Please don't shaft scientific computing users!
Please don't shaft scientific computing users!
Posted Jun 8, 2016 12:52 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46)In reply to: Please don't shaft scientific computing users! by rsidd
Parent article: Distributors ponder a systemd change
Exactly -- you don't expect processes to just sit around because you merely backgrounded them; you had to explicitly request this behavior, in advance (ie nohup/screen/etc) or you had no expectation of it remaining active when you logged out.
Heck, this was one of the first things I learned when I was but a wee lad some twenty years ago with my first exposure to Unix (SunOS) in an educational/scientific settings.
What will happen is that these traditional mechanisms will be extended to speak the right incantations to make sure nothing changes from an end-user's perspective -- except that if you don't explicitly request a process linger past logout, it *will* get killed, instead of proceeding in a schrodinger-ish state. Until then distros won't enable this feature by default.
Posted Jun 8, 2016 14:28 UTC (Wed)
by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
[Link] (12 responses)
Please don't shaft scientific computing users!
What will happen is that these traditional mechanisms will be extended to speak the right incantations to make sure nothing changes from an end-user's perspective
Looking at the tmux bug report inspires little confidence in this prediction. Nor does the quote from the article "So it may be some time before even the programs that are explicitly intended to run after logout are able to work transparently in this manner." Knowing corbet's style of writing this is likely an understatement.
Until then distros won't enable this feature by default.
Which distro has promised this, so far?
Like it or not (and I know Lennart P. doesn't like it), other unixen do exist, and many of the programs concerned are cross-platform. The most one can hope for is distro-level patching for some of the most popular ones.
Posted Jun 8, 2016 16:06 UTC (Wed)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (1 responses)
Oh, please. A proposal was rejected after determining there was a better way to achieve the desired goals.
> Which distro has promised this, so far?
From TFA, Debian, Arch, and Gentoo?
And, although the official decision is still pending, Fedora will likely follow.
Posted Jun 8, 2016 20:13 UTC (Wed)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
[Link]
Posted Jun 8, 2016 18:48 UTC (Wed)
by alankila (guest, #47141)
[Link]
Posted Jun 10, 2016 14:48 UTC (Fri)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (8 responses)
This is a fairly major Unix environment break. I'd have thought it should be via opt-in APIs - not opt-out.
Posted Jun 10, 2016 15:29 UTC (Fri)
by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
[Link] (7 responses)
I believe the answer is "screw that, we care about the Gnome desktop".
Posted Jun 10, 2016 15:55 UTC (Fri)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (6 responses)
No, the answer is "no matter how long we wait for folks to voluntarily update their stuff, it will never be long enough."
Meanwhile the rest of the world moves on.
Posted Jun 10, 2016 16:12 UTC (Fri)
by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
[Link] (5 responses)
I'd be more sympathetic if Gnome had produced a desktop that was widely regarded as awesome. Instead, in something like 17 years now, Gnome has produced Gnome1 which was a bad knockoff of KDE/CDE; Gnome2 that was a quite useful thing for some people; Gnome3 that threw out Gnome2 in favour of chasing some mythical unicorn. In that time, diehard Unix users moved to Linux and the BSDs, but many, eventually, to OS X. And desktop users of all persuasions (including Windows) became a minority in the face of the mobile onslaught. Where Linux dominates, but in a form (Android) that has little to do with Unix.
If you want to chase the market, just adopt Android on the desktop already. If you want to go after people who like the Unix way, stop pulling stunts like this that make decades-old habits suddenly stop working. Really.
Posted Jun 10, 2016 17:32 UTC (Fri)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (4 responses)
That only demonstrates that said "diehard unix users" actually prioritize "JustWorks" or even "OOooshiny" far higher than "respecting unix conventions".
Posted Jun 10, 2016 19:30 UTC (Fri)
by flussence (guest, #85566)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Jun 10, 2016 20:51 UTC (Fri)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (2 responses)
Oh? By any quantifiable quality, things are better now than they've ever been.
As for touchy-feely stuff like "respecting UNIX conventions". Twenty years ago in my academic days, I was taught that the overriding principle for UNIX was the simplicity of implementation. That was prioritized over everything else, including correctness, performance, and ease-of-use (for both developers and end-users)
Oh, for sake of discussion, I'll refer to this list:
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?UnixDesignPhilosophy
I'll note that even UNIXen at the time that list was published didn't really adhere to UNIX conventions all that well. As does the entire notion of GUIs.
Posted Jun 11, 2016 21:25 UTC (Sat)
by flussence (guest, #85566)
[Link]
Unix (the abstract ideal people usually talk about) shouldn't be confused with UNIX (sometimes spelled with an ®). I think most here would see ignoring the latter's conventions as a feature, on the other hand I agree with and often design systems according to that list. There are even a few points in there I didn't know about, but was doing anyway...
Posted Jun 13, 2016 13:17 UTC (Mon)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link]
If I really wanted to shake up my desktop, I'd probably just go for Android as my desktop, and use some rootless Xserver for whatever older apps I needed. I'd have tried that already, but I can't just 'yum install android-desktop' on my Fedora desktop and laptop.
Please don't shaft scientific computing users!
Please don't shaft scientific computing users!
Please don't shaft scientific computing users!
Please don't shaft scientific computing users!
Please don't shaft scientific computing users!
Please don't shaft scientific computing users!
Please don't shaft scientific computing users!
Please don't shaft scientific computing users!
Please don't shaft scientific computing users!
Please don't shaft scientific computing users!
Please don't shaft scientific computing users!
Please don't shaft scientific computing users!