7 ms·

"Linux is fragmented", and then goes on to list Free, Open, Net, Dragonfly and avoids listing a few more. "Poettering creepware". Web developers who use Google

"Linux is fragmented", and then goes on to list Free, Open, Net, Dragonfly and avoids listing a few more. "Poettering creepware". Web developers who use Google Analytics are "stupid". This is emotion-driven drivel.

Spivak 6y ago
I really don’t get the weird cult of people seemingly obsessed with Lennart. The man sets out to solve really hard problems in the Linux desktop space, isn’t afraid of tackling complexity when it shows up in the problem domain, and is obsessed with correctness. That last one gets him in trouble from people who want him to be more pragmatic but I personally really appreciate it. I really admire him for being the poster child for knowing when to say no. He pumps out really high quality software (seriously, read some of his source code it’s really easy to hack on), is genuinely innovative, and all people seem to do is shit on him and make him out like he’s some Linux daemon laughing manically every time a sysadmin gets frustrated. Anyone who uses the phrase “potteringware” please listen to him talk at any conference he speaks at like All Systems Go. He really is down to earth and really thinks through problems before tackling them.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  I can agree with not taking things personally but "obsessed with correctness" is not how I would describe systemd or PA
  - viraptor 6y ago
    Correct. And there are other people working on those projects too, even if we assume Lennart is that good. I found a fairly trivial DoS issue in systemd-resolved in ~10min with a fuzzer. (Years ago, fixed already) That shouldn't happen in a system obsessed with correctness.
  - biglost 6y ago
    I can’t understand why ini format for config files, cant use sed easy... :(
  - fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
    One thing I’ve never understood is how network-manager relates to all this brokenness: on every single Linux distribution I’ve run, I’ve had to hack around network-manager to avoid random broken stuff. Similarly, whatever was wrong with ifconfig and friends? ip might be “better”, but its documentation has been horrible and it obsoletes my 20 or so years of experience with Linux networking for no real gains
- habitue 6y ago
  Agreed. I think the hate against him stems from him just completely dismissing POSIX and the unix philosophy. Personally, I think this is a positive direction to move in. Let's stop worrying about the design principles that happened to underlie one of the operating systems that got popular. Instead, let's keep innovating and thinking of better ways to do things. That's what Poettering is doing.
  - nine_k 6y ago
    Proclaiming this explicitly and clearly would be nice. Say, "let's do away with the old Unix ways, and build a new, much better userland!" People at least would expect the radical change of the direction which is taking place.
- 0dayz 6y ago
  From what I remember, it comes from him having quite the dismissive attitude.
qwantim1 6y ago
> Linux is fragmented It’s actually quite an astute observation. I read recently that there are over 600 Linux distros and only about 500 are actively maintained. > Web developers who use Google Analytics are stupid. The adjective is wrong, but it’s also fair to say that there are free solutions for analytics, and some may go straight to using GA when they don’t need to.
- subsection1h 6y ago
  > I read recently that there are over 600 Linux distros How old are you? Everyone knows there are many Linux distros. Distrowatch has existed for almost 20 years. The issue isn't the number of distros; it's the marketshare. There are only a few distros with significant usage. The fact that there are many others is irrelevant because no one uses them.
athms 6y ago
FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and DragonFlyBSD are not the same operating systems, they don't share the same kernel. There are custom distributions of FreeBSD for specific use cases, such as OPNsense, but they are the same operating system and kernel as FreeBSD.
brian_cunnie 6y ago
I noticed that, too: the author doesn't mention the many-splendored versions of *BSD. My personal favorite is FreeBSD. I like Linux, but I have mixed feelings about systemd, especially when I discovered that systemd runs its own DNS server, which prevents the DNS server I wrote from binding to port 53 using INADDR_ANY. Instead, I had to write code to enumerate the interfaces & corresponding IP addresses & bind to each one separately. Systemd's decision to run their own DNS server is a bit of overreach, IMHO.
- LukeShu 6y ago
  You don't have to use systemd-resolved. Most distros have been using systemd but not systemd-resolved for years. Fedora only just started using systemd-resolved by default in the most recent release. It's like, yeah, that's a funny thing to also live in systemd.git, but systemd-resolved is functionally a separate product from systemd.
  - gautamcgoel 6y ago
    Yup. My recent Fedora upgrade broke my internet access due to this change. That was eye-opening, kinda turned me off from Fedora.
- magila 6y ago
  You know you turn that DNS server off by adding "DNSStubListener=no" to /etc/systemd/resolved.conf right?
  - nikisweeting 6y ago
    But why does it need to exist in the first place when my system has exactly 0 change in behavior when it's disabled?
    - magila 6y ago
      The functionality provided by the stub resolver is documented in the man page[0]. You may not be using it, but other people are. [0] https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-resolved.html https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-res...
greatgoat420 6y ago
Linux is fragmented in the sense that userland is separate from the kernel.

