Why doesn't Kubuntu (and Linux in general) not suffer BSOD problems of Windows?

[de_koraco]

Re: Why doesn't Kubuntu (and Linux in general) not suffer BSOD problems of Windows?

My feeling is my new Seven Ultimate is even more stable than XP.

Which isn't saying much. it's about as stable as Win2k. Now, given the fact that it has taken Microsoft 10 years to replicate the stability of an OS from 2000, but not surpass it, one can only laugh. Sweet God in heavens, it's like they've never had the outmost dominant OS in the world.

[telemetry]

Re: Why doesn't Kubuntu (and Linux in general) not suffer BSOD problems of Windows?

Of course - if you get a desktop crash in kubuntu there is always ctrl - alt - F12. This'll take you to a blank page and once you see the cursor blinking press ctrl-alt-F7. It will usually bring you back to a restored desktop. No restart required and no - you can't do that in windows.
This also works for screen locks and is definitely a get out of jail card. Once you reach the blank screen with blinking cursor - you can also ctrl-alt-del to restart your system without having to hit the power button.
I use emulators and sometimes there are crashes and graphics driver conflicts before I find optimum settings. This works a treat.
Kubuntu 11.04 is the operating system I always hoped for and most definitely worthy of donations for all their hard work.

[bsniadajewski]

Re: Why doesn't Kubuntu (and Linux in general) not suffer BSOD problems of Windows?

@telemetry

Wow, I didn't know that. I wish I knew that when I, among others, had trouble with the nvidia driver + Konsole resize problem. I since had that fixed thanks to the xorg-edgers PPA.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Why doesn't Kubuntu (and Linux in general) not suffer BSOD problems of Windows?

[b]Of course - if you get a desktop crash in kubuntu there is always ctrl - alt - F12. This'll take you to a blank page and once you see the cursor blinking press ctrl-alt-F7. It will usually bring you back to a restored desktop. No restart required and no - you can't do that in windows.
This also works for screen locks and is definitely a get out of jail card. Once you reach the blank screen with blinking cursor - you can also ctrl-alt-del to restart your system without having to hit the power button.
...

This just goes to show you. I've been using Linux since 1998, and KDE since the KDE 1.0 Beta since Sept of that year. I always used Ctrl+Alt+Bksp to kill the xserver. In all those 13 years I've never heard of or read about Ctrl+Alt+F12 or Ctrl+Alt+F7.

This old dog just learned another new trick (new to me!).

Thanks!

[esperado]

Re: Why doesn't Kubuntu (and Linux in general) not suffer BSOD problems of Windows?

My feeling is my new Seven Ultimate is even more stable than XP.

Which isn't saying much

I do not want to troll, but i can't compare very much, as i'm unable (as i always was at each tries in my life) to install a 100% working Kubuntu.
My fisrt reboot of 11.04 was a crash. No lan on 10.04, can't synchronize my Nokia phone etc...
This time, after a succesfull but hard war against ATI Xorg's drivers, i was not able to get my kubuntu audio working properly on my new computer, sadly re-formated in NTFS after 3 weeks of fight, more than 6 reinstals, thousands googlings, strange command lines by hundreds, and a broken keyboard by rage...
Nothing to be proud of, as Seven was running in 20mn with 0 problem, and the old Xp in 40mn with 0 problem without using my keyboard for something else than "Enter".
And, believe-me or not i have no love at all for the Redmond big-brother company and i know that hardware companies do not play fair with specs and drivers. Bus as long those driver's problems will remain in Linux's desktops, M$ will grows his 'outrageous fortune' selling at an outrageous price the "dominant OS in the world".
I had a dream, to see, from time to time, a BSOD, using a free open source OS *working* on a PC hardware of *my* choice. (here an ATI graphic card, plugged on a Asus Z68 MB).

[de_koraco]

Re: Why doesn't Kubuntu (and Linux in general) not suffer BSOD problems of Windows?

I'm not saying Linux is better than Windows, dont' even wanna go there. The point I was making is that with billions of dollars poured into R&D, and the user base available for testing, Windows should have become an OS you can control with your mind by now, and not a crappy piece of software that's only sometimes better than an OS created by geeks in basements, and that being due to outside development.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Why doesn't Kubuntu (and Linux in general) not suffer BSOD problems of Windows?

Oh, I'll go there, and at the drop of an experienced hat.

