One-Off Problems in Linux?

[Nokkaelaein]

Have some perspective.

I think that (whole post) was the best thing I've read on a forum in a while

[Arnox]

I recall at times having to reinstall Windows 95 multiple times in a day to get the default WordPad behavior back that I liked.

I also remember situations where I had Linux Mint or Antergos running on (the same) laptop and some quirky problem would show up requiring me to do a little web investigation and find a config file that I could update to make the problem go away. Nothing too major, but always something that would crop up after a week or two of steady use.

I also remember several similar situations with Windows 98, Windows XP, and so forth, that made me scratch my head and wonder how much testing they actually did on their operating system before they started selling it to people.

The answer? A lot. A whole, whole lot.

As it turns out, operating systems are complicated. Like, really complicated. And ensuring flawless performance on a million devices is pretty much impossible unless you're willing to spend billions of dollars to handle the top 80% of use cases, and if you're a major OS manufacturer like Microsoft, that only covers a few hundred million configurations.

When you stop for a second and think about how all of modern computing is based on billions of transistors made out of sand pushing little shocks of lightning through tens of thousands of tiny channels smaller than the width of a human hair, you start to appreciate that fault tolerance is the lowest it's ever been, and still the occasional quirk is going to pop up and annoy you.

Everything around you is a miracle. You have a phone in your pocket you can use to call anyone in the world or look up when any of the Three Stooges died whenever you want. Information from the other side of the planet can reach you in minutes. You have a computer running a free operating system that gives you up-to-the-minute news, sports, and weather. You can play games on it. It will show you pictures of ladies in bikinis, sometimes whether you want it to or not. You can write the next New York Times best seller on it. You can e-mail your mom, or write yourself a letter meant for someone who passed away ages ago. But once in a while the icons aren't exactly where you left them on the Desktop. It happens to me, too.

Have some perspective.

Well... Microsoft DID have a massive testing division and it WAS incredibly good... But then they completely defunded it and pushed testing onto the users instead, leading to much more incredibly broken updates including an update that straight up deleted user files.

Thankfully though, even if the Linux kernel doesn't have quite the same testing as old school Microsoft, it does have thousands and thousands of professional users looking at it, testing it thoroughly, and also full-time kernel maintainers who ensure maximum quality control. In fact, the quality control in the kernel is so good that I would daresay that I have never once seen an issue with stable kernels that wasn't driver-related. Not one time. With kernel drivers though, there's only so much you can do.

All that said, computers are pretty amazing. It's easy to take that for granted when you know how they work, but indeed, some people have worked together and put in a lot of man-hours to make these things work as well as they do.

[Mauser]

In my personal experience with LINUX is it has improved greatly due to development of fixing things through updates from the days when it wouldn't work when I first tried various LINUX distros back in 2000 since there no way to get the sound to work and impossible to get on the Internet because LINUX Dial up was worse than Windows 98se with it's constant freezes once I would go online followed by the Blue Screen Of Death. Back then there was no support what so ever but an over abundance amount of excuses. I was so happy when Windows 2000 came out so that I could actually use my computer. It wasn't till I tried LINUX again in 2015 after reading the E.U.L.A. of Windows 10 Spyware/Malware Edition that I thankfully found out LINUX was fixed to the point that it worked. Since then there have been improvements made to LINUX that I don't miss the horrors of Windows but I do miss certain things that won't run on LINUX since there is no LINUX alternative software to update my radar detector and the GPS head unit software for my car. Sadly, it seems the developers of WINE and it's derivatives seem to be more concerned in getting Windows software to run on LINUX that have a LINUX alternative instead of coming out with ways to make Windows software to work that the is no LINUX alternative to run on LINUX. Perhaps there will come the day these things will work also. Only time will tell. Despite these two issues LINUX blows away Windows.

[vel178]

Magical reboot of wonder is still a common theme. Window decoration for an app being all white space, next reboot here it goes up and working.
Or no sound on displayport hdmi adapter to a monitor. Rebooted, suddenly sound. Did do nothing to fix besides looking at my sound devices where it wasn't in.

Guess better not question it.

[AVLinux]

Haha,

Enlightenment excels at this... lots of ghosts in the machine. Mostly harmless and easily corrected even without reboots. I find it kind of charming; like that guitar amp that buzzes until you swat it just right or the old car radio that didn't tune the station until you hit the dash.. Intermittent issues are a mystery we shouldn't ever lose..