Linux becoming unstable?
 

I am somewhat worried about Linux of today, I find it is not as stable as it has been.
I started using Llinux some 5 years ago, almost never any serious crashes - until this year.
Today, running mainly FC3, LormaLinux, Debian sarge and Mepis, I pretty often have to pull the cord!

What problems are there? Well, to name a few:
Computer dies completely switching to text-console,
kde desktop sharing suddenly dies - both computers screen dies,
adding USB-drive, drive not recognised - 'init 1' and crash (reboot & everything is ok including USB-drive),
copying files to mounted smb-share - computer isn't dead but so slow it's unusable
random crashes both in X and in textconsole

Is it Linux? Meaning the kernel - is it the 2.6 that's the problem?
It could be X - but then I believe Fedora-bransch uses xorg and Debian XF86?
Also it doesn't matter what desktop/wm I use.
Some problems are (probably) related to udev or USB-devices. I never found Linux very good at handling removable storage, but before that only meant some manual commands were needed.
It's not the computer, I'm using 3 different machines.
Maybe it's simply badly written programs - but a faulty program should not be able to kill the entire system?

I sometimes have a feeling developers are too eager to introduce new features, maybe wanting to fight Windows with it's own weapons? Now maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, but just as an example take this 'udev' thingie - what was wrong with 'devfs'? Isn't this one examle of changing something just because something has to be changed? From my point-of-view, devfs worked fine even with removables, udev doesn't.
(As with UTF-8, standard in all distros today, making a mess of national characters. Don't know why that was introduced?)

Well, I'm not after solutions to specific problems now, just worried about the state of Linux. I went from Windows to Linux and all hardware-related problems were gone. Now it feels as I'm back to bad old Windows-times, spending my time trying to make hardware work & keep computer running...

What do you say, folks? Do you have the same experiences?
Or make me happy - tell me it's only program/function XYZ ??? Though I'm afraid that's not possible, I can't find anything in common?

My next step is now to try with kernel 2.4 - kernelversion is the only thing all these distros have in common afaik.

Re: Linux becoming unstable?
 

hi there,

just some input:

i don't know MEPIS and LormaLinux but all the other do not use a vanilla kernel. they use patched things.
so if you talk about instability you should be aware that you are not talking about the kernel.org kernels.
and if you are looking for stability you should consider trying slackware, debian woody, rhel, ...
reading about your linux experience i think you know what i mean...

regards
slackie1000

honestly, I think KDE has become too eye-candyish, and it all started with KDE 3.2.x
and now Gnome is starting to behave the same
way.........and it's really sad that linux is starting
to become "point and clickish" just to appease to people who are too lazy to learn the CLI........

Linux is only 'point-and-clickish' if you want it to be. You can remove all that eye-candy and work on the console only if you like. It's great to have choices.

I have been using Linux for about two years now(Debian sarge/sid, Ubuntu) and have no problems whatsoever with stability. No crashes on Debian testing in the last six months and a couple in Ubuntu, but I figure that's because I'm still tweaking stuff.

Re: Linux becoming unstable?
 

Nope! It's only getting better and better from my standpoint and experiences. ;)

Crashes...
 

I have not had any crashes, relating to the kernel, since last week. It just froze and did not accepted any input: just beep, beep, beep... Kinda scary :). I just restarted and everything worked fine (thank god for journaling filesystems ;)).
All in all i think the 2.6.x branch is very stable, as I was running it patched with morph-sources for about a year (can't remember when I started to patch my kernel), and had only this one crash. From my standpoint 2.6.x has been rock stable (though I never have uptimes more than one month) and I think, that 2.4.x should be only used for older computers (where it has more speed than 2.6.x).

Just my opinion...

The only problems I have had this past year or so that I have run Linux-only, I have been able to trace to hardware problems. (E.g., my power supply died, and took out my CD-ROM as it went down.)

The 2.6 kernels have been absolutely beautiful, IMHO.

i do agree with you on x because mine also crashes out of no where and its liek wtf

same here - outside of 3D-game problems, I haven't had a software-related lockup in years, literally. I did have a shutdown that I eventually traced to a bad stick of ram. :rolleyes:

you may want to run some hardware tests/diagnostics, particularly on power supply and memory. or strip the system down to bare essentials (stand-alone, small kernel, no X, no mouse, etc.) and then start adding things in until you see stability problems, to narrow it down.

I think the last time I had X crash was about 4 years ago and it was my own fault.. can't remember what I did but I think I accidently removed some used files in /tmp.. ;)

Lol lucky you

devfs as i recall is unmaintained, had lots of bugs, and had pointlessly long names to remember. udev is a simpler solution, but it was rushed, as i heard because devfs was unmaintained, and the kernel developers didn't like the idea of it being in kernel space.


On the DE side, its very unstable. KDE is slloow, and gnome gets in my way (besides some of gnomes programs being slow). All in all, both kde and gnome are trying to be like windows (from a hard to use, point click, wait 10 minutes kinda way ... and in the "help" messages all about, and in there look, and in there "click to change this" kinda way (you know, the one where if your mouse slips you lost half the desktop?)), and in the process hide and obfuscate the file system to the user........ yep, the GUI DE's have gotten more and more unstable, just wait till they start mimicking longhorn ..... ah, its a shame so many programs are written for DE's only.

I'm a bit puzzled now - So far one has had problems, most replies "rock stable". And my 3 computers dies in average at least once a day! It used to be once a year...
I'm happy to hear that it isn't Linux - could be KDE of course, but then crashes occur with no X running too, or using IceWm.

Now I have to do some serious thinking.
Can it be hardware, when all three computers behave the same? Hardly unlikely.
Problems with patched kernels? In every distro I try, but no problem for other people? I don't believe it.

I'm beginning to believe it has to be related to some program I'm using, thus always installing it. But a program shouldn't kill the system?
Only thing I know can kill the system completely is hardware, like Genesee suggests - but then again, on 3 different computers???

Hmmm....
What do they have in common? The mouse. That's all - Fujitsu wheel-mouse, standard protocoll.
And I also use Midnight Commander, always a few terminals open with mc running - earlier mc has crashed sometimes but never took system with it.
On the other hand, I remember a few times: a fresh installed distro, starting X resulted in no mouse or keyboard. This was caused by an incorrect mouse-config in XF86config. So maybe computer isn't dead, only mouse & keyboard! I have to investigate this.
I can use mouse in text-console today, don't think I had that before? Well, it's pretty handy to copy a commandline but that's all I use it for. Maybe I'll start with disabling that, hopefully the text-driver is easily found. ( gpm?)

speel: You also have several crashes. Maybe we should compare our systems and programs, see if we can find something in common.
To start with, you're running Ubuntu, did you install mc? Can you use the mouse in text-terminal?

And SciYro, thanks for the udev-explanation. Good to know there is a reason, and problems will surely be fixed.

Are the three computers also in differente places? I mean: Could your problem be related with the electricity supply?? <-- Sorry, I am not very sure how this is said in English :(, I hope you understood anyway...

That is something I never would have thought about! It's a good guess, but still I don't think so.
They are in my office, I'm sysadmin in a small school, and several other computers in this room runs fine (=pretty stable to be Windows).