Spivak 6y ago

I really don’t get the weird cult of people seemingly obsessed with Lennart. The man sets out to solve really hard problems in the Linux desktop space, isn’t afraid of tackling complexity when it shows up in the problem domain, and is obsessed with correctness. That last one gets him in trouble from people who want him to be more pragmatic but I personally really appreciate it. I really admire him for being the poster child for knowing when to say no. He pumps out really high quality software (seriously, read some of his source code it’s really easy to hack on), is genuinely innovative, and all people seem to do is shit on him and make him out like he’s some Linux daemon laughing manically every time a sysadmin gets frustrated. Anyone who uses the phrase “potteringware” please listen to him talk at any conference he speaks at like All Systems Go. He really is down to earth and really thinks through problems before tackling them.

raverbashing 6y ago
I can agree with not taking things personally but "obsessed with correctness" is not how I would describe systemd or PA
- viraptor 6y ago
  Correct. And there are other people working on those projects too, even if we assume Lennart is that good. I found a fairly trivial DoS issue in systemd-resolved in ~10min with a fuzzer. (Years ago, fixed already) That shouldn't happen in a system obsessed with correctness.
- biglost 6y ago
  I can’t understand why ini format for config files, cant use sed easy... :(
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
  One thing I’ve never understood is how network-manager relates to all this brokenness: on every single Linux distribution I’ve run, I’ve had to hack around network-manager to avoid random broken stuff. Similarly, whatever was wrong with ifconfig and friends? ip might be “better”, but its documentation has been horrible and it obsoletes my 20 or so years of experience with Linux networking for no real gains
habitue 6y ago
Agreed. I think the hate against him stems from him just completely dismissing POSIX and the unix philosophy. Personally, I think this is a positive direction to move in. Let's stop worrying about the design principles that happened to underlie one of the operating systems that got popular. Instead, let's keep innovating and thinking of better ways to do things. That's what Poettering is doing.
- nine_k 6y ago
  Proclaiming this explicitly and clearly would be nice. Say, "let's do away with the old Unix ways, and build a new, much better userland!" People at least would expect the radical change of the direction which is taking place.
0dayz 6y ago
From what I remember, it comes from him having quite the dismissive attitude.

qwantim1 6y ago

> Linux is fragmented It’s actually quite an astute observation. I read recently that there are over 600 Linux distros and only about 500 are actively maintained. > Web developers who use Google Analytics are stupid. The adjective is wrong, but it’s also fair to say that there are free solutions for analytics, and some may go straight to using GA when they don’t need to.

subsection1h 6y ago
> I read recently that there are over 600 Linux distros How old are you? Everyone knows there are many Linux distros. Distrowatch has existed for almost 20 years. The issue isn't the number of distros; it's the marketshare. There are only a few distros with significant usage. The fact that there are many others is irrelevant because no one uses them.

athms 6y ago

FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and DragonFlyBSD are not the same operating systems, they don't share the same kernel. There are custom distributions of FreeBSD for specific use cases, such as OPNsense, but they are the same operating system and kernel as FreeBSD.

brian_cunnie 6y ago

I noticed that, too: the author doesn't mention the many-splendored versions of *BSD. My personal favorite is FreeBSD. I like Linux, but I have mixed feelings about systemd, especially when I discovered that systemd runs its own DNS server, which prevents the DNS server I wrote from binding to port 53 using INADDR_ANY. Instead, I had to write code to enumerate the interfaces & corresponding IP addresses & bind to each one separately. Systemd's decision to run their own DNS server is a bit of overreach, IMHO.

LukeShu 6y ago
You don't have to use systemd-resolved. Most distros have been using systemd but not systemd-resolved for years. Fedora only just started using systemd-resolved by default in the most recent release. It's like, yeah, that's a funny thing to also live in systemd.git, but systemd-resolved is functionally a separate product from systemd.
- gautamcgoel 6y ago
  Yup. My recent Fedora upgrade broke my internet access due to this change. That was eye-opening, kinda turned me off from Fedora.
magila 6y ago
You know you turn that DNS server off by adding "DNSStubListener=no" to /etc/systemd/resolved.conf right?
- nikisweeting 6y ago
  But why does it need to exist in the first place when my system has exactly 0 change in behavior when it's disabled?
  - magila 6y ago
    The functionality provided by the stub resolver is documented in the man page[0]. You may not be using it, but other people are. [0] https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-resolved.html https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-res...

greatgoat420 6y ago

Linux is fragmented in the sense that userland is separate from the kernel.