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Yeah, I'm not running anything with some weird contingent license if I'm running Linux. Completely defeats the purpose. Also, now more than ever, after last mon

Yeah, I'm not running anything with some weird contingent license if I'm running Linux. Completely defeats the purpose. Also, now more than ever, after last month's big hacks I think building things from source makes more sense. I'll be sticking with gentoo for my mission-critical bare metal installs when I need Linux.

symlinkk 6y ago
I would not trust the community of volunteers that maintain Gentoo in their free time for anything mission critical. I would use Ubuntu or Red Hat, which are backed by companies.
- nisa 6y ago
  I've got bad news for you - most of Ubuntu is repackaged Debian which is from a community of volunteers that maintains the packages. Besides that Ubuntu used to be sloppy in backporting important patches and doing some NIH here and there... not sure about Redhat but they source heavily from Fedora which is also community-based.
  - symlinkk 6y ago
    It doesn’t matter that Ubuntu packages originally came from Debian. At the end of the day, Canonical employees are being paid to make sure they are up to date. I trust that over a bunch of volunteers who do it out of the goodness of their heart.
  - akerl_ 6y ago
    I’m not sure I can agree with this concern. All Linux distros work by repackaging upstream code, the majority of which is written by volunteers. For Debian, they’re repackaging directly from upstream. Ubuntu repackages from Debian. The value of going through a company is that you can choose to write a check to Canonical or RedHat and say “I’m hitting this issue with the software you repackaged, here is money, fix the problem”. There’s no similarly direct pay-to-win for Fedora or Debian. You can shop around for a consultancy or engineer and pay them to try to debug the issue, but they’re always going to be coming in as a 3rd party, which has an impact on the levers they can pull to resolve an issue.
    - jamiesonbecker 6y ago
      > You can shop around for a consultancy or engineer and pay them to try to debug the issue, but they’re always going to be coming in as a 3rd party Except for software that was written in-house or the packaging itself, RH or Canonical would also always be coming in as a third party. ... whereas your consultant might be the original author of the upstream code.
      - symlinkk 6y ago
        Most Linux software is written by Red Hat. GNOME, Wayland, and systemd are all Red Hat projects. They are even a major contributor to the kernel itself.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        jamiesonbecker 6y ago
        > Most Linux software is written by Red Hat.. even a major contributor to the kernel itself. Oh! I didn't realize Red Hat had hired RMS. :-/ Setting aside the controversial nature of those three specific projects (and the fact that this statement is demonstrably false), this statement demeans the contributions of thousands of coders, even from before Linux existed. (let alone before Red Hat was a gleam on Bob Young's head.)
    - nisa 6y ago
      It's not a concern but just an observation that things in universe in Ubuntu get rarely if at all backports. It's okay. I agree about having a company especially regarding timely security updates.
    - pabs3 6y ago
      There are consultancies that do that for Debian, the major ones have multiple engineers contributing to Debian and even more to upstream projects. https://www.debian.org/consultants/ https://www.debian.org/consultants/
  - strzibny 6y ago
    Red Hat sponsors Fedora big time. I was part of the packagers team for Ruby. Next to us were sitting Perl guys (you would never believe how many Perl packages are still there...!) and somewhere else folks doing Python packaging. Source: Formal Red Hat packager working on Fedora.
- sigzero 6y ago
  You just described just about every OS that isn't Microsoft of Apple. Good luck with that attitude.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    That just shows a lack of knowledge of the quantinty of commercial OSes available out there. Were are the volunteers for Sony and Nintendo console OSes, Android, ChromeOS, Fuchsia, IBM i, IBM z/OS, INTEGRITY, QNX,Unisys ClearPath, Solaris, HP-UX, Aix, vxWorks.....?
    - m4rtink 6y ago
      Both PS Vita and Nintendo Switch have miles long credits listing all the licenses (mostly BSD) and authors of the many OSS software bits they use.
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        Indeed and almost zero contributions to upstream. Those listings are required by the license. Also they aren't Linux or BSD derivatives, rather their own OSes.
        m4rtink 6y ago
        Yep, exactly - IIRC Sony did some code drops to FreeBSD long ago improving SMP performance but that was preatty much it.
doanerock 6y ago
Shit you have time to compile everything from source. What is this a air gapped laptop?

