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OSS Unix: Dividing & Conquering Itself
(Score.5, Interestin writes "Security guru Marcus Ranum has some interesting thoughts about how a continuing lack of consistency among Unix systems (and particularly Linux) is hurting Linux (and remaining commercial Unix vendors like Sun) and helping Microsoft. Admittedly this has been said before, but no-one else quite manages to phrase things the way Marcus can."
The 3 BSDs are much more consistent, and don't move things around on you for no reason.
http://www.olene.net/linux.html
Get a free iPod Nano 4GB!
And get a windowing system that can be tuned to be efficient if one so desires.
Bloody 'ell!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"Salt Lake City Airport, Dec 4, 2005" (look at the bottom of the page)
hm, slashdot editors -- for once you've repeated news from future!
Funny, I haven't had a single Win98 application that refused to run on WinXP properly. Unless you are talking about in the reverse WinXP apps not running on Win98, anything designed for Linux 2.6 specifically will not run on 2.4 or 2.2 either. Learn to see faults in your own following and you can see the light to fix them. Constantly trying to point the finger outside the circle to your enemy does nothing but hurt you.
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This argument could go either way.
The opposing view would be that since Linux competes with itself, through survivial-of-the-fittest, only the most prefered features get passed on. This process would make the OS stronger with each iteration. These iterations are more frequent than iterations of Windows.
This is fairly different from Redmond's approach of dictating what a Windows user wants and patching it to keep it working. Then maybe with the new version of Windows every 4 years or so (or maybe some large service pack) there will be some significant feature change.
There is a more consistent look and feel between Windows versions because features aren't competing side by side with each other. In Linux, there are competing desktop evironments, file structures, startup scripts, etc. Any featureset that is determined poor or redundant is dropped and the stronger featureset prevails.
He isn't talking about users; he's talking about programmers who code for the system and sysadmins who administer the systems.
Take the 2 major (commercial) Linux distros, SuSE and Redhat/Fedora. Take a look at the addon packages for them, and see how you have specific packages for specific distros as well as the specific versions of the distros.
Imagine you're Adobe, for example. Now imagine having to release a dozen different versions of Acrobat, one for each distro/version/architecture, etc.
I know LSB is a step in the right direction, but just a step or two doesn't complete the journey. What we need is a real summit (maybe in one of the conferences) where we lock all the major players into a room and have a deathmatch, I mean, a discussion followed by an approved standard, for the filesystem hierarchy.
he's right.
I've been kicking around Unix and Windows systems for as long as he has, both as a network and system administrator and more recently as a journalist, and while the techie side of me cares passionately about distribution performance and the like, I also know that what the real world cares about is: 1) Does it work and 2) Do I have to learn anything new about how it works.
That's it.
Anything, anything, that gets in the way of getting the job done with the least amount of training gets in the way of adoption.
That's why efforts like the LSB are so darn important. ISVs, CIOs, CTOs and customers, don't want to care about whether you're running Red Hat or Novell/SUSE, KDE or GNOME, they just want to stick the disk in and have the program run. Period. End of statement.
We, as techies, may love to argue and fuss over every last detail--file system fights anyone?--but operating systems are just like cars. While gearheads love tinkering with every last detail of their automobiles, most people just want to get in their car and drive.
Windows may splutter and be prone to accidents, but you just drive it.
Until Linux and the other open source operating systems stop requiring people to turn the starter crank, let out the choke, and pump the gas pedal three times before starting--with each distribution requiring a slighly difference sequence--Windows will continue to dominate the desktop.
Darn it.
Steven
After reading tfa I simply have to say this guy really gets it. And I've been saying this for years, I'll promote linux because I'd rather try than give up, but I feel it's a losing battle because of fragmentation.
There's strength in 'polymorphy', true, but *real* strength is in unity, not caring so much about you and your contribution to the grand plan but about the long term vision and it's high time - if not too late - that all these people pulling the oss wagon in 15 different directions (low estimate) start pulling it in the same direction or we'll be using windows 2009 one day... (or at least those who make a living programming).
It's all fun and games to debate one distro or another until you have a family to feed, and binary compatibility would go a long long way towards getting commercial vendors on board.
Oh, and for the real die hards: I'm a programmer, and if the price is right I don't give a damn about the source, as long as it works as advertised. If the source is available so much the better, but if all that happened is that if a corp goes out of business or abandons a piece of code that they'd open source it that would be more than enough for me.
I'd rather download a binary driver than the kernel sources to get one to compile for my kernel version, as if that should matter. Especially considering that I'm on dialup here.
