Electronics

[gardenman]

I'm of the belief that modern operating systems have become too complex to ever be truly safe. I think they're trying to do too much these days. The current MAC OS is reportedly 80+ million lines of code. The odds of there not being a flaw or fatal weakness in 80+ million lines of code are slim. Each new OS just seems to get bigger and bigger, which only makes more room for issues. 

I'm not sure the KISS approach (keep it simple stupid) isn't a better way to go moving forward. Make the OS very, very basic, but safe. Well, safer. Even a basic OS will likely have 10-20 million lines of code. But that's still an eighth to a quarter of what they're doing now. Make it, make it safe, and then don't change it. Do we really need a new OS every year or two? No.

[geezerette]

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@gardenman wrote:

I'm of the belief that modern operating systems have become too complex to ever be truly safe. I think they're trying to do too much these days. The current MAC OS is reportedly 80+ million lines of code. The odds of there not being a flaw or fatal weakness in 80+ million lines of code are slim. Each new OS just seems to get bigger and bigger, which only makes more room for issues. 

I'm not sure the KISS approach (keep it simple stupid) isn't a better way to go moving forward. Make the OS very, very basic, but safe. Well, safer. Even a basic OS will likely have 10-20 million lines of code. But that's still an eighth to a quarter of what they're doing now. Make it, make it safe, and then don't change it. Do we really need a new OS every year or two? No.

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@gardenman 

I couldn't agree more!

[Renata22]

Thank you for posting this. I hadn't heard about this. Updating now.

[gidgetgh]

Just finished updating my phone, iPad and MacBook Air. 

[BlueFinch]

Yeah, I've updated my phone and MacBook, but I'm concerned about how long this security breech has been active. From what I'm reading, it seems they stumbled on it kind of by accident, so it may be that they don't know either. Many could have already been affected. What next!

[gardenman]

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@BlueFinch wrote:

Yeah, I've updated my phone and MacBook, but I'm concerned about how long this security breech has been active. From what I'm reading, it seems they stumbled on it kind of by accident, so it may be that they don't know either. Many could have already been affected. What next!

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It's like I said earlier, with 80+ million lines of code, there will be issues. They need to go back to simpler operating systems with just the basics to make them safer. No individual and no group of programmers can validate 80+ million lines of code. You just put it out there, hope for the best, and fix issues as you find them. A smaller, more basic OS that's kept stable with minimal changes would solve a lot of the security issues we're seeing these days. Instead, they keep making a larger, more complex OS and we'll keep seeing more and more issues.