5 ms·

Yea personally I'm mostly fascinated with the semi microkernel architecture. I don't really mind that the rest is closed. And yea, I've suspected they lost some

by mikalv 9y ago

Yea personally I'm mostly fascinated with the semi microkernel architecture. I don't really mind that the rest is closed. And yea, I've suspected they lost some good people after seeing all the new security issues in the kernel the past years. If only wayland was more mature, and the Linux world would have put down X11 once and for all, I would be back on Linux a long time ago :)

ori_b 9y ago
> If only wayland was more mature, and the Linux world would have put down X11 once and for all, I would be back on Linux a long time ago :) I'm curious why Wayland changes things for you. X11 is warty as hell, but that's generally not something visible to the user. I don't go "Eww, they didn't bother framing the graphics message packets properly -- I'm going to use another OS".
- legulere 9y ago
  X11 is also responsible for some of the sluggishness of the Linux desktop, like resizing windows.
  - Vogtinator 9y ago
    With compositing enabled that doesn't really matter.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- pjmlp 9y ago
  I guess a proper stack for doing 3D graphics, instead of the gimmicks that X has had over the years? I lost count how many times I sat at FOSDEM X room, seeing the improvements that would eventually come (some day).
  - pcwalton 9y ago
    The Mesa/DRM stack is significantly better than Apple's, because the OpenGL implementation actually works, and Vulkan is supported on at least some hardware. At the protocol level, X isn't involved that much with the 3D graphics stack anyhow these days. Xorg simply speaks DRI3, which is just a way to marshal file descriptors representing graphics buffers over the connection. It isn't involved in the rendering happening at either end (application and compositor).
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      Metal is fine and supported by all relevant engines, thanks. As the name says, DRI3 was yet another attempt to improve the whole performance stack on Linux. As mentioned, I did my share of FOSDEM sessions.
      - jcelerier 9y ago
        > Metal is fine and supported by all relevant engines, thanks. thanks for the laugh
        pjmlp 9y ago
        Professional game developers have a different opinion regarding graphics APIs, even those that have been strong OpenGL apologists in the past: "John Carmack: Its still OpenGL, although we obviously use a D3D-ish API [on the Xbox 360], and CG on the PS3. Its interesting how little of the technology cares what API you're using and what generation of the technology you're on. You've got a small handful of files that care about what API they're on, and millions of lines of code that are agnostic to the platform that they're on." http://fd.fabiensanglard.net/doom3/pdfs/johnc-interviews.pdf http://fd.fabiensanglard.net/doom3/pdfs/johnc-interviews.pdf AAA studios already adopted Metal on their engines, Vulkan only matters on GNU/Linux among those having supported graphics cards. On Android, it is only available as optional graphics API in 10% of devices available worldwide. On Windows, it is only supported on legacy Win32, it isn't and it won't be supported on UWP. On Nintendo Switch, there is the option to use the more lower level API NVN instead. So laugh at will, lets see which APIs game studios care about.
- mikalv 9y ago
  Haha, well it's not only X11, but it's one of the main reasons. Other reasons are that for my usage and work, it just "works", no hours of configuration in dotfiles. Also it's convenient as a cross platform developer, since I can just crosscompile to Linux and Windows(mingw) via Docker. However, without the Mac, you'll have to break some licenses with a hackintosh. I think the project is cool, but in work related situations I can't do that because of legal reasons. This also reminds me about a cool project I've found, but not had time to test yet; https://github.com/shinh/maloader https://github.com/shinh/maloader
  - eru 9y ago
    The graphical user interface has almost nothing to do with ease of configuration. And yes, ease of configuration is worth a lot. Related anecdote: I started a friend of mine on Ubuntu, but she hated all the configuration via endless clicking. She immediately took to Archlinux---there's still configuration, but it's simpler and since it's all text, it's much easier to just read everything on the Archwiki instead of having to follow pictures (or descriptions of pictures).
