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Debian Dropping Linux Standard Base (lwn.net)
basscomm writes: For years (as seen on Slashdot) the Linux Standard Base has been developed as an attempt to reduce the differences between Linux distributions in an effort significant effort. However, Debian Linux has announced that they are dropping support for the Linux Standard Base due to a lack of interest.
From the article: "If [Raboud's] initial comments about lack of interest in LSB were not evidence enough, a full three months then went by with no one offering any support for maintaining the LSB-compliance packages and two terse votes in favor of dropping them. Consequently, on September 17, Raboud announced that he had gutted the src:lsb package (leaving just lsb-base and lsb-release as described) and uploaded it to the "unstable" archive. That minimalist set of tools will allow an interested user to start up the next Debian release and query whether or not it is LSB-compliant—and the answer will be 'no.'"
From the article: "If [Raboud's] initial comments about lack of interest in LSB were not evidence enough, a full three months then went by with no one offering any support for maintaining the LSB-compliance packages and two terse votes in favor of dropping them. Consequently, on September 17, Raboud announced that he had gutted the src:lsb package (leaving just lsb-base and lsb-release as described) and uploaded it to the "unstable" archive. That minimalist set of tools will allow an interested user to start up the next Debian release and query whether or not it is LSB-compliant—and the answer will be 'no.'"
Maybe we should look at creating some standards for editing and submitting articles, too.
It seems like Debian has decided to live up to its logo, the spiral. In adopting systemd and abandoning LSB, Debian has begun its death spiral.
My effort significant effort is effectively effortless. It's the effort effect at work. So there.
"editors" -- I don't think that word means what the slashdot "editors" think it means.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I think keeping certain level of things similar is a good thing because people have to keep things consistent for their stuffs to work.
The debian folks think they are popular enough that they should have their own ways of doing everything in Linux. This was a mistake Redhat made long time ago between their own versions of Linux. They learnt the lesson quickly enough to not become a disaster.
I really think Debian is screwing with linux admins who are primary customers of their flavor... Let me remind them that Debian owns an extremely small percentage of production installations worldwide... doing this now will turn their OS into a consumer grade product... which will make them very unimportant.
Slackware & FreeBSD looking better and better.
Why not go to the source and use Ubuntu instead?
Debian's Filesystem Hierarchy Standard predated the LSB for quite a while. I kind of wondered if they would be able to make the two match, and why LSB didn't just pick that up and use it, considering it had been in place for so long.
What's the obligatory XKCD for removing a standard?
would be to know where Debian is heading.
I'd very much like to support a distro which has clearly stated technical and societal values which mirror my own, but it's hard to distinguish exactly what Debian's values are anymore. Merely embracing GPL licensing and its values doesn't really tell you a lot, because even code with ethically questionable goals can be GPL.
Perhaps it's time for a Debian Conference in which "What do we stand for?" could be addressed and made a little more specific.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
But where is modtard when you need them?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I read the article but I wasn't quite certain why people weren't interested.
It sounds like it was too much work to maintain and implement, but it sounded like a lot of their implementation simply wasn't being used by anyone. Is it just the fact that LSB isn't as necessary/useful as people thought it would? I feel like most projects end up checking against Debian or RHEL and most distros adopt one of those as a sort of informal standard.
I stole this Sig
How can they do that? Isn't it all about the base?
What is all this doom and gloom about debian spiralling into oblivion and the end is coming? Did anybody read TFA before posting? The only thing that I can see from the LSB that has actually had a positive effect on me is the FHS, to which Debian is still adhering.
The LSB in its entirety actually contains a list of required libraries and standardized symlinks which may or may not be used on a system, but which must be there for "LSB compliance". IRL Debian package maintainers spend a lot of time and effort building dependancy lists into their packages so you DON'T have to have all those libraries on your system if you are not going to use them.
If you use dpkg or a wrapper (apt-get, aptitude, etc) to manage your system the LSB requirements are redundant at best and bloatware at worst.
The only situation where something like the LSB really makes sense is proprietary copy and run programs that depend on proprietary pieces. Even closed source proprietary software can utilize the apt database to resolve dependencies if it only has open source dependancies, or if the company hosts their own repository.
A large company running large numbers of Linux machines that wanted to standardize will probably (hopefully) do so to meet their requirements, rather than a generalized LSB desktop spec which attempts to be all things to all people.
