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Linus Fixes Kernel Regression Breaking Witcher 2

Posted by timothy on from the where-is-your-itch? dept.

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.."

1 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. I wish Debian was as responsible. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    I've used Debian for years now, but its quality is getting really bad these days. Things have gotten particularly bad since the switch to systemd.

    Some of the bugs that Debian suffers from now are unbelievable. There was one bug that broke the WINE launch script, for example. It made it impossible to use WINE to run Windows programs.

    When I first heard about that bug, I couldn't believe it. How could a bug like that even get through? It was blatantly obvious. Trying to run a Windows program using WINE would have shown it was broken! Didn't the package maintainer try that most basic of tests while preparing the new version?

    I don't expect perfection from Debian, but I do expect a minimal level of quality, and that particular bug is just plain inexcusable.

    The saddest part of all of this is that Debian is actually one of the better distros out there! The others are often more seriously broken in many other ways.

    I applaud Linus for caring so highly about quality, but it does not do much good to have a robust kernel if the distros are broken in idiotic ways.