Note that RedHat does not actually develop Linux - they are selling support for Linux, which in and of itself is telling. They are focusing on helping people use the tool instead of expecting people to change it themselves, and the market has responded by paying them.
Huh? Red Hat employs most of the systemd developers, a bunch of Gnome devs (unfortunately...), some kernel devs IIRC, and a bunch of other Linux-related devs. They contribute a huge amount to Linux development in general. How do they "not actually develop Linux"? That comment is mind-boggling. No, they're not the sole developer of Linux, but they are one of the heavyweight contributors, probably the largest.
I have *never* found a piece of PC hardware that did not have Windows drivers.
Get some pre-Vista hardware and see how it runs on Windows 8. There's lots of it that doesn't work because the mfgr never bothered to make a Vista or later driver.
I'm not philosophically opposed to what you're suggesting here. I am incensed, though, that it should be necessary.
So you think that you're entitled to getting software, free of cost, which is exactly the way you want it to be. The people who actually invest their time and effort into making these distros should, instead of doing what *they* think is the best course of action, do what *you* think is right, even though you don't feel like investing your time and effort into the project.
you should have a care before you begin discarding the viewpoints of those who have gone before you, and you should think twice before presuming to suggest what's good for us.
All the people who maintain distros have considered and discarded your arguments. So why should I value your opinion over theirs?
Additionally, your link goes on about the tired old "UNIX philosophy". Linux isn't UNIX, and never was. Why don't you switch to a real UNIX, which uses sysvinit? Oh yeah, there aren't any. The BSDs don't use it, MacOSX doesn't use it, and Solaris uses SMF now.
Unlike you, I don't presume to know better than experts in the field, or to tell other people how to do their jobs.
Ah, another systemd complainer, who of course can't be bothered to have a real Slashdot account.
However, the fact that systemd comes with the "USE US OR FAIL!" dire warning
There's no such thing in systemd. Slackware (always the last to just on new trends) seems to be getting along fine without it.
Given you only want to see complains as "whining" this indicates you do not want a free system.
systemd is LGPL FOSS, so it's just as Free as anything else. You seem to be using the appeal to emotion fallacy.
Pretending any discord against systemd must be illogic and panic is just your childish method for not having to argue against the problems highlighted.
Because all the "problems" you cite are generally overblown or not problems at all. Please, show me where prominent distro maintainers are criticizing systemd and refusing to integrate it into their distros. The ramblings of some disgruntled random people on Slashdot are not equivalent to the opinions of experts in the field.
There's a big difference between "we'll never adopt systemd" and "we're going to adopt it later after we're really sure it's ready for prime-time".
Also, Mint is a derivative of Ubuntu, so they're largely stuck with whatever Ubuntu does, unless they want to take on extra work. I'm pretty sure Ubuntu is following the same plan mostly.
This sort of behaviour is exactly why projects like a Linux distro, or god forbid GNU/Hurd, never make it to mainstream software.
Red Hat disagrees with you. They make billions of dollars in revenue on Linux. That's "mainstream" enough for me.
If you want the Linux eco-system to be accepted start by getting rid of Stallman, write some damned drivers, make an easy to use system that doesn't require 5 hours of Googling on how to get a laptop soundcard to work.
1997 is calling and wants you back. Linux has better driver support than Windows, and Linux Mint is much easier to use than Windows 8. My laptop sound works just fine out-of-the-box.
The systemd complainers are just a vocal minority. If they were representative of a large fraction of Linux users, then we would see several prominent distros not using systemd or making non-systemd versions. No one's doing that. That's why the anti-systemd people are so pissed off: everyone else is just ignoring them. This is Linux: if they don't like it, they can just fork an existing distro, but do you see any of them doing that? Nope.
I agree, choice IS good. However, what I'm seeing so far is a bunch of vocal whiners on Slashdot bitching about systemd, and no one actually stepping up to make a distro that doesn't use it. So what it amounts to is a few loudmouths telling distro maintainers they're wrong, even though the loudmouths don't want to actually do any work on distros themselves.
If the government is to intrude in the hiring practices for ENTIRE INDUSTRIES (I don't think they should, but that's just me), it should be in an effort to protect the wages of Americans -- rather than an attempt at currying favor with the likes of Zuck.
