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posted by chromas on Wednesday September 16 2020, @06:46AM   Printer-friendly

Linux 5.9 Dropping Soft Scrollback Support From FB + VGA Console Code - Phoronix:

VGACON/FBCON for the basic Linux console has supported a software scrollback buffer with the Shift + PageUp keyboard sequence for scrolling up in the output for contents out of view. But with most people not making heavy use of the frame-buffer console these days and the code being unmaintained, it's being stripped out from Linux 5.9.

As a post-5.9-rc5 change, Linus dropped the FBCON code and the similar VGACON scrollback support.

[Linus] Torvalds wrote, "This (and the VGA soft scrollback) turns out to have various nasty small special cases that nobody really is willing to fight. The soft scrollback code was really useful a few decades ago when you typically used the console interactively as the main way to interact with the machine, but that just isn't the case any more. So it's not worth dragging along."

I dunno about you lot but I absolutely still use soft scrollback. Not every day by any means but it's damned near essential if you or a system or driver update have somehow managed to get X into a hosed state and you don't normally have sshd enabled.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @06:51AM (17 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @06:51AM (#1051599)

    screen or tmux

    it's neat but userspace is better for this

    • (Score: 2) by leon_the_cat on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:04AM (15 children)

      by leon_the_cat (10052) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:04AM (#1051602) Journal

      I still use this feature quite a lot, surprised it is going to be killed.

      • (Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:12AM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:12AM (#1051605)

        I have "more" or "less" - never used this feature.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:37PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:37PM (#1051775)

          I use it to review the startup logs when things go wonky before login support is available. less can't help you when you can't log in, and in those situations the logs often don't make it to disk, especially when systemd is at fault.

          • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @04:40PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @04:40PM (#1051838)

            systemd

            Found your problem.

            Why are you using systemd? Stop using that shite! If you want a server, use Gentoo. If you want a desktop/laptop OS, use Void.

            Also, if you can't log in, you're using a recovery system anyway. Then like magic, less is able to help you!

        • (Score: 2) by sonamchauhan on Thursday September 17 2020, @02:44PM

          by sonamchauhan (6546) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 17 2020, @02:44PM (#1052214)

          But what is less than 'less'?

          I use this feature.

          Also remote X and text logs.

      • (Score: 4, Informative) by loonycyborg on Wednesday September 16 2020, @08:51AM (5 children)

        by loonycyborg (6905) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @08:51AM (#1051630)

        I used it before but very limited size of scrollback buffer often got in the way, also it forgot buffer once you switch to X server from it and then back. Switching to screen/tmux definitely makes sense.

        • (Score: 2) by leon_the_cat on Wednesday September 16 2020, @09:18AM (4 children)

          by leon_the_cat (10052) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @09:18AM (#1051631) Journal

          I don't buy your argument. The limit could be changed. It forgot buffer? I have never noticed this! Why is screen/tmux required for this seems huge overkill.

          • (Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Wednesday September 16 2020, @09:27AM (2 children)

            by loonycyborg (6905) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @09:27AM (#1051633)

            Like when system boots you can see kernel/service output, then X server starts. But say if I saw some errors in output and want to investigate them. I switch back to original VT and try shift-pgup, and it just doesn't work. Have to look up in system log instead. It's really annoying. I don't know how to adapt terminal multiplexer to this case but it's the last use for text VTs I have now beside system recovery.

            • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:39PM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:39PM (#1051776)

              You can't use those tools in this case, because they aren't available that early in the boot sequence. Getting rid of the scroll-lock feature is another major problem, because you could use it to pause the boot sequence before X started, so you could actually look at the logs.

              • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @04:32PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @04:32PM (#1051833)

                "Scroll-lock?" You know that you can boot in single user mode, and if your distro is sane that will prevent X from starting among other changes to the boot sequence? You also know that you can access early kernel output after it scrolls by with dmesg?

                Do you even know what you're talking about?

          • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday September 17 2020, @12:51PM

            by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Thursday September 17 2020, @12:51PM (#1052151) Homepage
            Using the *kernel* to perform some little userspace UI nicety seems like the huger overkill.
            The kernel gave you (userspace) the chars, you forgot them, why's that the kernel's problem?
            --
            Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
      • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday September 16 2020, @12:19PM (4 children)

        by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Wednesday September 16 2020, @12:19PM (#1051657) Journal

        I'm not surprised. The console is handy when the GUI fails to launch. And scrollback was handy.

        But expected, because what ordinary users want is irrelevant.

        --
        SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
        • (Score: 5, Insightful) by HiThere on Wednesday September 16 2020, @01:43PM (2 children)

          by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 16 2020, @01:43PM (#1051699) Journal

          Well....are you going to offer to maintain it? My C is too rusty, I don't know the internals, and I've never used it anyway.

          The thing is, Free Software doesn't work on what users want, it works on what volunteers will maintain. (OK, sometimes the volunteers are companies rather than individuals, but still volunteers.) If code has vulnerabilities, and nobody will maintain it, what do you think *should* be done?

          So you're right. Free Software doesn't do what users want. (Neither does commercial software. The constraints are just different.) Except, of course, to the extent that the developers are users.

          --
          Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
          • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday September 16 2020, @04:52PM (1 child)

            by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Wednesday September 16 2020, @04:52PM (#1051842) Journal
            Why would I maintain it? Linux has slowly turned to shit. So my choices are limited to FreeBSD, OSX and IOS.

            An OS that can be rendered inoperable by changing the USB ports you plug your mouse and keyboard in while the machine is off and requires multiple reboots and reinstalling a printer driver for a printer that was never unplugged from its USB port, like happened Sunday, is not fit for consider. Even Windows is better than that.

