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Ask HN: What did Linux not do right?

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Re: Ask HN: What did Linux not do right?

#21

Post by yummypaint »

I think the linux dev community and foss developers in general could be much more aggressive about going after government grant money. Open source software is used in everything from biomedical research to fundamental science, to industry, to defense. Somehow, these key shared resources are still run on a budget that's barely a rounding error by comparison.

I know writing grant proposals sucks and everyone wants to be having fun developing software, but if you pull in enough money initially you can pay people to write more grants and make things self sustaining in terms of funding. For how essential linux is to modern society there should be more paid people working on it full time.

Re: Ask HN: What did Linux not do right?

#22

Post by thom_ »

The desktop experience is still a mess. They’ve become complacent with ‘it works out of the box’ but that’s not the bar. Apple sets the bar and there’s no prize for second place. You’re on Apple or Linux or brain damaged and using Windows, but nobodies using two as their primary driver, and so one ecosystem dominates. I’m glad it’s Apple because the GNU crowd are virtue signalers first and software developers second. For all their yapping the linux desktop speaks for itself

Re: Ask HN: What did Linux not do right?

#23

Post by traverseda »

wkdneidbwf wrote: post #14
favourable wrote: post #4

Not Linux, but Systemd[0] makes many people angry. Entire distros have purposefully not included it. Look at Devuan[1] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemd [1] https://www.devuan.org/

people that are militantly anti-systemd confuse me greatly. the different and inconsistent init systems that preceded it were a nightmare. it led to a whole ecosystem of secondary system to manage apps, god, runit, monit, supervisord, etc. now i can just write a simple configuration file and have my app managed. i can describe network filesystem mounts as dependencies. blah blah. systemd made all of this trivial.

Before if you knew the standard unix-ey tools you could get by. For example, want to list services? Just use `ls /etc/init.d/`. Want to monitor a log file? Use something like `tail -f /var/log/whatever`. Want to see what filesystems are supposed to be mounter? Just opne /etc/fstab with your favorite text editor. Sure, it wasn't super consistent but you used the same tools as you always used, whether you're editing source code or whatever. You had one very flexible toolbox that you had to remember the options on.

So as an example, how do I see what services are available under systemd? How can I reliable see what file systems are supposed to be mounted at boot? The answer to both of those tends to be "systemd spreads it's files and configuration all around the filesystem to you need to learn some bespoke systemd command that you'll only ever use for systemd".

And while those previous init systems were inconsistent projects like openrc demonstrate that it's possible to accomplish systemd's goals, greatly simplify that init system mess, without breaking principles like locality of behavior or "everything is a file", and to keep it compatible with things like grep and tail and all that.

Re: Ask HN: What did Linux not do right?

#25

Post by suprjami »

Nextgrid wrote: post #19
gkbrk wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why on Windows open source drivers are a rounding error while on Linux open-source drivers are the norm.

A proprietary driver that works is better than an open-source one that doesn’t work or doesn’t even exist.

No it isn't. That thing breaks or doesn't update to a new API and suddenly you're screwed.

Re: Ask HN: What did Linux not do right?

#26

Post by h2odragon »

yummypaint wrote: post #21

I think the linux dev community and foss developers in general could be much more aggressive about going after government grant money. Open source software is used in everything from biomedical research to fundamental science, to industry, to defense. Somehow, these key shared resources are still run on a budget that's barely a rounding error by comparison. I know writing grant proposals sucks and everyone wants to b…

Once it becomes "about money" that controls the enterprise, even when it was originally about software. Sure there's some projects that avoided that but its a tar pit and I can't fault anyone for avoiding it.

Re: Ask HN: What did Linux not do right?

#27

Post by heurisko »

thom_ wrote: post #22

The desktop experience is still a mess. They’ve become complacent with ‘it works out of the box’ but that’s not the bar. Apple sets the bar and there’s no prize for second place. You’re on Apple or Linux or brain damaged and using Windows, but nobodies using two as their primary driver, and so one ecosystem dominates. I’m glad it’s Apple because the GNU crowd are virtue signalers first and software developers second.…

> The desktop experience is still a mess.

The closest I have seen to creating a good experience was Ubuntu Unity.

I noticed it being used in universities, and in the office I used to work at.

I'm disappointed that the Unity project wasn't taken forward, and it seems to me that Gnome just reimplemented it, but missed many best parts of the original.

Re: Ask HN: What did Linux not do right?

#28

Post by thom_ »

heurisko wrote: post #27
thom_ wrote: post #22

The desktop experience is still a mess. They’ve become complacent with ‘it works out of the box’ but that’s not the bar. Apple sets the bar and there’s no prize for second place. You’re on Apple or Linux or brain damaged and using Windows, but nobodies using two as their primary driver, and so one ecosystem dominates. I’m glad it’s Apple because the GNU crowd are virtue signalers first and software developers second.…

> The desktop experience is still a mess. The closest I have seen to creating a good experience was Ubuntu Unity. I noticed it being used in universities, and in the office I used to work at. I'm disappointed that the Unity project wasn't taken forward, and it seems to me that Gnome just reimplemented it, but missed many best parts of the original.

The 2d desktop is over anyway. Tomorrows desktop is 3d AR

Re: Ask HN: What did Linux not do right?

#29

Post by comfypotato »

h2odragon wrote: post #26
yummypaint wrote: post #21

I think the linux dev community and foss developers in general could be much more aggressive about going after government grant money. Open source software is used in everything from biomedical research to fundamental science, to industry, to defense. Somehow, these key shared resources are still run on a budget that's barely a rounding error by comparison. I know writing grant proposals sucks and everyone wants to b…

Once it becomes "about money" that controls the enterprise, even when it was originally about software. Sure there's some projects that avoided that but its a tar pit and I can't fault anyone for avoiding it.

Is it, though? I find a lot of security in the knowledge that Ubuntu has a self-sustaining financial model. It’s still close enough to the original love of software that Linus strongly approves. I really enjoyed your parent comment’s take on grant-writing. I do, however, expect that this is already taking place in the appropriate areas of Linux development more than is commonly realized.

Re: Ask HN: What did Linux not do right?

#30

Post by xt00 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #19
gkbrk wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why on Windows open source drivers are a rounding error while on Linux open-source drivers are the norm.

A proprietary driver that works is better than an open-source one that doesn’t work or doesn’t even exist.

Disagree but not because of philosophical reasons like “I want to fix my driver and know what it is doing”, but actually practical reasons — tons of companies make a driver plus hardware and end up semi abandoning it.. but some people in the community with open source drivers will often fix it.. then after some time people end up realizing the way they fixed it is better than the original driver and now the companies actually benefit from that new driver. So you end up with a win win for people and companies. So in general closed source drivers end up sucking compared to open source drivers except for very rare situations.. and even after massive battles with say nvidia they are starting to realize they will end up benefiting from working with the open source community rather than against them..
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