I've installed Windows on LOTS of machines since I bought my first PC in 1983 (Apple before that), and since 1998 I've installed Linux on even more machines than I've installed Windows on.

When Microsoft's VISTA developers came back from the first presentation of the Mac OS X they emailed Jim Alchin that Mac is what VISTA was supposed to be. Alchin made the mistake of relaying that evaluation to Ballmer and Gates, along with "If I weren't working for Microsoft I'd be using a Mac". He stopped working for Microsoft shortly after that.

VISTA, released in May of 2007, was a total disaster for Microsoft. I believe it was solely responsible for adding 3 or 4 percentage points to the Linux desktop market share, which was 8% before VISTA and over 12% after VISTA, if Steve Ballmer's graph is to be believed ... and I see no reason not to believe it. Rather than let VISTA run its normal life while Microsoft casually prepared their future release, they were forced to go into accelerated development for Win7, which was quickly released on July 22, 2009, only two years after VISTA.

Linux developers had no inside info on Win7's look & feel but Microsoft had a good view of KDE 4.0, which had screen shots and pre-alpha builds floating around from Sept, 2006 until alpha-1 was released in May of 2007. I say that to say this: VISTA was in development for over twice as long as Win7 was, and it was and is unstable junk. Even the IT people where I worked could not keep VISTA Ultimate running more than a week without having to reinstall it, and those attempts were on DELL notebooks that came with VISTA pre-installed. They elected to keep our 500 workstations running XP. Yet, in just two years, Microsoft produced Windows 7. From the very start it was about as stable as XP after nearly a decade of development and patches. The thing I noticed was how remarkable it's install look & feel, and its desktop, looked nearly identical to Kubuntu's install look & feel and somewhat like its desktop. It looked as if Microsoft had lifted screens right out of Kubuntu. And that is what I suspect that they did. I suspect that to create Win7 in such a short time they took XP, stripped a lot of legacy cruft out of it, where they could, and added Kubuntu & KDE4's cosmetics to it, where they could.

So, IMO, Win7 users just paid twice for a license to use XP.

[esperado]

Re: Why doesn't Kubuntu (and Linux in general) not suffer BSOD problems of Windows?

So, IMO, Win7 users just paid twice for a license to use XP.

First i agrree that 7 is, concerning cosmetic, the exact copy of Kubuntu, i was shocked by that. Transparencies, plasmoids, multiple desktops, virtual machine, menus, Internet connectivity: near a copy/paste....
I remember the time it was so complicated to get a network working in Windows, and , in the same time, Linux was connecting itself during install like a miracle
Don't agree 7 to ust be a copy of Xp, i have a very different feeling using the two. Got myself far away from vista, but it looks more efficient, smooth and stable than XP, specially in 64 bits. With more security (a copy of Linux, here too). But for the user at first sight, just little cosmetic changes, it is true.
About the war between M$ and Linux, one thing is for sure, Linux had won the professional servers market ( not for money reason, but quality). And will win the desktop market as soon this terrific, stupid and old driver problems will be solved.
Against the money of M$, Linux has some very good weapons. A huge and participative community, because it is free and generous (how many testers did pay M$ ?). And about the M$ "user base" ? Well, when i pay 400€ for renting (not even own) a seven, i add direct the IP where crash reports are send to localhost in my 300 lines host file (if you see what i mean). Unless they paid-me for the work.
Linux developers coding the things they love, for themselves, the way they love, produce a better code than developers under the pressure of a depressive Project manager, taking his orders from a crazy marketing manager, working to feed their family.... Love makes miracles, slavery never, Freeware and Open source spirit produce, most of the time, better softwares than commercial companies.

Well, Linux own 12% of the market ? No hardware companies can loose those sells. The problem, for the moment, is, when you buy some new equipment, you have no idea of the way it is supported by Linux. You buy, and, by curiosity, or desire, try to install Linux after.
My opinion is, if Linux devs stop to develop drivers and ask officially form hardware companies to develop themselves their "proprietary drivers" for linux, add-it to the CD, with a logo "Linux ready" on the pocket, this problem would be solved very soon. Because, it can be verified BEFORE to buy, and customers can return their card "Give me my money back: i'm sorry, but their is no Linux driver inside the CD".
And linux devs would be free to concentrate on more interesting things, core, architecture, softwares, ergonomic, basement's decoration.
And write more graphical tools for the user to get rid of all those scary command lines.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Why doesn't Kubuntu (and Linux in general) not suffer BSOD problems of Windows?

