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Debian's Systemd Adoption Inspires Threat of Fork
New submitter Tsolias writes It appears that systemd is still a hot topic in the Debian community. As seen earlier today, there is a new movement shaping up against the adoption of systemd for the upcoming stable release [of Debian], Jessie. They claim that "systemd betrays the UNIX philosophy"; it makes things more complex, thus breaking the "do one thing and do it well" principle.
Note that the linked Debian Fork page specifically says that the anonymous developers behind it support a proposal to preserve options in init systems, rather than demanding the removal of systemd, and are not opposed to change per se. They just don't want other parts of the system to be wholly dependent on systemd. "We contemplate adopting more recent alternatives to sysvinit, but not those undermining the basic design principles of "do one thing and do it well" with a complex collection of dozens of tightly coupled binaries and opaque logs."
Choose your OS, average user:
1) Windows
2) Apple
3) From hundreds of confusing distros and rage-forks of distros of "Linux"
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
... I was already investigating into FreeBSD as option. I welcome a fork of debian. The developers are irreparable split anyways. Half of them are pro systemd, the other half are not. So why waste time into talks. There won't be an acceptable solution anyways. So better head off and fork the project. I want to see how debian will survive, once half of the develoeprs have rushed away to form a new project.
The distributions should be wary of putting all their eggs in the freedesktop.org basket. Not all systems are desktops, and they shouldn't rely on desktop features at the expense of their own roles.
They assert on one hand that they don't have time to participate in Debian, and on the other that they have time to manage a fork. Not buying it.
http://forkfedora.org/
Not really, but well made.
Oh come on! There are only 6 hundred distributions.
The solution to yet another init system is to support even more init systems?
If systemd needs to die, then say so. Give the reasons why, then fork it if necessary. We've got enough problems supporting different not-invented-here stuff in too many distros already.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
And that is still the point. Linux, BSD etc are all good for a purpose.
Linus is NOT good for the desktop or average user. Most people just want something that works out of the box, even if there are a lot of tradeoffs.
There is a certain contingent in Debian that is not good for the project, IMO. I would like to see which side of a fork they are on, and pick tthe other.
Bruce Perens.
That list glosses over a couple of major problems.
1) You avoid the current version because it's such a usability disaster that no one wants to touch it. It's so bad that people would rather run an ancient and completely unsupported version.
2) Your current hardware is suddenly obsolete because it's last years model and it's not supported anymore.
Modular design makes "rage-forks" a lot less of a problem than some people try to make them out to be.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Threatening with a fork is never appropriate. With its multiple sharp points, a fork can be quite dangerous if used incorrectly!
Whoever installs your OS chooses for you. Might be your hardware vendor, maybe your nerdy cousin.
My wife read about Vista when it was coming out, and she asked me to install "Linux" for her so she could get used it to it before Vista happened.
I didn't ask her which distro; I chose one.
Anybody who can install an OS can choose one.
Choose your OS, average user:
1) Windows
Which Windows, out of the dozens of confusing versions and three or four different UIs?
Linus is NOT good for the desktop or average user.
Is Linus the Linux version of Microsoft Bob? I'd agree, then, that the average user wouldn't want him swearing at them every time they do something stupid.
Most people just want something that works out of the box, even if there are a lot of tradeoffs.
So why would they want Window 8?
This debianfork website does not really make the impression as if it has been done by a group of sys admins.
They claim that they have 950 supporters! (German).
I do not think that so many people would gather anonymously.
It's probably 1 or 2 guys who bought a domain and wants to force his opinion onto the debian developers.
Wait, there's only one Windows? I could've sworn there were at least a half dozen active versions out there with features that aren't all inter-compatible ... just like Linux. They don't even look alike, and it causes fragmentation.
Why is Windows on the desktop? Applications and vendor support (bribed or otherwise) which boils down to "because it has been around longer."
The difference with Linux is you get a choice, and you get to argue, and it makes a difference. There are far more on-line posts about people who do or don't like Windows 8's interface than about systemd, but that isn't the cause of Window's sudden failure on the desktop now is it?
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
They claim that "systemd betrays the UNIX philosophy"; it makes things more complex, thus breaking the "do one thing and do it well" principle.
This isnt a thought or a prediction, this is something systemd actually does when it takes NTP, console, logging, and networking and forces them into one application. the fork threat is to be taken seriously because of the leaderships inability to actually recognize this as a massive security, scalability, and overall functionality problem that was steamrolled into debian largely at the behest of KDE and Gnome devs. The best solution to avoid a fork in my opinion is to give the user something thats also been forgotten about in the linux community: choice. Systemd or RC Init, or uselessd (a fork of systemd that tries to rehabilitate systemd)
Good people go to bed earlier.
I am an experienced WIndows user and ihave tried several time to install Linux. Each time I look for the "magic" "download and install" button, I see endless disucssion and text and technical nonsense that developers should not incldue in the realses.
It alwasy ends the same... delete Linux downloads... be thankful Windows works well.
Linux works out of the box in the same way that MacOS or Windows does.
If your average Windows user had to install their own OS they would be even more lost than if they tried dealing with Linux.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Choose your OS, average user:
1) Windows
Which Windows, out of the dozens of confusing versions and three or four different UIs?
You seem to live in the past, the multiple-SKU Windows people liked to joke about is reduced to two these days, with difference being functionality like ability to join domains, not app compatibility - like you do experience between Linux distros. But dozen it never was, but I do understand you need to exaggerate this. And 3-4 UIs? Really? There is one for touch and one for desktop.
Systemd may be fine for a desktop, but not fine for a server. I can say the same exact thing about NetworkManager, which I quickly remove from any server I touch because some Ditro's think that servers need this crap.
I refuse to use Ubuntu for example because they can their software for desktops. I don't have anything against Linux desktops mind you, but I don't manage thousands of desktops. I manage thousands of Linux Servers.
If Debian does not want to ship systemd I'm happy. It saves me from searching for a new Distro to replace our current all Debian environment.
If someone does not like Debian for doing so, they can go Fork themselves all they want. Forking has been the primary reason for Linux growth. Yeah yeah, we have seen some orphaned and a few died on the tree, but the best continue and breed more... (*intentionally punned*)
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I have Centos 7 installed on a vm running SystemD. I personally do not like it. I don't see the benefits for a server.
I do remote sysadmin and the existing sysv init works fine and is very straightforward.
Come on Debian get off the bleeding edge bandwagon and stand up for stability and standards!
I think it could be potentially good for the free/open source software ecosystem for there to be multiple developed solutions to the init system being used out there. I think at this point, a fork could potentially be a lot of work, so I hope they are able to express a more complete vision of future goals, and perhaps differentiate itself For instance, will they try and become Free Software endorsed by the FSF?
I like the UNIX philosophy and don't think it goes out of style just because it's a few decades old.
I am against systemd, for now, mainly because of the binary log files and how it was railroaded through the community.
However, do these programs follow the do-one-thing-and-do-it-well principle: web servers like Apache, database servers like PostgreSQL, the X Window system, the GIMP, OpenOffice? Is an init system more like one of these or more like sed and awk? That's not a rhetorical question. I'm a web programmer who loves Linux, but the kernal and start-up are still black magic to me.
Maybe an init system can be simple. I don't understand why even shell scripts are needed. Seems like they should be the exception, not the rule. Seems like configuration should be a single file that lists the programs to start from top to bottom. If you wanted add some parallel start-ups, it seems like you could just make the config file format a little fancier, maybe with some braces or indentation to express dependency.
Maybe instead of systemd we could come up with a start-up standard, sort of like the POSIX standard. Most programs seem already to be callable with the same arguments: start to start it, stop to stop it, restart to restart it. So the simple config file would call one or the other depending on which cycle we're in. Why the need for shell scripts? I've looked at them, and they mostly seem to be doing this anyway: call start on the shell script, and it calls start on the program. I see some checking, some setting of environmental variables maybe, but is this really needed? Can't programs be formalized to follow some init API? If the start, stop, and restart are not enough, maybe also an option, like --bg, that they'd all take, so the init system always calls $program --bg start, or $program --bg stop, or whatever; so that all we need is that simple config file. Those programs that don't yet follow the init API could keep using a shell script until they do.
Please have mercy if this question is terribly naive. I've tried googling . . . a little. I was hoping a real live human being could either explain it all. Or feel free to reply with some links that explain why SysV init needs all those shell scripts and can't be just a simple list or somewhat-simple declarative configuration.
When my mom needed something for email and web I gave her a machine I had with Linux on it. It has worked just fine even though she had very little experience using a computer.
I am an experienced Linux user, and I have tried several times to install Windows. Each time I look on a retail site, I see aabout a dozen different versions of Windows for sale, and I find endless discussion about which version I should install and UI changes that developers should not include in the releases, and how I should download some third-party apps to make the UI not suck.
It always ends the same, with me putting my credit card away... be thankful Linux works well.
Are you kidding. Linux doesn't even need to be installed. You can just run it straight from the install media.
This is handy when you have a Windows install that can't even run it's own wired network interface and it can't tell you what driver it needs because it's too dumb to do that.
