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Debian Jesse is going to have Gnome3 as the default desktop.
The desktop re-qualification page, used to help choose which desktop will be default, has in the Jesse version a weight for systemd integration, and of course only Gnome3 does it (at least for now). This will surely make the systemd/gnome3 fanbase happy, but possibly will make others unhappy, as it [may] be seen as another step towards mono-culture, until we soon end up with all distros being redhat clones.
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Integration with systemd Making Gnome3 the Default Debian Desktop
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(Score: 5, Informative) by PinkyGigglebrain on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:25AM
Looks like I'll be sticking with my Debian 7 install till they shut down the repositories, then move onto something else that doesn't have systemd.
I hear Slackware is staying away from systemd.
Oh well.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @07:31AM
dude, just select xfce from the install menu. its not rocket science
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @09:39AM
Reading comprehension fail, my young rocket scientist: The grandparent isn't primarily concerned with the desktop environment but with systemd...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @12:05PM
I fear that Debian is going the way of Firefox. It has been one stupid decision after another from them. If they do go forward with this systemd and GNOME 3 stupidity, then they will drive away their most important users.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @02:09PM
which users are their most important users?
the ones that bitch and complain the loudest, or the ones that know how to use apt?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @01:33PM
sudo apt-get remove systemd
it aint rocket science
(Score: 3, Funny) by Blackmoore on Wednesday September 24 2014, @03:30PM
Well why dont you try that and get back to the class with what happened.
(Score: 4, Informative) by joshuajon on Wednesday September 24 2014, @05:19PM
I just did out of curiosity, doesn't work. And a bunch of stuff ended up missing from /sbin/ in the process including reboot, shutdown. When I reset the VM it now fails to boot with "Target filesystem doesn't have requested /sbin/init"
(Score: 4, Informative) by joshuajon on Wednesday September 24 2014, @05:45PM
apt-get install systemd
apt-get install systemd-sysv
reboot
now running systemd
apt-get remove systemd-sysv
apt-get install sysvinit
reboot
now running sysvinit
apt-get remove systemd now works.
(Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:06PM
that's a magnitude less than optimal.
well, I guess I stick with Mint for now. but keep an eye open for a new option that skips systemd.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @10:17PM
i guess if you remove an init system its kinda implicit that you install another
hopefully in the final release they'll make the install of sysvinit automatic when removing systemd (same as the old gdm3 to gdm and many others)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @09:56AM
Yes in theory you can fork entire distros if you don't like them... But I don't need to. They can keep their GNOME or KDE till Microsoft goes completely insane.
I was a bit concerned there wouldn't be any viable desktop path when the abomination called Windows 8 came out. But it looks like Microsoft will backpedal a bit with Windows 9. So they haven't gone completely insane yet.
(Score: 2) by efitton on Wednesday September 24 2014, @01:41PM
Microsoft cares about money. Windows 8 was an attempt to leverage their desktop into the phone market. It failed and is starting to cost them business. Hence the backtrack with Windows 9. GNOME cares about, actually I have no idea. It certainly isn't having a user base. The shiny from Day and McCann? Beats me, but logic is getting no where and the funding is irrelevant and having users is irrelevant so away they go. At some point KDE or Cinnamon or MATE will clearly be ahead but it is amazing how the GNOME minority flexes its muscles to get their way with being the default in so many distributions.
That doesn't address KDE and their "semantic desktop" or what will happen with the cluster that is gtk+ but... Winning? Year of Linux on the Desktop? Think I'll go cry myself to sleep now.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @03:26PM
There might be hope for KDE yet - if they really hold to the "simple by default, powerful when needed" philosophy.
Good defaults are important because >90% of them would be what 90% of the users would be using. This makes tech support easier, adoption by corporations easier. If you pick crappy defaults and practically everyone has them changed then most installs would end up being their own unique snowflake and that makes support harder. Powerful when needed (without resorting to conf file editing) is great too especially if discoverable - since that also makes support easier.
But for some reason many (most?) of the major distros seem to prefer GNOME. I have no idea why.
In contrast with the Windows Metro UI, discoverability dropped a LOT. Even merely logging out is harder than it was before and harder than it should be.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday September 24 2014, @11:22AM
Mass migration to FreeBSD?
I have some freebsd experimental tests scheduled this weekend, going to be interesting.
20 years ago this month I was downloading SLS linux floppy disk images from a local BBS and trying this new linux thing I had heard about on usenet.
I'd follow a Debian schism if one happens. I want an OS with a window manager/DE (personally I use xmonad). Not a desktop environment with an attached init system that vaguely connects to an OS. Whatever happened to the "universal OS"? I guess its *BSD now.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @12:04PM
debian-women happened.
They kicked anyone that wouldn't toe the line (Ted Walther etc) out of Debian.
(Score: 2) by metamonkey on Wednesday September 24 2014, @03:02PM
What is debian-women?
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 24 2014, @03:35PM
I miss krooger. As a blast from the past here's his DPL platform from '06
https://www.debian.org/vote/2006/platforms/krooger [debian.org]
Troup's statue and Suffield's announcement post. Krooger's general resolution proposal. Those were funny times, yet in their own way insightful times.
I remember when I got Suffield's announcement and I nearly wet myself laughing, yet it was so desperately necessary that it be sent.
Its shocking really how nothing has really changed, post-SJW invasion. Political correctness and complete lack of humor hasn't really fixed anything at all, despite the endless promises and bitter infighting.
"I am in Debian to change the world for the better, and have fun while doing it." - I miss having that guy in the project. There is wisdom in keeping a court jester around. Sometimes someone has to speak the truth. The corporate invader types hate it which is reason alone to support it.
He wouldn't have made a good DPL, but he was NEEDED in the project none the less.
And group of humans doing anything stagnates and dies eventually although a formal or informal court jester can keep it alive longer, maybe indefinitely. I don't think the corporate SJW invaders from the last decade or so see it that way, or maybe they're EEE-ing the project on purpose, hard to say... Malice and incompetence can be hard to tell apart.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @05:52PM
Maybe he can be pivotal in a debian fork. Got a way to get in touch with him. Now is the time. Last time I saw him he was at rootsoffaith.org .... Here http://www.rootsoffaith.net/profile/TedWalther [rootsoffaith.net]
(Score: 2) by drussell on Wednesday September 24 2014, @03:02PM
Mass migration to FreeBSD?
I have some freebsd experimental tests scheduled this weekend, going to be interesting.
20 years ago this month I was downloading SLS linux floppy disk images from a local BBS and trying this new linux thing I had heard about on usenet.
Hmm, now that I think about it, it was about that time that I first FTP'd into wcarchive.cdrom.com and saw the login readme which said something to the effect:
"Welcome to Walnut Creek CD-ROM's FTP Server... The hardware is [blah blah] and the operating system is FreeBSD. Should you wish to get your own copy it is available in pub/FreeBSD..."
