On Sat, 2024-04-20 at 15:52 +0000, Dan Cross wrote:
> Linux is a lot of things: incredibly useful, very powerful, and
> arguably the most important software project in the world.  But
> "elegant" is not something that comes to mind when I think look
> closely at it.

if you /really/ want to be a purist, then I reckon NetBSD fits the
bill. It runs on way more platforms than Linux and the other *BSDs ever
did.
--
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

On 4/20/24 16:52, Dan Cross wrote:
> In article <v00lph$3nik6$2@dont-email.me>, chrisq <devzero@nospam.com> wrote:
>> [snip]
>> A suffocating carbunkle on what was an elegant os that really didn't
>> need it...
>
> Linux is a lot of things: incredibly useful, very powerful, and
> arguably the most important software project in the world. But
> "elegant" is not something that comes to mind when I think look
> closely at it.
>
> - Dan C.
>

Which is why I dumped Linux for FreeBSD a few years ago now, systemd
really was the last straw.

Still have some machines running Linux, but no longer the main driver
for development...

On Sat, 20 Apr 2024 23:01:17 +0100, chrisq wrote:

> Which is why I dumped Linux for FreeBSD a few years ago now, systemd
> really was the last straw.

I started with BSD in about 1978, and FreeBSD in about 1991. Never touched
Linux!

On Sat, 20 Apr 2024 16:08:33 +0100, chrisq wrote:

> On 4/20/24 01:37, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, 20 Apr 2024 01:05:41 +0100, chrisq wrote:
>>
>>> Absolutely, Solaris, Linux, Freebsd and even cygwin + X + xfce4, all
>>> depend on X11 at core. VMS as well, though not sure of current status.
>>
>> DEC was a key contributor in the development of X11. But that was then.
>>
>>> As with systemd, Wayland looks like yet another attempt at power grab
>>> ...
>>
>> I wonder who you think is “grabbing” this “power”. Both systemd and
>> Wayland are open-source projects, created by people who see a problem
>> and are trying to fix it. Those in the community who see value in these
>> efforts adopt their solutions, others don’t. There is no Monopolistic™
>> BigCorp® forcing any of these things down our throats. If you don’t
>> want to use them, don’t use them.
>
> systemd originally came from redhat. I rest my case.

Most Linux users don’t use Red Hat. It seems to be mainly a North American
thing.

What “case” were you talking about, exactly?

On 20 Apr 2024 22:21:08 GMT, Bob Eager wrote:

> On Sat, 20 Apr 2024 23:01:17 +0100, chrisq wrote:
>
>> Which is why I dumped Linux for FreeBSD a few years ago now, systemd
>> really was the last straw.
>
> I started with BSD in about 1978, and FreeBSD in about 1991. Never
> touched Linux!

There are maybe half a dozen BSD variants still undergoing some kind of
development, versus about 50× that number of Linux distros. Yet it is
easier to move between Linux distros than it is to move between BSD
variants.

Linux is able to offer a great deal of variety with minimal fragmentation,
while the BSDs have more fragmentation and less variety.

On Sat, 20 Apr 2024 23:01:17 +0100, chrisq wrote:

> Which is why I dumped Linux for FreeBSD a few years ago now, systemd
> really was the last straw.

Open Source is all about choice. Not clear why you had to dump all of
“Linux” just because some distros use systemd.

And some BSD folks feel the need to work on their own systemd-lookalike,
too. It’s called “InitWare”.

On Sat, 20 Apr 2024 22:27:41 +0000, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> On 20 Apr 2024 22:21:08 GMT, Bob Eager wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 20 Apr 2024 23:01:17 +0100, chrisq wrote:
>>
>>> Which is why I dumped Linux for FreeBSD a few years ago now, systemd
>>> really was the last straw.
>>
>> I started with BSD in about 1978, and FreeBSD in about 1991. Never
>> touched Linux!
>
> There are maybe half a dozen BSD variants still undergoing some kind of
> development, versus about 50× that number of Linux distros. Yet it is
> easier to move between Linux distros than it is to move between BSD
> variants.
>
> Linux is able to offer a great deal of variety with minimal
> fragmentation,
> while the BSDs have more fragmentation and less variety.