There used to be a time when the government sometimes did try to protect middle-class Americans and their wages. Not any more; all they care about now is the profits of large corporations and the wealth of its CEOs like Zuck. If they have to fuck over middle-class Americans in this goal, the government (including Obama) will happily do this.
Wrong. Firing dumb projectiles out of a big cannon will always be much, much cheaper than firing expensive missiles from 100-million-dollar jets. You could eliminate the jet and just use a cruise missile, but those are $1 million each at a minimum.
Battleships are "obsolete" because the US military has had WAY too much money to spend and didn't have to economize.
However, these days, with the advent of rail guns (plus some downsizing in the military budget), it looks like the battleship concept is coming back.
In my own case, I have always used the K&R style, but my employer requires the Whitesmiths style. I have a large base of code at home that I wrote and maintain in the K&R style, and it's hard to switch back and forth between the two on a daily basis [sigh].
Then don't. Use your preferred style at work, and then convert it to your employer's preferred style with "indent" before checking it in.
No, not really. A developer has an education in computer science usually. A project manager, in my experience, does not have any kind of technical education whatsoever.
I'm not going to write "THIS!!!" because I really hate this neologism, however that's exactly the sentiment I have: This is exactly correct.
Very, very few job listings these days show salary expectations, so it's easy to apply for some nice-sounding position only to find it pays peanuts. So it's easy to not bother unless it looks really interesting.
If companies started advertising what they were really willing to pay for a position, they'd likely have more people looking at these positions (since they can compare with their present paltry salaries and jump). As it is, they seem to think we should just be happy to have a job, any job, and that they're all the same.
There was a Dilbert comic about this very thing over 10 years ago. The PHB says they want to only hire the cream of the crop, and Dilbert asks him why they only want to pay average salaries.
So if you've got a need for someone to just write basic apps, you can fill that fast, but if you need a "deep" programmer just expect that it's going to take a very long time to find one, but if your compensation is adequate you will probably get there eventually.
The problem is, almost no companies actually want to pay much more for the "deep" programmer than for the one who writes basic apps. There's only a minimal difference in salary between the two at best, and the difference is really based on years of total experience, not their actual expertise.
for a developer to know about it will depend, they should at least know where to find out the basic theories. Their project manager, that person should know about it and how each member of the team has to use those tools. I'm a generalist, i want to know how everything works, get the full picture. but now most programmers get pigeonholed to just doing 1 section even project managers are getting into locked into positions the same way,
Huh? At one of the last places I worked, the "project manager" was some late-20s girl who had no technical background at all, just a degree in project management. And the place after that was mostly the same, our PM was some older ex-military guy with no engineering background. I thought the job of a project manager was just to make up project schedules in MS Project and run around and bug people to see what their progress on each step is.
It's arbitrary now because nothing major has changed ever since 2.6. Before that, with 1.x, 2.0, 2.2, and 2.4, there were big architectural differences and drivers were not compatible between the releases. After the 2.6 changes, they stopped making large changes as everything had stabilized, and there was no more reason to make incompatible changes. Also, before 2.6, they had two tracks, a "stable" kernel and a "testing" kernel, where an odd number was used for the testing version. So there was 2.4.x which was stable and 2.5.x which was not, and eventually 2.5 turned into 2.6 when it was deemed ready for production use. After 2.6, they dropped that whole scheme and just went to small, incremental changes with each kernel, and certain arbitrary releases being deemed "long-term support". After the minor number (2.6.x) got too ridiculously large and it because apparent they weren't going back to the old stable/testing scheme, they decided to toss out the three-number scheme and move to 3.x. Now some time has gone by and that x has gotten too large.
Yes, you could just drop the major number altogether, and go to a singular number, but then you have the problem that this number is going to become ridiculously large and unwieldy. No one wants to talk about "Linux kernel version 119", "version 254", etc. Because with a single number, that's what you're looking at before long: 3-digit numbers, and eventually 4-digit ones. Most people like simple, single-digit numbers; it's easier to remember and reference.
So what happened with the Galaxy Nexus? Google claimed the hardware was incapable.
I'm sure it was a lie. AFAIK, there's nothing in Android that prevents it from running on older hardware, except of course driver support. Obviously, an old phone isn't going to run high-performance applications well, so it might not be able to play certain games, but that's not a problem with the OS.