The realization that there was a UNIX that ran on i386 hardware was a shocker and I was downloading the files to make install floppies for FreeBSD version 1 within minutes! :) IIRC, it was about version 1.1.5 when I first set up a dedicated FreeBSD server box and I wan 1.1.7.x on a couple machines for YEARS before upgrading to version 2.x as things progressed. I remember trying to put the only 387 I had (a 16 MHz chip) onto a 386/40 board but couldn't clock it above 20 MHz, IIRC or the math came out all wrong, so I put on my coat and went off to the wholesaler and bought my first
personal 486 board and chip... :) That machine ran it's entire life (was about 10 years continuous!) without crashing due to software. The only times it was ever powered off were two or three kernel change reboots with an air dusting/cleaning of the chassis innards and hard disk additions, one power failure due to the charger in the UPS blowing up and the UPS shutting off in protection mode and one time where I didn't want to ruin my 700+ day uptime so I tried yanking out an ISA SCSI controller with the power on (it had 2 SCSI controllers in it at the time, one VLB Adaptec and an ISA originally basically just for the tape drive) needed the unused ISA one which crashed it. (I had synced the disks first, luckily, LOL)
Now I've got Sgt. Pepper "It was 20 years ago today!" running through my head! :)
Not one software-bug induced crash in over 10 years of service before retiring the ol' 486, typically 300-500+ days of uptime between reboots, FFS... Try THAT on a Microsoft box of that era! HA! :)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 24 2014, @03:49PM
From memory around that time, wasn't there some peculiar restriction like linux worked with common PATA IDE hard drives but *BSD only had drivers for like three models of SCSI card so it was SCSI or nothin' with the BSDs? (And SCSI hardware cost about twice as much as IDE, although it was probably 10x as fast?) It was definitely a hardware reason like that, which kept me away from BSDs. Maybe it was graphics like my 256K VGA card worked in text mode but the BSDs only spoke to EGA cards or something. It was definitely something hardware related that kept me away from the BSDs.
Do you remember the holy wars of IDE vs SCSI which as usual the technologically superior system lost? I remember old IDE interfaces masking interrupts for like a second per access. And you could tell at the command line just by how responsive the system was / low interrupt latency if you were on a IDE or SCSI box.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @11:14PM
Uhhhh, no, that was never the case.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Thursday September 25 2014, @02:52PM
From memory around that time, wasn't there some peculiar restriction like linux worked with common PATA IDE hard drives but *BSD only had drivers for like three models of SCSI card so it was SCSI or nothin' with the BSDs?
No, the AC is right. There was never a problem with MFM/RLL or IDE disks. The 'wd' driver handled both MFM/RLL and IDE. The 'ata' driver was introduced years later and dropped support for MFM/RLL but IDE always worked. I actually still have 2 machines here that I'm about to finally pull out of service (currently just doing DNS, internal mail and some logging and somesuch) to replace with less power-hungry hardware (these have been in service since 1999, so 15 years isn't bad :) ) that are using the 'wd' driver still on patched-up, cobbled-together FreeBSD 2.x...
My first installation was to a 40 meg MFM hard drive, then I used IDEs mostly and a few SCSI. The SCSI was in there initially for a tape drive before I started amassing SCSI disks.
I remember old IDE interfaces masking interrupts for like a second per access. And you could tell at the command line just by how responsive the system was / low interrupt latency if you were on a IDE or SCSI box.
SCSI is definitely a beter system for many reasons, and certainly was MUCH better at the time but was much more expensive so for many applications was cost prohibitive. I had to use mainly IDE drives for many years due to cost. Now I still have boxes and boxes of things like factory refurb Seagate 7200 RPM barracudas and a bunch of Fujitsu 7200 and 10k RPM drives. I'll probably never use them all, they just last too darn long! :)
I still use 9.1GB Seagates as boot disks for most of my servers. Ultra robust and I think I still have at least 3 unopened 10-packs and at least another 50 lying around already. :) I also have a whole stack of 2/3 GB Elites. (the 5.25" Seagates). Huge, noisy and suck a TON of power so, of course, I haven't used them for anything for years but they are a great lark to fire up an array of 5.25"ers for someone who's never seen them before! LOL
Of course, I also still have a working 8 Meg, 8" Shugart MFM in my Wang 2200LVP, and a couple of 14" hard disks, a 10 Meg and an 80 Meg... Most people have never seen a 14" hard drive before! (and, they weigh like 250 lbs) Great conversation piece :)
My 80 Meg CDC Phoenix was built (completed) Dec 31, 1980... I'm sure it took more than one day to build those suckers! :)
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/cdc/discs/brochures/CDC_9448_CMD_Brochure_Jan81.pdf [trailing-edge.com]
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Thursday September 25 2014, @01:12AM
That's pretty sweet, my first 486 sx25 ran my BBS under dos/desqview/RemoteAccess for years with no problems whatsoever, never monitored uptime though, if I had known about linux/BSD in those days I would have been in balls deep. I remember some of the other Sysop's looking at linux, I dialled into one at one stage but just got login/password prompt with no option to request an account so didn't persue it any further as it was unfamiliar territory. I still remember paying $800 for 8mb RAM for my 486 and VGA was the shit! LORD was the untimate in multi-player games. :)
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Thursday September 25 2014, @01:16AM
I also forgot where I was going with that last comment, here it is: I accidentally connected an ISA modem with a machine powered up, flash/bang and the modem was dead, fortunately the MB survived as it was a customers pc. I think those old ISA sockets with the amount of tilt you could get would short the pins, pity, hotswappable components would have been awesome.
(Score: 2, Informative) by schad on Wednesday September 24 2014, @11:46AM
Yep, that was my reaction to CentOS 7 as well. "Guess I'll run 6.x until they turn out the lights, and then migrate to... FreeBSD?"
I'm very frustrated by the current Linux server situation. If you want a server OS -- something that you can use on a couple hundred production servers -- you're pretty much shit out of luck right now. RHEL/CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, SLES... all going, or already gone, systemd. Because those are all supported for a really long time we have a few years left. But just because they're getting patches, that doesn't mean they'll be getting new versions of software. And because so many developers and managers are brainless children obsessed with the latest and "greatest," it's going to be increasingly difficult to make those servers actually work while keeping them in a supported and supportable configuration.
It's so fucking infuriating. You know, you read the defenses of systemd. The real ones, the ones saying things like: "It's just too clumsy and unreliable to handle hardware connects/disconnects with SysV init." And that's a fair point. I can see why that could be a problem. But servers don't do any of that shit. They are configured at installation time and then not touched. Or, to be more precise, there is considerable process and procedure around how servers may be touched, and when, and who can do it, and so on. For a server, there is no use for systemd. None! It confers absolutely no advantages. Fuck, when we add a LUN to a server at work, we reboot the box even though we don't have to. It'll usually have been up for a couple hundred days by that point, so we take it as an opportunity to install kernel updates and make sure that everything that's supposed to start automatically does. And even on those occasions when we want to plug in some kind of external drive, we don't use USB. We use a NAS and plug it into one of the unused onboard NICs. (In practice, NFS over gigabit ethernet is usually faster and more reliable than direct-attached USB 3.0.)
Well, the nice thing about OSS is that if there's really a market for a truly server-only OS -- one where GNOME and the like aren't even installable options -- then someone will make it. Or, more precisely, someone probably already has made it, and it will just become more popular.
(Score: 4, Informative) by CRCulver on Wednesday September 24 2014, @02:25PM
While Debian packages systemd now (and thus can return to having GNOME as its default desktop for novice computer users who don't know what desktop to select), it does not require systemd. You can continue to run sysvinit, and Debian offers the package systemd-shim to satisfy dependencies on systemd without actually using it as one's init. No need to get hysterical and jump to another distro.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @03:24PM
Incorrect. Systemd is needed even for Gimp in debian Jessie.
It's either systemd or get the fuck out.
(Score: 2) by CRCulver on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:22PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @11:17PM
As far as I'm concerned, systemd-shim is just as bad as systemd. They both should be totally unnecessary.