...
First i agrree that 7 is, concerning cosmetic, the exact copy of Kubuntu, i was shocked by that. Transparencies, plasmoids, multiple desktops, virtual machine, menus, Internet connectivity: near a copy/paste.... I remember the time it was so complicated to get a network working in Windows, and , in the same time, Linux was connecting itself during install like a miracle

When I did my first Win7 install the Kubuntu/KDE comparisons stunned me as well. My first thought was "GPL violations!", but who in FOSS has the money to push that contention?

Don't agree 7 to ust be a copy of Xp, i have a very different feeling using the two.

Well, IIRC, XP was first a 32 bit OS with the 64 bit version being released later. (There weren't many 64 bit computers in 2000 and NO 64 bit applications, at least in the PC arena.)

Got myself far away from vista, but it looks more efficient, smooth and stable than XP, specially in 64 bits. With more security (a copy of Linux, here too). But for the user at first sight, just little cosmetic changes, it is true.

The VISTA Ultimate I played with on a DELL on which it was freshly installed, was SLLLOOOOW. But, the graphics was beautiful. Within 30 minutes it crashed so hard I had to reboot it. When it came up I got a msg saying that the video quality was had been reduced because "this installation was not registered" (That from a bulk Enterprise License version!). "Smooth and stable" were not part of that VISTA vocabulary. But, it could have been that DELL's hardware was junk. At the time, 1/3rd of their desktop monitors failed within a month of arrival, and about 1/10th of their laptops had to be sent back for service. But, ALL three of DELL's high end laptops running VISTA ... couldn't run VISTA...

About the war between M$ and Linux, one thing is for sure, Linux had won the professional servers market ( not for money reason, but quality). And will win the desktop market as soon this terrific, stupid and old driver problems will be solved.

The driver problem is part of Microsoft's monopoly lockin. When MS convinced PC OEMs to bundle their PCs with Windows, and almost immediately thereafter pre-install Windows, that's when they also convinced the PC OEMs not to share their hardware specs with "other OSs", i.e., Linux, BSD, or later BEOS. But, when the price of laptops fell into the commodity basement and the profit margins got razor thin, DELL and the others maintained a profit margin only by virtue of ad rebates from Microsoft, except in the case where DELL took BRIBES from Intel to NOT include AMD video chips in their PCs. DELL's entire profit during that time was the bribe payments, which Intel immediately dropped after 7 months when they learned that DELL started including AMD chips in the boxes with out informing anyone from Intel. When Intel dropped those bribes DELL almost, almost went under.

Later, as you pointed out, Microsoft took the upper hand and begin dictating their hardware requirement specs to the PC OEMs, under NDAs, so that they couldn't share those specs with other OS makers, like Linux, BSD, etc... They called that process "Windows Certification". Microsoft could tell PC OEMS if "their" hardware was up to snuff because the PC OEMs were nothing but hardware makers now, with Microsoft calling the shots. And you think that PC OEMs not sharing their hardware specs with FOSS developers is the fault of Linux

....
Well, when i pay 400€ for renting (not even own) a seven,

and, unless you use FOSS software, like LibreOO, GIMP, Blender, QtCreator, FireFox or Chrome, etc., you'll pay another several hundred € for the privilege of renting Windows.

i add direct the IP where crash reports are send to localhost in my 300 lines host file (if you see what i mean). Unless they paid-me for the work.

Yup, you aren't going to do their debugging for free. My host file has 7,431 lines. I don't work for free for ANYONE! , except for FOSS and Kubuntu.

.....
if Linux devs stop to develop drivers and ask officially form hardware companies to develop themselves their "proprietary drivers" for linux, add-it to the CD, with a logo "Linux ready" on the pocket, this problem would be solved very soon.

Do you know how many developers work on the Linux kernel alone? Try over 5,000, the majority of them paid by their employers (500 different companies) to work full or part time on the kernel!

Now, consider how many different PC OEMs there are, and each OEM has dozens of different models of computers. When DELL's Linux pre-install program was going strong I counted the total offerings for DELL. Dell offered 42 different kinds of Computers with Windows preinstalled. They offered 6 with Linux preinstalled. In addition, the 42 models with Windows installed on them had a HUGE range of options and peripherals available. The 6 models with Linux installed were of the same types as the Windows models, but with slight variations in hardware, so that the user couldn't literally compare apples to apples. and thus determine the cost of having Windows installed. And, the options and peripherals available for those six models were meager, at best, and worthless in the least. It was always wiser to buy the PC that one wanted even though it came with Windows preinstalled, because there were better and more options available, and more peripherals as well. IOW, the Microsoft tax was paid.

