Firmware 4.7.10413

[compurandom]

Originally Posted by ratinox

Because they do have a rock solid operating system. How often does your Kobo crash, dump core, spontaneously (seemingly) reboot, etc?

Two or three times a day? :-D

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by the.Mtn.Man

This is what baffles me about Kobo firmware development. They've been hammering on this thing for years and should have a rock solid operating system at this point that only needs a little fine-tuning now and then, but instead there are major bugs that have persisted across firmware releases (for instance, the two-finger light adjustment on the 1st generation Aura has been screwed up one way or another in every single release after 3.12.1), and it seems like every new release ships with significant new bugs that should have been caught during testing.

Simple: because it's hard.

The more code you have, the more interactions there are. The more likely you are to make a change that has an unintended consequence. Or, that to fix something you don't have any choice but to break something else. Then you have to decide on importance and when to do things.

As to seeing bugs before release, yes, they should be testing. And they are. But, a full suite of tests can take a long time. And as an example of how hard it can be to see bugs, the stats problem wasn't noticed here for a full week. The nature of the bug meant the critical people here didn't notice it for a week. And I'm not surprised it wasn't something a tester didn't see. And I have a suspicion about how the bug came about, and if I'm right, I'm not at all surprised (think the unintended consequences of other changes).

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by compurandom

Two or three times a day? :-D

The only time I have ever seen a Kobo vaguely that unstable was when I was toying around with KSM and KOreader. To be fair, that's not Kobo's fault. KSM intentionally destabilizes the OS to hook itself and never mind the long list of bugs and problems it has.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by compurandom

Two or three times a day? :-D

Interesting. I play enough with my Kobo ereaders that going by posts here and elsewhere, I may be in the running for the world record in number of factory resets by an enduser. What I have to admit is that most of those factory resets are due to me trying to use a Kobo ereader for uses if was never intended for. Even in my wildest dreams, I don't think Kobo intended their ereaders to be used to SSH into network switches nor to be used as a TFTP server to handle saving and loading firmware and configuration files but hey, it works well and is cheap and light. It took a few iterations but I no longer expect stacklog files with their first line of "OH THE HUMANITY!" as a common occurence while managing switches.

As for crashes while reading? The last one I saw was with an ebook that I loaded to my Aura One without first validating it. After the crash, I opened it with Sigil and enjoyed a few hundred error message from FlightCrew and epubcheck. After splitting the single html file into chapter files, correcting the errors and other cleanup such as moving inline styles into a stylesheet (thank ghod for saved search/replaces) until it validated without error. After those 45 minutes I will never see again, I was able to sideload and read it with no errors. Another reminder that never sideload without error checking is a very good idea.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

As for crashes while reading? The last one I saw was with an ebook that I loaded to my Aura One without first validating it. After the crash, I opened it with Sigil and enjoyed a few hundred error message from FlightCrew and epubcheck. After splitting the single html file into chapter files, correcting the errors and other cleanup such as moving inline styles into a stylesheet (thank ghod for saved search/replaces) until it validated without error. After those 45 minutes I will never see again, I was able to sideload and read it with no errors. Another reminder that never sideload without error checking is a very good idea.

I've been saying this for some time that eBooks with errors are causing a lot of the errors that are reported. Most people don't check the eBook after the error(s) to see if it's the eBook or the Reader. They just assume it's a problem with the Reader and the eBook is OK. The problem comes when the issues are with a Kindle. Mobi cannot be validated and to validate KF8, you have to use KindleUnpack to shift the code to ePub to then validate and you then have to fix the errors due to KF8 and validate again until you get either no errors or errors related to something else in the eBook.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I've been saying this for some time that eBooks with errors are causing a lot of the errors that are reported. Most people don't check the eBook after the error(s) to see if it's the eBook or the Reader. They just assume it's a problem with the Reader and the eBook is OK. The problem comes when the issues are with a Kindle. Mobi cannot be validated and to validate KF8, you have to use KindleUnpack to shift the code to ePub to then validate and you then have to fix the errors due to KF8 and validate again until you get either no errors or errors related to something else in the eBook.

