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Interviews: Linus Torvalds Answers Your Question187
by DoofusOfDeath
You've somehow managed to originate two insanely useful pieces of software: Linux, and Git. Do you think there's anything in your work habits, your approach to choosing projects, etc., that have helped you achieve that level of productivity? Or is it just the traditional combination of talent, effort, and luck?
Linus: I'm sure it's pretty much always that "talent, effort and luck". I'llleave it to others to debate how much of each...
I'd love to point out some magical work habit that makes it allhappen, but I doubt there really is any. Especially as the work habitsI had wrt the kernel and Git have been so different.
With Git, I think it was a lot about coming at a problem with fresheyes (not having ever really bought into the traditional SCM mindset),and really trying to think about the issues, and spending a fairamount of time thinking about what the real problems were and what Iwanted the design to be. And then the initial self-hosting code tookabout a day to write (ok, that was "self-hosting" in only the weakestsense, but still).
And with Linux, obviously, things were very different - the bigdesigns came from the outside, and it took half a year to host itself,and it hadn't even started out as a kernel to begin with. Clearly nota lot of thinking ahead and planning involved ;). So very differentcircumstances indeed.
What both the kernel and Git have, and what I think is reallyimportant (and I guess that counts as a "work habit"), is a maintainerthat stuck to it, and was responsive, responsible and sane. Too manyprojects falter because they don't have people that stick with them,or have people who have an agenda that doesn't match reality or theuser expectations.
But it's very important to point out that for Git, that maintainer wasnot me. Junio Hamano really should get pretty much all the credit forGit. Credit where credit is due. I'll take credit for the initialimplementation and design of Git - it may not be perfect, but tenyears on it still is very solid and very clearly the same basicdesign. But I'll take even _more_ credit for recognizing that Juniohad his head screwed on right, and was the person to drive theproject. And all the rest of the credit goes to him.
Of course, that kind of segues into something else the kernel and Gitdo have in common: while I still maintain the kernel, I did end upfinding a lot of smart people to maintain all the different parts ofit. So while one important work habit is that "stick to it"persistence that you need to really take a project from anot-quite-usable prototype to something bigger and better, anotherimportant work-habit is probably to also "let go" and not try to ownand control the project too much. Let other people really help you -guide the process but don't get in their way.
init system
by lorinc
There wasn't a decent unix-like kernel, you wrote one which ultimately became the most used. There wasn't a decent version control software, you wrote one which ultimately became the most love. Do you think we already have a decent init system, or do you have plan to write one that will ultimately settle the world on that hot topic?
Linus: You can say the word "systemd", It's not a four-letter word. Sevenletters. Count them.
I have to say, I don't really get the hatred of systemd. I think itimproves a lot on the state of init, and no, I don't see myselfgetting into that whole area.
Yeah, it may have a few odd corners here and there, and I'm sureyou'll find things to despise. That happens in every project. I'm nota huge fan of the binary logging, for example. But that's just anexample. I much prefer systemd's infrastructure for starting servicesover traditional init, and I think that's a much bigger designdecision.
Yeah, I've had some personality issues with some of the maintainers,but that's about how you handle bug reports and accept blame (or not)for when things go wrong. If people thought that meant that I dislikesystemd, I will have to disappoint you guys.
Can Valve change the Linux gaming market?
by Anonymous Coward
Do you think Valve is capable of making Linux a primary choice for gamers?
Linus: "Primary"? Probably not where it's even aiming. I think consoles (andall those handheld and various mobile platforms that "real gamers"seem to dismiss as toys) are likely much more primary, and will stayso.
I think Valve wants to make sure they can control their own future,and Linux and ValveOS is probably partly to explore a more"console-like" Valve experience (ie the whole "get a box set up for asingle main purpose", as opposed to a more PC-like experience), andpartly as a "second source" against Microsoft, who is a competitor inthe console area. Keeping your infrastructure suppliers honest bymaking sure you have alternatives sounds like a good strategy, andparticularly so when those suppliers may be competing with youdirectly elsewhere.
So I don't think the aim is really "primary". "Solid alternative" is Ithink the aim. Of course, let's see where it goes after that.
But I really have not been involved. People like Greg and the actualgraphics driver guys have been in much more direct contact with Valve.I think it's great to see gaming on Linux, but at the same time, I'mpersonally not really much of a gamer.
The future of RT-Linux?
by nurhussein
According to Thomas Gleixner,the future of the realtime patchset to Linux is in doubt, as it is difficult to secure funding from interested parties on this functionality even though it is both useful and important: What are your thoughts on this, and what do you think we need to do to get more support behind the RT patchset, especially considering Linux's increasing use in embedded systems where realtime functionality is undoubtedly useful.
Linus: So I think this is one of those things where the markets decide howimportant rtLinux ends up being, and I suspect there are more thanenough companies who end up wanting and using rtLinux that the projectisn't really going anywhere. The complaints by Thomas were - I think- a wake-up call to the companies who end up wanting the extended hardrealtime patches.
So I suspect there are companies and groups like OSADL that end upfunding and helping with rtLinux, and that it isn't going away.
Rigor and developments
by hcs_$reboot
The most complex program running on a machine is arguably its OS, especially the kernel. Linux (kernel) reached the top level in terms of performance, reliability and versatility. You have been criticized quite a few times for some virulent mails addressed to developers. Do you think Linux would be where it is without managing the project with an iron fist? To go further, do you think some other main OSS project would benefit from a more rigorous management approach?
Linus: One of the nice things about open source is how it allows people toreally concentrate on what they are good at, and it has been a hugeadvantage for Linux that we've had people who are interested in themarketing side and selling Linux, as well as the legal side etc.
And that is all in addition, of course, to the original "we'remotivated by the technology" people like me. And even within that"we're motivated by technology" group, you most certainly don't needto find _everything_ interesting, you can find the area you arepassionate about and really care about and want to work on.
That's _fundamentally_ how open source works.
Now, if somebody is passionate about some "good management" thing, gowild, and try to get involved, and try to manage things. It's not what_I_ am interested in, but hey, the proof is in the pudding - anybodywho thinks they have a new rigorous management approach that theythink will help some part of the process, go wild.
Now, I personally suspect that it wouldn't work - not only are techpeople an ornery lot to begin with (that whole "herding cats" thing),just look at all the crazy arguments on the internet. And ask yourselfwhat actually holds an open source project like the kernel together? Ithink you need to be very oriented towards the purely technicalsolutions, simply because then you have tangible and real issues youcan discuss (and argue about) with fairly clear-cut hard answers. It'sthe only thing people can really agree on in the big picture.
So the Linux approach to "management" has been to put technologyfirst. That's rigorous enough for me. But as mentioned, it's afree-for-all. Anybody can come in and try to do better. Really.
And btw, it's worth noting that there are obviously specific smallerdevelopment teams where other management models work fine. Most of theindividual developers are parts of teams inside particular companies,and within the confines of that company, there may well be a verystrict rigorous management model. Similarly, within the confines of aparticular productization effort there may be particular goals andmodels for that particular team that transcend that general "technicalissues" thing.
Just to give a concrete example, the "development kernel" tree that Imaintain works fundamentally differently and with very different rulesfrom the "stable tree" that Greg does, which in turn is maintainedvery differently from what a distribution team within a Linux companydoes inside its maintenance kernel team.
So there's certainly room for different approaches to managing thosevery different groups. But do I think you can "rigorously manage"people on the internet? No.