Well yes, that is the point, they can't run without drivers and since the drivers don't exist they can't run the latest version of Android.
Yes, well my point is it shouldn't be that way. There's no technical reasons old phones can't run the latest Android.
Cars and phones aren't the same thing in terms of safety recalls.
No, but security vulnerabilities should be taken much more seriously than they currently are, and with the force of government behind them. Mfgrs should not be allowed to refuse to provide security updates for older products, up to a certain point, just like they aren't allowed to ignore safety problems with cars. If peoples' phones get hacked and all kinds of economic crimes result, the government has to deal with that with its police and court system, so the government has every right to force mfgrs to provide security updates.
That'a s fair point but I think a more important one is whether any RHEL5 users are unable to upgrade to RHEL6 because their hardware cannot run it...and I doubt that case exists at all. However on Android that happens most of the time.
No, it doesn't. That never happens, ever.
There is absolutely no reason older hardware can't run a newer version of Android. The only reason they don't is because many hardware makers use closed-source drivers, so they only work on a certain kernel version, which of course corresponds to a certain Android release. There is no technical reason for this at all. This stuff never happens on real Linux because the drivers are open-source, so your hardware is never stuck with an older kernel version.
And of course, this mean that there is never a case where some hardware running an older version of RHEL can't run a newer release.
Perhaps they realized that users weren't willing to pay for ongoing support for software maintenance, the OS is free (of charge) but work to maintain it on those platforms costs the manufacturer money.
Users aren't willing to pay for ongoing support for their cars either. But manufacturers still release service bulletins and safety recalls, even for models 15 years old. If mfgrs can't build this into their initial price, that's their problem; this is no different than safety recalls for cars, and it should be required. Requiring all drivers to be open-source, and requiring phones to be user-upgradable, would fix this problem right away. Mfgrs don't necessarily need to support running the latest Android on 4-year-old phones, but there are communities which would happily support this, as long as the drivers are open-source and it's possible for users to upgrade their software without jumping through hoops ("jailbreaking", "rooting"). Just look at routers: DD-WRT, Tomato, and OpenWrt support loads of routers that are many years old. (Where they don't, the main problem is routers with insufficient flash memory for running Linux; not an issue with phones.)
that people prefer to just buy a new handset than pay for operating system maintenance.
I don't really care what other people prefer. Lots of people are pissed off that their phones lose support after only 3 months; if you like buying a new phone every 3-6 months, go right ahead, but I think it's ridiculous to think everyone is OK with that. They sure as hell don't support phones for the full 2 years that carriers get their customers to sign contracts for. And this isn't even safe, because of the security problems. This should be outright illegal.
Actually, the farmer in this analogy is ripping off mother nature because someone, at some point, found seeds growing wild, and while some work was done to breed them into the seeds we use today, they started with something that was totally free. In addition, the farmer isn't paying for the land and water and sunlight used to grow his seeds. He bought the land from someone else, but no one created the land, some asshole just grabbed it for himself first for free and laid claim to it, and ever since then it's been bought and sold. The water is sold because it takes work to distribute it with irrigation pipes, but it circulates around the globe naturally though the natural cycle of evaporation, rain, filtering into the groundwater, etc. And the sunlight is provided for free too. And then the biological processes which take these inputs and create edible grain are all provided for free too, and work automatically.
So no, 99+% of the work is not done by others, a significant fraction is done by natural processes.
Slashdot Mirror
Note that RedHat does not actually develop Linux - they are selling support for Linux, which in and of itself is telling. They are focusing on helping people use the tool instead of expecting people to change it themselves, and the market has responded by paying them.
Huh? Red Hat employs most of the systemd developers, a bunch of Gnome devs (unfortunately...), some kernel devs IIRC, and a bunch of other Linux-related devs. They contribute a huge amount to Linux development in general. How do they "not actually develop Linux"? That comment is mind-boggling. No, they're not the sole developer of Linux, but they are one of the heavyweight contributors, probably the largest.
I have *never* found a piece of PC hardware that did not have Windows drivers.
Get some pre-Vista hardware and see how it runs on Windows 8. There's lots of it that doesn't work because the mfgr never bothered to make a Vista or later driver.
