5 ms·

Our slowly growing Unix monoculture

49 points by matt_d 2y ago

forrestthewoods 2y ago
> I feel that as system administrators, there's something we gain by having exposure to different Unixes that make different choices and have different tools than Ubuntu Linux. You could try Windows! The water is warm and quite pleasant. There’s many things that are worse in Windows, but there’s also many things that are better!
- echelon 2y ago
  Though I think the intent here was a desire for other Unices, that makes me wonder if Windows now qualifies as a POSIX system with WSL.
  - mullingitover 2y ago
    Microsoft has been shipping POSIX-compliant Windows for over three decades now[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem
    - hinkley 2y ago
      Hold up. Didn’t they have no POSIX subsystem from 2012 to 2016? You can’t call it 30 years if they stopped, and stopping puts into question when they will stop again.
      - convolvatron 2y ago
        also before 2012 is was so marginal as to not be really usable for anything
        dekhn 2y ago
        you could replace it with a fuller 'interix' which was basically a full Unix with x and motif. I ported a large motif gui app but never used it. Microsoft later bought interix
      - lmm 2y ago
        It was still available as a download for Server 2012. It was listed as deprecated and they recommended various migration paths, but they didn't stop shipping it.
        hinkley 2y ago
        You don’t build a company strategy on deprecated projects with no announced replacement. Especially if it’s Microsoft or Google.
    - 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
      Yes but only as a technicality for sales. Nobody ever actually depended on or used the Windows POSIX system. Cygwin was created as a response to wanting a real working POSIX system on Windows.
    - suprjami 2y ago
      Services for UNIX has been removed and the "replacement" is WSL. I don't know if SFU was actually POSIX compliant, but Linux isn't 100% compliant and doesn't aim to be. Maybe having some modern WSL is better than having SFU's POSIX-1990?
  - stroupwaffle 2y ago
    Windows HAS a POSIX (sub)system; Windows itself is not a POSIX system. ;)
hinkley 2y ago
I’d like a microkernel that can run Linux containers, and its own containers. That gives you the sort of platform on which you could introduce a new ecosystem by parts.
- pphysch 2y ago
  Like Talos Linux? Don't you need the full Linux kernel to run arbitrary Linux containers?
  - zrail 2y ago
    Sounds more like Xen if Xen could boot containers instead of VMs.
  - hinkley 2y ago
    Brian Cantrill talked about how they got Docker running on Joyent. They had to make shims for many system calls and a little more fiddly code for a handful more. No idea how much skill that takes, but it’s been done once.
    - 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
      It's the same thing as making WINE: you implement the ABI in userspace. It's a pain in the butt and it suffers from compatibility and performance issues. Programs run with WINE often run into problems not found on their native Windows environment. It's better to have a standard that each operating system implements so that apps don't need a weird portability layer in-between. Sadly, Linux doesn't give a shit about other systems, so any effort to standardize containers will happen outside Linux, and Linux probably won't pick up its changes because they already have Linux containers. So a WINE like thing would be the most workable option. The current state of affairs is actually a much better solution. Just make all containers OS-specific, and ship the OS kernel and dependencies along with a shim, and run them with QEMU. Apps run way more reliably this way with no porting required. The devs do less work, the users do less work, there's less bugs, and you can run any app in any OS.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
samcat116 2y ago
> It seems unlikely that we'll get ARM-based machines, especially ones that we expose to people to log in to and use I don't really get why this is an assumption, in fact I'd heavily bet against it the not so distant future.
- ang_cire 2y ago
  I think he meant in his environment, not for IT in general.
  - samcat116 2y ago
    That makes sense, but I'd love to know why it wouldn't work for them (especially in a post about how things are becoming a monoculture OS and architecture wise).
    - ang_cire 2y ago
      Going off my experience, it might be about not wanting to mix replacement part pools, or just biases about ARM being underpowered among management. It sounds like they're running everything on-prem, whereas a "cloud-native" org probably doesn't care as much.
  - hinkley 2y ago
    Still, I already log into an ARM machine at home. No other choice at this point. And ARM at work was at the top of my todo list when I left my last job.
- lalaland1125 2y ago
  A lot of research labs run consumer hardware for cost reasons and we are still quite far away from non-Mac ARM desktops being available to consumers. The problem is that most of the consumer hardware manufacturers, from motherboards, to CPU coolers, etc are all geared towards AMD and Intel.
ang_cire 2y ago
As I read this, my homelab toilet servers in the next room are running x86 64-bit Ubuntu. My Framework 16 laptop is running x86 64-bit Ubuntu. My RPi 5 is running 64-bit Ubuntu (though that one is ARM). I used to have half a dozen dual-boot Linux distros on my fun laptop, and now it's just Ubuntu. I know those aren't the same as having other forms of Unix, but I think it echoes that even within the Linux ecosystem, Ubuntu has become the de-facto standard for a lot of people. I have never been a fan of CentOS, and SunOS was so long ago I barely remember it, and I've never tried FreeBSD, but I do want the FOSS-OS ecosystem to thrive and not collapse into Canonical alone (especially given that I don't entirely love some of their recent moves).
- zrail 2y ago
  > homelab toilet servers ....go on?
  - ang_cire 2y ago
    It's pretty self-explanatory? https://i.imgur.com/QqjsPge.jpg https://i.imgur.com/QqjsPge.jpg
    - zrail 2y ago
