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#26 2011-05-23 23:56:55

Misfit138
Misfit Emeritus
From: USA
Registered: 2006-11-27
Posts: 4,189

Re: Gnome OS? systemd as a dependency

ngoonee wrote:

I like KISS, but understand that it involves me doing more work than perhaps is strictly necessary to get things running..

And yet, I (and many others) have nearly the opposite experience; it is abstraction and annoyances like consolekit and pulseaudio which so often cause us more work and aggravation. Thankfully, Arch still allows us to choose.

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#27 2011-05-24 00:22:19

ngoonee
Forum Fellow
From: Between Thailand and Singapore
Registered: 2009-03-17
Posts: 7,354

Re: Gnome OS? systemd as a dependency

Misfit138 wrote:
ngoonee wrote:

I like KISS, but understand that it involves me doing more work than perhaps is strictly necessary to get things running..

And yet, I (and many others) have nearly the opposite experience; it is abstraction and annoyances like consolekit and pulseaudio which so often cause us more work and aggravation. Thankfully, Arch still allows us to choose.

Yes, choice is great, of course smile.


Allan-Volunteer on the (topic being discussed) mailn lists. You never get the people who matters attention on the forums.
jasonwryan-Installing Arch is a measure of your literacy. Maintaining Arch is a measure of your diligence. Contributing to Arch is a measure of your competence.
Griemak-Bleeding edge, not bleeding flat. Edge denotes falls will occur from time to time. Bring your own parachute.

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#28 2011-05-24 10:44:44

moljac024
Member
From: Serbia
Registered: 2008-01-29
Posts: 2,676

Re: Gnome OS? systemd as a dependency

And yet, as gentooers are a 1000 monkeys compiling the same package over and over again, archers are a 1000 monkeys configuring the (more or less) same system over and over again.


The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck, is the day they make a vacuum cleaner.
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But if they tell you that I've lost my mind, maybe it's not gone just a little hard to find...

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#29 2011-05-24 10:46:36

ngoonee
Forum Fellow
From: Between Thailand and Singapore
Registered: 2009-03-17
Posts: 7,354

Re: Gnome OS? systemd as a dependency

moljac024 wrote:

And yet, as gentooers are a 1000 monkeys compiling the same package over and over again, archers are a 1000 monkeys configuring the (more or less) same system over and over again.

I highly doubt that outside the major DEs you'd find many archers with 'more or less' the same system smile.


Allan-Volunteer on the (topic being discussed) mailn lists. You never get the people who matters attention on the forums.
jasonwryan-Installing Arch is a measure of your literacy. Maintaining Arch is a measure of your diligence. Contributing to Arch is a measure of your competence.
Griemak-Bleeding edge, not bleeding flat. Edge denotes falls will occur from time to time. Bring your own parachute.

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#30 2011-05-25 01:33:53

sand_man
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2008-06-10
Posts: 2,164

Re: Gnome OS? systemd as a dependency

ngoonee wrote:
moljac024 wrote:

And yet, as gentooers are a 1000 monkeys compiling the same package over and over again, archers are a 1000 monkeys configuring the (more or less) same system over and over again.

I highly doubt that outside the major DEs you'd find many archers with 'more or less' the same system smile.

Exactly. Configurability is what we have over other distros. What works for one may not work for another. And we come full circle. That's why I don't like where gnome is heading. Personally I use pulseaudio because I have two sound cards and I have no problems with it but I don't think it's right to force it on gnome users. Same goes with systemd.

http://www.linfo.org/unix_philosophy.html

There is no single, standardized statement of the philosophy. But if it had to be described with only a single word, that word would be modularity, which refers to a system that is composed of components (i.e., modules) that can be fitted together or arranged in a variety of ways.

Enough said I think.


neutral

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#31 2011-05-26 10:00:15

MurdersLastCrow
Member
Registered: 2010-10-04
Posts: 74

Re: Gnome OS? systemd as a dependency

The real question is what great benefit there is to gain, either to developers or users, by making things like that a dependency? As things work great the way they are, I think it would be simple enough to turn off the beneficial functionality and keep what is present if systemd isn't detected on the system. Then again, we don't have a choice between HTML and some other unified web standard. We don't usually expect a variety of possibilities for a great amount of things in this ecosystem- if systemd becomes good enough, it may become ubiquitous in a way. Of course, that means it would have to prioritize the needs of those who want full control, or that an alternative come for those. So it's far less likely in this case to be okay with everyone.

