How Is Linux Tested?

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3177338/how-is-the-linux...

gonna take a wild guess at this coz yeah it's a good question, but basically my guess is if there's a security problem the community, depending on the OS or distro, probably puts that out in the open, then the community fixes it. say there is a 'driver problem' with xyz chipset, same deal, enough folks bring attention to it through the community someone with too much coffee in them probably starts fixing it then releases it for review etc. if you look at say some of the builds from Arch Linux User Repository or "AUR" feedback on their site often brings attention to the maintainer, but again it all depends on who all is maintaining xyz MAKEPKG where it pulls from say github, who is behind xyz software say at github. my own opinion on this is well just my own, and yeah as they say 'could be wrong' but one scenario that i think has hurt companies configd like microsoft is the simple fact their business model put them in a bad position to not use the biggest resource they actually had: their customers. but remember that company came up in a time where the average joe on the street wasn't a geek, didn't have the world wide web in his/her pocket. today, that's not the case, the kid down the street might find a 'hole' or 'problem' with say linux and report it to whoever runs the distro he or she was goofing with. the other thing is it's almost impossible to ask any one single company, a small group of programmers hired by xyz company to find stuff wrong with software that goes around the world. what i'm getting at is for example the way you may look at, use, or implement your distro even if we both were on the same distro could be completely different than the way i use it. the other problem is again the business model, when you find a problem with linux well no stock prices go down, meaning a 'company' doesn't lose money, if anything it adds value to the release of the software. i'm not a guru and one of the reasons i love linux is because well, i'm not a guru. if i have a problem or fix something till i break it, either google, irc or any number of the forums online, social media, i got a 'tech' usually a message away. all the help i've had over the years with linux, even if i won the lottery no way i'd be able to pay everyone back with all the help they gave to me for free. i'm not anti microsoft or anti proprietary software or even anti make money but yeah at times sometimes the business models need changed for a company so their products can keep up with their customers. windows 98 second edition and windows 2000 plus windows 7 was some good software, lots of talented folks at microsoft.