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I for one am happy that RedHat is dying. The most contentious and unfriendly projects in the Linux ecosystem are run by its employees and the interests of the

I for one am happy that RedHat is dying. The most contentious and unfriendly projects in the Linux ecosystem are run by its employees and the interests of the rest of the community run directly counter to those of RedHat and by extension it's employees: software that doesn't need a gaggle of engineers to run vs software that you have to buy a subscription for. If software is so easy to build, run and debug that you don't need support for you won't buy support for it. Every enterprise I've been at in the last 10 years had CentOS for the engineers who knew their way around Linux and RHEL for those that didn't. It was completely up to you which one you chose. The only push to anyone buying RedHat was how impossible it was to build your projects without someone holding your hand or wasting days reading documentation.

a1369209993 7y ago
I just wish they'd died soon enough to take systemd and wayland down with them; it doesn't look like that's going to happen.
- buzzkillington 7y ago
  I seriously doubt there will be the manpower to keep pushing those projects once the money dries up. They are not intrinsically interesting and their implementation leaves a lot to be desired of. There will be yet another huge mess left for the distros to deal with then things will be back to normal in two or three years with everyone remembering why the Unix philosophy is important and that 'this time it isn't different'.
  - mixmastamyk 7y ago
    Am open to improvements but not going back to a shell-script-based boot, thanks.
    - JdeBP 7y ago
      The predecessor for systemd on Fedora was upstart, not van Smoorenburg init.
      - mixmastamyk 7y ago
        I liked upstart, but it could stand a few improvements too.
      - loeg 7y ago
        Somewhat briefly, sure. Upstart was used in Fedora, in SysV compatibility mode, from 9 (2008-04)[0] up until 15 (2010-10)[1], or about 2.5 years. Fedora prior to 2008 used classic Redhat runlevel init (what you're calling Smoorenburg). From the first release in 2003, through Fedora 9. So we have 4.5 years of "SysV init" followed by 2.5 years of Upstart in "SysV init" compatibility mode. That said, your comment isn't especially responsive to GP; both Upstart and Systemd in Fedora continued to use a bunch of shell scripts to define startup actions. It wasn't until the systemd unit file conversion efforts[2] around 2012 that Fedora largely moved to services defined as data in "INI"-style configuration files. GP's "shell-script-based boot" is not an unfair way to characterize Fedora's boot process prior to (and including the early history of) systemd in Fedora. [0]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Upstart https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Upstart [1]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/systemd https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/systemd [2]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Systemd-unit-cleanup https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Systemd-unit-cleanup
        JdeBP 7y ago
        Miquel van Smoorenburg never worked for Redhat that I know of. It was not a "Redhat init" as you call it. Indeed, it wasn't even init. The things that we are talking about are rc, not init, in the van Smoorenburg system. Nor was there the sort of exclusive "compatibility mode" that you are envisaging in order to make your argument that mixmastamyk was referring to Upstart. Upstart could employ van Smoorenburg rc scripts, but that was not a mode. Upstart was still event-driven with job files. The van Smoorenburg rc scripts were run via what was just another job file. Were your argument valid for Upstart, it would equally be valid for systemd's mechanism for invoking van Smoorenburg rc scripts, and you would have to say that systemd is shell-script-based boot, which really makes a nonsense of mixmastamyk talking about "going back" to it from systemd. Quite clearly, going back to Upstart is not what mixmastamyk was talking about, which not least can be seen from xyr comment written, next to yours, 4 days beforehand.
  - a1369209993 7y ago
    I'd like to believe that, but things like https://www.debian.org/vote/2019/vote_002 https://www.debian.org/vote/2019/vote_002 really aren't encouraging (note the absence of any proposal for actually removing the toxic Big Ball of Mud, and that the top voted proposal is to drop support for any software that works correctly).
- floatboth 7y ago
  WTF is your problem with Wayland? Wayland is good, it's a brilliant protocol that you can actually understand, which has attracted a community of new developers to hacking on the free desktop platform. As a result, we finally have a desktop situation that's not a pile of workarounds on top of a decades old crusty mess that nobody wants to touch that is Xorg, finally there's no fucking screen tearing, finally there's proper multi-monitor HiDPI, finally it's possible to actually sandbox GUI apps (unlike X11, having a Wayland socket does not give you the power to mess with the desktop and overlay a fake password prompt or keylog), finally there are no weird lags (because the protocol is fully async and does not involve a silly middleman broker that xorg ended up as).
hinkley 7y ago
I was Red Hat ambivalent up until the point they bought JBoss, and as far as I'm concerned, Marc Fleury introduced the word 'astroturfing' to the vernacular. At that point the confirmation bias started to settle in pretty quickly, and so it seemed like their choices just got weirder and weirder. I like to think I understand how software businesses work, but then I think about Yahoo and Red Hat and realize I don't know shit, because I couldn't begin to understand why they have had legs when more seemingly valid concerns flamed out.
- vkou 7y ago
  > but then I think about Yahoo and Red Hat and realize I don't know shit, because I couldn't begin to understand why they have had legs when more seemingly valid concerns flamed out. A lucky investment into AliBaba for the former, and a good sales team for the latter.
stingraycharles 7y ago
This is complete nonsense. Enterprises like to buy from organizations like RedHat because it provides a safety net. On top of that, you typically appreciate the fact that your suppliers make money, because that increases the chance they will stay in business.
- techntoke 7y ago
  Unless what they are supplying is free already when you hire people that actually use Linux.

