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Of course, but I would not like to have to patch it to modify something that on other systems can be modified with either a configuration option, or a shell scr

Of course, but I would not like to have to patch it to modify something that on other systems can be modified with either a configuration option, or a shell script. To me, the most poisonous example that contrasts the traditional design with Freedesktop's design is acpid contrasting logind. In the former case, an acpi event is sent, and acpid simply executes a file such as `/etc/acpi/action/lid_down.sh`. That file can contain anything the system administrator wills, from a simple script that does nothing more than `systemctl sleep` to whatever complex task he could desire. The last time I checked the situation, logind had replaced this powerful, and simple mechanism with a configuration that offers nine options to execute when the lid is pressed, none of which involve executing a simple file. Of course I can edit the source code and recompile to allow it to do what I want it to, but I would far rather simply quickly alter a simple shell script to do so. And luckily I can, because I do not use logind but acpid, but that does not change the ire I experience when dealing with many Redhat and Freedesktop people who make it very clear that I should be using logind, that it's better, and that they create artificial dependencies on it to as Poettering calls it “gently puh” me in that direction.

vanviegen 5y ago
Although I like the acpid approach, the logind way is probably safer to abstract behind a user friendly GUI. That's what most people will be using. :-/
- Blikkentrekker 5y ago
  And that is probably the motivation for this design philosophy of limiting options that Redhat and Freedesktop champion where more and more, simple, clean, turing complete solutions are replaced by a discrete list of simple options. But it does not change at all why I dislike it, and why I am annoyed by Freedesktop's pushing and insistence that many keep to these more custoizable solutions supposedly simply because they are “stuck in their ways” and that their philosophy is the future and “modern”, whereas all I see is more hurdles that stop me from effectively being the master of my own machine.
  - awrmc 5y ago
    You have a misunderstanding of what Freedesktop is. Freedesktop is just a group of desktop developers that submit standards to each other, they don't really dictate anything. For that reason it tends to self-select for developers who are actively working on desktop environments, and the standards that tend to get submitted there are things that already have some level of adoption among open source desktops. You too can submit specifications to Freedesktop but you'll probably not have much luck with getting something adopted among peers if you're not already interacting with other desktop developers on a regular basis. "Customizability" is also not the domain of a group that like Freedesktop that publishes specifications. Their purpose is to define some baseline of standard behavior for interoperability. The customization comes from individual projects. No offense but your criticism is pretty misplaced.
    - Blikkentrekker 5y ago
      In theory it is that; in practice it has become a different face of Redhat because it's mostly Redhat developers that submit these standards there and the body is known to have a certain philosophy that is indeed exemplified by systemd. They aren't particularly keen on hacking in how they design their software and standards and talking with them is frustrating to say the least.
      - awrmc 5y ago
        I can't understand what you're talking about, I'm looking through the list of specifications and I don't see anything specific to Red Hat or systemd. I also see a lot of other names besides Red Hat people: https://specifications.freedesktop.org/ https://specifications.freedesktop.org/ If Red Hat engineers submit something there it's because they think it's useful to the other desktop projects. It's just a collaborative space to put specs. If you have a spec of your own you can just create a new RFC. You don't need to persuade them to change how they design theirs, unless you intend to start working at Red Hat and start maintaining some of their software for them.
  - morelisp 5y ago
    “People who write the code get to make the rules” is perhaps the most fundamental part of bazaar development ideology. If you don’t like it, write more code.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  > the logind way is probably safer to abstract behind a user friendly GUI. How so? The canonical solution would be to ship a default `lid_down` script that could take the currently-active policy as set by the GUI as an input. But the nice thing is that adding/tweaking policies is a fully-supported operation, you just edit the script and the GUI config mechanism to support them.
  - awrmc 5y ago
    I just made an account to respond to this. Shipping scripts is racy and error-prone. It's the wrong approach and is not how any actively developed desktop wants to do things. They want an API they can use from a service, that's what logind provides and that's why it's been adopted. You can also run acpid alongside logind if that's what you prefer, but it will be racy unless you also use logind's inhibitor API.
dijit 5y ago
And this means we can’t do things like force disconnect an eGPU or whatever on acpi events. I think I figured out my issue with systemd. It does not apply Chesterton Fence when redeveloping things… and how could it, when it redevelops so much. Maybe it’s fine if it’s all you’ve ever know (or you never hacked on your system) but those that did have lost something.
- Blikkentrekker 5y ago
  The situation is that such hackers and tweakers rarely use systemd, for these reasons. They are simply annoyed by A) it being pushed on them; B) people often acting that they are irrational for not liking it while it does not what they expect and need; and C) discussions with Freedesktop developers that, frankness be, reveal they live inside of a very strange bubble and have no idea of the use cases outside of it. This is software brought to you by the minds who brought you. “I have no idea what XFCE is or does, sorry.” or that libinput did not need a way to disable mouse acceleration because everyone wants mouse acceleration.
  - awrmc 5y ago
    I'm an open source hacker and I like systemd. Once I took the time to learn its APIs I found it does everything I expect. Your issues with XFCE and libinput don't seem to be related to systemd. I can't see how airing grievances against other unrelated projects would be a constructive place to take this discussion. Complaining about open source projects only supporting some use cases is also confusing to me. A lot of these projects are very open about the fact that they exist only to "scratch their own itch".
    - Blikkentrekker 5y ago
      I have no issues with XFCE. I personally would never use i, but it also leaves me alone and it's developers don't exhibit this mentality. I have a problem with Jon McCann's famous quote, who was at the time a lead developed of GTK+, who did not know what XFCE, one of the biggest consumers of the library, even was when he made a change that broke about anything outside of GNOME. — What his language suggested was that he lived in a bubble thinking that only KDE and GNOME existed, and that since KDE wasn't using GTK+ it was fine to do this.
rixed 5y ago
acpid vs logind is another illustration of the trade offs involved when moving towards GUIfication of the bazar that is (was?) unix. Basically the proposition is akin to a weapon exchange program: hand over your powerful but dangerous Turing complete configuration language in exchange for nicer looking desktops. Who would not prefer a better looking desktop?
- Blikkentrekker 5y ago
  It's what you consider nicer. I consider dialog windows to be a slow and frustrating way to configure anything and on top of that in this case it loses me the ability for my computer to do what I want it to when I close my lid. And if it simply remained at that, but left me alone I wouldn't be so irate, but I don't feel left alone and “Who would not prefer a better looking desktop?” already borders on this “My way, of the highway.” philosophy of Freedesktop, whose developers all too often tell one that one's subjective likings are wrong and that one is somehow “wrong” or “outdated” for favoring a machine that is fast to configure and does what one wants. It also doesn't help much that on a purely visual level there design choices look ugly to me, and that these are also the same people that remove theme options lest the holy “brand identity” be compromised, as well as that their design blasts too much bright white light into my face when I'm already tiring my eyes out trying to learn to read a language that's not written in a script I'm accustomed to.
  - rixed 5y ago
    I now realize the sarcasm was unfortunately not obvious, and I have to apologize. -- Sent from my terminal
  - rixed 5y ago
    I believe this issue of Turing complete config language vs simpler declarative configuration is one of the basic thing for which there exist no good universal solution. I face the very same issue in my day job where I'm struggling to cut the right balance between a featureful data manipulation language with which the customer can implement whatever he needs, as long as he is OK with a bit of programming, or a more limited one for which we have a GUI... and that GUI itself has to be tested, and I'm also currently reviewing QA tools to help testing GUIs, and they basically fall in two camps: those that require one to spend a week learning how to program them, and those that are much more limited but come with a straightforward GUIs... Before systemd the same conflict happened with network-manager: my network setups were usually custom and out of reach from network-manager that I despised and purged of my desktops first thing after a fresh install. Yet with time network-manager supported more and more use cases and I'm now happy to use it. Maybe one day systemd will also make it possible to add the bits of hackery here and there and we will all be satisfied with it. For now, if so many users have it easier thanks to systemd, which seems to indeed be the case, then it's still something.