Functional languages?
by EmeraldBot
While historically you've been a C and Assembly guy (and the odd shell scripting and such), what do you think of functional languages such as Lisp, Closure, Haskell, etc? Do you see any advantages to them, or do you view them as frivolous and impractical? If you decide to do so, thanks for taking the time to answer my question! You're a legend at what you do, and I think it's awesome that the significantly less interesting me can ask you a question like this.
Linus: I may be a fan of C (with a certain fondness for assembly, justbecause it's so close to the machine), but that's very much about acertain context. I work at a level where those languages make sense. Icertainly don't think that tools like Haskell etc are "frivolous andimpractical" in general, although on a kernel level (or in a sourcecontrol management system) I suspect they kind of are.
Many moons ago I worked on sparse (the C parser and analyzer), and oneof my coworkers was a Haskell fan, and did incredible exampletransformations in very simple (well, to him) code - stuff that isjust nasty to write in C because it's pretty high-level, there's tonsof memory management, and you're really talking about implementingfairly abstract and high-level rules with pattern matching etc.
So I'm definitely not a functional language kind of guy - it's not howI learnt programming, and it really isn't very relevant to what I do,and I wouldn't recognize Haskell code if it bit me in the ass andcalled me names. But no, I wouldn't call them frivolous.
Critical software to the use of Linux
by TWX
Mr. Torvalds,For many uses of Linux such as on the desktop, other software beyond the kernel and the base GNU tools are required. What other projects would you like to see given priority, and what would you like to see implemented or improved? Admittedly I thought most about X-Windows when asking this question; but I don't doubt that other daemons or systems can be just as important to the user experience. Thank you for your efforts all these years.
Linus: Hey, I don't really have any particular project I would want tochampion, largely because we all have so different requirements on thedesktop. There's just no single thing that stands out as being hugelymore important than others to me.
What I do wish particularly desktop developers cared about is"consistency of experience". And by that I don't mean some kind ofenforced visual consistency between different applications to makethings "look coherent". No, I'm just talking about the pain anduncertainty users go through with upgrades, and understanding thatwhile your project may be the most important project to *you* (becauseit's what you do), to your users, your project is likely just a fairlysmall and irrelevant part of their experience, and it's not verycentral at all, and they've learnt the quirks about that thing theydon't even care about, and you really shouldn't break theirexpectations. Because it turns out that that is how you really makepeople hate their desktop.
This is not at all Linux-specific, of course - just look at the lessthan enthusiastic reception that other operating system redesigns havereceived. But I really wish that we hadn't had *both* of the majorLinux desktop environments have to learn this (well, I hope theylearnt) the hard way, and both of them ending up blaming their usersrather than themselves.
"anykernel"-style portable drivers?
by staalmannen
What do you think about the "anykernel" concept (invented by another Finn btw) used in NetBSD? Basically, they have modularized the code so that a driver can be built either in a monolithic kernel or for user space without source code changes ( rumpkernel.org ). The drivers are highly portable and used in Genode os (L4 type kernels), minix etc... Would this be possible or desirable for Linux? Apparently there is one attempt called "libos"...
Linus: So I have bad experiences with "portable" drivers. Writing drivers tosome common environment tends to force some ridiculously nastyimpedance matching abstractions that just get in the way and makethings really hard to read and modify. It gets particularly nasty wheneverybody ends up having complicated - and differently so - driversubsystems to handle a lot of commonalities for a certain class ofdrivers (say a network driver, or a USB driver), and the differentoperating systems really have very different approaches and lockingrules etc.
I haven't seen anykernel drivers, but from past experience my reactionto "portable device drivers" is to run away, screaming like littlegirl. As they say in Swedish "Bränt barn luktar illa".
Processor Architecture
by swv3752
Several years ago, you were employed by Transmeta designing the Crusoe processor. I understand you are quite knowledgeable about cpu architecture. What are your thoughts on the Current Intel and AMD x86 CPUs particularly in comparison with ARM and IBM's Power8 CPUs? Where do you see the advantages of each one?
Linus: I'm no CPU architect, I just play one on TV.
But yes, I've been close to the CPU both as part of my kernel work,and as part of a processor company, and working at that level for along time just means that you end up having fairly strong opinions.One of the things that my experiences at Transmeta convinced me of,for example, was that there's definitely very much a limit to whatsoftware should care about. I loved working at Transmeta, I loved thewhole startup company environment, I loved working with really smartpeople, but in the end I ended up absolutely *not* loving to work withoverly simple hardware (I also didn't love the whole IPO process, andwhat that did to the company culture, but that's a different thing).
Because there's only so much that software can do to compensate.
Something similar happened with my kernel work on the alphaarchitecture, which also started out as being an overly simplifiedimplementation in the name of being small and supposedly runningreally fast. While I really started out liking the alpha architecturefor being so clean, I ended up detesting how fragile the architectureimplementations were (and by the time that got fixed in the 21264, Ihad given up on alpha).
So I've come to absolutely detest CPU's that need a lot of compilersmarts or special tuning to go fast. Life is too short to waste onin-order CPU's, or on hardware designers who think software shouldtake care of the pieces that they find to be too complicated to handlethemselves, and as a result just left undone. "Weak memory ordering"is just another example.
Thankfully, most of the industry these days seems to agree. Yes,there are still in-order cores, but nobody tries to make excuses forthem any more: they are for the truly cheap and low-end market.
I tend to really like the modern Intel cores in particular, which tendto take that "let's not be stupid" really to heart. With the kernelbeing so threaded, I end up caring a lot about things like memoryordering etc, and the Intel big-core CPU's tend to be in a class oftheir own there. As a software person who cares about performance andlooks at instruction profiles etc, it's just so *nice* to see that theCPU doesn't have some crazy glass jaw where you have to be verycareful.
GPU kernels
by maraist
Is there any inspiration that a GPU based kernel / scheduler has for you? How might Linux be improved to better take advantage of GPU-type batch execution models. Given that you worked transmeta and JIT compiled host-targeted runtimes. GPUs 1,000-thread schedulers seem like the next great paradigm for the exact type of machines that Linux does best on.
Linus: I don't think we'll see the kernel ever treat GPU threads the way wetreat CPU threads. Not with the current model of GPU's (and that modeldoesn't really seem to be changing all that much any more).
Yes, GPU's are getting much better, and now generally have virtualmemory and the ability to preempt execution, and you could run an OSon them. But the scheduling latencies are pretty high, and the threadsare not really "independent" (ie they tend to share a lot of state -like the virtual address space and a large shared register set), soGPU "threads" don't tend to work like CPU threads. You'd schedule themall-or-nothing, so if you were to switch processes, you'd treat theGPU as one entity where you switch all the threads at once.
So it really wouldn't look like a thousand threads to the kernel. TheGPU would still be scheduled as one single entity (or maybe a coupleof entities depending on how the GPU is partitioned). The fact thatthat single entity works by doing a lot of things in massiveparallelism is kind of immaterial for the kernel that doesn't end upseeing that parallelism as separate threads.
alleged danger of Artificial Intelligence
by peter303
Some computer experts like Marvin Minsky, Larry Page, Ray Kuzweil think A.I. will be a great gift to Mankind. Others like Bill Joy and Elon Musk are fearful of potential danger. Where do you stand, Linus?
Linus: I just don't see the thing to be fearful of.
We'll get AI, and it will almost certainly be through something verymuch like recurrent neural networks. And the thing is, since that kindof AI will need training, it won't be "reliable" in the traditionalcomputer sense. It's not the old rule-based prolog days, when peoplethought they'd *understand* what the actual decisions were in an AI.
And that all makes it very interesting, of course, but it also makesit hard to productize. Which will very much limit where you'llactually find those neural networks, and what kinds of network sizesand inputs and outputs they'll have.
