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Linus Fixes Kernel Regression Breaking Witcher 2
jones_supa writes There has been quite a debate around the Linux version of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and the fact that it wasn't really a port. A special kind of wrapper was used to make the Windows version of the game run on Linux systems, similar to Wine. The performance on Linux systems took a hit and users felt betrayed because they thought that they would get a native port. However, after the game stopped launching properly at some point, the reason was actually found to be a Linux regression. Linus quickly took care of the issue on an unofficial Witcher 2 issue tracker on GitHub: "It looks like LDT_empty is buggy on 64-bit kernels. I suspect that the behavior was inconsistent before the tightening change and that it's now broken as a result. I'll write a patch. Serves me right for not digging all the way down the mess of macros." This one goes to the bin "don't break userspace". Linus also reminds of QA: "And maybe this is an excuse for somebody in the x86 maintainer team to try a few games on steam. They *are* likely good tests of odd behavior.."
More like "Head Developer of the most famous and critical infrastructure project in the comunity personally fixes bug and takes the time to apologize, take the blame and talk to the users about it"
Oh and it's a bug that only affects a desktop leisure piece of software rather than a big server infrastructure project (which people thik is the only thing kernel devs care about)
It's worth mentioning, he also wouldn't flame someone for breaking the kernel like this. The time he did flame someone for a similar bug, it was because the developer not only broke userland, but also began to argue that he was correct to do so. That is when he got flamed.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The fix and half the quotes attributed to Linus were from me. Apparently people can't figure out who posted which GitHub comment.