Linux Has Fewer Bugs Than Rivals

sushant_bhatia_progr writes "Wired has an article stating that according to a four-year analysis of the 5.7 million lines of Linux source code conducted by five Stanford University computer science researchers, the Linux kernel programming code is better and more secure than the programming code of most proprietary software. The report, set to be released on Tuesday, states that the 2.6 Linux production kernel, shipped with software from Red Hat, Novell and other major Linux software vendors, contains 985 bugs in 5.7 million lines of code, well below the industry average for commercial enterprise software. Windows XP, by comparison, contains about 40 million lines of code, with new bugs found on a frequent basis. Commercial software typically has 20 to 30 bugs for every 1,000 lines of code, according to Carnegie Mellon University's CyLab Sustainable Computing Consortium. This would be equivalent to 114,000 to 171,000 bugs in 5.7 million lines of code."

Comments

I wonder...

[Chi-RAV]

I wonder which facts from this study will end up on Steve Balmers Propaganda presentation sheets...

Fewer lines of code, fewer bugs AND FEWER FEATURES

[Cycline3]

Fewer lines of code, fewer bugs AND FEWER FEATURES. What does it matter if it's better written software, if it's not easy to use or won't do what you want it to do?

People can argue all they want - but Linux vs. OS X or Win XP for the average joe on the desktop just is NOT a reality yet. Not even close.

Re:20-30 bugs per 1000 lines???

[DunbarTheInept]

False. It's a sign the slashdot population is getting stupid. The reason moderators can't figure out who's kidding is that there is a large enough population of slashdotters now who would say something extremely dumb and actually mean it. Just because it looks entirely silly and nonsensical doesn't mean it's a joke.