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Ulrich Drepper On The LSB
Sam Lowry writes "In a recent post at his livejournal, Ulrich Drepper criticizes the LSB standard and urges the distributions to drop it." It's an interesting piece; Ulrich raises some good points.
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Who is Ulrich Drepper, and why should I care about what he says on his LiveJournal?
-mkb
Just curious as to who this guy is...
...and realizing that in today's net-driven society, all it can take is for people to quote you, and others automatically assume you're important. I have no idea who this guy is, and I'm already assuming he's someone since ./ quoted him in an article.
Do not confuse "Freedom of Choice" with "Free Will".
...seems to be maintainer of the GNU C library, and works for Red Hat. At least, that's what Google says. Should I know who he is??? :/
Game dev and music blog
But does it run Linux? Mmmm, something else is gonna drop soon.
Some other random dude says this isn't true over on his MySpace!
In a recent post at his livejournal... It's an interesting piece; the reason are thought-out well
I'm sorry, but isn't this the ultimate in oxymorons?
Like, there are still loosers out there who think that the LSB has any value..ohmygod, that is SO last week! This just means they're listening to whatever Jenny the head cheerleader says. Ohmygod, my parent's just don't listen to me, and they totally don't understand ABI issues.
(Seriously, wtf is a technical article doing on a site full of whiny emo-kids?)
Please help metamoderate.
You really like to post this comment, don't you? At least the 2nd time I read it, word for word, maybe the third.
You are kinda right, though, even though I guess some of those probs come from Suse, never had those with other distros (Fedora and Debian lately), but I always had trouble and instabilities with Suse...
Even if you don't use Linux and use Free/Open/NetBSD or MacOSX, you should be thinking highly of this man- he's pretty damn sharp to say the least.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
MODS:
How is this "interesting"? This dipshit has posted this to every Linux article for the last four or five days.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I do believe this is a troll. Note the author's name, when spelled backwards, is a slur.
I've been using Linux for many years, and the problem of obtaining software packages drives me to the end of my nerves. Every single time I try to get a package that isn't something extremely common like Apache, I run into major, major problems. Honestly, I don't care how the problem gets fixed. Distribute a binary with everything compiled in for all I care. Distributions distribute every package known to man anyway. :)
./configure nonsense. It sucks.
Something needs to be done. Even with the source, half the time I have to make all sorts of include changes. What is so hard about providing a common build and install process? If you get Apache, OpenOffice, and Mozilla to adopt a convention, everything else will follow. Why not have something like Apache Ant that simply installs either to a user directory or to a common directory and links to every user directory? Then provide a nice GUI on top of it, where it will either compile if the source is there and then install, or just install otherwise? How hard could that be? Forget this
Regardless, this is a perfect example where sometimes it really does make sense to have "management" provide leadership by imposing structure. Ideally, they would be serving and representing the interests of users and helping to overcome the disinterest of joe programmer who doesn't do the psychologically difficult work of catering to someone other than themselves. The "scratch an itch" metaphor breaks down when other people don't know how to "scratch" themselves and need the help of a division of labor to serve their needs. Before you say that they should learn how to "scratch", think that as a community, society, and economy we all scratch eachother's itches in an incredibly diverse number of ways. This comes about because of intentionally trying to fulfill a demand. In the case of the Linux stack of Free/Open Source software, the developers have not taken responsibility for how their product is consumed.
He's the gent that's the equivalent of Linus for the current in use GCC right at the moment. You might want to listen to him- he's got a good point.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
RTFA
It could have been written by Bill Gates or my mom.
Why does the author have to be so important if the facts are laid out and verifiable. You don't have to agree with his analysis nor his conclusions, but the facts should stand or fall regardless of the author
Johns: Well, how does it look now? Riddick: Looks clear.
Except for the specific references to the LSB & Linux...he's just described my job. OK, not the exotic places. Not that. Or, the ISO meetings...come to think of it, where's my fancy all-expenses-paid travel junket? Damn those standards people!
Windows is too fragmented, what the hell from a fresh w2k install and service packs I can't even play a DVD. You need XYZ to play a dvd, not that you can download it from anywhere it comes with commercial media players but Windows doesn't tell you that. Then we get to actually playing media and within a month I find I have installed WMP, QuickTime*, ATI media player, RealPlayer, mplayerc and PowerDVD. WTF? How about making all these apps handle plugins for any format? We only looked at media players but they serve as a prime example of Windows fragmentation, if Microsoft sort these things out Windows may be ready for the desktop sometime this decade.
* QuickTime now comes with ITunes, if you want it or not, you download get the DRM bullshit and then uninstall ITunes just to get QuickTime. NOW THAT IS RETARDED!
"grammer"?
Hmmm....
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Suse has been going down hill for a long time. I liked it for a long time.
But then when I upgraded to Suse, I found the version had shipped with a broken Python install. Right out of the box, various bits of python were broken. And I couldn't find a rebuilt RPM on the suse website.
So I installed python myself.
Suffice to say, I was not very happy about. I'm looking at other distros now.
Dude thanks! I finally know how to install this game on Linux. The last time I tried, I ended up causing my mother's computer to wardial her friends from her recipe club.
Not knowing who someone isn't doesn't indicate IQ, nor a drop in IQ. Not knowing someone indicates ignorance on a subject. IQ is a measure of intellectual functioning. A pgymy living in the amazon might not know who the President of the US is, or what a computer is, but he/she could have the highest IQ ever recorded.
./ IQ is dropping.
*Sigh* your post on the other hand, does indicate that the average
Hey, this is Slashdot...dups are allowed...
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Anyone know where this link went? I get document contains no data.
From the fine article:
This applies also to the code which is written by the presumed professionals paid by the OpenGroup to write tests. Want an example? Look at this. This is no isolated incident, I've found this kind of problems on many occasions.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
Wow, you really should consider giving Fedora a try, Fedora core four has been reasonably stable for what it is(testbed for new Redhat), but the default install only has one app for a given task. And your dvd trouble is resolved by this URL http://www.fedorasolved.com/viewtopic.php?t=67
But we don't need standards that handle things by way of THIS sort of answer. The link in question is a bug in the standards test. Their answer was not to fix the standards test, like it should have been- it was to, as Ulrich put it, don't use fast SMP machines. In it's current form, the standard is less than useful because you're needing "waivers" for things like this.
Combine this with silly requirements such as needing Sendmail (Uhm, shouldn't it be more along the lines of, we need an MTA of some sort- so long as it's handled properly, who cares which one, right? Sendmail's the least desireable of all of them, and it tends to get turned off for Postfix or Qmail most of the time anyway!) and it's about as useful an appendix is to a human these days.