But there is not need to move between BSD distros in the first place. And
they share a great deal anyway.

On Sat, 20 Apr 2024 10:40:01 -0500, Grant Taylor wrote:

> No, I don't consider web based interfaces to be comparable.

At least some at Microsoft seem to think they’re “good enough”. Look at
Visual Studio Code: they could have used their own Dotnet to build it, but
no, instead they built it on Electron.

On 4/20/2024 6:25 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Sat, 20 Apr 2024 16:08:33 +0100, chrisq wrote:
>> On 4/20/24 01:37, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>> On Sat, 20 Apr 2024 01:05:41 +0100, chrisq wrote:
>>>> As with systemd, Wayland looks like yet another attempt at power grab
>>>> ...
>>>
>>> I wonder who you think is “grabbing” this “power”. Both systemd and
>>> Wayland are open-source projects, created by people who see a problem
>>> and are trying to fix it. Those in the community who see value in these
>>> efforts adopt their solutions, others don’t. There is no Monopolistic™
>>> BigCorp® forcing any of these things down our throats. If you don’t
>>> want to use them, don’t use them.
>>
>> systemd originally came from redhat. I rest my case.
>
> Most Linux users don’t use Red Hat. It seems to be mainly a North American
> thing.

RHEL is the big one in on-prem enterprise Linux. The US is the
country with most RHEL customers - but India, UK, Italy, France, Canada
also has a lot of RHEL customers.

RHEL clones are some of the major gratis Linux distros (among a bunch
of others).

For many years Redhat was the biggest contributor to Linux kernel.

Redhat has a pretty big place in the Linux space.

Arne

On 4/20/2024 6:27 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On 20 Apr 2024 22:21:08 GMT, Bob Eager wrote:
>> On Sat, 20 Apr 2024 23:01:17 +0100, chrisq wrote:
>>> Which is why I dumped Linux for FreeBSD a few years ago now, systemd
>>> really was the last straw.
>>
>> I started with BSD in about 1978, and FreeBSD in about 1991. Never
>> touched Linux!
>
> There are maybe half a dozen BSD variants still undergoing some kind of
> development, versus about 50× that number of Linux distros. Yet it is
> easier to move between Linux distros than it is to move between BSD
> variants.

That is because you compare oranges to apples.

You are comparing BSD's that are different OS'es (they do share
a lot of code but that is pick and choose) with
Linux distros that all run the same kernel but are available
in many different bundles. A Linux distro is not a separate
OS, but a bundle of Linux kernel + choice of C RTL + choice
of bunch of other stuff. You could probably create a Linux
distro where the only thing you added was the logo displayed.

Arne

On 4/20/2024 6:30 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Sat, 20 Apr 2024 10:40:01 -0500, Grant Taylor wrote:
>> No, I don't consider web based interfaces to be comparable.
>
> At least some at Microsoft seem to think they’re “good enough”.

Most do. Web interfaces are pretty dominant today. Maybe not
comparable, but good enough. And in most cases more than
good enough.

Who would pick a bank that insist on a desktop GUI instead of a
web interface?

> Look at
> Visual Studio Code: they could have used their own Dotnet to build it, but
> no, instead they built it on Electron.

Not much of a choice.

First release of VSC happened a year before .NET Core 1.0 was
released, so if the requirement was to support other platforms
than Windows, then .NET was not an option (they could have
tried Mono, but that was not theirs at the time).

It probably didn't hurt that the product they intended to
displace was also using Electron (Atom).

Arne

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>On Sat, 20 Apr 2024 23:01:17 +0100, chrisq wrote:
>
>> Which is why I dumped Linux for FreeBSD a few years ago now, systemd
>> really was the last straw.
>
>Open Source is all about choice. Not clear why you had to dump all of
>“Linux” just because some distros use systemd.

The problem is not systemd. Systemd is a symptom of the problem. The
problem is change for change's sake. Let's rewrite this thing and make
it different... not better, just different.