So I'd expect just more of (and much fancier) rather targeted AI,rather than anything human-like at all. Language recognition, patternrecognition, things like that. I just don't see the situation whereyou suddenly have some existential crisis because your dishwasher isstarting to discuss Sartre with you.
The whole "Singularity" kind of event? Yeah, it's science fiction, andnot very good SciFi at that, in my opinion. Unending exponentialgrowth? What drugs are those people on? I mean, really..
It's like Moore's law - yeah, it's very impressive when something can(almost) be plotted on an exponential curve for a long time. Veryimpressive indeed when it's over many decades. But it's _still_ justthe beginning of the "S curve". Anybody who thinks any different isjust deluding themselves. There are no unending exponentials.
Is the kernel basically a finished project?
by NaCh0
Aside from adding drivers and refactoring algorithms when performance limits are discovered, is there anything left for the kernel? Maybe it's a failure of tech journalism but we never hear about the next big thing in kernel land anymore.
Linus: I don't think there's much of a "next big thing" in the kernel.
I wouldn't say that there is nothing but drivers (and architecturesare kind of "CPU drivers) and improving scalability left, because I'mconstantly amazed by how many new things people figure out are stillgood ideas. But they tend to still be pretty incremental improvements.An OS kernel doesn't look *that* radically different from what it was40 years ago, and that's fine. I think radical new ideas are oftenoverrated, and the thing that really matters in the end is thatplodding detail work. That's how technology evolves.
And judging by how our kernel releases are going, there's no end insight for that "plodding detail work". And it's still as interestingas it ever was.
Related Links
Fallen Hero (Score:5, Funny)
You can say the word "systemd", It's not a four-letter word. Seven letters. Count them.
Heretic! Blasphemer! Shun the non-believer!
- byAnonymous Coward writes:
I really wanted the definitive answer to HOSTS vs AdBlock.
- bytaoboy( 118003 ) writes:
If you read beyond the answers to specific questions, and consider how these answers illustrate how this person thinks, you have a very significant interview...
- bynetsys( 1462063 ) writes:According to Google translate his Swedish quote is 'Burned child smells bad'
Re:Swedish quote (Score:4, Informative)
According to this native Swedish speaker, Google Translate is spot on (well, "burned" -> "burnt"). It is a jocular rewrite of "bränt barn skyr elden", aka "burnt child shuns the fire".
From Wikipedia [wikiquote.org]:
Bränt barn skyr elden.
- Translation: Burnt child shuns fire.
- Note: Sometimes jokingly put as "bränt barn luktar illa" ("burnt child smells bad").
- English equivalent: Once bitten, twice shy.
- "Somebody who has had an unpleasant experience thereafter shrinks from the cause of that experience."
- byTim the Gecko( 745081 ) writes:English equivalent: "once bitten, twice shy" -https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/... [wikiquote.org]
kinda dissapointed... (Score:1, Interesting)
byhitmark( 640295 ) writes:That Torvalds has bought the whole "just a init" marketing spiel surrounding systemd.
It is a init.
And a cron.
And a inetd.
And a network manager.
And a dhcp client.
And a (caching) DNS client.
And a session/seat manager.
And a firewall manager.
And a boot manager.
And a
And soon to be a tty manager.Its proponents may claim that all those are optional.
From a init point of view sure.
But from a desktop point of view, wanting to use any of those make systemd-as-init mandatory.
Re:kinda dissapointed... (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately for you, Torvalds understands more about systemd that you do. You need to read and comprehend a little more, stop relying on trolls that also don't know what systemd is or isn't. 90% of those items listed are optional but are part of the "systemd project" and not part of the systemd binary, you can choose to use any of them over the current offerings if you wish, its not compulsory.Re:kinda dissapointed... (Score:5, Insightful)
bydrinkypoo( 153816 ) writes: <drink@hyperlogos.org>on Thursday July 02, 2015 @12:06AM (#50030481)HomepageJournalYep, Linus himself brings up the two actual main issues with systemd itself. one, not a fan of binary logging. two, some of the personalities involved are problematic. The bigger issue, though, is systemd's influence over other projects. But that wasn't raised, so why would he comment?
- byThatsNotPudding( 1045640 ) writes:
The bigger issue, though, is systemd's influence over other projects. But that wasn't raised, so why would he comment?
Oh, it was asked, but my question about Red Hats' (and their one employees') increasingly out-sized dominance even over desktop apps wasn't deemed worthy, much to all our detriment.
- byBarsteward( 969998 ) writes:"one, not a fan of binary logging." so he's not a fan of binary logging but he didn't say why, maybe he'll update his thoughts once he uses the related tools like journalctl to see what benefits it brings.
"two some of the personalities involved are problematic." - he's not exactly a charmer at times either depends which side of the fence you are sitting at the time. He has brought many a developer into line when they step over the boundary.
" The bigger issue, though, is systemd's influence over other pr- bydrinkypoo( 153816 ) writes:
so he's not a fan of binary logging but he didn't say why, maybe he'll update his thoughts once he uses the related tools like journalctl to see what benefits it brings.
He probably understands that making it the primary logging method and thus requiring the use of the special tools for the least troubleshooting is a massive architectural mistake which is totally unnecessary and made for only arrogant reasons.
he's not exactly a charmer at times either depends which side of the fence you are sitting at the time. He has brought many a developer into line when they step over the boundary.
Sadly, he's not in a position to do that here, even if he wants to.
perhaps there was nothing to say about it as its not as worrying as people like to troll about.
Or perhaps you reveal yourself as a dbag when you call people who care about an issue trolls.
- bydevent( 1627873 ) writes:
I don't get the issue of binary logging. All files on my computer are binary, I always need some sort of program to show me the content of the file on my monitor. And what's the difference if SystemRescueCD ships journalctl alongside grep and emacs to show me system-log files?
The other, systemd's influence over other projects? What? So, if developers of Gnome or KDE decide that systemd brings a feature that they want to use (like systemd-logind) *that's* what you call "system'd influcence over other projectJust a comment.
And what's the difference if SystemRescueCD ships journalctl alongside grep and emacs to show me system-log files?
If I recall correctly, the binary format of the logs are not standardized. They are free to change between releases. Specifically, this was meant that you would need the version of journalctl that was compiled with version of systemd that was running. This was touted as one of the security (through obscurity) features of systemd's logging.
While upgrading, to debug you may need a rescue CD of the old release and a rescue CD of the new release. Or the rescue CD will have to bundle multipl
- bydevent( 1627873 ) writes:
Citation very much needed.
Here is a documentation of the binary log format:
http://www.freedesktop.org/wik... [freedesktop.org]
Systemd offers a C API to access those, an export format for easier parsing, and of course you can access the binary logs directly.
http://www.freedesktop.org/sof... [freedesktop.org]
http://www.freedesktop.org/wik... [freedesktop.org]- https://docs.google.com/docume... [google.com]
Will the journal file format be standardized? Where can I find an explanation of the on-disk data structures?
At this point we have no intention to standardize the format and we take the liberty to alter it as we see fit. We might document the on-disk format eventually, but at this point we don’t want any other software to read, write or manipulate our journal files directly. The access is granted by a shared library and a command line tool. (But then again, it’s Free Software, so you can always read the source code!)
- bydevent( 1627873 ) writes:
And what? That was in 2011, and they wrote "At this point we have no intention to standardize the format
And the format documentation you pointed at said
Note that the actual implementation in the systemd codebase is the only ultimately authoritative description of the format, so if this document and the code disagree, the code is right.
This document describes the current format of systemd 195. The documented format is compatible with the format used in the first versions of the journal, but received various compatible additions since.