vanviegen 5y ago

Although I like the acpid approach, the logind way is probably safer to abstract behind a user friendly GUI. That's what most people will be using. :-/

Blikkentrekker 5y ago
And that is probably the motivation for this design philosophy of limiting options that Redhat and Freedesktop champion where more and more, simple, clean, turing complete solutions are replaced by a discrete list of simple options. But it does not change at all why I dislike it, and why I am annoyed by Freedesktop's pushing and insistence that many keep to these more custoizable solutions supposedly simply because they are “stuck in their ways” and that their philosophy is the future and “modern”, whereas all I see is more hurdles that stop me from effectively being the master of my own machine.
- awrmc 5y ago
  You have a misunderstanding of what Freedesktop is. Freedesktop is just a group of desktop developers that submit standards to each other, they don't really dictate anything. For that reason it tends to self-select for developers who are actively working on desktop environments, and the standards that tend to get submitted there are things that already have some level of adoption among open source desktops. You too can submit specifications to Freedesktop but you'll probably not have much luck with getting something adopted among peers if you're not already interacting with other desktop developers on a regular basis. "Customizability" is also not the domain of a group that like Freedesktop that publishes specifications. Their purpose is to define some baseline of standard behavior for interoperability. The customization comes from individual projects. No offense but your criticism is pretty misplaced.
  - Blikkentrekker 5y ago
    In theory it is that; in practice it has become a different face of Redhat because it's mostly Redhat developers that submit these standards there and the body is known to have a certain philosophy that is indeed exemplified by systemd. They aren't particularly keen on hacking in how they design their software and standards and talking with them is frustrating to say the least.
    - awrmc 5y ago
      I can't understand what you're talking about, I'm looking through the list of specifications and I don't see anything specific to Red Hat or systemd. I also see a lot of other names besides Red Hat people: https://specifications.freedesktop.org/ https://specifications.freedesktop.org/ If Red Hat engineers submit something there it's because they think it's useful to the other desktop projects. It's just a collaborative space to put specs. If you have a spec of your own you can just create a new RFC. You don't need to persuade them to change how they design theirs, unless you intend to start working at Red Hat and start maintaining some of their software for them.
- morelisp 5y ago
  “People who write the code get to make the rules” is perhaps the most fundamental part of bazaar development ideology. If you don’t like it, write more code.
zozbot234 5y ago
> the logind way is probably safer to abstract behind a user friendly GUI. How so? The canonical solution would be to ship a default `lid_down` script that could take the currently-active policy as set by the GUI as an input. But the nice thing is that adding/tweaking policies is a fully-supported operation, you just edit the script and the GUI config mechanism to support them.
- awrmc 5y ago
  I just made an account to respond to this. Shipping scripts is racy and error-prone. It's the wrong approach and is not how any actively developed desktop wants to do things. They want an API they can use from a service, that's what logind provides and that's why it's been adopted. You can also run acpid alongside logind if that's what you prefer, but it will be racy unless you also use logind's inhibitor API.

