8 ms·

Linus at DebConf 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=310&v=Pzl1B7nB9Kc&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=310&v=Pzl1B7nB9Kc&feature=yo... >I’m o

Linus at DebConf 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=310&v=Pzl1B7nB9Kc&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=310&v=Pzl1B7nB9Kc&feature=yo... >I’m on a record saying, that maybe Valve will actually save the Linux desktop. And it’s actually not because I think games are important! I don't care, I don't play games. I think some people do, so games maybe important. But the really important issue is I guarantee you Valve will not make 15 different binaries. And I also guarantee you that every single desktop distribution will care about Valve binaries. The problem is Valve though build everything statically linked and it creates huge binaries. And that's kind of sad but that's what you have to do right now.

Linux_Watcher 4y ago
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that excluding work related stuff gaming is very important to those who own a Windows PC.
yazzku 4y ago
"I don't play games, I think some people do." Multi-billion dollar industry raking in higher profits than Hollywood and that at this point is an unregulated online casino for teens. Yeah, some people do...
- zopa 4y ago
  Well, yeah. His comic timing’s not the best but I think that was meant to be the joke.
  - indigodaddy 4y ago
    Yes, very dry, if not awkward, humor. I actually think Linus is quite funny in most of his interviews.
  - yazzku 4y ago
    Would have never guess it was meant to be a joke.
    - LarryMullins 4y ago
      To be clear, you're joking right now, right? I think you must be, but given your previous comment I'm not sure. Dry sarcasm in text is hard...
      - yazzku 4y ago
        No, I am not. Linus is not exactly an average person; it seems perfectly reasonable to me that among his many eccentricities would be the belief that only some people play games on a PC. Maybe I have been reading too many of his emails.
        ClimaxGravely 4y ago
        You're not alone. I wasn't able to discern that quote as humor either.
        LarryMullins 4y ago
        He's aware that video games exist, so obviously he knows some people play video games. I don't really see how you could confuse this.
candiddevmike 4y ago
Id rather have static binaries than a flatpak/snap for "universal distribution", personally.
- amelius 4y ago
  Snap really sucks because it forces you to have a /home/user/snap folder on the same filesystem as /. If you don't have that (e.g. home folder symlinked to another filesystem), then snap starts breaking in very weird ways. https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/limitations-in-snapd/9718 https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/limitations-in-snapd/9718 This actually means that at some point I will have to move away from Ubuntu.
  - bityard 4y ago
    Debian is very nice these days if you don't mind a tiny bit of enabling non-free repos. Or Pop OS for a more It Just Works approach, if their desktop suits your fancy.
    - amelius 4y ago
      Right now I'm stuck with nVidia's Jetson line of products which is vendor-locked to Ubuntu. The problem is that while you can extend them with a large SSD drive, these products have a really small disk used for /. I could run another OS inside a Docker container, all to avoid this limitation in snap, but of course things will not become prettier.
      - Y_Y 4y ago
        You've been able to run the root on (nvme) SSD for a while now with Dusty's scripts, and more recently with the official installer. I have great sympathy though, I am also using Ubuntu on Jetson and resent snap, especially since the new releases are 20.04 which have it more tightly integrated.
      - lgeek 4y ago
        You can change the root parameter in extlinux.conf to point to whatever block storage you want it to Or reconfigure U-Boot to load extlinux.conf (and the kernel image, initrd, etc) entirely from other type of media. IIRC NVMe, USB and external SDs are all supported
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hnarn 4y ago
Unless we’re talking about embedded systems (and most of the time, not even then I’d guess for portable gaming devices for example), what is the actual drawback of these “huge” binaries? Wasn’t the reason to separate binaries and libraries in the first place to conserve disk space? They are then clearly versioned to signal that you can’t expect just any version of the library to work with the program you wrote. The trade-off in using more disk to contain “an application” to “a binary” seems fine to me, if you’re not sacrificing anything else. The only drawback I can think of is that it makes very minor patches, like security fixes, to the library impossible, which is a nice thing to have I guess, but on the other hand you’re now giving the library maintainer the capability to crash your application, and since that would presumably go through some kind of review and rebuild of the application in the first place to avoid crashes against the new library code, why does it matter if the lib is a part of the actual binary or not? Is it really down to nothing but bandwidth and disk usage, or am I missing something here? Because if it is, and “blob binaries” becomes the norm, I’m sure you could still figure out partial patches somehow to conserve bandwidth and IO, while still keeping the binary essentially a built monolith. Maybe one argument is that abandoned programs can still be “patched” in a way because a library it depends on fixes an issue that library was responsible for, but doesn’t that seem pretty risky to begin with to run software that is no longer being patched? Indeed what constitutes “software” just seems to be multiple pieces in one case, and one piece in the other, no? The biggest case against “vendoring”, which in my mind is similar to “huge” binaries, that I can think of at least is that it gives developers a false sense of security to not have to think about keeping libraries up to date: but aren’t they already equally able to be sloppy about this when the libs are separate?
- poulpy123 4y ago
  I just checked and I have 5600 binaries in my /usr/bin. They take an average of 100kb. If statically compiling them means an average of 50M that means 281gb.
  - hnarn 4y ago
    You're arguing against a strawman saying that no binaries should ever be anything but statically compiled, including system binaries bundled with the operating system. I certainly did not say that.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
Space is cheap for now, so I'll accept that
arrakeen 4y ago
didn't valve mostly mitigate the fat binary problem with their soldier runtime set of shared libs?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  Yes, and then they realized that even that wasn't good enough because Linux Desktop ABIs are a shitshow, so they refocused on providing Windows ABIs instead to great success.
  - rowanG077 4y ago
    huh? When I run a Linux native game via steam it uses Windows dependencies? What is this dark magic.
    - noisem4ker 4y ago
      I think they meant Valve switched their focus to emulating Windows through WINE, practically adopting Windows' APIs, instead of solving Linux' dependency problems and pushing developers to compile for Linux natively (something they've always been reluctant to do).
mrkramer 4y ago
Why would I use Linux Desktop over Windows Desktop? Because it's FOSS, because of price, UX? I don't get it.
- CBarkleyU 4y ago
  It's like asking me asking you why I would drive a Mercedes over my BMW. How would you know? All you could do is to list a million things that are different on a Mercedes compared to a BMW and then claim every one of those differences makes a Merc better. Is that what you expect to get as replies to your question?
  - mrkramer 4y ago
    For a casual user who uses computer for work and gaming I would go with Windows. People say Linux is free and open source, more secure and you get privacy but is it really worth it? Idk.
    - danielheath 4y ago
      To me, Linux means having the option of a system that lacks distractions. That’s a drastic ux improvement for me personally; IMO windows UX peaked with 2000, and XP was nearly as good. I haven’t played much multiplayer anything (a little MTGa, among us, tabletop simulator and beat saber) but none of the single player games I’ve tried on Ubuntu have had any issues; just open steam and press play. Windows started pushing f2p games in the start menu, changed UI toolkits twice in two generations, etc; it’s become unpleasant for me to use. Apple have similarly dropped the ball on UX in the past 5 years. IMO Linux UX has caught up thanks to those companies failures.
      - gps0 4y ago
        What are some DEs / window managers you think are quite simple and let you focus?
        danielheath 4y ago
ykonstant 4y ago
A tiny bit off topic, but for the record: video games are, for me, extremely important. They are my favorite art form and an oasis in a daily nightmare; if I were unable to play my favorite games, the system I am running would be completely useless. Fortunately, the kind of games I like run mostly fine on Linux.