I think they should at least stage the systemd-dependent changes and prove the concepts a bit before deciding to deploy it in a stable release (as I'm sure they will if they consider it seriously). It's always a balancing act, and sometimes, for the sake of improvement of a crucial piece of technology, you try to weather the storm of breakage in order to achieve a higher goal. Qt 5's plan for requiring OpenGL for rendering, for instance, may be seen as such a change. Of course, systemd is a much more crucial part of a working system, even if it's something you don't really 'use'.

Even though I think there may be a better way to possibly handle the situation, I do like systemd.

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#32 2011-05-26 10:54:55

sand_man
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2008-06-10
Posts: 2,164

Re: Gnome OS? systemd as a dependency

One thing to note is that gnome was originally part of the GNU project. I know that the idea was to create an entirely free UNIX like operating system but I'm sure RMS never intended it to be tied down to Linux as the kernel. Just about anything in a Linux OS can be replaced with a counterpart from another project.
I don't really know what I'm getting at here. I guess I'm just wondering what Stallman would think about this.


neutral

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#33 2011-05-27 02:51:34

yejun
Member
Registered: 2009-10-21
Posts: 66

Re: Gnome OS? systemd as a dependency

I switched to systemd today. Everything seems working out of the box.

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#34 2011-05-27 05:56:59

sand_man
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2008-06-10
Posts: 2,164

Re: Gnome OS? systemd as a dependency

yejun wrote:

I switched to systemd today. Everything seems working out of the box.

I don't think anyone is saying that it doesn't work, it is IMO bad to depend on it since it is Linux only.


neutral

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#35 2011-05-27 19:16:38

pseudonomous
Member
Registered: 2008-04-23
Posts: 349

Re: Gnome OS? systemd as a dependency

Leonid.I wrote:
Mad Fish wrote:

Who uses other kernels (*BSD, Solaris) on desktop? Really? They are INSANELY lagging behind for desktop usage in comparison to Linux (especially in graphics stack).
If being Linux-specific adds value, then it's the right way to go. It's the task of other OS developers to adapt software for their needs. There is no need for upstream to care about unimportant kernels.

Indeed. Somehow people are quick to accuse gnome of neglecting other un*x platforms, but forget that BSDs so far lack KMS support, actively pushed by intel, which make these OSs useless on a desktop with intel gma chpis. So, who is to blame here?
...

Maybe you can distribute some of the blame to the Intel Xorg developers who've chose to make their graphics drivers unportable to any non-Linux architecture.  By your logic, since everybody's graphics stack is lagging behind Microsoft's  (including Apple's) then we should all be using Windows, so the GNOME developers might as well forget about supporting Linux and concentrate on porting their environment to windows.

Not to attack you personally, but the "screw everybody else, this is for Linux" attitude that a lot of projects hold really annoys me.

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#36 2011-05-28 00:04:12

aport
Member
From: San Diego
Registered: 2008-02-20
Posts: 99

Re: Gnome OS? systemd as a dependency

I think they are going in the right direction. We're seeing more and more applications become Linux-only... it's just progress.

Even XFCE 4.8 embraced this phenomenon. They dropped HAL in favor of udev, and as a result the BSD crowd gets shafted. I say whatever... if BSD software lags behind, it shouldn't stunt the growth of new and improved software.

Also, these DE developers have no obligations to support all *NIX variants out there. The burden lies on the system developers to create useful software and APIs upon which software like XFCE or GNOME can run. If those APIs and software start lagging behind and the DE developers drop support for the sake of progress, good riddance.

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#37 2011-05-28 00:27:26

aport
Member
From: San Diego
Registered: 2008-02-20
Posts: 99

Re: Gnome OS? systemd as a dependency

pseudonomous wrote:

Not to attack you personally, but the "screw everybody else, this is for Linux" attitude that a lot of projects hold really annoys me.

Writing portable software isn't really as simple as using POSIX-only syscalls. Maybe back in 1995, but it's far from true today.
Here's a pretend example:

A developer is writing an application which needs to be aware of device events. He's running Linux, so he checks out libudev. Libudev does everything he needs. It's also extremely well documented.
Our developer uses libudev, the program works great, and all is well.
A FreeBSD user asks the developer, "Can you make this run on FreeBSD?"
Hmm... Well let's see. Udev doesn't run on FreeBSD, so now our developer has to refactor large portions of his code to create an absraction layer for device events. Then, he needs to hook in support for whichever udev-like software FreeBSD runs. This alone is a strong deterrent to writing portable software. This is also a reason listed in the original article about GNOME3.
Then our developer discovers that FreeBSD uses devd. Our developer also discovers that, not only is devd not so terrific, it's also poorly documented. Whoops.