dijit 5y ago

And this means we can’t do things like force disconnect an eGPU or whatever on acpi events. I think I figured out my issue with systemd. It does not apply Chesterton Fence when redeveloping things… and how could it, when it redevelops so much. Maybe it’s fine if it’s all you’ve ever know (or you never hacked on your system) but those that did have lost something.

Blikkentrekker 5y ago
The situation is that such hackers and tweakers rarely use systemd, for these reasons. They are simply annoyed by A) it being pushed on them; B) people often acting that they are irrational for not liking it while it does not what they expect and need; and C) discussions with Freedesktop developers that, frankness be, reveal they live inside of a very strange bubble and have no idea of the use cases outside of it. This is software brought to you by the minds who brought you. “I have no idea what XFCE is or does, sorry.” or that libinput did not need a way to disable mouse acceleration because everyone wants mouse acceleration.
- awrmc 5y ago
  I'm an open source hacker and I like systemd. Once I took the time to learn its APIs I found it does everything I expect. Your issues with XFCE and libinput don't seem to be related to systemd. I can't see how airing grievances against other unrelated projects would be a constructive place to take this discussion. Complaining about open source projects only supporting some use cases is also confusing to me. A lot of these projects are very open about the fact that they exist only to "scratch their own itch".
  - Blikkentrekker 5y ago
    I have no issues with XFCE. I personally would never use i, but it also leaves me alone and it's developers don't exhibit this mentality. I have a problem with Jon McCann's famous quote, who was at the time a lead developed of GTK+, who did not know what XFCE, one of the biggest consumers of the library, even was when he made a change that broke about anything outside of GNOME. — What his language suggested was that he lived in a bubble thinking that only KDE and GNOME existed, and that since KDE wasn't using GTK+ it was fine to do this.

rixed 5y ago

acpid vs logind is another illustration of the trade offs involved when moving towards GUIfication of the bazar that is (was?) unix. Basically the proposition is akin to a weapon exchange program: hand over your powerful but dangerous Turing complete configuration language in exchange for nicer looking desktops. Who would not prefer a better looking desktop?

Blikkentrekker 5y ago
It's what you consider nicer. I consider dialog windows to be a slow and frustrating way to configure anything and on top of that in this case it loses me the ability for my computer to do what I want it to when I close my lid. And if it simply remained at that, but left me alone I wouldn't be so irate, but I don't feel left alone and “Who would not prefer a better looking desktop?” already borders on this “My way, of the highway.” philosophy of Freedesktop, whose developers all too often tell one that one's subjective likings are wrong and that one is somehow “wrong” or “outdated” for favoring a machine that is fast to configure and does what one wants. It also doesn't help much that on a purely visual level there design choices look ugly to me, and that these are also the same people that remove theme options lest the holy “brand identity” be compromised, as well as that their design blasts too much bright white light into my face when I'm already tiring my eyes out trying to learn to read a language that's not written in a script I'm accustomed to.
- rixed 5y ago
  I now realize the sarcasm was unfortunately not obvious, and I have to apologize. -- Sent from my terminal
- rixed 5y ago
  I believe this issue of Turing complete config language vs simpler declarative configuration is one of the basic thing for which there exist no good universal solution. I face the very same issue in my day job where I'm struggling to cut the right balance between a featureful data manipulation language with which the customer can implement whatever he needs, as long as he is OK with a bit of programming, or a more limited one for which we have a GUI... and that GUI itself has to be tested, and I'm also currently reviewing QA tools to help testing GUIs, and they basically fall in two camps: those that require one to spend a week learning how to program them, and those that are much more limited but come with a straightforward GUIs... Before systemd the same conflict happened with network-manager: my network setups were usually custom and out of reach from network-manager that I despised and purged of my desktops first thing after a fresh install. Yet with time network-manager supported more and more use cases and I'm now happy to use it. Maybe one day systemd will also make it possible to add the bits of hackery here and there and we will all be satisfied with it. For now, if so many users have it easier thanks to systemd, which seems to indeed be the case, then it's still something.