Linux_Watcher 4y ago

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that excluding work related stuff gaming is very important to those who own a Windows PC.

yazzku 4y ago

"I don't play games, I think some people do." Multi-billion dollar industry raking in higher profits than Hollywood and that at this point is an unregulated online casino for teens. Yeah, some people do...

zopa 4y ago
Well, yeah. His comic timing’s not the best but I think that was meant to be the joke.
- indigodaddy 4y ago
  Yes, very dry, if not awkward, humor. I actually think Linus is quite funny in most of his interviews.
- yazzku 4y ago
  Would have never guess it was meant to be a joke.
  - LarryMullins 4y ago
    To be clear, you're joking right now, right? I think you must be, but given your previous comment I'm not sure. Dry sarcasm in text is hard...
    - yazzku 4y ago
      No, I am not. Linus is not exactly an average person; it seems perfectly reasonable to me that among his many eccentricities would be the belief that only some people play games on a PC. Maybe I have been reading too many of his emails.
      - ClimaxGravely 4y ago
        You're not alone. I wasn't able to discern that quote as humor either.
      - LarryMullins 4y ago
        He's aware that video games exist, so obviously he knows some people play video games. I don't really see how you could confuse this.

candiddevmike 4y ago

Id rather have static binaries than a flatpak/snap for "universal distribution", personally.

amelius 4y ago
Snap really sucks because it forces you to have a /home/user/snap folder on the same filesystem as /. If you don't have that (e.g. home folder symlinked to another filesystem), then snap starts breaking in very weird ways. https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/limitations-in-snapd/9718 https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/limitations-in-snapd/9718 This actually means that at some point I will have to move away from Ubuntu.
- bityard 4y ago
  Debian is very nice these days if you don't mind a tiny bit of enabling non-free repos. Or Pop OS for a more It Just Works approach, if their desktop suits your fancy.
  - amelius 4y ago
    Right now I'm stuck with nVidia's Jetson line of products which is vendor-locked to Ubuntu. The problem is that while you can extend them with a large SSD drive, these products have a really small disk used for /. I could run another OS inside a Docker container, all to avoid this limitation in snap, but of course things will not become prettier.
    - Y_Y 4y ago
      You've been able to run the root on (nvme) SSD for a while now with Dusty's scripts, and more recently with the official installer. I have great sympathy though, I am also using Ubuntu on Jetson and resent snap, especially since the new releases are 20.04 which have it more tightly integrated.
    - lgeek 4y ago
      You can change the root parameter in extlinux.conf to point to whatever block storage you want it to Or reconfigure U-Boot to load extlinux.conf (and the kernel image, initrd, etc) entirely from other type of media. IIRC NVMe, USB and external SDs are all supported