Somebody documented a current snapshot but that doesn't tell me that the format has been standardized in any way.
The code that generated the journal is the only authority on the format of the generated journal. If you want to be sure you can read it, you need the same code or a promise that the documentation does not make.
So unless you can point me at the doc that says they have commited to a standard format, I re-assert
the binary format of the logs are not standardized. They are free to change between releases. Specifically, this was meant that you would need the version of journalctl that was compiled with version of systemd that was running.
- bydevent( 1627873 ) writes:
"The documented format is compatible with the format used in the first versions of the journal, but received various compatible additions since."
So, your last statement is factually wrong, i.e. that you need the version of journalctl that systemd was running. You can use the first version of journalctl and you will be able to read systemd 195 logs. But pracically, it is not the big deal you want it to make.
What you quote is not a commitment to a standard format. It merely documents the behaviour of the current implementation. My statement stands. The format's not standardized. The developers have asserted freedom to change it. I have not seen that recanted. All simple facts. Show me the statement that the format has been locked down.
The current text logs can be read it with less, more, cat, vi or any number of other tools. If the journal format gets locked down, then I should be able to grab any old
- byBite The Pillow( 3087109 ) writes:
Are you saying that "systemd" means many different things?
Because that seems to be its first problem, and one that should be easy to correct in the next month or so. A minor change will bring on a publicity firestorm, so do it right the first time.
Putting the onus on people who read the same word in multiple contexts to learn more, seems like too much to expect at this point. It's obviously not working, and there are more reasons, but that seems to be a sticking point.
Overloading can be confusing. We kno
- byhitmark( 640295 ) writes:
Yeah, choice. Like how Wayland depends on logind depends on systemd-as-init.
Damn it, one screwball in the dependencies chain and Gimp depended on systemd-as-init.
Hit update at that time and boom your perfectly functional distro install gets a init-ectomy.
To a init that will refuse to boot if you have a vestigial entry sitting around in fstab, no less.
- byMogster( 459037 ) writes:
So it's really just Emacs in disguise?
Init is a misnomer. (Score:5, Informative)
byTenebrousedge( 1226584 ) writes: <`tenebrousedge' `at' `gmail.com'>on Wednesday July 01, 2015 @08:32PM (#50029709)The job of the init system is actually to change the system state, and hopefully to be able to guarantee that it does so. Scripts have some inherent limitations in this regard, which is why even OpenRC relies heavily on C libraries. Understanding why people have been trying to replace SysV init for the last two decades would make a lot of Systemd's design decisions more clear to you, I feel. However, I do feel you are entirely mistaken if you think there is some propaganda movement to label it as 'just' an init system. System initialization is only a subset of the problem at hand, and even the name was chosen to reflect that.
- bythegarbz( 1787294 ) writes:
EMACS is just a text editor.
GIMP is just a photo editor.
Mozilla is just a web browser.Having an system for plugins / addons / new extensible functionality doesn't make any of them something they aren't.
Systemd is an init system where I've installed it. I don't you know where you get the idea that it magically does all the rest of the stuff without someone wanting it to. It's not like there's hidden covert code somewhere in PID1 that will sneak in a DHCP request when no one is looking.
- byhitmark( 640295 ) writes:
Bingo.
Update to a recent Gnome and it will bellyache about logind, that in turn is part of system. End result, what used to be a desktop that can run on top of any init requires a specific init.
Moving forward i am expecting to see similar with their cron replacement, their networking and firewall stuff, etc etc etc.
This where before things would not care if you booted via sysv, openrc, upstart, bsd rc, or a flat shell script with a bunch of commands.
- byAnonymous Coward writes:
""" The whole "Singularity" kind of event? Yeah, it's science fiction, and not very good SciFi at that, in my opinion. Unending exponential growth? What drugs are those people on? I mean, really.. """
I agree 100%. I've given talks at Singularity U. Heavy drug use is definitely involved! (And I never drank the Kool-aid).
Thanks Linus! (Score:2, Insightful)
byAnonymous Coward writes:I'm happy to see that you don't hate systemd. That was the last shoe to drop. I'll complete the switch to BSD now!
I'm happy to see that you don't hate systemd. That was the last shoe to drop. I'll complete the switch to BSD now!
Dragonfly BSD works quite well on the desktop, as does Funtoo Linux, which is systemd-free. Gentoo also works and still uses OpenRC by default, although there is growing concern some of the devs are quietly preparing to push a systemd agenda (kdbus patches in the kernel, one of the devs commenting he hopes systemd would become the Gentoo default, and a habit of the moderators in the Gentoo for
Re:Dragonfly BSD, Funtoo, and (for now) Gentoo (Score:5, Interesting)
Linus may not be showing good leadership in this instance, but not everyone has drunk the urine just yet, and there are others stepping up to the plate to maintain or create alternatives.
Leadership is not just "responding to users" (in your case, with the silent "L"). Stepping up to the plate is a baseball term - it implies doing something. While technically "whining" is doing something, as is taking up space, it's not a useful contribution. Nor does it mean that your "demands" are worth more that those of others (even if they are less demanding).
But don't let me stop you from indulging yourself in the fantasy that "complaining" == bug reports, and that bug reports somehow equates to "you must serve me" (no matter how crackpot your "needs" i.e.I can haz my init but i demanz all references to systemd be removed, coz, um, eh, end of world scenario).And feel free to accuse me of "bullying". Continue spamming, though perhaps, if you find the free time - you could start some sort of "anti-bullying" service as you are such an expert on the subject.
I'm unique - there are a dozen OS that I don't like. I don't complain about them, I just don't use them. You're like the majority of people. Really.
I'm unique - there are a dozen OS that I don't like. I don't complain about them, I just don't use them. You're like the majority of people. Really.
You are unique. Uniquely stupid and unable to pass basic reading comprehension.
The GP felt dismayed that Linus has drunk the systemd coolaid, and wants to switch to FreeBSD. I pointed out that not everyone has been taken in by the systemd nonsense, and that their are distros available that remain untainted, that if he wants to switch to *BSD I've found Dragonf
- byDemonoid-Penguin( 1669014 ) writes:
I'm unique - there are a dozen OS that I don't like. I don't complain about them, I just don't use them. You're like the majority of people. Really.
You are unique. Uniquely stupid and unable to pass basic reading comprehension.
The GP felt dismayed that Linus has drunk the systemd coolaid, and wants to switch to FreeBSD. I pointed out that not everyone has been taken in by the systemd nonsense, and that their are distros available that remain untainted, that if he wants to switch to *BSD I've found Dragonfly to be quite nice, but that there are a number of Linux choices he has available if he doesn't want to switch.
But go ahead and label that whining, [--rant---rabid froth--bullshit--]
Bully for you. I quoted what I was responding to. And yes, you'restill whining.
You seem to feel the need to lug the goal posts around while clutching at straws to build your strawman... meh, you probably need the exercise anyway.I have no problems with people who don't want to use systemd, I don't use it for production machines myself (but apparently I'm a piss and kool-aid drinker). I don't like people who demand that choice be removed - and when the anti-systemd crowd complain it'snot because they can't
How did I guess that replies to this article would be dominated by systemd?! Always guaranteed to stir up a shit-storm of comments. Can be quite entertaining.
Anyway, I digress. Advantages of systemd are:
* Starting services in parallel, making for a more efficient bootup.
* Automatic dependency handling of services. No more need to manually change the order via symlinks.
* Monitors started services, and will automatically restart them if configured to.
* Centralised management of logged messages. No need t- byUngrounded Lightning( 62228 ) writes:
Anyway, I digress. Advantages of systemd are: [long list]
Those are all very nice things to have.
