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But developing the new stuff doesn’t make the old stuff go away; there’s a huge userbase with trillions of lines of scripts and stuff to support. It’s thinking

But developing the new stuff doesn’t make the old stuff go away; there’s a huge userbase with trillions of lines of scripts and stuff to support. It’s thinking like this that led to the fragmentation in the first place.

dsr_ 4y ago
Right. A new project can: - get changes into the kernel, and all newly installed systems after some point maybe three years from now will have them, probably - get changes into the core requirements of a distro, and get newly installed and upgraded systems to have the feature in a couple of years, but only that distro. If the changes are too obnoxious, some organizations won't upgrade and some will leave for another distro - make an implementation so attractive that lots of distros will include it either by default or as an option. Nothing will get the project traction on systems that are not upgraded, regardless of the reason being can't or won't. And as long as people have a high expectation of working on those systems, the replacement will be another thing people have to remember.
- eternityforest 4y ago
  Windows has lots of old systems, but they just continue to run the old systems for a few years, and then 20 more years after support ends. It's a lot easier to maintain old versions when there are fewer of them and they are all corporate backed. One team can keep a version going. But with Linux there are thousands of versions, arguably millions because it encourages customization even beyond just choosing a distro. With Windows, Android, and just about any other commercial style thing, there are versions that come out once per year or so, with either no forks, or forks that promptly get ignored and forgotten, or very minor customizations that don't really add or remove anything beyond the wallpaper and launcher. And they generally preserve backwards compatibility better than Linux, because the stack can just be application+bundled libraries -> OS stuff fully controlled by OS vendor. There's no systems made of small pieces meant to be interchanged by the installer, any one of which could stop working on a new system, all by different teams, you know your GUI toolkit works on the new OS version because it ships with the new OS version. There are no other distros, because even when they are possible, like with AOSP, there's no culture of tinkering, people just take what they get, which both prevents fragmentation, and on the other side, gives the developers a reason not to make migration too hard, because they are trying to make one distro for all, not just a distro for their 10% of users. Ubuntu does a good job of trying to be "The standard Linux", but things still change and break between versions far more than on Android.
pdimitar 4y ago
Not necessarily, you can support the old stuff but require the new way going forward. Even better, you can script the migration of a lot of the old stuff to the new one. It's pretty difficult to do but at one point we should get to it.
- eternityforest 4y ago
  Android essentially does exactly that already with API level targets and it's great. They even have security features where they say "From now on, if you target this API level you can't do this without going through this API, and we won't allow new things in the play store below X target".
crabbone 4y ago
Well, we have the administrative side of it down more or less. We have LTS releases, deprecation policies, even sometimes rudimentary automation to port old configuration and tools to match the new tooling. This part doesn't scare me. The part that does scare me is that we'd need something like a task force that will have enough authority to compel all involved parties to follow their design as well as to have a good design in the first place. Standardization is a powerful tool that enables significant advances in the industry that any individual player cannot accomplish on their own, and would be very beneficial to the most widely used operating system on the planet. But making useful standards is hard. Even harder in the presence of players who might want to achieve exclusivity for their product by obstructing standardization process. The later would've been my greatest fear.

dsr_ 4y ago

Right. A new project can: - get changes into the kernel, and all newly installed systems after some point maybe three years from now will have them, probably - get changes into the core requirements of a distro, and get newly installed and upgraded systems to have the feature in a couple of years, but only that distro. If the changes are too obnoxious, some organizations won't upgrade and some will leave for another distro - make an implementation so attractive that lots of distros will include it either by default or as an option. Nothing will get the project traction on systems that are not upgraded, regardless of the reason being can't or won't. And as long as people have a high expectation of working on those systems, the replacement will be another thing people have to remember.

eternityforest 4y ago
Windows has lots of old systems, but they just continue to run the old systems for a few years, and then 20 more years after support ends. It's a lot easier to maintain old versions when there are fewer of them and they are all corporate backed. One team can keep a version going. But with Linux there are thousands of versions, arguably millions because it encourages customization even beyond just choosing a distro. With Windows, Android, and just about any other commercial style thing, there are versions that come out once per year or so, with either no forks, or forks that promptly get ignored and forgotten, or very minor customizations that don't really add or remove anything beyond the wallpaper and launcher. And they generally preserve backwards compatibility better than Linux, because the stack can just be application+bundled libraries -> OS stuff fully controlled by OS vendor. There's no systems made of small pieces meant to be interchanged by the installer, any one of which could stop working on a new system, all by different teams, you know your GUI toolkit works on the new OS version because it ships with the new OS version. There are no other distros, because even when they are possible, like with AOSP, there's no culture of tinkering, people just take what they get, which both prevents fragmentation, and on the other side, gives the developers a reason not to make migration too hard, because they are trying to make one distro for all, not just a distro for their 10% of users. Ubuntu does a good job of trying to be "The standard Linux", but things still change and break between versions far more than on Android.

pdimitar 4y ago

Not necessarily, you can support the old stuff but require the new way going forward. Even better, you can script the migration of a lot of the old stuff to the new one. It's pretty difficult to do but at one point we should get to it.

eternityforest 4y ago
Android essentially does exactly that already with API level targets and it's great. They even have security features where they say "From now on, if you target this API level you can't do this without going through this API, and we won't allow new things in the play store below X target".

crabbone 4y ago

Well, we have the administrative side of it down more or less. We have LTS releases, deprecation policies, even sometimes rudimentary automation to port old configuration and tools to match the new tooling. This part doesn't scare me. The part that does scare me is that we'd need something like a task force that will have enough authority to compel all involved parties to follow their design as well as to have a good design in the first place. Standardization is a powerful tool that enables significant advances in the industry that any individual player cannot accomplish on their own, and would be very beneficial to the most widely used operating system on the planet. But making useful standards is hard. Even harder in the presence of players who might want to achieve exclusivity for their product by obstructing standardization process. The later would've been my greatest fear.