4 ms·
> My theory is that the big distros are intentionally destroying forwards and backwards compatibility on the desktop as much as possible. The more often window
by cycloptic 6y ago
> My theory is that the big distros are intentionally destroying forwards and backwards compatibility on the desktop as much as possible. The more often window managers, desktop software, etc., stop working, the less their own teams have to compete with existing software. Wayland’s X11-as-a-second-class-citizen and gtk’s elimination of API stability are two other good examples of this. Also, tearing down established standards is a great way to sabotage the various BSD’s out there.
I see this sentiment a lot and I don't get it. The developers I've talked to have been doing a lot of work to get XWayland working and to fix all the edge cases. And GTK has been API stable for years, the only thing that really seems to have broken was themes. And actually now GTK3 is feature complete and will not be receiving any more changes except bug fixes.
As far as init systems go, there seems to have never been any real standard and most distros always seem to have done their own thing. It does not seem like anything could be done there especially when a low level piece of software like this needs to use Linux- or BSD-specific APIs. It simply is not possible to have a portable standard there right now.
I have a humble request, please don't continue by promoting these unfounded theories and accusing people of sabotage. I personally would welcome a friendly fork of systemd to make some positive changes but it won't happen if people are doing it out of hostility. Many of the issues in the GP post have been brought up over the years. Upstream and the distros all have a stance on them and there is a reason why things are the way they are. It would be unwise to proceed without having substantial discussions with them to put resources where they are actually needed most. There was already a hostile fork that died because of not paying attention to this.