Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Tightly-coupled core distro [was: Council meeting summary for 3 April 2012]
On Sun, 2012-11-18 at 17:19 +, Duncan wrote: > Diego Elio Pettenò posted on Sun, 18 Nov 2012 07:47:22 -0800 as excerpted: > > > On 18/11/2012 07:43, Vadim A. Misbakh-Soloviov wrote: > >> And, by the way, I doubt, that people "laugh" about eudev (previously > >> named udev-ng) creation. Mostly they just can't understand why gentoo > >> devs created third udev's fork, where it was already done (and > >> maintained) fork for LFS (somewhere on bitbucket) > > > > People _are_ laughing at it. On G+, on Twitter, I suppose identi.ca and > > IRC as well. > > There's worse things than being laughed it. In fact, what's the oft-used- > in-MS/Linux-context quote (Gandi if I'm not mistaken), something along > the lines of... > > First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then > you win! > > If they're laughing, they're beyond the ignore stage. And we see > evidence of the fight stage now too. If the idea behind that quote is > correct... People keep repeating that quote implying that whenever somebody laughs at an idea it's because the idea is worth something, but that's illogical and in fact false: just because B(worthy idea) was preceded by A(laughter) doesn't mean that whenever there's A(laughter) then B(worthy idea) ensues http://xkcd.com/386/ -- Stelian Ionescu a.k.a. fe[nl]ix Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur. http://common-lisp.net/project/iolib signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
[gentoo-dev] Re: Tightly-coupled core distro [was: Council meeting summary for 3 April 2012]
Diego Elio Pettenò posted on Sun, 18 Nov 2012 07:47:22 -0800 as excerpted: > On 18/11/2012 07:43, Vadim A. Misbakh-Soloviov wrote: >> And, by the way, I doubt, that people "laugh" about eudev (previously >> named udev-ng) creation. Mostly they just can't understand why gentoo >> devs created third udev's fork, where it was already done (and >> maintained) fork for LFS (somewhere on bitbucket) > > People _are_ laughing at it. On G+, on Twitter, I suppose identi.ca and > IRC as well. There's worse things than being laughed it. In fact, what's the oft-used- in-MS/Linux-context quote (Gandi if I'm not mistaken), something along the lines of... First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win! If they're laughing, they're beyond the ignore stage. And we see evidence of the fight stage now too. If the idea behind that quote is correct... But regardless, there's quite some coding to do before we see. Meanwhile, it may fizzle out, or other events may overtake. Anyway you look at it tho, things could be interesting. But there's still worse things than being laughed at. Gentoo continued in spite of the ricer rep it once had, and this project seems to be being blown WAY out of proportion in all KINDS of ways, but gentoo will still continue, regardless. (All that said, the copyright/legal thing is a bit concerning, but it already seems to be on its way to being worked out, best I can tell, so it too seems to have been blown way out of proportion, tho it may well have been felt that was necessary in ordered to stress the gravity of the situation. As many find out too late, legal isn't a laughing matter, but regardless, that angle /does/ appear to be being addressed. The others... let them laugh.) -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
[gentoo-dev] Re: Tightly-coupled core distro [was: Council meeting summary for 3 April 2012]
Rich Freeman posted on Sun, 18 Nov 2012 07:26:17 -0500 as excerpted: > I'm sure all of the options will be offered as options for as long as > people care to take care of them. With the number of anti-systemd posts > on -dev I don't see openrc going away anytime soon. > > I'm sure the default will stay as it is unless a substantial majority > want it otherwise - we can't go flipping that every time the latest > whatever comes along. [For close followers of the discussion, this is a repeat. But it's worth repeating in the hope that the message gets out to gentoo users who don't follow so closely.] Based on previous posts from other gentoo users, this point seems to have been lost on some, but it's absolutely true. As I've pointed out before as well, even if by some miracle all of gentoo turned on a dime and became a virulently pro-systemd distro today, in practice it'd take time for that to work into the implementation. We're looking at probably a year minimum, more practically closer to two, before end-users could really be "forced" over, and that's if somehow the policy changed on a dime, today, which isn't going to happen. So even if gentoo ultimately heads that direction, and I think the default _may_ _eventually_ be systemd but with *SERIOUS* stress on BOTH _MAY_ and _EVENTUALLY_, in reality we're looking at 3-5 years. And in the free software world, a _LOT_ happens in 3-5 years! So much so that five years really is at the horizon in any case -- there will be enough currently unforeseen changes between now and then that it's really hard to predict anything out that far anyway, and MOST people attempting to do so in anything but trivial