Thank you, this is a perfect example of the mentality of anti-systemd people.
I'm not philosophically opposed to what you're suggesting here. I am incensed, though, that it should be necessary.
So you think that you're entitled to getting software, free of cost, which is exactly the way you want it to be. The people who actually invest their time and effort into making these distros should, instead of doing what *they* think is the best course of action, do what *you* think is right, even though you don't feel like investing your time and effort into the project.
you should have a care before you begin discarding the viewpoints of those who have gone before you, and you should think twice before presuming to suggest what's good for us.
All the people who maintain distros have considered and discarded your arguments. So why should I value your opinion over theirs?
Additionally, your link goes on about the tired old "UNIX philosophy". Linux isn't UNIX, and never was. Why don't you switch to a real UNIX, which uses sysvinit? Oh yeah, there aren't any. The BSDs don't use it, MacOSX doesn't use it, and Solaris uses SMF now.
Unlike you, I don't presume to know better than experts in the field, or to tell other people how to do their jobs.
Forget about having a smooth install unless you buy very specific models of specific brands.
It's no different for Apple. Good luck installing Mac OSX on a Thinkpad or worse an Acer. But no one has a problem with this.
Even my ThinkPad, which was rated as having "good" linux support has shoddy WiFi drivers at best
Get rid of your Broadcom card and get an Intel card instead. You can get them for $15 on Ebay. Broadcom sucks.
Good luck getting a Mac to support some random crappy hardware. And even there, since Macs use Broadcom, they've been having a lot of problems lately.
the soundcard fails to operate without me performing quite a lot of manual configuration
If you have Intel sound you shouldn't have that problem.
Ah, another systemd complainer, who of course can't be bothered to have a real Slashdot account.
However, the fact that systemd comes with the "USE US OR FAIL!" dire warning
There's no such thing in systemd. Slackware (always the last to just on new trends) seems to be getting along fine without it.
Given you only want to see complains as "whining" this indicates you do not want a free system.
systemd is LGPL FOSS, so it's just as Free as anything else. You seem to be using the appeal to emotion fallacy.
Pretending any discord against systemd must be illogic and panic is just your childish method for not having to argue against the problems highlighted.
Because all the "problems" you cite are generally overblown or not problems at all. Please, show me where prominent distro maintainers are criticizing systemd and refusing to integrate it into their distros. The ramblings of some disgruntled random people on Slashdot are not equivalent to the opinions of experts in the field.
There's a big difference between "we'll never adopt systemd" and "we're going to adopt it later after we're really sure it's ready for prime-time".
Also, Mint is a derivative of Ubuntu, so they're largely stuck with whatever Ubuntu does, unless they want to take on extra work. I'm pretty sure Ubuntu is following the same plan mostly.
This sort of behaviour is exactly why projects like a Linux distro, or god forbid GNU/Hurd, never make it to mainstream software.
Red Hat disagrees with you. They make billions of dollars in revenue on Linux. That's "mainstream" enough for me.
If you want the Linux eco-system to be accepted start by getting rid of Stallman, write some damned drivers, make an easy to use system that doesn't require 5 hours of Googling on how to get a laptop soundcard to work.
1997 is calling and wants you back. Linux has better driver support than Windows, and Linux Mint is much easier to use than Windows 8. My laptop sound works just fine out-of-the-box.
The systemd complainers are just a vocal minority. If they were representative of a large fraction of Linux users, then we would see several prominent distros not using systemd or making non-systemd versions. No one's doing that. That's why the anti-systemd people are so pissed off: everyone else is just ignoring them. This is Linux: if they don't like it, they can just fork an existing distro, but do you see any of them doing that? Nope.
Can't someone fork a version without systemd?
I agree, choice IS good. However, what I'm seeing so far is a bunch of vocal whiners on Slashdot bitching about systemd, and no one actually stepping up to make a distro that doesn't use it. So what it amounts to is a few loudmouths telling distro maintainers they're wrong, even though the loudmouths don't want to actually do any work on distros themselves.
If the government is to intrude in the hiring practices for ENTIRE INDUSTRIES (I don't think they should, but that's just me), it should be in an effort to protect the wages of Americans -- rather than an attempt at currying favor with the likes of Zuck.