Unfortunately, for my needs, simplicity and understandability are far more important than a fast boot and feature-rich management of the runtime environment. I need to KNOW that things are being handled properly and securely. That's become far more important since Snowden showed us, not that the spooks were getting into our computers (which we'd already figured was happening), but how DEEPLY and EFFECTIVELY the
Sure, no problem. If you dislike systemd that much, it certainly makes sense to move to a different software platform. I just disagree with your arguments. Your reasoning is flawed, and I believe this is about feeling. Which is fine; needing to enjoy the OS you use is a valid reason for changing.
Your Snowden argument isn't particularly applicable in this instance, as you have access to the full source code for systemd. If you're not comfortable looking through C code, then any init system would be a pr
- byUngrounded Lightning( 62228 ) writes:
Sure, no problem. If you dislike systemd that much, it certainly makes sense to move to a different software platform.
I don't particularly dislike systemd per se. I do observe the controversy around it, and the image of it and its project, painted by its opponents (some of whom have enough creds that it's unlikely that they're talking through their hats), indicates that the claimed issues are likely to be real problems, and this may be a tipping point for Linux adoption and user choice among distributions
Excellent! It's nice to get a decent response from someone on this issue, instead of the usual emotive decry that seems to be typical of many systemd detractors.
The controversy with systemd is pretty interesting. There's a fair bit of misinformation flying around, which does muddy the water. I think this misinformation seems to be the source of many people's objections to it. Unfortunately, the only way I can see to solve this is to get people using it.
What's so great about systemd? Well, going from yo
- byookaze( 227977 ) writes:
I do observe the controversy around it, and the image of it and its project, painted by its opponents (some of whom have enough creds that it's unlikely that they're talking through their hats), indicates that the claimed issues are likely to be real problems, and this may be a tipping point for Linux adoption and user choice among distributions or OSes.
So you're saying Linux Torvalds has not enough creds so it's likely that he's talking through his hat, and you're making a fallacy by talking about Linux adoption which has nothing to do with this controversy. This controversy makes no sense for most Linux users who don't even understand what "init" is about.
I did my first Linux drivers (a PROM burner and a Selectric-with-selonoids printer) on my personal Altos ACS 68000 running System III, wrote a driver for a block-structured tape drive for AUX - working from my own decompilation of their SCSI disk driver (since the sources weren't available to me initially), ported and augmented a mainframe RAID controller from SvR3 to SvR4, and so on, for nearly three decades, through hacking DeviceTree on my current project. I don't think C has many problems left for me, nor does moving to yet another UNIX environment - especially to one that is still organized in the old, familiar, fashion. B-)
The C standard has moved since these decades, so I wouldn't say sth like that unless I was still heavily programming today.
And having problems with an init which is a very simple OS component, shows tha
- byookaze( 227977 ) writes:
Unfortunately, for my needs, simplicity and understandability are far more important than a fast boot and feature-rich management of the runtime environment. I need to KNOW that things are being handled properly and securely. That's become far more important since Snowden showed us, not that the spooks were getting into our computers (which we'd already figured was happening), but how DEEPLY and EFFECTIVELY their technology and personnel are able to do so.
So systemd is good news for you, as it removes the frightening security mess that shell initscripts were by configuration files that are not executables.
Trojan could be hidden anywhere with sysvinit, especially with links everywhere, it was just impossible to monitor. Security is one of the reason I stopped using sysvinit more than a decade ago on my servers and desktops.I need to KNOW that things are being handled properly and securely. That's become far more important since Snowden showed us, not that the spooks were getting into our computers (which we'd already figured was happening), but how DEEPLY and EFFECTIVELY their technology and personnel are able to do so.
It always was important, Snowden just opened more eyes, but lots of people already knew, some still have their eyes closed though.
If the improved functionality is at the cost of burying the configuration and logging in non-human-readable form and entangling diverse processes into an interlocking mass under a complex and ever growing manager, the shark has been jumped.
That was
Gosh, well, thanks for the enlightening response. I guess those who really understand Unix don't feel the need to produce a well reasoned and rational argument.
As I understand the three major forks:
One (OpenBSD) is for having as secure a desktop/server/embedded platform as the maintainers can manage - important in this post-Snowden era (as it was, all unknown, in the era preceding Snowden B-b). It is based outside the US so it can incorporate strong encryption without coming afoul of US export controls.
One (NetBSD) is for developing network internals software and networking platforms (typically ported, when possible and not part of a proprietary product, to the o
Hi! I'm the guy who asked the question on functional languages. Mr. Torvalds answered my question beautifully and correctly, but I just want to make a small clarification to my original's tone (just for the record). If you read it, it kind of reads as though I have a negative slant against functional languages. I don't actually think that; I rephrased my question several times, and unfortunately I muddled it up in doing so. (The eye and the mind see different things, so the saying goes)
I think both low l
- bycolumbus( 444812 ) writes:
Linus mentioned a Swedish phrase: "Bränt barn luktar illa"
I got curious and ran it through Google Translate."Bränt barn luktar illa" in Swedish = "Burned child smells bad" in English.
What the hell?
Is that a bad translation or is that actually right? If that's right, that seems pretty grim to me. Would a native Swedish speaker on this thread be willing to explain that the origin of that phrase?- byEmeraldBot( 3513925 ) writes:
Linus mentioned a Swedish phrase: "Bränt barn luktar illa"I got curious and ran it through Google Translate.
"Bränt barn luktar illa" in Swedish = "Burned child smells bad" in English.
What the hell?Is that a bad translation or is that actually right? If that's right, that seems pretty grim to me. Would a native Swedish speaker on this thread be willing to explain that the origin of that phrase?
I'm not a native Swedish speaker, but I think I know the origin of this particular phrase. The original phrase is, I believe: "[A] burned child fears fire". It's the Swedish equivalent to "Fool me once, shame on you: fool me twice, shame on me" - once you've been bitten by a mistake, you become reluctant to do it again.
The joke here is that rather than being translated as "A burned child", it literally means "burned child", so you can interpret it literally and get a completely different meaning. Welcome
- byvux984( 928602 ) writes:
It's the Swedish equivalent to "Fool me once, shame on you: fool me twice, shame on me" - once you've been bitten by a mistake, you become reluctant to do it again.
There's a better english equivalent than that.
"Once bitten, twice shy."
- bycolumbus( 444812 ) writes:
Thanks for the explanation. I appreciate it.
- byXest( 935314 ) writes:
Don't tell me, you think "There is more than one way to skin a cat" is really used in reference to skinning cats, "Holy shit" is really a reference to the Pope's turd, and "Fucking hell" is really a reference to having sex with the underworld?
Believe it or not, other cultures have terms whose actual meanings don't tie up to their literal interpretations as well.
I don't think Linus is really comparing portable device drivers to the aftermath of an ISIS style execution of a small child or something.
Linus:
"It's like Moore's law - yeah, it's very impressive when something can (almost) be plotted on an exponential curve for a long time. Very impressive indeed when it's over many decades. But it's _still_ just the beginning of the "S curve". Anybody who thinks any different is just deluding themselves. There are no unending exponentials."
Cromwell's Rule [wikipedia.org]:
"If the prior probability assigned to a hypothesis is 0 or 1, then, by Bayes' theorem, the posterior probability (probability of the hypothesis, given the
Re:He answered the most boring questions! (Score:5, Insightful)
"I have to say, I don't really get the hatred of systemd. I think it improves a lot on the state of init"
He answered it. What the fuck is with you people?
- byMerk42( 1906718 ) writes:It's the typical FOSS mindset.
