Linux becoming unreliable like windoze

[niksfree]

Hi since installing Linux some years back I seem to notice that with each upgrade instead of getting a more stable easy to use system I feel i'm getting more problems that keep requiring me to find someone who can remove the glitches and fine tune out the bugs that have crept in. What do others think.
It appears to me the upgrades are becoming ego trips for the developers and nothing to do with providing a simple stable system that can be upgraded with ease and no hassles.

[GNU-Fan]

Quite a overgeneralizing statement, don't you think?

[elija]

Pretty much every problem I have had with Linux has actually been with the carbon interface so I would suggest when looking for something to blame for problems, the first thing to check is the mirror...

Or maybe that's just me

[niksfree]

Pretty much every problem I have had with Linux has actually been with the carbon interface so I would suggest when looking for something to blame for problems, the first thing to check is the mirror...

Or maybe that's just me

You may have a point but this old carbon interface only just presses the download button, after that I don't have any control over the content or do I, as I'm not a programmer or grew up with computers I must be missing something. lol

[Dapper Dan]

It appears to me the upgrades are becoming ego trips for the developers and nothing to do with providing a simple stable system that can be upgraded with ease and no hassles.

There is truth in what you say and it doesn't apply to just operating systems.

[rant]In 1959 Oldsmobile engineers created the most perfect four speed automatic transmission ever devised. It was quiet, extremely smooth, low on resource demand, rugged and dependable. Then, some pointy headed engineer decided it just had to be made better so they converted it into a three speed! The new "Slim Jim" three speed automatic transmission essentially was the old four speed with second gear removed! The shift from first to third was noisy and bone jarring and placed undue stress on the engine and transmission internals, resulting in the most faulty transmission GM ever produced. This is just one example of how manufacturers change things that work perfectly well just so they can be percieved as making "improvements."[/rant]

I'll give Red Hat/Fedora and SuSE a lot of credit here... many of their utilities have gone pretty much unchanged in years because they are intuitive and easy to use. In my opinion, Ubuntu had the perfect network utility interface until 8.10 when they changed it. The newer version isn't as good as it was in 8.04. While it is true some things go from good to worse, it is also true many things go from good to better! I don't think many of us would argue that the 2.6 kernel wasn't an improvement over 2.4. The cardinal rule in all of this should be: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

[elija]

You may have a point but this old carbon interface only just presses the download button, after that I don't have any control over the content or do I, as I'm not a programmer or grew up with computers I must be missing something. lol

Sorry that was a very tongue in cheek answer.

You can change pretty much anything and yeah some of it will require programming. Notice that I didn't say you should.

This is my serious answer.

The main problem is that simplicity is extremely complex. I'm going to stick with the software example here. Consider some simple command line utilities, ls, mv and cp for example.

They do exactly what they are meant to which is to provide a view into the directory structure. But, for most computer users it can't be considered friendly. What's needed is a GUI. Enter curses (or ncurses I believe it is now). This allows you to program a GUI like the old DOS ones or the Slackware installer. Suddenly it is more friendly to users, but the software has become hugely more complex.

Now, multiply that up through the levels of abstraction to the Desktop tools of Nautilus, Dolphin, Thunar et alia and you can see that they have become immeasurably more complex beasties. This is why bugs occur with depressing frequency.

Dapper Dan: You are not thinking like an engineer. "If it aint broke, don't fix it" is fine for non-engineers but for an engineer it is "If it aint broke, it don't have enough features yet"

[questio verum]

"If it aint broke, it don't have enough features yet"

Ha! Ha! Priceless! I Hope you don't mind if I borrow that one.

qv

[Dapper Dan]

Dapper Dan: You are not thinking like an engineer. "If it aint broke, don't fix it" is fine for non-engineers but for an engineer it is "If it aint broke, it don't have enough features yet"

Or... "If it ain't broke, it must be deprecated."

[druidmatrix]

I absolutely agree with you Nicsfree. It has been my own observation too - for example - boot logging is an extremely important feature I think. I believe it broke in FC 4 - and has not been fixed since. It is my opinion that (Redhat) Linux is trying harder and harder to emulate Windows and each successive release gets worse!