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Linus Torvalds: Programs exist for their users

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Re: Linus Torvalds: Programs exist for their users

#51

Post by tete »

[Here the post in case the site is down...]

On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 2:18 PM, Eric W. Biederman wrote:

> Keeping compatibility is easy enough that it looks like it is worth doing, but maintaining 30+ years of backwards compatibility

Stop right there.

This is not about some arbitrary "30-year backwards compatibility".

This is about your patch BREAKING EXISTING BINARIES.

So stop the f* &^ing around already. The patch was shown to be broken, stop making excuses, and stop blathering.

End of story. Binary compatibility is more important than any of your patches. If you continue to argue anything else or making excuses, I'm going to ask people to just ignore your patches entirely.

Seriously. Binary compatibility is so important that I do not want to have anything to do with kernel developers who don't understand that importance. If you continue to pooh-pooh the issue, you only show yourself to be unreliable. Don't do it.

Dammit, I'm continually surprised by the idiots out there that don't understand that binary compatibility is one of the absolute top priorities. The only reason for an OS kernel existing in the first place is to serve user-space. The kernel has no relevance on its own. Breaking existing binaries - and then not acknowledging how horribly bad that was - is just about the worst offense any kernel developer can do.

Because that shows that they don't understand what the whole point of the kernel was after all. We're not masturbating around with some research project. We never were. Even when Linux was young, the whole and only point was to make a usable system. It's why it's not some crazy drug-induced microkernel or other random crazy thing.

Really.

Linus

Re: Linus Torvalds: Programs exist for their users

#52

Post by phn »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #14

Can anybody explain what this is approximately about?

Well, the first guy is submitting a patch to the linux kernel source that would make program binaries (executable files, sort of) compiled for an older version of the kernel break. This same guy looks like he is about to argue that it is not worth to maintain compatibility with 30 year old binaries.

And then Linus (the guy behind Linux) goes on to explain that the OS should serve its users, and that keeping compatibility with existing programs, no matter how old they are is of utmost importance for users to be able to use that system.

I don't know if I helped, or if I addressed your doubts. I hope so :)

Re: Linus Torvalds: Programs exist for their users

#53

Post by acqq »

muuh-gnu wrote: post #49
reddit_clone wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>everyone coming from Windows, where you have a reliable, stable base system which doesnt change for a decade Now, you are being plain funny. Haven't you heard of 'DLL Hell' in Windows platform?. You never had 'windows update' break your software for no reason?

I've never had to upgrade Windows (including all installed apps) to be able to install some other random app. On Linux, having to upgrade the distro (including getting a new desktop environment force-installed) to get a new version of any random app is established practice. Example: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3822

If you claim that you "never had to upgrade Windows to be able to install some other random app" you probably haven't used Windows much then. There are games that need explicit version or newer of DirectX. You can't even produce from the C or C++ sources the binary application that runs on any Windows XP with the latest Visual Studio (11). Any C/C++ application built with Visual Studio 2010 won't run on Windows 2000 or XP prior to SP3. We developers try to build the applications that run on as many targets as possible, but even MSFT doesn't support us enough for that, seeing the older versions as the competition to their newest "shiny thing." Which is not funny considering millions and millions of users still running Windows XP.

See the various opinions on MSFT intentionally removing the binary compatibility which already existed in their libraries here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3648209

Re: Linus Torvalds: Programs exist for their users

#54

Post by icebraining »

muuh-gnu wrote: post #49
reddit_clone wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>everyone coming from Windows, where you have a reliable, stable base system which doesnt change for a decade Now, you are being plain funny. Haven't you heard of 'DLL Hell' in Windows platform?. You never had 'windows update' break your software for no reason?

I've never had to upgrade Windows (including all installed apps) to be able to install some other random app. On Linux, having to upgrade the distro (including getting a new desktop environment force-installed) to get a new version of any random app is established practice. Example: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3822

Then you're lucky, because plenty of applications required you to install the Service Pack 2 on XP to install them, .NET application often required newer versions, same with games and DirectX, etc.

Re: Linus Torvalds: Programs exist for their users

#55

Post by einhverfr »

muuh-gnu wrote: post #41
onli wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because though there is an element of truth in it, it just sounds plain wrong. After two sentences i thought "he probably works for microsoft or another big corporation", not because it's flame, but because of the attitude to regard this as pure chaos (and having no big plan as bad). I even looked up the profile. There is kind of a release-plan, not for the whole eco-system, but that's what stable distros ar…

> not for the whole eco-system, but that's what stable distros are for The problem is that no app dev targets stable distros, but always goes for the latest and greatest from the upstream so distros are constantly forced to update libs and change the base system. So with a stable distro, you cant get a new version of an app, because the libs of your distro are too old, and you need to upgrade the whole distro just to…

I wouldnt say that's true. LedgerSMB 1.3 when it shipped last year supported PostgreSQL 8.3 and higher, Perl 5.8, etc... 1.4 will probably require Perl 5.10 and PostgreSQL 8.4...... We specifically target older versions to make it easy for adoption.

In fact, usually when we run into problems, it's a new version, not an old one.

Re: Linus Torvalds: Programs exist for their users

#56

Post by MatthewPhillips »

muuh-gnu wrote: post #49
reddit_clone wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>everyone coming from Windows, where you have a reliable, stable base system which doesnt change for a decade Now, you are being plain funny. Haven't you heard of 'DLL Hell' in Windows platform?. You never had 'windows update' break your software for no reason?

I've never had to upgrade Windows (including all installed apps) to be able to install some other random app. On Linux, having to upgrade the distro (including getting a new desktop environment force-installed) to get a new version of any random app is established practice. Example: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3822

Dependencies are bundled on Windows. It means installing App B doesn't affect your App A. It also means that security bugs must be fixed at the app level, not at the library or OS level.

Re: Linus Torvalds: Programs exist for their users

#57

Post by abrahamsen »

mapleoin wrote: post #37
ot wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sentence is a betrayal of UNIX's history: There are two major products that came out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence. (Jeremy S. Anderson)

I think it rather refers to MINIX.

More specifically, it most likely refers to this discussion:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.minix/browse_frm/thre...

Linus was a kid in 1992, and got scolded by one of the greatest icons of the field. That could still sting 20 years later.

Re: Linus Torvalds: Programs exist for their users

#59

Post by akira2501 »

exim wrote: post #58
dsr_ wrote: post #10

Leadership: communicate a clear mission and inspire others to want to do it. Linus has it.

I would add politeness. Not sure about Linus, though...

Leadership doesn't require politeness. Fairness is probably what you really want.

Re: Linus Torvalds: Programs exist for their users

#60

Post by iamgopal »

muuh-gnu wrote: post #31
Negitivefrags wrote: post #16

In my experience binary compatibility on linux is a train wreck. Ever tried to get a binary compiled 5 years ago to run on a fresh install of linux? Good luck. If you still have the specific version of every shared library that it loaded you might be able to get it to work. This isn't the fault of the kernel team though. It is probably to be expected on platforms in which distributing source code is the default optio…

> This isn't the fault of the kernel team though. It is the result of having no unified platform and library release coordination, no long term plans, nothing, just chaos. Everybody just releases when he is in the mood for it. And since nothing is complete when released, devs further down the chain always go for the latest and greatest to get additional functionality. And to upgrade app1, you have to upgrade lib1 whi…

It is also result of lack of strong dictator in user space. Look how Linus use words like "masturbate, f*ck" a lot ( because he has earned right to protect what he has build ) while in desktop world, shuttleworth can not be that strong dictator when whole community is not with him.
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