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Personally, I enjoy Linus' rants on a regular basis. They are the perfect antidote to total idiocy that happens in the Linux software world at times. I've very

by mmjaa 9y ago

Personally, I enjoy Linus' rants on a regular basis. They are the perfect antidote to total idiocy that happens in the Linux software world at times. I've very rarely ever found his point of view to be incorrect, and the abrasion that occurs is a great way to rub the shine off a lot of bullshit. I know people find it uncomfortable or rude, but I think its a necessary feature of a great leader when dealing with an unruly mass of, generally speaking, mostly arrogant, mostly privileged individuals.

digi_owl 9y ago
Sadly while he may be running the kernel development quite well, he defends some serious idiocies when it comes to his dive log software Subsurface. Such as defending the bundling of modified libs, thus making it hard (if not impossible) to package for various distros. And rather than noticing this as being very similar to what he has ranted about others doing in the past in userspace, he joins in attacking said distros... Edit (because apparently i am "posting too fast"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsurface_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsurface_(software) See the last few parts, and citenotes 9 and 10.
- mmjaa 9y ago
  Interesting. Got a link to an example of where this is happening? Because its a form of irrationality I'm not accustomed to with Linus, and I'd like to see for myself if he might have reasons for behaving this way beyond just stubborn pig-headedness. I know he can be stubborn, but in the case of management of Kernel development, he has very fine reasons... the scope of the kernel is far greater than the scope for some user space software, and so this is indeed an intriguing opportunity to gain some insight into his thought processes.
- CJefferson 9y ago
  He is consistent in my opinion. His problem is that most libraries don't try to avoid breaking programs, unlike the kernel. I've started distributing an exact version of boost and gmp with my programs and refusing to accept bug reports generated from using other versions. Life is too short (when unpaid) for the pain caused by exactly the problems Linus is describing.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    He is blaming the distros though and not the upstream libs for the problem.
- adnzzzzZ 9y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PmHRSeA2c8&t=5m40s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PmHRSeA2c8&t=5m40s What he's talking about is on the video above and it's a very reasonable point. I just released a game with Linux support and most of the bug reports I got were from people running the game on different distributions and random libraries not being the version you would expect it to be. This is not to mention that I got way more bug reports from Linux users than Windows users, despite Linux users making up 2%-3% of the playerbase. His point is absolutely valid and not at all a "serious idiocy".
  - JepZ 9y ago
    Just out of curiosity: Is you game open source (so every distribution builds it with their libraries) or is it distributed in binary format and are you using a custom engine or something well known like UE4/Unity? I am asking this because just yesterday, I tried to run the steam streaming client and it kept crashing. As far as I can tell, because it must have been compiled with a different compiler or glibc than the rest of my system. In fact, with closed source software I see a lot of problems in the Linux space which could be solved by recompiling, but that simply isn't possible. The reason behind all this is probably that Linux systems are just not build for closed source software as the devs keep changing things which would be required for that (e.g. stable ABIs). Btw. does anybody know if there are tools out there to obfuscate code for games, so that they could release their code in a form which some distribution could compile, but which is too obfuscated for someone else to make use of it (e.g. steal the game)?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - diggernet 9y ago
      They could compile it to the JVM...
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
      If Linux Desktops had a stable and consistent base system, no one would need to recompile anything. That's the actual solution here. It's way way simpler to do than what you're suggesting.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
  Someday I really hope the Linux Desktop community pulls its head out of its ass and realizes that building their system the way they do and distributing software the way they do is the reason no one really cares about them. I mean ffs, even Linus can't distribute consistently runnable and stable binary software without completely bypassing all the distro stupidity. As far as I'm concerned, choosing AppImage is just more evidence that Linus is a smart and practical dude who makes reasonable decisions.
  - em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
    "even Linus can't distribute consistently runnable and stable binary software without completely bypassing all the distro stupidity" Incorrect. AppImage is used to distribute Linus's Subsurface in distro-agnostic manner, by packaging all needed libraries with the binary. Even Linus gives his endorsement, "This is just very cool." so that means a lot. https://appimage.org https://appimage.org
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
      Somebody skipped the rest of my post, apparently.
  - stjohnswarts 9y ago
    I sort of agree. I wouldn't use linux except for programming tasks unless the major distros like fedora and ubuntu had everything that I needed for the most part. Most people can't compile code and go off and figure out library issues if the build goes belly up.