>And some BSD folks feel the need to work on their own systemd-lookalike,
>too. It’s called “InitWare”.

There's some argument for a service manager. But a service manager should
not replace everything with one big monolithic chunk. I am not a fan of
service managers and I didn't like when Solaris implemented it, but I can
see some arguments in favor.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On 4/20/24 18:26, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> The problem is not systemd. Systemd is a symptom of the problem.

I can agree to that.

> The problem is change for change's sake. Let's rewrite this thing
> and make it different... not better, just different.

I feel like there is a HUGE dose of ignorance on some contemporary
developers and they are repeating old mistakes and making new mistakes.

I know that some oft maligned changes are actually rooted in good
reason. I'm thinking about the deprecation of ifconfig, netstat, and
route. The kernel grew, changed, and gained a LOT of new options that
the old tools had no idea how to work with. I can get behind that.

What I can't stand is why there aren't new versions of ifconfig,
netstat, and route that use the new framework while providing command
compatibility with nearly 50 years of Unix and Unix like OS history.
Not providing a compatible wrapper is stupid in my opinion.

> There's some argument for a service manager. But a service manager
> should not replace everything with one big monolithic chunk. I am not
> a fan of service managers and I didn't like when Solaris implemented
> it, but I can see some arguments in favor.

At least Solaris stopped SMF at managing services and didn't try to take
over DNS, NTP, and many other things.

--
Grant. . . .

On 4/20/2024 8:32 PM, Grant Taylor wrote:
> On 4/20/24 18:26, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>> The problem is not systemd.  Systemd is a symptom of the problem.
>
> I can agree to that.
>
>> The problem is change for change's sake.  Let's rewrite this thing and
>> make it different... not better, just different.
>
> I feel like there is a HUGE dose of ignorance on some contemporary
> developers and they are repeating old mistakes and making new mistakes.
>
> I know that some oft maligned changes are actually rooted in good
> reason.  I'm thinking about the deprecation of ifconfig, netstat, and
> route.  The kernel grew, changed, and gained a LOT of new options that
> the old tools had no idea how to work with.  I can get behind that.
>
> What I can't stand is why there aren't new versions of ifconfig,
> netstat, and route that use the new framework while providing command
> compatibility with nearly 50 years of Unix and Unix like OS history. Not
> providing a compatible wrapper is stupid in my opinion.
>
>> There's some argument for a service manager.  But a service manager
>> should not replace everything with one big monolithic chunk.  I am not
>> a fan of service managers and I didn't like when Solaris implemented
>> it, but I can see some arguments in favor.
>
> At least Solaris stopped SMF at managing services and didn't try to take
> over DNS, NTP, and many other things.

I don't know systemd well - only its reputation.

But my impression is that it missed on the main criteria: keeping
things simple.

To illustrate the point and somewhat move back to VMS let me confess
something: I really like SYS$MANAGER:SYSTARTUP_VMS.COM to manage
what get started on VMS.

VMS start the stuff that has to run and one put in what one
want to start in SYS$MANAGER:SYSTARTUP_VMS.COM usually in the
form of @SYS$STARTUP:something$STARTUP.COM.

A simple text file that after a little cleanup typical
will be only 20-50 lines. Easy to understand. Easy to edit.

My perspective is based on some assumptions:
- that there is no need to start many hundreds of products
- that there are not crazy many dependencies
- that the system manager know how to edit a text file in
a terminal window

But I think they should hold true for practically all VMS
systems.

Arne

On Sat, 20 Apr 2024 18:41:40 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

> RHEL is the big one in on-prem enterprise Linux.

Like I said, that seems to be a North America thing.

> RHEL clones are some of the major gratis Linux distros (among a bunch of
> others).

Most Linux distros are offshoots of Debian, not Red Hat.

On Sat, 20 Apr 2024 20:46:54 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

> But my impression is that [systemd] missed on the main criteria: keeping
> things simple.

But it does. Service definitions (and “unit” definitions in general) are
written in config files following the classic text-based .INI format. If
you remember, Microsoft created this format back in the 1980s for Windows
config files, then abandoned it in favour of that horror known as the
Registry. Well, it lives on in the open-source world.