  - unixhero 9y ago
    Yeah. Linux is not like that any more. Try Linux Mint. The only configuration you will do is to enter your username and password.
    - nickpsecurity 9y ago
      And then again when their site gets subverted and you have to reinstall since you might have a rootkitted binary. I loved Mint for its incredible usability. Just can't recommend a supplier whose security was that bad.
      - unixhero 9y ago
        Nah. You can't hold a 'maintainer transgression' which happened two years ago against them forever. They have indeed implemented solid checks and offer a Shaxxx-sum file for every iso file they publish. Not only that, bt publicly "soul searched" and went to great lenghts to assure the community and its users that such mistakes would not be repeated. Now verifying the authenticity of the iso file actively encouraged, on the download page. They made a mistake, took solid steps to improve, and the show has moved on. You should too, instead of smearing the project far far down the line. (I'm being retorical, I know)
pjmlp 9y ago
I came to realize that for those of us that actually care about graphics programming, nice GUI tools and UI/UX, Linux world will never be the place to be. The majority of devs are happy having a replicate of PDP-11 experience, maybe with twm and tools like xdvi or xv. Those that try to improve the overall desktop experience closer to other desktop systems, get bashed as needless fluff.
- bostand 9y ago
  Your posts are full of stereotypes...
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Those stereotypes are backed by HN posts about how the CLI is so great, how using a tiling window manager is so great, how using XFCE (a CDE clone) is all that is needed, that GNOME/KDE devs destroy the desktop because they care about UI/UX for non-technical users, that systemd is a desktop plague infecting servers,.... Plenty of material.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      Apparently using one's mental faculties and empirical observations to make a generalization has gone out of fashion. On the other hand, linking to some crappy research in a hastily peer "reviewed" journal, with 20 participants and no controls, that satisfies your biases and which you haven't even read except for the abstract is considered epitome of discussion.
  - MrBuddyCasino 9y ago
    Don't be so quick to discount stereotypes. Look at them as a sort of Bayesian prior - updated by individual encounters, but often not completely off the mark.
    - bostand 9y ago
      But if his observations are so far of the mark you can be pretty sure his stereotypes are too. By the way, visual studio and intelij idea look the same on all platforms
nickpsecurity 9y ago
The merging of Mach with UNIX was a mistake given it was one of the slowest, over-complicated microkernels. Far as I'm aware, they'd prefer to remove Mach but it's a big job at this point that might affect their ecosystem a lot. If you are interested in open microkernels, I encourage you to look into L4 family (eg OCL4 or OKL4) since they're far more advanced than Mach-based designs. Minix 3 does one with NetBSD userland and self-healing capabilities. GenodeOS is turning one into a desktop. IBM's K42 ran on NUMA machines. JX OS mixes one with a JVM to run the OS in Java. For security, GEMSOS was a security kernel w/ MAC. KeyKOS and EROS were examples of those doing capability-based security. Modern ones like Muen and seL4 just do separation w/ apps managing security policy. EDIT: Windows is also a "semi-microkernel" with a microkernel inside of it on the bottom that seems to be used for consistent way of interfacing components more than anything. I'm not sure if it's still in there.
- pcwalton 9y ago
  Mach is fine. The IPC primitives it exposes are a lot more straightforward than Unix sockets. The performance issues everyone talked about in the '80s are not really problems anymore in 2017. L4's send/recv context switch trick is great until you get to SMP, at which point its performance necessarily moves closer to that of traditional microkernels like Mach.
- mikalv 9y ago
  I've been playing a bit around with L4 kernels and some more of Minix 3 from before. Genode seems nice but never had the opportunity to test it yet. The rest was all new for me, thanks for the information :)