Yes we need standards. API standards, possibly ABI standards- but not what we're getting here.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I'll grant I'm not familiar with all the politics and the specific methodology by which a Linux distro tests or achieves LSB compliance, but this blog entry sounds a lot like whining. Ulrich whines that it's hard, that the audit raises many bugs, that it's tedious, that other distros "somehow" achieve their compliance but he's not sure how, that the audit process itself has bugs, and that the LSB group must be pushing this agenda down people's throats.
If it were truly well-thought-out, I'd see either one of two lines of discussion. One would list philosophical proofs that the concept of LSB was unsound for specific philosophical reasons X, Y and Z. The other would list technical proofs that the implementation of LSB standards was unsound for specific technical reasons A, B and C. No whining that it's hard. No whining that other distros do it differently. No whining that bugs are found. No whining that there's politics involved. Just solve the problems found, improve the process of finding problems, or show why the problems or the process is untenable.
[
Speaking of editing, the linked post could certainly use some:
"My advise: but the losses. Remove any claim that the LSB will ensure any additional level of assurance for developers. To some extend, I think, the claims a scaled back meanwhile, if I understood Art correctly."
"is a somewhat good reflection of who a Linux implementation should behave "
"we file bugs and wait of the test to be waived."
You knob.
>1% market share meanst greater than not less than
Also Linux already has >1% share in a lot of market segmants, hey guess what a lot of segmants microsoft has next to or 0% share! gasp!
It's not like Linux has shareholders to please why should I give a crap if my grandma wants to use it?
The fact of the matter is Windows XP is pretty easy to use and pretty stable. I've had the same install on my laptop since Febuary 16 2002 and I use it every day, I install and uninstall and travel around plug into different networks I run all sorts of program and it never crashes... Unless I try and play a DVD because ATI doesn't support my card anymore, but then again my Ubuntu box crashes when I try and play a DVD aswell... funny.
I'm a fairly technical user
You certainly have mastered the cut & paste operations.... see here.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Guys, you're posting to the wrong web site. This is /. , not ./
No, he doesn't have a point because it's a bunch of lies.
First, Suse bugs have nothing to do with the Linux community being fragmented.
Second, these bugs are not representative of most Suse users. They appear to be taken from a message board where people post their problems, then aggregated as if they all happened to the same person. Do that with any OS and it'll look bad.
Third, it appears as though some people are being paid to post negative comments about Linux. This is happening on other message boards as well. The difference between a paid troll and a legitimate person with a problem is that the latter will actually try to find a solution, even if they're new to Linux.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Dude thanks! I finally know how to install this game on Linux. The last time I tried, I ended up causing my mother's computer to wardial her friends from her recipe club.
That was you?!!?? My mum's gonna kick your mum's ass! ;)
The whole problem is this...LSB decided try to force a commercial package format on everybody and tried to top it off by charging a fee to be certified compliant. Look, I'm all for consistent file heirarchies and such but I draw the line at being told I have to conform to enable someone else to make money.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
It's interesting because it's true.
The poster points out some of the same frustrations many non-linux people have when they try to use the OS. Keep in mind, that anyone switching to Linux still has to do work. This means any switching to Linux research is going to occupy spare time. That time better be spent getting Linux to do my work better, not me making Linux work at all.
I don't even need to read the article to agree that LSB is bad. It's not the idea of LSB that is bad either. Having a standard base to build software against would be great for Linux software developers. There would be a slow moving target that is easy to hit. It's also a way to guarantee that software you write will work on any distro that follows the standard. And distros not following the standard would at least know what it is and make accomodations to get that software to run without giving the developer more work of building for multiple targets.
The problem is that the standard that the LSB came up with. First of all it includes rpm, which I don't have time to complain about. The real problem with it is really that it doesn't work. I had a dev kit for some hardware at a job once. That dev kit was built for LSB. First I tried to fenagle it to working on Gentoo (non-lsb) no go. So I tried it on the newest Fedora of the time (lsb) and it still didn't work. I checked to see if it was the fault of the devs or the fault of fedora. I found it was the fault of neither. They both followed LSB perfectly. The LSB was just so crappy that it allowed for an incompatability between two standard-obeying programs. But now that the problem was discovered I got it to work.
LSB is a great idea. But it wont work unless the standard itself is sane.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Point 1 and 2 could be solved by using by using Novell Linux Desktop. Yes, it's boring, but you can't have it both way.
BTW, the menu in my 9.3 installation have a single volume control applet, and it's pretty damn simple to understand. Actually, it's pretty much a copy of the Windows mixer. WTF is wrong with your install ?
:wq
This story was originally posted here. Some troll liked it and now it's here again.
Whoever modded it interesting should also read the signature from right to left.
Um, I bought Quake3 for Linux when it was on sale at EBGames and ran it in Red Hat and it was as easy as:
1. Insert CD
2. Double-click on installer icon when file manager window pops up
3. Enter root password when prompted
4. When all is said and done, choose Quake3 from the start menu
From what I can tell, there's only one difference between this and the Windows version that you described, and that's the entering of the root password. And we don't want to do away with that, because it's what makes Linux 90% less susceptible to malware.
Anyway, what distribution and version of Quake3 are you using?
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
"Spelling police, get on this ASAP!!"
...someone with such vast technical knowledge that there is no room left in his magnificent cranium for grammar checking.
That was a damned challenging read.
-- kortex "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts"
Can someone please explain what exactly is the LSB and how it applies to projects? I was always under the impression that it had to do with how file systems were organized (i.e. put your config files in
What are the tests for LSB compliance like?
Then I wish he'd put a XML parser into glic so that no-one has an excuse for not using XML for configuration files and for data export / import.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
All of these problems were solved ~5 years ago as Linux really hit the desktop.
A) You should never have to recompile the kernel or break anything by upgrading the kernel in a recent distro. And in the Red Hat product family, since Red Hat 8 (i.e. 8, 9, FC1 through FC4) all you do to install software is double-click on the package icon.
B) In the same lineage of Linux systems just mentioned (i.e. RH8 and later), all administration, from firewall through Apache setup, can be done with graphical configuration tools in the start menu.
C) Both KDE and GNOME (and pretty much all distros use one or the other for a long time now), all applications and the system itself are documented in an extensive help system. The KDE system is somewhat deeper and more comprehensive, but both are much more accessible than MAN pages.
BUT as a final comment: the reason to use Linux never has been, and never will be, for a nicer "desktop" environment than Windows. Desktop environments are inherently limited and there will come a point at which not much more can be done to "improve" them.
The REAL REASON to use Unix/Linux that opens your computing world WIDE OPEN once you master it and lets you accomplish things that you never thought possible more quickly than you can possibly imagine IS the command line environment, documented by the man pages.
So while the Linux world has gone a long way to solving most of the desktop issues (including those you name) and is now providing a very plug-and-play Desktop environment, at least in the major distros like Fedora, I'm almost sorry about that, because it means that 90% of the people trying Linux will never touch the command line, never learn about it, never touch the Unix computing model or realize that computers in general are already much smarter and much more capable that most people in the Windows world realize.