MP3 Search Engine
First switch them to Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, plus Openoffice.org, X-Chat, Gaim, etc. After you get that, replacing the OS is easier.
Who needs an enemy when you can divide and conquer yourself?
I survived the UNIX wars, unlike most of the companies involved in them. In their day, Pyramid, SCO, Apollo, DEC, Sun, Silicon Graphics, Gould and others fought ferocious scorched-earth wars trying to win customers' minds and money. The survivors, with the exception of Sun (a.k.a., The last man standing), have either disappeared into the mists of time, or are niche players that have been forced into new markets in order to survive. Other than their conflict, what did they have in common?
They were all selling some kind of UNIX operating system.
Back in the UNIX wars, the vendors had two primary axes on which they could compete: hardware speed, and features of their flavor of UNIX. Toward the end of the UNIX wars, a third battle evolved, over the desktop metaphor, the look and feel of the workstations' GUI. If you were around back then, you'll remember the ferocious fights over whether or not the 3D-look widgets of the Open Software Foundation (OSF) Motif metaphor were just flash and glitter or whether they were actually kind of cool.
Today, few remember the argument, and the code in question would be considered remarkably tight and lightweight compared to what people now use. If you step back and look at the UNIX wars from a high altitude, the actual battlefield was very small - GUIs and features in a UNIX operating system don't really sway customers much. The vendor who won, Sun, did so because they offered a consistent software experience (SunOs, later Solaris) across a broad spectrum of hardware at different performance levels from desktop to data center. In other words, the customers didn't care if the GUI had a 3D look and feel as long as it was fast, reliable, and affordable. A lot of users got sick of the debate and switched to a public domain window manager (I used twm on all my DEC, Sun, and BSDI machines...) - opting out of the whole battle - because they valued a consistent software experience more than they valued cool 3D-looking widgets.
You don't need to be an advanced student of computer history to know what happened. While the UNIX vendors beat eachother up over what amounted to nitpicking details, another vendor offered the same consistent kind of software experiencea cross a broad spectrum of hardware, including laptops. I am referring, of course, to Microsoft/Intel. Through the exacting lens of 20/20 hindsight, it is clear that the UNIX vendors were short-sighted losers arguing over what to watch on the television and fighting for the remote control while the house burned down around them.
Now, read this carefully: I am not bashing Microsoft Windows. Nor am I bashing UNIX. As a UNIX system administrator with 20+ years experience, and a Windows system administrator since Windows 1.0, I can tell you that there isn't a whole lot of difference in the work-load of efficiently running either environment. Sure, there are lots of annoying details in either environment, but it takes about the same time for an expert to load and configure a system. In the old days, UNIX machines were faster to bring online because of the prevalence of decent tape drives while Windows was primarily loaded by floppy - but that's about the only distinguishing factor I can recall. In other words, customers didn't choose Windows because it was better (or worse) than UNIX; they did it because Microsoft/Intel was careful to guarantee them a consistent software experience across a broad selection of hardware. Equally important, application developers flocked to that consistent software experience because it meant their products were cheaper to develop without the headaches of version-specific differences.
In 1985, when I wrote code for my UNIX machine, it worked on all the other UNIX machines because there was basically a single flavor of UNIX, which all used the same compiler, and everything just worked. Today, you actually have to be quite careful if you want to write code that compiles and works correctly on S
standardize your damn directory structures and startup scripts. Or at least come up with some sort of virtual linking scheme to provide one consistant view. "Well, *BSD puts it here, but on Linux it would be there and SYS 5 doesn't have one..."
You have managed to complain about characteristics (in bold above) that make each flavor unique; you should have grumbled about device naming conventions, too, and gone for the trifecta. You may as well complain about the variations in fruit: "well, the banana has a peel that must be removed prior to consumption, while grapes come in bunches, and don't get me started on pomegranates, etc."
The BSDs are generally do things in a similar manner. This is largely historical; it is the BSD Way(tm).
One really shouldn't just say "SYS 5". Not only is the nomenclature wrong - it should be SVR* - one should indicate which revision is under discussion, e.g. SVR3 or SVR4.
News flash: Linux is very much like SVR4. You can do some things (e.g. ps) in BSD style if you like but most practical purposes Linux is ~SVR4.
Solaris >=2 is SVR4-based, as is HP-UX. AIX (IIRC) is SVR3, but AIX administration is (or at least was) its own form of pain so the historical influence is basically a footnote.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
I forgot which linux distro it was, but it was several years ago. I had the choice of two install options
1. Developers
2. Administrators
It irked me a bit, seeing is there was no "average non-developer joe" configuration preset available. I guess the "administrator" is to administrate "developers". What do the "developers" develop for? They must develop for administators, or other developers. Yet "user" is nonexistant.
