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Stali: A new static Linux distribution

sta.li

91–100 of 233 posts

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#91
post #49

Why is static linking supposed to REDUCE memory usage and binary size? Am I missing something really obvious? Eg, if five different binaries are statically linked against the same version of OpenSSL, won't it be in memory and on disk four times more than it would be on a dynamic system?

Many applications only use parts of libraries, then the linker can throw the unnecessary parts away.

How do I get it to do that?

  $ cat test.c 
  #include 
  int main() { printf("Hello, World!\n"); }
  $ gcc -o test1 test.c && ls -lgG test1
  -rwxr-xr-x 1 6712 Sep 28 10:24 test1*
  $ gcc -static -o test1 test.c && ls -lgG test1
  -rwxr-xr-x 1 800904 Sep 28 10:24 test1*

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. They have a clear philosophy on what makes software suck less, it doesn't matter where it comes from. http://suckless.org/philosophy

Exactly my point. Philosophy has its place in software engineering but often it's not on a pedestal.

I was responding to the "NIH" comment. It's not NIH syndrome if it doesn't matter where it comes from.

Philosophy has its place in software engineering but often it's not on a pedestal.

That's a philosophy in itself, as is pragmatism or adherence to science. You just happen to disagree with theirs.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#93
Ignore FHS of Linux, it simply sucks.

Wow. Just wow. So these guys don't understand UNIX. Like they're going to do it better than the fathers of UNIX at AT&T (who came up with the specification on which the FHS is based). Yeah, OK.

Achieve better performance than any other x86_64 or arm distribution, as only statically linked binaries are used

Wow. So not only do they not understand UNIX, but now every process will have memory allocated for every symbol in the ELF header, and any application linking with the same set of libraries will have their own copy of the same machine code, and the startup will be longer, because every application will be larger. Any patching which will need done, all affected applications will need recompiled. Why does this remind me of Windows?

Achieve better memory footprint than heavyweight distros using dynamic linking and all its problems

Yeah, of course! Why try to rack your brains designing versioned interfaces and making sure libraries are backward compatible, when you can just statically link everything and create tremendous overhead in terms of maintenance and security? No point in writing linker map files and having the runtime linker present the correct version of the API to the application, riiiggghhhttt?

Is this a case of more Windows people getting onto the Linux bandwagon, and just completely not getting it, or what?

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#94
post #5

( Also discussed previously at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8819085 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7261559 ) Interesting points: * http://sta.li/filesystem -- Everything not obviously covered by a fairly simplified hierarchy is put into /sucks , without fixing the problem of /etc still being a grab-bag miscellany. * http://sta.li/filesystem -- /dev being for devices is a "Linux assumption". * http:/…

> Installation uses HTTP to fetch a boot volume image. This is a problem with all of the suckless software and it, well, sucks.

> > Installation uses HTTP to fetch a boot volume image.

> This is a problem with all of the suckless software and it, well, sucks.

If you serve things over HTTP its easier to daisy-chain it in a PXE -> iPXE kind of setup. HTTPS is not supported by most boot-ROMs.

Keep your boot-image server on site and local and HTTP isn't a real world issue.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#95
post #90

I really like the idea of static linking. Then I think about how I'd patch the next inevitable openssl bug. Then I don't like it as much.

It's a complete fallacy that every program that needs crypto needs to link to crypto libraries. Look at how Plan 9 does it, where everything is statically linked, but it's other processes which do crypto. Replace only one binary, and the crypto is fixed for all binaries.

[deleted]

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#96
post #5

( Also discussed previously at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8819085 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7261559 ) Interesting points: * http://sta.li/filesystem -- Everything not obviously covered by a fairly simplified hierarchy is put into /sucks , without fixing the problem of /etc still being a grab-bag miscellany. * http://sta.li/filesystem -- /dev being for devices is a "Linux assumption". * http:/…

> Installation uses HTTP to fetch a boot volume image. This is a problem with all of the suckless software and it, well, sucks.

> > Installation uses HTTP to fetch a boot volume image.

> This is a problem with all of the suckless software and it, well, sucks.

may you please elaborate on why you think fetching boot images over http is a bad idea ? fwiw, a large number of networking gear boot their line-cards with image fetched over http e.g. csco's asr-5000 etc.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#97
post #5

( Also discussed previously at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8819085 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7261559 ) Interesting points: * http://sta.li/filesystem -- Everything not obviously covered by a fairly simplified hierarchy is put into /sucks , without fixing the problem of /etc still being a grab-bag miscellany. * http://sta.li/filesystem -- /dev being for devices is a "Linux assumption". * http:/…

> http://dwm.suckless.org/ -- "Because dwm is customized through editing its source code, it’s pointless to make binary packages of it. This keeps its userbase small and elitist. No novices asking stupid questions."

The worst thing about that attitude is that the suckless programs I tried are full of bugs and usability problems. I actually liked the idea of building simplified core programs, without the bloat and bc stuff of the environment around them, and thus opted to use st with a multiplexer. But if the result is that one has a terminal where you can't copy stuff properly because it does not handle linebreaks, or where you can't use ssh properly because the moment you scroll all text gets distorted, that is not excellence, it's just bad. And if they had more users they maybe would find those bugs, and get the help they seem to need.

And the whole "we are cool, we configure in source code" is just lazy. It's not like they gain anything from that, the spared lines of code pale in comparison to the effort needed to organize the configuration at distro level.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#98
post #63

I thought we were happy to leave behind static linked OSes back in the 90's, other than targeting embedded deployments....

One of the first things I read was support for arm and RPi so I assume it's targeting the IoT.

RPi is used for a lot more than IoT.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#99
post #86
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an Ubuntu LTS user. Compared to Upstart in 14.04, Systemd is an improvement. ;)

I am also an Ubuntu LTS user, but more a developer than a system administrator. I have migrated from 14.04 LTS to 16.04 recently. I am using a NAS drive. After my do-release-upgrade -d, internet was not working anymore because of systemd circularity problem. I had to learn how to create systemd configuration files to describe remote filesystem mounts. It was not easy to find documentation on systemd. When my computer…

Ubuntu upgrades almost always suck, but the upgrade from 14.04 to 16.04 was the worst I ever saw. Nothing worked, my system was broken beyond rescue. Pulseaudio all over again.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly my point. Philosophy has its place in software engineering but often it's not on a pedestal.

I was responding to the "NIH" comment. It's not NIH syndrome if it doesn't matter where it comes from. Philosophy has its place in software engineering but often it's not on a pedestal. That's a philosophy in itself, as is pragmatism or adherence to science. You just happen to disagree with theirs.

Meh. I don't buy the "moderate valuing of philosophy is a philosophy" argument. If everything is a philosophy then nothing is a philosophy.

My point is, suckless products can actually suck despite following their "philosophy." It's not only the UI, although strictly adhering to the "UNIX" philosophy has its flaws. No, it's the suckiness of the source code that I'm talking about, e.g. dwm is composed of ad-hoc internal abstractions and special cases based on arcane X11 WM domain knowledge, not to mention the suckless comment "philosophy": that comments are a sign of bad code therefore don't use them.

Their "philosophy" is narrow-minded and overly simplistic, like a religion. It's also not based in truth, just biased anecdotes, e.g.

"Most hackers actually don’t care much about code quality."

...What? Is there a source for this information?

Their "philosophy" only makes sense for the smallest toy programs. Notice how there is no suckless kernel, It would likely be a heaping pile. Dogma loses, science wins.

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