Having one program (process) talk to another is dangerous. Think of a stranger trying to come over to me and deliver a message. There’s no way I can guarantee that he isn’t planning to stab me as soon as he sees me.
That’s why we have special mechanisms for programs talking to other programs. Instead of having the stranger deliver the message directly to me, our mutual friend Bob (IPC Library, binder in this case) acts as an intermediary. This way at least I can’t be “directly” stabbed.
What’s preventing the stranger from convincing Bob to stab me? Not much (except for Bob’s own ethics/programming)
To work around this, we have designed programming languages (rust) that don’t work if there’s a possibility of it being corrupted (I would add “at least superficially”, but that’s not the main topic here). Bob was trained by the CIA in anti-brainwashing techniques. It’s really hard to convince Bob to stab me. That’s why it’s such a big deal. We now have a way of delivering messages between two programs that is much safer than before.
The only problem is that the CIA anti-brainwashing techniques (rust) tend to make people slow. So we deliver messages less efficiently than before. Good news is in this case we managed to make Bob almost as fast as before, so we don’t lose our own much while gaining additional security. The people who checked on Bob even made sure to have Bob do the exact same thing as before when delivering messages (using RB Trees), hence this evidence is most likely credible.
KDE gang rise up! Can’t stand GNOME and its design philosophy, in recent times it seems like it’s been trying its hardest to become the most off-brand macOS it can possibly be. Everywhere I look its more form over function. Urgh.
As a long time Linux user, if kernel broke anything for me, and it used to fairly regularly, I would just roll back to previous kernel. Fedora makes it easy, by default you can just boot into previous version by selecting it in grub menu.
File a bug, roll back, keep the bug report subscribed and only update after it’s fixed.
Reflecting on my first year running solely Linux (as opposed to dual-booting), I think that this culture comes from the fact that, on Linux, problems can more often than not be solved. If not solved, then at least understood. When you want to change something on Windows, or something breaks, you have far less room to maneuver.
When I was a Windows user, I’d barely ever submitted a bug report for anything, in spite of being very tech-literate. It felt hopeless, as my entire experience with the OS was that if a fix would come, it’d have to be done by someone else.
Linux treating its users like adults, produces users who are more confident and more willing to contribute.
Is it even possible to report bugs to Microsoft without paid support? I always come across that Windows community forum where every solution to a problem is to update drivers, run sfc /scannow, etc. I doubt anybody on that forum can relay problems to Microsoft staff.
The Feedback Hub was introduced to fix this gap in user reports for Windows. Microsoft does actively monitor this. They respond when necessary, merge topics, deny or approve bugs/suggestions, etc. For their software, such as Terminal or VS Code, you can use GitHub issues.
Keep in mind, like most companies, Microsoft has guidelines on what employees can say when responding to any user feedback. This is why we typically see a lot of copy and paste. When it is more than that, wording is selective and you may not get more than one or two responses in total.
You can do the exact same thing in Windows, just think of the SysInternals Suite and its power. It’s just that people on Linux expect problems, while the overwhelming majority of people on Windows/MacOS is using their device expecting it to work and if it doesn’t they go do something else or buy another device.
Also this completely untrue notion that you cannot fix Windows or play around with its internals is very prevalent, to the point that it’s a meme, so people don’t even try.
But I have to fight the stupid OS to give me useful information. I have to install 3^(rd) party stuff. By default you only get this useless error reporting tool. Even if you report an error your likely to never hear from anyone and the chance of the error being fixed is virtually nonexistent.
On Linux the necessary information is usually readily available. The worst offender in my experience is Steam itself. You can get logs from games fairy easily. But if Steam misbehaves things can get more complicated.
I found bugs in Windows server products all the time, and there was no way of reporting them. If you opened a ticket (by paying, of course), they would never admit it was a bug. Half the time I got the impression I was the only person in the world that every encountered said issue, and that what I was doing was complete edge-case. Which was bullshit, I would investigate and find dozens of references (which never got resolved) because it was pretty much the only way to use X product feature.
Microsoft QA and support is utter trash. You can get better support in Linux on damn near anything by some rando on IRC or the specific product forum, or, gods forbid, Reddit. There is an almost 100% chance you can fix anything on Linux if you look hard enough, even if you have to go dig through the code. Nothing like that happens in the Windows ecosystem.
Also, the types of information you find are very different. On windows, you’ll find various forum posts about your problem, and some proposed solutions. Usually, nobody seems to know exactly what’s causing the problem, and that’s why the solutions are a bit random. Same goes for iOS related problems too.
On Linux, you might not need forum posts, because sometimes the error messages tells you what’s wrong and how to fix it. If that’s not the case, you’ll find posts about your problem, and usually there’s someone who explains what’s broken and what are the commands to fix it.
There’s none of that guesswork about trying 7 unrelated things to see if any of them magically solve your problem. It’s straight to the point. Your problem is caused by that setting over there, and here’s how to change it.
When it comes to closed-source software developed opaquely by for-profit corporations, particularly the huge, monolithic ones like Microsoft, I generally have the attitude that, if I do discover a problem:
They won’t take my detailed report
If they do take my report, it goes straight into a shredder bin (or a massive queue where low priority problems go to die, which may as well be the same thing)
If they do read my report, then it’s likely something they already are aware of
If they don’t know about it somehow, the issue is probably so low-priority and niche that it wouldn’t escape the backlog anyway
Probably not nearly as bleak as I make it out. But when you can’t see the process, how can you tell?
With open source projects, these things can all still happen, but at least the process is more transparent. You can see exactly where your issue is, and what’s been done to it so far, if anything. Other users can discover and vouch for your problem. And if the dev team takes pull requests, and you are willing, able, and permitted to contribute, you can make the fix yourself.
Also, with open source projects, I actually want to help the developer improve their project, whereas with Windows I simply do not care and won’t donate a second of my time to a large corporation for free.
That view bug has been sitting around since 2009, from what I can gather. But a file manager giving false filesystem state to a user is a showstopper. It violates the main purpose of the program. And risks data loss. Users may make errors based on false information.
Batch renaming I use regularly by ingesting media from cameras, though typically at the command line.
remember the other several occasions where developers hated actually getting feedback from these linux users cause they actually would have to fix their shit? but not many actually did
cause i remember, they only care as far as money goes
I know this isn’t a real answer, but it’s what I use as a stop gap measure… I basically have a text file called buffer, and ssh into the VM on a terminal on my host, and paste into the buffer file.
I know it’s lame, but for simple text and stuff, it works. For things like files and pics, I use a shared drive.
If someone has a better answer… Please let me know!
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