(Score: 1) by coolgopher on Thursday September 25 2014, @02:13AM
As of a couple of weeks ago, it's not. At least if you're using something which depends on PolicyKit. The only solution for me was to hold PolicyKit back to a pre-systemd version, and reconfigure it to give all users full access. I hadn't known what PolicyKit was before this, and now that I know I'd really rather not have it installed, but I do use the udisks2 package for convenient mounting of removable disks (via wmvolman), so for now I'm stuck with it. At the rate Debian is going, my next upgrade will be to Slack or Gentoo I suppose.
(Score: 2) by CRCulver on Thursday September 25 2014, @02:51AM
You are doing something wrong. Running GIMP even with current Debian unstable does not require running systemd as your init system.
Perhaps you are confusing the fact that some systemd packages will have to be installed in order to use GNOME apps, but that doesn't oblige the user to run systemd as his/her init system. With the systemd-shim package, you can continue to run sysvinit as your init, and at the same time install a bare minimum of systemd dependencies to run such desktop applications.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 25 2014, @05:19AM
Yes it does, this has even been discussed on the mailing list in the last day or so.
And it is all by design.
(Score: 1) by coolgopher on Thursday September 25 2014, @08:07AM
I'm doing something wrong? Well, you know what, perhaps you're right.
But that doesn't really excuse the mess - rather it reinforces the fact that it is a mess. Never before in my experience has the choice of init system had such a nasty impact on, well, everything else. If systemd truly was a choice in Debian at this point, I wouldn't be bitching about having to hold packages and mess with configuration settings I've never had to muck around with before. Sure, I'm running Jessie, so I shouldn't expect everything to be smooth sailing, but at the end of the day I'm coming away with the feeling that Debian is no longer a good choice of distro for me, as a user and developer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:58PM
Citation, please.
(Score: 1) by quixote on Wednesday September 24 2014, @08:44PM
Sheesh, man. You're the one posting as AC and you want a citation?
Tell you what. Start Synaptic (leftmost upper or lower corner main menu button > System > Synaptic), enter password at the prompt, type systemd-shim in the search box, install, close Synaptic, reboot, aaand see what happens. (Precise instructions in case you're really as clueless as you sound.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:34AM
For Slackware [slackware.com] and PCLinuxOS [pclinuxos.com] etc?
(Score: 2) by present_arms on Wednesday September 24 2014, @12:11PM
uname -a
Linux localhost 3.16.3-pclos1 #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Sep 18 06:31:56 CDT 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
grins
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 4, Funny) by aristarchus on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:38AM
Where have I heard this before? "You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. You will choose Gnome3 as your desktop environment. For great future."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:51AM
Clever circular logic. "GNOME needs systemd -> we need systemd" first, "only GNOME has systemd integration -> need GNOME by default" second.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @01:00PM
well stated
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday September 25 2014, @04:22AM
I thought they dropped Gnome3 as default simply because they had not yet switched to systemd, and Gnome3 requires it. Now that they've adopted systemd, it was possible to return to Gnome3 as the default. i.e., they would have preferred to keep Gnome3 as the default, but could not for a while because of the systemd dependency. With that dependency satisfied, they were then able to return to Gnome3.
Now why they would make Gnome3 the default instead of KDE, I have no idea. Sit a Windows (XP/Vista/7) user in front of both and see which one they're immediately productive with. It won't be Gnome.
(Score: 2) by buswolley on Wednesday September 24 2014, @07:49AM
Add a flamebait topic!
but...some topics are worrty of enduring flames.
subicular junctures
(Score: 5, Informative) by Marand on Wednesday September 24 2014, @08:30AM
Is it still flamebait when it's accurate? If you look deeper at the "requalification" info, the integrity of the whole thing appears dubious. For example, the accessibility team declared MATE to be the best for accessibility, but on the table it got the same +1 as GNOME. Also, it considers "systemd integration" a necessary bonus, when it's something only GNOME has, due to GNOME devs deliberately tying them together. Nobody else is going to get a ranking there because the other DEs try to remain init-agnostic, which makes it a bullshit metric that exists solely to push GNOME ahead.
They don't even have results yet for internationalisation, portability, or install size, and it's already "80% sure" that GNOME will win. No shit? That's what happens when you massage the data to support the desired outcome.
Some other statements of questionable merit:
• Systemd/etc integration: Xfce, Mate, etc are stuck paying catch-up to ongoing changes in this area. -- no shit, that's what happens when systemd and GNOME are inextricably tied together. Same reason wine is perpetually playing catch-up to windows.
• Since gnome 3 was the default in the previous release, existing Debian users should find it consistent to use it for jessie. -- GNOME 2 was the default for a lot longer than that, so why not MATE?
• I'm not sure [gnome]'s friendly for users with low visual capabilities . . . The problem is: not customisable enough, no magnifying possible with the needed quality, not enough visual customisations -- This doesn't sound like +1 to GNOME accessibility to me.
I'm a KDE user, but if anything, I think MATE would be a better default than the alternatives, considering the accessibility and familiarity aspects.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @12:17PM
systemd integration should be considered a negative, and any desktop offering it should be penalized. Any desktop requiring it should be penalized even more. systemd needs to be quarantined and marginalized. Any desktop that isn't helping in that effort needs to be quarantined and marginalized, too.
(Score: 2) by gallondr00nk on Wednesday September 24 2014, @12:42PM
I'd really like to know what happened to keeping the init system separate from the desktop environment. What was the harm in it?
What's missing from the Systemd debate is what Linux as a whole actually gets out of it. I havn't seen this quantified in any meaningful way. Is it faster boot times? Better stability? A more user friendly or elegant init system? More features?
I mostly use the BSDs, and so don't follow Linux user groups or mailing lists that closely. Are people communicating with the community at large about what all this disruption is in aid of?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @01:12PM
Spurious technical non-arguments are presented as indisputable fact in response to even the most balanced criticisms. So while there is often some form of "communication", the systemd camp have been incapable of responding with anything more than a dictatorial "because fuck you". Add resentment over the pushiness and dubious politics taking place and it seems the schism isn't going to be resolved amicably. The "fuck you" attitude having become mutual across both camps.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @03:43PM
why haven't there been any physical beat downs. These fucks took over everything and banned anyone opposed. They need to be hurt.
(Score: 2) by metamonkey on Wednesday September 24 2014, @03:18PM
The primary thing systemd has going for it is faster boot times because you skip all the script interpretation overhead and the ability to fork off services that are not interdependent.
The problems depend on who you ask. The main one that annoys me is, well, I liked having scripts for services. It makes it very easy to see exactly what's going on when a process starts or stops, and it's very easy to modify and create new custom services. You just need to know basic shell scripting. It's also easy to backtrack. Want to know how a certain service is being started? Just grep through /etc/init.d. You'll find it. On systemd they're all started in the same way. You just have a config file that tells systemd what options you want, but you can't just add to the start up process for a service. It's also very, very poorly documented. So we went from easy to understand and modify scripts to poorly designed and poorly documented inflexible config files. Oh, and then instead of just logging all the output to text files, it uses a freaking binary log that has to be read with another systemd program, journald. So now you can't just grep through your logs, or have a daemon that just sits watching the tail of a log file for certain events.
You combine all of that shit and it's just not very "UNIX-y." "The UNIX way" is for programs to do one (or few) things and do them very well, and output text. Then you can string together small, simple programs to accomplish complex tasks. Systemd, on the other hand, is monolithic and obfuscated.