Since you did something other than whatI wanted, all of your work was a waste of time.- byKjella( 173770 ) writes:
It's the typical FOSS mindset. Since you did something other than what I wanted, all of your work was a waste of time.
I think those wanna-be generals aren't really the community, but those who want to exploit the community to achieve their pet goals. To steal an expression from 4chan: The FOSS community is not your personal army. The opposite is less intuitive, but it also means the community isn't going to stand still just because your pet needs have been met while many others feel theirs haven't. For example I haven't heard much shit about PulseAudio in recent years, though initially it was rather crappy but it did add f
No, they just need reliable Linux distros. (Score:4, Insightful)
What you're claiming is at odds with the real situation.
The people who are most against systemd are the serious, professional, often long-time Linux system administrators who have to provision and maintain production Linux systems.
Maybe it's okay if systemd and PulseAudio fuck up your single Ubuntu workstation. That's not a luxury that these admins have. They need their Linux systems to work reliably all of the time.
This level of stability was very achievable in the past, before a distro like Debian adopted systemd. But now that it has, its quality has dropped off precipitously. Yes, this completely unnecessary drop in quality will make responsible people very angry!
There is no conspiracy, like you've convinced yourself that there is. There are just many experienced sysadmins who need Linux distros that work. With all of the major Linux distros switching to systemd lately, and the many problems this has caused, these sysadmins are left in a bad position.
They can't wait a decade for the problems to be sorted out. They need to act now. Many are doing something they probably should have done years ago, and are moving to FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Some are even moving to Windows, as unfortunate as that is.
The robustness and reliability of Linux systems aren't "pet needs". They're the very factors that will, if ignored, result in Linux losing its current position. A robust and reliable Linux kernel is useless if the init system and userland stack running on top of it is full of problems. The entire package just won't be useful.
- byBarsteward( 969998 ) writes:"The people who are most against systemd are the serious, professional, often long-time Linux system administrators who have to provision and maintain production Linux systems." - can you point to the proof of that statement and the others you make?
- Me. I'm a sysadmin of several years and systemd is not something my colleagues and I are looking forward to. It changes things on many levels and will require rewriting of many tools to upgrade our infrastructure and production Systems not to mention the test and staging environments. The (non technical) developers that don't see beyond the few learned CLI commands for years will also have to change. All because of systemd. My own desktop experience says we are in for a lot of trouble ala how windows admins
Re:No, they just need reliable Linux distros. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe it's okay if systemd and PulseAudio fuck up your single Ubuntu workstation. That's not a luxury that these admins have. They need their Linux systems to work reliably all of the time.
Or maybe it's okay if systemd fucks up all the servers running RHEL 7. After all, nothing important runs on that. So let's check, is Red Hat Inc. tanking and considering backtracking? Hell no, they're growing strong both in revenue and profits in the year that's passed since. So if a $14 billion dollar company can make systemd work for them, it probably can't be that bad. Or if it's bad, well then rip out the bad parts like write a non-binary log because how hard could it be to take the binary messages, printf and log the text in addition to/instead of a blob? Sometimes it sounds like the only two options is to drink the kool-aid or nuke it from orbit.
Re:No, they just need reliable Linux distros. (Score:5, Interesting)
Long time Linux system admin here, of over 20 years experience. Systemd is both stable and an improvement over sysv. The only instability I've ever heard of was through upgrading a system from sysv to systemd, and even then, it was only for certain edge cases. That is the fault of the upgrade process, not the end system. So, while systemd is stable, the upgrade process is still being tweaked. I presume this is why Debian still has sysv in their stable release.
I'm happy to run my production systems with systemd. In fact, I do already for some. They work reliably all of the time. Systemd works, and it works fine.
As for the dislike of systemd, I think it is partially rooted in the loss of a scriptable init system. The move from a scripted system to a binary system makes working around certain problems harder to manage. Of course, you can still use scripts to start up services, but it's not core to the process any more.
- byquantaman( 517394 ) writes:
What you're claiming is at odds with the real situation.
The people who are most against systemd are the serious, professional, often long-time Linux system administrators who have to provision and maintain production Linux systems.
Maybe it's okay if systemd and PulseAudio fuck up your single Ubuntu workstation. That's not a luxury that these admins have. They need their Linux systems to work reliably all of the time.
This level of stability was very achievable in the past, before a distro like Debian adopted systemd. But now that it has, its quality has dropped off precipitously. Yes, this completely unnecessary drop in quality will make responsible people very angry!
There is no conspiracy, like you've convinced yourself that there is. There are just many experienced sysadmins who need Linux distros that work. With all of the major Linux distros switching to systemd lately, and the many problems this has caused, these sysadmins are left in a bad position.
They can't wait a decade for the problems to be sorted out. They need to act now. Many are doing something they probably should have done years ago, and are moving to FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Some are even moving to Windows, as unfortunate as that is.
The robustness and reliability of Linux systems aren't "pet needs". They're the very factors that will, if ignored, result in Linux losing its current position. A robust and reliable Linux kernel is useless if the init system and userland stack running on top of it is full of problems. The entire package just won't be useful.
I'm not sure it's precisely that, developers want systems to improve so they can add new features and capabilities, but if I'm an admin then fundamentally all I really care about is reliability and uptime. For them a perfect OS never changes at all outside of bug fixes.
Init might be a massive PITA but it's a PITA they've already got working and trust. Their hatred of systemd might be based on very legitimate stability concerns, but it also might be a very rational response to a change which brings a minimal
--I'm not an AC. I've been using/adminning Linux since 1996, and I *despise* systemd. I'm looking into Mint Debian edition #2, Void, and Devuan to get away from systemd.
--Not looking to get into an argument, just wanted you all to know that we do exist, we are real admins, and we want a sane init environment + logging system that we can work with.
--#1, systemd takes away choice. Binary logging by default is incredibly bad, and I don't want to have to change it manually every time I do an install. If I wanted Windows, AIX or Solaris, I'd be running those instead of Linux. I think way too many distros are changing over to systemd when it's not really what a lot of people want or need. SysV was OK, Upstart was fine for most people's needs. Give me a sane
--Systemd resembles the MCP from TRON too much for my taste,
- byLunix Nutcase( 1092239 ) writes:
Doesn't mean systemd should be default across all dists
It isn't, but it's really not your choice if you aren't the one making and maintaining the distro, no?
Doesn't mean systemd should be default across all dists
It isn't, but it's really not your choice if you aren't the one making and maintaining the distro, no?
Two words: Fork it.
- byBarsteward( 969998 ) writes:they did one fork.. Devuan. but it doesn't seem to have made many headlines lately
Yeah, 'cuz it failed right away. They spent more time mislabelling each other as "systemd trolls" than they ever spent on doing something useful, like, you know, forking Debian.
- byDemonoid-Penguin( 1669014 ) writes:
Yeah, 'cuz it failed right away. They spent more time mislabelling each other as "systemd trolls" than they ever spent on doing something useful, like, you know, forking Debian.
I believe you're being unfair to all those experienced Unix system administrators - one of them raised enough money to buy a new laptop, and the others spend their time spraying lists and forums with spurious claims. I'd hardly call that failure.
Oh wait... do you mean theyreally intended tocreate something in software? In that case - I was wrong, and youare right.
- byEunuchswear( 210685 ) writes:
So you're saying all those messages I get from the mailing list are a hallucination?
All those messages?
https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/list/dng.en.html [dyne.org]
Yeah, that's a load of messages.
Not.
And, by the way, could someone please explain what Devuan is trying to do? I've heard they want to make a Debian distribution that doesn't use systemd. But that already exists, it's called Debian Jessie.