It's like watching people starve to death right before your eyes.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I was going to point this out as yet another failure of the American educational system to produce a graduate capable of spelling correctly and not writing run-on sentences. Then I took a look at the web link, which is from Canada. It does my heart good to realize that the Canadian educational system is producing graduates who can match Americans in their inability to write properly. If you Canadians try just a little bit harder, maybe one day you can be stupider than we is! (That last sentence is a joke.)
I'm surprised how well you Mac-trolls can type with only one hand at the keyboard.
Go back to fellating your iPod.
He should talk about LSB and standard build configs across distributions... glibc has caused many headaches to many people because of conflicting versions, directory locations, library issues, etc...
nah, in a standardized world you'd still be complaining about relative difficulty of GNU/Linux versus Windows, because Linux admin is mostly Unix admin. Meanwhile, other countries with somewhat more motivated and less lazy people are standardizing on Linux. Really, if Unix-like OS are a bit too much for you, then by all means stick with your monopoly-controlled OS, the rest of the planet is going to go in a different direction.
Hi there,
:)
Reality check: OS X isn't unix, its just not so stop saying it is. Its a mach kernel with some bsd stuff tossed in. Its unixy, I'll give you, but not so unixy that its a unix. That a minor technical detail I suppose, it its annoying that mac posers are trying to call themselves unix guys now. Your not.
Now -- to the important issue of why your on crackrock. OS X is not free. Its not free in any sense of the word, or in any sense that matters.
Allow me to explain.
One, its not available freely under any circumstances, unless you purchase an Apple Mac computer. Well, I'd rather not, so it'll never be free for me in monitary terms.
Two, and more importantly, its not free as in freedom. Read the license its under, thats not really open source no matter what Bruce Perens and his gang at OSI says. Bruce is my homeboy from way back when, but he's just plain wrong on when it comes to Apple and it smells like a sell out. Its not free, its just not.
Therefore, Apple isn't offering us anything that is any good to the sort of people who care about Linux. I gather that you just use Linux because there are circumstances where you find it useful, thats fine. Enjoy. However, your not a real open source person because the issue of freedom doesn't matter to you, as you have made very clear with your fauning of Apple and its bastard OSX. I'm glad that you've found true happiness with OSX, but allow me to be clear on this: We don't care, because OSX doesn't make us (Open Source, Linux and freedom loving people) happy, because it doesn't suit any of our needs. So if you think linux missed the boat, thats fine, but its also entirely irrelevent to absolutely everything. Linux is progressing at a steady rate everywhere.
Even on the desktop linux is slowly but surely pushing forward. Thats fine with us. I gather its not fine with you, so, stick with OSX. But don't tell us that our solution is no good because we like ours better then we like yours.
--SD
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."
for these two trolls which are posted on every article about Linux. And yet some clueless moderator mods them up despite the fact that they are both wrong and offtopic.
or theres the gentoo method... emerge quake3 pop in cd when asked... done! (runs and hides... hoping the anit-gentoo zealots won't find him)
I may be wrong but you're downright ugly!
You've been incrementally learning Windows for 10 years now. Every time you change versions you have to go through another learning-curve bump. "Where did they put "ODBC Drivers" now?". If you were suddenly presented with learning Windows on a tabula rasa, your learning curve and frustration level would be just as high as they are for a Windows user moving to Linux for the first time.
If you're a programmer, let me ask you this: How many text editors have you had to learn? Isn't it a pain in the ass learning a new one? "Hell, I already know 43 editors, I have no desire to learn another one". This does not make any of the editors you already know superior to the one you don't, nor does it make the new one inferior just because you don't. Different isn't a priori bad, it's just different.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
The other segment is for desktop OSs that run on generic multi-source hardware. That is over 90% of the market, and that is where the BSDs, Windows and Linux compete.
The hardware part of this market segment is not dominated by anyone, there are low entry barriers and lots of players. The OS part is dominated by MS, but with increasing competition from the BSDs and Linux. Whether this will turn into a real threat, its too early to say. Apple is not a player here, and, right or wrong, evidently doesn't intend to be. In this market segment, OS X, whatever its merits to users, is irrelevant because absent.
Conclusion: it may be too late for desktop Linux or BSD, but not because of OS X.
Your post has nothing to do with the story.
How could redhat given us "OSX based on linux?" Download the aqua source from Apple under the GPL and recompile it?
How much does Apple pay you shills anyway?
My pics.
Default install has only the "preferred" apps. But you are right, If you think that Win98 would allow different apps to make sounds at the same time, sound under linux sucks. If I use Amarok, I need to start and stop RealPlayer before sound works in flash. And I can't find out where I am supposed to copy these WMP dll's to get better support for *.WMV . It is way cool there are so many possibilities for system folders to be placed. This is very usefull if you are a big company playing with roaming profiles etc. But on a default 1-desktop install, folder locations should be STANDARD, whatever the distro.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Congrats on your copy/paste abilities.o ff&q=%22So%2C+I+guess+the+point+I'm+trying+to+make +is+that+what+seems+easy+and+natural+to+Linux+geek s+is+definitely+not+what+regular+people+consider+e asy+and+natural.+Hence%2C+the+preference+towards+W indows.%22&btnG=Search&meta=
http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=20&hl=en&safe=
What does this guy have against the Least Significant Bit/Byte (LSB) anyway? Geez...
drawoc soumynona???
Hey! I resent that, you insensitive clod!
How often do you wanna post that? I guess, I read exactly the same comment a few times here. Just stop it.
The idea of a common set of standards for lots of stuff obviously has many potential benifits for Linux.
The problem with the LSB is it does not do much. What is needed is not a standard for "thou shalt have this version of libc in this directory", but instead a standards body needs to come up with "this is the way you will perform your system initilzation", "this is how you will set and store your ip networking configuration" etc...this would make YOUR skills transferable from distro to distro, would allow the community to come up with BEST OF BREED solutions for things like system configuration tools etc.
Having 1000 different distros do this stuff in 1000 different ways is WORSE THAN not being able to run Oracle on a particular distro without a little tweaking.
-- Given enough time and money, Microsoft will eventualy invent UNIX.
Actually, he's responsible for Glibc, the standard linux implementation of the C standard library (and various extensions), not GCC. Still an important job however.
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
I, for one, would be very happy to be able to ignore such bit of information. What I want to know is: what the hell is a pygmy doing in the amazon?
Nuffsaid
________
Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.
Incorrect
You mean glibc not gcc
He's commenting to having too many apps. Which is dead wrong.
Windows:
Paint Shop Pro
Photoshop
Corel Draw
Ulead
(And umpteen others...)
Linux:
GIMP
It's not that it's that there's too many applications and all- it's that it's different from Windows by enough to throw the people that work by rote off. (Never mind that Bill and Company change up the rules every 5 or so years on UI...)