      I was expecting like "terrible old server that I refer to as toilet because it's terrible" but this is so much better. Bravo.
    - 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
      …did you need that sign to be custom printed?
      - ang_cire 2y ago
        I actually got it as a Christmas present from my step-mom who runs a print shop. :D
    - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 2y ago
Barrin92 2y ago
I think there's something to be said about the benefits to diversity from having the BSDs in the ecosystem but in the linux distribution world there's basically been a Cambrian explosion with incredible amounts of duplication. Ubuntu is not going to be the only thing people run but consolidation in itself is not bad as there's also been a lot of half cooked, abandoned and redundant projects around.
packetlost 2y ago
I've thought about this quite a bit. Ultimately there's a lot of benefit to a monoculture, but there's also some pretty scary downsides. At the end of the day, a monoculture is cheap interoperability and a crappy alternative to standardized protocols.
ConanRus 2y ago
[dead]
danielschonfeld 2y ago
I think the efficiency of the market for lack of better term is showing its hand here as it is in everything else. You used to go to an airport and see maybe 10 different airplane types and about twice that in trials and airline colors. Now you see three for each roughly.
giantg2 2y ago
I think this is less of a problem with FOSS. If the current iteration is acceptable, and the next generation generates pushback, then the community can branch off in multiple directions that each faction believes to be best. Going back to the biology reference of monoculture... in evolution you do have times where the population is mostly homogeneous, until you encounter events that promote/favor diversity. Eventually events settle on one main "winner" configuration and the cycle repeats. Similar here in my opinion.
im3w1l 2y ago
SteamOS is Arch based. NixOS is also interesting, and could plausibly become really popular. Oh and Android of course!
horsawlarway 2y ago
I don't really understand this post. My take is that, if anything, the host OS is becoming less and less important (not that I would choose ubuntu for... well... anything these days). There is an explosion of viable alternatives that are all running in containers (nix, alpine, debian, hell - lots of folks are just using distroless/scratch containers these days with static binaries). For folks on managed clusters, they don't even care what the underlying hosts are at all (and again - they aren't ubuntu). Kernel consolidation is real, but I definitely don't see an Ubuntu monoculture. I see a linux monoculture. My guess is that won't change until Linus steps back from running that show, and then I expect it to fracture again (It's always the people that end up mattering). I also don't agree that ARM isn't coming. It is (I'm already running several services on rpis, and I get issued ARM macs for work). From a power perspective... hard to beat - The performance/watt is just too good to ignore. Graviton/TauT2A are already here, and they're economical on the hosted side. Basically - this feels like the "I'm getting on up there and just want a stable thing I know" type nostalgia post. Ubuntu fits that bill for a lot of folks, but it's not where I see the next generation going. If you're only seeing ubuntu... I suspect you've been doing the same thing for too long. Time to jump out of the rut. Go somewhere new, see the cool new-fangled things the kids are playing with (it's not ubuntu). Ubuntu is a perfectly fine solution (and frankly - debian more-so) but the view the author has from the context of a university setting is... as outdated as my professor that insisted on smalltalk still in 2007. It's not wrong, it's just aged.
jauntywundrkind 2y ago
Systemd is a huge threat this way. Who cares what distros there are when they use the same base capabilities? I'm a systemd fan actually, but I recognize the threat. I don't like there being a total success, a monoculture. But alas, it feels like most people either live with and learn to love what systemd offers (many dimensional excellence & capabilities exposed consistently) while living with the couple hiccups, or they have a retro backwards looking anti-big reaction. So there's like a centrist force & an anti-force. There's no one trying for bigger better. No one's trying to out-do systemd, do a better job: they're working tirelessly to try to recreate a past where we did much less, had much smaller ambitions. There's no progressive force. This directly mirrors Molly White's recent XOXO talk (video not yet available) where she talks about how the better new web we want isn't just so replay of the past. That we need to build on, no be afraid of what's newly possible, chase new targets, evolve. https://bsky.app/profile/knowtheory.net/post/3l2ib4kfrjm2r https://bsky.app/profile/knowtheory.net/post/3l2ib4kfrjm2r
suprjami 2y ago
Perhaps having an OS polyculture is a luxury afforded to organisations with lots of time and money to wear the inefficiency cost of doing things 3 or 4 different ways, or who want to intentionally prop up a competitor to ensure there is market competition (it's fabled that IBM bought so much SLES to provide a competitor to Red Hat), and maybe some other reasons. An Ubuntu monoculture at least gives you an easy migration path to Debian.
kkfx 2y ago
The main issue today is hw support and power saving: IllumOS/OmniOS, FreeBSD could barely run on modern hw and even if they run they tend con consume much more electricity than GNU/Linux. Beside that instead of becoming fool with Ubuntu I'd rather choose NixOS or, if I can depending on the infra needs, Guix System to have a more manageable system language. They are MUCH more manageable and robust than Ubuntu or other GNU/Linux distros by nature, not stable as old SUN Solaris, but still stable enough and they teach how to manage modern systems and infra, witch is damn needed these days.
rurban 2y ago
Esp. towards the worst of all distros. Personally I am happy user of Fedora, and my previous company relied on Centos (now they are maintaining Alma). Dealing with this Ubuntu crap is only marginally better than Windows. Debian is not much better.

