6 ms·

I like how he is sarcastic about being very happy that systemd is installed on the watch.

by rxlim 10y ago

i336_ 10y ago
If you're right, that's a big sigh of relief from me. The guy mentions how "Lennart Poettering would love it!" as the h2, and also describes X11 as "legacy". With these in mind I feared he was serious about the systemd bit. I'm really sad X11 is legacy software myself, as an aside. It's a disaster, sure, but now we have one more layer of "uhhhh..." for all the UX-types to get scared away by: it used to be "(WinAPI) vs ((Qt)/(GTK+)/(Xlib/XCB))", which was embarrassing enough; now it's "(WinAPI) vs (X11((Qt)/(GTK+)/(Xlib/XCB))/Wayland((Qt)/(GTK+)/(???)))" which is just plain annoying for low-level graphics hacker wannabes - I can make a WinAPI app in C that opens a window in a few KB, where as to do that in Linux now I HAVE to support XCB and also write my own tiny UI for Wayland. Practically speaking it means that most developers will just pick a side^H^H^H^Htoolkit and go with that. It doesn't help that I've never been able to get past Qt's love of background processes vs. GTK's various displays of autism/spasticness. sighs...rant over, situation accepted a bit more. systemd is still a disaster though. I saw a massive 3Wx5H 1080p video wall in a shop window the other day, displaying... systemd emergency mode. At least I learned that some video stretchers are smart and will drop the panels they're controlling into standby if they display black for too long. (Only the two panels at the top-left displaying the error were on, the others visibly had their backlights off. Neat.)
- i336_ 10y ago
  Curious why this was downvoted (it's currently at -1). Happy to hear any explanation or view.
  - grzm 10y ago
    I haven't followed this discussion so am unfamiliar with the validity of the details of the comment, so I can't speak to the content. The downvotes may be in part due to the rantish nature of part of it, which you were aware of at the time of posting. Some readers may have thought as you knew its tone was overly heated, you could have taken the time to express it better. However, this is just speculation, based on behavior I've seen on HN.
    - i336_ 10y ago
      Ah, I see. Defining one's argument concretely and concisely is the basis of debating effectively, whereas I've just resorted to anecdote and ranting here. Woops. Thanks very much for that feedback, I'll keep it in mind.
  - elktea 10y ago
    probably because you called systemd a disaster without qualifying why you think so
    - i336_ 10y ago
      Hrm. Okay, let me have a go. If I had to use one word to describe systemd's integration and adoption into the Linux ecosystem it would have to be "hostile" - the label has unfortunately been applicable in both directions. Most of the feathers flew around 2012 when the major Linux distributions adopted systemd as their default init system, irreversibly pulling in all of systemd's system management policies as well, many of which were poorly designed. Several big names in the Linux community (Linus Torvalds and Greg Kroah-Hartman, to name two) have had heated discussions with Lennart Poettering and other people behind systemd about major bugs, design flaws and policy integration issues, with the systemd response consistently being "the way we're doing it is the right way, no patches will be accepted, go away" even when shown multiple times that something contravenes design best practices or tradition (aka principle of least surprise). For this reason I dislike systemd's highly bureaucratic "manglement" style, and am very sad that all major distributions have adopted it so widely. systemd uses a very dictatorial approach which makes it very very hard to use any other init system without nontrivial and obscure system reconfiguration. I understand Lennart also built PulseAudio and got it integrated into pretty much all Linux distributions. PA works well now, but if it's having a bad day and I really need sound working in a pinch, I can just kill it and use ALSA/OSS directly. systemd categorically isn't like that because it's (ostensibly) an init system. However it comes with so many extra "side features" (which an increasing number of things are depending on) that temporarily shoving it out of the way to became impossible very quickly, and before any real documentation was established. I think it's understandable a large amount of the Linux community have growled and snarled when presented with this set of circumstances. Nowadays, systemd is pretty much part of the woodwork now, but the communication and social issues continue. The first reply to a previous comment I made about systemd was extremely enlightening to read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12877934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12877934
      - 72deluxe 10y ago
