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Does OpenStack Need a Linus Torvalds?
BButlerNWW writes in with a story that speculates about the need for a marquee name to head OpenStack. "OpenStack has been dubbed by some enthusiasts as the Linux of the cloud — an open source operating system for public or private clouds. But there's one stark difference between the two projects: OpenStack doesn't have a Linus Torvalds, the eccentric, outspoken, never-afraid-to-say-what-he-thinks leader of the Linux world. Torvalds personifies Linux in many ways. OpenStack doesn't have that one central figure right now. The question is: Does OpenStack need it? Some would argue yes. Torvalds, because of the weight he holds in the project, calls the shots about how Linux is run, what goes in, what stays out of the code, and he's not afraid to express his opinions. He provides not only internal guidance for the project, but also an exterior cheerleading role. Others would say OpenStack does not need a Torvalds of its own. The project is meant to be an open source meritocracy, where members are judged based on their code contributions to the project. OpenStack has been fighting an image that the project is just full of corporate interests, which is part of the reason Rackspace ceded official control of the project to the OpenStack Foundation recently."
It could be argued that one of the main reasons why Linux has utterly failed as an operating system for average people on average computers is Linus Torvalds. It has certainly been successful in other areas, but as a "just works" freeware replacement for Windows, it's been a bust.
GNU/Linux on the desktop is easier to use than Microsoft Windows and it "just works" 99% of the time for the majority of people currently running Microsoft Windows. On my notebook computer I installed Ubuntu Linux 12.04 LTS during the early part of the summer (2012) and use it for sending/receiving email, browsing the web, streaming audio and/or video and music, editing documents, managing photographic collections, editing photographs and videos, and a variety of other tasks.
GNU/Linux on the desktop is easier to use than Microsoft Windows and it "just works" 99% of the time for the majority of people currently running Microsoft Windows.
Ubuntu... So. Many. Tiny. Bugs. So many insignificant little bugs, like I click on the volume icon and when I move my mouse to the slider, it still thinks I'm holding the button down. Like I can't change file associations intuitively. The interface allows it ("always open using this program") but it doesn't work. Every time I reboot, I set Chrome as my default browser. Ruby 1.8 by default while other developers are screaming at me for not having upgraded to 1.9. The GUI changes more often than I change my underwear. One year it's classic Gnome, the next it's Unity, the next Unity's out again. If I open a certain application (haven't exactly figured out which one, I've narrowed it down to 3 now) the Skype notifications don't appear anymore in the bottom-right corner of the screen (instead, the pixels in the rectangle that should contain the notification are "frozen" for a few moments until the notification rectangle disappears).
I don't know about other distributions, but Ubuntu still needs some polishing until it's ready to ship to intermediate users. I'm saying intermediate because beginners won't notice these small bugs and experts will fix them themselves.
I've looked over OpenStack and it looks great, with one exception: block storage (ie volumes.)
GlusterFS currently isn't recommended for VM storage by the GlusterFS people. They say "maybe" with the next release.
Sheepdog isn't recommended for production (and from what I read, provides abysmal performance - we're talking single-digit MB/sec.)
Lustre requires enormous setup+admin overhead.
DRBD isn't scalable beyond 2 nodes, really, and has serious issues with reliability and keeping in sync.
They've made a huge hullabaloo about Cinder - it's going to do my taxes, slice bread, and surpass Christ - but information as to what the hell it actually is or how it'll do it, beyond marketing-speak, is difficult to find. If you dig around, you find that it's a layer on top of other network block devices.
Far as I can tell, the only free (in either sense) backend they support is Sheepdog, which, as I said before, isn't considered anywhere near production ready.
It also appears that 'Highly available', 'fault-Tolerant', and so on- is coming from the underlying storage, not Cinder itself.
So, where's the beef? You can't have an "open" visualization system if you then require a netapp, IBM, or nexenta backend (sidenote: has anyone SEEN nexenta pricing? Holy christ on a stick!)
Please help metamoderate.
>GNU/Linux on the desktop is easier to use than Microsoft Windows and it "just works" 99% of the time for the majority of people currently running Microsoft Windows.
That's not the point at all in this context. The problem is people like you do not even understand the problem GNU/Linux faces here:
It does not make ANY GODDAMN DIFFERENCE if GNU/Linux or Ubuntu or whatever does 100% for the majority of people. The point is, why would people switch: What is the incentive? Windows already comes with their PCs and does pretty much what they want to.
This is something people like you will never understand: The average user does not give a shit about your idealistic "freedom" on the desktop.
I have no idea. With something like Proxmox I download it, install it and start running KVM and OpenVZ machines. Easy. With OpenStack, I go to their web site and I find nothing but a bunch of marketing crap. Cynical me just looks around there and thinks that some companies have got together to make something look open and look as if there might be some open source code and downloads 'somewhere', but there aren't. This is all to try and protect their expensive 'real' products that they know are probably under threat from a truly open source competitor but they just want to muddy the waters.
I think Joel Spolsky or someone once called it 'fire and motion'.