Here is a list: Fedora Core, SuSE, Gentoo, Debian, Mandrake. There are 5 distros in that list. Roll some dice to pick one. If you get a 6, roll the dice again.
Any of these will do. Really. You can do a multi-variable analysis to help you optimize your selection better. But the more fitness you demand, the more time you will waste.
Just pick one of the leading distros (which means more people will have come into the problems before you, and that they probably have been fixed by now) and stick with it. Problem solved.
I would really hate to go shopping with the author of the article.
Now where is my consulting fee?
In short, the directory structures are being taken care of.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
At each stage the claim has been that to get anywhere, we have to change what we're doing. Each time they have been wrong. Nobody knows for sure what will work best, but the best bet is what worked already. What we have is still growing by leaps and bounds, just as it always has done.
Imagine a world in which Free Software precisely as it is today was the norm. Imagine Microsoft trying to nose into it. BSOD? DLL wars? Viruses, worms, spyware, adware, pop-ups, DRM, "no-print" flags? Downloading drivers? Re-booting with every hiccup and adjustment, and re-installing every few months as the system decays? Forced upgrades that break what you had? Ever-increasing license fees for ever decreasing value?
All such diatribes have one thing in common. They are about what it takes to get two groups to embrace Free Software: proprietary software vendors, and know-nothing bozos. The former will never embrace Free Software because, frankly, they have little to offer it, and less all the time. The latter will use what they're given and like it, as they always have. Everybody else already sees the advantage, and has switched or is planning to switch.
Every year, I've been posting that the OSS world needs one sane, unified development API for its desktops. I sometimes get modded down, sometimes get angry replies...but nobody ever actually refutes what I'm saying, because they know I'm right.
I think with the recent spat of articles, people are beginning to see that desktop Linux is never going to make a dent on Microsoft's marketshare. Not with the way things are currently going.
File extensions: Linux uses file extensions, in fact, it uses many of the same file extensions as windows eg. txt, html, jpg, mpg, whatever.
Registry versus Text Config files. So you think editing text config files is confusing? Ok why don't you go ahead and open up regedit and screw around with some reg keys. Oh you messed something up? I'm not surprised. What's that you say, you used the GUI to configure your apps? Gee, that's funny, so did I. In the event that I do need to manually configure something (because say something screwed up and now my system won't boot), at least I have the option and at least the text config file will usually have comments explaining what the various options are, I'm yet to see an comments explaining what anything is in the Windows Registry.
Short/weird meaningless names. Ok try this one, open up Task Manager and click the Processes tab. Now tell me what ANY of the things you see are. svchost, regsvc, smss? Right, thought so... Ok how about opening up c:\windows\system32.. Yeah, lots of intuitive, coherent naming conventions there.
Ugly UI. My gnome desktop has a nice, slick OSX-like theme (I'd take a screenshot but let's face it, I'm lazy). WinXP has the Giant Cartoony Bubble Blue Theme From Hell. 'Nuff said.
Batch files vs commands. Last time I checked you could do most anything from the command line OR the gui in Linux. Try installing software or surfing the internet from the command line in windows.
Generic Print Driver. Because hardware vendors refusing to support Linux is, Linux's fault... And coming up with an acceptable alternative to proprietary windows drivers is, a bad thing.. uh huh...
Buy a penguin. You have a problem with a penguin as a mascot? I've got one word for you: Clippy.
Acronyms. Because only Linux el33tists use acronyms. You'd never hear a sensible Windows guy speak of things like: IIS, ASP, MFC, VB, IE, or NTFS. Oh, wait...
Communism. While you're at it, why not just call me Un-American for not supporting Microsoft, Mr. Limbaugh? So remember kids, Not Following The Mainstream == EVIL!!
So to the author of the animation, seriously, grow up. You're obviously someone who tried to install Slackware or some similar non-user friendly distro, got confused and gave up. Therefore, Windows == "best os" because you == "clueless user". Ok so that's a little harsh. But here's a scenario for you, I just built a box with the intention of dual-booting. Fedora installed without a hitch. Only thing it needed were drivers for my wireless card and video card (surprise you need those in Windows too). Put in Windows CD and reboot. The installer starts, then fails immediately. I still have no idea why but at this point, who cares? Linux does everything I need it to. So the moral of the story is, use what's best for you and stop bashing some other os when your os has all the same or equivalant fallacies that you're attempting to poke fun at.
The problem is that the "choice" people will come running at you with torches. These loud, obnoxious people have taken over the OSS movement and insisted that everything should be forked, there should be multiple versions of the same functionality, and there should be no standards so that everybody can choose various ones.
