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Revisiting How We Put Together Linux Systems (2014)

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Re: Revisiting How We Put Together Linux Systems (2014)

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignoring Nix is a blatant sign of failure. systemd could learn a thing or two, or even a few dozen things from the language design itself. About UNIX concepts, they're hidden temporarily because systemd, IMHO, is surfing a deep wave of change in the way OSes are understood. It's very declarative, open to instrumentation (virtualization). Turning the machine into an object. In a few years ideas will have settled and m…

you forgot that they are stuck dealing with the systems already in place. Do you expect Redhat and Debian to give up rpms and debs?

I meant as a discussion point and inspiration, not jumping to Nix.

ps: Debian is working on something similar to that https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds.

Re: Revisiting How We Put Together Linux Systems (2014)

#52
post #28

It reads to me that a problem is being solved that I don't have. For one thing, I only care about Linux on the server, not on the desktop.

Funny because I only care about Linux on the desktop and I don't have this problem, either. He talks about a state explosion of packages and libraries, but in practice, I don't see that it matters. Yes, there is technically a state explosion, so you can't test every possible combination of packages. But you don't need to because they don't interfere with one another much in practice. I won't pronounce that as univers…

If you only need versions in your distro's repos then this is usually fine - although often the more obscure stuff is broken in e.g. Ubuntu repos. If you want a newer version? Things break fast.

Re: Revisiting How We Put Together Linux Systems (2014)

#53

Can somebody just open up a fork of Linux for Poetering et al to fuck around in so they don't feel the political necessity to screw around with the infrastructure we all depend on? Fuck this. I'm moving to BSD. Conservatism can be a feature, not a bug.

Why update if you want to keep linux as it is? I am sure there are a few LTS distros around that will stay systemd free for the next few years.

BY which time we'll know if it is really so bad or if it is actually an improvement.

I doubt Red Hat (which has to actually sell it's OS and still flogs a load of Red Hat 6) will carry on pushing it if it really turns out to be a turd. (Yes I know where the main author works).

Re: Revisiting How We Put Together Linux Systems (2014)

#54

Can somebody just open up a fork of Linux for Poetering et al to fuck around in so they don't feel the political necessity to screw around with the infrastructure we all depend on? Fuck this. I'm moving to BSD. Conservatism can be a feature, not a bug.

Are you a contributor (code? money? documentation?) If so I'm sorry to see you go. Otherwise no worries enjoy...

Re: Revisiting How We Put Together Linux Systems (2014)

#55
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to put you down for negativity, for a lack of optimism, but damn it, I agree. It bothers me that come 2016 I will have no option but to move to a systemd based distro if we want to remain on a supported Linux version. Change is not always good.

As far as unsupported distros go, void is pretty nice. One of very few interesting distros out there without being a full departure from the norm like nixos. http://www.voidlinux.eu/

Ubuntu 14.04 is not using systemd...

Re: Revisiting How We Put Together Linux Systems (2014)

#56
post #20

Is btrfs really the right choice for this? Even their own faq lists it as still being experimental, and if this becomes as ubiquitous as systemd (which is likely if it's bundled with systemd) we'll really want a stable and performant file system.

Btrfs is by now used as a default file system in some distros. As far as I understand, only some features are still considered experimental.

Yeah, CoreOS used to have btrfs as default, and changed away due to many issues: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=CoreOS-Bt...
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