Linux liveCD to the rescue!
Boot up.
Interrogate hardware.
Proceed with beating the bushes to find Windows drivers.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Good. I don't want Linux to sell out and win the desktop. I just want it to remain an operating system for intelligent people, as it is now (at least with KDE. Gnome and Unity are almost as dumb as their commercial counterparts).
That horse has left the barn. Aside from Gentoo and Slackware, systemd is the new Linux init system. Between Redhat/Centos and Debian/Ubuntu et al. you have 95% of the Linux market, and they've all committed to it.
The main technical argument against systemd seems to be that it fails to adhere to Unix "philosophy" of composing small, focused tools. While true, I'm not sure it matters. Systemd is deployed in real systems and these aren't crashing or suffering chronic problems. "But I need shell scripts to do what I need." Systemd isn't incompatible with shell scripts.
The main political argument against systemd is that the people behind it are difficult to work with and unresponsive to the problems they create. That seems to be true, but ultimately it won't matter; forks have sent assholes to pasture in the past (I'm thinking of XFree86, gcc before egcs, cdrecord and others,) and if the systemd people continue to offend they too will be shed.
The big Linux vendors/distros have nothing to gain by backing up on systemd now and a great deal to lose in terms of customer frustration. The only way I see systemd being overcome is if some marvelous new system appears that a.) solves all the problems systemd solves b.) does so in neck-beard approved ways and c.) is written by someone that doesn't have an army of haters.
Good luck with that.
There's Window 8, and Window 8.1. There's 32-bit or 64-bit. There's Windows 7. There's about half a dozen different versions of Windows 7, and I've no idea how many of Window 8.
There's the XP interface. There's the Windows 7 interface. There's the Window 8 desktop interface. There's the Window 8.1 desktop interface. There's the Metro interface.
How can anyone expect someone to pick Windows for their desktop when there's so much fragmentation?
Version 8.1, the only one you're going to find at the store or on any new pre-built computer (unless you special order it with Win7). Apple is a no-brainier too. Buy an Apple computer, get the current version of the OS. Easy peasy. The only thing even remotely confusing is that Windows 8.1 (if you buy it standalone) comes with both 32-bit and 64-bit installation discs.
And whichever you choose (Windows or Apple), you can be almost 100% sure that all your old Windows and Apple software will work just fine in the new version.
Now, compare that to the poor non-techie bastard who has to choose a distro, when he's not even sure exactly what Linux is. He has to do a ton of research to even get started. And he finally settles on a distro, only to find out that the Steam game that he wants only works with Ubuntu. So he says, "Okay, I guess I'm going to have to start over and install Ubuntu." But even then, he has to decide WHICH Ubuntu. Which desktop? Does he want to go Unity? Gnome? KDE? And WTF is a gnome?!?!? And WTF is the difference??? And, and.....fuck it, I'm going back to Windows.
Come to think of it ....
Have gnu, will travel.
Linux works out of the box in the same way that MacOS or Windows does.
Which distro and desktop?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
On a bad internet connection here, so can't do the homework.
They want to put yet another boot system to work?
Why can't they just remove the fucking abortion systemd is and fork it like it never existed?
unless you're not participating and you're a canabal
I would gladly hand over my credit card to buy WIndows any day than deal with pages and pages and pages of silly technical text.
When I walk into Best Buy, I only see Windows 8.1 on the shelf. Where are you shopping where they have a dozen different versions for sale? Even Amazon doesn't have that many versions of Windows for sale (unless you count OEM versions).
Something about, you got too much memory to know what to do with. Hardy-har-har-har!
My Linus just worked right out of the box. You have to get past the F--- You! if you have NVidia graphics, and the prickly user interface that periodically tells you you're a moron.
At least it's better than my Stallman. That thing ate something off the bottom of it's foot while I was giving a presentation. Yechh.
Choose your OS, average user:
1) Windows
2) Apple
3) From hundreds of confusing distros and rage-forks of distros of "Linux"
good for me that i don't give a shit about what OS the average user chooses.
the average consumer eats processed shit, wears slave produced shit, regularly buys useless crap, uses closed software from locked gardens, gives away his privacy with a smile, votes every 4 years to maintain a soft fascist status quo, swallows shitloads of propaganda daily and in general has no fucking idea about how the world he lives in works. nor does he give a shit.
feel identified? ok, you might as well use Microsoft Apple (c) products, let's not make a drama out of this. move on.
OSX hasn't changed it's hardware compatibility since Mountain Lion. iOS is a bit more restrictive - but then again, we're talking about desktop environments, whereas iOS is designed mainly for consumption anyway and thus outside the scope of the argument.
While many good issues have been brought against systemd, I am surprised that the two most important ones (for me) never made it to these lists:
1. Without checking the code there is no way to figure out the startup sequence of services. I don't understand which f***ed up idiot came up with "Require" and "After" concepts. It should have been just a simple directed acyclic graph, with topologically sorted services starting.
2. The idea of generators is beyond idiotic. Letting obscure binary file parse my fstab to generate another config file to be run later?! Seriously?
(I mean this fails even in my (very simplistic) config on home router.)
Source: I am a faculty in EECS@MIT.
There are +150 Debian forks (derivates) already, so yet another one hardly matters. The main reason why its is an empty "threat" is that there basically isn't any real development of needed infrastructure in the non-systemd camp, and as time goes by, more and more alternative development will be need by non-systemd distros.
The fork of systemd's "udev", "eudev", is basically just a shadow fork with patches, but soon eudev maintainers have to decide between having to support a kdbus manager, thereby become more developers instead of just patch maintainers, or their fork will deviate so much from the real udev, that they no longer just can leech new patches from it.
Of course, ConsoleKit is still dead with nobody picking up development, the only alternative is a rather limited implementation of systemd-logind, and is basically maintained by a Canonical developer who are unlikely to maintain it after Canonical have switched to systemd.
Stuff like root-less X.org can at the moment only be safely done by systemd. Some Wayland implementations will also depend on systemd simply because the upstream projects aren't getting any help at all in supporting non-systemd distros.
Even SysVinit isn't in such a hot state, it haven't made a release in five years, and the defacto upstream maintainers have been SUSE/Reed Hat for years. At some point they will drop maintaining it anymore.
I could go on, but the fact is that there is an increasing amount of work needed to be done, just in order to keep status quo somewhat, and that the non-systemd camp are severely lacking developers that could help maintaining such critical infrastructure.
It would actually be quite good for the non-systemd camp if there was a proper Debian fork that solely was about non-systemd developemnt. They have been lacking a focal point for such development for a long term stable distro for years (Slackware, despite its merits, is ultra conservative and probably too limited in certain ways for this).
The problem is that some factions in the non-systemd camp are pursuing systemd "emulation" by using shims and forks. That way you just get a second rate systemd, and it will remove any motivation from upstream projects to support anything else than system. Using Ubuntu's "logind" is a short term gain, but a strategic failure for the non-systemd camp. They need their own implementation of needed infrastructure, not just copying or emulating systemd.
> ...
> Linus is NOT good for the desktop
>
Says who? This is entirely your personal and subjective OPINION and does not apply to all.
I have been employing Linux as my main desktop ssytem since 1997 and my productivity has neve been higher.
1) You avoid the current version because it's such a usability disaster that no one wants to touch it.
I actually recently installed 8.1 on my main gaming rig and found it quite fast and easy to use, actually.
2) Your current hardware is suddenly obsolete because it's last years model and it's not supported anymore.
Windows 8.1 has the exact same hardware requirements as Vista and Win7. In fact, it's even more lightweight and less demanding than Win7. If your hardware is so old it can't run Vista, then yes, that could be a problem But I'm pretty sure a 10+ year old computer hardware would choke on the latest version of most modern Linux distros too.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I disagree. Having Linus yelling expletives at your average PC user would go along way towards educating them or scaring them away from computers.
The end result is the same in either case.
For the consumer, there is only Windows 8.1. It comes in a nice little box (with 32-bit and 64-bit discs inside). To buy any version of Windows 7, you would have to special order it online (since no real-world brick-and-mortar retailer has stocked it for some time).
Have you ever installed Windows?
If you're not sure what exactly Linux is, you're ipso facto not going to be installing it. Show me a counterexample, and I will show you someone dumb enough to wipe their computer without knowing why.
If such a species exists, it deserves all the Windows it gets.
Steam runs great on my Gentoo box... so I'd *assume* it would work on most Linux distros. I would never recommend Ubuntu to anyone I cared about anyways.
Have you ever installed Windows?
Many times, every version going back to 3.1.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I think that really depends on the age of hardware... just this morning, a coworker has installed a new hard drive, and windows 8.1 on a roughly 3yo desktop. Windows installed and within a few minutes had updated all the drivers... very straight forward... my last desktop install, I had installed to one drive, and after updates in ubuntu (grub did something goofy to another drive), and it wouldn't boot anymore.