There used to be a time when the government sometimes did try to protect middle-class Americans and their wages. Not any more; all they care about now is the profits of large corporations and the wealth of its CEOs like Zuck. If they have to fuck over middle-class Americans in this goal, the government (including Obama) will happily do this.
Wrong. Firing dumb projectiles out of a big cannon will always be much, much cheaper than firing expensive missiles from 100-million-dollar jets. You could eliminate the jet and just use a cruise missile, but those are $1 million each at a minimum.
Battleships are "obsolete" because the US military has had WAY too much money to spend and didn't have to economize.
However, these days, with the advent of rail guns (plus some downsizing in the military budget), it looks like the battleship concept is coming back.
In my own case, I have always used the K&R style, but my employer requires the Whitesmiths style. I have a large base of code at home that I wrote and maintain in the K&R style, and it's hard to switch back and forth between the two on a daily basis [sigh].
Then don't. Use your preferred style at work, and then convert it to your employer's preferred style with "indent" before checking it in.
No, not really. A developer has an education in computer science usually. A project manager, in my experience, does not have any kind of technical education whatsoever.
I'm not going to write "THIS!!!" because I really hate this neologism, however that's exactly the sentiment I have: This is exactly correct.
Very, very few job listings these days show salary expectations, so it's easy to apply for some nice-sounding position only to find it pays peanuts. So it's easy to not bother unless it looks really interesting.
If companies started advertising what they were really willing to pay for a position, they'd likely have more people looking at these positions (since they can compare with their present paltry salaries and jump). As it is, they seem to think we should just be happy to have a job, any job, and that they're all the same.
There was a Dilbert comic about this very thing over 10 years ago. The PHB says they want to only hire the cream of the crop, and Dilbert asks him why they only want to pay average salaries.
So if you've got a need for someone to just write basic apps, you can fill that fast, but if you need a "deep" programmer just expect that it's going to take a very long time to find one, but if your compensation is adequate you will probably get there eventually.
The problem is, almost no companies actually want to pay much more for the "deep" programmer than for the one who writes basic apps. There's only a minimal difference in salary between the two at best, and the difference is really based on years of total experience, not their actual expertise.
for a developer to know about it will depend, they should at least know where to find out the basic theories. Their project manager, that person should know about it and how each member of the team has to use those tools. I'm a generalist, i want to know how everything works, get the full picture. but now most programmers get pigeonholed to just doing 1 section even project managers are getting into locked into positions the same way,
Huh? At one of the last places I worked, the "project manager" was some late-20s girl who had no technical background at all, just a degree in project management. And the place after that was mostly the same, our PM was some older ex-military guy with no engineering background. I thought the job of a project manager was just to make up project schedules in MS Project and run around and bug people to see what their progress on each step is.
Which dwarf planet are you from, Makemake, Eris, or something else?
It's arbitrary now because nothing major has changed ever since 2.6. Before that, with 1.x, 2.0, 2.2, and 2.4, there were big architectural differences and drivers were not compatible between the releases. After the 2.6 changes, they stopped making large changes as everything had stabilized, and there was no more reason to make incompatible changes. Also, before 2.6, they had two tracks, a "stable" kernel and a "testing" kernel, where an odd number was used for the testing version. So there was 2.4.x which was stable and 2.5.x which was not, and eventually 2.5 turned into 2.6 when it was deemed ready for production use. After 2.6, they dropped that whole scheme and just went to small, incremental changes with each kernel, and certain arbitrary releases being deemed "long-term support". After the minor number (2.6.x) got too ridiculously large and it because apparent they weren't going back to the old stable/testing scheme, they decided to toss out the three-number scheme and move to 3.x. Now some time has gone by and that x has gotten too large.
Yes, you could just drop the major number altogether, and go to a singular number, but then you have the problem that this number is going to become ridiculously large and unwieldy. No one wants to talk about "Linux kernel version 119", "version 254", etc. Because with a single number, that's what you're looking at before long: 3-digit numbers, and eventually 4-digit ones. Most people like simple, single-digit numbers; it's easier to remember and reference.
Microsoft mostly contributes to making Linux run smoothly on Azure and Hyper-V.
This doesn't help Linux users any, this only helps MS.
Between 2006 and 2008 Oracle contributed 3% of all Linux code.
