7 ms·

Aside from being a GNOME release team member I am also the packager for GNOME within Mageia. I find packaging GNOME to be really easy, way easier than I expecte

by bkor 14y ago

Aside from being a GNOME release team member I am also the packager for GNOME within Mageia. I find packaging GNOME to be really easy, way easier than I expected actually. Your argument comes across as that others should work more like the way you want them to work. The "large detachment from reality" is IMO an unneeded comment, easy to make comments from the sideline. The people who are involved with GNOME from OpenBSD side are really nice and friendly. But some in that openbsd thread have the weird notion that if OpenBSD would drop GNOME that then we'd take OpenBSD more into consideration. Your bit about NetworkManager: The goal is that you can easily configure your network. The way of doing that at that time and for now is NetworkManager. If it isn't good enough, then promote something which delivers the same goal, but is technically better. That's how to positively and practically change things.

thaumaturgy 14y ago
Mageia is forked from Mandriva, and not very old, and Mandriva already has systemd support. I'm not surprised that Gnome has been easy for you to package for your distribution. As far as I know, none of the BSDs are packaging Gnome 3 right now. Not one of them. Don't you think that might be signaling some trouble?
- takluyver 14y ago
  > As far as I know, none of the BSDs are packaging Gnome 3 right now. Not one of them. Don't you think that might be signaling some trouble? But is that trouble for Gnome, or trouble for the BSDs? I suspect the affected users are a rather larger percentage of the BSD userbase than of the Gnome userbase.
  - meaty 14y ago
    I think, being a BSD user, we're probably not concerned much about that. Gnome 3 accounts for a miniscule proportion of users. It's less relevant that Gnome 3 doesn't work on BSD to the BSD projects than Gnome if you ask me. Bad PR for Gnome would cost more than bar PR for BSD.
    - bkor 14y ago
      I'm not sure why you're focussed on PR? Anyone is free to help out and ensure that GNOME runs on BSD. But if nobody spends any effort, then don't complain when it goes wrong. At the moment even the feedback is pretty bad. There is 6+ months of development all done in the open, to only hear much later that some decision made 9+ months ago had a unforseen side-effect.
  - thaumaturgy 14y ago
    Well, both. The BSDs are inarguably falling behind when it comes to active, daily, "regular desktop" users, and a lot of that is due to the struggling they're doing with hardware support and with desktop environments. Either the BSDs are going to end up relegated for a long time to server-only OSs (arguably they already have been), or they are going to somehow commit massive resources to catch up (possibly inventing their own replacement pieces along the way), or they are going to disappear completely. And it is that third outcome that really should make anybody that cares about Linux crap their pants, because the BSDs have some very very nice architectural features and have collectively contributed a lot back to the Linux ecosystem. In some ways, they are way ahead of anything that Linux has to offer. (pf versus iptables is an easy example. I think I would weep with joy if Linux ever threw out iptables and replaced it with pf.) If the support for BSD dwindles down below a certain point, that's going to be bad for the entire Linux community too. Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to be either inexperienced in either Linux or BSD and don't know any better, or they are short-sighted and don't see any reason to be concerned about the long-term viability of the other.
    - takluyver 14y ago
      But even if no-one's using desktop BSD, the interesting code in it won't disappear, and neither will the people who write that code. Perhaps I'm being short sighted, but I don't see much danger to the Linux ecosystem from BSD's userbase dwindling.
      - thaumaturgy 14y ago
        Good software isn't like a real-world monument; people don't spend effort to go back and revisit it later and gawk at it. Good software either gets championed by someone, or it fades forever into obscurity. (I wrote a really amazing hack years ago ... in COBOL. Maybe you've heard of me?) Likewise, the people that are contributing to BSD right now are doing so because they believe in what they are working on. Although some of them are true cross-platform developers, many others would never make the switch. It would be agony trying to work in Linux if you're, say, Theo de Raadt. Seriously, I wonder if that might be his own personal version of hell. I use a lot of both -- Debian, an Arch-like thing, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and have for years. The only reason that I know that iptables has serious shortcomings is because I've used pf. If I had never used the BSDs, I would have no idea what I was missing out on. If I had twenty more hours in a day, I might even be tempted to make iptables more pf-like. pf is kind of my go-to for BSD cheerleading, but it shines in other core areas too. For instance, Linux is really only just now getting stuff that looks like a distributed or cluster file system; but BSD has had this for quite a while already. Heck, one of the best options for a while in this area was HAMMER, developed by one guy for his personal BSD. And if you wanted something a little bit more mainstream, FreeBSD has supported ZFS for a long time -- Linux is still catching up there. Or, there was the new malloc that OpenBSD developed a few years ago, that ended up revealing old memory-related bugs in all kinds of software (e.g. http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20080708155228&mode=flat http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=2008070815522...). There's simply no way that all those people would be doing the same kind of work in the sort of environment that Linux is fostering right now.
