SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/20/systemd_2561_data_wipe_fix/
Following closely after the release of version 256, version 256.1 fixes a handful of bugs. One of these is emphatically not systemd-tmpfiles recursively deleting your entire home directory. That's a feature.
The 256.1 release is now out, containing some 38 minor changes and bugfixes. Among these are some changes to the help text around the systemd-tmpfiles command, which describes itself as a tool to "Create, delete, and clean up files and directories." Red Hat's RHEL documentation describes it as a tool for managing and cleaning up your temporary files.
That sounds innocuous enough, right?
It isn't, as Github user jedenastka discovered on Friday. He filed bug #33349 and the description makes for harrowing reading, not just because of the tool's entirely intended behavior, but also because of the systemd maintainers' response, which could be summarized as "you're doing it wrong".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Unixnut on Tuesday June 25 2024, @10:20AM (1 child)
Correct it does but support is not yet complete, plus systemd has not yet subsumed enough of the Linux OS layer to be a complete abstraction away from the kernel. I suspect if systemd successfully becomes an abstraction layer between the application layer and kernel layer, you will be able to run what looks like a full Linux distro under Windows.
Already some companies I worked give developers Windows with the Linux subsystem and say "it is just like Linux" instead of actually offering a Linux machine. It isn't "just like Linux" but from their point of view they just need one OS, one support contract and everyone can be managed by Active Directory. Much simpler than a separate Windows/Linux infrastructure.
Why doubt it? It seems logical, and from a business perspective it seems like a definite way to increase revenue. Don't forget Red Hat was bought by IBM. IBM as we know is very big on making money on consulting and support fees, that is their bread and butter. They also don't shy away from obfuscation and lock-out of systems so that you have to use their support and consulting services.
I also ponder if there is a larger fight going on between IBM and MS for the share of the OS market. After all Microsoft through SCO launched some serious legal attacks against IBM and Linux in the 00's, not to mention all the FUD against Linux.
Now IBM through Red Hat is effectively turning Linux into an equivalent of Windows in order to compete directly against Microsoft for the enterprise market, while Microsoft builds out its subsystem in order to successfully subsume Linux into a Windows service and neuter the threat.
I agree, but I think the point where they become non-viable is coming close. The Devuan team have done a great job ripping out as much of systemd as they can but as I can see from the mailing lists, it is getting harder and harder.
Firstly as systemd takes over more Linux systems, they have to fork the original systems and maintain them, which takes a lot of man power and as no companies are interested in a non-systemd Linux (for reasons mentioned in the previous post), nobody is really willing to pay developers to work on the non-systemd code, meaning it is left to volunteers.
Secondly they find themselves implementing systemd "shims" so much now to get programs to work that some on the list started joking that Pottering has got us inadvertently re-implementing systemd for him.
I do feel like it is a losing battle which is why I started moving to FreeBSD a couple of years ago. The servers were moved first because they were easier to migrate, leaving Devuan on my workstations.
However a few months ago I moved my main desktop workstation to FreeBSD after a Devuan upgrade to the latest stable broke my graphics. The Nvidia driver is proprietary and assumed systemd exists on the Linux machine. It tried to register some nvidia systemd component which predictably failed, borking the install and preventing the driver from working.
After a week of trying to get Devuan to boot with a GUI, including multiple re-installs I gave up and set up FreeBSD as I needed the system up for work. It took a bit of fiddling but once working seems perfectly suitable as a replacement (Except sleep/resume doesn't work, a throwback to the early 00's Linux).
Unfortunately unless there is a sea change in the Linux ecosystem I suspect events like the above will become more common. Things will just get harder and harder for non-systemd distro's to keep compatibility. Eventually they may well turn into nothing more than hobby/experimental distros, not fit for everyday use.
As the moment my laptop is the only Linux OS I have left. Simply because suspend/resume works on it and it does not need a proprietary graphics driver to work, so the Nvidia issue above has not occurred. However I feel it is a matter of time until even that drifts too far out of compatibility.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday June 25 2024, @01:33PM
Myself, I'm not running servers or needing to support a bunch of systems; I just wanted something that didn't make my eyes bleed like Win10 did (and still does) and where the file manager (where I more or less live when I'm not doing something else) doesn't make me want to string up a UI developer. A good stable desktop OS that would give me no grief and would Just Work. (I was spoiled by XP; suits me very well, never a bit of trouble and uptimes measured in years, and the ability to make it wholly restful to the aging eyes. And I'm past where I'm willing to fight the everyday OS to a draw. Immediate surrender or it's on the next prospect.)
Daily driver is still XP64 (deal with it, world, I'm safer than you are). Mostly PCLinuxOS when I need "modern". And a whole stack of small HDs and a hotswap bay for Test OSs (have found live and installed are often not the same). But as you say... "Eventually they may well turn into nothing more than hobby/experimental distros, not fit for everyday use." I think it's already to that point. And an awful lot of 'em are one or two guys struggling to keep up. So I've been hunting a distro that suits me as well as PCLOS and that has a definite future in the linux ecosystem, but so far have found only tolerable, not "I enjoy using this" and "everything works". So far Fedora/KDE is the least trouble and least annoying but jaysus the performance is nowhere close to PCLOS, which runs like the wind on any piece of crap. Not quite Puppy, but close.
"The Nvidia driver is proprietary and assumed systemd exists on the Linux machine."
Oh. Oh dear. This perhaps explains why a recent attempt to install PCLOS (which happens to be non-systemd) on Default VM Hardware... simply refused to work. And perhaps why on real hardware with random vidcard (would have to check what's in there), Devuan was weird after an update, to where I deemed it "needs a do-over" and Debian refused to update at all.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.