If people went to their local computer store and bought software packages on CDs, and installed them on computers that did not have internet connectivity, the yes, up with the LSB. Do you do that? I don't even use a full installer package to install an OS anymore, just a network capable installer that then pulls all the dependancies in the appropriate versions from a repository on the net.
Yes, it was a noble concept, to try to define a standard set of always available libraries, and where they were, but in reality you rapidly run into the same problem software has on Windows, where software is written to depend on shared DLLs, but because people don't update their OS, or because people do update before the developer tests against a new version of the shared DLL, so software starts shipping with it's own copy of the relevant DLLs, and you end up with multiple versions of standard DLLs on your system.
When I started playing with slackware years ago, I really wished for something like the LSB, because I was sneakernetting everything home or taking days to download things on dialup. Those days are now distant memories.
Both rpm and apt solve the same problems, but do so without requiring a pile of unused libraries that just sit around cluttering up your system.
And just as a last point, how in the world does the LSB/NO LSB discussion compare in any way to the systemd/sysvinit discussion? One of them fundamentally changes the way a system operates, the other one just installs a bunch of packages that you can install just fine on your own. That's not an apples and oranges comparison, that is an apple and cinderblock comparison.
"Proximity to wonder has blunted our perception and appreciation of it" --Tim Hartnell in 'Exploring ARTIFICIAL INTELLI
This is all getting pretty OT, but it is interesting.
I remember well when grub came on the scene. At first it blew my mind how complex they were making the apparently-simple job of booting. But when you really looked into it, it turned out that the process wasn't so simple at all, and there was a real and valid reason for everything that was done. It added as much complexity as needed to be added, and not really any more than that. (And then just when we started getting used to grub, along came grub2 and changed everything again ... yet it addressed real needs and the changes made sense if you spent enough time looking at the issues).
Contrast that to systemd. Yes, sysvinit had certain shortcomings, and yes, systemd did address these. But it also added more complexity than it needed to. It took on stuff that should have been completely separate issues - journald and subsumation of udev and some other tentacles, I'm looking at you. IMHO, if systemd had been architected as a general purpose bus into which the pieces could have been OPTIONALLY plugged without tight coupling, it would have addressed every one of the objections without any heartache or controversy. As it is, it is too much of a totalitarian bureaucracy, and needlessly so.
Anyway, throwing LSB to the curb is bullshit. They saved a grand total of maybe ten programmer-minutes by doing it. It should be no sur[rise that we read ulterior motives into it.
Maybe you accidentally your keyboard.
The whole keyboard?
When Ubuntu gets rid of Unity, I'll use Ubuntu again
Once I discovered that Unity is short for Unusability, I did sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop and never looked back.
Funny enough, I've noticed in every single *buntu instance where I've gone from upstart to systemd, the boot times have gotten longer. One of the many reasons why I figure upstart was a better choice to modernize the init system, it's actually better at the "being an init system" part! Unfortunately Canonical sabotaged any chances they might have had due to their CLA, but ironically enough upstart probably remains the most popular desktop Linux init system thanks to ChromeOS using it (and Google has shown zero inclination to change; I suspect if it really ever needs it, which it likely won't for quite some time, Google will just maintain a fork of upstart).
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Well, it hasn't driven me back to LILO *yet*. But I sure don't understand why they replaced something reasonably easy to understand with something hopelessly opaque.
I actually preferred Grub over LILO once I got used to it. But that is not clearly true of Grub2.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Remember a short while ago when the minimal install images were less than 50mb
... fortunately Puppy linux can build a working system with debian packages without the standard required and base packages
While I haven't done accurate timings, I think the boot is a few seconds longer (with 15.04) on my work machine. Annoyingly, it also made the boot less reliable--it now sometimes fails to boot completely and just hangs; presumably it's a race of some sort but who knows?
Wow. I'll admit to reinstalling an OS just not to have to deal with grub2 myself. And rather than finding a way to make it boot the older kernel I decided to remove all the kernels I didn't want to boot (with a GUI no less).
After the shock of grub2 being "helpful" (as in try to modify configuration, then it's overwritten because it's dynamic) I had figured out how to make changes back then.
Don't be a piker, man. It makes you stick out, even if it does make you seem sharp at the same time. Get my point?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.