            And with fewer maintainers who have a proper overview of how changes in one area can have "that can't happen " effects elsewhere, well, i20 years from now its going to be grim.

            I should know within another year just how much functionality I'll have in my eyes after the next rounds of surgery, but right now that laptop either gets an old version of course and used for games, or becomes a FreeBSD server.

            I've tested most of the screen readers - Apple makes the best. Linux has the absolute worst - broken.

            An iPad and shelling into FreeBSD to code is doable. And cheap.

            --
            SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
            • (Score: 2) by Pav on Wednesday September 16 2020, @11:01PM

              by Pav (114) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @11:01PM (#1052002)

              Linux has been put to the sword. Corporate grifters have pushed out many of the honest actors from leadership, even from the likes of Debian. Only corporate-approved closed-sourceable stuff doesn't get the crapware poison, and the community has to some extent been smoked out and have fled in the corporate-approved directions, and not enough to the likes of Devuan etc...

        • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @04:43PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @04:43PM (#1051839)

          oh STFU, you FOSS troll tranny.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 18 2020, @10:11PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 18 2020, @10:11PM (#1053044)

      But shift-pgup/pgdown doesn't *just work* in those :(

      It's alway annoying when you have to think 'now was it ctrl-[ or ctrl-] or ctrl-esc? And how do I get get out of this annoying sticky 'select' mode again?'

      Dropping this out will surely raise hell for all the LFS / Gentoo people, since while you're going through semi-manual distro bootstrap, this scroll back is all you have at first. Ouch!

      But I guess nobody bothers rolling their own distros any more - screw THOSE people!
      It's kinds sad to hurt the ones who probably made the whole 'distro of Linux/GNU OS market' great, and the new people just learning too.
      I get that Linus himself probably never bothers, but this ability to have complete control over the construction of an OS is kinda unique and important to the whole phenomenon of 'distros'.

      It's sad to see that become a little harder / more painful, just because its probably not even a MiB more to 'dragging along' in what is a vastly massive source tree anyway. The whole 'we do everything well' thing is also absolutely something else that made Linux (the kernel itself) amazing - it was never 'we just do what we personally like to use a lot, and screw everyone else - CBF'.

      Ah well, I guess this is nothing new - there must already be a bunch of forks re-adding everything he ripped out 'for greater elegance'? I guess at some point someone will merge them all into a super-set, which will perforce become the ultimate 'upstream' for Linux - just not under Linus' direct control - I'm thinking it'll organise more like how freeBSD does it, a model that works.

      Perhaps that's even what he's going for? A way to retire from being the centre of things, without destruction. Just gradually fading away, his version becoming more and more of an embarrassment with old age, and further aggressive cuts? Kinda like Albert Einstein in his later years.

      I guess the only way he can initiate that (without just ending up 'in charge' again) is to keep ripping stuff out (that people actually need) until those people get together, step up and collectively do something constructive about it.

      We're not there yet - I don't think.

      But I predict that he's only going to get more aggressive about ripping out stuff he doesn't personally use.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:05AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:05AM (#1051603)

    I read about this key combo some years ago... and forgot about it. I'm always using X terminals to scroll back (using the mouse) to look in the console output. Mainly because I didn't remember the key combo (and terminals make it easier to use). If I just could scroll with my mouse in the console... waaaay more conventient and catered to the way we use our computer.

    I pipe to less sometimes in the console which allows me to use the arrow keys or page-up/down without holding the shift button, but for me this breaks colored output.

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by sante on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:20AM

      by sante (6874) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:20AM (#1051609)

      Use less -R or --RAW-CONTROL-CHARS

      (From the man page: Like -r, but only ANSI "color" escape sequences are output in "raw" form. Unlike -r, the screen appearance is maintained correctly in most cases.)

  • (Score: 0, Troll) by leon_the_cat on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:11AM (17 children)

    by leon_the_cat (10052) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:11AM (#1051604) Journal

    I am impressed by you complete knowlege of how everyone uses their computers these days. I guess you use webcams to spy on us?

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:17AM (16 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:17AM (#1051608)

      It sounds like he cannot find a competent developer willing to maintain the code.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Unixnut on Wednesday September 16 2020, @10:50AM (10 children)

        by Unixnut (5779) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @10:50AM (#1051643)

        > It sounds like he cannot find a competent developer willing to maintain the code.

        To be fair, seeing how Linux seems to be progressing to Windows levels of reliability, stability and "black box behaviour", I think there is a general shortage of competent developers in the Linux ecosystem, which would affect the kernel moreso than others, as they seem to hold themselves to higher standard of development than the rest of the ecosystem.

        • (Score: 5, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Wednesday September 16 2020, @12:30PM (6 children)

          by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Wednesday September 16 2020, @12:30PM (#1051661) Journal

          People are "aging out". This includes developers.

          Once you retire, unless you're autistic, you have other things to do. And more health problems. And an awareness that you're nearer the end than the beginning.

          Think of the challenge the laid off devs who worked on Firefox faced. Some of them will never find another paying job, especially in this environment unless they switch to working on closed source. Others will drop out of the industry entirely and become bus drivers or truckers or whatever, same as previous downturns.

          Others will retire early.

          In all cases, institutional knowledge will be lost. Because people don't just get older - they get old.

          --
          SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:43PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:43PM (#1051780)

            Yup, and the new kids can't afford the time and resources required to become skilled developers, so we aren't able to replace the old guard. This is a major problem across the entire industry.

          • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:48PM (2 children)

            by Freeman (732) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:48PM (#1051785) Journal

            Then they die or sometimes they die when they're younger too. Still, the people who have had the most affect on modern computers aren't all that old. The old geezers that have died off or are dying, worked on precursors to modern computers. Just saying that old programmers aren't all that old, usually.

