Interesting Linux online poll

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In this week’s Questions and Answers section we talked about breaking an operating system to learn more about it, specifically learning how to fix it. These days it is fairly rare for a Linux distribution to break unless the user goes out of their way to do something destructive. When was the last time you had a Linux system break to the point of not being able to boot? Let us know what caused the problem in the comments.

When was the last time your system broke?

It is broken right now: 7806 (84%)
Within the past year: 311 (3%)
In the past 1-5 years: 425 (5%)
In the past 6-10 years: 276 (3%)
In the past 11-15 years: 126 (1%)
In the past 25-20 years: 30 (0%)
More than 20 years ago: 54 (1%)
I have never had a broken Linux system: 208 (2%)
I do not run Linux: 15 (0%)

When was the last time your system broke? The no. 1 answer, it is broken right now surprise me. My last one was about 6-10 years ago when an upgrade kept my Broadcomm WIFI from working.

I also wonder how many of those "my system is broken right now’ are the operators own fault for trying to tweak their system to infinity?

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Although I’ve had no issues with my personal system, my work PC (on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS) has definitely required troubleshooting in the past. However, I’m still not sure if that’s Linux-related, or if there have been brief power cuts that have caused some sort of corruption.

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Well… Never :slight_smile:

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Did the original question spell out just what constituted “broke”?

Jymm, would you consider putting forward such an expanded qualified poll? Maybe, itemize categories of “broke”, like GUI, WiFi, Sound, etc.?

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Probably not I don’t really know enough. DistoWatch has a poll every week related to one of their articles. I like to repost the ones that seem interesting or the answers surprise me. The answer to this one surprised me. Of course you can see some of what happened to the systems in the week’s readers comments, but not everyone comments. 84% saying my system is broken right now seems odd. I still think tweaking is the biggest thing that breaks systems, but that’s not the system breaking to me.

Some are that not that interesting or the answers are pretty predictable.

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Sorry Jymm, I missed that it was not your own poll!

I can only label that questionaire’s response selection as meaningless, because it lacks those necessary qualifiers to make it meaningful!

:frowning:

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My systems only “broke” when I was tired or not paying attention. But the difference is that I simply rebuilt it; to me it was more like remodeling my configuration rather than BREAKING the system!

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