by mikalv 9y ago

ori_b 9y ago

> If only wayland was more mature, and the Linux world would have put down X11 once and for all, I would be back on Linux a long time ago :) I'm curious why Wayland changes things for you. X11 is warty as hell, but that's generally not something visible to the user. I don't go "Eww, they didn't bother framing the graphics message packets properly -- I'm going to use another OS".

legulere 9y ago
X11 is also responsible for some of the sluggishness of the Linux desktop, like resizing windows.
- Vogtinator 9y ago
  With compositing enabled that doesn't really matter.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
pjmlp 9y ago
I guess a proper stack for doing 3D graphics, instead of the gimmicks that X has had over the years? I lost count how many times I sat at FOSDEM X room, seeing the improvements that would eventually come (some day).
- pcwalton 9y ago
  The Mesa/DRM stack is significantly better than Apple's, because the OpenGL implementation actually works, and Vulkan is supported on at least some hardware. At the protocol level, X isn't involved that much with the 3D graphics stack anyhow these days. Xorg simply speaks DRI3, which is just a way to marshal file descriptors representing graphics buffers over the connection. It isn't involved in the rendering happening at either end (application and compositor).
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Metal is fine and supported by all relevant engines, thanks. As the name says, DRI3 was yet another attempt to improve the whole performance stack on Linux. As mentioned, I did my share of FOSDEM sessions.
    - jcelerier 9y ago
      > Metal is fine and supported by all relevant engines, thanks. thanks for the laugh
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        Professional game developers have a different opinion regarding graphics APIs, even those that have been strong OpenGL apologists in the past: "John Carmack: Its still OpenGL, although we obviously use a D3D-ish API [on the Xbox 360], and CG on the PS3. Its interesting how little of the technology cares what API you're using and what generation of the technology you're on. You've got a small handful of files that care about what API they're on, and millions of lines of code that are agnostic to the platform that they're on." http://fd.fabiensanglard.net/doom3/pdfs/johnc-interviews.pdf http://fd.fabiensanglard.net/doom3/pdfs/johnc-interviews.pdf AAA studios already adopted Metal on their engines, Vulkan only matters on GNU/Linux among those having supported graphics cards. On Android, it is only available as optional graphics API in 10% of devices available worldwide. On Windows, it is only supported on legacy Win32, it isn't and it won't be supported on UWP. On Nintendo Switch, there is the option to use the more lower level API NVN instead. So laugh at will, lets see which APIs game studios care about.
mikalv 9y ago
Haha, well it's not only X11, but it's one of the main reasons. Other reasons are that for my usage and work, it just "works", no hours of configuration in dotfiles. Also it's convenient as a cross platform developer, since I can just crosscompile to Linux and Windows(mingw) via Docker. However, without the Mac, you'll have to break some licenses with a hackintosh. I think the project is cool, but in work related situations I can't do that because of legal reasons. This also reminds me about a cool project I've found, but not had time to test yet; https://github.com/shinh/maloader https://github.com/shinh/maloader
- eru 9y ago
  The graphical user interface has almost nothing to do with ease of configuration. And yes, ease of configuration is worth a lot. Related anecdote: I started a friend of mine on Ubuntu, but she hated all the configuration via endless clicking. She immediately took to Archlinux---there's still configuration, but it's simpler and since it's all text, it's much easier to just read everything on the Archwiki instead of having to follow pictures (or descriptions of pictures).
- unixhero 9y ago
  Yeah. Linux is not like that any more. Try Linux Mint. The only configuration you will do is to enter your username and password.
  - nickpsecurity 9y ago
    And then again when their site gets subverted and you have to reinstall since you might have a rootkitted binary. I loved Mint for its incredible usability. Just can't recommend a supplier whose security was that bad.
    - unixhero 9y ago
      Nah. You can't hold a 'maintainer transgression' which happened two years ago against them forever. They have indeed implemented solid checks and offer a Shaxxx-sum file for every iso file they publish. Not only that, bt publicly "soul searched" and went to great lenghts to assure the community and its users that such mistakes would not be repeated. Now verifying the authenticity of the iso file actively encouraged, on the download page. They made a mistake, took solid steps to improve, and the show has moved on. You should too, instead of smearing the project far far down the line. (I'm being retorical, I know)

pjmlp 9y ago

I came to realize that for those of us that actually care about graphics programming, nice GUI tools and UI/UX, Linux world will never be the place to be. The majority of devs are happy having a replicate of PDP-11 experience, maybe with twm and tools like xdvi or xv. Those that try to improve the overall desktop experience closer to other desktop systems, get bashed as needless fluff.

bostand 9y ago
Your posts are full of stereotypes...
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Those stereotypes are backed by HN posts about how the CLI is so great, how using a tiling window manager is so great, how using XFCE (a CDE clone) is all that is needed, that GNOME/KDE devs destroy the desktop because they care about UI/UX for non-technical users, that systemd is a desktop plague infecting servers,.... Plenty of material.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    Apparently using one's mental faculties and empirical observations to make a generalization has gone out of fashion. On the other hand, linking to some crappy research in a hastily peer "reviewed" journal, with 20 participants and no controls, that satisfies your biases and which you haven't even read except for the abstract is considered epitome of discussion.
- MrBuddyCasino 9y ago
  Don't be so quick to discount stereotypes. Look at them as a sort of Bayesian prior - updated by individual encounters, but often not completely off the mark.
  - bostand 9y ago
    But if his observations are so far of the mark you can be pretty sure his stereotypes are too. By the way, visual studio and intelij idea look the same on all platforms

nickpsecurity 9y ago

The merging of Mach with UNIX was a mistake given it was one of the slowest, over-complicated microkernels. Far as I'm aware, they'd prefer to remove Mach but it's a big job at this point that might affect their ecosystem a lot. If you are interested in open microkernels, I encourage you to look into L4 family (eg OCL4 or OKL4) since they're far more advanced than Mach-based designs. Minix 3 does one with NetBSD userland and self-healing capabilities. GenodeOS is turning one into a desktop. IBM's K42 ran on NUMA machines. JX OS mixes one with a JVM to run the OS in Java. For security, GEMSOS was a security kernel w/ MAC. KeyKOS and EROS were examples of those doing capability-based security. Modern ones like Muen and seL4 just do separation w/ apps managing security policy. EDIT: Windows is also a "semi-microkernel" with a microkernel inside of it on the bottom that seems to be used for consistent way of interfacing components more than anything. I'm not sure if it's still in there.

pcwalton 9y ago
Mach is fine. The IPC primitives it exposes are a lot more straightforward than Unix sockets. The performance issues everyone talked about in the '80s are not really problems anymore in 2017. L4's send/recv context switch trick is great until you get to SMP, at which point its performance necessarily moves closer to that of traditional microkernels like Mach.
mikalv 9y ago
I've been playing a bit around with L4 kernels and some more of Minix 3 from before. Genode seems nice but never had the opportunity to test it yet. The rest was all new for me, thanks for the information :)