OSX is a little quirky for installs, but not that bad either... in general they are all okay... Linux is the only OS (depending on distro) in the bunch where clicking the "update all" button will often break something that worked before.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Not really. It is has gotten worse at this in the last decade. 10 years ago I'd say Linux is likely easer to install on random hardware. Today the relentless desire to hack up drivers has dried up (understandably a ton of work that never stops). The better desktop distributions went broke. Mandrake is gone. Caldera (pre SCO) is gone. RedHat makes a server but not an OS. YellowDog (PPC) gone.... Xandros gone. It is getting harder and harder to get Linux to install and work on the desktop.
Did you just step out of your time machine from the year 2000?
Having used it almost exclusively since 2001, I've always regarded Debian as a distro for more tech-savvy and conservative types -- system administrators, for example. However, their recent move towards systemd seems very unlike them and, as a professional sysadmin, this worries me. Perhaps it's what we can expect, every once in a while at least, from a bunch of people who are not system administrators.
Luckily, they seems to be having second thoughts about the matter and this could be an opportunity for them. Their main competitor, which IMO is Red Hat, have already committed to systemd, which I'm not happy about either and find just as surprising. Therefore, since so many people have expressed their misgivings about it, if Debian were to reverse their earlier decision and go back to sysvinit (or at least make systemd optional), then I think we could see many sysadmins converting their RHEL systems to Debian jessie.
thats a bit unfair, because there are only a few real distros that account for the majority of linux users, and Only two real parent distros, of RedHat and Debian, which account for over 95% of linux installs, and just about all "production" machines.
Many of the distros are the exact same as the parent, but are specialized for a specific task or piece of hardware, which gives linux the legendary flexability.(like raspian), and lets it work on anything.
One of the big incompatibility between these two worlds was initsystems, which is now rectified by universal adoption of system.
Oh, and for the most part, they use the same libraries, same system software, same kernel, so most software targeted for one, compiles against them all, except in rare corner cases of version mismatch, but even still, its not unreasonable to expect a competant guru to do some minor port work to get them running.
This is very much unlike the world of the x86 BSDs.
Well, in the same vein which of the dozens of versions of linux do you install? Beyond this, take a typical 32-bit windows application, and it runs in all of them without a recompile... Want to run a program in linux, is it in your distro's install system, yes, but an older version, you need the latest, but that also means updating a bunch of other stuff to an unstable release, crap, now your sound no longer works right... there goes three hours tracking that problem down.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
I'd be happy to vote... if I could figure out how. Do I join the list, wait for a reply, then finally reply to that? WTF?
I think this is probably the biggest reason there's no activity from the public (or very little) on that issue. You have to vote via a mailing list. Seriously-- get a better system for input, get more input. Mailing lists are easy, sure, by they're a crapshoot for readability and interaction.
I'm no fan of SystemD but if I can't vote then I guess I'm heading to Slackware... FWIW-- if I wanted my servers to have a desktop configuration by default, I'd use motherf**kin' Windows. As well, most of us NEVER reboot-- so faster boot times are marginally useful at best.
Furthermore, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
A dozen versions for sale? Are you counting server editions too? For home use there is only one version to consider. Plain 8.1. For Businesses There is 8.1 Pro but depending on your needs and business size, you might even get away ignoring that Older versions and server versions are not even considered for ordinary users. The (free) UI add on is optional of course. I too use it but its not a must and is trivial to find and install Mind you all this is still less variation than a single distro of linux in some cases. Lets see, there's mint but which version? 16, or is it 17 these days, they seem to change every few months. And what is this? They are all supposed to be the same version but why do they look so different? KDE, Cinnamon, Mate, XFCE. And why does it say ubuntu there? is that not another distro? Oh its a spin off. But there is also a debian version too... with no version numbers. Oh god my head hurts I can't make heads or tails of it...
Isn't Mint Debian Edition effectively a defacto fork already? I would assume most Systemd haters are also Gnome3 haters.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Gnome and Unity are almost as dumb as their commercial counterparts).
the good thing about gnome3/unity is that it provides an excellent oportunity to realize you don't need it. nor gnome. nor kde.
get yourself a pure window manager (dozens to choose from, most of them totally customizable) and be done with the "desktop" mentality once and for all. it will work with any linux.
you'll have to learn a few basic things: how to split windows and switch between them, how to launch programs, errr ... not much more. oh, and forget about leaving your crap on any "desktop". get used to keep it organized, already. after 30-60 minutes of exploration you should look back at windows, macos, kde or gnome as bizarre aberrations from a infantile and baroque past. so much for user experience.
compared to awesome or i3, the whole
Actually I can relate. Got my fiancee off Windows and into Ubuntu (latest stable at the time). Initial install was a nightmare to get a bootable installer but once the hurdle gone, installed just fine. Then it was the carrousel of packages, getting het what she needed. Mandarin music player, OpenOffice (the easiest one to get IMO) and other things so she could enjoy a virus-free setup. It just meant days of screwing with a system she just wanted to USE. Not build.
She eventually got a Mac Mini because of house influence. She's been quite happy with it so far. Her last gripe is her Android phone not satisfying. I'm trying not to push her but... this is also an iOS house...
The init process is a critical stage: failure tends to leave you with no access to the system to diagnose the failure. I tend to break it into two parts, the first part being what's necessary to allow at least a single-user login on the console, and the stuff that happens after that point to bring up the full multi-user system and server processes.
I don't like systemd for the first part. It's overly complex, and the more parts and interdependencies there are the more things there are to fail. To quote an engineer, "The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the works.". Shell scripts and plaintext log files may be primitive, but they have the advantage of being easy to read with minimal access and not requiring complex stuff to run (mainly they just require that basic binaries be available in the path). Until I've got at least a basic system up and running enough to log in and work, I want the init process to be as simple and straightforward as possible with as few points of failure in the init process itself (as opposed to the things it's starting) as possible. I want this stage to be as hard to break and easy to debug/fix as possible. I don't want to depend on complex tools at a point where I'm working in the most primitive environment.
I don't particularly like systemd for the second part, but it isn't quite as much of a problem here as in the first part. By this point I've got a basic system up, I can log in and work, and most of the tools are available. Obviously nothing graphical will work, but text-based tools will probably run to decipher binary logfiles and modify configurations. I still prefer not depending on such tools, because they're one more point where things can fail to work and leave me scratching my head trying to figure out what broke without access to basic diagnostic information, but at this stage I can likely fix any tool-related problems and get back on track.
The one part I think systemd works for is in the later stages of the second part. There's a lot of server processes with interdependencies that typically start after the multi-user system's up and running. I think systemd's a good thing for getting those running, it can do a better job of parallelizing that process than shell scripts can. The only change I'd make is to make systemd use syslogd like everything else, so log files end up in the expected place and are plain text so basic tools like more and tail and grep work on them as-is. Binary logfiles offer no great advantage over plaintext, and going through syslogd means not depending on two sets of tools and having to manage two configurations to get logging directed where it needs to go.
One last bit has me twitchy about systemd: history. SysV init scripts may be clunky and primitive, but they've been around a long time. People know how to manage them, and they've had the kinks worked out of them and best practices established. systemd doesn't have that. I do not want to make my servers (that have to run for anything to work right) dependent on something until I've had time to work with it and get familiar with it and, more importantly, it's been out there in use long enough for people to find and fix the problems, work out the oddities and figure out the best ways to use it without shooting yourself in the foot. I'd prefer to stick with SysV init on my production systems and only enable systemd on testbed systems at the start, and then enable systemd on a server-by-server basis so unexpected failures don't completely kill me (eg. if systemd blows up on my primary mailserver, the backup still on SysV can keep things under control until I either fix the problem or revert and restart the primary).
But I'm pretty sure a 10+ year old computer hardware would choke on the latest version of most modern Linux distros too.
The big problem there is graphics drivers for old cards, for which the vendors have discontinued their binary blobs and the opensource drivers never had good thermals and bus timing configurations for lack of documentation. In general, though, old machines can carry most of the newest distros while breaking a moderate sweat.
Someone had to do it.
That's not out of the box. Buy a machine with Linux pre-installed (yes, I realize there aren't many options) like you do a windows machine, and viola...it works out of the box.
THAT'S the point he was trying to make.
The average user also has about one tit, one ball and half a penis. Just wanted to mention that.
Sorry, I'm not posting this under my own username. Not a chance.
I'd mod you up if I had points, but Slashdot seems to be especially stingy with them these days. Good point.
Plus, the level of straw man and unwarranted troll mods has skyrocketed. Guess I pissed in someone's Cheerios.
Really? You looked at what versions? Because I know for a fact they only have one version with at most 2 sku's in the brick and mortar stores. And on their site? it's not like they are pushing you too the enterprise versions. No you see home and professional when it was windows 7 and now you see windows 8 and windows 8 pro. (ok 8.1).
I am sorry but trying to complain about the multiple sku's of windows to the numerous flavors of linux is ridiculous. And name me software you need that requires any specific SKU of windows.
I trust the Debian committee - as a collective - to make the best choice. The committee has a large group of people with diverse interests and the majority voted to adopt systemd. Debian isn't exactly known to be a flippant Distro.
