4 ms·

I would actually be somewhat okay with running the graphical stack as root inside a jail, if it meant bypassing all of the systemd emulation. > Frankly it feel

by byuu 11y ago

I would actually be somewhat okay with running the graphical stack as root inside a jail, if it meant bypassing all of the systemd emulation. > Frankly it feels like Linux is turning into some kind of marketing mess I feel it's just been becoming a mess in general. They're trying too hard to cater to every possible use case, and there's nobody really in charge of the whole end-product to say "NO" to things. So they completely miss the elegance that comes with simplicity and minimalism. More and more, I feel the long-term solution for BSD is going to have to be a full split on the graphical stack. It's been lovely for transitioning to be able to take all of my Linux apps with me to BSD, and it's a huge hindrance to eg Haiku adoption, but ... with Linux becoming more and more insular with Linux-only dependencies all throughout the stack, it seems inevitable that this Frankenstein of Linux emulation is going to have to collapse at some point. We could still have GTK/Qt ports, so we could still run the truly portable stuff (Audacious, Pidgin, Transmission. etc.) Or as a nice alternative, dedicate a TTY to running a virtual machine of a full Linux OS for your graphical desktop.

toyg 11y ago
>So they completely miss the elegance that comes with simplicity and minimalism For anyone following Linux since 2000 at least, this statement is so funny. X11 was never simple nor minimal. The various init daemons were never simple nor minimal. The mess that is the collection of kernel drivers has never been simple nor minimal. Linux has always been about choice: if you like stripped-down, you go and strip it down; if you like full-featured, you go and pack everything. There is no one-size-fits-all, no single design. Anything else would not be Linux. The un-linuxness of systemd is exactly that it's becoming less and less optional. We whined for years that X11/Xorg was really a non-optional piece of crap, and when it's finally seeing some competition, we're being saddled with a non-optional daemon that takes over the rest of your system -- and unlike X11, it's not even desktop-only.
- generic_user 11y ago
  Yes, I agree with this very much as a long time Linux and BSD user. Linux was never like a BSD. The only thing that 'IS' Linux is the kernel everything else is a choice. With BSD you get a kernel + system libraries + userland all in the base system. So linux has always been a mess but extremely flexible.
- chousuke 11y ago
  > Linux has always been about choice This is wrong. Linux has never been about anything. It's always been only what people have made it; no less, no more. Viewed like this, systemd is not at all "un-linuxy" (if that made sense in the first place). It is a set of tools written by a bunch of people to solve their problems, and has gained mindshare, users and developers faster than other alternatives, which is exactly what Linux (the kernel) did. Your only choice is to use it, or not use it, but you don't get to complain if someone else decides to depend on it because they deem superior to alternatives. If you want to keep other software from depending on systemd, the onus is on you to provide a reasonable alternative. It will not work to simply demand that others must spend their effort maintaining code that they have no interest in because you want something.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    If you want to keep other software from depending on systemd, the onus is on you to provide a reasonable alternative. You're saying it as if there aren't already plenty of them.
    - chousuke 11y ago
      I am. Currently I am not aware of any serious effort besides the systemd project to provide a coherent, modern core userland for Linux distros. Previously, every distro built their own init systems and core tools to manage services, leading to meaningless differences in an area where heterogeneity is not a benefit, but hinders progress instead. I don't really have an opinion one way or the other about the rest of the project's tools like networkd or the dhcp server and what have they, but having a working service manager out of the box (which means it actually gets used by default!) has already made my life easier compared to the old sysvinit thing that couldn't even reliably tell you if your services were running or not, never mind anything more advanced.
      - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
        Currently I am not aware of any serious effort besides the systemd project to provide a coherent, modern core userland for Linux distros. There's your problem. You don't even have any defined scope. A "coherent, modern core userland" doesn't actually mean anything concrete - it covers enormous ground that no single package can obey. Modern service managers are plentiful - nosh, s6 and perp probably being the most promising. The "old sysvinit thing" has been replaced many times for over 15 years by now. Just because you didn't notice, well, that's your problem.
- simoncion 11y ago
  > We whined for years that X11/Xorg was really a non-optional piece of crap... Does the fact that sshd's X11 forwarding doesn't require to run an X11 -errm- client(?) to run X11 software on a remote machine make X11/Xorg more optional? (Obviously, you do need to run X11 on the machine that displays the GUI, and you do need X11 libs installed on the remote machine.)
  - toyg 11y ago
    No, I was referring to the fact that there was basically no alternative graphics system in the mainstream. You could choose among different windows servers, desktop systems etc, but all of these would only run on top of X11/Xorg. Compatibility with other implementations both at protocol and interface levels was barely even nominal. Whenever X11/Xorg development stalled or hit problems etc, the entire desktop ecosystem was screwed, often for long periods. Now we're going to see this happen with basically the entire userland. If distributions keep pushing it, systemd is going to become "X11 for userland", regardless of its actual quality.