A service file consists of a series of directives, each of which is there
for a purpose. Compare creating sysvinit scripts (I have done both), where
you end up copying and pasting a whole lot of boilerplate from some
existing script into the new one, maybe not really understanding why it’s
needed.

> To illustrate the point and somewhat move back to VMS let me confess
> something: I really like SYS$MANAGER:SYSTARTUP_VMS.COM to manage what
> get started on VMS.

That’s the equivalent of the old /etc/rc.local, that some distros (and I
think also BSDs) still support. OK for a small handful of services, but it
doesn’t scale.

> A simple text file that after a little cleanup typical will be only
> 20-50 lines. Easy to understand. Easy to edit.

Not so easy to selectively add/remove, enable/disable or start/stop
individual services.

On Sat, 20 Apr 2024 18:48:15 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

> On 4/20/2024 6:27 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>> There are maybe half a dozen BSD variants still undergoing some kind of
>> development, versus about 50× that number of Linux distros. Yet it is
>> easier to move between Linux distros than it is to move between BSD
>> variants.
>
> You are comparing BSD's that are different OS'es (they do share
> a lot of code but that is pick and choose) with
> Linux distros that all run the same kernel but are available
> in many different bundles.

Why is it the Linux distros are able to maintain a common kernel, but the
BSDs are not? Aren’t the BSD kernels flexible enough for such different
uses? Which aren’t even that different, compared to how distinct the
various Linux distros can be?

On 4/20/2024 10:04 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Sat, 20 Apr 2024 20:46:54 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> To illustrate the point and somewhat move back to VMS let me confess
>> something: I really like SYS$MANAGER:SYSTARTUP_VMS.COM to manage what
>> get started on VMS.
>
> That’s the equivalent of the old /etc/rc.local, that some distros (and I
> think also BSDs) still support. OK for a small handful of services, but it
> doesn’t scale.

It does not scale.

But it should not need to scale.

You should not run that many services on a single system.

>> A simple text file that after a little cleanup typical will be only
>> 20-50 lines. Easy to understand. Easy to edit.
>
> Not so easy to selectively add/remove, enable/disable or start/stop
> individual services.

add/enable : put $ @sys$startup:something$startup in that file
remove/disable : change to $! @...
start : @sys$startup:something$startup
stop : @sys$startup:something$shutdown

Simple!

Arne

On Sat, 20 Apr 2024 22:26:00 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

> You should not run that many services on a single system.

I call that a “Windows Server” mentality. I think it has to do with
proprietary apps, each one assuming it owns the system. So if you try
running more than one, and they interfere, the vendors will simply point
the finger at each other.

It has been traditional, going back decades, for *nix servers to be multi-
role.

On So 21 Apr 2024 at 02:08, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> Why is it the Linux distros are able to maintain a common kernel, but the
> BSDs are not? Aren’t the BSD kernels flexible enough for such different
> uses? Which aren’t even that different, compared to how distinct the
> various Linux distros can be?

Because they do not want to! They have different objectives and they are
really different projects. Not at all comparable to Linux distributions.

'Andreas

--
ceterum censeo redmondinem esse delendam

On Sa 20 Apr 2024 at 19:32, Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:

> On 4/20/24 18:26, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>> The problem is not systemd. Systemd is a symptom of the problem.
>
> I can agree to that.
>
>> The problem is change for change's sake. Let's rewrite this thing and make
>> it different... not better, just different.
>
> I feel like there is a HUGE dose of ignorance on some contemporary
> developers and they are repeating old mistakes and making new
> mistakes.

I think the problem is that they grew up in a Windows dominated world,
not like us greybeards.

> I know that some oft maligned changes are actually rooted in good reason.
> I'm thinking about the deprecation of ifconfig, netstat, and route. The
> kernel grew, changed, and gained a LOT of new options that the old tools had
> no idea how to work with. I can get behind that.
>
> What I can't stand is why there aren't new versions of ifconfig, netstat,
> and route that use the new framework while providing command compatibility
> with nearly 50 years of Unix and Unix like OS history. Not providing a
> compatible wrapper is stupid in my opinion.

