The Bloj

Slashdot musings

Posted on September 29th, 2005 by Tim.
Categories: Programming, Tim.

When a program dumps core, it means that the program did something that it wasn’t supposed to do (like try to read memory that isn’t valid) and the operating system has (correctly), stop the program’s execution, and to make life easier on developers, copied the program state into a handy file so that the problem can be debugged. No other programs on your system will be harmed by this one malfunctioning program.

When Windows blue screens, it means *the operating system* has done something it wasn’t supposed to do (like try to read memory that isn’t valid) and the operating system bails. Often, it will return execution to the next instruction and hope things will be okay. It almost certainly isn’t. You’re basically screwed.

The equivalent in Linux is an Oops. They don’t happen that often on production systems. A crappy properitary program doing things it’s not supposed to is *not* a Linux problem nor an Open Source problem. It’s SAP’s problem.

It’s a little known fact that 80% of BSoDs are caused by device drivers (not the “operating system”), and the vast majority of these are caused by video drivers. Device drivers are primarily written by third-party sources, not by Microsoft. By the above logic, one would surmize that 80% of Windows crashes aren’t Microsofts fault. This is partly true, but the reality of the situation is that the average user doesnt understand what a device driver is. The average Linux user most likely understands the idea of a kernel module however (since they most likely had to find and configure a module at some point for their hardware). So when a system crashes due to a bad driver, the Linux user will almost never blame the entity called “Linux”, but whenever Windows crashes due to a bad driver, who is the user going to blame?

I’m not sure why I read slashdot anymore. Maybe if I stop reading comments…

~Tim

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