16 Dec
2008
39050
hits
hits
Once upon a time..
I'm going to tell you a story, but I going to do it briefly because I have a bunch of things to do.
There was this guy who used Linux and OpenSolaris for many years. He liked it a lot. He was used to mount devices by hand, to look for wireless networks by using iwconfig (at that time network manager wasn't just working), etc. One day he saw one of his friends working with a MacBook Pro, and he realized how well that machine was working. It was relatively fast, the OS was good looking, and the action of connecting to any wireless network was one click away.
Long story short: this guy ended up buying one of those boutique-laptops and he was pretty happy with it.
He was pretty happy, until something happened. One day, he hit a kernel bug while he has coding a user space application. At the beginning he though it was just a random crash, but then he realized there was a consistent way of crashing the machine with that unprivileged user space application.
The bug was in xnu/xnu-1228.9.59/bsd/net/route.c:460, for some reason something bad happened with the reference counter of an object. And there, at this exact moment, is when he realized he did screwed up working on a non-free machine.
And.. that's it. I finish the store here; I gotta reinstall a PC.
Posted by Alvaro Lopez Ortega
Comments
Johannes Berg on Tue Dec 16 21:35:50 2008
1046
... and he lived happily ever after! or not?
Felipe on Tue Dec 16 21:39:24 2008
1047
congratulations, use some free OS for everyday uses, all the assistants to some of your talks will be happier, and one of that guys it's me :D happy hacking ;) ... in a free OS :P
Lucian on Tue Dec 16 22:08:42 2008
1048
I've had my up to date mac kernel panic on me before. My case was with a bug in vlc when playing a certain mkv, but it got solved before I had time to investigate. I really want some distro to do to KDE what ubuntu has done to gnome (i.e. make it just work) because there is less to tweak on the mac for me right now (there is plenty of stuff to tweak all the time). Also, I want broadcom and nvidia (preferably gallium3d) full-featured open source drivers for everything they make as a christmas present.
Mon on Tue Dec 16 22:24:04 2008
1049
Nice story, reminds me a lot of myself :) But come one, you run into one single bug (albeit a serious one, i admit) and you stop using the platform alltogether? In all those years you've never run into a single bug in OSS? I don't want to push to using OSX, i know i can't do that but giving up on Macs because of this... ah well your choice :)
Esteban on Tue Dec 16 22:58:43 2008
1050
Wait a minute... The incredible of this story is that you (the great alo) was using OSX as your primary system!! Fallen idol!! :) Un saludo
Misc on Wed Dec 17 00:10:38 2008
1052
Well, technically, the kernel of OS X is free software, afaik. More ever, I think you can install linux on a macbook without much trouble so the hardware is not wasted.
Bontuko on Wed Dec 17 00:32:29 2008
1053
Every so often, I feel the urge to jump ship and use a Mac instead of Linux. Whenever this happens, I run into a bug on the Mac, try to find the code to debug it, and realize that...there is no code. Free software IS the pragmatic choice. It is the only software you can run the way you want, no matter what. Cool story, and keep the faith!
SKaRCHa on Wed Dec 17 00:51:08 2008
1054
@alo: Welcome back! :) @Lucian: Try Kubuntu... I really like it.
Dave S on Wed Dec 17 04:30:21 2008
1055
While everyday I'm also tempted to switch back to Linux, whenever I do happen to run it in my VM, I remember how easier most things are on OS X. BTW, the XNU kernel is opensource and you can download the source for all Apple's opensource software directly from Apple here[1] and the XNU source from here[2]. Yes, this does require you to register with Apple, but you still have access to the source under their APSL license. I just downloaded it and looked at line 460 of route.c and it absolutely means nothing to me since I'm not a kernel programmer.. hehe. Anyways, I'm posting the code here in the hopes it will inspire someone to fix it and make my every day OS that much better. Line 460 is the panic line bellow: /* * Decrements the refcount but does not free the route when * the refcount reaches zero. Unless you have really good reason, * use rtfree not rtunref. */ void rtunref(struct rtentry *p) { lck_mtx_assert(rt_mtx, LCK_MTX_ASSERT_OWNED); if (p->rt_refcnt <= 0) panic("rtunref: bad refcnt %d for rt=%p ", p->rt_refcnt, p); if (rte_debug & RTD_DEBUG) rtunref_audit((struct rtentry_dbg *)p); p->rt_refcnt--; }
Meh on Wed Dec 17 16:29:06 2008
1056
Yeah please whine about non-free operating systems and don't bother making a proper bug report to the Apple folks. That is REALLY constructive and sane approach to the problem! Thank you.
Meh on Wed Dec 17 16:30:11 2008
1057
Yeah please don't act in a constructive way and make a proper bug report to the Apple people so that they could fix the problem! Instead of that how about whining a little bit about how non-free operating systems suck in the interwebs...
muriel on Wed Dec 17 17:08:58 2008
1058
I am not really sure about it because I don't use a mac, but isn't the mac os x kernel open source? I guess if you really wanted, you could fix the bug and recompile the kernel. afaik, only the aqua stuff on mac os x is proprietary.
Duh on Wed Dec 17 17:25:04 2008
1059
And of course, Linux kernels never crash and they're always easy to fix when they do. Not.
Marco on Wed Dec 17 17:39:35 2008
1060
I miss the point, what the comment on the source means ? that Alvaro is wrong or that Apple had Fail ? :D
comctrl6 on Fri Dec 19 02:01:47 2008
1061
"One day he saw one of his friends working with a MacBook Pro, and he realized how well that machine was working. It was relatively fast, the OS was good looking, and the action of connecting to any wireless network was one click away." That right there makes all the difference between Linux and non-OSS systems (Windows, Mac, ...). Ease of use, which OSS has very little of.
Skinkie on Fri Dec 19 22:34:31 2008
1062
Story continues; after 1 year + 1 day; guarantee void. Logicboard breaks. Alvaro cries.
Kilon on Thu Jan 15 23:25:05 2009
1071
There is a myth passing around by Linux users , that just because OSX is the most user friendly is also the less customizable . The truth is that OSX has nothing less than all the OSs out there. It is by far the best OS for the majority of users. I happen to own 3 pcs (1 winxp+1 win98+1 ubuntu) , 1 iMAC , 1 macbook and 1 acer aspire winxp laptop. In mac os if you like GUI there are several utilities extremely powerful , if you prefer to write there is Applescript and Python . After MACOS in a distance my second best is UBUNTU. Nice OS , very much like OSX but not as stable .
Antonio Ognio on Wed Mar 4 21:13:01 2009
1109
Hey Alo, my MacBooks is a triple boot system. I must admit I find myself using it on OS X for the most of the time. Suspend works better there and it's my biggest partition. I use Ubuntu at work on standard PC hardware. It's nice to use both platforms for several hours every day. I don't know if I'd be that confortable with OSX if I had to de everything in it :/
Antonio Ognio on Wed Mar 4 21:20:53 2009
1110
Hey Alo, my MacBooks is a triple boot system. I must admit I find myself using it on OS X for the most of the time. Suspend works better there and it's my biggest partition. I use Ubuntu at work on standard PC hardware. It's nice to use both platforms for several hours every day. I don't know if I'd be that confortable with OSX if I had to de everything in it :/
Kelly Brown on Fri Jun 12 22:32:44 2009
1172
I really like your post. Does it copyright protected?
Alvaro Lopez Ortega on Fri Jun 12 23:08:43 2009
1173
Kelly, sure! Assume it's licensed under CC-BY. :-)