by mmjaa 9y ago

digi_owl 9y ago

Sadly while he may be running the kernel development quite well, he defends some serious idiocies when it comes to his dive log software Subsurface. Such as defending the bundling of modified libs, thus making it hard (if not impossible) to package for various distros. And rather than noticing this as being very similar to what he has ranted about others doing in the past in userspace, he joins in attacking said distros... Edit (because apparently i am "posting too fast"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsurface_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsurface_(software) See the last few parts, and citenotes 9 and 10.

mmjaa 9y ago
Interesting. Got a link to an example of where this is happening? Because its a form of irrationality I'm not accustomed to with Linus, and I'd like to see for myself if he might have reasons for behaving this way beyond just stubborn pig-headedness. I know he can be stubborn, but in the case of management of Kernel development, he has very fine reasons... the scope of the kernel is far greater than the scope for some user space software, and so this is indeed an intriguing opportunity to gain some insight into his thought processes.
CJefferson 9y ago
He is consistent in my opinion. His problem is that most libraries don't try to avoid breaking programs, unlike the kernel. I've started distributing an exact version of boost and gmp with my programs and refusing to accept bug reports generated from using other versions. Life is too short (when unpaid) for the pain caused by exactly the problems Linus is describing.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  He is blaming the distros though and not the upstream libs for the problem.
adnzzzzZ 9y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PmHRSeA2c8&t=5m40s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PmHRSeA2c8&t=5m40s What he's talking about is on the video above and it's a very reasonable point. I just released a game with Linux support and most of the bug reports I got were from people running the game on different distributions and random libraries not being the version you would expect it to be. This is not to mention that I got way more bug reports from Linux users than Windows users, despite Linux users making up 2%-3% of the playerbase. His point is absolutely valid and not at all a "serious idiocy".
- JepZ 9y ago
  Just out of curiosity: Is you game open source (so every distribution builds it with their libraries) or is it distributed in binary format and are you using a custom engine or something well known like UE4/Unity? I am asking this because just yesterday, I tried to run the steam streaming client and it kept crashing. As far as I can tell, because it must have been compiled with a different compiler or glibc than the rest of my system. In fact, with closed source software I see a lot of problems in the Linux space which could be solved by recompiling, but that simply isn't possible. The reason behind all this is probably that Linux systems are just not build for closed source software as the devs keep changing things which would be required for that (e.g. stable ABIs). Btw. does anybody know if there are tools out there to obfuscate code for games, so that they could release their code in a form which some distribution could compile, but which is too obfuscated for someone else to make use of it (e.g. steal the game)?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - diggernet 9y ago
    They could compile it to the JVM...
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
    If Linux Desktops had a stable and consistent base system, no one would need to recompile anything. That's the actual solution here. It's way way simpler to do than what you're suggesting.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
Someday I really hope the Linux Desktop community pulls its head out of its ass and realizes that building their system the way they do and distributing software the way they do is the reason no one really cares about them. I mean ffs, even Linus can't distribute consistently runnable and stable binary software without completely bypassing all the distro stupidity. As far as I'm concerned, choosing AppImage is just more evidence that Linus is a smart and practical dude who makes reasonable decisions.
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
  "even Linus can't distribute consistently runnable and stable binary software without completely bypassing all the distro stupidity" Incorrect. AppImage is used to distribute Linus's Subsurface in distro-agnostic manner, by packaging all needed libraries with the binary. Even Linus gives his endorsement, "This is just very cool." so that means a lot. https://appimage.org https://appimage.org
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
    Somebody skipped the rest of my post, apparently.
- stjohnswarts 9y ago
  I sort of agree. I wouldn't use linux except for programming tasks unless the major distros like fedora and ubuntu had everything that I needed for the most part. Most people can't compile code and go off and figure out library issues if the build goes belly up.