A survey on kernel quality [LWN.net]

A survey on kernel quality

Posted Jul 10, 2006 7:33 UTC (Mon) by Wol (guest, #4433)
In reply to: A survey on kernel quality by guest
Parent article: A survey on kernel quality

As I remember it, IDE is a mares nest of bugs (that's not the kernel, that's the hardware, and every new chipset includes a brand new bugset :-(

Alan tried to get the kernel driver as clean as possible WITHOUT breaking all the numerous bugfixes. Then he went on sabbatical. When he came back, he discovered that the person who'd taken over from him had revamped the code, "cleaned up" a large number of bugfixes (note - they were fixes to chipsets, not the driver) such that the driver no longer worked with those chipsets, and there was a major row.

Basically, IDE has *always* been an absolute nightmare to maintain. Probably the reason Windows has far fewer problems is that (a) Windows code is as big a mess as the chipsets, and (b) Windows needs to support far fewer chipsets because they have a habit of obsoleting hardware... one occasion where that policy actually makes good programming sense, rather than just good business sense...

Cheers,
Wol

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A survey on kernel quality

Posted Jul 10, 2006 11:30 UTC (Mon) by superstoned (subscriber, #33164) [Link]

well, most irritations i have are IDE related - now and then, a new kernel version introduces less stable performance, ie stalls etc. lately things have ben good, btw, I think the kernel is getting better, not worse. but it might not go fast enough, and i'm sure if you have newer hardware, you might be bugged a lot more often.