
Ask HN: How Is Linux Tested? - billconan
I came across https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ghacks.net&#x2F;2019&#x2F;09&#x2F;23&#x2F;former-microsoft-employee-explains-why-bugs-in-windows-updates-increased&#x2F;<p>saying the bugs in windows 10 increased, because Microsoft cut its QA team.<p>I&#x27;m curious how Linux is tested? There isn&#x27;t a QA team or is there?
======
pmontra
[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3177338/how-is-the-
linux...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3177338/how-is-the-linux-kernel-
tested)

------
tokzco
gonna take a wild guess at this coz yeah it's a good question, but basically
my guess is if there's a security problem the community, depending on the OS
or distro, probably puts that out in the open, then the community fixes it.
say there is a 'driver problem' with xyz chipset, same deal, enough folks
bring attention to it through the community someone with too much coffee in
them probably starts fixing it then releases it for review etc. if you look at
say some of the builds from Arch Linux User Repository or "AUR" feedback on
their site often brings attention to the maintainer, but again it all depends
on who all is maintaining xyz MAKEPKG where it pulls from say github, who is
behind xyz software say at github. my own opinion on this is well just my own,
and yeah as they say 'could be wrong' but one scenario that i think has hurt
companies configd like microsoft is the simple fact their business model put
them in a bad position to not use the biggest resource they actually had:
their customers. but remember that company came up in a time where the average
joe on the street wasn't a geek, didn't have the world wide web in his/her
pocket. today, that's not the case, the kid down the street might find a
'hole' or 'problem' with say linux and report it to whoever runs the distro he
or she was goofing with. the other thing is it's almost impossible to ask any
one single company, a small group of programmers hired by xyz company to find
stuff wrong with software that goes around the world. what i'm getting at is
for example the way you may look at, use, or implement your distro even if we
both were on the same distro could be completely different than the way i use
it. the other problem is again the business model, when you find a problem
with linux well no stock prices go down, meaning a 'company' doesn't lose
money, if anything it adds value to the release of the software. i'm not a
guru and one of the reasons i love linux is because well, i'm not a guru. if i
have a problem or fix something till i break it, either google, irc or any
number of the forums online, social media, i got a 'tech' usually a message
away. all the help i've had over the years with linux, even if i won the
lottery no way i'd be able to pay everyone back with all the help they gave to
me for free. i'm not anti microsoft or anti proprietary software or even anti
make money but yeah at times sometimes the business models need changed for a
company so their products can keep up with their customers. windows 98 second
edition and windows 2000 plus windows 7 was some good software, lots of
talented folks at microsoft.

~~~
jolmg
This would be a lot easier to digest with some line breaks separating
paragraphs and capitalizing the first letter of each sentence.

The paragraphs would help in keeping track of which line I'm on, because it
would give more shape to the text. The capitalizing would help in scanning for
the beginning of sentences in order to search for the main ideas presented
here more quickly, and then go back to fill in the details.

Regarding why I would scan, it's because there seems to be a fair amount of
filler. For example the beginning:

> gonna take a wild guess at this coz yeah it's a good question, but basically
> my guess is

contributes nothing to the idea you're trying to present. You could literally
just cut that out and you wouldn't lose content.

I'm just trying to advise. You can disregard me if you want.

