Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
I thought for a moment that you were trying to be cheeky, but I guess you're not. I'll repeat again -- they're two completely unrelated concepts and deal with two completely different aspects of software.
Adobe Photoshop not being Linux compatible, for example, does not make Linux unstable. An application crashing because the distro rushed in to get the latest kernel/glibc without proper QA implies instability.
At least now I hope you get the difference.
Lets talk atomicity. Either something works, or it doesn't. Debian or any distro for that matter will try its level best to get a piece of hardware to work. If that hardware is a critical part in the functioning of the whole system, then the system as a whole should work at all as opposed to it crashing the system.
Secondly, for absolute stability you need microkernels. This is when the system continues to function even when internal kernel data structures are corrupted. Why am I saying this? Point is stability is relative. End of story.
My piece of hardware was fine. It worked with other distros. Debian stable did not work with it. It kept on crashing. Call it flaky hardware or whatever you want. Its in use by a large number of people.
And lastly, my point still stands. Debian stable will always support a subset of hardware supported by Ubuntu or Fedora or other bleeding edge distros. You *cannot* refute that fact.
- Dinesh