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Comment by lightedman | Hacker News Reader

You need a new kernel to support a GPU? What ass-backwards garbage is this? With Windows, it's install a new driver; not update the core of the OS and possibly introduce horrible bugs.

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Read this: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/73xutn/why_ca...

Yep, utterly backwards. That kind of thing should be purely in driver space where it belongs, hooked on a driver model and not a kernel upstream model.

It's funny that Microsoft learned this problem and fixed it back in 2007-ish. Well, in another 30 years Linux will catch up. Maybe.

MS didn't fix it. They simply froze their abstraction and everyone expects it to be the same. Linux supports kernel modularity for a long time already. The only difference - they don't guarantee interfaces to be set in stone. So clearly they aren't interested in "catching up", since they do it on purpose.

I don't necessary agree that it works for their goals (preventing messed up un-upstreamable kernel modules), but they do it for a reason.

"MS didn't fix it."

Linux can't lose the GPU without taking the entire system or the program it's operating down. Windows can have the entire subsystem crash and come right back up almost instantly without loss of screen data, including active game windows.

Microsoft most certainly fixed their graphics problems that were rampant from NT4 through Vista.

Meanwhile windows is able to restart the entire graphics subsystem with a new driver without losing apps. I doubt linux will ever reach these levels.

Yeah, right. Windows can do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP31lluUDWU

In addition to the other comments. Ubuntu's LTS, if you install hardware enablement stack, will automatically install new kernels once Ubuntu releases them for the LTS.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack

The desktop version does this automatically... if you install the LTS from a XX.XX.02 release: Ubuntu 16.04.2 does this. Ubuntu 16.04.1 does not-you have to manually enable it.

> With Windows, it's install a new driver; not update the core of the OS and possibly introduce horrible bugs.

Windows drivers are typically the source of Windows' horrible bugs. It's no different.

hint: it has something to do with the fact that Windows machines have a reputation for BSoDing regularly, whereas Linux systems have no such reputation.

If anything Linux Desktops are way less stable than Windows Desktop. Try crashing a graphics driver on Linux and see what happens and compare that to Windows (it restarts without interrupting operation). Most of the Linux schedulers are awful for interactive use as well. I'm forced to use Debian and Scientific Linux installations at work, they are so much worse at basically anything I've experienced both on Windows and macOS it is not even funny.

I experience somewhat frequent GPU crashes when playing Diablo3 under Wine with the integrated i3-4150 GPU, but the graphics stack recovers by itself in about a minute. I can then continue from where I left off, sans the application that crashed with it.

Under Windows the recovery is instant, there is an audible bell and a popup window in the taskbar saying something along the lines of: "The graphics driver has crashed and has been restarted". In any case by now I'm pretty sick of Linux fanboys making fun of people using other operating systems. Using Linux as a Desktop OS, especially if your are not given a chance to modify the installation is an exercise in self-flagellation.

For Linux it's IME not BSODs, but deficiencies in desktop usage situations. A CPU and I/O scheduler that causes sound stuttering (now better than five years ago), or my favorite... CDs with read errors can hang much of the user interface forever and effectively require a restart. Not even mechanically force-ejecting the CD helps. It is AFAIK not due to programming errors in the UI - processes become unkillably stuck. Fortunately it isn't very relevant anymore. It may even have been fixed and I haven't noticed.

Network drives going away will still reliably hang explorer processes. It’s 2017, there’s no reason to be doing network access on the UI thread anymore.

I've been using Ubuntu desktop for over ten years. My experience is that every now and then it just stops and needs a hard reset. Not as polite as a BSOD.

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