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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Today I'm grateful I'm using Linux - Global IT issues caused by Crowdstrike update causes BSOD on Windows (www.timesnownews.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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This isn't a gloat post. In fact, I was completely oblivious to this massive outage until I tried to check my bank balance and it wouldn't log in.

Apparently Visa Paywave, banks, some TV networks, EFTPOS, etc. have gone down. Flights have had to be cancelled as some airlines systems have also gone down. Gas stations and public transport systems inoperable. As well as numerous Windows systems and Microsoft services affected. (At least according to one of my local MSMs.)

Seems insane to me that one company's messed up update could cause so much global disruption and so many systems gone down :/ This is exactly why centralisation of services and large corporations gobbling up smaller companies and becoming behemoth services is so dangerous.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Most old systems used two digits for years. The year would go from 99 to 0. Any software doing a date comparison will get a garbage result. If a task needs to be run every 5 minutes, what will the software do if that task was last run 99 years from now? It will not work properly.

Governments and businesses spent lots of money and time patching critical systems to handle the date change. The media made a circus out of it, but when the year rolled over, everything was fine.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago

Also a lot of people were "on call" to handle any problems when the year changed, so the few problem that had passed unnoticed when doing the fixed and did pop up when the year changed, got solved a lot faster than they normally would.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

One program I tested went from (31,12,99) to (01,01,100). Its front end formatted the date and added the century, so it showed 1 January 2000 as 01/01/19100

That wasn't fixed. The fault didn't affect processing (the years were wrong but had the correct offset between them) and was only visible to internal users, and also that system was expected to be retired in 2004

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (3 children)

We also got the worst version of Windows ever, ME. Tho maybe with all the BS they’ve done with 11 that might change.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

I'd use ME before the adware that is the current version. It wasn't that bad, it was just Win98 with some visual slop on top that crashed slightly more often.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

I'm not sure I'd stick to calling it the worst version "ever" since MS is trying really hard to out do themselves.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Millennium Editions ruin everything!! 🤬