It must be the season. I've found myself agreeing with you on more occasions in the last couple of weeks than in the last couple of years.

[JSWolf]

Because I use Calibre and I remove the DRM, I validate and once validated, I mark with the Reading List plugin so when I next plug in my H2O, the validated eBooks get sent automatically.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by DNSB

It must be the season. I've found myself agreeing with you on more occasions in the last couple of weeks than in the last couple of years.

Something must be going on as a few other people commented the same thing. But, I'll try and keep things balanced

[the.Mtn.Man]

Originally Posted by ratinox

You're conflating operating system with applications.

"Operating system" tends to be a fluid term, especially when it comes to what are known as embedded systems like the Kobo firmware.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by the.Mtn.Man

"Operating system" tends to be a fluid term, especially when it comes to what are known as embedded systems like the Kobo firmware.

I don't consider the Kobo firmware to be embedded. Or is even "firmware" in the same way as other devices. If you get one of the Kobo devices that have an internal SD card, you can pull that out and see that there is a Linux distro on one of the partitions with the Kobo software. The newer devices have fixed memory, so the distinction is a bit harder to justify, but they all work the same way. The devices boot a Linux distro before starting the Kobo software, nickel.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by the.Mtn.Man

"Operating system" tends to be a fluid term, especially when it comes to what are known as embedded systems like the Kobo firmware.

Not really. Firmware is a fluid term, OS not so much. The first time I heard FW related to a linux distro with app over it I was confused. For me, FW is assembler inside a DSP, not OS+ SW. But OS is OS, you can add as many drivers as you like (if you want to think in those terms), but they are elements added to the OS, not the OS itself.

BTW, this firmware is not even an embedded system, as I understand that term.

[the.Mtn.Man]

The point is that none of these terms are necessarily set in stone. The Kobo OS could be called embedded because it is specialized, purpose-built software as opposed to a general purpose computing platform.

But this is getting all very nitpicky. I'm just curious why there are so many persistent bugs in the Kobo software despite years of development, and the answer seems to be not enough resources to do better, which isn't an entirely satisfactory answer.

[compurandom]

Originally Posted by compurandom

Two or three times a day? :-D

Ok, I admit it, that was a troll, but I couldn't help it when such a broad generalized statement was made.

You don't see me complaining about crashes because most of the time I know what caused it. The most likely cause is as others have said, a bad epub. I see an unexplained crash about once a month.

Having said that, there's a bug where if my kobo goes to sleep (timeout) and I immediately wake it up, the touchscreen doesn't work. If I put it back to sleep with the button and wait about 10-20 seconds, it seems to recover most of the time. Is this a hardware or software problem?

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by the.Mtn.Man

The point is that none of these terms are necessarily set in stone. The Kobo OS could be called embedded because it is specialized, purpose-built software as opposed to a general purpose computing platform.

No, the definition of "operating system" is well defined and set in stone. An OS is the program or programs which control the computer's hardware and provide access to that hardware to higher level programs (applications).

No, the Kobo OS is not specialized. It's a full Linux kernel and Busybox which is one of the most generalized, generic operating systems you can find today. Case in point: every Android device in the world uses this foundation.

Maybe, the Kobo firmware as a whole (OS plus applications) could be called embedded but not because of the software. Because the hardware is specialized and purpose built. Although in practice these devices (tablets, smartphones, readers) are more sophisticated and capable than traditional embedded systems ("dumb" phones, programmable thermostats, manufacturing controls and such) so I refer to them as "computing appliances". The distinction in my mind is that computing appliances could be used as general purpose computers whereas embedded systems cannot.

But this is getting all very nitpicky. I'm just curious why there are so many persistent bugs in the Kobo software despite years of development, and the answer seems to be not enough resources to do better, which isn't an entirely satisfactory answer.

Because... re-read davidfor's and my answers because that's the reality of it. The OS is solid, the applications less so for reasons we described.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by the.Mtn.Man

But this is getting all very nitpicky. I'm just curious why there are so many persistent bugs in the Kobo software despite years of development, and the answer seems to be not enough resources to do better, which isn't an entirely satisfactory answer.

As a person who works with big software development, sadly, I'm not curious but accept it as life