        I remember the Fedora 7 (?) days when PulseAudio was made default and nothing worked (silence is golden apparently). I routinely removed PulseAudio from my systems and dropped to ALSA. I observe that systemd has a plethora of other systems that you mention, including a DHCP server. Yes a DHCP server. I do not understand it. Edit: Yes I know Fedora 7 was ancient. Just my memories. I think the fact that PA was broken in it got fixed pretty swiftly, from memory. But I was plagued with glitchy audio releases after this - could be my incredibly lame hardware at the time (but worked fine in ALSA).
- flukus 10y ago
  It hasn't been all roses in the windows world. Aside from qt/gtk being just as desirable there, there was also winforms and WPF in .net that are now left out in the cold and no clear forward direction that would also work on windows 7. They seem to be taking an each way bet on whether Win32 is deprecated or not. Actually, I think this is the situation that lead to the growth in webapps and probably helped the decline (or failure to rise) of windows phone, no one had a clue where MS was going.
  - i336_ 10y ago
    Huh. That interesting, and kinda sad. TIL about this aspect of the bigger picture. I'm a bit behind on where Windows is at in the grand scheme of things nowadays.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    WPF is pretty much alive for desktop applications and its architecture (XAML + Blend tooling) is the foundation of UWP applications. Windows Forms is officially dead as communicated at Build a few years ago. It is now playing chess with Carbon. MFC is officially on life support. Way forward for C++ developers is UWP. Everything from Win32 that isn't required for UWP support is deprecated and Project Centipede is the official way to bring Win32 applications into the new shinning UWP world.
    - i336_ 10y ago
      TIL. Thanks for this, been wanting to keep my finger on the pulse of Windows development, but am quite distant at the moment (no Windows hardware).
- ensiferum 10y ago
  Bollocks, the equivalent of opening a window using Win32 in Linux world is using X11's xlib (or xcb) API. Equivalent albeit more brain damaged. Wayland doesn't change this. Once Wayland is adopted the X server will become a Wayland client and X client's will connect to the X server as usual. You don't have to write a native Wayland application if you don't want to.
  - i336_ 10y ago
    That's true, yep. But another commentator noted how Wayland doesn't provide X11-standard functionality (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13346877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13346877). I fear that X11 will eventually be installed (and possibly even available) in less and less environments, in the long term. So 10 years from now it'll be interesting to see where things are at. Hopefully things haven't devolved too far.
    - ensiferum 10y ago
      One could only hope that 10 years from now X has in-fact disappeared. My greater worry is that it's still around and Wayland (with Weston implementation) hasn't yet gained enough traction to become "de-facto" server. To make matters worse there's the Ubuntu's MIR display server, which seems to have gone silent. This could lead to some nasty fragmentation between distros.
- wott 10y ago
  > I'm really sad X11 is legacy software myself, as an aside. It's a disaster, sure, but now we have one more layer of "uhhhh..." for all the UX-types to get scared away by: it used to be "(WinAPI) vs ((Qt)/(GTK+)/(Xlib/XCB))", which was embarrassing enough; now it's "(WinAPI) vs (X11((Qt)/(GTK+)/(Xlib/XCB))/Wayland((Qt)/(GTK+)/(???)))" which is just plain annoying for low-level graphics hacker wannabes - I can make a WinAPI app in C that opens a window in a few KB, where as to do that in Linux now I HAVE to support XCB and also write my own tiny UI for Wayland. That's worse than this: you will quite possibly need features that are not implemented through Wayland, but through each different Desktop Environment, through different APIs, since Wayland ditched many X11(+standardised extensions) features.
  - i336_ 10y ago
    Another commentator noted that X will just become a Wayland client when things even out. I suspect that things won't necessarily work out that cleanly/elegantly, and eventually X11 will installed on fewer and fewer devices. Whatever we're left with will create quite an interesting ecosystem; here's hoping it's not too much of a political disaster. For me, that means hoping Qt keeps up at the end of the day; it's been far superior to GTK in every way IMHO for some time.
jdub 10y ago
He's not. Far better to run a tightly configured systemd on an embedded device than thickets of shell scripts. And as he states, it makes modifying device behaviour that much simpler.
digi_owl 10y ago
I am honestly not sure...

