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The Linux Kernel interface does an excellent job of remaining stable. There's a surprisingly small set of interfaces that the kernel actually exposes to userlan

The Linux Kernel interface does an excellent job of remaining stable. There's a surprisingly small set of interfaces that the kernel actually exposes to userland, and in the words of Linus, "WE DO NOT BREAK USERSPACE!". I don't see the lack of stable APIs elsewhere as an actual problem. The biggest problem is that it makes life harder for proprietary software developers - it's pretty much mandatory for them to setup automated CI & release processes if they want their software to actually be usable. There's a huge upside to not caring about a huge stable userspace API: it's much easier to continue to evolve if you just stop caring about backwards compatibility. And often, backwards compatibility means giving up your future to hold on to your past. The difficulty of getting anything done grows exponentially more complicated, often with few significant tangible benefits.

revelation 11y ago
What exactly was achieved in the backwards compatibility nightmare that is Gnome 3, for example? This: https://trac.transmissionbt.com/ticket/3685 https://trac.transmissionbt.com/ticket/3685 All things UI in Linux distributions go through so much insane thrashing that very very few application developers want to bother. There are no tangible benefits to UI thrashing; people use systems for software, not window chrome!
- DanielDent 11y ago
  Desktop Linux is definitely still maturing... I'm not up on the latest in Gnome-land and don't know the background on the issue you linked, but it looks like the benefit is that they get to stop maintaining a bunch of code for a UI feature they've decided isn't actually a good idea. That will make it easier for them to continue to build reliable software, as there will be less legacy code to consider when writing future code. The UI churn you talk about may be because the "window manager" concept is probably fundamentally flawed. Creating a coherent and sensible UI when you have to target a whole suite of different window managers which may use entirely different UI paradigms is... probably a nigh-unsolvable problem which might not even be worth working on.
  - oblio 11y ago
    > Desktop Linux is definitely still maturing... You're such an optimist. https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html c 2003
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    The only time you run into a WM issue is when you try to ape the OSX singular menubar. As long as you go with the Windows thinking of having the menubar inside the relevant window, your UI will work across just about every WM out there. I really don't see why the UI world is so hell bent on moving away from the menubar. That is unless they are stuck up on turning every UI into a touch UI...
- bitwize 11y ago
  This is because the developer community, aside from some long-time system hackers like Linus who know what's at stake (most of whom are Linus's age or older), do not think in terms of building software that will last and adapt to changes. They think in terms of "old and busted" and "new hotness" and that their job is to migrate everyone off the old and busted and force the community to adopt new hotness. Hence the churn in GNOME, hence systemd.

revelation 11y ago

What exactly was achieved in the backwards compatibility nightmare that is Gnome 3, for example? This: https://trac.transmissionbt.com/ticket/3685 https://trac.transmissionbt.com/ticket/3685 All things UI in Linux distributions go through so much insane thrashing that very very few application developers want to bother. There are no tangible benefits to UI thrashing; people use systems for software, not window chrome!

DanielDent 11y ago
Desktop Linux is definitely still maturing... I'm not up on the latest in Gnome-land and don't know the background on the issue you linked, but it looks like the benefit is that they get to stop maintaining a bunch of code for a UI feature they've decided isn't actually a good idea. That will make it easier for them to continue to build reliable software, as there will be less legacy code to consider when writing future code. The UI churn you talk about may be because the "window manager" concept is probably fundamentally flawed. Creating a coherent and sensible UI when you have to target a whole suite of different window managers which may use entirely different UI paradigms is... probably a nigh-unsolvable problem which might not even be worth working on.
- oblio 11y ago
  > Desktop Linux is definitely still maturing... You're such an optimist. https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html c 2003
- digi_owl 11y ago
  The only time you run into a WM issue is when you try to ape the OSX singular menubar. As long as you go with the Windows thinking of having the menubar inside the relevant window, your UI will work across just about every WM out there. I really don't see why the UI world is so hell bent on moving away from the menubar. That is unless they are stuck up on turning every UI into a touch UI...
bitwize 11y ago
This is because the developer community, aside from some long-time system hackers like Linus who know what's at stake (most of whom are Linus's age or older), do not think in terms of building software that will last and adapt to changes. They think in terms of "old and busted" and "new hotness" and that their job is to migrate everyone off the old and busted and force the community to adopt new hotness. Hence the churn in GNOME, hence systemd.