Hello, Warning: the following might be interesting (if at all) because of its hidden (and subtle) punch line. Other than that, not necessarily worth reading and/or considering.
As we all know, the major event of the year happened this weekend when Chrome exceeded IE usage (even if for a fleeting moment - however, the trend is there. Firefox slid to third, they say.) Be that as it may, I assume the comparison was made on the basis of the apples to apples principle, i.e., Windows to Windows (to Windows). As the Linux world is fading more and more into irrelevance (sorry for hurting some people's feelings with this "disclosure"), I'm listing a couple of personal experiences that, to me, never bode well for Linux development and success. 1. A paranoid behavior to never admit mistakes; probably for fear that an imaginary enemy (Microsoft?) might use the news to their advantage. The main example is the kernel.org (and others) recent lengthy outage which elicited nary a discouraging word. Hush hush in the Linux community, disappointing indifference in the other "communities". Here, some of my small and humble encounters with the sickenish reluctance to admit a mistake, only to quietly correct it later: - The Bug 646150 (bugzilla.mozilla.org) regarding the obvious crashes of Firefox-4.0. Quietly (and 100%) fixed in the following release, 4.0.1. - The Bug 128177 (code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list) where Chrome (yes, _that_ "weekend" Chrome - but the Linux variant) just crashes _consistently_ at a certain URL, and occasionally during some other activities (harder to pinpoint and _document_). About a week after the report, the newer version(s) no longer crash consistently; just occasionally during some other activities (harder to pinpoint and document:). The (Linux) world will never know that Chrome would simply hard crash at this day and age. The Bug report will slowly and quietly fade off into the sunset without any comments/resolution - of value. 2. The sloppy programming, evidenced in dealing with the above Chrome releases. Not worth getting into details. Here at least, there's a much simple explanation and frankly understandable excuse. The centuries-old tendency of programmers (especially those with any brains at all) to drift toward where the action is and away from losing ventures. I could safely add to this paragraph the appalling state of quality control and of understanding and handling Bug reports. But enough ranting. Cheers, -- Alex -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/blfs-support FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
