Distributors ponder a systemd change

Posted Jun 8, 2016 0:49 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Distributors ponder a systemd change by darwish
Parent article: Distributors ponder a systemd change

It's Ok to introduce “bold”, backward-incompatible changes when you are doing experimental work. Once your creation is in use by millions “bold steps” are no longer allowed. Think Windows Phone (Windows Mobile had 12% market share, Windows Phone 7 broke everything and as a result Windows Phone will, most likely die) and compare it to Windows itself (at introduction it also was pretty much incompatible with previous setups but that just meant that people ignored it… only when Windows 3.0 made it possible to use MS DOS programs it took off). Note that you could eventually remove stuff (Windows x64 no longer supports MS DOS programs) but there must be a transition period.

The sane decision here would be a dialog which asks user about it (similarly to how user is asked if they want to keep their “Documents” directory name after locale change), then add code to screen/tmux/etc (if people just flat out refuse to cooperate then Ok, you could just include link to the appropriate bug in “release notes”), etc.

IOW: this may be a good default, but it still breaks user's expectations without warnings. This is really bad—lack of warnings, that is. The change itself may be good, but “bold” moves like this is how your create not Linux, but Plan/9: good (as in: really good, no quotes) OS which nobody uses (not even it's creators).

Distributors ponder a systemd change

Posted Jun 20, 2016 19:04 UTC (Mon) by ThinkRob (guest, #64513) [Link]

> It's Ok to introduce “bold”, backward-incompatible changes when you are doing experimental work. Once your creation is in use by millions “bold steps” are no longer allowed.

But that's the strength of the distro model isn't it? Upstream projects can experiment, do cool stuff, etc. and the distros make sure that the parts that they ship are configured to suit whatever the goals of the distro (ease of use, niche-specific stuff, whatever.)

And that's exactly what's happening here. systemd switched the default in their upstream repo, and it's up to the distros to determine whether to follow that change immediately, give people some lead time, or say "fuck it" choose to ignore the change forever. All three are valid options depending on the distro's goals.