I use it (I run Debian 7.6 Wheezy), and it's "fine." I'm not on a holy war against it. But to be honest I'd be happier with init.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:00PM
Wheezy is sysv
(Score: 2) by metamonkey on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:35PM
Oh. Then I must have been thinking of my other box that runs fedora.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @01:39PM
Another weird statement:
So, it's fine, but because the number after Gnome is "2" and not "3" , it's regressing ? biased much ?
(Score: 2) by tempest on Wednesday September 24 2014, @02:46PM
I tend to agree when the topics of systemd or firefox failure crop up. But in the case of systemd, it's reassuring to see the number of vocal people against it, and know I'm not the only one finding this process dubious. I like unix because of the philosophy, and it's nice to know I'm not alone - which I'd almost believe considering the astounding speed systemd was adopted in a far from perfect state.
It's interesting how far the gnome group has upped the ante. They stuck by a desktop which became increasingly unpopular due to their decisions, have essentially hijacked GTK, and now enter a symbiotic relationship with the init system. If this doesn't work out, there's will be one massive crater left behind when it crashes and burns. They'll have no plan B. I suppose it's also possible the gnome ecosystem will become something like Android: "Linux" but not really; its own separate thing.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 24 2014, @04:03PM
"If this doesn't work out, there's will be one massive crater left behind when it crashes and burns. They'll have no plan B."
My very blunt, brutal, and honest opinion is some journalist, if there still are any of those left in the world, needs to follow the money where-ever it leads, after first reading and understanding the results of a google search for "embrace extend extinguish".
I have this gut feeling that someone has a collection of submarine patents like "embedding an NTP daemon in an init system" or "centralized binary logging" and once the alternatives are finally extinguished in the E E E strategy the doors will slam open and the patent trolls will roar across the countryside like the epic battle at the end of the LOTR trilogy. Or the start for that matter.
Personally, when the orcs are unleashed, I intend to be safe and secure at home and work with ... something else. Something from the age before Sauron took over with the one ring to bind them all, or perhaps a totally new plane of existence like the *BSD.
I have no idea how I will be able to survive not having USB 3.0 hot plugging on my DNS server, or without embedding init into a desktop environment you couldn't pay me enough to use, but I'm sure I'll get by somehow like I always did.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Wednesday September 24 2014, @05:15PM
I have no idea how I will be able to survive not having USB 3.0 hot plugging on my DNS server, or without embedding init into a desktop environment you couldn't pay me enough to use...
But just thing of all the vulnerabilities and forced marches that you'll miss out on.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Marand on Wednesday September 24 2014, @08:01AM
Not surprising, really. This reeks of the same political bullshit that tainted the discussion about which (if any) init system should replace sysv-init in Jessie. The initial decision to switch the desktop default from GNOME to Xfce was fairly arbitrary and had the GNOME camp up in arms, so it shouldn't be a surprise to anybody that, once they finished forcing systemd on everybody through dependencies and arguments, there would be a push to reinstate GNOME as the default.
That's the problem with the whole thing, not just with Debian: GNOME and systemd are "winning" through politics, not merit. Even if systemd were a flawless init alternative, a lot of us would want to fight it at this point simply because of the heavy-handed way it's being pushed on everybody while trampling on alternatives. If I wanted to live with "I know what you want better than you do, shut up and deal with it" I'd be using OS X, not a Linux distribution.
At least it's just defaults. Debian's installer allows you to choose an environment (or none) at install time, and systemd is still semi-optional with the systemd-shim package. You're still stuck with the non-init parts, because of the incestuous relationship systemd has with other parts such as udev, but systemd-shim lets you use a different init.
. . . For now.
---
(FYI: editors, the release name is "Jessie" [debian.org] with an i.)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @08:17AM
Well then why don't we do some politics of ourselves.
We could go get some pistols and then put it to the backs of their heads.
After that we could pull the trigger on each of those pistols.
If they want to force things, let's force back but worse.
Everything went down hill once the *-women came in.
They became gatekeepers of what once was our thing.
We need to kill those fucks.
With bullets. So that they die.
(Score: 1) by jbernardo on Wednesday September 24 2014, @08:43AM
(FYI: editors, the release name is "Jessie" with an i.)
Doh, seems like the autocomplete in swiftkey betrayed me again. Sorry about that.
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Wednesday September 24 2014, @10:04AM
if systemd were a flawless init alternative, a lot of us would want to fight it at this point
If systemd were a flawless init most of us probably wouldn't care, and would in fact _like_ a "better init". The fact it's a bag of spanners is what's causing most of the problems.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Wednesday September 24 2014, @10:19AM
Well, yeah, but the point was that it's hard see any good in it when you're pissed about the method of delivery. Even if someone's giving you free diamonds, it's easy to be annoyed about it if the method of delivery is "mixed with feces and thrown at your face". Unless you have a fetish for that sort of thing, and then you'll love it, I guess. Just like systemd.
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Wednesday September 24 2014, @11:14AM
Fair point, although it's easier to forgive the odd moment of muppetry if you're actually making something better, versus something which is "less good, just different". At which point everybody else is much more insulated from the level of original delivery.
So I might put up with the crap-in-your-face for the odd diamond, at which point somebody else might be prepared to pick up my "crap filtered" stream of diamonds, and so on. But nobody is going to pile through this for nuggets of yet more crap, and that leads to the problem that all you have is the core group and not much else. (Have I strained that comparison to breaking point yet?).
Likewise if systemd was a well designed init replacement then most folks wouldn't be even hearing about this - it'd be like the device node to devfs to udevd moves, or the procfs/sysfs/sysctl migrations, or any one of a hundred other technical changes that have run through into wider distribution and "just got done".
To put it another way: both Theo de Raadt and Richard Stallman have managed to mightily piss off whole sections of the human race on occasion, and each other pretty regularly, yet they both produce software that people want to use, and have generated communities around that which means you can ignore their....quirks. Mostly. Something that the systemd guys seem to be failing spectacularly to do on any scale...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Marand on Wednesday September 24 2014, @11:42AM
Probably. As far as analogies go, it was a rather shitty one to begin with. (don't hit me)
Funny that you mention udev, since it (and its creator) are unfortunately tied into this as well, which is part of the problem. I'm not sure if Sievers just happened to make something useful by mistake, or if he got infected later by Poettering's brand of development while working on systemd.
At least you can shut udev off and go back to manually created device nodes in an emergency and still have most things still work just fine. Or you could before it got tied with systemd -- haven't had a need to kill udev since that change. It's getting very difficult to avoid systemd in the same way.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 24 2014, @04:11PM
the method of delivery is "mixed with feces and thrown at your face"
This will go down in internet history as the strangest way to describe "E E E via submarine patents" that I've ever seen.
Think about it... is there a better rational reason for really weird and illogical technical decisions being made that are being pushed via expenditure of enormous amounts of political capital (which takes time and money)? One unanswered question is who's paying to destroy linux...
(Score: 1) by quixote on Wednesday September 24 2014, @09:14PM
The money angle hadn't occurred to me earlier. But now that you mention it ... it does make creepy sense.
Move away from simple, text-based logs, modular implementation toward opaque interdigitated total interdependence, and, yes, I could see submarine patents suddenly wreaking havoc.
And just recently I saw in the financial news that Novell, who'd been bought by Attachmate a few years back, has now been bought by Micro Focus. Somewhere in there I remember something about a consortium that includes Microsoft. Although, to be honest, the GOOG has been much more of a destructive parasite on Linux than even Microsoft.