You will NEVER convince me that it's a valid complaint that there is "too many applications" because it's DEAD WRONG and an out and out lie meant to distract from the real problem- which isn't even a problem once you think about it.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Let's forget once and for all about binary compatibility. Bury it. Because it does not really benefit most people. There is one very well-known operating system which implements as near full binary compatibility as you can get -- and it's generally regarded as a disaster.
..... but the new stuff probably will be more like the natural stuff so nothing will need to be changed}.
What matters is source compatibility. And right now GNU/Linux has that in spades. Not just GNU/Linux, but the BSDs, Mac OSX, Solaris and even Windows have it. If the source code is properly written, and properly packaged, then it will compile on any machine that is up to the job of running it. If you make any really drastic changes -- the standard C library for instance -- you might well have to recompile some applications. Is that a major hardship? I don't think so. Back when we changed from round-pin 5 and 15 amp plugs to rectangular-pin 13 amp plugs, people had to have their houses rewired. When we went from artificial gas to natural gas, people had to have their cookers and heaters modified. When Channel Five launched, many VCRs needed their RF output shifted. These were all necessary changes for the better {ironically enough, we probably will be going back to artificial gas in future
Binary compatibility was never more than a nasty hack, fudged in for the benefit of those who want to lock up the source code of their software. These people are pure evil. By not sharing their code with you, they are just one very tiny step removed from stealing from you. It had the beneficial {at least, it was beneficial when processors were slow and disk space small} side effect that you did not have to spend CPU time and disk space compiling applications locally; but now that disk space and processor power are cheap, the benefits of pre-compiled applications are diminished substantially.
There's even a good argument to be made in favour of deliberately introducing binary incompatibility. If programs compiled on my computer would only ever be able to run on my computer, and any program compiled on anyone else's computer would never be able to run on mine, then there would be no such thing as viruses or buffer overrun vulnerabilities. {Unfortunately, this raises the question of how to ever get any computer up and running}.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Linux core.
Single clean theme for KDE or GNOME.
Video and multimedia that work in linux without problems.
Specified set of working hardware and a distro deal with Dell / whomever.
Unified, cleaned up development tool package.
Application developer support for ^^^^
Clean application installer, no hassles.
Redhat had enough funding to make those things happen. They didn't.
..don't panic
What's wrong with you??? You're posting that again and again!!! See: Comment 1 Comment 2 Comment 3 Comment 4
This is modded insightfull? It wasn't when it has been posted the first time(s), and it is not this time either. It rides on some clichés and it's a simple flamebait.
N/T
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Am I the only one who read the name as Dr. Pepper?
Who is John Galt?
Better yet, use Synaptic.
Even better, try not being a plagarizing troll. Go outside and get some fresh air, perhaps also try dating. You'll be happier.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
In a recent post at his livejournal, Ulrich Drepper criticizes the LSB standard
And here I thought he was a fan of the MSB: It would have been nice to see him critizise the Least Significant Bit
Damn those abbrivs.When I read this, I had a curious sense of deja-vu, as if I had responded to this retarded argument once before. And looky here:
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF8&q=User%3A+%2Come on. It wasn't even insightful the first time.
What's wrong with you??? You're posting that again and again!!! See:
Comment 1
Comment 2
Comment 3
Comment 4
Comment 5
And some more! Stop it!
This same shit has been posted before, blah blah blah.
Mod This Mother Fucking Troll Way The Hell Up!!!
Feh.
Another cut and paste job by the parent poster. Don't bother modding it up, it's been replied to many, many times before.
but hey, why not? glibc is already the most bloated piece of shit on the planet. let's make it the biggest piece of shit in the UNIVERSE!
the sad part is, all of what you have just described is very true.
Yes of course. That's what make things work. Sometimes it may not be the best. If there is no commerical interest no growth for linux and other OSS products.
In the old days, UNIX splintered and it never really recovered until Linux came along. I think Linux is moving in the same direction in ways. With the popularity of the 31337 gentoo boyz that do all sorts of different things without understanding what they are really doing (just building and installing shit to play, mostly) to the different security policies implemented across the board to the different places that basic files are installed and the different ways that basic processes are started up. As a developer I'd have to say that it's still safest to static link your app and supporting "Linux" can be like supporting 5 different platforms.
It's not a monumental task but it's not a simple one either, the majority of the market doesn't want to "configure" stuff, they want to install it and go. LSB isn't about the geeks but that's really who it has been aimed at, the filesystem isn't supported by hardly anybody. What would be better, IMO, take a fairly open community distribution. Pick a base platform out of it, capture all the version numbers and locations and crap, and call that "Linux2005 Standard Base" do it again in a year or 2. Build GUI versions if you need. You want to be compatible with that.
This lib64 madness seems a little shortsighted as well. Why don't we assume that 64bit machines will strive to be native 64bit across the board and have a lib32 directory for compatibility and not rename every damn library? Or put it in the soname. I about shit when I saw that and it turns out, that's what LSB wants you to do.
If we're serious, we need to step this up. There is no "common" way to install and run java applications on Linux. If you do anything with a database you have to potentially ship it and it requires some amount of configuration by a user who may or may not know what they are doing, why can't we fix that? There are tons of other things too.
I do standards work: Hawaii, Chicago, Berlin, next month Boston.
Why? To standardise a system (http://smartfrog.org/) that is already available as an LGPL product, but is being reimplemented by others.
But most of those expenses paid trips end up sitting in meeting rooms, discussing issues of XML namespaces, the umpteen WS-something web service standards that are internally inconsistent, or trying to come up with compromise designs that work less well than those of the individual groups. Also, there isnt enough test-centric thinking going on. I'm trying to fix the latter; our test suite is BSD-licensed and hosted on Sourceforge, but we are only one project out of many.
I am not convinced that standards bodies are the right thing for OSS projects. Too much committee work, you have to be a funded developer to take part, more focus on neatness of the document or the power of the vendor rather than the quality of the code.
How many text editors have you had to learn?
Should I have to learn a text editor? Sure, I had to learn emacs and vim. What about nano? Nano was obvious. It listed the commands at the bottom. Sure it's not the most powerful editor around, but still. It's a freaking text editor. I should be able to open a file, type stuff in, save, and quit, without ever having seen the editor before, and without having to read the man page. None of the GUI editors really suffer from this problem, since they have menus and toolbars to fall back on. But for some reason, the DOS style alt menus in console never caught on in the Linux world, not even as an option.
Sorry, just had to get that one out.
Come on people... I know I can't be the only one who first read that as "Ulrich Drepper On LSD".
Obviously he moved. Probrably becsause a neighbor was haranguing him about who the President of the US is.
because the ansi standard is fucking terrible. i've never seen such a stupid design in my life.