Where? Was it as useless as the code contributed by MS, which only helps people run virtualized Linux on MS platforms?
Actually apparently Google isn't much of a contributor and still keeps all of their changes in-house.
Last I heard, Google did contribute a bunch of kernel changes which they had made for Android.
So what happened with the Galaxy Nexus? Google claimed the hardware was incapable.
I'm sure it was a lie. AFAIK, there's nothing in Android that prevents it from running on older hardware, except of course driver support. Obviously, an old phone isn't going to run high-performance applications well, so it might not be able to play certain games, but that's not a problem with the OS.
Well yes, that is the point, they can't run without drivers and since the drivers don't exist they can't run the latest version of Android.
Yes, well my point is it shouldn't be that way. There's no technical reasons old phones can't run the latest Android.
Cars and phones aren't the same thing in terms of safety recalls.
No, but security vulnerabilities should be taken much more seriously than they currently are, and with the force of government behind them. Mfgrs should not be allowed to refuse to provide security updates for older products, up to a certain point, just like they aren't allowed to ignore safety problems with cars. If peoples' phones get hacked and all kinds of economic crimes result, the government has to deal with that with its police and court system, so the government has every right to force mfgrs to provide security updates.
That'a s fair point but I think a more important one is whether any RHEL5 users are unable to upgrade to RHEL6 because their hardware cannot run it...and I doubt that case exists at all. However on Android that happens most of the time.
No, it doesn't. That never happens, ever.
There is absolutely no reason older hardware can't run a newer version of Android. The only reason they don't is because many hardware makers use closed-source drivers, so they only work on a certain kernel version, which of course corresponds to a certain Android release. There is no technical reason for this at all. This stuff never happens on real Linux because the drivers are open-source, so your hardware is never stuck with an older kernel version.
And of course, this mean that there is never a case where some hardware running an older version of RHEL can't run a newer release.
Perhaps they realized that users weren't willing to pay for ongoing support for software maintenance, the OS is free (of charge) but work to maintain it on those platforms costs the manufacturer money.
Users aren't willing to pay for ongoing support for their cars either. But manufacturers still release service bulletins and safety recalls, even for models 15 years old. If mfgrs can't build this into their initial price, that's their problem; this is no different than safety recalls for cars, and it should be required. Requiring all drivers to be open-source, and requiring phones to be user-upgradable, would fix this problem right away. Mfgrs don't necessarily need to support running the latest Android on 4-year-old phones, but there are communities which would happily support this, as long as the drivers are open-source and it's possible for users to upgrade their software without jumping through hoops ("jailbreaking", "rooting"). Just look at routers: DD-WRT, Tomato, and OpenWrt support loads of routers that are many years old. (Where they don't, the main problem is routers with insufficient flash memory for running Linux; not an issue with phones.)
that people prefer to just buy a new handset than pay for operating system maintenance.
I don't really care what other people prefer. Lots of people are pissed off that their phones lose support after only 3 months; if you like buying a new phone every 3-6 months, go right ahead, but I think it's ridiculous to think everyone is OK with that. They sure as hell don't support phones for the full 2 years that carriers get their customers to sign contracts for. And this isn't even safe, because of the security problems. This should be outright illegal.
All of us here live in the third world.
The first world is Mercury. No humans live there.
No problem, get one of the off-brand TVs like Vizio. It's only the big name brands like Sony and Samsung which only sell "smart" TVs.
Actually, the farmer in this analogy is ripping off mother nature because someone, at some point, found seeds growing wild, and while some work was done to breed them into the seeds we use today, they started with something that was totally free. In addition, the farmer isn't paying for the land and water and sunlight used to grow his seeds. He bought the land from someone else, but no one created the land, some asshole just grabbed it for himself first for free and laid claim to it, and ever since then it's been bought and sold. The water is sold because it takes work to distribute it with irrigation pipes, but it circulates around the globe naturally though the natural cycle of evaporation, rain, filtering into the groundwater, etc. And the sunlight is provided for free too. And then the biological processes which take these inputs and create edible grain are all provided for free too, and work automatically.
So no, 99+% of the work is not done by others, a significant fraction is done by natural processes.
It was pretty decent back in the 1.x days. It was all downhill after that.