symlinkk 6y ago

I would not trust the community of volunteers that maintain Gentoo in their free time for anything mission critical. I would use Ubuntu or Red Hat, which are backed by companies.

nisa 6y ago
I've got bad news for you - most of Ubuntu is repackaged Debian which is from a community of volunteers that maintains the packages. Besides that Ubuntu used to be sloppy in backporting important patches and doing some NIH here and there... not sure about Redhat but they source heavily from Fedora which is also community-based.
- symlinkk 6y ago
  It doesn’t matter that Ubuntu packages originally came from Debian. At the end of the day, Canonical employees are being paid to make sure they are up to date. I trust that over a bunch of volunteers who do it out of the goodness of their heart.
- akerl_ 6y ago
  I’m not sure I can agree with this concern. All Linux distros work by repackaging upstream code, the majority of which is written by volunteers. For Debian, they’re repackaging directly from upstream. Ubuntu repackages from Debian. The value of going through a company is that you can choose to write a check to Canonical or RedHat and say “I’m hitting this issue with the software you repackaged, here is money, fix the problem”. There’s no similarly direct pay-to-win for Fedora or Debian. You can shop around for a consultancy or engineer and pay them to try to debug the issue, but they’re always going to be coming in as a 3rd party, which has an impact on the levers they can pull to resolve an issue.
  - jamiesonbecker 6y ago
    > You can shop around for a consultancy or engineer and pay them to try to debug the issue, but they’re always going to be coming in as a 3rd party Except for software that was written in-house or the packaging itself, RH or Canonical would also always be coming in as a third party. ... whereas your consultant might be the original author of the upstream code.
    - symlinkk 6y ago
      Most Linux software is written by Red Hat. GNOME, Wayland, and systemd are all Red Hat projects. They are even a major contributor to the kernel itself.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - jamiesonbecker 6y ago
        > Most Linux software is written by Red Hat.. even a major contributor to the kernel itself. Oh! I didn't realize Red Hat had hired RMS. :-/ Setting aside the controversial nature of those three specific projects (and the fact that this statement is demonstrably false), this statement demeans the contributions of thousands of coders, even from before Linux existed. (let alone before Red Hat was a gleam on Bob Young's head.)
  - nisa 6y ago
    It's not a concern but just an observation that things in universe in Ubuntu get rarely if at all backports. It's okay. I agree about having a company especially regarding timely security updates.
  - pabs3 6y ago
    There are consultancies that do that for Debian, the major ones have multiple engineers contributing to Debian and even more to upstream projects. https://www.debian.org/consultants/ https://www.debian.org/consultants/
- strzibny 6y ago
  Red Hat sponsors Fedora big time. I was part of the packagers team for Ruby. Next to us were sitting Perl guys (you would never believe how many Perl packages are still there...!) and somewhere else folks doing Python packaging. Source: Formal Red Hat packager working on Fedora.
sigzero 6y ago
You just described just about every OS that isn't Microsoft of Apple. Good luck with that attitude.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  That just shows a lack of knowledge of the quantinty of commercial OSes available out there. Were are the volunteers for Sony and Nintendo console OSes, Android, ChromeOS, Fuchsia, IBM i, IBM z/OS, INTEGRITY, QNX,Unisys ClearPath, Solaris, HP-UX, Aix, vxWorks.....?
  - m4rtink 6y ago
    Both PS Vita and Nintendo Switch have miles long credits listing all the licenses (mostly BSD) and authors of the many OSS software bits they use.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Indeed and almost zero contributions to upstream. Those listings are required by the license. Also they aren't Linux or BSD derivatives, rather their own OSes.
      - m4rtink 6y ago
        Yep, exactly - IIRC Sony did some code drops to FreeBSD long ago improving SMP performance but that was preatty much it.

doanerock 6y ago

Shit you have time to compile everything from source. What is this a air gapped laptop?