Didn't say spelling.
http://www.watacrackaz.com
As I read the typos and grammatical errors that run rampant through the article I have to ask myself if I should take the author seriously. I'm not asking for Pulitzer material, but I am asking for some indication of the author's professionalism because I've never heard of this person before now and especially considering the author's criticisms leveled at the LSB. The article's flaws detract greatly from indicating how professional the author is and therefor from the author's overall goal, which is to convince me to take him seriously enough to consider his points in his article. I don't.
Been a while since I've seen this cut-and-past troll. Last time it was an article on the Linux Kernel. Wish I had time to find the last post. It was word-for-word. But I'm at work...
Request a Linux Shockwave player here: http://www.macromedia.com/support/email/wishform/
The parent post is either a very persistent and unimaginative troll or a script of some kind - it's been posting the same article nearly character-perfect to any thread remotely connected with Linux.
;-)
Please Do Not Feed The Trolls.
Mod down or ignore... for Christ's sake don't reply - it only encourages them
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
#1. Define the format of the package that LSB apps will be shipped in.
#2. Define the functionality needed by the package management system to install, update/upgrade, remove those packages.
#3. Let the various distributions add that functionality to their own systems IN ADDITION to the functionality they already have.
Never define a app as the "standard".
Always define the functionality so anyone can write an app to that standard.
"For simple binaries that just run"
...
...
lcc + dietlibc + nasm + pmake +
while now we have the GNU toolchain
gcc + glibc + gasm + GNUmake + GNUbinutils
From all these I respect only gcc. glibc is a horrible piece of bloat anyway. When something is as bloated as glibc, you'll need standards.
My comprehensive defense.
If I had a nickel for every time I've told vi "Alt F X", or told notepad "Colon X", (or wordpad Alt F X Y "fuck you") I'd be posting to forbes.com instead of slashdot.org.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
This really can't go on, with developers releasing binaries for every distribution under the sun that people badger them enough to support. There needs to be a common, intelligent interface to shared libraries that works regardless of when or how the library was compiled!
:: frustrated and right now trying to port drivers for the Highpoint 1820A to kernel 2.6.13 since some deprecated code got removed IN A STABLE KERNEL SERIES and now the compile breaks ::
There also needs to be a stable driver ABI so that we don't have to recompile the kernel module wrapper for every kernel we build -- assuming the manufacturer even gives you wrapper code. Linux on the desktop simply is not going to succeed with issues like these!
Should I have to learn to drive a car? Sure, I had to learn my motorcycle and my airplane. But what about a cab? A cab is obvious. It has a cab driver who takes commands. Sure, cabs aren't the most powerful form of transportation, but still. Its freaking transportation. I should be able to step to the curb, raise my arm, say where I wish I was, and have somebody take me there, without ever having seen the cab or the driver before in my life. None of the public transportation I've ever used suffers from the problem of having to learn to drive, since they have drivers who drive me where I'm going. But for some reason, the idea of being driven, rather than driving, hasn't caught on in the Linux world.
:-)
Sorry, too damn much time on my hands
I'd like to go Apple but I'm worried that I might turn into Steve Jobs and have to wear black all day and do stuff like eat sushi for breakfast and consult a feng shui master whenever I need to use the john. I couldn't live up to these standards, especially as I wouldn't have any money after going Apple and would have to rely for my sushi on stealing the neighbour's goldfish. Though I guess I might be able to train my cat to steal them for me, so then I could start to save for a copy of Red Hat Enterprise Linux by renting him out for his fishing skills.
I think I'll stick to Debian which has the one standard that trumps all others: a universal operating system, freely available to anyone anywhere, that respects the needs of its users. The LSB isn't so very important compared to this.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
"Linux is *not* user friendly, and until it is linux will stay with >1% marketshare."
The parent is indeed a troll. Linux passed Apple back in 2003, according to IDC. Here's the link to a recent article:
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/35688.html
Don't know why Slashdot missed this.
LSB was created to help with binary compatibility. Binary compatibility is important. For most users, the alternative is to restrict themselves to the software provided by their distribution. I agree that the LSB does not do much. However, I'm not sure I want a standard that restricts the distribution to the point of being a mirror copy of every other distribution. I certainly don't want a standard that says I have to have RPM, Yast, or apt-get. I also don't want a standard that says I can't use iproute2, parallel initialization, or my own wireless network script.
Request a Linux Shockwave player here: http://www.macromedia.com/support/email/wishform/
When did Linux take over "LSB"? Where I'm from, LSB is an acronym for Least Significant Bit and is one of the things that make people who bridge between ethernet and token ring crazy.
I'm not letting Ulrich have it.
This better get modded 5+ for old school militance!
The LFSS (Linux File System Standard) is the main standard I am really concerned about; if developers and OS distributions would stick to that it would solve a great deal of the problems I see when installing applications.
The LSB is overrated imho.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Second, large applications (the worst offenders) are often so large that supplemental libraries would add very little extra in the way of bulk. The difference between an hour download and one hour, four minutes is insignificant, even if you'd normally curse the four minute download if it was on its own.
As a result, it would be trivial to have an installer that checked dependencies and ensured that all relevent software was installed by some means or other. Even if there's no "package manager" per-se, there's still slocate! You're not powerless to find things.
The flow-chart would look something like this:
Does the user want a statically-linked executable installed (where the choice exists)?
Is library X installed?
Is the application installation off a CD/DVD image or some other local storage?
Is there a network connection? (We want the most recent library of the right version, so we prefer remote versions over distro versions.)
Does the user have a CD/DVD with the required package (or perhaps source tarball, if a compile environment exists) on it?
Repeat for applications, replacing LD_LIBRARY_PATH with PATH, for the application's environment. (Applications can include scripting engines.) Finally, repeat for scripts, data files and anything else you might need to actually run the system correctly.
Where the application can link against different library APIs and/or different groups of libraries, then link it to a standard wrapper and provide one wrapper per API or API group you support -or- use dlopen() and support the lot within a single wrapper. Makes it much easier to support new libraries, or a lack of a specific library, since you're not hard-coding a specific link to something outside of your control.
None of this is impossible or even difficult. (How hard is it, really, to do a 'yum install' or a 'set LD_LIBRARY_PATH' within an application?) Since the developers have copies of the required packages (they DID test the software, right?
The LSB is a solution created because many of the commercial software vendors out there regard users as necessary evils rather than the primary purpose for having the application in the first place. If vendors could sell packages without ever needing to have users, they'd love it.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It may be that Ulrich Drepper is a pain in the ass, but that is actually beside the point here. If anything - he actually have a point. Following the Posix standard should be sufficient. More often problems arises not due to the lack of following a certain standard but by having bad quality-checking inside your organization. It really doesn't matter how well you are complying to a standard if you haven't actually tested it on the platform you are targeting.
