4 ms·

Quote from article: "The attitude of our community was one of engineering excellence: we do not want deprecated code in our source trees, we do not want to kee

by wolfgke 10y ago

Quote from article: "The attitude of our community was one of engineering excellence: we do not want deprecated code in our source trees, we do not want to keep broken designs around, we want pure and beautiful designs and we want to eliminate all traces of bad or poorly implemented ideas from our source code trees. And we did. We deprecated APIs, because there was a better way." The Linux kernel only removes/changes internal kernel interface all the time - the kernel developers take care to keep the external kernel interface (syscalls) backward-compatible. EDIT: One of the commentators at the original article writes something similar: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2012/Aug-29.html#comment-633569788 http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2012/Aug-29.html#comment-633...

aidenn0 10y ago
The linux kernel is hard-core into not breaking backwards compatibility. 2/3 of Linus's rants targeting a kernel developer tend to be because they broke userspace. On the other hand, there is approximately zero chance that a dynamically linked executable from 10 years ago will run on my current system because the system libraries break backwards compatibility all the time. Drepper takes a lot of flak for this, but glibc is not even remotely the only library at fault for this. Many core userspace libraries broke not only binary compatibility regularly but often source compatibility. Inspect a steam install sometime. It installs dozens of DLLs just so games will have a stable base to work from. Also, have I just gotten lucky or something? This is the second time that someone mentions audio not working on linux as the norm, but from the mainlining of ALSA in 2.6 on, I've had zero issues with audio working for all but the most obscure audio devices.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  These days when people say "audio broke" it is most likely the pulseaudio layer that is acting up (and their devs blaming bugs in alsa for the breakage).
- paulddraper 10y ago
  DVDs, printers, and to a lesser extent graphics have more issues for me than audio.
  - aidenn0 10y ago
    Also my experience, but people complain about sound. I know Ubuntu adopted PA way to early, so perhaps that's what some people are thinking of. Also, back in the day, dmix was not enabled in setups where it really ought to have been so you had the "some program is blocking everyone else from using the sound."
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  I've had about 50/50 when it comes to sound. I don't know if it's certain chips or manufacturers or what, but I never really expect it to work for me OOTB.
- kasabali 10y ago
  > Drepper takes a lot of flak for this, but glibc is not even remotely the only library at fault for this. The reason Drepper takes a lot of flak for this is not because glibc constantly breaks ABI compatibility but because he set tone of dynamic linking discussions back in the day and he is responsible for static-linking-aversiness of glibc & GNU toolchain and pure dynamic linking culture of mainstream linux distributions. I agree with all of you've said, though.

by wolfgke 10y ago

aidenn0 10y ago

The linux kernel is hard-core into not breaking backwards compatibility. 2/3 of Linus's rants targeting a kernel developer tend to be because they broke userspace. On the other hand, there is approximately zero chance that a dynamically linked executable from 10 years ago will run on my current system because the system libraries break backwards compatibility all the time. Drepper takes a lot of flak for this, but glibc is not even remotely the only library at fault for this. Many core userspace libraries broke not only binary compatibility regularly but often source compatibility. Inspect a steam install sometime. It installs dozens of DLLs just so games will have a stable base to work from. Also, have I just gotten lucky or something? This is the second time that someone mentions audio not working on linux as the norm, but from the mainlining of ALSA in 2.6 on, I've had zero issues with audio working for all but the most obscure audio devices.

digi_owl 10y ago
These days when people say "audio broke" it is most likely the pulseaudio layer that is acting up (and their devs blaming bugs in alsa for the breakage).
paulddraper 10y ago
DVDs, printers, and to a lesser extent graphics have more issues for me than audio.
- aidenn0 10y ago
  Also my experience, but people complain about sound. I know Ubuntu adopted PA way to early, so perhaps that's what some people are thinking of. Also, back in the day, dmix was not enabled in setups where it really ought to have been so you had the "some program is blocking everyone else from using the sound."
CaptSpify 10y ago
I've had about 50/50 when it comes to sound. I don't know if it's certain chips or manufacturers or what, but I never really expect it to work for me OOTB.
kasabali 10y ago
> Drepper takes a lot of flak for this, but glibc is not even remotely the only library at fault for this. The reason Drepper takes a lot of flak for this is not because glibc constantly breaks ABI compatibility but because he set tone of dynamic linking discussions back in the day and he is responsible for static-linking-aversiness of glibc & GNU toolchain and pure dynamic linking culture of mainstream linux distributions. I agree with all of you've said, though.