            --
            Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
            • (Score: 3, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Wednesday September 16 2020, @04:19PM (1 child)

              by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Wednesday September 16 2020, @04:19PM (#1051822) Journal

              This is an industry / idiocracy where the average half life of an engineer is 3 years. It's either up to management or out. And those management jobs are reserved for people whose skill set includes ass kissing and back stabbing.

              And after a certain age, you're less hireable and are expected to work for less. If old companies like Boeing haven't learned the value of institutional knowledge, you can be sure that the software industry hasn't either.

              Plus every downturn many people leave permanently. There's only so many startups that you can be in that crash and burn before you get really really cynical. And only so much crunch bs before you get fed up with incompetent assholes who continually try to bargain down how much time something should take.

              And the rise of amateurism - UX Experience Professional is just one example. At least with software, we have objective measures to get rid of some of the mistakes. Doesn't compile? No bs-omg around that - it's broken . It produces wrong output? Same thing. It breaks something else? It leaks memory? There's a race condition and the program just stops running and the cpu is pegged?

              But bad management is always an "opinion". And your opinions don't count because you don't have the title or connections.

              Hard to argue with the experience of coders who took jobs doing construction or driving a truck during a downturn and find they're happier.

              In this industry over 40 is old, over 50 is unemployable.

              --
              SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:16PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:16PM (#1051933)

                This is an industry / idiocracy where the average half life of an engineer is 3 years. It's either up to management or out.

                In my many years in this industry, I have never seen an "up or out" shop. It has in fact been the opposite, if you know what you are doing, management is not going to disturb a running operation and take a risk on you screwing up as a manager.

                In this industry over 40 is old, over 50 is unemployable.

                I have worked with many experienced engineers over 50. A good friend of mine is mid-sixties and switched jobs this year. Maybe you won't find someone over 30 at Facebook, but established orgs are happy for qualified people. Especially if they are out of child-rearing age. The job pays what it does, plus-minus.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 18 2020, @11:43PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 18 2020, @11:43PM (#1053099)

            "unless you're autistic"

            How did this become so acceptable a claim to make these days?

        • (Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @01:48PM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @01:48PM (#1051702)

          Maybe all the competent developers fail on CoC related social credit score grounds?

          I use the console daily. How big could the code be? How hard could it be to keep it going? Harder than bowdlerizing blacklist, whitelist, master and slave throughout the massive kernel source?

          • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:05PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:05PM (#1051744)

            Linus caved. I guess the millions he earns every year (though he is already wealthy) were just too good to give up on principle. Plus his daughters have been fully indoctrinated in the West Coast matriarchal religion, so he probably also caved to keep his harpy daughter happy with him.

            Spineless.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @09:47PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @09:47PM (#1051974)

            I use the console daily. How big could the code be? How hard could it be to keep it going?

            As TFA [phoronix.com] quotes Torvalds:

            Maybe there are people who haven't jumped on the whole GUI bandwagon yet, and think it's just a fad. And maybe those people use the scrollback code. If that turns out to be the case, we can resurrect this again, once we've found the sucker^Wmaintainer for it who actually uses it." [emphasis added]

            It sounds like a good case for *you* to maintain/improve that code.

            If you want that functionality and are willing to, assuming you're competent to do so, donate your time and effort to keep it, I'm sure a whole bunch of folks would be really grateful for your hard work.

            So what do you say? Have we found a new "sucker^Wmaintainer" for this code?

      • (Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:46PM (3 children)

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:46PM (#1051784) Journal

        It sounds like he cannot find a competent developer willing to maintain the code.

        Imagine how amazing the console and scrollback could be if it came under the umbrella of systemd!

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @04:03PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @04:03PM (#1051809)

          Please don't joke about that, it's probably going to happen sooner than you'd think. It's really sad to see how much Linux has sold out over the last few years. Increasingly, I don't even bother with it other than for a few applications that I run in Virtualbox. There was a time when running FreeBSD rather than Linux involved meaningful sacrfice, but *BSD have been getting better and Linux has been regressing, or moving very slowly forward.

          Being unable to scrollback means that you had better hope that somebody had the forethought to log things as you often don't know you need to scrollback until after the fact. You shouldn't need to constantly pipe input to a log file or use screen in case you need to read some of the earlier messages. I know that I personally tend not to scrollback unless something unexpected happens. If I expect to need to do so, I pipe the output through more or less or some other method to ensure that I get all of it, not just hope that what I want is there.

        • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday September 17 2020, @02:25PM

          by RS3 (6367) on Thursday September 17 2020, @02:25PM (#1052186)

          I can barely imagine such a blissful world. Systemd can fix anything. It knows what you want before you even do! We don't even need systemd kernels- I'm waiting anxiously for systemd BIOS. Then we can all relax and do nothing forever.

          /s

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 18 2020, @11:49PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 18 2020, @11:49PM (#1053104)

          Supposedly someone was working on just that, a userspace console subsystem for systemd.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 18 2020, @11:45PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 18 2020, @11:45PM (#1053101)

        No surprise there, as people can't be assed to do the due diligence that Torvalds demands.

        Much more "liberating" to hack around him with systemd and containers in the clouds.

        One reason we should really be worried for the day GHK get the reins permanently.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:14AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:14AM (#1051606)

    I don't understand whether this will break my use-case or not. I use it within konsole/gnome-terminal etc. In particular, I use it when I ssh into the cluster. Am I using this feature, or am I using a konsole/gnome-terminal feature? Usually I don't have to resort to tty on the local machine, but sometimes I do, and I may need it then as well --- is it only that that's being thrown out?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:16AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:16AM (#1051607)

      just to clarify: most often I use this to scroll through long cmake/compiler output, and it routinely happens on remote machines.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:58AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:58AM (#1051620)

      It will break it on the text console, but not anything that runs in X. It doesn't matter whether you use ssh or not, but only what kind of terminal you are using.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:33AM (20 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:33AM (#1051612)

    I guess everyone's boot process works perfectly every time, so that there's never a reason to scroll back and see what happened?

