From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=DKIM_ADSP_CUSTOM_MED, DKIM_INVALID,DKIM_SIGNED,FREEMAIL_FROM,MAILING_LIST_MULTI, T_SCC_BODY_TEXT_LINE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 7364 invoked from network); 7 Jun 2022 15:09:21 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (2600:3c01:e000:146::1) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 7 Jun 2022 15:09:21 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 10C7040CFE; Wed, 8 Jun 2022 01:09:17 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mail-oi1-x234.google.com (mail-oi1-x234.google.com [IPv6:2607:f8b0:4864:20::234]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id CB29D40CF5 for ; Wed, 8 Jun 2022 01:09:11 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mail-oi1-x234.google.com with SMTP id h187so11137828oif.4 for ; Tue, 07 Jun 2022 08:09:11 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20210112; h=mime-version:references:in-reply-to:from:date:message-id:subject:to :cc; bh=wzIR5JpnG/NQ+25dAl1mvq1pnZrxVTywVRDtkOvO1A4=; b=KQ3CU6aMPJjFnPyDvYo5kHWnp9GGZsOjeSoeQVlcHlPeWI3ELqZzrW1TrKjNH/vsmq qzrcuhgo8SFfW/Z4LAx6mg2sRj9zU2QQg/Y74Qonyg5CQZUNrp2FE0lO4aIT4t6vPU93 dmTcCHjG7RzkkuEclmh+UQ2fkkTDxkAEtQtjSnfDNd00mN3ucOoLW1oRznV/xjYlNUL0 J9IF8oMm86XL52FuxwJ4gjAn1En8dxEvJ1a+OBJm5ziI9xDzZcy1cy3vZAQwxeZzVjjt WgsO4iplcFfSMjepcSwhns66skFGegha7VTLP6YH03xZhT6oTg2YI10RuM4VOpkgomiq g7gg== X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20210112; h=x-gm-message-state:mime-version:references:in-reply-to:from:date :message-id:subject:to:cc; bh=wzIR5JpnG/NQ+25dAl1mvq1pnZrxVTywVRDtkOvO1A4=; b=h3Sfxp0DpBUZbUQjKMccdZKSppoj30wA/VxPuweJ3dlXV45BRUc3qTNY2Tc23PFygw vMvWwexnkfkDhVF9JrH6WvfxmI/2RlwWAl/M0fJxiuloErIcKbjIgum26h9AzuZ5drSl AmsW3C+yn3gqiFgRTqfZo+A8cKSsAYlbHJIIl1/r86EJqebsE0uAjMCIHtoOjVbc0RLx U31cmN5cgWyAnuNdAPSW39C1SJWFS5GpkbjopyCFaaukCK6aqIQEmkejCaYN/3iDAj7d tsj1cF0SHMZFg+JCbN9Ug1qxq96EtlyNmkzIw2b1rGllJwP8TVsDhJuRrbz6F7mtKVFy Uehw== X-Gm-Message-State: AOAM533Ax6fvWz7GtSBNNXCI6X/Megg8M732uFqBhy/z4yKY7w8vWybR LEQo5CVRxLl6LMcWYMi5PoHFFWEwWC9UhipIS8E= X-Google-Smtp-Source: ABdhPJxCh0wQW43y61zTn5h6Z+CrCDz675g0LWH0JonxTVy/8nfC9PIIxL8QLbx1DH2Zq9QVv2XD8d/No9KG6VLl1As= X-Received: by 2002:a05:6808:1989:b0:32e:a477:264e with SMTP id bj9-20020a056808198900b0032ea477264emr4640226oib.49.1654614550832; Tue, 07 Jun 2022 08:09:10 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 References: In-Reply-To: From: Dan Cross Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2022 11:08:34 -0400 Message-ID: To: "Theodore Ts'o" Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Message-ID-Hash: 6DW5KRCXUXVJYPKZXDVXQGRMBGSJCCWP X-Message-ID-Hash: 6DW5KRCXUXVJYPKZXDVXQGRMBGSJCCWP X-MailFrom: crossd@gmail.com X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header CC: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] Re: Fwd: [simh] Announcing the Open SIMH project List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: On Tue, