At 2004-08-03T12:45:38+1200, Volker Kuhlmann wrote:
> You have an unlimited naive faith in the kernel development process,
> expecting the outcome to always be the best one can possibly achieve.
Wrong. I do, however, tend to err on the side of trusting experienced
kernel developers over random people ranting on mailing lists.
It is a very well known fact that software has bugs. The Linux kernel
is software. It has bugs. These facts do not mean that _every_
behaviour that you do not personally like is therefore wrong or caused
by a bug. Complaining about DMA handling during IDE error recovery is
pointless if you don't understand what you're talking about. If you
really care, write an email to the maintainer asking why it works that
way--it's quite likely you'll receive a response explaining why it was
designed that way.
> I know how cr*ppy the kernel can be from my own experience. In fact
As will anybody who has used Linux for any length of time. In fact, any
long time user of any operating system will be able to run off lists of
things that the operating system does poorly.
Have you reported these problems to your vendor through the correct
channels? If you're running a distribution that doesn't provide
professional vendor support, have you reported the problem (and,
preferably, supplied a fix) to the maintainers?
> I'm somewhat surprised that it's used so often in mission-critical
> applications.
Are you familiar with the concept of Worse Is Better? UNIX was one of
the early examples of this. Linux follows the tradition somewhat.
Perhaps that's because you have no idea what sort of testing and
validation is done before it is used in these mission-critical
applications.
Anyway, the Linux kernel is covered by Sturgeon's Law, just as
everything else is.
And no, burning or reading a CD is not a mission-critical application.
> I have an old SCSI CD burner which always burnt like clockwork. Now
> cdrecord has a fit. Why? Neither hardware nor cdrecord have changed.
> J�rg Schilling told me just now:
What a shocker, some other subsystem has a bug. This does not prove
that the (unrelated) behaviour you were complaining about before is
incorrect or stupid.
> How ironic that old but still functional hardware has to be retired
> because Linux doesn't hack it any more... Wasn't that the argument in
> favour of Linux?
Yes, that argument does tend to be propagated fairly heavily, even
nowadays when recent GNOME and KDE desktops are easily as demanding as a
modern Windows installation. The people who propagate this argument
don't tend to have thought about it very much. In any case, even those
who do propagate this argument don't promise that _every_ piece of
old hardware will work.
Cheers,
-mjg
--
Matthew Gregan |/
/| [EMAIL PROTECTED]