+1

'Andreas
--
ceterum censeo redmondinem esse delendam

On So 21 Apr 2024 at 02:04, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> On Sat, 20 Apr 2024 20:46:54 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>
>> But my impression is that [systemd] missed on the main criteria: keeping
>> things simple.
>
> But it does. Service definitions (and “unit” definitions in general) are
> written in config files following the classic text-based .INI format. If
> you remember, Microsoft created this format back in the 1980s for Windows
> config files, then abandoned it in favour of that horror known as the
> Registry. Well, it lives on in the open-source world.

But .INI format is not a classic unix file format and not as easy to
parse as the real, classic unix file formats. I think of it as an
abomination.

>> To illustrate the point and somewhat move back to VMS let me confess
>> something: I really like SYS$MANAGER:SYSTARTUP_VMS.COM to manage what
>> get started on VMS.
>
> That’s the equivalent of the old /etc/rc.local, that some distros (and I
> think also BSDs) still support. OK for a small handful of services, but it
> doesn’t scale.
>
>> A simple text file that after a little cleanup typical will be only
>> 20-50 lines. Easy to understand. Easy to edit.
>
> Not so easy to selectively add/remove, enable/disable or start/stop
> individual services.

In fact it is easy to do all that if you know how to edit text filesm
either by hand or with tools like awk or sed.

'Andreas
--
ceterum censeo redmondinem esse delendam

In article <v01rv6$335k$1@dont-email.me>, ldo@nz.invalid (Lawrence
D'Oliveiro) wrote:

> On Sat, 20 Apr 2024 18:41:40 -0400, Arne Vajh�j wrote:
> > RHEL is the big one in on-prem enterprise Linux.
> Like I said, that seems to be a North America thing.

It has a significant presence worldwide, although it's most popular in
North America. SUSE Enterprise is popular in Europe, Ubuntu LTS is used
everywhere, but doesn't dominate anywhere AFAIK, and China is a weird mix,
with its own RHEL work-alikes and some others.

> Most Linux distros are offshoots of Debian, not Red Hat.

There are enough Linux distros that ISVs have to be selective about what
they support. Fortunately, most of the popular Debian derivatives are
more directly Ubuntu derivatives.

John

In article <v01sf0$338c$1@dont-email.me>,
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>On Sat, 20 Apr 2024 18:48:15 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>
>> On 4/20/2024 6:27 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>>
>>> There are maybe half a dozen BSD variants still undergoing some kind of
>>> development, versus about 50× that number of Linux distros. Yet it is
>>> easier to move between Linux distros than it is to move between BSD
>>> variants.
>>
>> You are comparing BSD's that are different OS'es (they do share
>> a lot of code but that is pick and choose) with
>> Linux distros that all run the same kernel but are available
>> in many different bundles.
>
>Why is it the Linux distros are able to maintain a common kernel, but the
>BSDs are not? Aren’t the BSD kernels flexible enough for such different
>uses? Which aren’t even that different, compared to how distinct the
>various Linux distros can be?

Because Linus owns the trademark and controls what can be called Linux and
what cannot be. Linus decides what goes into the kernel, and therefore
if he wants there to be one Linux kernal, there is. If he wanted there to
be two, he could do that too.

I rather like the idea of having one person in charge of deciding what
goes into the kernel and what does not, although I disagree philosophically
with Linus about many things that have gone into Linux in the past decade.

BSD is not like that. There is no one person who decides what is BSD and
what is not.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On 4/21/24 13:17, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> Because Linus owns the trademark and controls what can be called
> Linux and what cannot be. Linus decides what goes into the kernel,
> and therefore if he wants there to be one Linux kernal, there is.
> If he wanted there to be two, he could do that too.

On one hand I agree. But on the other hand I disagree.

Given that the Linux kernel is released as source code, people can
reconfigure it as they want. People can even add patches to it to add
additional functionality that's not in the upstream vanilla kernel
source. OpenZFS and some binary BLOB drives from vendors being perfect
examples of such things not in the upstream vanilla kernel source.

--
Grant. . . .