49 points by matt_d 2y ago

> I feel that as system administrators, there's something we gain by having exposure to different Unixes that make different choices and have different tools than Ubuntu Linux. You could try Windows! The water is warm and quite pleasant. There’s many things that are worse in Windows, but there’s also many things that are better!

echelon 2y ago
Though I think the intent here was a desire for other Unices, that makes me wonder if Windows now qualifies as a POSIX system with WSL.
- mullingitover 2y ago
  Microsoft has been shipping POSIX-compliant Windows for over three decades now[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem
  - hinkley 2y ago
    Hold up. Didn’t they have no POSIX subsystem from 2012 to 2016? You can’t call it 30 years if they stopped, and stopping puts into question when they will stop again.
    - convolvatron 2y ago
      also before 2012 is was so marginal as to not be really usable for anything
      - dekhn 2y ago
        you could replace it with a fuller 'interix' which was basically a full Unix with x and motif. I ported a large motif gui app but never used it. Microsoft later bought interix
    - lmm 2y ago
      It was still available as a download for Server 2012. It was listed as deprecated and they recommended various migration paths, but they didn't stop shipping it.
      - hinkley 2y ago
        You don’t build a company strategy on deprecated projects with no announced replacement. Especially if it’s Microsoft or Google.
  - 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
    Yes but only as a technicality for sales. Nobody ever actually depended on or used the Windows POSIX system. Cygwin was created as a response to wanting a real working POSIX system on Windows.
  - suprjami 2y ago
    Services for UNIX has been removed and the "replacement" is WSL. I don't know if SFU was actually POSIX compliant, but Linux isn't 100% compliant and doesn't aim to be. Maybe having some modern WSL is better than having SFU's POSIX-1990?
- stroupwaffle 2y ago
  Windows HAS a POSIX (sub)system; Windows itself is not a POSIX system. ;)

hinkley 2y ago

I’d like a microkernel that can run Linux containers, and its own containers. That gives you the sort of platform on which you could introduce a new ecosystem by parts.