This "Linux-only" attitude is natural. If FreeBSD wants developers to write awesome software, they need to provide awesome APIs along with awesome documentation. Awesome documentation does *not* mean a single vague manpage entry on freebsd.org (this is the only information I could find about devd in three days.)


Edit: This "linux-only developers vs *NIX users" debate has raged for a while, and has recently started to escalate. There is some good discussion about the topic here: http://gezeiten.org/post/2011/01/Xfce-4 … SD-flavors.

Basically, BSD guys blame the Linux guys for writing bad (non-portable) code, and the Linux guys blame the BSD guys for writing poor documentation and not participating upstream.
After all, the FreeBSD mentality has been, "Don't try to deal with it upstream, let's just ignore those crazy Linux guys and fix the code locally." Turns out that when the upstream development pace is going a million miles per hour, you're left in the dust.
There is a longstanding joke in the FreeBSD community in which Linux developers think that all *NIX systems run udev. It's unfortunately close to true, but whose fault is it?

Last edited by aport (2011-05-28 01:02:47)

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#38 2011-05-28 16:59:13

Leonid.I
Member
From: Aethyr
Registered: 2009-03-22
Posts: 999

Re: Gnome OS? systemd as a dependency

pseudonomous wrote:
Leonid.I wrote:
Mad Fish wrote:

Who uses other kernels (*BSD, Solaris) on desktop? Really? They are INSANELY lagging behind for desktop usage in comparison to Linux (especially in graphics stack).
If being Linux-specific adds value, then it's the right way to go. It's the task of other OS developers to adapt software for their needs. There is no need for upstream to care about unimportant kernels.

Indeed. Somehow people are quick to accuse gnome of neglecting other un*x platforms, but forget that BSDs so far lack KMS support, actively pushed by intel, which make these OSs useless on a desktop with intel gma chpis. So, who is to blame here?
...

Maybe you can distribute some of the blame to the Intel Xorg developers who've chose to make their graphics drivers unportable to any non-Linux architecture.  By your logic, since everybody's graphics stack is lagging behind Microsoft's  (including Apple's) then we should all be using Windows, so the GNOME developers might as well forget about supporting Linux and concentrate on porting their environment to windows.

Not to attack you personally, but the "screw everybody else, this is for Linux" attitude that a lot of projects hold really annoys me.

No offense taken smile

All I said was that GNOME is not the first major project focusing solely on linux.

Now, regarding other platforms... hmm. What would I use (linux/BSD or win7) on a machine with switchable hi-end graphics? In my experience, directX under win is superior to opengl under mac/linux/unix. That is when you really need hardware accel (as opposed to using it for toys, like desktop effects). Right tool for the job, you know...


Arch Linux is more than just GNU/Linux -- it's an adventure
pkill -9 systemd

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#39 2011-05-28 20:44:49

MurdersLastCrow
Member
Registered: 2010-10-04
Posts: 74

Re: Gnome OS? systemd as a dependency

I'd like to see what the BSD forums are saying about this matter. These guys tend to come up with some pretty ingenious hacks to work around issues like this (there is plenty of software that have workarounds due to focus on Linux that BSD users can use anyway). I would hope that it wouldn't be too difficult to do something to make it portable, but I don't think it should always fall on the *BSD developers to work around these issues. I think that, so far as it's convenient and realistic, we should support as many platforms as possible.

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#40 2011-05-28 21:59:49

aport
Member
From: San Diego
Registered: 2008-02-20
Posts: 99

Re: Gnome OS? systemd as a dependency

MurdersLastCrow wrote:

I'd like to see what the BSD forums are saying about this matter. These guys tend to come up with some pretty ingenious hacks to work around issues like this (there is plenty of software that have workarounds due to focus on Linux that BSD users can use anyway). I would hope that it wouldn't be too difficult to do something to make it portable, but I don't think it should always fall on the *BSD developers to work around these issues. I think that, so far as it's convenient and realistic, we should support as many platforms as possible.

Unfortunately the only real difficulty with porting systemd is the developer. He won't do it himself, and he won't merge any patches either.
He implies that forks should be made which rip out linux-only code and replaces it. For example, replace inotify and epoll with kqueue.

Kind of a PITA, but I think he makes a good point. Init is at the very bottom of the userspace stack. It should be as closely integrated to the underlying kernel as possible. The kernels provide different interfaces, yes, but the developer is proposing that systemd interfaces, not the code, become the commonality shared between them. Each kernel can fork systemd, integrate it with the kernel at the lowest level, then use the systemd interfaces on top of it. Systemd has already stated that the interfaces won't change, and that writing kernel-specific replacements is a trivial task. I would figure that FreeBSD developers would be absolutely delighted to replace Linux-only syscalls with FreeBSD-only syscalls. After all, Linux sucks and BSD is vastly superior.

