4 ms·

Why is there such a fascination with having so many versions?

by prox 5y ago

blacktriangle 5y ago
Off the top of my head... Some people want to build everything from source. Some people want a preconfigured Gnome enviornment. Some people want a preconfigured KDE environment. Some people want a distro with the latest version of packages. Some people want a distro that is conservative about upgrading packages. Some people are running in VMs and don't need all that extra crap. Some people want a version that pedantically sticks to the spirit of the GPL. Some people want a version that is maximally convinient GPL be damned. I'm sure there's more reasons.
- 3r8Oltr0ziouVDM 5y ago
  Some people hate systemd :)
  - gerdesj 5y ago
    It gets on my nerves sometimes but then I remember the days of creating init scripts a la Miguel van Smoorenborg (with various dialects), upstart, Gentoo etc style OpenRC jobbies and the rest. I get on with my day and you can barely see the blood dribble out of the corner of my mouth when I put the verb in the wrong position. systemctl rofl restart ... [fuck] backspace etc ... [bollocks][arse] ... hit enter.
- gerdesj 5y ago
  I think you have pretty much covered all the main reasons. I use Arch (formerly Gentoo) on my work and home PCs/laptops because I like rolling releases with a bleeding edge. I generally run Ubuntu LTS minimal installs for servers because they are tiny and stable and guarantee to be upgradeable to the next LTS release. I run Home Assistant IoT wranglers on Debian because that's what HA insists on for "Supervised". My wife uses Arch because I look after it and she doesn't care. It simply has to just work and it has for years now without skipping a beat. Upgrading hardware for laptops and PCs means dumping the filesystems to files on a server or whatever and blatting them onto the new device. If there is physical space, put the old HD/SSD/whatevs into the new box and use a live CD like system rescue or Clonezilla. All the drivers are built in out of the box. These days most things simply work with minimal fiddling. I can't remember the last time I fiddled with xorg.conf. OK I disabled the touchscreen on this laptop when I cracked it and that involved fiddling with xorg. I remember setting modelines by hand in XFree86 ...
- prox 5y ago
  Thank you for the elaborate answer, so flexibility is key.
Vaslo 5y ago
I ask the same questions about programming languages but usually get downvoted to hell.
- pdimitar 5y ago
  Well, I upvoted you. IMO it's about time we converge on just 4-5 languages -- each with unique benefits that can't be had easily in the other ones! -- and finally start to be truly productive. Programming is mostly a complete mess today and everybody loves their own ugly disabled baby. Sigh.
  - blacktriangle 5y ago
    Upvoted and do like the idea, its an interesting question to see how many languages do we really need. I remember some paper from the 80s suggesting in the future all we would need is Ada and Lisp. This is somewhat echoed with the GNU projects attempt at C for low level dev and Guile for higher level dev and scripting. With no judgement of suitableness or not trying to exclude just tossing out examples, I'd guess it looks something like: Small footprint systems language - C, Zig, Ada/SPARK; Higher level dynamic language - CL, Scheme, JS, Clojure; Full Spectrum Language - Rust, Red + Red/System; Basic low level embedded - Forth; Higher level static language - Haskel, SML, Java; But already these start breaking down, particularly static languages are a minefield. Lazy vs eager evaluation, nominal vs structural typing are two major axis of differentiation there. Then for both static and dynamic languages the question of immutable by default vs immutable as an add-on. Further there's a question of do you need 3 languages for system, high level, and full spectrum vs picking one of the two approaches? And even this binning of 5 completely ignores to what degree concurrency should be a first-class concern of the language. Then there's the whole question of VMs and is there value to building your whole ecosystem on a shared VM? And further, now there's the problem of exposing functionality to non-developers. Should we include a tool like Lua or R that targets non-devs, use a tool like Racket or Red with their very explicit support for creating small custom DSLs, or is that a total non issue because the correct solution is to write GUI tools for that market? Then the bigger question is, to kitchen sink or not. Languages like CL, Scala, and C++ have taken an approach of implement a ton of features and then trust the developers to sort it out. Other languages are laser focused on a single feature and then take it to its extreme, kinda like how Clojure does with immutability or Pony with actors. Yet if we don't embrace multiparadigm languages, we're leaving a ton of research on the table or accepting the zoo of programing languages. Yeah programming is a shitshow.
megous 5y ago
Are you asking why everyone doesn't want the same things from their computer?

