Well, there are big difference...

Posted Nov 24, 2011 10:32 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: And people call Lannart arrogant??? by dlang
Parent article: That newfangled Journal thing

why not? Lennert thinks that he does, the only difference is the definition of 'heretic'

No. The main difference is that Lennart has the mandate to introduce this (and other) changes. Fedora has well-defined procedure where such changes are discussed and accepted and rejected - and so far it was pretty sympathetic to the Lennert's creations. They were considered on their technical merits and accepted or pushed away till they'll be ready. They also have the option to reject proposed changes completely (even it was never implemented so far).

This is normal technical process: we all want to make things better but of course different people differ in the definition of "better". What jmorris42 offers is totally different: we should create some kind of sacred tome which will define out religion and reject everything which does not conform to it. No matter if it's good or bad - if it's sacred tome it's wrong and not allowed.

If you want to worship someone or something - it's your choice, but please do it in your sect, in your temple, don't try to push this on other people.

I understand why jmorris42 does not like to do it this way: world is changing. Just because you refuse to change with it does not mean it'll comply with your wishes and will keep the option to use old code open: *BSD fell in this trap - they are mostly unusable today not because they have some inborn weaknesses but because companies decided they don't care and so it's hard to find hardware to run them on!

It's interesting that Linux itself is in danger of going the same way in some cases: people from Palm complain that when they contact subcontractors and ask about Linux support they are redirected to people who ask which version of Android they plan to use!

But if you fear that this will be the result then you have only two choices actually:
1. Accept changes and "go with the flow".
2. Roll up your sleeves and try to keep your "UNIX-style system" alive (like *BSD people are doing).

Screams "heretics, heretics" are not really a good answer because Linux world has no bishops which can hear you and if someone will try to instill such institution I doubt a lot of people will accept that.

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Well, there are big difference...

Posted Nov 24, 2011 11:26 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (2 responses)

you define heretic as anyone unwilling to accept the latest proposal

others define heretic as people eager to change the system in ways that are not incramental changes, but are instead "throw out what's there and write a replacement, the replacement doesn't need to do everything the old system did because the people who used those features aren't important"

changes that are proposed that are really optional (and not just "pick a different distro if you disagree" optional), and can be ignored if the admin wants to get relatively little opposition (they may get some grumbling if it takes work to figure out how to turn off the new features, but nowhere near the opposition that these re-writes from scratch get)

Well, there are big difference...

Posted Nov 24, 2011 11:34 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

by the way, a note on the number of users and the "most machines don't need this feature argument"

If you count by the number of people at a keyboard of a machine you may be right.

but when you start considering server farms where the admin to system ratio is commonly well over 100 servers per admin, you would get very different numbers.

embedded systems are in many ways far more like servers than desktops. They have skilled admins managing the software and all the non-trivial configurations on the devices (either at the factory, or through 'firmware updates'

'winning the desktop' while loosing servers and embedded devices would not be a overall win.

Well, there are big difference...

Posted Nov 24, 2011 14:23 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

but when you start considering server farms where the admin to system ratio is commonly well over 100 servers per admin, you would get very different numbers.

Sure. For example you can get... zero. We have totally different systems on desktop and on servers here (they only share few common packages like glibc and libstdc++ to simplify testing). It does not matter at all what the servers are using because desktops are using totally different Linux. I'm pretty sure we are not alone.

embedded systems are in many ways far more like servers than desktops. They have skilled admins managing the software and all the non-trivial configurations on the devices (either at the factory, or through 'firmware updates'

Again: there are many different types of embedded systems and they use different packages. What they usually don't use are desktop-based distributions.

'winning the desktop' while loosing servers and embedded devices would not be a overall win.

Why not? Apple ceased to produce their rack-mountable servers and they use quite different set of programs on their iPad and Macbook - and still is fine AFAICS.

Sure, we should not forget servers, routers and other Linux-based machinery, but I fail to see why the desktop-oriented distribution should be driven by the needs of server or an embedded system.

I think this one thing which Ubuntu did right (and Fedora followed): distribution's work is selection first and foremost. It must work fine in the default install. If you want to serve a different niche - you can create a spin-off. Journald does not propose to remove support of syslogd for the time being and I'm pretty sure such support will only be considered in the future if Journald will be good enough for most uses, not just for desktop.

As for "who's the most numerous"... it's silly question: RedHat's accounting department knows the numbers, I'm pretty sure needs of the most important customers will be taken into account when the fate of journald will be determined.