Not that I wear a tin foil hat or anything.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 24 2014, @09:41PM
Doesn't even have to be evil empire totally destroys linux, just some jerk of a patent troll figuring.. hmm... how about I ask for $1 for every linux distro cd/dvd ever made or downloaded? That's pretty cheap compared to microsoft windows or osx licensing but a pretty good haul for a patent troll...
Or, Debian isn't under corporate enough control, whats a good way to destroy Debian so the only linux out there is corporate linux, maybe with TPM/big brother inside DRM control by the NSA... Hmm license something for $1/yr that wouldn't meet DFSG... so they can give up on the DFSG or go under... Hmm.
Or just plain old FUD. You know who (voldemort?) didn't get too far claiming "unix" source code in linux, but you know who does stupid things like monolithic designs with registries and binary logging and ... Even if you lose in court, even if you know its a lost cause, you can FUD FUD FUD for many years... This isn't tinfoil hat, its a reasonable assessment of "round 2" of an ongoing fight. If you know who doesn't attack on this angle, what is wrong with them? It seems obvious.
(Score: 2) by caseih on Wednesday September 24 2014, @02:48PM
And what problems are these? Please list them.
It's really surreal to read about systemd on sn and sd. Groupthink is clearly against systemd with very little argument against systemd other than some weak philosophical arguments, or saying that old sys v init scripts were good enough. Very few arguments against systemd come from people who've spent any time to understand its architecture, to say nothing of actually *using* systemd. One person on sd actually claimed he preferred using Windows to Linux with systemd, which is pretty bizarre, given Windows' service architecture. systemd really has zero impact on 90% of users, and a huge benefit for many, including those impacted by it (system administrators, for example).
Many systems, desktops and servers, are running a distro with systemd and I have yet to hear of any real problems that show systemd is inherently flawed. And in fact some system administrators really like systemd because it's soo much simpler to get services up and running with simple config files instead of hundreds of lines of fragile shell code. Is systemd a solution in search of a problem? Hardly. I sound like a broken record, but old init scripts have lots of issues. Hacks with PID files, grepping the process list, to determine if a process is already running, or has died, hacks to keep processes running. To say nothing of the issues that laptops and desktops have with suspend and hibernate. sys v init was never designed with that in mind. But systemd doesn't prevent you from writing and using fragile init scripts. It will happily run them for you. systemd does make it super simple and easy to make a daemon out of just about any program or script, without having to mess with daemonizing in your own code. And you get process supervision for free if you want it, and process management without manually messing with PID files or other forms of fragile locking.
Not that following others is reason in itself, but Solaris abandoned sys v init scripts years ago, though I can't argue that SMF is fun to work with.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday September 24 2014, @04:13PM
and a huge benefit for many, including those impacted by it (system administrators, for example).
Please feel free to tell us what those benefits are. So far all I hear is, "There are no advantages to systemd on the server. Nobody cares about boot time on servers."
I have yet to hear of any real problems that show systemd is inherently flawed.
The one I keep hearing is that if systemd shits the bed you can't really read the log files without relying on systemd itself...which sounds problematic.
"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 VLM on Wednesday September 24 2014, @04:31PM
So far all I hear is, "There are no advantages to systemd on the server. Nobody cares about boot time on servers."
I would moderately correct your remark in that I actively see parallel booting as an intense disadvantage for servers or any professional application (embedded, pretty much everything but generic "who cares" desktops). When some insane kernel panic happens I REALLY need to know its because of the previous log line that it was starting up mysql so start looking there. I have a huge financial incentive in not wasting time looking at mysql when the real problem is it started up 15 things at once and the sheer load blew it up or some random malloc failed or parallel process #6 tried to enable ipv6 on an interface at the same time as parallel process #7 tried to disable ipv6 or whatever other form of parallel race condition idiocy that doesn't really need to exist anyway.
In a professional environment, the only thing worse than parallel init, is dependency based or semi-non-deterministic init. So if mysql takes an extra 100 ms to start because the NAS is a bit slow today, then, and only then, does apache decide to crash, and since its at the same time its a PITA to troubleshoot and all that really matters is reboots are no longer a way to get the system to a deterministically stable state, they just kinda randomly don't work sometimes. Awesome, just what I want in a server OS (not!).
I would much rather lose 5 seconds of uptime on my redundant load balanced servers per monthly reboot than have to randomly and unpredictably have to spend hours troubleshooting race conditions once per year, not to mention potential data loss and lost labor time of the users and lost revenue. That just doesn't work out well mathematically for me.
So yeah, just architecturally, I bitterly hate the idea of systemd on a server and will actively do anything to avoid it. Its just inherently amateurish and unprofessional to use. Its an epic noob move, both technically and from the business side, to trade reliability via elimination of an entire class of potential problems for being 1% faster at something we practically never do anyway. Being dragged kicking and screaming by the OS vendor is "probably" safe, but making a business decision like that independently would be reasonable grounds for termination.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 24 2014, @04:14PM
"I have yet to hear of any real problems"
Product tying.
Go ahead, try to run "GIMP the image editor" with the "wrong" init system. There is no rational reason to product ty those unrelated tasks unless you have a hidden agenda, and hidden agendas aren't usually very good aka they're hidden for a reason.
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Wednesday September 24 2014, @04:16PM
Fundamentally? systemd is trying to do Too Damn Much and weld it in via the init system, which could be better, but isn't terribly broken for most all the traditional use cases.
Removing and improving on legacy init is one job (which does need doing). The consolidation and centralisation of a grab bag of system capabilities into a common infrastructure is a different job; systemd is munging them both into one thing. Bad.
So for any core system update you're balancing risk, benefits and costs: As a developer/user (primarily in the mid-range embedded space) I'm seeing no solid benefits, large risks and massive knock on costs on the future of the infrastructure, as systemd becomes an increasingly pervasive dependency for everything from logging to authentication to networking etc...
It's not a "vi versus emacs" that if you don't like it you pick something else and go with that - it's becoming increasingly hard (as per TFA) to avoid the damn thing. This should be because it's *better*, but it isn't - it's because it's *different*. This is not a problem for Gnome and Redhat, and if you're looking at their distribution then this may even be a good thing, but the world is not RHEL, and we aren't all worried about containerised Gnome.
I could go on, but whilst I don't agree with it all this essentially covers a lot of what I would say: http://ewontfix.com/14/ [ewontfix.com]
Now having said all that; I'd _like_ to be wrong, and for it to be a painless improvement, but having looked at it I'm not seeing anything persuasive from the systemd folks and from the sheer level of crud thrown about (e.g. the Kernel debug line debacle, wrong on *so* many levels) to the state of the docs (quantity != quality) to the source code in the repo (journal-qrcode.c? Seriously?) don't fill me with the warm and fuzzies.
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:49PM
And replying to myself here, but you always stumble across the best link after the event....
http://blog.lusis.org/blog/2014/09/23/end-of-linux/ [lusis.org]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday September 24 2014, @11:10PM
With barely a minute's thought, it seems obvious that there's nothing systemd does that couldn't be accomplished by putting it in the place of rcS and letting the old init call it.
Proper design would ask how minimal can the change be and still do the job and how far up in the tree can it go. They're doing the opposite of proper design here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @04:32PM
Systemd is a security hole. It circumvents traditional unix permissions.
It is huge and has untold numbers of root exploits in it.
It is a gift for and by the NSA.
There you go.
Fuck you.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday September 24 2014, @11:06PM
I keep hearing about these 'hundreds of lines' of shell script. However, generally, only a few lines are actually necessary.
My big concerns are debugging when the system won't come up and for cases where a different init is needed but systemd is locked in place by a hairball of ill-considered dependencies (the desktop, REALLY?!?)
