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Stali: A new static Linux distribution

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Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#151

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

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.

I don't believe Mac OS X/OS X/macOS's launchd is as complicated as systemd.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#152

Post by sevensor »

johnny22 wrote: post #42
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…

It didn't just start growing. There was talk of it being the base of the OS (excluding the kernel) since 2012 (as mentioned here http://0pointer.net/blog/projects/systemd-update-3.html ). > We have been working hard to turn systemd into the most viable set of components to build operating systems, appliances and devices from, and make it the best choice for servers, for desktops and for embedded environments alike. I…

> There was talk of it being the base of the OS

To be fair, that's pretty much the definition of an init system, innit?

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#153

Post by morganvachon »

johnny22 wrote: post #42
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…

It didn't just start growing. There was talk of it being the base of the OS (excluding the kernel) since 2012 (as mentioned here http://0pointer.net/blog/projects/systemd-update-3.html ). > We have been working hard to turn systemd into the most viable set of components to build operating systems, appliances and devices from, and make it the best choice for servers, for desktops and for embedded environments alike. I…

Thanks for that. When I had first heard of it back in 2012, it was right after getting my first Raspberry Pi, and a friend had suggested trying to port systemd to it to improve boot speed. At that time, all I was able to find out about systemd was that it was a faster init. There was nothing I saw back then about the authors wanting to replace all of GNU with it. It was several months later, after the update to systemd broke my Arch installation, that I started reading about how it's growing too fast and rather than focus on code quality and stability, the authors were rushing to make it this huge replacement for GNU.

Since then I've followed its progress, and while my overall impression remains slightly negative, I'm hoping it improves to the point that it is stable and mature enough for daily use. Until then, I happily run Slackware for serious work and Windows 10 for games.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#154

Post by morganvachon »

vacri wrote: post #58
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…

Ubuntu 16.04 is not meant for lightweight machines - for example, the Unity desktop assumes you have 3D acceleration (which sucks for using in a VM). It's not systemd that makes your atom netbook slow (well, assuming you're using Unity...) Re: systemd itself, I could care less about the bells and whistles, but every time I go back to fiddle with a sysv init script, I yearn for either of upstart or systemd...

Nope, Xfce on all the Linux distros on that machine, except for Elementary. I was surprised to find that Elementary's Pantheon was faster than Xfce on Ubuntu 16.04.

Besides, it wasn't a test of DE performance alone, it was a combination of factors including boot time, script run time, video encode/decode, build from source time, and so on. Yes, DE performance was also a metric, and for fun I did load Unity on both 14.04 and 16.04 just to see what would happen. If I were basing it on DE performance alone and used the default DE for each distro, both Ubuntu versions would be the slowest by far.

Also, 3D acceleration was not an issue, the Intel video hardware in that machine is fully accelerated in Linux and OpenBSD.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#155

Post by yrro »

72deluxe wrote: post #123
Annatar wrote: post #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 h…

Windows? Have you ever heard of DLLs?

My Windows system currently has 21 copies of zlib1.dll on it, each shipped by a different program. While I have no doubt that Windows programmers have heard of DLLs, they clearly haven't grasped the idea of shared libraries.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#156

Post by JdeBP »

kbenson wrote: post #25
striking wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot even begin to describe how silly your comment is. Since when were politicians even comparable to programs? Do we "elect" a init system, as one nation united under Torvalds? I'm hoping I was just trolled by an HN-flavored Markov Chain.

> Since when were politicians even comparable to programs? Since people learned the power of the metaphor. > Do we "elect" a init system For some distros? Sure. By its nature, Linux, GNU and the open source software that goes into the ecosystem allows people to create new distributions, or choose one of the many that exist. This choice is, in some small way, like a vote. If systemd was really that bad, enough people…

Actually, it was a simile, not a metaphor.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#157

Post by Crespyl »

signa11 wrote: post #96
startling wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> networking gear

As someone unfamiliar with that domain, this just raises more questions for me. Is there some secondary layer of code-signing/validation that happens? Is the image host always within the local network and the connection assumed trustworthy?

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#158

Post by JdeBP »

vacri wrote: post #46
striking wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot even begin to describe how silly your comment is. Since when were politicians even comparable to programs? Do we "elect" a init system, as one nation united under Torvalds? I'm hoping I was just trolled by an HN-flavored Markov Chain.

> Do we "elect" a init system, as one nation united under Torvalds? Debian selected it via an election.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11834348 for an interesting contrast.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#159

Post by JdeBP »

Retr0spectrum wrote: post #107
marmaduke wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you took the "one tool one purpose" thing to an extreme, you'd only have one binary with OpenSSL compiled in, right? Given some familiarity with the suckless ideology, it seems that it is the simplicity of static linking, not conservative use of disk space, which is its virtue. For, if anyone groks the tool chain perfectly but lacks disk space, I'd like to hear the secret.

> you'd only have one binary with OpenSSL compiled in So then any process that wanted to use crypto etc. would have to call this binary? That just seems like a very inefficient way if implementing dymanic linking...

You have the wrong metric. The metric should be the efficiency of the mechanism in implementing SSL.

Now look at things like Gerrit Pape's sslio , http://smarden.org/ipsvd/sslio.8.html . Note that the subject at hand purportedly uses several of Gerrit Pape's other tools.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#160

Post by praptak »

Has anyone actually tested the claim of static linking improving performance?

The dynamic linking might not be free in terms of cycles but a huge part of the code is already in memory rather than on disk at the time the binary starts.

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