Poettering: Revisiting how we put together Linux systems

Posted Sep 6, 2014 21:00 UTC (Sat) by dlang (guest, #313)
In reply to: Poettering: Revisiting how we put together Linux systems by Wol
Parent article: Poettering: Revisiting how we put together Linux systems

> Where it will really score is commercial software which will be sold against something like a SLES or RHEL image, which will then continue to run "for ever" :-)

Yep, that's part of my fear.

this 'forever' doesn't include security updates.

People are already doing this with virtualization (see the push from vmware about how it allows people to keep running Windows XP forever), and you are seeing a lot of RHEL5 in cloud deployments, with no plans to ever upgrade to anything newer.

Poettering: Revisiting how we put together Linux systems

Posted Sep 6, 2014 22:14 UTC (Sat) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (2 responses)

As you say this is a dynamic that exists today so I'm not sure how it can be a con of the proposal as one of the main reasons VMs have taken over the industry is because of this same ABI management problem (and consolidation), with VMs you can run a particular tested userspace indefinately without impact to other software which needs a different ABI on the same system. This proposal doesn't really change this dynamic much, the same amount of pressure comes from end-users of proprietary vendor-ware to re-base and support newer OS releases even given that you can run old software indefinitely in VMs or containers.

Poettering: Revisiting how we put together Linux systems

Posted Sep 6, 2014 23:00 UTC (Sat) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

Is this a dynamic that we should be encouraging and move from a misuse of virtualization by some Enterprise customers to the status quo for everyone?

I don't think so.

Poettering: Revisiting how we put together Linux systems

Posted Sep 7, 2014 15:58 UTC (Sun) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

I think it is a dynamic that exists because it fills a need, it's an equilibrium, and we don't have control over he needs that drive it, but we can change the friction of different implementations to make life easier. Being able to easily run multiple ABIs on a system reduces the friction for upgrading just as much as VMs allow you to hold on to old systems forever.

On desktops as well being able to run older apps on newer systems rather than being force-upgraded because the distro updates and also being able to run other newer apps (and bugfixes) on a cadence faster than what a distro that releases every 6mo or 1yr gives, is a benefit that many seem to be looking for, staying on GNOME2 for example while keeping up with Firefox and LibreOffice updates or whatever. Being able to run multiple userspaces on the same system with low friction allows them to fight it out and compete more directly than dual-booting or VMs, rather than being locked in to what your preferred distro provides.