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Phoronix has an article up about some interesting ideas of Lennart Poettering about what could be a possible future for Linux:
Lennart Poettering of systemd and PulseAudio fame has published a lengthy blog post that shares his vision for how he wishes to change how Linux software systems are put together to address a wide variety of issues. The Btrfs file-system and systemd play big roles with his new vision. Long story short, Lennart is trying to tackle how Linux distributions and software systems themselves are assembled to improve security, deal with the challenges of upstream software vendors integrating into many different distributions, and "the classic Linux distribution scheme is frequently not what end users want."
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New Linux Vision That Involves btrfs
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Grelb's Reminder:
Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above
average drivers.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by digitalaudiorock on Monday September 01 2014, @10:37PM
I'm stunned frankly at the number of folks who don't seem to see that and defend this crap. I'm glad to see there seem to be fewer such folks here than on the green site. It's so obvious this is the case, simply from the fact that they've chosen to make none of that cluster fuck modular...that whole "take it all or fuck you" approach. What possible good motive could there be behind that alone?
LP really is a clueless, arrogant fucking child. That's putting it as nicely as I can.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Monday September 01 2014, @10:59PM
Yeah... Really starting to lose my enthusiasm. I can really only link to a post I already made (yay subscription-enabled infinite post history). It was looking so good too... http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=3454&cid=83030 [soylentnews.org]
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DECbot on Tuesday September 02 2014, @01:59AM
In my previous post, I was off attributing this to systemd, but I think I nailed that everything short of your wallpaper is in Poettering's project scope. Up next, Pottering will solve the Linux graphics stack, from drivers to windows managers and beyond. I'll call it GNOME4 or how I forgot my worries and learned to abandon the Unix philosophy.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2, Funny) by Jesus_666 on Tuesday September 02 2014, @02:21PM
That's why Lennart will soon present Lennix version 1.0, a single program that contains everything from the kernel to the init system to the shell to GNOME. This will give you unprecedented boot-to-GNOME performance and thus improve your productivity by orders of magnitude. It will also obviate package management because software packages are only required if your system can run more than one binary, which is completely unneccessary in Lennix.
Future versions of Lennix will also contain all data Lennart thinks you will ever need, thus removing the need to lug around a clunky file system.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday September 02 2014, @03:07PM
Maybe he could implement in mandatory Australis in addition to GNOME so I can ignore all the things I hate in one place.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Thursday September 04 2014, @04:39PM
...followed by the HURD in a finalized distro called Stallix, paving the new commu^H^Hputing revolution towards prosperity for all Truly Free Software. Hail, user-comrades!
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 1) by canopic jug on Tuesday September 02 2014, @12:01PM
That's giving him the benefit of the doubt, something that may not be appropriate given how much control systemd takes away from users and what a mess it and pulse audio are. Inflicting pre-alpha software onto production distros is another problem with systemd. But then about the lack of users' choice, maybe that is the goal. His post suggests to me that systemd might also be lining things up for rolling out DRM in such a way that users will not be in a position to avoid it. Systemd needs to be stopped now and if LP wants to continue with it, he should spin off his own distro and work with that until he has something safe and viable to show.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Tuesday September 02 2014, @02:25PM
I too am a little apprehensive to charge ahead without a bit more development.
But, I strongly suggest you all read the article. LP is clearly not a dull guy, and his article raises a very important point.
The BTRFS solution he proposes uses de-duplication to permit the "system" being arbitrarily booted with different versions of software. This might have a radical effect on linux being usable for the desktop of non-techies as it will become much easier to have systems "a la carte" distros.
And the points of systemd (that was not really visible until this current article) seem to simply allow the /usr to be separated from dynamic information via /etc/ /var etc.... and personal information /home etc...
It really was a very interesting article...
I am using Opensuse, and although it uses systemd, sysv still works just fine - transparently converted to systemd of course...
Ad hominem attacks rarely add to the debate...
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Tuesday September 02 2014, @05:35PM
The real attack occurring in all of this is the blatant intentional attack on choice by LP and everyone involved in this mess. Besides, have you read the way LP "debates" any of this stuff? It comes down to he knows everything and we know nothing...with his links to his endless lists of "debunked myths" etc...as if that's the end of the discussion.
Even if/when his ideas or goals are valid, the level of criticism his approach is getting in the Linux community is unprecedented and growing...yet he seems convinced that none of it is valid. That is the reason the criticism tends to turn into attacks.
(Score: 3, Informative) by opinionated_science on Tuesday September 02 2014, @09:42PM
my point was simply, that I am just as frustrated by the "dump" of a new system. But then again, I am not currently a developer, and opensuse and other vendors have plumped for it.
I was responding to the fact I read the article about using BTRFS to *improve* the distribution system, and I think it actually makes very valid sense.
If you have ever used the opensuse build studio, you would know what I mean. This allows you to essentially do what LP suggested. You can dynamically dial in a distribution.
The point LP made about de-duping in BTRFS and volume management, is that the major similarities between vendors will get shared, and only the differences propagated.
Having rebuild many packaged systems, I can see what this buys us. Validated packages trees (just like opensuse Tumbleweed/factory etc..) that have been tested together.
But I too have been a bit negative about the systemd debacle - although it is stable on this system (opensuse 12.2) as is pulseaudio. I have had a few nightmares with SSD freezing and laptop behaviour. A good thing that opensuse 12.2 only uses systemd under init!!!
Ultimately, if we want linux to be more mainstream, the current state of packaging is far from the idea. The average user simply needs to be able to get patches almost invisibly. Notice, that Micro$oft routinely breaks their users machines. Don't we want linux to be better?
And again, constructive criticism is welcome. Being rude is just not nice, and doesn't help.
But then again, I'm stil stuck on opensuse 12.2...