    • (Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:38AM (19 children)

      by pkrasimirov (3358) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:38AM (#1051613)

      Yeah, it's dumb to remove it.

      • (Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:50AM (18 children)

        by Bot (3902) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:50AM (#1051616) Journal

        You know, if I had spare time I would check whether the reason given by linus makes sense. We are talking about kernel devs that have trouble finding time to maintain a scrolling back feature. If it makes no sense it's likely a message. Sent to us or to whom, that would be the prob.

        --
        Account abandoned.
        • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:54AM (7 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:54AM (#1051619)

          It doesn't, but we're well past the point where Linus can be trusted.

          All other considerations aside, it's completely inappropriate to break a feature in a post-rc change, especially intentionally, and apparently just for the sake of sheer orneriness. This is Apple-grade user hostility.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @01:42PM (6 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @01:42PM (#1051698)

            It doesn't, but we're well past the point where Linus can be trusted.

            And why might that be? Did I miss something? Was he outed as an FSB operative or caught embedding GoogleAds into the kernel?

            Please.

            • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday September 16 2020, @05:59PM (5 children)

              by tangomargarine (667) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @05:59PM (#1051897)

              There was the rumor awhile back that people in that sphere didn't want to leave FLOSS BDFLs alone with women out of fear of getting accused of sexual misconduct. [theregister.com]

              (damn...talk about your poorly-timed ads: this one for some storage company features a woman *in a cape* looking all dramatic and full of justice)

              --

              And Linus's out-of-the-blue "I'm taking a break from Linux" thing [linux-magazine.com] in 2018 that looked a bit suspicious, almost as if somebody was leaning on him.

              If parent wasn't referring to this stuff, I don't know what they were getting at.

              --
              "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @09:59PM (4 children)

                by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @09:59PM (#1051985)

                There was the rumor awhile back that people in that sphere didn't want to leave FLOSS BDFLs alone with women out of fear of getting accused of sexual misconduct. [theregister.com]

                (damn...talk about your poorly-timed ads: this one for some storage company features a woman *in a cape* looking all dramatic and full of justice)

                --

                And Linus's out-of-the-blue "I'm taking a break from Linux" thing [linux-magazine.com] in 2018 that looked a bit suspicious, almost as if somebody was leaning on him.

                If parent wasn't referring to this stuff, I don't know what they were getting at.

                Sounds about right.

                However, I'd say that stuff was orthogonal to GP's assertion [soylentnews.org] that "we're well past the point where Linus can be trusted."

                Moreover, the code is being removed because there's no one to maintain it. As Torvalds says [phoronix.com]:

                Maybe there are people who haven't jumped on the whole GUI bandwagon yet, and think it's just a fad. And maybe those people use the scrollback code. If that turns out to be the case, we can resurrect this again, once we've found the sucker^Wmaintainer for it who actually uses it."

                As such, I can only assume that GP is using this as an opportunity to personally attack Torvalds. What value that has, other than GP venting his spleen, I do not know.

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2020, @05:13AM (3 children)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2020, @05:13AM (#1052097)

                  This is is just more of what reminds me of, 'getting rid of the manual off switch.' You have this massive machine, maybe it powers things, maybe it's a generator, maybe it's this or that; but, then it's decided to remove manual control/manual off switch and replace it with [insert automated IOT device]. Then, when shit hits the fan; oops, you can't just smack down that trusty, 'real,' off switch. Yes, GPS is nice; but, doesn't mean you should go and burn all paper maps.

                  Keep the damn feature in there. It's important. Type writers are important, we need them. Internal combustion engines are important, we need them. Don't forget how to use Cobol. Don't forget Fortran. Don't get rid of paper maps. Technology will progress; yes, but there are still people who speak Latin for a reason. It's a bridge to the past, a bridge that; is probably only really the most necessary once it has been severed. Plenty of all kinds of things could happen where any one of those formerly mentioned things would be extremely desirable to have; especially if a solar flare knocks out everything for a few months or so. I've used this feature before; I see no reason to get rid of it. Instead of just shaving it off the kernel; why not at least keep it and just create a kernel switch to enable it; if having it functional by default is a possible future threat (if that's possible, maybe I'm speaking out of my element). I think that'd be much more reasonable.

                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2020, @05:45AM

                    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2020, @05:45AM (#1052102)

                    Keep the damn feature in there. It's important.

                    Does that mean you're volunteering to maintain this code?

                    Because that's the problem. No one is maintaining this piece of code. Plus, the perception is that it's not in use.

                    As Torvalds clearly points out when quoted in TFA (I did link to it in the comment you replied to, but you seem to have ignored that part. He said [phoronix.com]:

                    Maybe there are people who haven't jumped on the whole GUI bandwagon yet, and think it's just a fad. And maybe those people use the scrollback code. If that turns out to be the case, we can resurrect this again, once we've found the sucker^Wmaintainer for it who actually uses it."

                    So. If you find this functionality important enough, perhaps *you* should maintain it. If not, then you're just whinging like a child that *someone else* isn't doing it.

                    You do realize that Torvalds can't *force* anyone to do anything, as the kernel devs don't work for him, right? And unsupported code has no place in a production kernel.

                    I'll say it again: If this functionality is that important to you, step up and maintain the code yourself. As long as you do that, you'll never have to worry about losing soft scrollback for frame-buffer consoles.

                    We just fixed the problem. Hooray! When do you get started?