I suspect the technical people behind Debian/Fedora/Arch/OpenSuSE and other Distributions (some of which make money on their products and services) are a lot smarter and thoughtful than a bunch of people with a website that has a purple background and orange links.
I've used systemd under Arch, and i could open up a systemd unit file and understand what every word in the file meant. I can't say the same thing about most SysV startup script.
I disagree. Having Linus yelling expletives at your average PC user would go along way towards educating them or scaring them away from computers.
The end result is the same in either case.
I'm sorry, but you are either flame bait or a complete retard.
Linus, the person, does not interact with your average PC user. He does not interact with your average programmer either. Linus maintains Linux, the kernel.
Let's ignore the issue of whether the fork is a good idea. How are they going to accomplish this? Debian has thousands of packages. Upstream developers mostly like systemd. At least a few dozen packages are becoming hard dependent on systemd. Assume this number doubles every year (not unlikely). What is the Debian fork going to do? Assume that about 200 or so already have reduced functionality without systemd, again let that go up 50% per year for the next few years. How are they going to fix this?
This sounds like hundreds or not many thousands of man years of work per year every year trying to keep up. How is the Debian fork possibly going to make it? The best they can do is release a traditionalist subdistribution which uses init. OK that's easy, but that's not a fork. And frankly if they start patching a few things, why not just roll those patches either upstream or into Debian?
How is this fork going to work and what are they going to do?
Old video cards are 100% worthless. Modern CPUs have built-in GPUs that outperform every video card made more than 7 years ago. Just throw your old video card in the trash if it's more than 7 years old, or if it's a "midrange" card from 3 years ago.
Fair enough. If you're taking that route then let's discuss one distro of Linux: Ubuntu.
So let me guess, You grow your own cotton which you then turn into thread, that you then weave into clothes, with which you then make your own clothes? No? then shut the fuck up you self entitled prick. Your computer was built by the same small asian people as mine.
And it's funny to hear you clamoring on about propaganda when that's all your little speech was.
And I guess you don't vote, which in my mind means you don't get to complain since you instead let the "mindless masses" control your life for you.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Linux could work for the average user, at the end of the day there is no technical reason why not. After all Linux(in the form of android), dominates on the cell phone market, where the user base demands greater user friendlyness, has less patience, and wants even more bells and whistles, and is far less compitent with a computer. Linux has been shown to work marvelously with light meters, accellerometers, USB, touch screens(multi-touch even).
The big issue is how consumers by technology. They don't care about specs really, they don't care about merit. They care about branding and imagine. They want their Apple(tm), search with google(tm). Advertising and public relations gurus over the last few decades have build reality distortion bubbles, where people actively identify with brand names. GNU/Linux has no such brand name. They really don't care about "just works". Face it, windows does *not just work*, but people do whatever it takes, because they think windows is what they are supposed to be using. Microsoft presents the image of normalicy and conformity that most people identify with.
Apple on the other hand, presents an elitest artisan, fine craftsman, and intellectually supperior image, that marks the owner as part of an elite group.
Linux cleans up serverside, because it rode the wave of start up culture of the 1990s. If you had a great idea for a new website, but didn't have much capital, you could run a proffesional website with Linux, Apache, Mysql, and PHP out of an old desktop for a fraction of the cost of what constituted a proffesional server, of the day
As these companies grew, they continuted to use linux, and helped it transform into a proffesional class OS, that couldn't help but take notice.
Linux will eventually take over the desktop, and the reason is because microsoft has no real friends, and they have an ever growing list of enemies. Many of those pimpleface teenage nerds they stepped on back in the 1990s are now grown developers and sys admins. Their day dreams are now multi-million dollar products. Linux has a lot of corporate backers, many of which are household names, and some of the largest most powerful corporations in the world.
Whats eventually going to happen is that MS is going to piss off another giant like Google or Samsung to the point they want blood. You'll see a few large companies pour money, time, resouces, advertising into a distro with enough MS haters to accept them, and then use a Free as in beer product into the desktop market, to crush microsoft to prevent them from competing in other markets, by destroying their cash cow.
There will not be a year of the desktop. It will be a decade of pure hell, and microsoft is going to fight tooth and nail, and use every dirty trick in the book to keep the desktop market. They will eventually loose, because the nature of FOSS allows many companies to quietly pool resources behind a single banner, especially a not-for-profit, and allows more to join later without any real effort or diplomacy. Eventually it will be taken from them, and from that point its another 10 years before they go out of business.
Ubuntu LTS as distributed on pre-installed systems such as those from System76 or Penguin Computing. If you have never had a pre-installed, chain designed for Linux system go out today and buy one today. It's like night and day.
I suppose turning a Mac on with Command+Option+R pressed down is a little quirky. Not sure of many other machines that will let you reinstall the the OS completely from the Internet even after a hard drive replacement so easily though. And 'update all' on a Linux distro typically updates far more than the operating system - stuff breaks all the time when updating applications on any platform.
And that is still the point. Linux, BSD etc are all good for a purpose.
Linus is NOT good for the desktop or average user. Most people just want something that works out of the box, even if there are a lot of tradeoffs.
I've gotten several older users moved to Zorin 8 (and now 9) after XP died. For the most part they can do what they want, shop, Skype, play most browser based games, bank, email, etc. I find they get less infections, almost zero. Once in a while they misplace an icon or play with the system setting and I have to look at it for them, but that too is rare. It saved them from buying a new system so they are willing to learn a little...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
I'm currently the senior sysadmin for several thousand Redhat/CentOS servers and everything about systemd is giving me a headache. Myself and every other person on my team dislike it to varying degrees and none of us want to use it. This is now a blocker to us upgrading from RHEL6 to RHE7. There are lots of nice new features in the updated release we want or need to use but we are refusing to upgrade. This isn't a philosophical argument. I've tested it in various scenarios and it's almost not fit for purpose and throws out countless decades of experience in the team.
Frankly I'm shocked that RedHat have steam-rollered this into version 7, they are normally a very conservative distro (a very good thing in an enterprise environment!) Though I guess I shouldn't be that surprised since the lead developer works for them. I'd be looking at other distributions but they all seem to be switching too. I'd say RedHat have lost some business but I'm not sure what options I have to switch to?
However I have noticed a marked increase in the backlash against systemd in the last few months, probably from the fact that now people are having to use it and all these discussions are definitely a good thing, if slightly too late.
Go take your ball and go home. Your fork will die in a year due to infighting because you anti systemd folks are simply a bunch of whiny malcontents who are incapable of contributing anything positive to a project and then you'll be crawling back.
from the summary
That is really the crux of the issue and what distinguishes the systemd dispute from all the other FOSS food fights. The FOSS community never agrees on anything. That is why we have multiple everything: Multiple Kernels (BSD & Linux Kernels, multiple flavors of each) many distributions of each flavor, a host of programming and scripting languages, multiple package management tools (rpm, portage, dpkg) several GUI toolkits, GNOME and KDE desktop environments etc. Wayland is not enough, we must also have Mir. And the licenses. Egads! How many of those do we need?
Despite all the passion and ego involved, disagreement between adherents of particular designs and implementations has never before risen to the level of open revolt that we see over systemd. Why? Because in all these disputes each person can choose what is best for him/herself. Like Python and despise Perl? Use Python. Vice versa? Use Perl. But the usual rule of the user getting to pick what he likes best does not apply with systemd. Lennart Poettering is working to restrict choice to only systemd. His tactic is to make systemd a dependency of major software packages. Here he ison the Gnome dev list pushing a Gnome systemd dependency.
Sometimes an unpopular item is replaced on the buffet; Good software wins out and variety shrinks a bit. That can be a good thing. But the fear is that systmd is going to win not because it is a popular choice but because Poettering has gamed the outcome using dependencies. Something is wrong if you are running systemd because you hate it and you love Gnome. Perhaps the fanatical hatred of Poettering is driven by belief that systemd adoption is advanced in part by his cheating, instead of on the merits of systemd alone. The abusers are abusing not because he has written what they judge to be bad software but because he has violated an unspoken ethic of the FOSS community.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Threatening a fork is like threatening legal action: if you think you're to that point, you need to just do it, and inform the relevant parties afterwards. Anyone can threaten to take action.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Erm, no? When I was having wireless issues on a new (to me) Thinkpad, I couldn't even get online to search for the problem. Installing a completely different distro ended up fixing those wireless issues. The Windows installation Linux replaced had no such issues. In fact, I can't think of a time when I *had* wireless issues with Windows, but I can recount many, many issues with wireless under Linux, from having to compile the kernel with things like PCMCIA support to support my old Orinoco Gold PCMCIA cards, etc etc etc. You're probably right: Had I had these same issues under Windows or MacOS, I'd be equally as lost, if not moreso. However, in 15 years of computing, that particular issue has not come up under Windows (although there have been many, many others). Hell, on some of my hardware, I can't even get Linux to install anymore (something about APIC (not APCI), etc) whereas the Windows XP install it came with is perfectly fine. And so on.
