ncol

In my opinion most of the distributions are starting from the wrong end. They start with kernel, add package management, decide which services to run, which toolkit to use and then make some utility applications. Sometimes over a few different distributions. This mean not only that it is hard to convince people why they should change things, but that when you made the improvements you want you end up stalling since you haven't actually tackled the things that are lacking.

What you should do is the opposite. They should start with the toolkit, the network infrastructure, the management utilities or something else that would be the use-case. Once you have e.g. a solid toolkit that is attractive to developers and people start making good applications the rest is a matter of time. There is of course a reason why people don't do this, which is because it is hard. But hard is good, it is complexity that will kill you.

This is of course essentially why Android and Chrome OS is successful in their own right.

Of course my experience is different. If you want browse the web, do some development and stay within those confines it can work. But that has been true for probably at least a decade and is true for any other mainstream operating system as well. If that is what you want you should probably go with Chrome OS. But people usually expect to be able to do more than that.

Quality isn't an absolute measure. If you were to plot the security holes in the Linux kernel on a timeline you will most likely find that there is at least one the majority of the time. Security is essentially a percentage of how hard something is to discover and exploit. And you don't know what that percentage is until someone go looking.

The same is essentially true for the rest of the the operating system. Your average user can be perfectly happy e.g. clicking on random links and executing random code without apparent consequences. They will rave about Linux until reality catches up with them. Whether that is software conflicts, (lack of) backups, security or just maintenance in general. Usually at that point they get disillusioned and switch to something else. That is why we have the perpetual "year of the Linux desktop". Because people leave at a similar rate that they join.

By working in enterprise Linux I, involuntarily, get to see all this at different points in time. Not just from my own perspective as someone who has largely accepted these problems, or from the perspective of a user that is excited about Linux until they aren't. It is from this perspective, and because I know how hard it can be to do things that are outside of the default, that I say that the other big operating systems are better overall.

I can't agree. I work in enterprise Linux. We essentially make distributions, build systems, customized kernels etc. Linux, desktop Linux especially, is the worst of the big operating systems. It certainly has qualities, but if you make a table with all the different things to expect from an operating system and you look into each section without being too subjective Linux will come last overall. And I don't think it really is changing. Ever wondered why Ubuntu doesn't really seem to be getting better, mostly just shifting technologies around? Well, that is because it essentially reached the level that desktop Linux is at. Anything else is going to be going in the direction of something like Android and even that isn't necessarily up to the standard of the alternatives.

I would like to elaborate, but I think it is pretty futile to do so online, which is pretty telling in itself. One example that should challenge people view would be the ssh default story that is on the front page right now. Everything in Linux is pretty much like that if you dig deep enough. And while its competitors aren't perfect either, they are just far more consistent. Because that is a major selling point for them.

> Does a user "own" security footage in a store that they enter? Definitely not.

Why not? Data is everywhere these days. You won't be able just quit e.g. social media in the future to avoid being tracked. One of your friends will tag you, your face will be indexed, your name will be correlated to your phone number, your phone number to your ip address and now they know everything you read anyway. If that isn't the future you want you can either come up with all sorts of rules for when and where you can and can't take pictures and collect data, which all the companies will try to avoid anyways. Or you can say that people own their own data and only reasonable usage is granted automatically.

Presumably reasonable usage of a security camera would be to, you know, ensure security. Maybe you can opt in to some consumer behavior survey. But they shouldn't just be able to sell the data to a data mining company for face recognition, location tracking and consumer intelligence.

Consoles were banned in China from 2000 to 2015.

Sure. I would put that sort of more in the high level engineering than "real-world testing" though. I mean if you are Waymo you can drive around for a year and see what happens. If you are Audi you can still repair some fault after delivery and redesign the next model year. It is when you can't do that you need high levels of quality assurance, integration, fault tolerance etc. If anyone could teleport small objects to Mars it would soon be littered with smart phones in aluminium foil regardless of how harsh the environment is ;)

Haven't worked in this field, but here are some episodes discussing the topic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJLOZDPTp3I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADJwChUtdDQ

https://theamphour.com/334-an-interview-with-gerry-roston/

https://theamphour.com/220-an-interview-with-shaun-meehan-do...

https://theamphour.com/401-an-interview-with-brent-and-bryce...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzRP1qdwPKw

I think what you are talking about is mostly just normal engineering in the sense that the process is similar. What really makes space unique isn't space as such but that there is no real-world (real-space?) testing, no inspections after the fact or do-overs.