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

hnarn 4y ago

Unless we’re talking about embedded systems (and most of the time, not even then I’d guess for portable gaming devices for example), what is the actual drawback of these “huge” binaries? Wasn’t the reason to separate binaries and libraries in the first place to conserve disk space? They are then clearly versioned to signal that you can’t expect just any version of the library to work with the program you wrote. The trade-off in using more disk to contain “an application” to “a binary” seems fine to me, if you’re not sacrificing anything else. The only drawback I can think of is that it makes very minor patches, like security fixes, to the library impossible, which is a nice thing to have I guess, but on the other hand you’re now giving the library maintainer the capability to crash your application, and since that would presumably go through some kind of review and rebuild of the application in the first place to avoid crashes against the new library code, why does it matter if the lib is a part of the actual binary or not? Is it really down to nothing but bandwidth and disk usage, or am I missing something here? Because if it is, and “blob binaries” becomes the norm, I’m sure you could still figure out partial patches somehow to conserve bandwidth and IO, while still keeping the binary essentially a built monolith. Maybe one argument is that abandoned programs can still be “patched” in a way because a library it depends on fixes an issue that library was responsible for, but doesn’t that seem pretty risky to begin with to run software that is no longer being patched? Indeed what constitutes “software” just seems to be multiple pieces in one case, and one piece in the other, no? The biggest case against “vendoring”, which in my mind is similar to “huge” binaries, that I can think of at least is that it gives developers a false sense of security to not have to think about keeping libraries up to date: but aren’t they already equally able to be sloppy about this when the libs are separate?

poulpy123 4y ago
I just checked and I have 5600 binaries in my /usr/bin. They take an average of 100kb. If statically compiling them means an average of 50M that means 281gb.
- hnarn 4y ago
  You're arguing against a strawman saying that no binaries should ever be anything but statically compiled, including system binaries bundled with the operating system. I certainly did not say that.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago

Space is cheap for now, so I'll accept that

arrakeen 4y ago

didn't valve mostly mitigate the fat binary problem with their soldier runtime set of shared libs?

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
Yes, and then they realized that even that wasn't good enough because Linux Desktop ABIs are a shitshow, so they refocused on providing Windows ABIs instead to great success.
- rowanG077 4y ago
  huh? When I run a Linux native game via steam it uses Windows dependencies? What is this dark magic.
  - noisem4ker 4y ago
    I think they meant Valve switched their focus to emulating Windows through WINE, practically adopting Windows' APIs, instead of solving Linux' dependency problems and pushing developers to compile for Linux natively (something they've always been reluctant to do).

mrkramer 4y ago

Why would I use Linux Desktop over Windows Desktop? Because it's FOSS, because of price, UX? I don't get it.

CBarkleyU 4y ago
It's like asking me asking you why I would drive a Mercedes over my BMW. How would you know? All you could do is to list a million things that are different on a Mercedes compared to a BMW and then claim every one of those differences makes a Merc better. Is that what you expect to get as replies to your question?
- mrkramer 4y ago
  For a casual user who uses computer for work and gaming I would go with Windows. People say Linux is free and open source, more secure and you get privacy but is it really worth it? Idk.
  - danielheath 4y ago
    To me, Linux means having the option of a system that lacks distractions. That’s a drastic ux improvement for me personally; IMO windows UX peaked with 2000, and XP was nearly as good. I haven’t played much multiplayer anything (a little MTGa, among us, tabletop simulator and beat saber) but none of the single player games I’ve tried on Ubuntu have had any issues; just open steam and press play. Windows started pushing f2p games in the start menu, changed UI toolkits twice in two generations, etc; it’s become unpleasant for me to use. Apple have similarly dropped the ball on UX in the past 5 years. IMO Linux UX has caught up thanks to those companies failures.
    - gps0 4y ago
      What are some DEs / window managers you think are quite simple and let you focus?
      - danielheath 4y ago

ykonstant 4y ago

A tiny bit off topic, but for the record: video games are, for me, extremely important. They are my favorite art form and an oasis in a daily nightmare; if I were unable to play my favorite games, the system I am running would be completely useless. Fortunately, the kind of games I like run mostly fine on Linux.