I like how he is sarcastic about being very happy that systemd is installed on the watch.

by rxlim 10y ago

I like how he is sarcastic about being very happy that systemd is installed on the watch.

i336_ 10y ago

If you're right, that's a big sigh of relief from me. The guy mentions how "Lennart Poettering would love it!" as the h2, and also describes X11 as "legacy". With these in mind I feared he was serious about the systemd bit. I'm really sad X11 is legacy software myself, as an aside. It's a disaster, sure, but now we have one more layer of "uhhhh..." for all the UX-types to get scared away by: it used to be "(WinAPI) vs ((Qt)/(GTK+)/(Xlib/XCB))", which was embarrassing enough; now it's "(WinAPI) vs (X11((Qt)/(GTK+)/(Xlib/XCB))/Wayland((Qt)/(GTK+)/(???)))" which is just plain annoying for low-level graphics hacker wannabes - I can make a WinAPI app in C that opens a window in a few KB, where as to do that in Linux now I HAVE to support XCB and also write my own tiny UI for Wayland. Practically speaking it means that most developers will just pick a side^H^H^H^Htoolkit and go with that. It doesn't help that I've never been able to get past Qt's love of background processes vs. GTK's various displays of autism/spasticness. sighs...rant over, situation accepted a bit more. systemd is still a disaster though. I saw a massive 3Wx5H 1080p video wall in a shop window the other day, displaying... systemd emergency mode. At least I learned that some video stretchers are smart and will drop the panels they're controlling into standby if they display black for too long. (Only the two panels at the top-left displaying the error were on, the others visibly had their backlights off. Neat.)