                  • (Score: 2) by DECbot on Thursday September 17 2020, @05:46PM

                    by DECbot (832) on Thursday September 17 2020, @05:46PM (#1052302) Journal

                    Except VBA. That can go die in a dumpster fire.

                    --
                    cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
                  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Saturday September 19 2020, @07:51PM

                    by tangomargarine (667) on Saturday September 19 2020, @07:51PM (#1053656)

                    Instead of just shaving it off the kernel; why not at least keep it and just create a kernel switch to enable it; if having it functional by default is a possible future threat

                    I would assume because maintaining it involves changes that just dropping the feature entirely would avoid. The thing with programming is, as the codebase evolves, you frequently can't "just leave it in place" as things around it change, without extra effort to keep it working.

                    And this being open source, nobody probably wants to make that effort if they don't have evidence people actually need the feature. Maintaining legacy compatibility is a pretty thankless job.

                    --
                    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
        • (Score: 4, Interesting) by leon_the_cat on Wednesday September 16 2020, @08:01AM (9 children)

          by leon_the_cat (10052) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @08:01AM (#1051622) Journal

          I wonder if he is goading someone into maintaining the code.

          • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday September 16 2020, @01:04PM

            by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday September 16 2020, @01:04PM (#1051683) Homepage Journal

            I would but I don't have the time. It's not like it's overly complex compared to most of the kernel code.

            --
            My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 3, Funny) by Dr Spin on Wednesday September 16 2020, @02:27PM (7 children)

            by Dr Spin (5239) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @02:27PM (#1051723)

            I think _someone_ is goading us to switch to *BSD.

            Linux gets less useable/stable every year, and you can't blame this one on systemd (or can you? [evil cackle]).

            --
            Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
            • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday September 16 2020, @02:53PM (5 children)

              by RS3 (6367) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @02:53PM (#1051737)

              I could (and will) argue that the time and effort put into systemd development, admin, crazy problem resolution, etc., could all be put toward maintaining other better endeavors like scrollback.

              While I'm at it, a hopefully provocative question: I think that most everyone in tech, and most users, expect constant updates, patches, bugfixes, etc. Thank you MS and your whole perpetual economic motion machine for that technological cancer. That said, is it possible that the scrollback code, or any code for that matter, is mature, complete, and needs no "maintenance"?

              • (Score: 2) by DECbot on Wednesday September 16 2020, @05:16PM (3 children)

                by DECbot (832) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @05:16PM (#1051857) Journal

                I think it is a fallacy to think code will never need maintenance. This type of thinking is likely what doomed the X server. Perhaps I'm too much an enthusiast than a developer to have a constructive argument, but my understanding is a lack of maintenance of the mature X server code destined it to obsolescence. Which is why it is getting dumped now because the code is reportedly so crusty that porting it to handle modern security, user management, and incorporating bug fixes and such is more difficult than starting from scratch, thus why there is Wayland. It's the problem where the edge cases are too numerous to develop and test against that a new paradigm is needed. X server is not getting dumped because it was poorly written by some lazy slob (honestly I'm not sure who wrote and maintained the bulk of the X server code), but because the code was written to the requirements of an older system and has not been continuously modernized--only hacked to bolt-on support for new systems, it has incurred much technical debt to make it operable with newer systems that a reckoning was overdue to provide and continue to support new userland and display manager features. Again, I'm not in the development community and this is somebody else's interpretation of X vs Wayland, so if you have more input feel free to set the record strait.
                 
                Anyway, I can see the argument, the kernel shouldn't need scroll back support, that should be something like a terminal session manager. But creating a modular kernel sounds like a BSD kernel and has no place for monolithic Linux kernel. That or Linus has seen the wisdom and is retroactively trying to downsize the scope of the Linux kernel to reduce his responsibility and make some of this stuff modular (in a systemd way).

                --
                cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
                • (Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday September 16 2020, @05:53PM (1 child)

                  by Bot (3902) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @05:53PM (#1051893) Journal

                  Which is why it is getting dumped now

                  I dunno. Substituting instead of working on say SDL based UIs (SDL seems tear-free and fast enough for me) tells me somebody either was noob enough or motivated enough to try substituting X with something else. What, a decade passed? and X is likely still needed.

                  --
                  Account abandoned.
                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 18 2020, @01:51AM

                    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 18 2020, @01:51AM (#1052534)

                    And ideally the 'default' X server session should be using the linux console for both keyboard and display modesetting, including leaving CTRL-ALT-XX under console services so if X craps it doesn't have your entire display subsystem. A related but separate issue: EDID/ECC(?) is already handled by the KMS drivers now, and if you plug/unplug the monitor (like using an old kvm switch) it already triggers a display change, so why is it still possible for the linux kms console and Xorg server to get into undisplayable states when monitor events happen?

                    There are a lot of serious issues here that need rectifying and many of them would make both wayland and X moot for single user/single app situations (although not for clipboard and related 'desktop bus' type transactions between applications.

                • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday September 17 2020, @02:50PM

                  by RS3 (6367) on Thursday September 17 2020, @02:50PM (#1052218)

                  I don't follow people here well enough to know your background- you mentioned BSD and I admit I have yet to try BSD (of any variant) and maybe I just need to do that.

                  I'm also more of an admin than developer (I'd rather be a developer but that's a long backstory involving time and money.)

                  Overall I agree with you on all points.

                  My take on X is that it was a great design allowing for networked "client/server" X-terminals, but due to the (too many) layers in the architecture ends up being too slow. While *nix OSes are awesome and have my preference, MS did many user-app-to-GPU shortcuts, rather than the X layers, and the net result is 1 computer running *nix / X is incredibly GUI slow compared to the exact same machine booting any Windows version. I know because I've almost always done dual-boot machines.