I love Linux, use it all the time, but when it's fucked it's good and fucked and my solution these days is just to keep all my data on a different mount just in case I just have to reinstall vs actually troubleshoot an issue.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Ha. Those system76 computers suck. They are simply Taiwanese Clevo and Sager laptops rebadged with a absurdly huge markup that is not justified for something that is intended to be sold as a no name generic laptop in asia. Good luck finding replacement parts when you need a new AC adapter or keyboard.
People use video cards from seven years ago? The only reason I can think of for that is if your PC is seven years old, in that case they need more then a new video card.
*15-20 years, actually. Didn't start messing with Linux until around 1998, and then it still took a back seat to BeOS...
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
The fact that the claimed developers are anonymous is a pretty good indicator that this a sham in a misguided attempt to pressure Debian's vote.
Unfortunately in open source we always have a group of assholes who don't contribute but somehow feel they know best. Oftentimes their opinion will involve a lot more work, but hey they won't be the ones responsible, so who gives a shit
I'm surprised he's not posted and posited that with a hosts file, even systemd could be blocked...
I will reply only on 1) cause I'm more confident on that matter:
systemd doesn't recommends "Require" nor "After" concepts. Required concept to express dependency between services is using socket-based activation or other kind of activation that offers similar means of syncronization. That said, the classical Lennart's example, Avahi daemon can start when D-Bus IPC sockets are available. Other ways to start services in a deterministic order often hide race conditions or serious limitations in the way the system answer to dynamic events. For example: until not much time ago Samba server had to be fully restarted when Cups printers were available to expose them to SMB clients. Cups failures or delays in launching prior Samba would lead the latter to be unable to serve printers until a full restart of the service. The same was needed when printers list was updated. This of course was a sign of poor integration between the two services but it should give the idea: IPC is the only mean to synchronize between different services start-up and to express a true dependency. Also it: 1) allows to be intrinsically more efficient cause it doesn't require user-space polling. 2) it allows for circular dependencies to be properly resolved. That is: Samba depends on Cups for local printers but Cups may want to be aware of remote SMB printers. Acyclic graph to express services dependency, as you say, is a too strict condition for complex systems and it's not really needed to ensure proper system start-up.
Wait.. so you went to the websites of the software you wanted to have installed? Do you realize that most distro's have had a unified app-store way before OSX did? Talking about building.. I've had to build more software on my macbook then on my linux machines because OSX lacks a good package manager. Though macports & brew fill that gap somewhat, but the build times - the agony.
Linux works out of the box in the same way that MacOS or Windows does.
If your average Windows user had to install their own OS they would be even more lost than if they tried dealing with Linux.
You were being sarcastic, right? Give an average human being a clean computer with a blank HDD and ask them to install Windows on it and with the exception of any vendor specific drivers they're running in less than an hour. If they have to go find the drivers on the vendor's website(s) then maybe add 30 minutes depending on their Internet speed. Give an average human being the same hardware and a Linux distro and they'll be calling one of us to fix or finish the install after trying to get it running the day before. Sorry, that's just the way Linux (still) is. It's not for the non-technical and why it has less than 1% of the market and why there aren't too many major computer vendors selling Linux desktop computers. The support level is just too damn high! It's not just that MS is contractually obligating these vendors; it's that they cannot afford the Linux support.
Holding the mouse wrong ?
The parent post (about givign up on Linux for Windows) is a 0, but the child post (worded the same but in favor of Linux), is a "4, Insightful".
Why not? Both Postgresql and Openoffice does that.
I'm firmly reminded of having to edit the Windows Registry and delete some keys to make the system even see the optical drive.
There are many other problems like this - Microsoft's fdisk not properly supporting partitioning, so if you're erasing an Ubuntu drive you need to delete the partition with the Ubuntu fdisk because Windows can't do it.
Once Microsoft deal with these stupidities, Windows will truly be ready for the desktop.
Mint Maya with Mate. Backtrack with Gnome[2]. Kali.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Go back and reread the thread, this just went over your head.
On any Debian system, you could perform apt-get remove to take out a program you don't want. It works for GNOME, and KDE, so why should it not work on systemd? I should be able to install another init system in Debian and remove systemd, like all the other applications. If that is not the case, then Debian has serious problems.
why not do this, build Jessie in such a way that during the install of Debian Jessie put an option so the user can select either init system so there is a tick option to either select systemD or old traditional init system that debian has used for years, can Debian Jessie be built in such a way that during install the user has a choice to go with either system???
i been using debian & slackware exclusively for the last few years because they are the last two remaining old school distros and if Jessie goes full tilt towards systemD i will be forced to abandon Debian
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Installing Windows is simple. It was easier than installing linux for the longest time. With the current latest releases, both mainstream linux desktop OSes and Windows are equally easy to install. I'm talking about the actual installation process, not picking a version or doing upgrades and support.
As an experienced Linux user, you already know which distro you want. A new user switching from Windows to Linux is completely lost. There are way, way more Linux choices than Windows choices and that user is probably less technically inclined and thus is even more confused: What's a window manager? Why do I want to manage windows? I thought I was using Linux not Windows??
You could argue that the user should pick one of the most popular distro, but then you can say exactly the same thing when switching to Windows.
If you're willing to pay Microsoft to try Windows, how much have you paid to your distro for providing such a well working operating system for free? Take that credit card back out.
Wooosh!
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Sure you can. You just can't do it with a sourceless binary.
Come over and tell that to my 16, 15 and 13 year old kids.
At first they were very hesitant to move off windows to ubuntu or mint (two are ubuntu, one is mint). Now they will not want to go back to windows.
Reasons:
They find linux easy to use and can do things like scan documents, etc without any assistance.
To many problems with windows, they were not admins, but managed to break their windows installs every few months.
No need to download hundreds of MBs in updates and restart your computer every two or three days.
"The support level is just too damn high"
From my personal experience it was when they ran windows and constantly broke things. Now they run linux they have far less issues.
You are living proof that nobody should be so anal retentive that their assholes actually suck the humor out of the air.
I would gladly hand over my credit card to get a version of windows that doesn't halt causing me to lose my work while it displays silly technical text in a fancy blue screen.
My Stallman periodically gives me patient lectures about how I could be a better human being if I followed his advice.
Not Debian stable.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
More of a problem is finding 32-bit distros with updated apps that don't trigger CVE issues. Dusty Linux distros are almost as dangerous, as, dare I say it, old Windows releases.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
" problem that made your desktop look like Windows 95"
I don't get the reference, are you saying windows 95 is a bad thing in your pro-windows rant?
Fortunately there are slightly more then 654685787684 different websites telling you how to remove windows infections.
Don't forget that once Windows is installed and you've installed all your drivers you then have to update it!
If I install a Linux distro that came out, let's say, 5 months ago I'd expect that to take about 30 mins on a slow ADSL connection.
If I install a version of Windows that's 5 months old I'd expect it to take most of the day if not some of the next day!
Having said that I'd never install a version of Windows that's 5 months old, instead I would install a version of Win7 with the latest service pack streamlined in and it would STILL TAKE A WHOLE FU**ING DAY.
That's why Linus uses Gnome, I suppose.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
... and less than two arms, legs, eyes, etc.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Congratulations, you have cleverly determined the point the parent was attempting to make, which is that Linux may have many versions but this doesn't make it that much more complex than it does for Windows!
Have a cookie.
Are you sure about that?
I still run MainActor 5.5, that's 11 years old, on a modern Kubuntu.
You might want to stop talking now, you've made a big enough dick of yourself.
Huh. Guess you don't love your kids enough to buy them a Mac.
Geforce 9800GT 512 from 2008, so close to 7 years old.
I did a quick comparison with a modern low-range card on Tom's Hardware (I forget which particular card, but it was an nVidia one). Mine outperformed it in the bulk of their tests, the only one it didn't was in memory capacity.
I have a new (last year new) mainboard with onboard video. Doesn't even come close to my 9800GT.
You, sir, are full of shit.
Aw, angry internet nerd can't grasp that other people's needs don't match his.
Go on, post some more angries about how we're fools and nobody cares about us, while demonstrating that you actually do care that we don't use what you think we should.
You remind me of my ex-, who kept insisting that I should start using Windows because it does everything she wants.
WRONG. They care about *tasks* and *activities*. You see, a computer for MOST people is a TOOL, with which the purchaser hopes to accomplish certain THINGS. Things like:
- Edit that spreadsheet from work;
- Send an email to their kid in college 500 miles away;
- Listen to some music or watch a movie (or both);
- Edit some photos then upload them to Facebook;
- Browse the web;
- Write a paper;
Notice that there's no mention of "Process random data at 50 gigaflops of megabuttz over a DDR3 EEPROM Ivy Bridge SSD, with WiMax Bluetooth EDR 4.0?"
Specs don't matter to the average computer user. They care about "Is this fast enough / big enough / new enough / networked enough to do X, Y, and Z?" There's a reason that Apple's advertising works so well: it's because they get this point.
Linux evangelists are often completely oblivious to this point, which is why we're still waiting for that vaunted Year of the Linux Desktop. You're right: there is very little *technical* reason why Linux couldn't work for the average user - however there is nobody who understands how the general public buys and views computers marketing and selling Linux to the masses today. The sellers inevitably focus on specs-specs-specs, or they focus on philosophical issues which the average buyer doesn't care about. Neither of which connect to those average buyers.
