Comment 28 for bug 1491797

It doesn't matter whether this machine has the common old-age ailment of dried thermal grease or not. It's part of normal ageing, so Linux needs to be able to handle it in a non-destructive way.

Now Linux is being bullheadedly intolerant to common ailments. It's like a doctor letting an old patient suffer from an indefinitely drug-relievable illness and saying "no, you must buy an expensive life-threatening surgery to correct the underlying root cause". (This parable is apt, because in my computer one insert brass nut has popped off the case and is now spinning in its cavity with the screw, so I would have to do something drastic to even reach the thermal grease.)

What kind of an attitude is that to the continual improvement of Linux?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continual_improvement_process
Will it ever be smart if you avoid making it smarter? Or have I mistaken about the goal of Linux development?

Even my car from 1995 (Nissan) is smarter than this: in the case of overheating, it can protect itself gracefully in many ways; it doesn't kill the engine demanding immediate cooling system repair - it starts doing every possible cooling action and avoiding various heating actions in the order of least annoyance to the user. Then it informs the user about the heat problem, so that they can help. Then it files an error report about having overheated. Quite a lot better than Linux in 2015.

The concept of "failing safely" should be applied here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail-safe
Users of these ailing (or just dusty) computers are now suffering of abrupt forced shut downs when they could easily be given lesser evils (noisier fan, slower processing, suspending for a bit every once in a while).

All the opportunities to remedy the situation should be taken, because as nothing always works, a low number of actions taken will more likely fail in someone's computer.