If I'm required to create anything portable I'll try to build it that way from the beginning. There may be some issues to cope with, but more often they are minor.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Is it completely sad and stupid that as I sat here first reading (without my glasses) this headline I was all excited because I read "Lars Ulrich Dapper on the LSB" - as in "Dude, the lead singer of Metallica has a ham license and gets on 75 and 40? Sweet!"
I think I'll go put my glasses on before continuing with my Slashdot experience.
Parent is a troll, repeating the typical Linux software is hard to come by / hard to install FUD. Read my essay: Linux Myths Exposed.
./configure && make && make install process should work for most software on Linux. Almost all major software, and a lot of minor software too, uses autoconf.
On to specific issues:
``I've been using Linux for many years, and the problem of obtaining software packages drives me to the end of my nerves.''
Probably because you haven't been using Debian. I've had those problems too, but never on Debian. The thrick is that Debian has good package management software, AND a huge selection of high-quality packages. If you don't have either of these, yes, then you're going to run into problems.
``Every single time I try to get a package that isn't something extremely common like Apache, I run into major, major problems.''
Bullshit. Even other distros than Debian get many packages working that are not ``extremely common like Apache''.
``Distributions distribute every package known to man anyway.''
Now, even a contradiction? First, you say you can't get software, and now that distros ship every package known to man? Mods?!?! +5 Interesting?
``Even with the source, half the time I have to make all sorts of include changes. What is so hard about providing a common build and install process? If you get Apache, OpenOffice, and Mozilla to adopt a convention, everything else will follow.''
More bullshit. There is a convention. The
This is utter crap. It's not so much that an Anonymous Coward is posting this troll, but the fact that it gets modded up +5 drives me up the wall. Argh!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Argh, I was so upset I FUBARed the link. It's suposed to be Linux Superstitions Exposed. The other one was the working title...
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Anyone?
v2sw7CUPhw5ln6pr5Pck4ma7u7LFw0m6g/l7Di5e6t5Ab6TH.
And how much did you pay for this? Don't give me that crap about Linux being free, it is only free if your time has no value. I know what a good sysadmin costs per hour, and I for sure don't want to pay him for wasting his time.
I'd do it myself, but I'm out of mod points. This is a point far, far too many Linux advocates ignore. Heck, I'm a CS guy, sure, and I know how to compile things from the command line, and yeah, it's a cool feeling, but that doesn't mean I don't vastly prefer getting binaries. Being able to download an application over broadband and use it almost instantly is wonderful; having to sit there for lengthy periods of time waiting for something to compile (or essentially waste time figuring out why it won't) keeps me from getting real work done, and is thus not wonderful, as the real work still needs to get done and I have less time to do it.
:)
Having to compile apps creates a time hole not unlike downloading on dialup did before broadband came along. We all hated that, and it really hampered the usability of the net for multimedia/interactive/anything that wasn't flat text or simple CGI. The only difference here is that the time hole created by the download-and-compile-everything philosophy is considered somehow cool by certain people who don't seem to understand that end users are going to despise anything that hampers their productivity. Very few people like to spend hours in front of their computer for the sheer fun of it. Maybe we do on slashdot, but I think we can all agree we're a skewed sample.
You've got to be bloody kidding!
There is no reason, whatsoever, for binary files not to be shippable and usable under the same architecture across distros. The Linux community is smart enough to overcome this challenge (or perhaps just stubborn enough to get pissed off at it and make it work perfectly). Shipping source-only packages and requiring compilation is a sensless way to waste everyone's time. Why should I spend half a day compiling packages from source every time I install Linux? I can get a Linux box up-and-running in less than two hours because of binary packages.
Requiring everyone to compile everything is a big fat waste of clock cycles that would better be spent on something like Folding @ Home. The challenges of making binary compatibility work properly is irrelevant, and will be solved given enough time. Everything-on-Linux-compiled-locally is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
So? Any black person who reads slashdot is probably too aglicized and self-loathing to care (cf. Condoleeza Rice).
How do you think it affects a byte's self esteem to be deemed the least significant? From now on it should be referred to as the EBI, End Byte of Importance. MSB should then be reffered to as IBI, Initial Byte of Importance, this way self esteem inssues in our bytes can be avoided.
If you're talking about OSX here, you're wrong for both definitions of free: It costs money (so not free as in beer), and I can't get the source, modify, and redistribute (so not free as in speech, either).
It's worse than that, even: I can't run it at all without buying a machine from Apple to run it on.
Granted, it's a neat OS, and lots of people like it for good reasons... but don't go calling it "free". Apple doesn't.
I doubt you're talking about Darwin by itself (the "BSD" part of OSX). I don't see how it could be considered a better "desktop OS" than Free/Net/OpenBSD or Linux. It's just another *NIX... you can run X11 on it, but you could already do that on any of the above.
Maybe somebody doesnt want only software from the great apt-get collective?
Take for example R.I.S.E. (i dont care about searching the link. its a sourceforge project, and its NOT in debian). I never managed to get it compiled. 4 different source versions, on knoppix installed and suse 8.0... i let a more linux savy friend try it, he failed, too.
The windows install just installes to program files/rise and creates some startmenue links that work...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Your problem is that you think about it on a per program basis. For one program it really doesn't matter what format the config and mgmt is done in. If you have to manage hundreds of programs across dozens of machines with different OS's then it becomes a serious issue.
Myself, I abstract out configuration and management into a standard XML-RPC interface because it allows me to write the tools for those tasks without worrying about the details of those tasks at that layer. It's a nice abstraction that works easily with standard libraries. It's a lot bulkier, and error prone, to write an app that has to know how to configure and manage dozens of apps with varying methods of handling those tasks.
I've yet to see any other free tools that let you manage Linux, Windows, and OS X systems with the same lightweight program. Not to mention providing the same abstracted XML-RPC interface to other programmers to write their own config tools for.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I've got XSL transformations which I use to add and remove entries within the Jabber config file in a safe and robust way.
Ever tried to pull that for Apache with perl scripts? Ugh.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
I guess, I found him: ClintJCL. I'm not totally sure, but he has a blog and posted exactly the same message and some anti-Linux stuff there.
The fact remains that after you've seen through all the marketing hype, XML remains inappropriate for many tasks, and configuration files are right at the top of the list.
In fact, it's the opposite: XML makes a lot of sense for configuration files. For instance, suppose that you need to write a script that automatically adds a line to /etc/X11/xorg.conf or a similar configuration file. If a file like that is in XML, this is trivial: you can write a XSL transformation or use any of a billion tools to apply the change in a correct way. But if it's in some ad-hoc file format (as it is right now), you either have to write a parser and unparser (which would have been unnecessary if it had been in XML; and how do you know for sure that your code is entirely correct?) or use some hacky combination of sed/grep/etc. to perform the change (which is, alas, the "Unix way"). The latter will of course fail unpredictably in lots of cases. E.g., are you handling those sections correctly? Comments? What if the line was already present? And so on.