Have you ever tried living on a low income?
I have 3 desktop pc's ( 1 toy for testing, 1 backup for main machine and 1 main desktop )
and 3 laptops all well old p3's 2 with 512mb and 1 with 1gb
1 rasp_pi ( not presently used )
1 olimex a20 sbc with a 320gb disk which everything else backs up to ( and yes its a bit sluggish over nfs )
My NEWIST machine that i use for everything is 7 years old dmidecode gives the bios date as 05/08/2007
cpu is an athlon AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4000+
And that is due to a friend donating cpu and motherboard.
Disks in all 3 desktops are salvaged from sky+ boxes picked up cheap at boot sales ranging from 120gb 20 320gb
nvidia gforce 6150 ( unsure of age but also a handme down ) with 2 19 inch 1280x1024 monitors hanging of it.
I love debian have only ever used debian or slackware since 1st getting it kernel 0.9.something...
I will not have ANY machine with binary log fles like systemD ( pronounced system-borg )
Why did it have ANY need to pull in gnome kde dbuss etc it is just forced in via dependancys....
What complete git decided to make systemd be the ntp system and and controled via timedatectl
binary log files and matching tools - okay if you want them, BUT AFTER syslog in TEXT mode
What come next safe boot with trusted binaries and can only use xyz service if unmodified ?
Not in this lifetime ( i can use recent kde / gnome desktops on my main machine but far prefer gnome2 OR xfce )
span100
What a load of nonsense. It's apparent that you haven't tried a distro in 10+ years, as everything you've said is crap.
A split decision that created flames of epic heat, even for Debian, even for Free Software in general. Flames that burned far hotter than even Vi vs Emacs. Flames that just won't die out. And the systemd side makes it worse with the attitude of STFU they project. The problem is a TC can't make this decision because it isn't technical, it is cultural and social.
This is a culture clash, between the UNIX folks who want UNIX developed in the open Linux model (as opposed to BSD) locked in a battle with people who want Windows that doesn't suck. And worse the systemd side has made it clear they are going to intentionally design out any possibility of co-existence or compatibility so it is a binary decision, take systemd and keeping any other set of low level plumbing viable is going to get very painful, very quickly.
Compromise is therefore not going to be possible since one camp is dead set against it and the UNIX camp will not accept systemd. So a fork is going to happen, but probably not just Debian. The whole Linux world will soon be the GNU/Linux camp vs the Freedesktop.org/GNOME/Linux camp.
The real root of the problem is Pottering and Co. hate UNIX and want to use the kernel as a device driver to build a new platform upon. They should have simply joined ReactOS but it isn't sexy enough for their egos and besides, RedHat won't pay their salary to work on that project.
@BeardedGNUFreak: "You would think even the 15 year old Slashdot kiddies that make up 'teh Linux community' would have had the foresight to never let another Miguel de Icaza type clown trash their precious little OS." post447641
Interesting quote, but I wonder what are the actual number of front-line developers that are involved in this 'movement' calling for a Debian fork. I would have thought it would be damaging mainly by producing incompatible versions and diluting the developer base.
I'm still running the same timeseal binary for internet chess that I was running in the 90s. I'll bet the old *bsd builds still work, too.
It is over 15 years old.
I still sometimes run programs I wrote in 2001. I don't make any changes or upgrade anything, it all just still works.
You are sorta right, systemd is not an application, it isn't just PID1. It intends to be nothing less than an operating system that sits atop the Linux kernel and uses it for low level device and filesystem drivers because at this point no sane person would try to reinvent that wheel.
And it is an OS that UNIX people do. not. want.
you can *not* do that with even two versions of the same linux distro a year apart from eachother.
Hyperbole. Of course you can, if you design the software to handle that. One of my employer's pieces of software is compiled on SLES10 (from 2006) and runs on current Linux distros without a hitch. Code from 5 years ago compiled with gcc 2.95, and I'm sure that I could have that running both on a Linux release from 2000 and one from 2014.
Now, if you've got a programmer that doesn't have that as their specific goal in how they compile and package the software, then there will be a problem. With non-commercial software that's distributed by the developer as source anyhow, what's the reason for them to take enough care in packaging it to support forward-compatibility? If their software is popular enough, they know it'll be recompiled for inclusion in every new distro's repository anyhow, so they won't focus on supporting the goal of wide compatibility of the binary.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Tell me about it, the last update made my 486SX a brick; bastards!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
see, it's easy to tell what the average user does. it's also easy to make a fool of oneself trying to guess what a particular stranger on the net does, like you just did.
but anyway your conclusion seems to be that since we both use cotton and microelectronics in some way we both should use windows? or that voting one mafia over the other will bring us ... wait a minute, this is gorgeous ... "control over our lives"? and, hey! we get to complain as a bonus! no shit!
hehe, hilarious. too bad you didn't like my propaganda. yours was spot on.
The systemd version is significantly shorter than bash script. Yay. However,
(1) I would have to read many pages of documentation to figure out what the systemd version actually does, whereas I can just read the bash script and see what it does. What if I don't know sh? Then, I am not a real sys admin. The shell is used in many places in administering a UNIX system, not just the init system.
(2) Most importantly, I can hack that bash script to do whatever I damn well please. Have I hacked init scripts before? You bet your booty I have.
OK, cool. Keep that attitude, and maybe we can stop "usability" from getting in the way of actually getting things done. Lots of simple things are easier on Windows than on Linux. Problem is, when you want to do the unusual things, that's when it gets impossible. Linux? Of course it's possible. Spend enough time, and you can swap any part out for something you like more. There are a dozen ways to do most things, and you get to research and choose which one you like. I like that. Now, if I'm going to play a game...reboot into Windows. Lowest common denominator OS for a lowest common denominator activity, and it works beautifully for that (unless the dev used a 32-bit number to represent the RAM in your machine, and the game refuses to start with your -{big_number} amount of RAM).
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Bullshit, Jedidiah. Installing old-ass Windows XP? Sure. Installing Windows 8? Very simple and with 8 different installs not a single driver needed. You're FUD and trolling are way out of date.
Option-D to boot a hardware test over the internet is nice too.
Go is great. I have binaries surviving android, macosX, and linux os upgrades.
First off many things betray the "Unix Philosophy", Bash, ZSH, Busybox, Apache, sendmail, exim, postfix, it could go on from there, because most of these programs do more then one function, such as bash, zsh, and busybox all include their own versions of system applications or once were. The mail servers, do not do a single function, they send and receive, filter, authenticate and many other mixed services, if they were to the "Unix Philosophy" then it should be more like qmail. Apache version 2.0 allows for a great deal more function, including proxy support, other protocol support, and many other things. SystemD though not perfect, makes changes, and encourages the discussion to make changes. Without some of the past changes, that go against the "Unix Philosophy" we wouldn't be here today, but with an abacus, and someone singing the news of the decade as they walked into the village this week.
Though macports & brew fill that gap somewhat, but the build times - the agony.
Don't forget, if you only want a .5 megabyte terminal application you also have to install ~5+GB of xcode....
I'd love to run macports (and have in the past), but that huge chunk of space the xcode install takes up kills the SSD space I have.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
Do either Sendmail or Postfix have the ability to recall emails, like Exchange Server?
Except no, it doesn't. I switched from Win8 to Ubuntu (as a former long time Linux user) recently and whilst my OS X box (and this same box running Windows 8) sees my network shares reliably and runs Borderlands the Pre Sequel reliably, Ubuntu drops my network shares at random, my Wifi adapter doesn't work, and the game crashes the OS - hard reboot required (doesn't crash on the same hardware in Windows).
Except it can - go into device manager and check the PCI identifier for the missing device. "I don't know how to do it" does not equal "Windows is too dumb to do it"
Could have sworn it is only a few months since MS had to canvle a patch tuesday because one of patches was causing spontaneous reboots.
Lol, days? You have a 4-digit UID and figuring out a simple bootable installer was a "nightmare" to you? What's the tech world coming to, a bunch of point-and-clickers?
From bare metal, 1 hour tops with all apps selected from Software Center and downloaded over broadband. There's stuff about Ubuntu to bitch about. But install-to-productivity time ain't one of them.
A tiny minority. People who apparently are going to maintain a fork, but "don't have time to deal with Debian".
What do they think maintaining a distro involves, other then a lot of time working on procedure, process and politics?
10 years ago, you think it was easier to install Linux on a desktop? Looooool!! Looooool!! OMG, you must not have done a whole lot with Linux or something, because it's super easy these days, and using it has only gotten easier. And let us not forget that Android and Chrome OS are both Linux distributions, whether people admit to that or not, and I don't think they're hard to use.
If you want to install Linux on your desktop, may I please point you to any *buntu or even the Mint series. Boom. Done.
How can anyone expect someone to pick Windows for their desktop when there's so much fragmentation?