a1369209993 7y ago

I just wish they'd died soon enough to take systemd and wayland down with them; it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

buzzkillington 7y ago
I seriously doubt there will be the manpower to keep pushing those projects once the money dries up. They are not intrinsically interesting and their implementation leaves a lot to be desired of. There will be yet another huge mess left for the distros to deal with then things will be back to normal in two or three years with everyone remembering why the Unix philosophy is important and that 'this time it isn't different'.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  Am open to improvements but not going back to a shell-script-based boot, thanks.
  - JdeBP 7y ago
    The predecessor for systemd on Fedora was upstart, not van Smoorenburg init.
    - mixmastamyk 7y ago
      I liked upstart, but it could stand a few improvements too.
    - loeg 7y ago
      Somewhat briefly, sure. Upstart was used in Fedora, in SysV compatibility mode, from 9 (2008-04)[0] up until 15 (2010-10)[1], or about 2.5 years. Fedora prior to 2008 used classic Redhat runlevel init (what you're calling Smoorenburg). From the first release in 2003, through Fedora 9. So we have 4.5 years of "SysV init" followed by 2.5 years of Upstart in "SysV init" compatibility mode. That said, your comment isn't especially responsive to GP; both Upstart and Systemd in Fedora continued to use a bunch of shell scripts to define startup actions. It wasn't until the systemd unit file conversion efforts[2] around 2012 that Fedora largely moved to services defined as data in "INI"-style configuration files. GP's "shell-script-based boot" is not an unfair way to characterize Fedora's boot process prior to (and including the early history of) systemd in Fedora. [0]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Upstart https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Upstart [1]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/systemd https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/systemd [2]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Systemd-unit-cleanup https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Systemd-unit-cleanup
      - JdeBP 7y ago
        Miquel van Smoorenburg never worked for Redhat that I know of. It was not a "Redhat init" as you call it. Indeed, it wasn't even init. The things that we are talking about are rc, not init, in the van Smoorenburg system. Nor was there the sort of exclusive "compatibility mode" that you are envisaging in order to make your argument that mixmastamyk was referring to Upstart. Upstart could employ van Smoorenburg rc scripts, but that was not a mode. Upstart was still event-driven with job files. The van Smoorenburg rc scripts were run via what was just another job file. Were your argument valid for Upstart, it would equally be valid for systemd's mechanism for invoking van Smoorenburg rc scripts, and you would have to say that systemd is shell-script-based boot, which really makes a nonsense of mixmastamyk talking about "going back" to it from systemd. Quite clearly, going back to Upstart is not what mixmastamyk was talking about, which not least can be seen from xyr comment written, next to yours, 4 days beforehand.
- a1369209993 7y ago
  I'd like to believe that, but things like https://www.debian.org/vote/2019/vote_002 https://www.debian.org/vote/2019/vote_002 really aren't encouraging (note the absence of any proposal for actually removing the toxic Big Ball of Mud, and that the top voted proposal is to drop support for any software that works correctly).
floatboth 7y ago
WTF is your problem with Wayland? Wayland is good, it's a brilliant protocol that you can actually understand, which has attracted a community of new developers to hacking on the free desktop platform. As a result, we finally have a desktop situation that's not a pile of workarounds on top of a decades old crusty mess that nobody wants to touch that is Xorg, finally there's no fucking screen tearing, finally there's proper multi-monitor HiDPI, finally it's possible to actually sandbox GUI apps (unlike X11, having a Wayland socket does not give you the power to mess with the desktop and overlay a fake password prompt or keylog), finally there are no weird lags (because the protocol is fully async and does not involve a silly middleman broker that xorg ended up as).

hinkley 7y ago

I was Red Hat ambivalent up until the point they bought JBoss, and as far as I'm concerned, Marc Fleury introduced the word 'astroturfing' to the vernacular. At that point the confirmation bias started to settle in pretty quickly, and so it seemed like their choices just got weirder and weirder. I like to think I understand how software businesses work, but then I think about Yahoo and Red Hat and realize I don't know shit, because I couldn't begin to understand why they have had legs when more seemingly valid concerns flamed out.

vkou 7y ago
> but then I think about Yahoo and Red Hat and realize I don't know shit, because I couldn't begin to understand why they have had legs when more seemingly valid concerns flamed out. A lucky investment into AliBaba for the former, and a good sales team for the latter.

stingraycharles 7y ago

This is complete nonsense. Enterprises like to buy from organizations like RedHat because it provides a safety net. On top of that, you typically appreciate the fact that your suppliers make money, because that increases the chance they will stay in business.

techntoke 7y ago
Unless what they are supplying is free already when you hire people that actually use Linux.