ways will get MAJOR parts of their prediction wrong, simply because events will overtake them. > And frankly, I could care less what it is since I can change it. If I > wanted to be rigidly bound by defaults there are a lot of distros easier > to maintain than Gentoo. iOS comes to mind. :) That's a point that should be near and dear to any serious gentooer's heart! =:^) > I run OpenRC on my main box, and systemd on a VM hosted within it. I > wouldn't be surprised if I move to systemd some day as my experience > with it has been a good one, but I'll use the tools I think are best for > the problem at hand, and not what somebody else chooses for me, and I'll > be the last to force a choice on anybody else. With the previous caveats about trying to predict anything in the FLOSS world too far out, in 2-3 years, I expect I'll be on systemd myself. But there's no rush, and I intend to wait until it stabilizes somewhat, first. At present it's simply evolving too fast for my tastes, for something so system-basic. I enjoy running alphas and betas as much as the next guy and it's a rare time indeed that I don't have /something/ not-absolutely stable running on my systems, but that doesn't mean I want /all/ of my system unstable and shifting out from under me, and system init is an area where I'm just not ready to make a change as big as systemd, when it's still actively growing and changing at the rate it seems to be doing so today. That said, I _do_ run openrc-, mainly because I found the changes of ~arch openrc too coarse-grained and hard to troubleshoot when things go wrong. By running the live-git version and examining git-whatchanged every time I update, often looking at the diffs for individual commits, I get the incremental changes as they come in, and can much faster pinpoint where a particular problem is when I see it, making the necessary changes locally and of course bug-filing upstream as I need to, to get it fixed. But running a live-git version of something I'm already on, in ordered to more closely follow individual commits and pinpoint and resolve bugs faster, is quite different from deciding I'm going to switch to something with as much churn as systemd seems to still have, engulfing and extinguishing entire projects like some ravenous black hole or gray goo. Yes, I expect at some point I'll be assimilated myself, but there's no reason that point needs to be now, and the future where I expect it to happen remains to be written, with a good chance the plot line will change significantly between now and then, such that I may never be assimilated after all. For all I know, the whole worldview will change between now and then, and other events might well overtake this gray goo that now seems to be engulfing everything that it touches, such that it never does in fact engulf me and my systems. > That said, Gentoo can > only offer the options that devs step up and maintain, so if you care > greatly about something start writing patches. This too is a point that's often lost on people. Take kde as an example. Yes, kde3 was relegated to the kde-sunset overlay, where it's being maintained in some state by users (see the gentoo-desktop list for the discussion on that, if interested). Bu
[gentoo-dev] Re: Tightly-coupled core distro [was: Council meeting summary for 3 April 2012]
Alec Warner wrote: > Fabio Erculiani wrote: >> I think expressing my own opinion about Lennart-made software is my >> right, after all. >> Firstly, it's almost impossible nowadays to avoid including avahi, >> systemd and pulseaudio into a desktop distro so, there is no real >> choice. This issue became a sensible matter for those users who for >> instance, wanted to have a silly mp3 player working without going >> through the PA nonsense, really missing the old >> ALSA-oh-it-was-always-working days. > > Er, the source is open, so choice is always there. What I think your > complaint is the fact that it used to be easy to do those things > (because upstream supported those options and USE flags exposed them > to you) and now upstream is not supporting those options and there is > no easy way to remove the dependencies without doing a bunch of work. > I think it's more a matter of process. These changes force major userspace changes, which since they are not a matter of ABI export, don't really concern kernel devs (after all, they design for userspace to do crazy stuff, or their OS is not robust: beyond ABI stability, the contract they fulfil, in the main they don't really care what happens there.) However the changes are forced on admins and users, unless we take on a development effort which means we're no longer just admins or users. And yeah, people are clearly looking at doing that with mdev, though we'd rather not have to be forced into that. >> If you want to bring complexity but you end up not being able to >> handle it, then you're not a really good engineer, IMHO. > > I don't think anyone expects complexity to come bug-free. Cathedral > and the Bazaar? Release Early and Release Often? I expect the software > to reach a stable state in a reasonable amount of time given the > complexity involved. > The way to handle complexity is with small, modular