I know you're being tongue in cheek, but most people don't pick Windows; it's picked for them.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
You need to hand that credit card over to Dell or somebody else who will sell you a PC that actually works, then. You have a hardware problem.
I always suspected my users were pretty fucked up and this confirms that.
"Luke, use the Fork"
Table-ized A.I.
If you are 29 years or older you may remember what Coca Cola did back in 1985, with its "New Coke" campaign
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
Well ... systemd is the "New Coke" equivalent in the FOSS community
It is touted to be a better than ever but unfortunately, like "New Coke" of yore, it gonna flopped
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Linus OS is the choice of scuba divers.
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Surtainly not the average user. Linux is a system for the tinkerer. Systemd is clearly a move to monetise linux. Yeah, call me a troll if you like, but linux is not for your god damn grand parents!
My ESR wants me to go to a cathedral. Or a bazaar. But I have to choose.
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Good post. I agree with you although I'd say it depends on the specific Linux distribution.
That said though, I don't know why so many people have a problem with Linux being sometimes difficult. I've been using Linux since 1999 and I LIKE the fact that it is sometimes difficult. I couldn't care less about converting Windows users to Linux, or making Linux easier to use.
And I don't care either for the "year of the linux desktop" thing. I've been happily using Linux on the desktop since 2002. My wife uses one of my laptops in bed and I have it running Openbox with everything she needs on it. She just right clicks and there is her web browser, her manga reader, xpdf for reading books, gmplayer for music, xmahjong games, etc. How fricken hard is it to right click on a desktop and click a program? KDE and Gnome are even easier.
I think bringing your average computer user into the linux world is actually going to cause more problems down the line if it isn't already. They don't understand unix philosophy, history, or the best direction for things. When they start wanting to contribute code we will get even worse crap than systemd.
That's odd. The stuff I wrote in 2001 doesn't even compile nowadays.
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I wonder if debianfork.org infringes the Debian trademark.
"You cannot use Debian trademarks in a domain name, with or without commercial intent" (https://www.debian.org/trademark)
I stopped reading he list of "benefits" when I got to binary logging. Looking at the list of major server distro's it looks like all of them are going to be adopting, or already have adopted, this monstrosity. what are viable alternatives? currently using Ubuntu, because, you know, it's Debian, but up to date.
You now have Linux Mint (Mate or Cinnamon DE) which is pretty user friendly...
systemd is a genuine leap of innovation in Linux. Here's my attempt to clear some of the FUD around it - http://www.lambdacurry.com/sys...
You seem to live in the past,
There's Window 8, and Window 8.1. There's 32-bit or 64-bit. There's Windows 7. There's about half a dozen different versions of Windows 7, and I've no idea how many of Window 8.
There's the XP interface. There's the Windows 7 interface. There's the Window 8 desktop interface. There's the Window 8.1 desktop interface. There's the Metro interface.
You forgot Windows 95 and Windows 3.11 for Workgroups..
All the things you mention except one OS version (Win 8.1) and two GUI versions (desktop+metro) are irrelevant for what you replied to -- "Choose your OS, average user". User who choose Windows today get Windows 8.1.
how come no one starts a crowd funding project for a fork yet?
Your scenario is like an expert PC user group. :)
Subtract yourself and two siblings, add a decade or two, a mortgage and sundry worries to the remaining one, and now you have a typical PC user tossing up between operating systems.
What distro has dropped 32-bit x86 support?
I will probably go FreeBSD...
Oh and if you do manage to get it installed, you are left to search for drivers and utilities and to edit conf files for even the most basic functions like say multi-monitor support whereas with windows this is maybe 3 mouse clicks away.
YMMV In my experience is on windows which I have to hunt down for drivers, reboot after installing each one, install all the necessary programmes. On Fedora I only have to install the Nvidia driver which is 3 clicks away @ RPMFusion. If I try to play an mp3 the system prompts me to install the appropiate codecs, which takes 2 more clicks.
Yeah total nonsense. If anything linux is easier to install. A recent case proved this for me. My wife's mother's laptop (Toshiba...something) had been 'fixed' by an unscrupulous fella for £80. The guy had just found a vista disk somewhere and formatted and re-installed. I knew this as it was a 'dell' branded vista install. Anyway, apart from losing all her photographs, nothing worked - no wireless, no ethernet - no sound!! It was insane. I spent ages trying to track down drivers for all this in an attempt to get it working and after several hours of transferring installs via USB, I gave up and just tried XUbuntu booting from USB. Everything. Worked. First. Time. Everything, wirelss, ethernet, sound - it even managed to suspend properly! (something that has always seemed a bit flakey on linux). Anyway, I installed and a few weeks later she is as happy as larry.
So, I'm sorry to say that linux is simpler to install than windows...at least from my experience.
Oh, I left 'vista' on there too...just in case.
do it already.
Finding Windows drivers? Typical Linux zealot, your mind is forever frozen in the area of Windows XP. I installed Windows 8 on a 4 year old computer. Everything worked, including the Wi-Fi adaptor. The only driver I needed to install was for my Nvidia GTX 650, just so I could also have the Nvidia control panel and such. On the rare instance you need a Windows driver, they are easy to find unless you're completley incompitent.
Different AC here, but I'll help you out. He's referencing the fact that most Linux DEs look like shit rehashed from the Windows 95 era. About the only exception is KDE, but it's slow as a snail on ice on even the beefiest hardware. As for infections, for myself and many other users, they aren't even an issue. A little common sense, some basic computer literacy goes a long way. A small price to pay when you use the most widly used OS with the largest selection of commercial and free software.
Compile any Linux binary as static and it will include everything it needs to run -- although 64-bit binaries won't load on a 32-bit system of course.
In fact just the other day I was on an older system and I couldn't find iperf in its distro so I downloaded the pre-compiled 32-bit binary to do some quick bandwidth testing.
As a company that deals with industrial customers, we have dealt with plenty of Windows software that will not run on anything newer than XP, or sometimes 7, or 98 or 3.1 before those.
The Windows API is not a static target.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Please, when you want to get a new version of your graphics driver or update something too big (say KDE, Mate) you end up replacing the whole OS. You can change window manager, terminal emulator or shell (ksh, zsh) etc. any time, but some fine grained stuff like choosing the version of a program you prefer to run is only possible on Windows as well as e.g. setting targets for fan control, looking for voltage drops - linux never allowed me to read ANY of the half dozen or so voltage sensors built in any PC, it doesn't even acknowledge their presence.
It would be good to have a low footprint Windows clone to do the low level tasks that are just impossible on linux.
Good. Forks are a good way for those who disagree to still get along. Debian and Forked-ian and still share patches (outside of the init process) and stay in sync easily ... if that is what they choose to do. So we will wind up with the choice of Debian-classic or Debian-with-sprinkles. Cool.
This reminds me of GNU Emacs and XEmacs, they disagree (or lack legal rights to make code free) on the basics but a lot of the elisp is kept in sync. Choice is G(NU)ood.
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
In Debian one can already choose between sysvinit, systemd, or upstart. See this http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html
This is not an option when you are talking about a 7 year old laptop. You cannot upgrade to either a modern cpu nor a modern graphics card.
Someone had to do it.
WRONG. They care about *tasks* and *activities*.
...
Notice that there's no mention of "Process random data at 50 gigaflops of megabuttz over a DDR3 EEPROM Ivy Bridge SSD, with WiMax Bluetooth EDR 4.0?"
Specs don't matter to the average computer user...
Um...you apparently missed the context of the parent completely. You even quoted the parent, called him wrong, then made the focus of your statement a point that agreed specifically with the part of the parent that you quoted; and all through that you completely did not show how the statement you quoted was in any way wrong.
The main focus of the parent that he showed examples of is on the sentence "They care about branding and image." Your rebuttal included the list of things that people use a computer to accomplish:
- Edit that spreadsheet from work;
- Send an email to their kid in college 500 miles away;
- Listen to some music or watch a movie (or both);
- Edit some photos then upload them to Facebook;
- Browse the web;
- Write a paper;
All of those things can be done on Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X. Which one a person uses is based completely on branding or image. The parent went into what most users would use based on their perceptions of specific brands. Most users would use MS Windows because that is "Normal" and "Conforms" to what they believe they should be using based on the requirements on the side of the box of the software they want to use for whatever they want to do. The ones who would use Mac OS tend to be the "hipster" type that want to appear different and call themselves superior to those who use Windows, even though they need to do all about the same things as their Windows brethren. The Linux/BSD crowd tend to be more independent thinkers than the above two, though they very well fall into conforming with themselves (for example, those who say "I use Debian. Yes it's Linux, but you'd never catch me dead using Gentoo." and vice versa.) These too will also get the tools to do all of the above functions from their package manager of choice, and have the heart and fearlessness to perhaps tinker with software under the hood
Your post did not make any claim that refutes any of these points that the parent made and I have outlined... therefore you did not prove how you thought he was wrong in his statement that you quoted.
I don't like the ideal of binary log files, but I can get behind everything else.
I think you got a point. The "free" in open source means "freedom" to me. I'm free to choose what works for me. When comes to support, company could choose to support windows or redhat but it is almost impossible to support *my* linux.