pphysch 2y ago
Like Talos Linux? Don't you need the full Linux kernel to run arbitrary Linux containers?
- zrail 2y ago
  Sounds more like Xen if Xen could boot containers instead of VMs.
- hinkley 2y ago
  Brian Cantrill talked about how they got Docker running on Joyent. They had to make shims for many system calls and a little more fiddly code for a handful more. No idea how much skill that takes, but it’s been done once.
  - 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
    It's the same thing as making WINE: you implement the ABI in userspace. It's a pain in the butt and it suffers from compatibility and performance issues. Programs run with WINE often run into problems not found on their native Windows environment. It's better to have a standard that each operating system implements so that apps don't need a weird portability layer in-between. Sadly, Linux doesn't give a shit about other systems, so any effort to standardize containers will happen outside Linux, and Linux probably won't pick up its changes because they already have Linux containers. So a WINE like thing would be the most workable option. The current state of affairs is actually a much better solution. Just make all containers OS-specific, and ship the OS kernel and dependencies along with a shim, and run them with QEMU. Apps run way more reliably this way with no porting required. The devs do less work, the users do less work, there's less bugs, and you can run any app in any OS.
0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago

samcat116 2y ago

> It seems unlikely that we'll get ARM-based machines, especially ones that we expose to people to log in to and use I don't really get why this is an assumption, in fact I'd heavily bet against it the not so distant future.

ang_cire 2y ago
I think he meant in his environment, not for IT in general.
- samcat116 2y ago
  That makes sense, but I'd love to know why it wouldn't work for them (especially in a post about how things are becoming a monoculture OS and architecture wise).
  - ang_cire 2y ago
    Going off my experience, it might be about not wanting to mix replacement part pools, or just biases about ARM being underpowered among management. It sounds like they're running everything on-prem, whereas a "cloud-native" org probably doesn't care as much.
- hinkley 2y ago
  Still, I already log into an ARM machine at home. No other choice at this point. And ARM at work was at the top of my todo list when I left my last job.
lalaland1125 2y ago
A lot of research labs run consumer hardware for cost reasons and we are still quite far away from non-Mac ARM desktops being available to consumers. The problem is that most of the consumer hardware manufacturers, from motherboards, to CPU coolers, etc are all geared towards AMD and Intel.

ang_cire 2y ago

As I read this, my homelab toilet servers in the next room are running x86 64-bit Ubuntu. My Framework 16 laptop is running x86 64-bit Ubuntu. My RPi 5 is running 64-bit Ubuntu (though that one is ARM). I used to have half a dozen dual-boot Linux distros on my fun laptop, and now it's just Ubuntu. I know those aren't the same as having other forms of Unix, but I think it echoes that even within the Linux ecosystem, Ubuntu has become the de-facto standard for a lot of people. I have never been a fan of CentOS, and SunOS was so long ago I barely remember it, and I've never tried FreeBSD, but I do want the FOSS-OS ecosystem to thrive and not collapse into Canonical alone (especially given that I don't entirely love some of their recent moves).

zrail 2y ago
> homelab toilet servers ....go on?
- ang_cire 2y ago
  It's pretty self-explanatory? https://i.imgur.com/QqjsPge.jpg https://i.imgur.com/QqjsPge.jpg
  - zrail 2y ago
    I was expecting like "terrible old server that I refer to as toilet because it's terrible" but this is so much better. Bravo.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
    …did you need that sign to be custom printed?
    - ang_cire 2y ago
      I actually got it as a Christmas present from my step-mom who runs a print shop. :D
  - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 2y ago

Barrin92 2y ago

I think there's something to be said about the benefits to diversity from having the BSDs in the ecosystem but in the linux distribution world there's basically been a Cambrian explosion with incredible amounts of duplication. Ubuntu is not going to be the only thing people run but consolidation in itself is not bad as there's also been a lot of half cooked, abandoned and redundant projects around.

packetlost 2y ago

I've thought about this quite a bit. Ultimately there's a lot of benefit to a monoculture, but there's also some pretty scary downsides. At the end of the day, a monoculture is cheap interoperability and a crappy alternative to standardized protocols.

