A Higgs-Bugson in the Linux Kernel

anyone else feel like the linux kernel release quality has come down a bit here in the 2020s? i feel like it hasn't been this bad since the mid 90s. anecdotally in the past couple years, i've experienced a data corruption bug in xfs, wonky wifi firmware/kernel regressions, graphics artifacts and hard crashes in amdgpu. my experience with mainline releases before 2020 has been that they're rock solid. i'd doubt myself before i doubted the kernel. i say all this with a deep appreciation for everyone and the work they're doing... my intuition says that the complexity of it all is reaching a tipping point that is finally overwhelming the ages old release engineering processes.

My experience is the opposite. I run mainline starting with -rc1 on my gaming pc, its been literally flawless for me since I switched to an AMD RX 7900 XT about two years ago. Ten years ago there was a 50/50 chance -rc1 would fail to boot on at least one of my machines, I can't remember the last time that happened.

Look at all the syzbot automation on the kernel mailing list, as an example of how the process continues to improve.

IMHO the best Linux experience really is to run bleeding edge versions of everything. I wasted a great deal more time backporting patches before I started doing that, than I have spent chasing new bugs since.