4 ms·

Yeah, IME, Debian is about the least invasive distro. Their patches tend to be a) minimal and b) only make things better.

stock_toaster 6y ago
Except for that one time[1]. [1]: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/05/random_number_b.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/05/random_number...
- npsimons 6y ago
  Oof. I'd forgotten about that one. Tend to make things better, tend to. Just points out when you're doing systems level software development, how careful you must be. Also, don't just blindly "fix things" because a tool complains. Understanding of warnings and error messages are important.
- deschutes 6y ago
  This comment sums my thoughts on that issue: > Using uninitialized data as entropy source is an AMAZING idea in first place. “Fixing” or “unfixing” doesn’t make it any better.
  - deknos 6y ago
    uuh, no. perhaps it was initialized with zeros before. or with highly structured data. uninitialized data is not the same as external noise. i am rather glad, they think of that, it was a shame, that they oversaw this.
- josefx 6y ago
  They fixed a valgrind warning by blindly removing the affected function calls? Might as well reduce every program to an empty main() to enforce correctness.
  - pmontra 6y ago
    A reference to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25052001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25052001 ?
dralley 6y ago
Doesn't Debian sometimes go so far as to split software apart into multiple packages? I've always thought that Fedora and Arch were both much more "upstream first" than Debian is.
- BlackFingolfin 6y ago
  /me raises hand Yes, they do. And then they complain to you that this broke something: they split our package, from the main package A they split off parts into separate packages B, C, ... that depend on A. And then complained to us that B and C had a circular dependency and that this means we had to fix something. The audacity. Our users still sometimes report issues where I immediately ask "are you using Debian or Ubuntu?" and the answer is usually yes: because guess what, they only install A (which matches our software's name) and then they miss the functionality which Debian moved into B, C, ... We actually print a warning about this when starting the software (along the lines of "Warning, B is missing, some things may not work as expected"), which then Debian patched out, calling it "misleading". I've never had similar issues with any other downstream Linux distro. So, no, I really can't agree with GP's statement.
  - rutthenut 6y ago
    Wow, this Debian hack really makes life difficult for end users :( > We actually print a warning about this when starting the software (along the lines of "Warning, B is missing, some things may not work as expected"), which then Debian patched out, calling it "misleading". >
- jcelerier 6y ago
  Yep, had a bug very recently caused by splitting libllvm-dev and libclang-dev... guess what, libllvm-dev's CMake files depend on clang libs as they are all built together so if you only install libllvm-dev, find_package(clang) in CMake will error without any way to fix it from your code.
- deknos 6y ago
  yeah, that's a good thing. because i do not need always dev-files or documentation or debug symbols on my machine. all people are always about "slim systems" and alpine. but when debian does real engineering, then everybody complains it's complicated. that is a little bit annoying. yes, debian is complex, but it's for a reason, since there are many requirements.
quicksilver03 6y ago
I disagree, what they do to Apache, nginx and especially Exim is very invasive and doesn't bring any actual benefit. They even had to write a program to modify the Exim configuration after they made it impossible to do it by hand.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  Regarding Apache and nginx, you're referring to the sites/mods-enabled mechanism? Actually I really like that one compared to the "stock" way of one damn yuge httpd.conf - way more maintainable, no matter if in a Docker container creation script or in a bare-metal environment with Puppet provisioning. Regarding exim... exim is one of a nightmare no matter how one looks at it. I hate it with a passion, no matter the distro.

stock_toaster 6y ago

Except for that one time[1]. [1]: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/05/random_number_b.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/05/random_number...

npsimons 6y ago
Oof. I'd forgotten about that one. Tend to make things better, tend to. Just points out when you're doing systems level software development, how careful you must be. Also, don't just blindly "fix things" because a tool complains. Understanding of warnings and error messages are important.
deschutes 6y ago
This comment sums my thoughts on that issue: > Using uninitialized data as entropy source is an AMAZING idea in first place. “Fixing” or “unfixing” doesn’t make it any better.
- deknos 6y ago
  uuh, no. perhaps it was initialized with zeros before. or with highly structured data. uninitialized data is not the same as external noise. i am rather glad, they think of that, it was a shame, that they oversaw this.
josefx 6y ago
They fixed a valgrind warning by blindly removing the affected function calls? Might as well reduce every program to an empty main() to enforce correctness.
- pmontra 6y ago
  A reference to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25052001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25052001 ?

dralley 6y ago

Doesn't Debian sometimes go so far as to split software apart into multiple packages? I've always thought that Fedora and Arch were both much more "upstream first" than Debian is.

BlackFingolfin 6y ago
/me raises hand Yes, they do. And then they complain to you that this broke something: they split our package, from the main package A they split off parts into separate packages B, C, ... that depend on A. And then complained to us that B and C had a circular dependency and that this means we had to fix something. The audacity. Our users still sometimes report issues where I immediately ask "are you using Debian or Ubuntu?" and the answer is usually yes: because guess what, they only install A (which matches our software's name) and then they miss the functionality which Debian moved into B, C, ... We actually print a warning about this when starting the software (along the lines of "Warning, B is missing, some things may not work as expected"), which then Debian patched out, calling it "misleading". I've never had similar issues with any other downstream Linux distro. So, no, I really can't agree with GP's statement.
- rutthenut 6y ago
  Wow, this Debian hack really makes life difficult for end users :( > We actually print a warning about this when starting the software (along the lines of "Warning, B is missing, some things may not work as expected"), which then Debian patched out, calling it "misleading". >
jcelerier 6y ago
Yep, had a bug very recently caused by splitting libllvm-dev and libclang-dev... guess what, libllvm-dev's CMake files depend on clang libs as they are all built together so if you only install libllvm-dev, find_package(clang) in CMake will error without any way to fix it from your code.
deknos 6y ago
yeah, that's a good thing. because i do not need always dev-files or documentation or debug symbols on my machine. all people are always about "slim systems" and alpine. but when debian does real engineering, then everybody complains it's complicated. that is a little bit annoying. yes, debian is complex, but it's for a reason, since there are many requirements.

quicksilver03 6y ago

I disagree, what they do to Apache, nginx and especially Exim is very invasive and doesn't bring any actual benefit. They even had to write a program to modify the Exim configuration after they made it impossible to do it by hand.

mschuster91 6y ago
Regarding Apache and nginx, you're referring to the sites/mods-enabled mechanism? Actually I really like that one compared to the "stock" way of one damn yuge httpd.conf - way more maintainable, no matter if in a Docker container creation script or in a bare-metal environment with Puppet provisioning. Regarding exim... exim is one of a nightmare no matter how one looks at it. I hate it with a passion, no matter the distro.