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Stali: A new static Linux distribution

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Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#131

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

Annatar wrote: post #104
martinsb wrote: post #39

It is quite hard to take seriously any project that so much uses word "suck" to describe other projects, i.e., other people work, or their approaches.

Why? Most software out there sucks. Computers suck. Most people are unbelievably bad at designing and writing software. Very few of us are RJ Micals or Adam Leventhals, or Jeff Bonwicks. Most people have major issues with reasoning and implementation when it comes to writing software. It's the reality.

Ironically, suckless.org is a bunch of plan9 elitists. The plan9 elitists are similar to solaris elitists, but have radically different beliefs, and probably believe that Bonwick and Leventhal and the rest should be jailed for working on ZFS, DTrace, Zones, SMF, etc.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#132

Post by striking »

anon4711 wrote: post #119
striking wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are a pair of links that you may have missed under the "Don’t use systemd (read more about why it sucks)" line item. http://suckless.org/sucks/systemd http://uselessd.darknedgy.net/ProSystemdAntiSystemd/ The first link reads like a sort of 99 Theses, while the second is a dissertation on why people will never get along on the subject of systemd.

I take the attribution in the first link (references to "Führerbunker" and "Führer") to mean that the author is comparing Lennart Poettering to Hitler. That's not funny, it's just very, very inappropriate.

I didn't write the linked content, nor did I choose the links.

If you feel strongly about this, consider contacting the authors of the story.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#133

Post by qplex »

creshal wrote: post #115
ghshephard wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with HTTP? I think the OpenBSD team made it clear that HTTPS does nothing for security (At least the integrity portion) of downloading stuff (which is why signify is a thing). By explicitly using a non-secure channel for transport you make it explicit that integrity must come from some other channel.

Except… There is no other channel. Suckless doesn't sign their releases, nor the image download. Nor is anything in git signed. Integrity, schmintegrity ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The other channel: read the source code yourself before compiling.

This actually possible with most suckless projects since they are just a couple of hundred lines of C...

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#134

Post by paulddraper »

ben0x539 wrote: post #113
paulddraper wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And...you can actually choose. Not only does your vote count, when it comes down to it, yours is the only vote that counts.

Eh, arguably from ecosystem effects, other people's votes count a lot too. I don't think I'd want to be the sole user of best init system in the world!

True, but you could if you wanted to.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#135

Post by burntsushi »

qznc wrote: post #127
rkangel wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about Go, but Rust doesn't promote it. Rust compiles a whole binary at once (for full program optimisation), but that binary can be a dynamic library or executable. How you then build the operating system on top of that is up to you.

Recently, ripgrep was on the frontpage. It says "Linux binaries are static executables" [0]. If I run ldd on cargo, it spits out the usually glibc dependencies, but Rust libraries are statically linked. It seems to be the default behavior of cargo? I would describe that as "promote static linking". Personally, I don't judge this as good or bad. There is no simple answer. Static linking has clear disadvantage wrt secu…

> It says "Linux binaries are static executables" [0].

They are. Running `ldd` on cargo doesn't confirm or deny this. You need to run `ldd` on the binary distributed:

    $ curl -sLO 'https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/releases/download/0.2.1/ripgrep-0.2.1-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.gz'
    $ tar xf ripgrep-0.2.1-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.gz 
    $ ldd ./ripgrep-0.2.1-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl/rg
            not a dynamic executable
This is not the default output on Linux. You need to compile with musl instead of glibc: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12565268

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#136

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

pjmlp wrote: post #59
morganvachon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a loaded question, and I'm only qualified to answer from my perspective and experience. My biggest gripe with it has always been that it is alpha-quality software, even today, that has a central role in an otherwise mature OS ecosystem. It has been widely adopted (some would say forced or tricked into adoption by a few distros) and therefore all the major Linux distributions are now running at an alpha level w…

The irony of the eroding the UNIX philosophy from Linux is that most real UNIX systems, meaning AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, NeXTSTep (cough macOS), Tru64,... do have something similar to systemd. Sometimes shouting "UNIX philosophy" in GNU/Linux forums reminds me of emigrants that keep traditions of their home countries alive that are long out of fashion back home.

No, you're actually wrong, IIRC.

The other systems still fundamentally do init's job, as well as managing services. They DON'T do everything, including:

-replace cron

-handle dynamic device files (udev's job)

-set the hostname

-replace syslog

-replace inetd

-automount

-anything I forgot

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#137

Post by NzNz »

pjmlp wrote: post #59
morganvachon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a loaded question, and I'm only qualified to answer from my perspective and experience. My biggest gripe with it has always been that it is alpha-quality software, even today, that has a central role in an otherwise mature OS ecosystem. It has been widely adopted (some would say forced or tricked into adoption by a few distros) and therefore all the major Linux distributions are now running at an alpha level w…

The irony of the eroding the UNIX philosophy from Linux is that most real UNIX systems, meaning AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, NeXTSTep (cough macOS), Tru64,... do have something similar to systemd. Sometimes shouting "UNIX philosophy" in GNU/Linux forums reminds me of emigrants that keep traditions of their home countries alive that are long out of fashion back home.

AIX, HP-UX, Solaris and NeXTStep were not written by the original authors of Unix and its philosophy. Linux has always been closer to the philosophy than many of these, actually. So much so that it has imported concepts from the successor of Unix, Plan9. Linux's procfs which exposes sysinfo as files within the filesystem is a concept taken from Plan9, which was the OS people like Ken Thompson and Rob Pike envisioned as the future of OSes and replacement for Unix.

Those "traditions" you're speaking of not only are not outdated, but they never were fully realized to their ideal outside of Plan9, which attempted to make everything accessible through file APIs.

The suckless crowds are not about reproducing the original Unix. They are about carrying the torch of that philosophy, and the original unix was just the beginning, not an end in itself. Here's an example of software from suckless that follows Plan9 : http://tools.suckless.org/ii/

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#138

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

justinsaccount wrote: post #10
simophin wrote: post #3

I still don't understand why systemd sucks

Because people like to complain more than they like to actually build a usable alternative. Edit: here's a great example from one of the links in the other comment: suckless complaining about "sysv removed" in systemd. Link takes you to this changelog entry: "The support for SysV and LSB init scripts has been removed from the systemd daemon itself. Instead, it is now implemented as a generator that creates native sys…

They built many. runit, s6, nosh, bsdinit, openrc.

But yeah, it is being blamed for bloating init, because for one thing, cron isn't init's job. And that's just the start.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#139

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

bitwize wrote: post #11
simophin wrote: post #3

I still don't understand why systemd sucks

Hating systemd is like hating Hillary Clinton at this point. It's well past time to suck it up and make peace with your next init system/President because the only viable alternative(s) are far worse.

That's not true. Unlike presidential elections, we don't all have to make the same choice. openrc, runit, s6, nosh, bsdinit... there are plenty of choices that are better.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#140

Post by spoiler »

qznc wrote: post #124
paulddraper wrote: post #28

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.

I guess the "suckless" answer would be to not use OpenSSL.

Who knows, we might soon get SuckleSSL. :)

Jokes aside, they have a bizarre philosophy and attitude, especially when you consider their software is most of the time buggy, and… Well, sucky.

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