Of course, XML is a horribly bulky format. But who cares? It's not like configuration files will take up a lot of disk space either way. The important thing is to have a universal standard format that can be easily manipulated using standard tools so that you don't have to implement parsers and printers all the time or approximate them using broken sed/grep hacks.
You ever get the sense that you're missing the forest for the trees? Did it ever occur that, perhaps, Quake 3 was just an *example* intended to convey a *point* and that it could be replaced with any number of other high-profile programs?
Comment of the year
``"I have trouble getting my modem to work." "Wrong distro!" "I switched distros, and now my modem works but my sound card doesn't."''
Oh, I totally agree with you that no distro is a magic bullet. Especially when it comes to hardware support, which is, after all, a kernel issue. With all distros sharing the same kernel, it makes sense that switching distros doesn't help to get hardware support (barring things like distros using old kernels or including extra, proprietary drivers).
However, package management is something where changing distros makes all the difference in the world. This makes sense, too; after all, packaging is what distributors do. Distros vary all the way from not providing any package management at all to providing tens of thousands of packages with full dependency resolution and graphical front ends.
Here's something to chew on: just like package management sucks on some distros and works brilliantly on others, saying someone is using the wrong distro is bullshit in some cases and makes sense in others.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Yes, the guy is called ClintCJL: one of his posts. You can find the same post in his blog, but he says, that he just copied it from /..
Some research at Google reveals a lot about this guy.
Well I took your comment seriously as well, because I'd rather that than the alternative of accepting someone actually thinks the old meme of how crap "99%" of LiveJournals are is funny with any delivery, much less the vanilla crap you posted.
A majority of a majority of things are absolute shit, attempting to spin humor from cynicism with no wit or charm just has you come off sounding retarded first, and unfunny upon the revelation that it was supposed to be a joke. No one's laughing.
Unlike Ulrich, I _actually took part in the LSB_ in the lonely dark days of 1996. Far from "making things compatible with RedHat", we were trying to stop the major issues which fragmented the UNIX market in the previous years. It's not so easy to compile your fancy "portable" app on both Solaris and your HP/UX workstation. The LSB head off this very problem in the Linux community by creating an infrastructure that had some base compatability. Before you think this guy is anyone to talk, take a look around for his work in the community... There are some of us with much more experience (*cough* *cough*) who can't ever get modded above 0 ;)
And you're an asshole for calling someone an asshole anonymously for calling someone an asshole anonymously.
The hardware requirements seems to be more like "minimal" for the test to succeed, not the preferred or even the only. That filing was done AFAIK on a brand new Athlon/NForce4, so that point is void.
touche' ;-)
He has my sympathy since it is apparently part of his job description to run this test suite against his code, but the fact that race conditions exist does not have anything to do with binary compatibility. He is probably frustrated because he knows how to write code, and looking at this sloppy stuff frustrates him... yea ... me too, but such is life. In the end, the test suite run on a 300mhz processor with 256 meg is just as binary compatible as the same thing run on a quad processor 3Ghz with 16 Gig of memory... So rather than fight with the race conditions, he should get a clue, and do what SuSe did and run it on some pig that is to slow to fall into the trap. Yes the LSB should fix the test suite, but they probably have more important stuff to do, so they say... "Run it on a slower processor". Cheating is when you link in special libraries that recognize the question and fake the answer. Not so with Race conditions. They prove that the test suite program was poorly written and nothing more. Granted some fool will steal the code from the test suite and try to implement threads using it, and then complain to Red Hat that they are not compatible, but so what? Surprise, Surprise it is not compatible with any of the distributions because the code was not designed to implement enterprise threading, just to prove that a thread worked the way it was supposed to. ...and it barely does that only if run on a machine too slow to have enough cycles left to run the cleanup code.
Bravo. I was wondering how long it would be until someone pointed this out. Honestly, it was because I couldn't think of a well-known word that was the amazonian equivelent.
The testing process was to run a test, and when it failed, try to figure out if the problem was in the test suite or the tested code. Simple enough.
The tests certainly at some point worked.
No. That wasn't the case. I found myself fixing obvious bugs in the test suite, then attempting to use the fixed version against the target. It was often clear that the test suite could never have worked.
Some distributions still somehow manage to pass the test suits of a new version of the spec. And all this without the people reporting any problems and requesting waiving the test.
We'd report the bugs, with suggested fixes, but we could not wait for fixes to come back and retest. We had to plow forward. We claimed compliance when we had a test we thought tested the assertions and passed it. We never asked for a waiver. Another nice things we came across during the LSBv3 testing are numerous timing problems.
Been there. Done that, though I didn't have to find some slow machine. What is the value of such a certification? What assurance does this give you? Is don't use fast SMP machines an acceptable answer in any universe, especially when it comes to thread tests?
If you have need of slow machines, I can provide approximately 25 working 486/33's. I'd put this on his blog, but he doesn't allow comments. I thought this was strange, because I use livejournal primarily as a place where people can comment. However, he talks about his choice there, too. To each their own.
It is not possible to achieve the goal of 100% binary compatibility...
All good points. And its worse than that. Yet, the exercise was valuable. For us, it uncovered many bugs in SVr3. Many. This was ultimately a good thing for our customers.
We were also a Unix porting house. We fixed lots of bugs in our prior ports of Unix. We offered our fixes to AT&T for free. They declined. We had to apply our fixes to each port - without the benefit of CVS. And, we had thousands of patches. And all this for a basically stable system. It was around then that I was convinced of the incredible inefficiency of propietary software. This would never happen to gcc.
My advise: but the losses.
I read this as "My advice, cut the losses." Oddly, many versions of this mispelling pass my spell checker. Ulrich needs an editor. Perhaps I'll volunteer. Perhaps he can check my work. Will you be a swap editor for me? I'll check your work, you check mine.
So, i agree that the test suite was a horrible idea from the idea that one might assure customers that their old software will still run, or will run on compatible platforms. I agree that the last bug will not be found. However, that is not an excuse to give up the search.
-- Stephen.
The format is the rpm-the-file specification. All you have to do is provide a method for installing RPM files, e.g. Debian does this via the "alien" package converter. If you want to reimplement rpm-the-program you can, it's an open file format spec, there's just no point, kind of like how everyone uses libpng to read/write the completely open png format. You could write your own program to do it, but, really, there's no point.
I am trolling
My single issue with the LSB was caused when I discovered that compliance with the standard requires RPM. As soon as I saw that, I laughed contemptuously and closed the browser window which had loaded the LSB site.
RPM itself is rubbish, and as I said although I didn't go further, I surmised that a standard that was going to endorse crap like RPM in one area, was almost certain to endorse other such evil crap in other areas.
You've heard the saying:-
Just Say No.
The question isn't why someone would not re-implement the rpm app.
