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I stopped subscribing. The thing is, the Glory Days when kernel development was a scary, exciting wild west are lone gone. By necessity, the Linux kernel is n

I stopped subscribing. The thing is, the Glory Days when kernel development was a scary, exciting wild west are lone gone. By necessity, the Linux kernel is now a part of the tech firmament and development is necessarily not as sexy as it used to be. So it's gonna be tough to get people to pay to read about it.

CrLf 10y ago
I don't think kernel development is any less scary now than it used to be. It's just as scary, people just don't care to know the gory details anymore. Such systems-level knowledge is seen as much less valuable now in the age of javascript frameworks that don't last longer than a month and silver bullets that everyone talks about but few are actually using for "production" scenarios worthy of that name. It just mirrors internet culture as a whole. Easy to consume information, show off and fashion.
- fdsaaf 10y ago
  > systems-level knowledge is seen as much less valuable now Lest aspiring systems programmers get the wrong idea: systems knowledge is still black magic and it's still plenty valuable. Knowing how systems actually work under the hood is a rare skill and can help you code circles around the node-is-close-to-the-metal [1] competition even when writing application code. [1] https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says/status/234856345579446272 https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says/status/234856345579446272
- mwfunk 10y ago
  There's just as many (if not more) people doing systems programming as ever, there are just a lot more programmers in general and much of that growth has been in web development.
ckastner 10y ago
To be fair, LWN is more than just about Linux kernel development. I find it a useful aggregator of information of note from the F/OSS world. For example, as of right now, most of the articles on the front page aren't about kernel development: distro security updates, LibreOffice, Firefox, GnuPG, ...
- rleigh 10y ago
  This is very true, but I am increasingly wanting something a bit less Linux-centric for all the major categories it covers, which also includes the BSDs and other platforms. There's also an increasingly unhealthy echo chamber regarding "the desktop" if you read the comments, which largely mirrors subscribers' corporate/project affiliations, and that's one of the reasons I no longer subscribe or read it too frequently.
  - ckastner 10y ago
    I've had a similar feeling about the comments, which probably contributes to why I don't read them anymore.
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    Yeah i keep seeing a small set of names from the same org and corporations pop up again and again, trying to defend where the Linux "desktop" is moving.
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    To me, LWN only seems Linux-centric to the extent that FOSS itself seems Linux-centric. I've seen articles on LWN about major new developments in the BSD world (for instance, https://lwn.net/Articles/651700/ https://lwn.net/Articles/651700/ ), as well as notable developments about FOSS for Windows or OSX.
- karma_vaccum123 10y ago
  Right, but most of that aggregation is reposts from other aggregators, many of which are free. This is why I stopped subscribing; I don't need to pay for reposts from proggit.
elihu 10y ago
I think kernel development is a lot slower and more incremental than it used to be, which is probably a good thing. However, back in the "wild west" days we had some very good books that explained in detail how the kernel works. Now, if someone wants to get started in kernel development, I wouldn't even know what book to recommend; all the good ones I know of haven't been updated in a decade. I think this is perhaps an overlooked aspect of Linux's success; at a critical time, they had LWN and good documentation that made it easy for new developers to understand what's going on and start contributing. I don't know any other open source project that is as accessible to new developers as the kernel was in the early 2000's.
- ajdlinux 10y ago
  As someone who's only come into the kernel very recently, I have found the lack of up-to-date documentation to be quite frustrating. I'm very glad to see Jon Corbet step up to be the kernel documentation maintainer and make some concrete steps to improve the usability of our docs, but it's annoying to see few new books or similarly consolidated resources for new kernel developers. The main reason I'm surviving in the kernel is that I'm employed on a team with many experienced kernel developers - I don't think I would have gotten into the kernel as a volunteer. I think in the last few years many open source communities have become a lot better than the kernel in terms of having good starting points for beginners. In the last 5 years I think many projects have started to focus on developing and improving community process, which is good.

CrLf 10y ago

I don't think kernel development is any less scary now than it used to be. It's just as scary, people just don't care to know the gory details anymore. Such systems-level knowledge is seen as much less valuable now in the age of javascript frameworks that don't last longer than a month and silver bullets that everyone talks about but few are actually using for "production" scenarios worthy of that name. It just mirrors internet culture as a whole. Easy to consume information, show off and fashion.

fdsaaf 10y ago
> systems-level knowledge is seen as much less valuable now Lest aspiring systems programmers get the wrong idea: systems knowledge is still black magic and it's still plenty valuable. Knowing how systems actually work under the hood is a rare skill and can help you code circles around the node-is-close-to-the-metal [1] competition even when writing application code. [1] https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says/status/234856345579446272 https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says/status/234856345579446272
mwfunk 10y ago
There's just as many (if not more) people doing systems programming as ever, there are just a lot more programmers in general and much of that growth has been in web development.

ckastner 10y ago

To be fair, LWN is more than just about Linux kernel development. I find it a useful aggregator of information of note from the F/OSS world. For example, as of right now, most of the articles on the front page aren't about kernel development: distro security updates, LibreOffice, Firefox, GnuPG, ...

rleigh 10y ago
This is very true, but I am increasingly wanting something a bit less Linux-centric for all the major categories it covers, which also includes the BSDs and other platforms. There's also an increasingly unhealthy echo chamber regarding "the desktop" if you read the comments, which largely mirrors subscribers' corporate/project affiliations, and that's one of the reasons I no longer subscribe or read it too frequently.
- ckastner 10y ago
  I've had a similar feeling about the comments, which probably contributes to why I don't read them anymore.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Yeah i keep seeing a small set of names from the same org and corporations pop up again and again, trying to defend where the Linux "desktop" is moving.
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  To me, LWN only seems Linux-centric to the extent that FOSS itself seems Linux-centric. I've seen articles on LWN about major new developments in the BSD world (for instance, https://lwn.net/Articles/651700/ https://lwn.net/Articles/651700/ ), as well as notable developments about FOSS for Windows or OSX.
karma_vaccum123 10y ago
Right, but most of that aggregation is reposts from other aggregators, many of which are free. This is why I stopped subscribing; I don't need to pay for reposts from proggit.

elihu 10y ago

I think kernel development is a lot slower and more incremental than it used to be, which is probably a good thing. However, back in the "wild west" days we had some very good books that explained in detail how the kernel works. Now, if someone wants to get started in kernel development, I wouldn't even know what book to recommend; all the good ones I know of haven't been updated in a decade. I think this is perhaps an overlooked aspect of Linux's success; at a critical time, they had LWN and good documentation that made it easy for new developers to understand what's going on and start contributing. I don't know any other open source project that is as accessible to new developers as the kernel was in the early 2000's.

ajdlinux 10y ago
As someone who's only come into the kernel very recently, I have found the lack of up-to-date documentation to be quite frustrating. I'm very glad to see Jon Corbet step up to be the kernel documentation maintainer and make some concrete steps to improve the usability of our docs, but it's annoying to see few new books or similarly consolidated resources for new kernel developers. The main reason I'm surviving in the kernel is that I'm employed on a team with many experienced kernel developers - I don't think I would have gotten into the kernel as a volunteer. I think in the last few years many open source communities have become a lot better than the kernel in terms of having good starting points for beginners. In the last 5 years I think many projects have started to focus on developing and improving community process, which is good.