                  In fact the servers I admin don't run a GUI- it's just too slow for me. In the rare times that I need a GUI tool, I use a Windump machine running an X server, running the app on the Linux server.

                  I see code maintenance _needed_ only because APIs keep changing, perhaps too whimsically?

                  But my main comment to you: I've always thought of the Linux kernel as modular. You need a few basic things to get something running enough to load modules (like some kind of disk/storage drivers, filesystem drivers) but my kernels are mostly modular after that.

                  That said, for scrollback to work during boot, it has to be compiled into the kernel. But otherwise should be possible as a loadable module for terminal sessions.

                  In fact most of the terminal session apps seem to have good scrollback built-in, like putty.

              • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @08:07PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @08:07PM (#1051944)

                That said, is it possible that the scrollback code, or any code for that matter, is mature, complete, and needs no "maintenance"?

                I work on Chromium outside Google, and I have done kernel integration before. The problem is when nobody honors interfaces anymore, then types change, necessary handles are removed and it becomes a grind to adapt your code to other people's ever changing whims as time goes on.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:32PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:32PM (#1051769)

              It will be implemented in systemd ... badly

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:38AM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:38AM (#1051614)

    That sucks. I use the feature.

    I could see dropping the weird old VGA-specific optimization that moves the start of the display around in video memory. That was insane. Computers have plenty of system RAM to spare for the purpose, and sending the 4000 bytes across PCIe isn't a big deal like it was in the ISA bus days.

    Dropping the feature entirely is horrible. Somebody give Linus a beating for me.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @09:23AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @09:23AM (#1051632)

      That feature is basically a necessity if you're using a system with a non-accelerated framebuffer/console.

      I was actually noticing this on an R200 AGP card I was running the other day: the framebuffer code is so slow in 32bpp (the default) that with a full screen (1920x1080) console it actually draws slower than console text output, which on builds with fast compiles seems to actually slow them down if you don't switch to another vt and back (which causes it to instantly catch up on the console).

      Having said that: is there a kms specific fbcon app to replace the one from the 1990s era fbdev support? Because right now it seems like fbset can fuck up your system in all kinds of situations because of its lousy fb.modes setting, and the stupid plug and play monitor stuff just as often leads to X/your console ending up in unsupported video states that require a reboot to get out of (maybe ssh would work, but I don't normally run it on my desktops for security reasons.)

      Given all of this, is there anyone here actually up for kernel development? I have been discussing a fork of the linux kernel, mesa, and a backpatching fork of gcc if there was interest, but no developers professional or amateur seem willing to take it on. If there is interest, I will personally be getting ipx protocol support fixed up for linux 5.x kernels, and have already been testing use of it on the .10 4.x releases where it still works with no problems, although looking at ipxutils package, it definitely needs some love, and manpages explaining API use.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @11:21AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @11:21AM (#1051647)

        R200 AGP card

        Throw that garbage out. You are better off with Raspberry Pi. Your pocket and the environment would thank you.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 18 2020, @12:21AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 18 2020, @12:21AM (#1052495)

          Just work. Having been working on a Pi recently I can tell you the software support still isn't there. Building from source is a trial and there are concessions to be made running raspbian, devuan, fedora, opensuse, etc. Unless you can actually get an RPi4 8GB (almost unobtainium right now, and the only model worth getting out of the Pi4 lineup) the previous generation Pi3s aren't even fit to run a web browser on anymore. And their I/O capacity is garbage. They may be low power but they lack just about everything else.

          As for the hardware: Real nerds used to revel in what old kit they had collected and kept running. This new generation of poser skiddies don't understand their roots because they were never actually a part of the group they now claim to represent. The whitewashing of nerddom is almost complete. Next up: book burning in support of ebooks. I hope the irony of that event won't be lost on others.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @05:52PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @05:52PM (#1051891)

        Perhabs? If you set up a mailing list and an IRC channel for maintaining old discarded shit in the kernel, I'd be interested.

    • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday September 16 2020, @01:00PM

      by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Wednesday September 16 2020, @01:00PM (#1051681) Journal
      4000 bytes? The console hat multiple modes. I once set mine to 160x60, just because I could. Still worked. That's 160x60x2 bytes. (19,00 bytes).
      --
      SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @02:11PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @02:11PM (#1051716)

      I could see dropping the weird old VGA-specific optimization that moves the start of the display around in video memory. That was insane

      It was not at all insane when it was added, way back circa 1991 and 16Mhz and 33Mhz i386 being the only Intel processors Linux ran upon.

      Back then, if you had 4Meg of ram total you were lucky (and excited) and compared to an i386 physically copying data around in ram, the adjustment of the start address of video ram in the VGA card was lightning fast. As in the difference between reading the lines as they scrolled vs. scrolling them as a blur.

      Is this specific VGA optimization less amazing, and a support burden, today, yep, with 3+GHz machines. But when it was first put in it was an amazing bit of optimization to speed up the overall system.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @05:19PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @05:19PM (#1051859)

      I also use this feature, usually during boot-up if something isn't quite right. I can use dmesg later but the data is not always in there.

      I do not want the feature dropped, but I also think it needs be be maintained by somebody competent.

      I think Linus is right, but the problem is not the feature being useful or not, it is if there is someone competent to maintain it. Linus has shown himself to be pragmatic over the years, and this is a good example.

      So, let us [1] complain about this open source software not being what we want for something we use but for which there are usually workarounds or [2] work towards having a good maintainer for the feature.

      Is there another choice I am missing?

    • (Score: 2) by EvilSS on Thursday September 17 2020, @02:33PM

      by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 17 2020, @02:33PM (#1052201)
      Well the good news is that it's open source, so you can just put it back yourself.
  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:52AM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:52AM (#1051617)

    So this whole submission, to the Front Page of the Renowned SoylentNews, is about TMB losing one feature of the linux kernel? Wow, just wow.

