3 ms·

At last, the fix no one asked for: Portable home directories merged into systemd

16 points by GordonS 7y ago

soyahdontlikit 7y ago
Who says every project has to take industry trends into consideration? An LFS build pipeline stamping out a Linux distro of arbitrary spec isn’t going to be that hard to get going for a hardcore cloud user, the sort of person that is crazy bothered by attention given to grandpas desktop-centric way of computing.
cmurf 7y ago
Steve Jobs (paraphrased): The customer doesn't know what they want, until we've shown them. homed isn't intended for servers or cloud, or computers with many users. It's main use case is a laptop with one, to a few, users. It's not a default user home manager, and that would need some integration by desktop environments to e.g. authenticate and unlock using existing graphical login.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > It's main use case is a laptop with one, to a few, users. I use a couple of such laptops, and I've read what's been written about portable home directories, and I still don't understand what use case this addresses that isn't already better addressed in other ways. I would really like to understand. Can someone explain?
- apostacy 7y ago
  > Steve Jobs (paraphrased): The customer doesn't know what they want, until we've shown them. Systemd aside, I really dislike the whole "Henry Ford said users would want a faster horse" Can we please stop trotting this platitude out every time a controversial new change is made? This narrative is just an excuse for pigheadedness by developers. It can be boiled down to "ignore user complaints, plow ahead with change anyway". Many of the biggest failures were made by people who thought they were the next Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs himself nearly bankrupted Apple by insisting on giving users a computer without a fan, even though nobody asked for that or wanted it.[1] I am convinced that the majority of people who say they are ignoring customers desires are actually wrong, and that we just have a survival bias. [1]: http://www.vectronicsappleworld.com/archives/appleii/0002.php http://www.vectronicsappleworld.com/archives/appleii/0002.ph...
nickik 7y ago
I think its a nice feature and totally optional. I long thought that a feature like that is useful. Generally I see no reason why user information should be stretched all over the system. Its totally clear that this is not the right tool for all situations, but it is a nice tool. Now, maybe it should be packed separately but I don't really care if it is there if I don't use it.

16 points by GordonS 7y ago

Who says every project has to take industry trends into consideration? An LFS build pipeline stamping out a Linux distro of arbitrary spec isn’t going to be that hard to get going for a hardcore cloud user, the sort of person that is crazy bothered by attention given to grandpas desktop-centric way of computing.

cmurf 7y ago

Steve Jobs (paraphrased): The customer doesn't know what they want, until we've shown them. homed isn't intended for servers or cloud, or computers with many users. It's main use case is a laptop with one, to a few, users. It's not a default user home manager, and that would need some integration by desktop environments to e.g. authenticate and unlock using existing graphical login.

JohnFen 7y ago
> It's main use case is a laptop with one, to a few, users. I use a couple of such laptops, and I've read what's been written about portable home directories, and I still don't understand what use case this addresses that isn't already better addressed in other ways. I would really like to understand. Can someone explain?
apostacy 7y ago
> Steve Jobs (paraphrased): The customer doesn't know what they want, until we've shown them. Systemd aside, I really dislike the whole "Henry Ford said users would want a faster horse" Can we please stop trotting this platitude out every time a controversial new change is made? This narrative is just an excuse for pigheadedness by developers. It can be boiled down to "ignore user complaints, plow ahead with change anyway". Many of the biggest failures were made by people who thought they were the next Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs himself nearly bankrupted Apple by insisting on giving users a computer without a fan, even though nobody asked for that or wanted it.[1] I am convinced that the majority of people who say they are ignoring customers desires are actually wrong, and that we just have a survival bias. [1]: http://www.vectronicsappleworld.com/archives/appleii/0002.php http://www.vectronicsappleworld.com/archives/appleii/0002.ph...

nickik 7y ago

I think its a nice feature and totally optional. I long thought that a feature like that is useful. Generally I see no reason why user information should be stretched all over the system. Its totally clear that this is not the right tool for all situations, but it is a nice tool. Now, maybe it should be packed separately but I don't really care if it is there if I don't use it.