i336_ 10y ago
Curious why this was downvoted (it's currently at -1). Happy to hear any explanation or view.
- grzm 10y ago
  I haven't followed this discussion so am unfamiliar with the validity of the details of the comment, so I can't speak to the content. The downvotes may be in part due to the rantish nature of part of it, which you were aware of at the time of posting. Some readers may have thought as you knew its tone was overly heated, you could have taken the time to express it better. However, this is just speculation, based on behavior I've seen on HN.
  - i336_ 10y ago
    Ah, I see. Defining one's argument concretely and concisely is the basis of debating effectively, whereas I've just resorted to anecdote and ranting here. Woops. Thanks very much for that feedback, I'll keep it in mind.
- elktea 10y ago
  probably because you called systemd a disaster without qualifying why you think so
  - i336_ 10y ago
    Hrm. Okay, let me have a go. If I had to use one word to describe systemd's integration and adoption into the Linux ecosystem it would have to be "hostile" - the label has unfortunately been applicable in both directions. Most of the feathers flew around 2012 when the major Linux distributions adopted systemd as their default init system, irreversibly pulling in all of systemd's system management policies as well, many of which were poorly designed. Several big names in the Linux community (Linus Torvalds and Greg Kroah-Hartman, to name two) have had heated discussions with Lennart Poettering and other people behind systemd about major bugs, design flaws and policy integration issues, with the systemd response consistently being "the way we're doing it is the right way, no patches will be accepted, go away" even when shown multiple times that something contravenes design best practices or tradition (aka principle of least surprise). For this reason I dislike systemd's highly bureaucratic "manglement" style, and am very sad that all major distributions have adopted it so widely. systemd uses a very dictatorial approach which makes it very very hard to use any other init system without nontrivial and obscure system reconfiguration. I understand Lennart also built PulseAudio and got it integrated into pretty much all Linux distributions. PA works well now, but if it's having a bad day and I really need sound working in a pinch, I can just kill it and use ALSA/OSS directly. systemd categorically isn't like that because it's (ostensibly) an init system. However it comes with so many extra "side features" (which an increasing number of things are depending on) that temporarily shoving it out of the way to became impossible very quickly, and before any real documentation was established. I think it's understandable a large amount of the Linux community have growled and snarled when presented with this set of circumstances. Nowadays, systemd is pretty much part of the woodwork now, but the communication and social issues continue. The first reply to a previous comment I made about systemd was extremely enlightening to read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12877934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12877934
    - 72deluxe 10y ago
      I remember the Fedora 7 (?) days when PulseAudio was made default and nothing worked (silence is golden apparently). I routinely removed PulseAudio from my systems and dropped to ALSA. I observe that systemd has a plethora of other systems that you mention, including a DHCP server. Yes a DHCP server. I do not understand it. Edit: Yes I know Fedora 7 was ancient. Just my memories. I think the fact that PA was broken in it got fixed pretty swiftly, from memory. But I was plagued with glitchy audio releases after this - could be my incredibly lame hardware at the time (but worked fine in ALSA).
flukus 10y ago
It hasn't been all roses in the windows world. Aside from qt/gtk being just as desirable there, there was also winforms and WPF in .net that are now left out in the cold and no clear forward direction that would also work on windows 7. They seem to be taking an each way bet on whether Win32 is deprecated or not. Actually, I think this is the situation that lead to the growth in webapps and probably helped the decline (or failure to rise) of windows phone, no one had a clue where MS was going.
- i336_ 10y ago
  Huh. That interesting, and kinda sad. TIL about this aspect of the bigger picture. I'm a bit behind on where Windows is at in the grand scheme of things nowadays.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  WPF is pretty much alive for desktop applications and its architecture (XAML + Blend tooling) is the foundation of UWP applications. Windows Forms is officially dead as communicated at Build a few years ago. It is now playing chess with Carbon. MFC is officially on life support. Way forward for C++ developers is UWP. Everything from Win32 that isn't required for UWP support is deprecated and Project Centipede is the official way to bring Win32 applications into the new shinning UWP world.
  - i336_ 10y ago
    TIL. Thanks for this, been wanting to keep my finger on the pulse of Windows development, but am quite distant at the moment (no Windows hardware).
ensiferum 10y ago
Bollocks, the equivalent of opening a window using Win32 in Linux world is using X11's xlib (or xcb) API. Equivalent albeit more brain damaged. Wayland doesn't change this. Once Wayland is adopted the X server will become a Wayland client and X client's will connect to the X server as usual. You don't have to write a native Wayland application if you don't want to.
- i336_ 10y ago
  That's true, yep. But another commentator noted how Wayland doesn't provide X11-standard functionality (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13346877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13346877). I fear that X11 will eventually be installed (and possibly even available) in less and less environments, in the long term. So 10 years from now it'll be interesting to see where things are at. Hopefully things haven't devolved too far.
  - ensiferum 10y ago
    One could only hope that 10 years from now X has in-fact disappeared. My greater worry is that it's still around and Wayland (with Weston implementation) hasn't yet gained enough traction to become "de-facto" server. To make matters worse there's the Ubuntu's MIR display server, which seems to have gone silent. This could lead to some nasty fragmentation between distros.
wott 10y ago
> I'm really sad X11 is legacy software myself, as an aside. It's a disaster, sure, but now we have one more layer of "uhhhh..." for all the UX-types to get scared away by: it used to be "(WinAPI) vs ((Qt)/(GTK+)/(Xlib/XCB))", which was embarrassing enough; now it's "(WinAPI) vs (X11((Qt)/(GTK+)/(Xlib/XCB))/Wayland((Qt)/(GTK+)/(???)))" which is just plain annoying for low-level graphics hacker wannabes - I can make a WinAPI app in C that opens a window in a few KB, where as to do that in Linux now I HAVE to support XCB and also write my own tiny UI for Wayland. That's worse than this: you will quite possibly need features that are not implemented through Wayland, but through each different Desktop Environment, through different APIs, since Wayland ditched many X11(+standardised extensions) features.
- i336_ 10y ago
  Another commentator noted that X will just become a Wayland client when things even out. I suspect that things won't necessarily work out that cleanly/elegantly, and eventually X11 will installed on fewer and fewer devices. Whatever we're left with will create quite an interesting ecosystem; here's hoping it's not too much of a political disaster. For me, that means hoping Qt keeps up at the end of the day; it's been far superior to GTK in every way IMHO for some time.

jdub 10y ago

He's not. Far better to run a tightly configured systemd on an embedded device than thickets of shell scripts. And as he states, it makes modifying device behaviour that much simpler.

digi_owl 10y ago

I am honestly not sure...