Why is there such a fascination with having so many versions?

by prox 5y ago

Why is there such a fascination with having so many versions?

Off the top of my head... Some people want to build everything from source. Some people want a preconfigured Gnome enviornment. Some people want a preconfigured KDE environment. Some people want a distro with the latest version of packages. Some people want a distro that is conservative about upgrading packages. Some people are running in VMs and don't need all that extra crap. Some people want a version that pedantically sticks to the spirit of the GPL. Some people want a version that is maximally convinient GPL be damned. I'm sure there's more reasons.

3r8Oltr0ziouVDM 5y ago
Some people hate systemd :)
- gerdesj 5y ago
  It gets on my nerves sometimes but then I remember the days of creating init scripts a la Miguel van Smoorenborg (with various dialects), upstart, Gentoo etc style OpenRC jobbies and the rest. I get on with my day and you can barely see the blood dribble out of the corner of my mouth when I put the verb in the wrong position. systemctl rofl restart ... [fuck] backspace etc ... [bollocks][arse] ... hit enter.
gerdesj 5y ago
I think you have pretty much covered all the main reasons. I use Arch (formerly Gentoo) on my work and home PCs/laptops because I like rolling releases with a bleeding edge. I generally run Ubuntu LTS minimal installs for servers because they are tiny and stable and guarantee to be upgradeable to the next LTS release. I run Home Assistant IoT wranglers on Debian because that's what HA insists on for "Supervised". My wife uses Arch because I look after it and she doesn't care. It simply has to just work and it has for years now without skipping a beat. Upgrading hardware for laptops and PCs means dumping the filesystems to files on a server or whatever and blatting them onto the new device. If there is physical space, put the old HD/SSD/whatevs into the new box and use a live CD like system rescue or Clonezilla. All the drivers are built in out of the box. These days most things simply work with minimal fiddling. I can't remember the last time I fiddled with xorg.conf. OK I disabled the touchscreen on this laptop when I cracked it and that involved fiddling with xorg. I remember setting modelines by hand in XFree86 ...
prox 5y ago
Thank you for the elaborate answer, so flexibility is key.

Vaslo 5y ago

I ask the same questions about programming languages but usually get downvoted to hell.

pdimitar 5y ago
Well, I upvoted you. IMO it's about time we converge on just 4-5 languages -- each with unique benefits that can't be had easily in the other ones! -- and finally start to be truly productive. Programming is mostly a complete mess today and everybody loves their own ugly disabled baby. Sigh.
- blacktriangle 5y ago
  Upvoted and do like the idea, its an interesting question to see how many languages do we really need. I remember some paper from the 80s suggesting in the future all we would need is Ada and Lisp. This is somewhat echoed with the GNU projects attempt at C for low level dev and Guile for higher level dev and scripting. With no judgement of suitableness or not trying to exclude just tossing out examples, I'd guess it looks something like: Small footprint systems language - C, Zig, Ada/SPARK; Higher level dynamic language - CL, Scheme, JS, Clojure; Full Spectrum Language - Rust, Red + Red/System; Basic low level embedded - Forth; Higher level static language - Haskel, SML, Java; But already these start breaking down, particularly static languages are a minefield. Lazy vs eager evaluation, nominal vs structural typing are two major axis of differentiation there. Then for both static and dynamic languages the question of immutable by default vs immutable as an add-on. Further there's a question of do you need 3 languages for system, high level, and full spectrum vs picking one of the two approaches? And even this binning of 5 completely ignores to what degree concurrency should be a first-class concern of the language. Then there's the whole question of VMs and is there value to building your whole ecosystem on a shared VM? And further, now there's the problem of exposing functionality to non-developers. Should we include a tool like Lua or R that targets non-devs, use a tool like Racket or Red with their very explicit support for creating small custom DSLs, or is that a total non issue because the correct solution is to write GUI tools for that market? Then the bigger question is, to kitchen sink or not. Languages like CL, Scala, and C++ have taken an approach of implement a ton of features and then trust the developers to sort it out. Other languages are laser focused on a single feature and then take it to its extreme, kinda like how Clojure does with immutability or Pony with actors. Yet if we don't embrace multiparadigm languages, we're leaving a ton of research on the table or accepting the zoo of programing languages. Yeah programming is a shitshow.

megous 5y ago

Are you asking why everyone doesn't want the same things from their computer?