Consider using init=/bin/bash as a debugging aid. Look things over, make a few changes then see if it works by calling rcS. Can't do that with systemd because it will insist on being PID1 but can't be because that's my shell.
Meanwhile, I'm having a hard time seeing what systemd can do for me that a few helpers that register with dbus can't do. Perhaps you'd like to explain?
(Score: 1) by gcrumb on Thursday September 25 2014, @04:57AM
Groupthink is clearly against systemd with very little argument against systemd other than some weak philosophical arguments, or saying that old sys v init scripts were good enough. Very few arguments against systemd come from people who've spent any time to understand its architecture, to say nothing of actually *using* systemd.
Those 'weak' philosophical arguments are coming from people whose careers have been spent un-fucking systems. It might be worth your while to take the same advice you give further on, and actually spend some time working and living with the issues that you consider to be so 'weak'. But if you're too impatient for that, you can always try reading this [lusis.org]. Specifically, this from the systemd design docs:
Any experienced systems administrator doesn't need to be told why this is a terrible idea. If you don't see the problem, then you're not really qualified to comment on how strong or how weak the 'philosophical' arguments are. I don't mean that dismissively. On the contrary, I'm suggesting you read up to the point where you do get the point, so that you can educate yourself. It's a shame, really that Sievers and Poettering haven't chosen to the same.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bunfight
(Score: 2) by caseih on Thursday September 25 2014, @06:19PM
Interesting. You keep on saying the very things I called people out for in my original post. Systemd is self-evidently bad. Sorry but that's not an argument. You quote a paragraph on how systemd is architected and say how bad that is but you fail to say specifically why it's bad and what problems are occurring, or even potentially could occur. "An experienced sysadmin doesn't need to be told this is a terrible idea" you say. Go on, tell me why it's a terrible idea. Specifically. Otherwise I stand by my claim that arguments against systemd so far have largely been weak.
The fact is that among the sysadmin communities I'm a member, including the official RHEL mailing lists, there is nary a word about actual systemd problems.
Don't patronize me with saying "educate [yourself]." The onus is on you to provide evidence, not tell me just to go look for it. I keep waiting for specific arguments against and problems with systemd but so far I've been disappointed.
By the way I am an experienced sysadmin, maybe not as much as many of you here. But I've worked with Linux and Unix for 14 years, adminning many servers hosting different kinds of services. I can talk about problems with init scripts because I've worked with them. I've had systems not boot because of a problem with a service starting (OpenLDAP on RH 4 and 5, I'm looking at you!) I've written my fair share of init scripts. I've also worked with other init systems too.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:26PM
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 25 2014, @08:36AM
False flag operation for either compromising patches of the userspace, or kernelspace.
Maybe somebody with the knowledge, tools, or manpower could look into that for us?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 25 2014, @09:14AM
Probably. But they have already won. You can only fight governments through force. The people compromising debian are not going to give up their positions if their masters are the agencies and a government.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @08:09AM
There needs to be revenge taken against the people who forced systemd on Debian.
It is a small cabal.
The debian charter says debian is for the benifit of the user.
(Same with the Free Software manifesto)
The vocal systemd debian "Devs" say you get what we give you, debian is a do-acracy (so if everything that needs to be done has allready been finished, the shit pushers take over).
Revenge needs to be sought.
The systemd-etc modus operandi is take over key positions, shut down debate by banning critics and deleting messages as spam, done.
We need real revenge against them. To punish them for their coup.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday September 24 2014, @11:52AM
Remove them from key positions or marginalize them ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @11:58AM
The second option.
The first won't work.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @08:11AM
Feminists and faggots (or feminist supporters).
The men were kicked out five years ago.
Honestly, It would be nice if the feminists and faggots died.
They're all about arm-twisting and control.
I hate them. They ruined free/opensource community.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @09:32AM
Get. Professional. Medical. Help. Now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @11:32AM
Fuck you.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday September 24 2014, @11:38AM
Or at least have someone look at that large growth to the posterior of the amdygula. The pressure may be causing distorted reality perception.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday September 24 2014, @11:42AM
I thought that was caused by Apple products.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @11:44AM
Obviously, it's caused by systemd. :D
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday September 24 2014, @11:52AM
Do not confuse this with the Jobs Reality Distortion Field. That is entirely extra-cranial. And, it costs more.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @12:02PM
Systemd and gnome are intertwined, and the gnome foundation did waste scads of contributed money on paying charming lady interns to "encourage female participation in free / open source software"...
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2143160/gnome-foundation-faces-cash-crunch-over-women-outreach-program.html [pcworld.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @08:53AM
Thought I'd share it here too...
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5746113&cid=47979833 [slashdot.org]
by jd (1658) on Tuesday, 23 September 2014, 09:31PM
Software that is designed correctly separates out what it does, how it does it, and how it interacts with the outside world.
Ergo, software that is correctly designed is user-agnostic. If the user thinks in a particular way, whatever that way happens to be, it is the job of the software to accommodate that. If it does not, it is not software for users, it is software that has users. Possession is everything.
Software that is correctly designed is configuration-agnostic. If the configuration file states something is enabled, then that is enabled. It is not the job of the software to say the file really means something else. If the configuration is broken, state how and why. Clearly. If the configuration is old, import and update. But don't tell me, or anyone else, what Joe Bloggs thinks would look better. I don't care. And the more other people's preferences get shoved in my face, the less I will care.
Theo clearly has the right idea - the only way to get past the morons is with an attitude of utter contempt. Bugger all else matters, apparently.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday September 24 2014, @11:54AM
http://boycottsystemd.org/ [boycottsystemd.org]
Makes you wonder if systemd team somehow have links like SCO did back to people with bad intentions through the wallet or contract.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday September 24 2014, @12:39PM
That website is a joke. This line cracks me up: "Consider migrating to *BSD, Plan 9 or something similar, if things get really out of hand." Seriously? Plan9? I am not bashing plan9. It has a great architecture via 9p that Linux should have copied. But that is like saying everyone who hates Windows 8 should switch to ReactOS *in its current state*. As interesting as Plan9 is, it is not ready for any sort of production or casual daily use. FreeBSD is in a much better position than Plan9 to act as a replacement.
My 1xE-2¢? I have no beef with replacing the init system and the basic functionality of systemd is fine by me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @01:32PM
What about rolling your own Linux distro without the nasty bits...
Doesn't Linux From Scratch (http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/) let you do that easily?
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday September 24 2014, @04:10PM
You could but at this point it is moot. Systemd is here to stay. All the bitching and empty threats to jump ship to *BSD or Slackware is simply not doing anything. Shell script kludge is Unix cruft that needs to be avoided in certain places. Systemd fixes that using IPC albeit it includes functionality that is of scope for an init system (e.g. an NTP client).
My current thoughts on systemd are this: it's intended goal of being a more modern pid1, init and process manager is needed. But I don't like the kitchen sink approach so I am a bit weary. Systemd is not the end-all be-all of init systems. And I believe that down the road things will change and any extraneous nonsense will be removed or changed. Plus we already have uselessd (use-less)which aims to trim the fat from systemd and remove the dependency on glibc. So if systemd sucks hard enough, we can simply drop in an alternative without breaking downstream package dependency. That is the beauty of open source.
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Wednesday September 24 2014, @04:38PM
What about rolling your own Linux distro without the nasty bits...
Doesn't Linux From Scratch (http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/) let you do that easily?
I've ignored the debate/outrage but I won't accept binary logs so I'll have to avoid systemd.