Take the Intel Mobil Series 4 Express video chip that is in this Sony VAIO VGN-FW140/E notebook. All that Sony had to do to get Windows to run on it was to follow Microsoft's specs when they designed it. That included the surrounding firmware that supports the video chip and connects it to the address and data buses, and control lines. Even then, they messed up because VISTA crashed this display several times a day. BUT, other PC OEMs, like HP, Toshiba, etc., had models that used the MS4E chip and their video was stable. The Linux video driver ran well on some of them but not on this one or others. The same can be said for the dozens of other video drivers. Add to that the sound drivers, the USB drivers, the wireless drivers, the power supplies, etc. and you see the magnitude of the problem. Also, as a programmer you should know that just because someone writes HTML script, or Qt4/C++ code doesn't mean that they could quickly come up to speed on a video or sound driver, if at all.

So, having all Linux developers "stop and work on drivers" isn't practical or useful. For the most part, except for the outliers hardware, Linux drivers work well or very well ... odd, old or worn out hardware not withstanding.

Because, it can be verified BEFORE to buy, and customers can return their card "Give me my money back: i'm sorry, but their is no Linux driver inside the CD".

Now that's funny, esperado! Imagine taking your unopened Windows install package back to your PC vendor and asking them to reimburse you for it because you haven't opened the seal, so you haven't accepted the EULA and you aren't going to install it. That's already been tried countless number of times, and with very few exceptions the hapless user is told to buzz off.

However, I have taken a webcam back to a box store and returned it because it didn't work on my PC (which was running Linux), and no questions were asked.

.....
And write more graphical tools for the user to get rid of all those scary command lines.

When I ran my first Linux OS, RH5.0, in May of 1998, the install and most of the configuration work was via the command line. But, a lot of running and/or configuring Win386, Win95, NT, W2K and XP involved opening a DOS box and running a windows command. In some circumstances, even with Win7, a DOS box is still used.

As I continued to use Linux via various distros but always running KDE, I used the CLI less and less. By the time I got to this forum the only uses I had for a Konsole were for updatedb, locate, whois, ls, vdir and a couple of others. Since arriving at this forum I've learned and added some nifty configuration techniques to my repertoire using the CLI (apt-get, dpkg, modinfo, service, and others that I frequently forget).

[esperado]

Re: Why doesn't Kubuntu (and Linux in general) not suffer BSOD problems of Windows?

"Now that's funny, esperado! Imagine taking your unopened Windows install package back to your PC vendor and asking them to reimburse you for it because you haven't opened the seal, so you haven't accepted the EULA and you aren't going to install it."
That's the way it is legally supposed to wok woks in my country.
Very useful, after some hundreds of € paid to your lawyers, and years of procedures to know exactly how much Dell or Hp had spend for your windows license (around 20-50 € ?).
In fact, in this situation, they often offer-you to use your license or not, and offer an extra "commercial offer" more or less equivalent. It is less time consuming and help Both M$ and computers sellers to keep the things on the dark side of the monopolistic force.

About NDA and windows Drivers, i do not fully agree. The NDA lies on the M$ interface. Not the chip specification itself, hopefully owned by his manufacturer/designer ;-).
AS long as Linux has his own (and different) specifications to connect any hardware to the OS, Hardware manufacturers are free to develop drivers for the hardware they OWN, and sell. And i can imagine that, working on reverse engineering of chips can be seen like some kind of industrial espionage ?

My suggestion was about the way Linux bring the necessary drivers to the OS during install. Getting-them automatically from mysterious PPA's (If it does not work, it will be Linux's fault) VS getting them from the manufacturer's CD (it will be his fault , not the OS's one in user's minds).
Not a technical real difference, but both a social and psychological big difference, enough, on my point of view to change the things and positions.
It will be transparent and easy for everybody to see if manufacturers offer or not, Linux's drivers with their products.

Take my last bad experience: I would have no difficulty with my ATI's graphical card drivers (they are on their site, but i doesn't knew) , and i would be able to begin a fight for a money-back with ASUS about their lack of audio drivers for Linux (there is somewhere in their site a hidden link for them to dave null )
And ask a question about this:
"Choose your Operating system :
- DOS
- Windows XP
- Windows Vista
- windows SEVEN "
- Others (manuals and BIOS)

[woodsmoke]

Re: Why doesn't Kubuntu (and Linux in general) not suffer BSOD problems of Windows?