It's holding back a lot of progress.
I think you are a suffering from a case of not seeing the forest for the trees. The proprietary UNIX vendors cratered for a few simple reasons. Nitpicking over their GUI standards weren't much of it:
A. Their business model demanded steeply inflated profit margins, leading to steeply inflated hardware and software costs. As soon as Microsoft could do most of the same things at a fraction of the price they were partially doomed. As soon as Linux could do ALL of the same things at even a smaller fraction of the price they were completely doomed. Proprietary UNIX had its heyday because people had to pay them buckets of money for there stuff because there was no other way, not true anymore.
B. The vast majority of the for profit computer hardware and software business, is completely depdendent on high volume and economy of scale. The fragmentation that killed the proprietary UNIX vendors was steep R&D costs for relatively small and deeply fragmented customer base. Gates figured out a long time ago the cost of developing software is fairly constant. The more copies of software you sell the less it costs and the more money you make. Volume is king in most software development. The proprieatary UNIX also couldn't compete in developing things like their proprietary CPU's because with each new generation CPU development get ever more expensive to develop and the didn't have the volume to cover the cost. IBM with their deep pockets being an obvious exception.
C. Fragmentation in standards did lead to fragmentation in application development. Software developers were almost universally forced to either pick the market leader(Windows) and pander to them, or waste fairly extensive resources trying to develop on multiple platforms, especially the QA resources to test on all of them.
Microsoft wins hands down on attracting software developers because they have the biggest market and they do for the most part keep binary applications running on their platforms for nearly ever.
Its a simple proven fact of the life the thing that drains application developers of their enthusiasm for Linux the most are:
- There is no GUI standard. You either pick one and code to it and blow off all the potential customers who want to use another, or try to code to multiple standard which no one does, or users are forced to CONSTANTLY switch gears between GUI look and feel. That really hacks off users. OSX wins hands with users and developers because everything works predictably and the same. OSX wins with developers because there are finite number of ways to develop things. There are a few to many generations of frameworks to choose from but that is mostly sue to supporting legacy apps.
- There is no decent audio standard if you are developing audio apps. Between OSS, ALSA, esd, arts, gstreamer and bad mixer implementations(though these are better in newer GNOME and KDE) its simply a royal pain to develop and audio app on Linux and hope for it to run right on every machine.
@de_machina
After reading the article, I got pretty damned depressed and then I realized that it was partly the presentation (visual impact) and the experience that this guy seems to have over people like me.
Fortunately, I read a few responses on this topic and it restored my morale by reminding me that amazing growth, maturity and big-business support is simply happening and nothing this guy said makes it go away adding to the fact that it makes his arguments somewhat hollow in light of what he has suggested.
And here's something else:
For business systems, no one in his right mind should care if their systems can run "anything" so long as it runs what they need to do business and will likely see it in the future. So depending on your business, Linux may not, at present, be a good fit but that doesn't mean it's unsuitable for anyone. Frankly, I pray for the day we can put Linux on the desktops (a coporate decision) because it will make our systems more of a tool than a toy which is exactly what Windows + add-ons and personalizations invariably end up. (Yes, I know you can lock'm down, but when you do that, your users hate you because they know YOU locked it down.)
In any case, things are shifting and a lot of big players are interested in making Linux serve the purpose and these include foreign nations, big businesses and local governments. It's happening and I'm not hearing a lot about failure in these areas yet. (The only failures I have heard of so far are from Microsoft offering a sweet deal NOT to change rather than having someone change and then go back to Windows... anyone have any such stories?)
My prediction: If Linux in business applications get useful enough, then we will see that various "flavors" mean nothing -- businesses will have one or a few guys making the "desktop load" and that is the image everyone will be using. Forget about "flavor" problems -- each business will make their own anyway -- as if we don't already do that with Windows to begin with?
I'll take you a step further: I think Linux not only need a single unified API for GUI applications, but I think that Linux needs to create an entirely new windowing system from scratch. I've never seen an X11 application that didn't look, or work, clunky. You'll never get rid of all those applications that don't support (say) copy&paste correctly unless you 1) FORCE them to port the programs to a new API, 2) Make is easier in the new API to create correct copy&paste than incorrect copy&paste.
Look at Apple's development tools. They rewrote the window manager from scratch, put in every great feature they could think of, then they specifically designed the API (Cocoa) to make it really easy to develop GOOD applications, and really hard to develop bad ones.
How many OS X applications do you see with bad GUIs? Maybe 5% of them? And half of those are ports from other OSes.
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