I am aware that it can be taken out of the driver's seat (I do so every time), but I am also aware that doing so doesn't remove the dependencies on the libraries and that the systemd team is hard at work removing even that option.
Re:He answered the most boring questions! (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree that Torvalds isn't the authoritative god of all that makes up a distribution and as such his opinion is one to be considered, but no the only one.
Also he speaks to the biggest fundamental controversy, the log strategy/format. I agree with Torvalds, that the capabilities of systemd are interesting, but I personally find the bathwater that comes with it troublesome enough to not want it. That and how they engage with the community at times. A lot of the other gripes about systemd are more implementation mistakes that are unintended and often addresed, but this part is very explicitly intentional and counter arguments have been dismissed out of hand.
Re:He answered the most boring questions! (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree that Torvalds isn't the authoritative god of all that makes up a distribution and as such his opinion is one to be considered, but no the only one.
True. Those of us who were "there" remember when he didn't think it was that big a deal to develop the kernel using proprietary tools, esp. source code control systems (can you say"Bitkeeper" [wikipedia.org]), and couldn't understand why everybody was whining about the risks.
We all know how that ended. It blew up all in the kernel developers faces.However, it also meant that he sat down and started writing git, and as a result we're all nowbetter off than where we started.
So have faith. Either he's right, and systemd will not turn out to be that bad, or his faith in systemd will end in tears, and then, he'll sit down and write a new startup management system that will kick everybody else's collective asses!
In either case, we win!
- byUngrounded Lightning( 62228 ) writes:
So have faith. Either he's right, and systemd will not turn out to be that bad, or his faith in systemd will end in tears, and then, he'll sit down and write a new startup management system that will kick everybody else's collective asses!
Or maybe somebody ELSE will write a kick-ass init system, and Linus will say "Hey, that's cool!" and promote it. Or the maintainers of a major distribution will adopt it. Or those of a MINOR distribution will - and user will migrate.
Linus is great. But why does THIS hav
- byreve_etrange( 2377702 ) writes:
Bitkeeper was also available for free
Only to kernel developers.
make that just happen by breaking the rules
You can't break a license agreement to which you aren't a party. If your opinion was widespread, Samba wouldn't exist.
specifically they reverse-engineered the Bitkeeper protocol
I'm sure typing 'help' at the telnet prompt was a real strain on Tridge's gray cells.
I think your choice of example is rather meaningless, given it was a (member of) the Samba development team that reversed engineered the protocol.
- byreve_etrange( 2377702 ) writes:
given it was a (member of) the Samba development team
Eunuchswear'sreply [slashdot.org] hit the nail on the head.
reversed engineered the protocol.
More like an API implementation than reverse engineering. All he did was use telnet to send plaintext commands like 'help' and 'clone' and pipe the output to files. The names of the commands were taken from the output of 'help' or the kernel mailing list.
- byreve_etrange( 2377702 ) writes:
No, that's exactly the interest of his example.
Yup, thanks.
- bylars_stefan_axelsson( 236283 ) writes:
It blew up for *political* reasons, not for *technical* reasons.
Yes. And since we live in a political world where technology always have to bend to political realities, they cannot and should not be ignored.
Great thinkers, like Stallman, recognise this, and hence does "over the top" things like starting writing a free compiler and invent the very concept of software freedom, i.e. they focus on the political, that which out nothing much can exist. Lesser thinkers, like Linus Torvalds, doesn't, instead thinking that technology and the development of complex technical syst
"I have to say, I don't really get the hatred of systemd. I think it improves a lot on the state of init"
He answered it. What the fuck is with you people?
It's like saying, "At least they're trying." Not exactly a positive endorsement on the quality of the systemd code.
"I don't get the hatred" means "at least they're trying?"
How long are you going to grasp at straws that Linus doesn't like systemd? To the point where you give up and say "well his opinion doesn't matter anyway"?- byBarsteward( 969998 ) writes:"Not exactly a positive endorsement on the quality of the systemd code." - how on earth do you get that understanding from what he said? its called "grasping at straws"
- byviperidaenz( 2515578 ) writes:
don't forget Git
- bySargentDU( 1161355 ) writes:Windows 7 is two releases old (Win 8 and 8.1) and soon to be three releases old when 10 comes out.
- byEunuchswear( 210685 ) writes:
One of my reasons for picking Linux over Windows was a boot process consisting of simple easy to understand shell scripts.
They you'd best stay away from sysvinit which has everything except "simple easy to understand shell scripts".
Re:He answered the most boring questions! (Score:4, Insightful)
He did answer what you wanted:
Yeah, I've had some personality issues with some of the maintainers, but that's about how you handle bug reports and accept blame (or not) for when things go wrong.If people thought that meant that I dislike systemd, I will have to disappoint you guys.
- bySargentDU( 1161355 ) writes:I think you asked the wrong person your question. That is why it is not answered. I don't know who is in a position to address your complaint though either.
- byfaway( 4112407 ) writes:that was always a problem of Linux being reliant on X Windows, and you don't know if the X windows is going to run properly until it's installed.therefore the installer has to be text-based, or so they claim.
but it's all BS. the people who are doing the video drivers have a vested interest in discouraging direct use of those video drivers -- they are typically employed in jobs that have to do with either X Windows or something related. they want you to use X, even though X is terribly insec- byhitmark( 640295 ) writes:
What people gloss over is that you don't install OSX on your own. You buy a Mac (the worlds biggest dongle, imo) and it comes preinstalled.
Similarly with Windows, outside of the build it yourself enthusiasts people buy Windows preinstalled on some kind of x86 device.
Look at Chromebooks and you see preinstalled Linux.
Look at Android and you see preinstalled Linux.
Netbooks (that Chromebooks could be considered related to) started out as preinstalled Linux, but MS and Intel joined forces in smothering that bab
- bybrantondaveperson( 1023687 ) writes:
you don't install OSX on your own.
You can though, and I have, and it's incredibly simple to do. Of course, they do have the huge advantage of very minimal hardware support to worry about, but the installer is a very nice piece of work.
Re:linux hard to install and use for desktop users (Score:5, Informative)
that was always a problem of Linux being reliant on X Windows, and you don't know if the X windows is going to run properly until it's installed. therefore the installer has to be text-based, or so they claim. but it's all BS. the people who are doing the video drivers have a vested interest in discouraging direct use of those video drivers -- they are typically employed in jobs that have to do with either X Windows or something related. they want you to use X, even though X is terribly insecure and generally crappy software.
Not sure if you're stoned or trolling or dropped out of a time vortex from the 90s, but
1) GUI installers have been the norm for desktop oriented distros for years, mostly through live CDs.
2) For most of Linux history there's been zero credible competitors to X
3) Wayland is mainly driven by ex-X developers
4) Wayland will still need drivers to have accelerated graphics5) Neither application developers nor users usually see X, you write against for example Qt and the toolkit takes care of talking to X. They might hate X, but they hide its quirks pretty well.
- byi.r.id10t( 595143 ) writes:
Of the 7 linux boxes I keep up and running and actually use for something on a very regular basis, 4 of them do not have any flavor of X installed. One of those 4 has a few X libraries installed (for me to one run app over a SSH tunnel on a local X server), but the other 3 are pure command line only.
So how exactly is Linux reliant on X windows?
Granted, a lot of things that a majority of people use a computer for need a windowing environment (a blinking cursor *is* graphical!) but very serviceable Linux mac
Re:linux hard to install and use for desktop users (Score:5, Insightful)
1999 called and wants its meme back.
Seriously, have you actuallyused any modern Linux distros? Hey, good news, it has gottenso easy to install and use, you don't even need toinstall it! Download any of a dozen LiveCD / DVD / BRD / Thumbdrive versions, burn it to the appropriate media, and reboot. Bam! You have a fully functional modern OS at your fingertips.
