Ubuntu 15.10 Kernel Regression That Broke Graphics Displays In VMWare Patched

prisoninmate writes: On Monday, February 22, 2016, Softpedia reported on the availability of new kernel updates for several of Canonical's supported Ubuntu Linux operating systems, including Ubuntu 15.10, for which five kernel vulnerabilities have been patched at that point in time. And from the looks of it, the respective kernel updates introduced a regression, which Canonical patched four days later, on February 26, 2016, saying that the issue was introduced along with the fixed vulnerabilities for Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) and it broke graphics displays for those running the OS in VMWare VMs.

Comments

It highlights the sorry state of Linux today.

[Anonymous Coward]

News like this is important because it highlights the sorry state of Linux today.

Linux used to be all about quality, stability, reliability, and robustness. Linux is what we used to use when we wanted our computers to just work, and continue working.

Yet over the last 5 to 10 years, we've seen a massive decrease in quality across the board. It isn't just Ubuntu. This affects pretty much all distros.

Many of us switched to Linux in the first place because we were fed up with Windows repeatedly crashing, or Mac OS being too limited.

For a long time Linux was better than both of them. We could use Linux for months on end without it crashing, and it gave us the full power of a UNIX-like environment, too.

But that has been eroded away.

Like we see in this incident, Linux has become less-stable than Windows. First there are these kernel fixes, indicating a low quality to begin with. Then there was the regression introduced by the fixes, which further shows a lack of quality!

A kernel change should never break user space. Ever. As Linus Torvalds himself said, "If a change results in user programs breaking, it's a bug in the kernel. We never EVER blame the user programs. ... WE DO NOT BREAK USERSPACE!"

So not only is Linux now approaching the low level of stability we saw with Windows 95 and 98, but it's also stripping away the UNIX-like environment that made it so powerful. We're seeing more and more anti-UNIX software being included in most distributions, including systemd and GNOME 3.

So this makes many of us ask, Why the heck do we still use Linux?!

We need stability. We need a UNIX-like environment. We don't want to use Windows. Linux used to offer all of that, but no longer does. So many of us have moved to FreeBSD, with the rest going to OS X.

You might say, "Well, fuck off then! We don't need you!", but it turns out that we are the kind of people the Linux community desperately needs. We are the ones who contributed code, fixes, bug reports, and documentation. We are the people who helped make Linux what it is. As we've been slowly driven away from Linux we've seen the quality continue to fall and fall. We surely won't be coming back as long as that's the case!

So it could very well be a chicken-and-egg problem. Linux initially drew us in because it was better than the competitors. But now that it has become worse, thanks to efforts like systemd and GNOME 3, we are being driven away. And as we are driven away, Linux gets even worse and worse. But since it's getting worse, it doesn't draw us back in! The FreeBSD and OS X communities now benefit from our contributions, while Linux withers away.

Re: It highlights the sorry state of Linux today.

[Anonymous Coward]

One regression that wasn't fixed for four days... yep, that's clearly the least stable OS in history.

Re:It highlights the sorry state of Linux today.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sheesh. This is Canonical. They don't have the reputation of stability to begin with.

Bunch of monkeys tampering with the kernel as if they were competent. Linus snubbed their proposal of maintaining the long term branch for a reason.

Re:It highlights the sorry state of Linux today.

[Gr8Apes]

All true. I personally would probably prefer to not run any systemd distros, and will avoid them for a while. Just far too flaky and troublesome. initd works just fine. Maybe in 5 years systemd will either have settled down and be usable, or a new service will come in to replace it.

Re:It highlights the sorry state of Linux today.

[thegarbz]

Like we see in this incident, Linux has become less-stable than Windows.

Oh wow. So much ignorance in one post, I'd mod you troll if I didn't want to actually write a rebuttal.

Let's start with "this incident".
Many of use run linux on servers. Many of us continue to run linux on servers. Linux is still and has been a stability god compared to Windows on servers. This incident here affects running graphics on one very specific piece of hardware (or virtual hardware). The result was that graphics were stuffed up in this scenario. At not point did the resulting system become unbootable or completely inoperable. In fact it is to Linux's core strength that in this scenario you could fire up any old network session and get a display remotely. Also each of the kernel patches fixed an issue that required an authenticated logged in user in the first place. That user could potentially cause a DoS or gain some privileges in some scenarios. Certainly nothing to do with stability.

Which bring us to "less stable than windows"
You may want to qualify that statement. Few if any issues that have cropped up in Linux over the past few years have been related to stability issues. Some bugs have caused operational issues and some vulnerabilities have been discovered that could lead to attack vectors. But throughout all of this the one thing Linux has been and continues to be is "stable".

While we're talking about the now, let's look at your use of "has become"
Linux is as stable now as it's always been, but is it worse in other ways? Several major vulnerabilities discovered over the past few years were introduced decades ago. The specific case we're talking about now is a hardware issue. We've never had to look at hardware support in the past to make sure Linux worked properly right? Right? I mean no one has ever published or needed to maintain lists of working or buggy hardware, right? Yeah didn't think so. Linux may have always been a king in terms of the breadth of out of the box hardware support, but it has never been a favourite for manufacturers to write 100% perfectly working drivers. Even in the server space a good 20 years ago remember bashing my head against the wall due to drivers for RAID controllers misbehaving. This is certainly nothing new and the sheer breadth of Linux's hardware support makes regression testing a heck of a difficult mission.

So here we are then. Yet again a Linux article comes up on Slashdot, and yet again someone spews a bit of unrelated garbage, claiming competitors (Windows) is better, and it's all because of Systemd and Gnome, both of which are as unrelated to the problem as your post.

14.04 LTS was also broken

[theapeman]

I found that 14.04 LTS would not run with the latest kernel under vmware But it has been updated and now does run (3.19.0-51)

Lowercase "w" in VMware

[Danborg]

It's VMware, not VMWare. #pet #peeve

Re:Linus Torvalds: "WE DO NOT BREAK USERSPACE!"

[xvan]

Are you sure this is a userspace issue?
Because virtualization software has a kernel component.