4 ms·

This talk is a bit of a downer. He sort of just complains about problems with Linux for 30 minutes without offering any solutions

• stevefan1999 3y ago
  Because it is a political problem. There is no solution for a political problem.
  • saurik 3y ago
    As a local politician I whole-heatedly agree with this assertion (and will now go cry myself to sleep).
  • high_5 3y ago
    Yes, but the problems are always multifaceted. So sometimes even an apparent weakness might come off as a strength or a non-issue in a different situations. For example it's interesting that for all its technical excellence Windows isn't present in the HPC space.
    • pjmlp 3y ago
      Easy, Windows is not free beer. As for presence, unless something has radically changed, most researchers at CERN used a mix of Windows and OS X, when I was there 20 years ago. Even though everything else used UNIX (Solaris)/Linux. Back in those days, I was the only one on my team that even bothered to test the recently made available, Scientific Linux.
      • jstimpfle 3y ago
        HPC is not a very well defined term or domain, and Windows not being free beer is probably only a small part of the reason. While some of HPC is close to universities, cash is not a general problem in this domain by far. What about Unix/Linux being easier to automate, what about them having better performance on some important axes (like file systems)? What about it being easier to open up and tweak? To reach inside the kernel?
        • pjmlp 3y ago
          Even big research centers like CERN have to deal with cash problems. Windows is just as easy to automate, don't pretend it is a UNIX. Windows source code is available for a fee. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sharedsource/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sharedsource/ As for Windows HPC in general, https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/high-performance-computing https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/high-performance... So when one needs to open the pockets, other options are taken. It is not different from picking UNIX source tapes instead of paying for VAX/VMS licenses.
          • jstimpfle 3y ago
            I find your reply to be a little bit strange. As often you're throwing some claims in the air, and only back those up with seemingly irrelevant links. I've never used Azure which is behind that "HPC" link, but at least Azure != Window in my book. I doubt that Windows licensing costs are that significant compared to HPC hardware. If there are good technical reasons to run on Windows, licensing shouldn't be an issue. Windows source code only being available through a tedious process might be a big problem. The free beer part is only a small aspect, and being accessible might be more important (as I said). You haven't reacted to Windows filesystems seeming slower (can only judge from my work PC), and slow filesystem are pretty sure a bad thing for many HPC workloads. I don't know much about Windows administration, but from all I've witnessed it's a lot of manual clicking around and fixing configurations that get periodically overridden. Scripting tools, like Powershell, and package managers for sure exist, but Windows never had an equally pronounced administration culture like Unix had. Heck, look at cmd, it's a bad joke (and I still begrudgingly use it because Powershell never seemed inviting to me to learn, and doesn't seem nice for interactive use). It might even have become better with Powershell and everything, but things don't change overnight. For kicks I asked ChatGPT about it and it basically told me the same thing. PS: not a fanboy, I'm writing this from my Windows dev machine.
  • Gordonjcp 3y ago
    How exactly is it a political problem?
    • abwizz 3y ago
      there are good arguments for and against a change and a 'forced change' is more or less impossible.
      • Gordonjcp 3y ago
        That doesn't really answer my question, though.
• pjmlp 3y ago
  Besides being a polical problem as per sibling comment, it is interwinded with UNIX, fixing some of the problems means moving away from being an UNIX as first step. Kind of ChromeOS and Android kind of have been doing, depending on the Linux kernel and little else.
• high_5 3y ago
  The more I saw the "So What" slide after each deficiency exposed, the more I saw it as subverting the whole presentation. Yes, there are problems, but it appears that didn't prevent UNIX&Linux from persisting and succeeding in many forms of computing. The presenter curiously forgot to mention "worse is better" principle.
• bullen 3y ago
  For IO epoll is the solution, which he kinda says. And then userspace IO which it seems will never work. Or perf cache-misses / tiptop IPC for that matter.