  - papsosouid 14y ago
    I can choose between giving up a simple, reliable OS or giving up a convoluted and obnoxious desktop interface that is essentially indistinguishable from the competing convoluted and obnoxious desktop interfaces. Guess which one I am likely to choose.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- bkor 14y ago
  You're wrong in your assumptions. Mageia did not have systemd support. We do now though, but we had to do that ourselves. To get systemd right for Mageia one person got involved with systemd and has sent various improvements upstream. Fixing bugs, etc, because nothing is perfect. In any case, my point is that almost everyone at GNOME uses all kinds of different Linux distributions, so everyone is aware of that. That GNOME is not packaged on *BSD: Why should that be troublesome if there is no involvement from them? In any case, we do get involvement from OpenBSD, just very little in comparison. For GNOME, various distributions send patches because a released tarball does not work in their environment. This is often done in the two days between tarball creation deadline and the actual GNOME release. This does not happen too often btw, but this is not limited to any specific distribution. What I am trying to say is: to make something work you have to work together. If you expect something perfect, I find it logical it turns out as a disappointment.
  - thaumaturgy 14y ago
    Lennart has outright said that systemd won't run on BSD (http://lwn.net/Articles/452865/ http://lwn.net/Articles/452865/), and now Gnome is saying it won't run (major components at least) without systemd. How is this about BSD devs needing to "work together"? Come on. You're talking about a major refactoring of core aspects of BSD until it becomes, basically, Linux. I have no idea why you're going off there about "perfect" when that's not what anybody else is talking about. Don't make this about BSD's involvement. The Gnome team has clearly just made a decision to support Linux, and Linux only.
    - bkor 14y ago
      I already said I am on the GNOME release team. So instead of referencing LWN, I'd rather reference GNOME release team meeting minutes: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/release-team/2012-November/msg00015.html https://mail.gnome.org/archives/release-team/2012-November/m... I'm not talking about BSD working together. I'm talking to participate. If you don't then you're ignored. IMO I've been quite thorough to explain my point-of-view, would appreciate if you could at least understand what I'm trying to say. An us-vs-them is not helpful.
meaty 14y ago
In that case as a Gnome team member, please take the comments I made as complaints relating to things that need fixing. I wouldn't say them if I did't stand behind my opinion. In fact, my argument is that Gnome should adhere to sound engineering principles. This is not my sole opinion - it is a generic opinion which can be applied to any engineering project and is an established norm. "Move the goalposts, expect trouble". NetworkManager utterly wins at easily configuring your network, but only if you have one ethernet card or a wireless card. For any other circumstance, it falls over miserably and turns into a shitfest of epic proportions which proceeds to bugger you at every available opportunity. ifconfig is a better tool, particularly on BSD as it handles ALL interfaces equally, ironically due to sound engineering! My efforts would be better spent writing a new desktop environment which actually cares about UNIX's semantics and architecture rather than reinventing it every few months.
- takluyver 14y ago
  I use two network interfaces on my laptop (wired and wireless), and NM seems to handle both without any issues. Or did you mean something else?
  - meaty 14y ago
    In my case, I have a wireless and PPTP VPN connection. I tried SSTP but couldn't even get a build working during to API breakages. The VPN configuration is a mess and hideously impossible to debug properly. There is no way an average end user would be able to get it working as you have to set log levels via cryptic dbus commands, start various services including network manager in debug mode and dredge through log files etc. Add to that, the source is comment free, there is no documentation whatsoever. That's all just shitty engineering. The whole thing feels like it's been built by 12 year olds.
nitrogen 14y ago
If it isn't good enough, then promote something which delivers the same goal, but is technically better. That's how to positively and practically change things. No it's not. The way to positively and practically change things is to do them right in the first place, or failing that, fix the system you have. The "throw it away and do something new" attitude is the driving force behind everything that is wrong with Linux on the desktop.
- meaty 14y ago
  Indeed - I think that is the entire summary of my point. There is reinvention due to ego, not sound engineering.
  - mercurial 14y ago
    I'm all for incremental improvements vs big rewrites. However, there are times where incremental improvement is not viable because the basic premises of the new system is conflicting with the basic premises of the old system. Take systemd, for instance. One of its stated goals is to remove shell scripts. This is not something which can be achieved by incrementally modifying sysvinit.
    - qznc 14y ago
      sysvinit does not require shell scripts, does it? You could put binary programs into /etc/init.d just as well.
      - mercurial 14y ago
        This wouldn't play very well with "modern" versions of sysvinit: http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts Besides, it's more a case of changing from a list of imperative programs replete with code duplication to a declarative model, rather than going from shell scripts to $language_of_the_day scripts. This is what I tried (and failed) to express in my earlier post.
    - meaty 14y ago