    • (Score: 5, Touché) by leon_the_cat on Wednesday September 16 2020, @08:03AM (6 children)

      by leon_the_cat (10052) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @08:03AM (#1051623) Journal

      and yet it has more comments than the previous three stories combined.

      • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday September 16 2020, @12:35PM (3 children)

        by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Wednesday September 16 2020, @12:35PM (#1051665) Journal

        Because when you need the console scrollback buffet, you really need it.

        Hitting ctl+F11 and scrolling back through the log is simple. So of course, remove it. Bad move!

        --
        SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
        • (Score: 4, Funny) by choose another one on Wednesday September 16 2020, @02:05PM (1 child)

          by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 16 2020, @02:05PM (#1051713)

          Didn't realize it was a buffet - that makes everything clear, buffets are clearly out due to covid (even before that, lack of hygiene in todays world made them risky due to norovirus), end of discussion.

          • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Wednesday September 16 2020, @05:53PM

            by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 16 2020, @05:53PM (#1051894)

            Plus, there'd be a one-way system, so no scrollback.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @04:09PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @04:09PM (#1051815)

          That's exactly it. If you know you're going to need the output, there's ways of saving it. That is assuming you're far enough into the boot process that you have access to programs. There are a number of different ways of saving it, but the times when you use the scrollback buffer are usually when you weren't expecting to need it. Removing it seems anti-user and I can't imagine this feature taking up a lot of developer time.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @12:37PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @12:37PM (#1051667)

        arisalty is losing sanity points. Must be the aging.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:09PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:09PM (#1051750)

        Finally another political submission that we can give our opinions about!

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @10:07AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @10:07AM (#1051638)

    System won't cleanly boot. Error displayed but must scroll to see it. Unable to login (start a shell) due to result of error. Booting from recovery media adds unneeded complexity (or might not be possible). A simple scroll up to view the error (and a simple change via GRUB, etc...) might be all that is required to resolve an issue.

    • (Score: 2) by epitaxial on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:06PM

      by epitaxial (3165) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:06PM (#1051747)

      All part of the Not Invented Here syndrome. New people don't understand it therefor it is bad and should be removed. Expect to see a similar feature implemented in systemd again soon but done poorly.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @05:03PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @05:03PM (#1051846)
      Just reboot, or restore from last snapshot. If that doesn't/can't work re-image the whole thing and restore the data from backups. Who's got time for actually figuring the details of what happened?

      Welcome to fixing stuff Windows-style. ;)
    • (Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:04PM

      by digitalaudiorock (688) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:04PM (#1051928) Journal

      +1000. I can recall a case where I would have been pretty screwed without that in the VMware console. I can't believe there wasn't some way to leave that feature in place.

      No surprise these days. I literally can't recall that last time anything in Linux actually improved. Even running Gentoo I'm getting to where I dread updates, because they always mean fighting some bullshit bloat from upstream idiots (not Gentoo issues). A good example is how gnome-base/librsvg now requires fucking rust...just to compile one fucking graphics library. Then again, why wouldn't I want a compiler from people who's made such great choices with FF!

    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday September 17 2020, @02:27PM (1 child)

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Thursday September 17 2020, @02:27PM (#1052192) Homepage
      You sound like you've never heard of a serial console. Learn your boot flags, and how to drive your bootloader.
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2020, @04:46PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2020, @04:46PM (#1052280)

        You assume that a serial device, ports, cabling and equipment for a console are readily available, and can be implemented in less time than it takes to briefly scroll up and check an error.
        It was easy back in the day when servers were rolled out in data centers with serial console support by default (or for modern remote configurations). My tool kit still has a collection of serial cables and adapters.
        You can add a serial port to a VM and map it back to tools like PuTTY with serial connectivity out of the box. But it is still more effort, unnecessary complication and distraction compared to a quick and simple scroll up (at a time when you need your tools to work for you, not add more work).

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Mojibake Tengu on Wednesday September 16 2020, @10:16AM (18 children)

    by Mojibake Tengu (8598) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @10:16AM (#1051639) Journal

    FreeBSD supports Unicode on system console.
    And UEFI framebuffer takeover by boot loader, passing it to kernel as console framebuffer.
    Even the Xorg driver for that (scfb).
    That's what real operating system does.

    Shame on toy Linux, no pity anymore.

    --
    Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Wednesday September 16 2020, @12:50PM (6 children)

      by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Wednesday September 16 2020, @12:50PM (#1051673) Journal

      Linux it falling apart.

      I bought a new external mouse and keyboard, plugged them in, and turned the computer on todo some printing Sunday.

      Only one mouse button worked - and really I dependably. Both trackpad buttons didn't work. Printer didn't work.

      Why? Because I hadn't plugged the mouse and keyboard into the same USB ports.

      Swapping the ports didn't fix it. A reboot, it worked - sort of - but left and right buttons reversed.

      Swap mouse buttons, reboot - mouse buttons swapped themselves again.

      Took a half a dozen reboots and changing the "left - right buttons" for it to stick - but the left button is right , and right is now left. Go figure.

      Printer couldn't be un-paused. Not even as root. Had to manually remove the driver and replace-install it.

      Which meant finding the right ppd. Because it was no longer automatic.

      This is what happens when somebody "fixes" something but doesn't realize their fix can cause problems. Expect more of this as older devs age out and their institutional knowledge disappears.

      --
      SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @01:26PM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @01:26PM (#1051688)

        Linux has never owed its success to "clean design."
        It was the original implementation of: just keep iterating, get it deployed widely, and eventually it will probably converge on something useful.
        Besides using a global pool of free labor (the Internet just became "mainstream"), Linux had a spec to implement: Unix. That served as a good guide. Well, basic Unix was implemented by Linux many years ago. Now there is no guide to follow created by the real pros. Thus, bad ("not as good", to be charitable) ideas rule the day.