Give it a try, and if you don't like it, it comes with a 100% money back guarantee.- byaitikin( 909209 ) writes:
1999 called and wants its meme back.Seriously, have you actuallyused any modern Linux distros? Hey, good news, it has gottenso easy to install and use, you don't even need toinstall it! Download any of a dozen LiveCD / DVD / BRD / Thumbdrive versions, burn it to the appropriate media, and reboot. Bam! You have a fully functional modern OS at your fingertips.Give it a try, and if you don't like it, it comes with a 100% money back guarantee.
Seriously, evenGentoo [gentoo.org] (notorious for having one of the more complex installs) has a graphical installer as of somewhere near 5 years ago. I don't understand where the original poster is coming from...
- byviperidaenz( 2515578 ) writes:
Probably from installing the Debian base system from 3.5" floppies in 1997. The waiting a day or so while the rest of it downloads over your dodgy dialup connection. The one that didn't work until you bought a new modem because the dodgy Winmodem you had didn't work outside of Windows.
- byBlaskowicz( 634489 ) writes:
It does work wonderfully, especially for the common random hardware that's two or three to nine year-old. But you still get some shit like editing the grub line for the first couple boots if you have some video card. Or the state of your alsa + pulseaudio depends a lot on what sound card or distro you're using : if I change one or the other I get a different set up - and if my music player isn't pleased by the result it decides that its volume slider will control the master volume.
I think it's one of those "And when she was good, She was very, very good, But when she was bad, she was horrid." type things.
Linux installers have the "simple" cases covered pretty well by now, and if you're not doing anything too funky, you're fine.
But if you have some sort of edge case - rare hardware, non-standard partition setup, etc., you can quickly fall off the rails of the GUI installer and be relegated to a regime where there's only a handful of people in the world who might be able to understand
Re:linux hard to install and use for desktop users (Score:5, Insightful)
bydrinkypoo( 153816 ) writes: <drink@hyperlogos.org>on Thursday July 02, 2015 @12:14AM (#50030499)HomepageJournalFor people who have run into those sorts of situations, they tend to remember it. The fact that 99.9% of people can install with no problems doesn't counteract the fact that they spent 12 hours banging their head against the wall trying to fix a "simple" issue with their installation.
How is that different from Windows, though? When I got my GA-MA770-UD3P 1.0, trying to install XP produced a black screen with a broad variety of video card options, and two different known-good power supplies. Eventually a BIOS update fixed the problem, which is why I single out the motherboard. My CPU and RAM both might have played parts, oddly. Gigabyte told me they couldn't explain it and they wanted me to pay hourly for them to figure it out, but eventually they must have figured it out because a BIOS update cured the problem.
Meanwhile, Linux installed just fine.
A Windows update is also staggeringly likely to send you back to the store to replace your peripherals. For people who don't have any, whatever, but MFDs and scanners and whatnot often don't work on the new Windows for some dumb reason. Usually they speak the same protocol as still-supported devices... which is handy if you're a Linux user.
I've had Windows just mysteriously refuse to play ball on machines where Linux works great. Just trying to find a driver for my Renesas USB3 card for Windows is ugh, but obviously, the driver comes with the Linux kernel. Blah blah blah. Anecdote, data, whatever.
If you have some sort of edge case,any OS can crap on you.
- byperryizgr8( 1370173 ) writes:
trying to installXP
BZZZZT! Comparing a 20 year old OS to bleeding edge Linux distros is stupid. Try the Win 10 (almost nightly) builds and experience an install experience than any Linux build.
- byBite The Pillow( 3087109 ) writes:
I love to give open source a hard time, because most of its advocates (who are generally not contributors, but rather evangelists) are blind to the bad sides.
But, pretty much anything Linux is rock-solid and quite user friendly since my brother sent me a CD in 1997 or so. If I didn't have a penchant for certain aspects of Windows, and a strong muscle memory for short-cuts (which I realize can be customized, but I also made a previous point), I would have no reason to use anything other than Linux.
And I say
- bymeta-monkey( 321000 ) writes:8 months ago I installed Linux Mint on my wife's grandmother's computer and on my grandfather's computer. Since then I have received 1 tech support call from grandpa (couldn't find his bookmarks in Firefox) and 2 from grandma (mainly related to not understanding how Skype works. But that's an application issue. The OS recognized and worked correctly with the camera and mic instantly). It's just not that hard anymore. Things are stable and far more intuitive in desktop land.
To be fair, Windows is also much b
- byhitmark( 640295 ) writes:
Gnome, KDE, heck even XFCE or LXDE/LXQT would do.
What it comes down to is not the interface, but that it comes preinstalled and configured for the hardware it runs on.
OSX comes preinstalled on Mac (basically a massive dongle these days). Windows comes preinstalled on a range of x86 based devices.
The buyer unpacks, turns on, enters some basic account data, and starts using.
- byRamze( 640788 ) writes:
This has always been my primary issue. The problem being that developers don't care what I want. I can't fault them for it as Linux is generally given away free, so it's not like I'm paying their salaries. They generally care more about their own personal tastes or that of the corporations that buy their linux support contracts.
I do not care for Gnome, KDE, XFCE, or MATE... I absolutely hate Unity. I do like Cinnamon -- but even with lovely distros like Linux Mint and the Ubuntu derivative Cubuntu, t
Re:linux hard to install and use for desktop users (Score:4, Informative)
bywolrahnaes( 632574 ) writes: <sean&seanharlow,info>on Wednesday July 01, 2015 @07:41PM (#50029417)HomepageJournalI have to strongly disagree. I've been using Linux-based OSes intermittently since around the time 2.2 was released and have run some of my machines exclusively on Debian or its derivatives since 2004. It used to be a pain to deal with, particularly multimedia and WiFi drivers, but these days it's almost guaranteed that more will work out of the box on Ubuntu than does on a fresh Windows install.
My current laptop is 100% functional on Ubuntu 12.04 or newer with no messing around required. WiFi works, GPU works, SD reader works, etc. My home-built desktop requires a slightly newer distro to support accelerated graphics out of the box and still depends on binary drivers to get useful 3D performance thanks to its Geforce 970 graphics, but otherwise is also fully supported. Both of those require a pile of drivers to work fully even on the latest beta versions of Windows, some of which are very hard to find thanks to OEM-only components where the vendors don't provide standalone downloads. The closest I got in either case to going out of my way for Linux compatibility is choosing nVidia graphics over AMD, but in both cases I'd have done the same even for a Windows-only box because they simply had the better offerings.
I haven't been required to even go as far as dropping to the command line or editing a config file to get something working in years. The last time I had to do anything like that was back when VDPAU was a new thing and I was trying to get a XBMC running with hardware video decoding and HDMI audio output on a fairly new nVidia graphics card. nVidia's ALSA support was pretty flaky at the time so every kernel update required recompiling a few things to get sound back.
I still do tend to use consoles and config files to set things up the way I like them because I know what I'm doing and can get it done faster, but it's in no way required. If I was setting up a new PC for my grandmother I'd probably use Ubuntu rather than Windows because she could do everything on the internet exactly the same as she currently does but wouldn't be able to fuck it up by clicking on every stupid popup she gets.
- bywestlake( 615356 ) writes:Geek humor is to humor what military music is to music.
Re:Totally excellent exchange! (Score:4, Insightful)
Linus has seemed to have weathered many storms and has gathered some wisdom and perspective missing from his earliest pronouncements. This was one of the best
I agree. This is one of the better/most-on-topic things I've seen on
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