by bkor 14y ago

thaumaturgy 14y ago

Mageia is forked from Mandriva, and not very old, and Mandriva already has systemd support. I'm not surprised that Gnome has been easy for you to package for your distribution. As far as I know, none of the BSDs are packaging Gnome 3 right now. Not one of them. Don't you think that might be signaling some trouble?

takluyver 14y ago
> As far as I know, none of the BSDs are packaging Gnome 3 right now. Not one of them. Don't you think that might be signaling some trouble? But is that trouble for Gnome, or trouble for the BSDs? I suspect the affected users are a rather larger percentage of the BSD userbase than of the Gnome userbase.
- meaty 14y ago
  I think, being a BSD user, we're probably not concerned much about that. Gnome 3 accounts for a miniscule proportion of users. It's less relevant that Gnome 3 doesn't work on BSD to the BSD projects than Gnome if you ask me. Bad PR for Gnome would cost more than bar PR for BSD.
  - bkor 14y ago
    I'm not sure why you're focussed on PR? Anyone is free to help out and ensure that GNOME runs on BSD. But if nobody spends any effort, then don't complain when it goes wrong. At the moment even the feedback is pretty bad. There is 6+ months of development all done in the open, to only hear much later that some decision made 9+ months ago had a unforseen side-effect.
- thaumaturgy 14y ago
  Well, both. The BSDs are inarguably falling behind when it comes to active, daily, "regular desktop" users, and a lot of that is due to the struggling they're doing with hardware support and with desktop environments. Either the BSDs are going to end up relegated for a long time to server-only OSs (arguably they already have been), or they are going to somehow commit massive resources to catch up (possibly inventing their own replacement pieces along the way), or they are going to disappear completely. And it is that third outcome that really should make anybody that cares about Linux crap their pants, because the BSDs have some very very nice architectural features and have collectively contributed a lot back to the Linux ecosystem. In some ways, they are way ahead of anything that Linux has to offer. (pf versus iptables is an easy example. I think I would weep with joy if Linux ever threw out iptables and replaced it with pf.) If the support for BSD dwindles down below a certain point, that's going to be bad for the entire Linux community too. Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to be either inexperienced in either Linux or BSD and don't know any better, or they are short-sighted and don't see any reason to be concerned about the long-term viability of the other.
  - takluyver 14y ago
    But even if no-one's using desktop BSD, the interesting code in it won't disappear, and neither will the people who write that code. Perhaps I'm being short sighted, but I don't see much danger to the Linux ecosystem from BSD's userbase dwindling.
    - thaumaturgy 14y ago
      Good software isn't like a real-world monument; people don't spend effort to go back and revisit it later and gawk at it. Good software either gets championed by someone, or it fades forever into obscurity. (I wrote a really amazing hack years ago ... in COBOL. Maybe you've heard of me?) Likewise, the people that are contributing to BSD right now are doing so because they believe in what they are working on. Although some of them are true cross-platform developers, many others would never make the switch. It would be agony trying to work in Linux if you're, say, Theo de Raadt. Seriously, I wonder if that might be his own personal version of hell. I use a lot of both -- Debian, an Arch-like thing, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and have for years. The only reason that I know that iptables has serious shortcomings is because I've used pf. If I had never used the BSDs, I would have no idea what I was missing out on. If I had twenty more hours in a day, I might even be tempted to make iptables more pf-like. pf is kind of my go-to for BSD cheerleading, but it shines in other core areas too. For instance, Linux is really only just now getting stuff that looks like a distributed or cluster file system; but BSD has had this for quite a while already. Heck, one of the best options for a while in this area was HAMMER, developed by one guy for his personal BSD. And if you wanted something a little bit more mainstream, FreeBSD has supported ZFS for a long time -- Linux is still catching up there. Or, there was the new malloc that OpenBSD developed a few years ago, that ended up revealing old memory-related bugs in all kinds of software (e.g. http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20080708155228&mode=flat http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=2008070815522...). There's simply no way that all those people would be doing the same kind of work in the sort of environment that Linux is fostering right now.
- papsosouid 14y ago
  I can choose between giving up a simple, reliable OS or giving up a convoluted and obnoxious desktop interface that is essentially indistinguishable from the competing convoluted and obnoxious desktop interfaces. Guess which one I am likely to choose.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
bkor 14y ago
You're wrong in your assumptions. Mageia did not have systemd support. We do now though, but we had to do that ourselves. To get systemd right for Mageia one person got involved with systemd and has sent various improvements upstream. Fixing bugs, etc, because nothing is perfect. In any case, my point is that almost everyone at GNOME uses all kinds of different Linux distributions, so everyone is aware of that. That GNOME is not packaged on *BSD: Why should that be troublesome if there is no involvement from them? In any case, we do get involvement from OpenBSD, just very little in comparison. For GNOME, various distributions send patches because a released tarball does not work in their environment. This is often done in the two days between tarball creation deadline and the actual GNOME release. This does not happen too often btw, but this is not limited to any specific distribution. What I am trying to say is: to make something work you have to work together. If you expect something perfect, I find it logical it turns out as a disappointment.
- thaumaturgy 14y ago
  Lennart has outright said that systemd won't run on BSD (http://lwn.net/Articles/452865/ http://lwn.net/Articles/452865/), and now Gnome is saying it won't run (major components at least) without systemd. How is this about BSD devs needing to "work together"? Come on. You're talking about a major refactoring of core aspects of BSD until it becomes, basically, Linux. I have no idea why you're going off there about "perfect" when that's not what anybody else is talking about. Don't make this about BSD's involvement. The Gnome team has clearly just made a decision to support Linux, and Linux only.
  - bkor 14y ago
    I already said I am on the GNOME release team. So instead of referencing LWN, I'd rather reference GNOME release team meeting minutes: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/release-team/2012-November/msg00015.html https://mail.gnome.org/archives/release-team/2012-November/m... I'm not talking about BSD working together. I'm talking to participate. If you don't then you're ignored. IMO I've been quite thorough to explain my point-of-view, would appreciate if you could at least understand what I'm trying to say. An us-vs-them is not helpful.

