Is Linux only for the poor? (ZDNet)

Posted Mar 24, 2009 0:18 UTC (Tue) by pabs (subscriber, #43278)
In reply to: Is Linux only for the poor? (ZDNet) by flewellyn
Parent article: Is Linux only for the poor? (ZDNet)

I disagree. I still get the "ring of death" bug on intel drivers.

Is Linux only for the poor? (ZDNet)

Posted Mar 24, 2009 3:37 UTC (Tue) by jordanb (guest, #45668) [Link] (2 responses)

What "ring of death"? I've never seen a "ring of death" except on an xbox.

Years ago I'd have problems where Firefox would lock XFree86 up, such that I have to ssh in and kill it. That was actually very common in the Netscape 4.7 days. I've also had the occasional unintentional forkbomb (various versions of asterisk with bad extensions.confs will do that, especially). In every case the failure results in the screen and input freezing.

I've been using linux on my desktop for over ten years now, though, and can't ever recall seeing a panic that didn't occur while booting a broken kernel. I've never used proprietary drivers but have used just about every make of video card with free drivers.

Is Linux only for the poor? (ZDNet)

Posted Mar 24, 2009 12:54 UTC (Tue) by wertigon (guest, #42963) [Link]

Nevermind him. He's been watching the tape. He'll be dead soon, anyhow.

... Lest he transfer it to Youtube...

Is Linux only for the poor? (ZDNet)

Posted Mar 24, 2009 14:29 UTC (Tue) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

A forkbomb with Asterisk?

Asterisk could be run with real-time scheduling priority. Thus a 100% CPU loop in it (e.g.: an endless loop in the dialplan) would make Asterisk the only process getting CPU time. And thus the computer is quite unresponsive.

This, however, changed in 2.6.25: after a short while, such a loop will only get 95% CPU and thus leave you with a somewhat functional system (functional enough to troubleshoot. Or at least to shoot down the offender)