Among the alternatives Funtoo [funtoo.org] looks the most tempting to me because of this [funtoo.org]. I would almost certainly change to a different desktop environment than Gnome (MATE is decent and what I use now).
But sure LFS is also a possibility. Recently someone gave me a link to Minimal Linux Live [linux-bg.org] which also looks like fun if one can spare the time :) It uses BusyBox so no systemd or init or udev.
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @12:47PM
Coup is what happened. And it happened 4 years ago.
"Social" concerns came in (debian-women), technical men were kicked the fuck out (for not being nice enough).
Then the door was garded by the cunt feminists who now vet any new "debian developers" (no mysoginy!).
Gnome are the people who illegally and in bad faith spent your contributions on paying for female diversity managers and to get more women in tech.
These people are feminists.
They took over what was ours.
In debian more recently, a systemd fan registered the lack of systemd as default as a "technical bug", so that the issue would be decided
by an 8 man technical committie rather than by General Resolution. 4 of the committie members were current or former redhat employees, one of them
being the tie breaker chair. The other four were present or former canonical employees. See how this thing is?
No true debian people.
Anyone who complained too much was banned from the mailing list.
They keep talking about a do-acracy and shut the fuck up users and actual programmers who use the distro.
Even though their charter says it's all for the benifit of the user.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @01:26PM
MOD UP: INFORMATIVE +1
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday September 24 2014, @01:30PM
No one is interested in your sexist garbage.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @01:38PM
MOD DOWN: FLAMEBAIT -1
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @05:44PM
Disregard that, i'm stupid.
(Score: 1) by quixote on Wednesday September 24 2014, @09:34PM
Seconded!
Is this the same AC dropping sexist crap all over this thread? If so, ban his IP!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @10:26PM
yeah! fuck free speech! fuck it right in the ear!
(Score: 2) by efitton on Thursday September 25 2014, @03:03AM
We aren't stopping you from posting on Slashdot. Free speech is alive and well, along with our right not to listen.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 25 2014, @06:51AM
1 IP you think? Lol, nope.
Fuck you.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday September 24 2014, @01:34PM
If what you say is true then they have left the meritocracy for both people and software.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @04:12PM
They have.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by morgauxo on Wednesday September 24 2014, @01:11PM
I just lost a lot of respect for Debian. I am a little sad.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Wednesday September 24 2014, @01:15PM
I am also confused. Every time I have installed Debian it begins as a very bare bones no-desktop Linux install. Then (if I am even installing a Desktop) I have added X and whatever desktop environment I wanted. Does Debian now start off with a full Desktop right from the installer? Being able to make a more bare-bones Linux install was always one of Debian's strengths!
(Score: 3, Informative) by CRCulver on Wednesday September 24 2014, @02:27PM
Debian has, and probably always will, offer a bare-bones installer where the user can choose what desktop to install -- or even no desktop at all, as Debian is a popular distro for headless server installations. This news is about returning to GNOME as the default for novice computer users who just click through the installer, not making it mandatory for people who want to customize.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Thursday September 25 2014, @01:35PM
I guess I have only ever ran the barebones installer then. I was unaware there was a straight Debian installer that installed a whole desktop.
"not making it mandatory for people who want to customize"
Of course not. You can go away from the defaults in any Linux distribution.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 24 2014, @02:06PM
What's happened is that much of the UI design profession has decided, against the wishes of users, that tablets and desktops should look and act basically the same. My suspicion is that many of that crowd believe that tablets are the future and that desktops and laptops are eventually going the way of greenbar paper on dot matrix printers, so who cares if the interfaces for them suck?
Windows 8 is trying to do that. Unity is trying to do that. Gnome 3 is trying to do that. All 3 have users pissed off, and for roughly the same reasons.
The reason this pisses off users is that tablets and desktops have very different human-computer interactions, and the only things that unify their UI hardware really is that both have screens larger than a cell phone.
Things that are easy to do on a desktop but noticeably harder/impossible on a tablet:
- Right-click
- Spin the scroll wheel on the mouse
- Mouseover and hover
- Click the corners of the screen
- Type text (yes, you can attach keyboards to tablets, or use virtual keyboards, but both are a pain in the tuchas)
- Interact with relatively small buttons and text
Things that are easy to do on a tablet but noticeably harder/impossible on a desktop:
- Pinch and related gestures involving multiple points on a screen simultaneously
- Swipe
- Poke near the middle of the screen
- Rotate the screen from landscape to portrait orientation and back
- Interact with relatively large buttons and text (on a desktop, those feel cluttering, on tablets, they're basically a necessity because of how fat your finger is)
So if you're designing for a desktop, you have fairly small buttons and things around the edges, and lots of easy places to type. If you're designing for a tablet, you have large buttons in the center, an appropriate response on screen rotation, touchscreen gestures that do what you'd expect, and minimal typing. If you try to make your desktop UI identical to the tablet UI, you will find yourself doing something unnatural on at least one kind of machine.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday September 24 2014, @02:18PM
Things that are easy to do on a desktop but noticeably harder/impossible on a tablet:
- Precision clicking with a mouse
- Choice of operating system installation
- Replacement of hardware components
- Being able to point at the screen without magical things happening
Oh btw, Broadcom and NVidia sucks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @02:34PM
What you describe is true. But I think it's a symptom of the real problem: hipsters.
All of these awful designs have one thing in common: hipsters are responsible for them.
A central tenet of the hipster philosophy is that the hipster is always right, and unwilling to compromise or even consider the thoughts and opinions of others. They refuse to listen to user feedback.
Another central tenet of the hipster philosophy is to be different for no good reason at all.
As long as hipsters are working on these UIs, the UIs will be terrible. Their basic philosophy guarantees it.
(Score: 2) by DrMag on Wednesday September 24 2014, @05:16PM
Informational video for those unacquainted with the origin or traits of the hipster [youtube.com].
(Score: 2) by metamonkey on Wednesday September 24 2014, @03:49PM
I like having the option, though. My primary non-gaming computer is a Lenovo Yoga11s dual-booting into Windows 8 and Debian. It has a touch screen, and the screen can flip completely around the back and it becomes a tablet. I like the fact that if I decide to read a long article I can just flip it into tablet mode, sit back and scroll with my finger, or pinch to zoom in. Of course that only works in windows, and I hardly ever boot into windows. It's handy, but only as an optional thing. If you were required to scroll with the touchscreen instead of the trackpad, that would be awful. But having the extra ability is nice.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 1) by willoughby on Wednesday September 24 2014, @03:34PM
Why does any desktop environment need such tight (or any) integration with the init system?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @03:46PM
Conquest.
(Score: 1) by number6 on Wednesday September 24 2014, @04:25PM
My theoretical perfect operating system would be designed so that ALL userspace components including graphical UI elements and window managers and desktops are hot-swappable plugins.
The user just needs to drop the files of some plugin into a "Plugins" folder and reboot the machine, similar to how foobar2000 audio player is used.
When a new plugin is added and machine is rebooted, the user will find a new Preferences page added to the Preferences Panel (aka Control Panel). The Preferences Panel would talk to the system core/kernel via fully documented API programming methods.
With such a system, the "UI designers" of this world become "Plugin" designers; if you don't like their design then you just choose another plugin at the Preferences Panel. If the plugin is a fundamental display element such as the Desktop/Window Manager then it adds its Preferences pages under a category named "Display" in the Preferences Panel.