meaty 14y ago

In that case as a Gnome team member, please take the comments I made as complaints relating to things that need fixing. I wouldn't say them if I did't stand behind my opinion. In fact, my argument is that Gnome should adhere to sound engineering principles. This is not my sole opinion - it is a generic opinion which can be applied to any engineering project and is an established norm. "Move the goalposts, expect trouble". NetworkManager utterly wins at easily configuring your network, but only if you have one ethernet card or a wireless card. For any other circumstance, it falls over miserably and turns into a shitfest of epic proportions which proceeds to bugger you at every available opportunity. ifconfig is a better tool, particularly on BSD as it handles ALL interfaces equally, ironically due to sound engineering! My efforts would be better spent writing a new desktop environment which actually cares about UNIX's semantics and architecture rather than reinventing it every few months.

takluyver 14y ago
I use two network interfaces on my laptop (wired and wireless), and NM seems to handle both without any issues. Or did you mean something else?
- meaty 14y ago
  In my case, I have a wireless and PPTP VPN connection. I tried SSTP but couldn't even get a build working during to API breakages. The VPN configuration is a mess and hideously impossible to debug properly. There is no way an average end user would be able to get it working as you have to set log levels via cryptic dbus commands, start various services including network manager in debug mode and dredge through log files etc. Add to that, the source is comment free, there is no documentation whatsoever. That's all just shitty engineering. The whole thing feels like it's been built by 12 year olds.

nitrogen 14y ago

If it isn't good enough, then promote something which delivers the same goal, but is technically better. That's how to positively and practically change things. No it's not. The way to positively and practically change things is to do them right in the first place, or failing that, fix the system you have. The "throw it away and do something new" attitude is the driving force behind everything that is wrong with Linux on the desktop.

meaty 14y ago
Indeed - I think that is the entire summary of my point. There is reinvention due to ego, not sound engineering.
- mercurial 14y ago
  I'm all for incremental improvements vs big rewrites. However, there are times where incremental improvement is not viable because the basic premises of the new system is conflicting with the basic premises of the old system. Take systemd, for instance. One of its stated goals is to remove shell scripts. This is not something which can be achieved by incrementally modifying sysvinit.
  - qznc 14y ago
    sysvinit does not require shell scripts, does it? You could put binary programs into /etc/init.d just as well.
    - mercurial 14y ago
      This wouldn't play very well with "modern" versions of sysvinit: http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts Besides, it's more a case of changing from a list of imperative programs replete with code duplication to a declarative model, rather than going from shell scripts to $language_of_the_day scripts. This is what I tried (and failed) to express in my earlier post.
  - meaty 14y ago