i upgrade to UNSTABLE branch, the problem was over.
XP keep on rebooting on my industrial board but Redhat and Debian run happily unless too much load. The problem actually due to loose connection to the board which later rectified and all OS run stable.
On my Fujitsu Notebook that use Crusoe prosessor, XP run very slow. The GUI responsiveness is quite bad. Redhat 8 also run very slow here but Altlinux beta version run faster than XP here. One crash of XP applicataion but none on Altlinux. Opera did crash on Redhat here.
A my office, I have RH7.2 running as a desktop purposes. This machine also act as a server for traffic management data. My subordinate entering data using other PC and currently my desktop kept the whole last year data up to the current latest. Other staff are vieving the report output through web browser from many other PC, all of them are Windows. Until today, I have no crash although I did some development on my desktop also.
So my conclusion is that, the stability will depend on the hardware, distro and distro version for Linux. XP got more benefit from the driver provided by OEM but in some cases, Linux third party driver comparatively equal in term of performance.
And Eugenia, do you have a lot of tweaking on your installed distro?
” It’s a bug because CONTROL-C and CONTROL-V don’t work! (it’s a joke) ”
Bwa ha ha ha ha ha haa … (thanks for the joke)
Then I gave up 😉
But also Ctrl+Y,U,I,O,P,A,S,F,Z,X,B, and Ctrl+N which works nicely in KDE/QT environment 🙂
—————————————–
it’s just as buggy as Windows XP: “As much as the partisans wish it were so, open sourcing isn’t a magic solution to the problems of bugs and security issues.
—————————————–
Of course ! There is no perfect solution to security problems if the computer administrator is ignorant. And it is easy to find ignorant M$ admins than Linux admins …
And even it was true, you doesn’t need to pay for a buugy software like XP. You can use your money to make courses of security …
Try again !
Look at webservers. Apache still runs the majority of the websites, but IIS has certainly had more bugs.
Apache != Linux
IIS != Windows
That wasn’t what the original poster was saying. Somebody else said something to the effect of, “Windows has more known bugs because it is used by more people”. The poster’s comment was that this opinion was flawed (which it is) and used Apache and IIS as a contrary example to prove his/her point.
/I’ve tried about every patch and update I could find. //
How about booting to safe mode and defragging your hard drive?
Hardly the OS fault, if you don’t follow recommended maintenance.
Done that, done scandisk thorough check
numerous virus scans, windows updates, ie updates, program updates, baseline security checks.
yes, this is the fault of the OS, it started immediately after I did the first reboot upon installing to a fresh drive.
How do you know that I don’t follow recommended maintenance? I don’t typically post every single bit of information that I do to my machine, I don’t want to use the 8,000 characters explaining how I did a defrag to see if that would help my computer keep from locking up as soon as I enter my login information. I’m just saying that the OS shouldn’t have that problem on a fresh install.
With linux being open source the bugs are found and fixed faster.
i bet Fred Langa has bugs too, (Better get him a Sheep dip)
I’ve read through the great majority of these posts…and have to say that many good (and bad) points have been raised.
However, one point that (at least in my browsing) was unaddressed is that Langia is basically equating patches offered by the vendor as “bugs.”
Okay. That’s been covered.
Now. Look at the patches offered by Red Hat for RH 7.3.
Are all those patches for the kernel? Hell no.
Most of those patches are for individual applications which may or may not be on the system.
Now. Look at the patches offered by Microsoft for Windows. Any version.
Are these patches for Wordpad? No. These are patches for the OS of Windows itself…the Windows kernel, if you will.
So is “Linux” as a kernel more bug-free than the NT kernel? Quite possibly. Is Linux as an operating system with applications as bug-filled as Windows as an operating system (and practically nothing more)? That’s apparently what Langia is saying.
So, if we use this equation, every bugfix for OpenOffice and XMMS and Bluefish are apparently as important as a bugfix for the Windows kernel.
Seem mildly peculiar?
Another point I’d like to throw out into the open is that programmers are HUMAN.
We are prone to making mistakes. Typos are not the end of the world. We’re allowed the occasional slip-of-the-brain…
…but, as this is true, software will continue to have bugs.
I’ve never really heard of a complex application that didn’t. The challenge is fixing (or subduing) enough of these bugs to have the application do what its supposed to the great majority of the time.
I installed Linux once on my PC and tried it 5 times at my brothers box.
At my PC it didn’t support my mous (standart PS2)
At my fathers notebook it didn’t even recognice the keyboard
I had 5 times the chance to play with linux on my brothers PC. 2 times KDE crashed, and once the complete system went down (followed by a reboot).
Regarding uptime: As I know the longest uptime was 12 years by a digital VAX, can linux beat this?