components that are loosely-coupled and cohesive. AKA "Do one thing, and do it well." Like udev has been doing for quite a while. >> >> Having said that, I also wonder where's the lovely modularity the >> various *nix platforms had. If this is the actual direction of Linux >> Foundation, Redhat and Canonical, I am worried that Linux would end up >> being an OSX-wannabe. > > The problem as I understand it is that you want other people to write > software that meets your needs and it turns out that the world doesn't > always work that way. > > You can fork the software you hate (using versions before you hated > it) or you can write your own software (like mdev + busybox) to > replace the hated components. Both of those things are actually > somewhat useful. Complaining about how some random people on the > internet don't write software that you find palatable is just silly. > It's not about that: the point is that massive changes are being pushed through, and the people who actually have to implement them in the real- world haven't been consulted. When they are, after their concerns about administration (you know, their jobs) are dismissed and they're asked for technical reasons, they draw attention to Unix principles, simply because they have been proven over decades to be the best basis for software- engineering. And please: "random people on the internet"? That's not how I'd describe upstream udev or kernel maintainers. Or is this your "it's the developer's playground" philosophy again? Simply put, there is no space in kernel mailing-lists, nor in upstream udev et al, to have this discussion. It affects Gentoo users most, because we are far more likely to run using custom-compiled kernels with base system modules like motherboard disk-controllers built-in, and to have setup eg /usr on LVM in accordance with docs, and since we use a rolling-release we haven't needed to change what wasn't broken. Nor do many of us think we've heard any benefit to outweigh the disadvantages. For instance, we've been told several times that a) an initramfs is the new root, in that we don't need rescue tools on an easy to mount root anymore, our initramfs will be a souped-up rescue-shell; and b) that an initramfs is easy to set up and maintain, and should typically only be a few hundred kilobytes (so it's not going to bloat the boot process.) Everything I've seen of people's configs in forum posts about setting up initramfs, and heard of the process, makes me think it's going to be a custom design per-Gentoo user, and tweaking what's in there is going to be part of standard setup and ongoing maintenance. Forgive me for assessing that as a regression in usability. Ultimately of course, udev maintainers will do what they want. That's fine, and I'll shut up about the whole thing as my concerns are on the record: just so long as no-one pretends they've justified the breaches of basic design principles. Regards, Steve. -- #friendly-coders -- We're friendly, but we're not /that/ friendly ;-)
[gentoo-dev] Re: Tightly-coupled core distro [was: Council meeting summary for 3 April 2012]
Greg KH wrote: > Steven J Long wrote: >> And that is what we were discussing: possible future coupling between the >> two, which is much easier to do when the sources are part of the >> same package. .. >> OFC you could just assure us that udev will never rely on systemd as a >> design decision. I can understand that systemd might need close >> integration with the underlying udev implementation. > > Nope, can't make that assurance at all. > > Actually, maybe I can make the opposite assurance Well, thanks for being straightforward about it: clearly you're keeping the option of udev requiring systemd open, and in fact want to move toward that. > , let's see what the future brings... :) > Yeah, we'll see :) You have udev working nicely, fulfilling a whole load of use-cases, and now you want to upwardly-couple to er, a service-manager. Running as pid 1, no less, even though it's not necessary. (I predict that latter decision will get reversed in a while, just like a /usr partition went from an anachronism to a grand new design, and xml config formats are no longer talked about; thankfully binary logs got slammed back out the door in-kernel at least[1].) Not build another thing utilising udev and dbus, not even one closely integrated, but upwardly-couple every Linux system to that new userspace project. Good luck with that. steveL. [1] http://lwn.net/Articles/492134/ -- #friendly-coders -- We're friendly, but we're not /that/ friendly ;-)
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Tightly-coupled core distro [was: Council meeting summary for 3 April 2012]
On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 12:59:22AM +, Duncan wrote
> It may very well be that a fork is thus required. I guess we wait and
> see. But I don't see the kde folks being willingly subsumed into a
> gnomeos black hole, and time and again, floss history has demonstrated
> that when there's an immediate need, forks do occur. Both gnome and kde
> have their forks in recent history, xorg is a fork, there's the glibc and
> gcc history, etc. If integration gets too close, a fork /will/ happen.