by byuu 11y ago

toyg 11y ago

>So they completely miss the elegance that comes with simplicity and minimalism For anyone following Linux since 2000 at least, this statement is so funny. X11 was never simple nor minimal. The various init daemons were never simple nor minimal. The mess that is the collection of kernel drivers has never been simple nor minimal. Linux has always been about choice: if you like stripped-down, you go and strip it down; if you like full-featured, you go and pack everything. There is no one-size-fits-all, no single design. Anything else would not be Linux. The un-linuxness of systemd is exactly that it's becoming less and less optional. We whined for years that X11/Xorg was really a non-optional piece of crap, and when it's finally seeing some competition, we're being saddled with a non-optional daemon that takes over the rest of your system -- and unlike X11, it's not even desktop-only.

generic_user 11y ago
Yes, I agree with this very much as a long time Linux and BSD user. Linux was never like a BSD. The only thing that 'IS' Linux is the kernel everything else is a choice. With BSD you get a kernel + system libraries + userland all in the base system. So linux has always been a mess but extremely flexible.
chousuke 11y ago
> Linux has always been about choice This is wrong. Linux has never been about anything. It's always been only what people have made it; no less, no more. Viewed like this, systemd is not at all "un-linuxy" (if that made sense in the first place). It is a set of tools written by a bunch of people to solve their problems, and has gained mindshare, users and developers faster than other alternatives, which is exactly what Linux (the kernel) did. Your only choice is to use it, or not use it, but you don't get to complain if someone else decides to depend on it because they deem superior to alternatives. If you want to keep other software from depending on systemd, the onus is on you to provide a reasonable alternative. It will not work to simply demand that others must spend their effort maintaining code that they have no interest in because you want something.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  If you want to keep other software from depending on systemd, the onus is on you to provide a reasonable alternative. You're saying it as if there aren't already plenty of them.
  - chousuke 11y ago
    I am. Currently I am not aware of any serious effort besides the systemd project to provide a coherent, modern core userland for Linux distros. Previously, every distro built their own init systems and core tools to manage services, leading to meaningless differences in an area where heterogeneity is not a benefit, but hinders progress instead. I don't really have an opinion one way or the other about the rest of the project's tools like networkd or the dhcp server and what have they, but having a working service manager out of the box (which means it actually gets used by default!) has already made my life easier compared to the old sysvinit thing that couldn't even reliably tell you if your services were running or not, never mind anything more advanced.
    - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
      Currently I am not aware of any serious effort besides the systemd project to provide a coherent, modern core userland for Linux distros. There's your problem. You don't even have any defined scope. A "coherent, modern core userland" doesn't actually mean anything concrete - it covers enormous ground that no single package can obey. Modern service managers are plentiful - nosh, s6 and perp probably being the most promising. The "old sysvinit thing" has been replaced many times for over 15 years by now. Just because you didn't notice, well, that's your problem.
simoncion 11y ago
> We whined for years that X11/Xorg was really a non-optional piece of crap... Does the fact that sshd's X11 forwarding doesn't require to run an X11 -errm- client(?) to run X11 software on a remote machine make X11/Xorg more optional? (Obviously, you do need to run X11 on the machine that displays the GUI, and you do need X11 libs installed on the remote machine.)
- toyg 11y ago
  No, I was referring to the fact that there was basically no alternative graphics system in the mainstream. You could choose among different windows servers, desktop systems etc, but all of these would only run on top of X11/Xorg. Compatibility with other implementations both at protocol and interface levels was barely even nominal. Whenever X11/Xorg development stalled or hit problems etc, the entire desktop ecosystem was screwed, often for long periods. Now we're going to see this happen with basically the entire userland. If distributions keep pushing it, systemd is going to become "X11 for userland", regardless of its actual quality.