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Linus Torvalds: Programs exist for their users

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Re: Linus Torvalds: Programs exist for their users

#81

Post by sixbrx »

abrahamsen wrote: post #57
mapleoin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I always thought Linus gave better than he got in that argument, myself. He was pretty brutal to Minix in a couple of places. BTW. love the reference to "BSD detox" somewhere in that thread, it always gives me a chuckle.

Re: Linus Torvalds: Programs exist for their users

#82

Post by bitwize »

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...

Linus has to his credit the fact that he's less of an a-hole than, say, Theo de Raadt.

Though I'm not so sure I want Nice Guys(tm) writing my software...

Re: Linus Torvalds: Programs exist for their users

#83

Post by lambda »

cpeterso wrote: post #70

In contrast, here is a thread about Debian, after much deliberation, unanimously choosing to break kernel ABI compatibility with VMware. They didn't want to increase the ABI number during a "freeze", even though they broke the ABI. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=607368

That's the difference between the user-space interface, and the kernel ABI. The Linux kernel ABI has no compatibility guarantees. If you are linking to the kernel, you are considered to be part of the kernel, and thus you are expected to keep abreast of any ABI changes (preferably by getting your module into the kernel tree, so that anyone changing the ABI can fix your code too).

The Debian kernel team tries to do a reasonable job of tracking kernel ABI compatibility changes, and updating the number when the ABI does change, to avoid having to recompile and reinstall everything for every patch to the stable tree. In this case, they decided that the ABI change was only intended for a single, in-tree module (KVM), and that they didn't have to increment the ABI number for a change that shouldn't affect anything else.

This is really just an example of the Linux kernel developers' two approaches to compatibility. For the kernel ABI, they make no guarantees whatsoever about compatibility. For the user space interface, they are supposed to never, ever change the interface in ways that will break existing programs, though there are sometimes disagreements about what precisely constitutes this interface and what is outside the bounds of it.

Re: Linus Torvalds: Programs exist for their users

#84

Post by tybris »

ot wrote: post #34
16s wrote: post #24

I got a good laugh from this quote: "[Linux] is not some crazy drug-induced microkernel"

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)

When did Unix stop being a product of Bell Labs?

Re: Linus Torvalds: Programs exist for their users

#85

Post by jonhohle »

ahelwer wrote: post #73
jonhohle wrote: post #69

> Programs exist for their users While this may be inferred from this discussion, this is not what Linus said in this thread. He actually said: > The *only* reason for an OS kernel existing in the > first place is to serve user-space. This is a much narrower definition without the philosophical implications of the title. Sometimes programs don't exist for their users. Take DRM for example - it is explicitly against t…

The DRM user is the publisher, not the user of the program itself.

I disagree. The Publisher in this case is the programmer - or at least distributor - of the program. Content consumers are the intended user.

Re: Linus Torvalds: Programs exist for their users

#86

Post by ynniv »

abrahamsen wrote: post #57
mapleoin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[Regarding Linux's x86 base] What is going to happen is that they will gradually take over from the 80x86 line. ... I think it is a gross error to design an OS for any specific architecture, since that is not going to be around all that long.

Ouch, history hurts.

Re: Linus Torvalds: Programs exist for their users

#87

Post by namdnay »

jonhohle wrote: post #85
ahelwer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DRM user is the publisher, not the user of the program itself.

I disagree. The Publisher in this case is the programmer - or at least distributor - of the program. Content consumers are the intended user.

I have to disagree with you there, clearly the user of DRM is the copyright holder. They are using the tool to perform their activity, that of "safely" leasing their content to consumers.

In the same way, the user of DirectX is the game publisher, not the consumer who buys the game.

Re: Linus Torvalds: Programs exist for their users

#88

Post by saurik »

reddit_clone wrote: post #45
muuh-gnu wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>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?

You are using this term incorrectly: the cause of DLL Hell is when one DLL (often a newer one) should be used, but another is used instead (even if it is older). The causes of this were varied.

On 16-bit Windows there was a single address space and only a single version of a DLL could be loaded by all processes: the first one to load would "win", and the others would get screwed with the old copy. This was due to 16-bit Windows not having memory protection: it was more of a GUI over DOS, and thereby had cooperative multi-tasking.

Even with that fixed, many developers would require a slightly newer version of a library, and rather than ask the user to upgrade their system (an irritating consequence of not having packages or dependencies; APT FTW ;P) would just include the DLL in their installer and unconditionally overwrite any existing copy.

After the dynamic loader started supporting "local" versions of libraries (installed to the same folder as the application), a similar problem happened with COM objects, which are centrally registered: someone would install their own version of a shared GUI component, register it with the shared name, overwriting possibly-installed newer copies.

Both of these problems were actually solved, but way too many developers simply gave up on Microsoft and Windows beforehand, and then refuse to spend the time to learn about the improvements. In essence, Windows now has reasonable-ish package management, with dependencies: Windows Installer.

In addition to dependencies and versioning of packages (which can then be correctly tracked by Windows, much like APT on a Debian/Ubuntu box), Windows Installer supports the notion of "unified installer program" with "merge modules": in essence, you can include someone else's package inside of your package; that way the dependencies can correctly be checked, and old versions won't get overwritten.

There are still a few cases that are quite difficult to manage (involving libraries that require a modified ABI over time, but still receive updates), and Microsoft's solution to those is WinSxS. Honestly, while I'm much less familiar with it than on Unix, it only seems a constant multiple more crazy than .la files, which I believe solve a similar problem.

These technologies and improvements were all introduced at or before Windows XP, an operating system that was released just over a decade ago. Of course, these are all solutions that developers sometimes ignore, but if you download software for Linux that comes with a .sh installer that scribbles into /lib, you are in for similar "hell".

Re: Linus Torvalds: Programs exist for their users

#89

Post by saurik »

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…

> The Linux ecosystem needs one distro (say Ubuntu) to become so influential, that app devs start to primarily target it instead of the upstream.

This used to be RedHat: software for Linux would often come as either 1) source code (if open), 2) a crazy .sh install script, and 3) an RPM package for RedHat 5.

Re: Linus Torvalds: Programs exist for their users

#90

Post by eCa »

ot wrote: post #34
16s wrote: post #24

I got a good laugh from this quote: "[Linux] is not some crazy drug-induced microkernel"

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)

Linux is not Unix?
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