Yeah I've also had good experiences with Linux reliability.
But that's because I intentionally stay on the "happy path" that's been tested by millions of others. I avoid changing any kernel settings and purposely choose bog-standard hardware (Dell).
When you're on the other side, you're not just maintaining the happy path. You're maintaining every path! And I'm sure it is unbelievably complex and frustrating to work with.
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Personally I would like software to move beyond "the happy path works" but that seems beyond the state of the art.
Over time you get trained not to do anything "weird" on your computer, because you know that say opening too many programs at once can cause a lockup. Or you don't want to aggressively move your mouse too much when doing other expensive operations. (This may be in user space or the kernel, but either way you're trained not to do it.)
There is another post that I can't find that is about "changing defaults". I used to be one of those people who tried to configure my system, but I've given up on that. The minute you have a custom configuration, you run into bugs, with both open source and commercial software.
The kernel has thousands of runtime and compile-time options, so I have no doubt that there are thousands upon thousands of bugs available for you to experience if you change them in a way that nobody else does. :)
> Or you don't want to aggressively move your mouse too much when doing other expensive operations. (This may be in user space or the kernel, but either way you're trained not to do it.)
Operant conditioning by software bugs is totally a thing, but for this particular example I was trained into exactly opposite behaviour. I do move my mouse a lot during very resource-intensive computations, because that lets me gauge the load on my system (is there UI animation lag? is there cursor movement lag?), and in extreme cases, it can tell me when there's time to do a hard reboot. I've also learned through experience that screensavers, auto-locking, and even auto-poweroff of the screen can all turn what was a long computation into forced reboot, so avoiding long inactivity periods is important.
This conditioning comes from me growing up with Windows, but I hear people brought up on Linux have their own reason - apparently it used to be the case (maybe it still is?) that some computations relying on PRNG would constantly deplete OS's entropy pool, and so just moving your mouse around would make those computations go faster.
But that's because I intentionally stay on the "happy path" that's been tested by millions of others. I avoid changing any kernel settings and purposely choose bog-standard hardware (Dell).
When you're on the other side, you're not just maintaining the happy path. You're maintaining every path! And I'm sure it is unbelievably complex and frustrating to work with.
-----
Personally I would like software to move beyond "the happy path works" but that seems beyond the state of the art.
I also think there is a big component of this:
Operant Conditioning by Software Bugs
https://blog.regehr.org/archives/861
Over time you get trained not to do anything "weird" on your computer, because you know that say opening too many programs at once can cause a lockup. Or you don't want to aggressively move your mouse too much when doing other expensive operations. (This may be in user space or the kernel, but either way you're trained not to do it.)
There is another post that I can't find that is about "changing defaults". I used to be one of those people who tried to configure my system, but I've given up on that. The minute you have a custom configuration, you run into bugs, with both open source and commercial software.
The kernel has thousands of runtime and compile-time options, so I have no doubt that there are thousands upon thousands of bugs available for you to experience if you change them in a way that nobody else does. :)