The category "Display" will always have at least one Preference entry named "Default User Interface". If the user decides to add a new user interface plugin named "Old-Skool Desktop, No Mobile Shit, No Touch-Screen Shit, No Chameleon FX" then -after rebooting- he sees a new Preference page under "Display" and can choose this interface. If the user decides to add a new user interface plugin named "Everything, Desktop-Mobile-Mouse-Keyboard-Touch, Full Chameleon FX" then -after rebooting- he sees a new Preference page under "Display" and can choose this interface too.
Of course, when a third-party display plugin exists, then user must choose between it/them or the "Default User Interface" via a control such as drop-down or checkbox.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @05:01PM
all f#cking fascinating comments really! thx. smile and lol alot.
just wanted to mention that code comes from motivated people. talk is talk.
one problem not much mentioned though is the role that "distros" play.
i think it's possible to use a second computer/device to download all the
separate source code (projects), compile it and then load it onto the first computer.
some smart guys said "hey we already did this, let's pack this all together into a DISTRO".
so i am also laying blame on the distro-leaders for putting a working distro before ethics and philosophy.
also the hard, honest and important question for future linux: choice.
what choices do we lose if not pushing against systemdee?
if every fucking thing needs systemdee to work .. then wat?
multiple same windows? no!
icons on the desktop? no!
need a GPU to work (or a GPU emulator shim)? yes!
shitty desktop interface? yes!
f#ck gnome3! if we can kill gnome3 we can kill systemdee too!
go MATE! GOGOGOGO!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @05:15PM
btw. stinkyfeet2 on desktop and systemdee on servers with no xserver ONLY BECAUSE i respect the hard (real) work
of kernel programmers (don't let it go to waste) and "my" distro dumped SysV init going to the 3 series linux kernel.
if i would not appreciate the new kernels i'd stick w/ SysV init (and the "old" kernels).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:22PM
It was fun while it lasted, but clearly it's time to move back to Windows. When we have a game as rigged as this it isn't worth the effort, not to mention Linux developers are apparently too busy playing these idiotic political games and selling out to make a better product. Case in point: bought any new laptops lately with synaptics touchpads? Well I have and they don't work for crap. But yeah let's ignore basic stuff like pointing devices not working at all and "fix" stuff that isn't even broken, all for horribly misguided reasons.
Me, I'll focus on supporting free software in areas other than the OS, because this battle has been lost for a long time and now I don't even believe in the cause anymore because it's been overrun by douchebags. I'll take Windows over this mess and supporting systemd and Red Hat any day.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:37PM
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @07:35PM
And that's worse because ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @07:39PM
Or a yessir to RedHat.
Thanks Debian & Ubuntu, for holding the line. Way to really stand up for yourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @07:42PM
Exactly -- there's no real difference here. The "circular logic" post from above pretty much says it all.
If the supposed COMMUNITY got its way this wouldn't be happening. Clearly it doesn't.
Same thing, different CEO.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @07:46PM
Yep, that's what's killed it for me. When Linux was sort of on the edge, the entire character of the 'movement' was different. It seemed like a perfect mix of ideology, brains, and determination.
Now that it's essentially as 'edgy' as your local McDonald's menu (and about as interesting), shit like this is going to continue to drive people into the arms of Windows and the BSDs, which I'm not totally sure is a good thing either.
Such is the way of things, however. Sad, though, to see it end this way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @07:52PM
Actually you know what? This is even WORSE than a yessir to the CEO of MS or Apple.
Here's the thing: at Apple or MS, the CEO doesn't care about things at the level we're discussing here. Who does care would be the technical team responsible for the part of the system in question. That team presumably would have some sort of a lead who would be the ultimate decision maker as to how things will or won't work, and what will or won't be implemented. And a good lead would of course listen to his or her team.
What we have here is a situation where the entire technical team (in this case more or less the entire community of Linux developers) is saying "no no no this is a terrible idea," and has completely logical, valid, rock-solid reasoning on their side, and they're getting a middle finger as the response.
At MS or Apple unless you have a complete asshole at the technical decision-making level who ignores their team this wouldn't happen, and chances are that sort of person wouldn't last long. And if you do have a complete asshole at the helm, well that's the boat we're in right now with this whole mess.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @08:00PM
(in this case more or less the entire community of Linux developers) is saying "no no no this is a terrible idea," and has completely logical, valid, rock-solid reasoning on their side, and they're getting a middle finger as the response.
B-B-B-B-BUT IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, FORK IT!
That might've worked at one point, but now that everything and its dog is going to be inextricably bound to System D, you'll be forked all right.
With no reacharound.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 28 2014, @12:46PM
WTF is "System D"?
If you're clueless enough to call it that, I don't expect you have any idea why it sucks, or how to configure a system that doesn't use it.
Actually, from this whole article I've got the impression that a lot of "nerds" have forgotten how to configure a Linux distro installation.
Anyone who thinks a userland init package has become critical for any and every install is holding it wrong.
RTFM or GTFO!
(Score: 1) by donjan on Thursday September 25 2014, @12:34AM
What we have here is a situation where the entire technical team (in this case more or less the entire community of Linux developers) is saying "no no no this is a terrible idea," and has completely logical, valid, rock-solid reasoning on their side, and they're getting a middle finger as the response.
I'm not a fan of systemd myself, but the quoted statement is false.
What we have is the vast majority of the "technical team" either agreeing with the proposed change or being indifferent to it. On the opposite side, a minority is saying "this is a terrible idea" and backing it up by some solid reasoning, but the problem is that too many of those people are armchair developers who push back for ideological/sentimental reasons like "one-task-per-binary-unix-philosophy", "RedHat-wants-to-dominate-all" and "I-dont-want-to-learn-journalctl-instead-of-using-grep".
While I happen to sympathise with all those reasons (especially the dislike of journalctl) and more importantly with criticism put forth by people like Rich Felker and John Vincent, you and I have to be fair and accept the validity of the pro-systemd reasoning. Which is more or less successful in rebutting technical critique while questioning the necessity of the ideological reasons (either as dogmatic, tinfoil-ish or plain lazy).
And there's the crucial point: we can't prove that systemd with all its advantages and drawbacks is not an improvement to sysvinit, we can only say that we don't like its flavour. But FOSS is the so often lauded do-ocracy, and so far sysvinit, OpenRC, Upstart, runit and others have apparently failed to deliver, which leaves the field to systemd.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 25 2014, @08:58AM
so far sysvinit, OpenRC, Upstart, runit and others have apparently failed to deliver, which leaves the field to systemd.
False.
"Failed to deliver?" Ha!
System D answers a question that most of us aren't/weren't ever asking. A vocal minority and their toadies waving around B.S. like "This prevents logfile tampering" is a sure admission that this project is a blemish on the face of society.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @08:01PM
It looks like I'll be getting much more familiar with the *BSD world the next time I need to install a Unix-like OS.
PC-BSD on the desktop and FreeBSD on the server...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @08:19PM
Yes.
Someone needs to submit a migration guide thread here or something. I know instructions are out there on the www, but it would be nifty to see what the SN crowd has to say.
(For my money, I tried installing FreeBSD 10 and OpenBSD 5.5 on a couple of machines and had very bad luck. Felt like "Linux 1997")
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 25 2014, @05:22AM
Debian removes working finished programs from their repos if the program hasn't gotten an update in awhile.
Nothing is ever "done" for them.
They are FAGGOTS chasing a dragon and demand you do to.
FUCK them.
Sometimes programs get finished and don't need to be fucked with after that.
Also the debian "devs" feel they are superior to both the users and actual programmers.
FUCK tHEM.