Can Systemd be used to start one script that do all the actual starting etc, and just sit back and shut up?
Right now Sysv init can be used to do just that. Get started by the kernel, then fire up whatever process is listed at the requested runlevel (said process will handle the rest). Then sit back and wait for the shutdown to the called.
If Systemd can be used in this manner, it is a full drop-in replacement for Sysv init.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Funny you should put it that way.
I just installed a laptop for a 3-year-old who likes to play games out of my Steam library. It's running Kubuntu and he has no problems with it. It boots fast, plays his games well and generally gets out of the way whilst he enjoys himself. I'd hazard a guess that he's below the average user, he's running it as a desktop and he's made ZERO tradeoffs. And neither did I.
ARE YOU KIDDING???
I use my compiter for these tasks:
1) Email
2) Organize photos
3) Web browsing
4) Document writing
I don't care about GPUs, LPUs, CPUs, or R2D2s... I just need it to WORK!
For me, a 15-year old video card would meet all of my needs!
Saying that a 7 year old video card is not useful is exactly the type of comments that I don't undersatdn about Linux cultists.
If nVidia would wake up and support FreeBSD properly, I would probably be switching a few machines to it. I want opencl first, though.
Until then, I'm sticking with Gentoo. It doesn't matter to me if it's too difficult for others to install. Works just fine on my desktops (and anything else I want to put it on).
Ops, I shuld have usd the prevuwe but in.
Please, when you want to get a new version of your graphics driver or update something too big (say KDE, Mate) you end up replacing the whole OS.
Graphics drivers tend to have minimum requirements, same as in Windows. Minimum kernel version, libc, etc? Minimum Windows release, DirectX version, etc. Using an open-source driver, my package manager grabs the new module, usually along with the current version of the kernel. With a closed-source driver, the installer compiles the interface module and copies the files to the right places. It's hardly replacing the whole OS, just the kernel in the worst case.
In replacing something large like the desktop environment, I haven't tried doing something like trying to get KDE 1.x running under a modern Linux, so I can't address it directly. I know two things though: it's more possible than getting the Windows 98 desktop working on a modern Windows.
setting targets for fan control, looking for voltage drops - linux never allowed me to read ANY of the half dozen or so voltage sensors built in any PC, it doesn't even acknowledge their presence.
YMMV, based on hardware support in the kernel, but lm-sensors supports a large list of drivers, including temperature, voltage, and fan speed sensors. I get readings on my machine, but I can't speak for yours, of course.
It would be good to have a low footprint Windows clone to do the low level tasks that are just impossible on linux.
More choice and more ways to do things is always good. I won't say that an actually-working Windows clone would be a bad thing. ReactOS didn't impress me, last time I tried to run it.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
What, no snarky retort after he mentioned a distro for you? Idiot.
Most people don't even care that systemd replaces init. The binary logging is stupid, and the difficulties systemd adds for debugging broken systems suck. But fine, it replaces init.
But systemd doesn't just replace init. Oh no, it wants to replace udev, dbus, and cron, and terminal handling, and file system mounting, and any number of other things that PID 1 should have nothing ever to do with. It's completely out of control. Gnome now needs it to login. How the hell can a window manager need to do anything with PID 1? It's horribly horribly broken.
I'll use it happily instead. The binary log files alone makes systemd a dead idea. The lack of being modular and doing one thing well would also make it a done deal, but I'd say that's secondary, though still high up!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
yeah, maybe if you'd installed one released AFTER that you wouldn't be talking such crap?
but will it run office? (regardless of than answer businesses are scared of anything they didnt overpay for)
Don't forget Windows 10, the tech preview is free - works fine in a virtualbox container...
If systemd is going to be the default init system on steroids, where will that leave the non-Linux ports of Debian, which prides itself in being THE "universal operating sytem" (go ahead Google for the phrase, first hit is Debian)? Insisting on hard dependency on systemd is going to creat problems for Debian Hurd and kFreeBSD, unless systemd has already been ported to those systems? https://www.debian.org/ports/h... http://www.debian.org/ports/kf...
If you're using an old machine, chances are you're not going to care much about 3D performance so toss the old graphics card and use the (very well supported) Intel integrated video that most machines have come with for a while.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
It's not odd. He's good and you're shit.
Max, is this you?
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Does it not have an ethernet port?
And don't you know better than to do any kind of major work on the *only* computer you have to hand?
My Thinkpad was the other way round. No drivers available for WiFi (and sound) on Win7 - which ran like a three legged donkey anyway. Mint worked fine, likewise Backtrack. It's now happily running Kali.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Linux could work for the average user, at the end of the day there is no technical reason why not. After all Linux(in the form of android), dominates on the cell phone market, where the user base demands greater user friendlyness, has less patience, and wants even more bells and whistles, and is far less compitent with a computer. Linux has been shown to work marvelously with light meters, accellerometers, USB, touch screens(multi-touch even).
The big issue is how consumers by technology. They don't care about specs really, they don't care about merit. They care about branding and imagine. They want their Apple(tm), search with google(tm). Advertising and public relations gurus over the last few decades have build reality distortion bubbles, where people actively identify with brand names. GNU/Linux has no such brand name. They really don't care about "just works". Face it, windows does *not just work*, but people do whatever it takes, because they think windows is what they are supposed to be using. Microsoft presents the image of normalicy and conformity that most people identify with.
Apple on the other hand, presents an elitest artisan, fine craftsman, and intellectually supperior image, that marks the owner as part of an elite group.
Linux cleans up serverside, because it rode the wave of start up culture of the 1990s. If you had a great idea for a new website, but didn't have much capital, you could run a proffesional website with Linux, Apache, Mysql, and PHP out of an old desktop for a fraction of the cost of what constituted a proffesional server, of the day
As these companies grew, they continuted to use linux, and helped it transform into a proffesional class OS, that couldn't help but take notice.
Linux will eventually take over the desktop, and the reason is because microsoft has no real friends, and they have an ever growing list of enemies. Many of those pimpleface teenage nerds they stepped on back in the 1990s are now grown developers and sys admins. Their day dreams are now multi-million dollar products. Linux has a lot of corporate backers, many of which are household names, and some of the largest most powerful corporations in the world.
Whats eventually going to happen is that MS is going to piss off another giant like Google or Samsung to the point they want blood. You'll see a few large companies pour money, time, resouces, advertising into a distro with enough MS haters to accept them, and then use a Free as in beer product into the desktop market, to crush microsoft to prevent them from competing in other markets, by destroying their cash cow.
There will not be a year of the desktop. It will be a decade of pure hell, and microsoft is going to fight tooth and nail, and use every dirty trick in the book to keep the desktop market. They will eventually loose, because the nature of FOSS allows many companies to quietly pool resources behind a single banner, especially a not-for-profit, and allows more to join later without any real effort or diplomacy. Eventually it will be taken from them, and from that point its another 10 years before they go out of business.
The reason why MS will lose the desktop is closed source and closed mentality.
Our universities want to teach operating systems, their use, design, and tweaking. In addition, to do so at zero cost for software. This is where Linux came in.
We have students who have started in College/University with LFS (Linux from Scratch). They get to study internals, networking, security, end-user computing, servers and more. Included of course are the language courses in C, C++, Python, Perl, Bash scripting, etc. etc. And the students had the software and course material on their laptops.
MS had restrictions on what information was available.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
My ESR wants me to go to a cathedral.Or a bazaar. But I have to choose.
Does he at least fetch your mail?
"Debian's Systemd Adoption Inspires Threat of Fork" Wouldn't a Knife be more effective? XD
Nobody complained about e.g. net interfaces being renamed? I would have guessed it would mess up a lot of firewall rules or routes...
I agree. I will point out one thing real quick though. WMIC is a GREAT tool on windows (included since xp or 2000). I quickly foudn the answer for my networking stuff by running wmic /? from command line. It listed my options and I saw one called NIC. Followed up with a "wmic nic get /format:list" and BOOM I saw each adapter and all the properties (specifically under ServiceName) about it that I would need to find a driver and place to USB drive. Now I know in the future that I can run "wmic nic servicename /format:list" and see that little RTL8167 or whatever that I need. :D
s/Windows/Ubuntu/
You forgot to add the 3 hours of the always enjoyable update/reboot cycle.
And the running around to 80 websites to download software to make it usable.
I can go from blank HDD to fully installed and patched opensuse 13.1 in 30 minutes.
Using generic drivers that come with the install results in hardware that can not be used to its full potential.
haha, you completely missed the point of my post, and went straight to the stereotypical tropes about overly technical linux users. Its like you didn't read my post, but just responded to what you wanted me to say.
RavenLrD20k did a nice job tearing you apart below.
Actually those 600 are just flavors of the same distro. Not a real valid argument but eye candy differentiation. Start from giving proper name to things as they are. There is a handful of real separate distribution NOT debian cousins. Look for free gnu linux, one is based on Ubuntu some are on debian but with a purposine others from scratch (a real distro at that) and one from arch. But all are using your freedom os in mind. Paying no royalties to no king. Jeycoff