.rpm format which is only used and supported by default via Red Hat-based distributions.
The question is why the various distributions have not included the LSB package format in their default package management apps AND why those LSB packages are not as easily managed as the default packages for those systems.
Until that happens, the LSB will continue to be irrelevant and no ISV's will support it.
Instead, you have the
But the ISV's would rather deal directly with Red Hat and certify their apps on Red Hat than getting them LSB certified.
The LSB "standard" is up to version 3.0 now and still there aren't any ISV's supporting it.
Why is that?
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
So _this_ is what recursion is!
But if the selected example didn't illustrate the point doesn't it mean that the poster failed it?
I constantly have distros compleatly eat themselves trying to do an application update 6+ months after initial install.
BS. So long as the distro is supported, it'll work.
I'd say that Linux position now is far worse than the old UNIX fragmentation and from what I see is constantly getting worse, not better.
Spot on. Maybe too many people here are too young to remember what happened with the UNIX Wars back in the 80/90s, but dealing with PITA distro's (which is most of them) seems worse now than it was when UNIX was bad. Now, I'd say that Linux is getting so bad that UNIX is by default easier to develop for than Linux.
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
I don't understand 80% of what people are saying,
so here's a bunnie with a pancake on its head:
http://www.splunk.com?ac=secret
OK, not really. It's a cool linux search engine
that is like google for your IT log data. My
mother's son works there.
I'd ask you the same thing...
If you consider the number of the other "high-profile" programs that aren't on both platfrorms and then realize that it's about the same level of effort for those that DID bother to make a version for Linux- you'd find that the bulk of them follow the path that Quake 3:Arena followed.
It's a null argument. Autopackage and Loki/LGP Install/Uninstall take care of most of the situations and if you're careful about your coding, you can end up with stuff that works on pretty much any modern Linux distribution- LSB or no. POSIX is a much better standard to follow and more useful for APPLICATION portability anyhow.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Your troll might be right, but there's no reason to add racism to the post. Nice try, asshole.
Could be wrong here but...
I am looking at the portable OpenSSH 4.2 source tree right now.
http://www.openssh.com/
Scanning the openssh-4.2p1 directory, what do I see?
aclocal.m4
configure
configure.ac
etc.
That looks like an Autoconf-based build system to me.
Poster didn't even link to the supposedly "better way to do it".
So why is this modded interesting?
Well I'm busy at the moment but I'm sure I can fit in converting a few apps to xml (possibly with XSD that contain documentation for the xml format)
I'd also like to standatdize command lines:
e.g.
cc if=
patch -i
tar -f
All do the same thing (take a file as input), so why do they have difference command lines?
and even the simple things like --help or what happens when there's no command like input are a horrible mishmash of air plucked foo.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Always looking for a silverback alpha male with the mantle of authority.
We monkies can't be bothered to read arguments and analyze them critically, we need to know the peg in which the other monkey is sitting to decide if we beat him or offer to groom him.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
xmlstarlet
Huh? What happens if it isn't in your "repository"? What happens when a new version comes out? Oh, your distro only does security fixes, so you have to "edit your sources.list" to point to some "development repository". WTF kind of solution is that?!
All these people saying "apt-get it" have no idea about real-world computer use. Apt-get is fine IF your distro has all the latest software and dependencies in STABLE repositories. How many distros offer that?
Here's a clue: take your distro, don't use any "development" repositories, and try to get the next major Gnumeric release. Oh, it's not in your repositories. Oh, and it has new "dependencies". So you can either compile from source (with all its dependencies) or add some unofficial repository to your sources.list and and and...
Screw that. Why can't people just double-click a new program when it comes out? Why all the mess with repositories? You try it: install the new Gnumeric release when it arrives, without using "unstable" or whatever -- a really lame solution for production use. You'll find it's a right mess.
THAT is the problem, and apt-get doesn't solve it. The big issue is a billion packages for a billion distros, with comical wastage of testing and packaging resources, so that hardly anyone can get the latest new app without upgrading their entire distro or fiddling around with unstable repositories.
At least Autopackage is heading towards a solution...
I agree with everything you just said.
Fuck newbies.
I don't go into the cockpit of the airplane and bitch about how hard it is to fly it. I don't yell at Ford because I can't change a timing chain. I COULD do these things, and if i had a compelling reason to learn and the resources to learn, and in that case I would gladly do so. However, I can change a tire, and I have managed to figure out the little air nozzle on the airplane.
I set up linux systems all the time. Let me tell you that installing distro's like UBUNTU is very easy. It's easy because time and resources were put into making it easy.
Installing quake 3 on linux is hard because:
1. Linux users like to figure things out, and don't mind following directions.
2. Linux users aren't generally computer-retarded to the point where they NEED to be hand held to get it installed.
3. Quake 3 is FREE SOFTWARE (and has been for awhile). When difficulty puts a dent in someones wallet it will get easier.
4. THE PRIMARY REASON: Very very very little money is being spent, and few resources put into by the community, making quake easy to install on linux.
So let me spell it out. Ford thinks that it should be fairly easy to change a tire, and people are capable of it. >> MAGIC >> Every car sold comes with everything you need to put on the spare, and even comes with a spare.
Now, while were on the subject, I find it infuriating to manage a windows network. People can't do a damned thing without admnistrator priviledges. They can't install software, they can't do shit except browse the web and collect exploits. Why can't they install software, and here I mean to their local account? Because everyone runs windows with administrator priviledges to avoid being pissed off every 30 seconds when shit breaks, so software companies assume it. It isn't a flaw in the OS usually, it is a flaw in the software. There is no reason it should be impossible to install some bullshit image viewer into their home directory, but you can't.
Now, when I want to set up an SSH server, how easy is it to do in windows? Have you ever tried to install Squid onto a windows machine? Windows services are bullshit compared to linux's beautiful init scripts.
People think that cars need mechanics, that sick people need doctors, that pipes need plumbers and wires need electricians. However, they want computers to be fully operate-able and maintainable by every fucktard with a GED.
And finally, yes, it is as easy to install Quake on windows as inserting the CD and clicking Setup.exe. That is why that same person, who's ability to install software consists of running Setup.exe owns a computer which is sending 20,000 SPAM's and his credit card information every hour. This dipshit can install Virus of the Day in two clicks even if his computer is totally patched, firewalled, and virus protected.
And he does run it, and he does get the virus. And then he says, 'why are computers prone to viruses'.
Ford COULD build a car where anyone could change out any part. It would cost $500,000 and would break down every 4 days. The headlights would randomly not work, and people would still install things wrong and break it worse. People would still go to mechanics because they are too stupid to unlatch one part and latch on the replacement without getting their balls caught in it.
apt-get install openoffice
Fix 1:
#!/bin/bashor better:
#!/usr/bin/env bash"/usr/bin/bash" it's not common on linux systems.
Now I am sad.
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