There already is a lightweight udev implementation ("mdev") included
in busybox. Given busybox's philisophy and goals, we can be certain
that mdev will remain lightweight. I'm not a programmer or developer,
but I was annoyed enough to start what became
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Mdev BTW, there is a sort of "udev rules"
equivalant. See http://git.busybox.net/busybox/plain/docs/mdev.txt
--
Walter Dnes
[gentoo-dev] Re: Tightly-coupled core distro [was: Council meeting summary for 3 April 2012]
Duncan posted on Fri, 11 May 2012 00:59:22 + as excerpted: > Fabio Erculiani posted on Thu, 10 May 2012 22:48:29 +0200 as excerpted: > >> On a side note, I find it quite odd to be accused of trash talking by >> Linux Kernel people. > > hwoarang is a kernel person? FWIW, I see the gregkh post you were referring to, now. Odd indeed, tho he just said rude, not trash talk. FWIW2, I'd have probably included a "IME" (in my experience) disclaimer to that failaudio, tho I don't disagree with that label. Toning down may be worthwhile for all sides, tho. This isn't lkml and I don't think most would want it to be. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
[gentoo-dev] Re: Tightly-coupled core distro [was: Council meeting summary for 3 April 2012]
David Leverton posted on Thu, 10 May 2012 19:57:30 +0100 as excerpted: > Greg KH wrote: >> No one forces you to use any of this software if you do not want to. >> There are lots of other operating systems out there, feel free to >> switch to them if you do not like the way this one is working out, no >> one is stopping you. > > Or alternatively, the people who hate Unix could move to some other OS > that suites them better, rather than trying to destroy what everyone > else is perfectly happy with. I see the "hate Unix" angle tho I'd call it a bit strong... But trying to destroy what everyone else is perfectly happy with?? How is simply writing some software, which after all is FLOSS and which nobody is forced to use, "destroying"? They're taking their own software where their vision points it, no more, no less. I don't really agree with where it's going either, but that's part of the very freedom of the FLOSS community we're all a part of. Others can fork the software or provide less integrated substitutes, if desired. Meanwhile, if it's what other coders choose to build on, well, they're free to do that too. It doesn't mean I have to use their software! FWIW, that's one reason I'm no longer using kmail, for instance. When kmail akonadified, I tried it, then switched to claws-mail. It's ALSO one reason I'm using gentoo, I get to choose whether I build kde with akonadi and semantic-desktop support, or not. And I choose not. I see the kdepim folks vision, and they're free to pursue it, but their path and my path simply diverged, that's all. Kde runs SO much nicer without the weight of semantic-desktop dragging it down. And if the systemd and udev path fully merge, I'll have a choice at that point. If systemd looks mature and stable enough at that point to be used on my system, I'll probably try it. I might like it. =:^) Or, like akonadified kmail, I may find it a rube goldberg of a system that I'd rather stay away from. Given history, I'm sure there will be alternate solutions available, tho it'll no doubt take some serious work and adaptation on my part to switch. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
[gentoo-dev] Re: Tightly-coupled core distro [was: Council meeting summary for 3 April 2012]
Fabio Erculiani posted on Thu, 10 May 2012 22:48:29 +0200 as excerpted: > On a side note, I find it quite odd to be accused of trash talking by > Linux Kernel people. hwoarang is a kernel person? If you note, gregkh didn't post that. I can't agree with udev/systemd integration, but it's worth noting that gregkh has for the most part stayed out of that debate, and simply stated where he sees udev going, as an upstream person who thus speaks with authority on the subject. It may very well be that a fork is thus required. I guess we wait and see. But I don't see the kde folks being willingly subsumed into a gnomeos black hole, and time and again, floss history has demonstrated that when there's an immediate need, forks do occur. Both gnome and kde have their forks in recent history, xorg is a fork, there's the glibc and gcc history, etc. If integration gets too close, a fork /will/ happen. But that history is available to everyone and the wise will take heed. Meanwhile, for the moment at least, upstream udev and systemd have both taken pains to state that while they're going to ship in a unified tarball, at least for now, udev will remain buildable on its own, SPECIFICALLY to support folks not ready to go systemd just yet. So there's still hope. And 3-5 years is an eternity in an ecosystem such as the FLOSS world, evolving at the speed of the net! Looking back from there, it's quite possible this debate will look petty and short-sighted, regardless of how things ultimately turn out. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