Esperado wrote:

About NDA and windows Drivers, i do not fully agree. The NDA lies on the M$ interface. Not the chip specification itself, hopefully owned by his manufacturer/designer.

Esperado is quite correct in posting that, but.... that may be changing if one want's to read into the latest ploy by MS as a conspiracy.

It "could be" that MS is literally going to try to "tie" the OS to the Chip...." to speed development..."

http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/31/a...s-tablets-res/

Here is another article

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/01/m...acturers-to-f/

Now, whether MS is literally trying to TIE the chip and OS together I don't know, but....

woodsmoke

[esperado]

Re: Why doesn't Kubuntu (and Linux in general) not suffer BSOD problems of Windows?

" In some circumstances, even with Win7, a DOS box is still used."
On my point of view, in a graphical environment, near everything has to be done via a graphical interface, asking only reflexion to the user not his memory (or many hours on Google). and there is nothing difficult to implement such dialog boxes .
Of course, if some admins prefer to use the command lines, there are here, underneath.
One of the things i do not like in Linux environment is the massive miss of those dialog boxes, and that the OS do not succed to hide their existence. I really hate to see those white lines, running too fast to be read, on a black (or blue) board.
Let us say that Linux is perfect for the user, if he do not ask too much (photo, video, etc...) as long it comes perfectly tuned in a machine. But to install or for maintenance...hum...what a pain...
About the future of Ms, let's hope the best for those two projects:
http://www.longene.org/en/index.php
and: http://www.reactos.org/fr/index.html

[GreyGeek]

Re: Why doesn't Kubuntu (and Linux in general) not suffer BSOD problems of Windows?

My hope is that Ballmer and the MS board grow a conscience and compete ethically, though I doubt there is much of a chance of that happening.

Both of the projects you mention are failures before they get off the ground. The first is a totally Chinese project (and they are excellent coders) but their approach is to apply a patch to the 2.6.30 kernel which, when compiled, creates "unifiedkernel.ko", a module which has to be loaded at every boot up with the insmod command. It creates a kernel interface for the WINE project, which also has to be installed from source and compiled on your Linux installation. WINE works best with XP programs, to be sure, but that doesn't say much for WINE because what it does work with is so limited it doesn't make a "run any XP program" environment, which would be essential for any Linux/Windows "merge". It's like trying to drop a LOTUS (Linux kernel) engine into a Yugo (Windows) car and expecting a good outcome. IF there is one thing I've noticed about WINE it is this: what you got working with the previous release usually won't work with the next release. This has nothing to do with the skills of the WINE coders. It is because their target, XP, is a moving target, and every update moves it some more.

The ReactOS is a dream I've watched for several months. Their target, XP, is also moving, and if they ever got ReactOS to work with every XP program like XP SP3 works with that program it would be a miracle that would rival changing water into wine. I doubt they can do it for many of the same reasons that WINE doesn't work well. Also, I've read that there is code cruft in XP that even Microsoft coders won't change because they don't know exactly what it does, and, when they change it, XP breaks.

AND, the bull in that china shop is this: IF they ever did get ReactOS to be to Windows XP what DRDOS was to MSDOS, they'd have their hands so full of "cease and desists" orders, IP infringement lawsuits, and such, it would take them years to dig out from under the flood of paper that would be delivered to their mail box. A snowball in Hell would survive longer.

[woodsmoke]

Re: Why doesn't Kubuntu (and Linux in general) not suffer BSOD problems of Windows?

Regarding WINE I have always found it somewhat fascinating that i can get rather complex MS games to run under it but can't get what I would thing is a relatively simple crossword puzzle program to run.

The crossword puzzle program as of the last iteration of WINE, whatever it is, in Kubu, will actually "run" the whole program but then it won't actually "print the clues'.

I don't know how the program is coded, but if WINE will actually run say...excel, which is a database/spreadsheet, one would think that it would print the clues which are in a database...so...

it is all very odd.

woodsmoke

[de_koraco]

Re: Why doesn't Kubuntu (and Linux in general) not suffer BSOD problems of Windows?

It's like trying to drop a LOTUS (Linux kernel) engine into a Yugo (Windows) car

lol, I actually come from the homeland of Yugo
What a crappy piece of machinery.