this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2026
345 points (96.5% liked)
PC Gaming
15000 readers
697 users here now
For PC gaming news and discussion. PCGamingWiki
Rules:
- Be Respectful.
- No Spam or Porn.
- No Advertising.
- No Memes.
- No Tech Support.
- No questions about buying/building computers.
- No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
- No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
- No off-topic posts/comments, within reason.
- Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates. (Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources. If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
While calling Linux commie garbage. Dafuq?
You want technical? Let's go.
This is technically confused. ECC memory is error-correcting memory used in servers and workstations to detect and correct bit-flip errors. It's not a Linux requirement and Linux runs fine on non-ECC consumer hardware, the same hardware Windows runs on. It sounds like you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what ECC is and/or what Linux is. Having worked at the architectural level in RAM addressing utilizing Hamming code to protect against sais bit flips, I've experience in this area. Linux runs on everything from Raspberry Pis to supercomputers to Android phones. Windows also supports ECC memory on compatible hardware. This isn't a Windows vs Linux distinction at all.
This is vague enough to be unfalsifiable. Features to compensate for what exactly? It certainly isn't memory usage or performance, that's for sure. Memory errors on non-ECC hardware affect both operating systems equally since that's a hardware limitation, not an OS one.
This is an appeal to authority but backfires. Linus Torvalds famously uses Linux exclusively (he prefers Fedora and is happy not being at the bleeding edge), advocates for it constantly, and has been publicly critical of proprietary software and Nvidia drivers. Invoking him as someone who would disapprove of Linux advocacy is an interesting choice, or an entirely uninformed one.
Someone who opens with that framing and then produces technically confused claims about ECC memory is not making a good faith technical argument. Linux, as a technology, is not political. You're working backwards from your own ideology using mental gymnastics to make uninformed claims in an attempt to support said ideology.
Here's a question for you. Why are you on Lemmy, "FOSS commie garbage" software, same as Linux?
Just fyi, you are talking to a nutter. That person created the linuxsucks community and seems to spend all waking (probably sleeping too) hours thinking about linux and how to get mad at linux. Don Quixote has nothing on this guy
Dayum, that's wild haha thanks.
Data integrity is a hardware problem, not an OS problem.
The myth that Linux is stable enough that you don't need ECC unless you're running ZFS or a database is wrong. A flipped bit corrupts memory before the OS sees it.
-ECC protects the OS. The OS cannot protect itself.
Windows has the most aggressive consumer‑grade fault‑tolerance stack with WHEA, bad‑page retirement, PCIe AER recovery, GPU/driver subsystem restart, VBS integrity enforcement, core offlining, and memory poisoning.
-These features dramatically reduce crashes on unreliable hardware.
ECC is the only one to detect single‑bit errors, correct single‑bit errors, detect multi‑bit errors, and prevent silent corruption from propagating. It's not 'Linux stability' - it's literally ECC (which most consumer desktops and laptops don't have)!
-Servers need ECC because server workloads demand correctness (and Linux doesn't even try to deliver that because they don't have to).
Cosmic rays, electrical noise, and manufacturing defects literally hit hardware, not software. -That famous blue screen in front of an audience during a Windows presentation? -Nothing to be ashamed about (but they could've used ECC)!
If the hardware lies, the OS has no way to know. Even Windows Server requires ECC. Enterprise Linux distros recommend ECC. It's about physics: not the OS.
Good, we've made progress. You now correctly describe what ECC does, which is accurate. Notice though that you've abandoned your original claim that "Linux is intended to be run on ECC memory" and replaced it with "servers need ECC." Those are completely different statements. The first one was wrong, like I refuted. You've just admitted it without saying so.
These are real but irrelevant to your original argument. Those features handle hardware errors after they occur. ECC prevents corruption before it propagates. They're not comparable. On non-ECC consumer hardware, Windows and Linux, and any other OS for that matter, are equally exposed to silent bit-flip corruption. Windows just surfaces the errors more visibly. That's better logging, not better physics.
Easily the most provably false thing you've said. Linux runs 100% of the top 500 supercomputers in the world. It runs the majority of financial infrastructure, safety-critical systems, and enterprise servers globally. Correctness is literally the reason it dominates those environments. The idea that it doesn't try for correctness is not a technical position, it's just wrong. At this rate, are you applying for a position in the Trump admin? You'd fit right in for how confidently incorrect you are.
Also still waiting on that Lemmy answer. For someone so against "FOSS commie garbage" you seem pretty active on it, enough to make your own community and moderate it.
I admire your composure, knowledge and patience.
Thanks, I appreciate that! As part of my degree I worked on designing/building and addressing RAM and ROM so it's a particular area of interest of mine. I enjoyed building address hashes all the way up from NAND gates, to JK/D flip-flops, to eventually said RAM and ROM.
SearXNG also helps with searching and getting relevant articles and results, especially in comparison to Google these days haha.
Which I feel this person may read and believe articles like this thanks to AI 🙃
https://myshoesreview.com/flip-flops/is-ram-made-of-flip-flops/
If you're interested in what JK flip flops actually are:
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/digital-logic/what-is-jk-flip-flop/
Random thought - do you use AI to author your comments/posts?