ConanRus 2y ago

[dead]

danielschonfeld 2y ago

I think the efficiency of the market for lack of better term is showing its hand here as it is in everything else. You used to go to an airport and see maybe 10 different airplane types and about twice that in trials and airline colors. Now you see three for each roughly.

giantg2 2y ago

I think this is less of a problem with FOSS. If the current iteration is acceptable, and the next generation generates pushback, then the community can branch off in multiple directions that each faction believes to be best. Going back to the biology reference of monoculture... in evolution you do have times where the population is mostly homogeneous, until you encounter events that promote/favor diversity. Eventually events settle on one main "winner" configuration and the cycle repeats. Similar here in my opinion.

im3w1l 2y ago

SteamOS is Arch based. NixOS is also interesting, and could plausibly become really popular. Oh and Android of course!

horsawlarway 2y ago

I don't really understand this post. My take is that, if anything, the host OS is becoming less and less important (not that I would choose ubuntu for... well... anything these days). There is an explosion of viable alternatives that are all running in containers (nix, alpine, debian, hell - lots of folks are just using distroless/scratch containers these days with static binaries). For folks on managed clusters, they don't even care what the underlying hosts are at all (and again - they aren't ubuntu). Kernel consolidation is real, but I definitely don't see an Ubuntu monoculture. I see a linux monoculture. My guess is that won't change until Linus steps back from running that show, and then I expect it to fracture again (It's always the people that end up mattering). I also don't agree that ARM isn't coming. It is (I'm already running several services on rpis, and I get issued ARM macs for work). From a power perspective... hard to beat - The performance/watt is just too good to ignore. Graviton/TauT2A are already here, and they're economical on the hosted side. Basically - this feels like the "I'm getting on up there and just want a stable thing I know" type nostalgia post. Ubuntu fits that bill for a lot of folks, but it's not where I see the next generation going. If you're only seeing ubuntu... I suspect you've been doing the same thing for too long. Time to jump out of the rut. Go somewhere new, see the cool new-fangled things the kids are playing with (it's not ubuntu). Ubuntu is a perfectly fine solution (and frankly - debian more-so) but the view the author has from the context of a university setting is... as outdated as my professor that insisted on smalltalk still in 2007. It's not wrong, it's just aged.

jauntywundrkind 2y ago

Systemd is a huge threat this way. Who cares what distros there are when they use the same base capabilities? I'm a systemd fan actually, but I recognize the threat. I don't like there being a total success, a monoculture. But alas, it feels like most people either live with and learn to love what systemd offers (many dimensional excellence & capabilities exposed consistently) while living with the couple hiccups, or they have a retro backwards looking anti-big reaction. So there's like a centrist force & an anti-force. There's no one trying for bigger better. No one's trying to out-do systemd, do a better job: they're working tirelessly to try to recreate a past where we did much less, had much smaller ambitions. There's no progressive force. This directly mirrors Molly White's recent XOXO talk (video not yet available) where she talks about how the better new web we want isn't just so replay of the past. That we need to build on, no be afraid of what's newly possible, chase new targets, evolve. https://bsky.app/profile/knowtheory.net/post/3l2ib4kfrjm2r https://bsky.app/profile/knowtheory.net/post/3l2ib4kfrjm2r

suprjami 2y ago

Perhaps having an OS polyculture is a luxury afforded to organisations with lots of time and money to wear the inefficiency cost of doing things 3 or 4 different ways, or who want to intentionally prop up a competitor to ensure there is market competition (it's fabled that IBM bought so much SLES to provide a competitor to Red Hat), and maybe some other reasons. An Ubuntu monoculture at least gives you an easy migration path to Debian.

kkfx 2y ago

The main issue today is hw support and power saving: IllumOS/OmniOS, FreeBSD could barely run on modern hw and even if they run they tend con consume much more electricity than GNU/Linux. Beside that instead of becoming fool with Ubuntu I'd rather choose NixOS or, if I can depending on the infra needs, Guix System to have a more manageable system language. They are MUCH more manageable and robust than Ubuntu or other GNU/Linux distros by nature, not stable as old SUN Solaris, but still stable enough and they teach how to manage modern systems and infra, witch is damn needed these days.

rurban 2y ago

Esp. towards the worst of all distros. Personally I am happy user of Fedora, and my previous company relied on Centos (now they are maintaining Alma). Dealing with this Ubuntu crap is only marginally better than Windows. Debian is not much better.