Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
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> Bugfest! Win2000 has 63,000 'defects'
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Not everyone will be having fun at Microsoft next week. While the
> | software giant and its partners celebrate the arrival of Windows 2000 on
> | Thursday, Feb. 17, hundreds of members of the Windows development team
> | will be busy cleaning up the mess.
> `----
>
> http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,2076967,00.htm
>
> http://www.vistax64.com/vista-general/26933-windows-2000-released-20-000-
bugs.html
>
> "In 2000 a leaked memo from Microsoft obtained by Mary Jo Foley (of
> Microsoft-Watch) revealed that Windows 2000 was released with 20,000 bugs
> and that Microsoft knowingly released it any way. After this incident,
> Microsoft would not speak to Mary Jo Foley for two years regarding
> projects and information of any kind."
>
> Can you say /slopware/?
Roy,
On the surface your perception is probably correct, but based on my
experiences it's misleading and biased.
The Linux kernel ships with over 1300 bugs! If you would take a look at
http://bugzilla.kernel.org you might want to reconsider and stop placing
blame. The blame doesn't help Linux improve, and if/when Linux is the
leading OS, that doesn't mean it will have fewer bugs always.
The fact is that all systems ship with bugs.
Ubuntu as of this moment has 57323 open bugs!
source: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bugs
The severity of bugs varies, and it's often difficult to duplicate a bug.
There are generally fewer developers than users, and even fewer *good*
developers.
The Linux kernel has been released with serious regressions before. You may
recall that a prominent scheduler developer left Linux development, after he
pointed out some regressions in the kernel test suite. Linus Torvalds
releases the code anyway, and he has a good reason based on his perception.
He has said on the LKML that essentially bugs and mistakes will occur, and
it's often more important to keep the code continually moving, and tested,
rather than wait for all of the issues to be fixed.
The Ubuntu or Linux world is more than just a kernel though, especially if
you're comparing it to Windows. Windows has to provide a C runtime, a C++
runtime, a toolchain, a window system...
So, if you sum up all of the bugs in Linux, Xorg, Firefox, glibc, GCC, etc.
you would find that the Linux world is generally worse than Windows when you
use such statistics.
The quality of software for Linux varies drastically. Microsoft is not
without problems obviously.
When you consider the archaic programming languages, and the base upon which
the whole world builds most software, it's amazing that the quality is even
as good as it is.
Linux doesn't need more enemies. Linux needs honest insight into how these
problems can be solved, in a way so that it can be used as any good tool, to
do useful things. There was a time when Linux had > 10 totally different
driver implementations (1 for each architecture) for the same hardware
device, before the developers improved the device driver abstractions. It
took some pain, and criticism to get there.
-George
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