        Speaking of programmers not knowing WHY things are the way are in Unix and so they change them for the worse: In CentOS, "ls -laF" results in a directory listing with all dot files and dot dirs mixed willy nilly in the output. Well, not quite will nilly, just in the wrong order for a directory listing. Namely, instead of all dot files and dot dirs being grouped together at the top, they are interspersed with the regular files.

        Yes, I know how to "fix" this, but the fact that it is now broken is a sign of the death by a thousand cuts by those ignorant programmers who now maintain Linux.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @01:53PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @01:53PM (#1051710)

          If centos changed the gnu original ls, why blame Linux devs?

          • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @02:58PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @02:58PM (#1051740)

            It was actually the collation environment variable that was changed for the user. This env var determines how things are alphabetically sorted. For a terminal, the old, standard env var should never have been changed because this breaks long-standard behavior. Apparently, someone decided that the old sort order wasn't "friendly" to someone who knew nothing about Unix.

            I am lumping the distro maintainers and those who work on userland software in with Linux kernel programmers when I say "Linux." It's the complete package.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 18 2020, @11:57PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 18 2020, @11:57PM (#1053105)

          Older devs used to understand that changes had to happen deliberately and with a clear path of reversal, as you could not just push to prod a new update overnight.

          But such detail orientation and nitpickery is now labeled "autistic", and seen almost like mental leprosy by the new cloud brogrammer elite.

          An example of such can be found in these very comments.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @09:48PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @09:48PM (#1051976)

        Sounds like the mouse is matched by your "desktop" based in where it is plugged.

        Yes, totally stupid. Probably udev related or something from that systemd pig farm. It should be a per user setting, and not dependant on where the mouse is, or how many. At least that was before. But we are well past sanity in Linux.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 19 2020, @12:02AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 19 2020, @12:02AM (#1053109)

          Probably libinput, that the Wayland fanatics are hard at work reinventing mouse input with.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by srobert on Wednesday September 16 2020, @01:51PM (10 children)

      by srobert (4803) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @01:51PM (#1051707)

      I picked up a new laptop assuming I'd install FreeBSD on it. I'd used it on my old one for years. But the wifi card wasn't supported in FreeBSD. No problem, I'll run Linux until it is. 2 years later ... still waiting. And yes, I sometimes use the scrollback in the console when I'm trying to troubleshoot something.

      • (Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Wednesday September 16 2020, @02:31PM (2 children)

        by Dr Spin (5239) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @02:31PM (#1051724)

        I had this problem. Now he wifi card gives problems under Linux too.

        I think the answer is to buy a supported card and switch to OpenBSD.

        Fewer things are supported, but when they are, they actually work!

        --
        Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:50PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:50PM (#1051788)

          Laptop. The wifi chip might be soldered in so they can't replace it.

          • (Score: 4, Informative) by drussell on Wednesday September 16 2020, @04:11PM

            by drussell (2678) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @04:11PM (#1051817) Journal

            They're virtually always a removable card. Easier to FCC certify just a module than every different motherboard.

      • (Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Wednesday September 16 2020, @02:47PM (3 children)

        by Mojibake Tengu (8598) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @02:47PM (#1051730) Journal

        If the machine is UEFI, you could use efi syscon and scfb driver all the time in FreeBSD. I do just that on latest Ryzen7 laptop which has strange dual card, with Xorg running perfectly in native resolution (no 3D accel of course). The trick is to select proper EFI framebuffer mode in boot loader by loader commands (GOP command and MODE command) to get display's native resolution. Doing same with many single-purposed machines or servers even without Xorg.

        Maybe I could write a complete howto about this later...

        --
        Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
        • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:58PM (2 children)

          by Freeman (732) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:58PM (#1051802) Journal

          Your post just provided a fine example of why I don't use Linux as my gaming platform, even though I could do so with SteamOS (for the most part). Sure, your example is with FreeBSD, but it may as well have been a Linux example.

          When I want to play, I want to turn on my computer, load up my game, and play. Not spend the next 4 hours figuring out what broke my internet, installation, or other weird edge case. I just want it to work. I'll be sticking with Windows until it becomes more inconvenient or they do something more stupid than they've already done.

          --
          Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
          • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:02PM (1 child)

            by isostatic (365) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:02PM (#1051926) Journal

            Funny, that's why I use linux, I turn it on (wake it up) and it just works. I gave up with windows 'just working' 2 decades ago, I hear many cries from colleagues who use it though.

            • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:17PM

              by Freeman (732) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:17PM (#1051934) Journal

              Once you get it on there, it's pretty stable, usually. Coming at a new set of hardware with Linux, it's just as likely to be a nightmare as opposed to a quick and easy install. Also, where's my VR support? Oh, gotta have windows for that one. Guess, I'll setup a dual-boot . . . at which point, may as well just stick with the one.

              --
              Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
      • (Score: 2) by epitaxial on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:11PM (1 child)

        by epitaxial (3165) on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:11PM (#1051751)

        I picked up a cheap LTO tape drive that used 4gb FC. Already had some cards on hand so I thought FreeBSD would make a nice OS to stream backups to take. The FC cards are old by now and well supported in Linux. No FreeBSD support at all. I went with the next best alternative, Slackware.

        • (Score: 2) by srobert on Thursday September 17 2020, @01:08AM

          by srobert (4803) on Thursday September 17 2020, @01:08AM (#1052057)

          Used Slackware on and off in the 90's. These days my next best is Void.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @04:52PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @04:52PM (#1051841)

        stop funding the enemy every chance you get, you ridiculous slave.

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