Let's assume that FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, etc... wake up and realize that this is not a bad thing... it's actually a very good thing. We get better, faster, more feature-rich code which is much easier to maintain... and we also get a good step toward a more standardized userspace. Why should high-level userspace developers have to worry about low-level kernel interfaces? It's a giant pain the in the ass that impedes progress and turns small, simple programs into large, unwieldy beasts.

I think what this really boils down to is BSD developers expecting RedHat to write BSD code for them. RedHat only cares about Linux. The code is free; BSD developers are more than welcome to port the software themselves. If it's so easy that the systemd developer has no good excuse, then what's the issue here? Git... how does it work?

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#41 2011-05-29 02:35:07

Anthony Bentley
Member
Registered: 2009-12-21
Posts: 76

Re: Gnome OS? systemd as a dependency

aport wrote:

Basically, BSD guys blame the Linux guys for writing bad (non-portable) code, and the Linux guys blame the BSD guys for writing poor documentation and not participating upstream.
After all, the FreeBSD mentality has been, "Don't try to deal with it upstream, let's just ignore those crazy Linux guys and fix the code locally." Turns out that when the upstream development pace is going a million miles per hour, you're left in the dust.

Since when does BSD not participate upstream?

At least in OpenBSD, local patching is strongly discouraged, for obvious reasons. Even for things in the base system (like BIND, …), patches are usually rejected and instead sent upstream. And they actively work with upstream when upstream cares—for instance, Marc Espie has commit access to GCC, binutils, and KDE. The problem is simply too little manpower, not lack of participation.

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#42 2011-05-29 03:09:05

NevarMaor
Member
Registered: 2009-04-22
Posts: 29

Re: Gnome OS? systemd as a dependency

I wonder how much of this is a reaction to Ubuntu's Unity? And maybe Gnome 4.0 will only be available for GNU/Hurd (Gnurd - the ultimate geek OS)?

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#43 2011-05-29 05:36:56

MurdersLastCrow
Member
Registered: 2010-10-04
Posts: 74

Re: Gnome OS? systemd as a dependency

Lol, even if Gnome were prone to 'react' to Unity, I'm not entirely sure if there's anything about this that will directly affect ... oh wait, Upstart. Gotcha'.

Well, Ubuntu's going to be using LightDM soon, so it will be as much Gnome as Xfce is by the time 11.10 comes out. So I don't really see this causing any trouble for Ubuntu users, although it may be wise to get in on systemd and improve it since the architecture has more potential than Upstart, despite the investments they've already made in Upstart.

Gnurd- hah. Lennart hasn't really been new to the idea of developing for the systems that are important, and so far as I know he's the main propellant of this discussion. But he seems to have caught the attention of the relevant developers. As much as I endorse cross platform compatibility, systemd may be worth the commitment. I'd like to know the exact details of why this change would benefit a lot of Gnome-central technology, though. System V doesn't handle user switching and stuff so horribly, now, does it? The fact that there are almost no BSD guys in the GNOME Project itself complaining about this should probably say something about the (lack of) severity of the issue, however.

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#44 2011-05-30 00:48:57

NevarMaor
Member
Registered: 2009-04-22
Posts: 29

Re: Gnome OS? systemd as a dependency

Well, I haven't really used Gnome to any extent since [irony] I stopped using FreeBSD for my desktop (so was I the ONLY FreeBSD desktop user ever?) [/irony]. If FreeBSD had better flash support I'd still be using it. Maybe with HTML5 ...

I would imagine FreeBSD would just carry on just fine supporting Gnome 2 until things are ironed out wrt systemd, udev, etc. Let the Linux crowd be the beta testers.

Anyway, keeping in mind that Gnome is a GNU project - from those who brought us the Hurd - Gnome OS is probably a good 20 years away smile

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#45 2011-05-31 10:53:28

Damnshock
Member
From: Barcelona
Registered: 2006-09-13
Posts: 414

Re: Gnome OS? systemd as a dependency

ngoonee wrote:
moljac024 wrote:

And yet, as gentooers are a 1000 monkeys compiling the same package over and over again, archers are a 1000 monkeys configuring the (more or less) same system over and over again.

I highly doubt that outside the major DEs you'd find many archers with 'more or less' the same system smile.

And even with major DE's: my KDE is extremely hacked and changed from the default, even the startup scripts.

Regards


My blog: blog.marcdeop.com
Jabber ID: damnshock@jabber.org

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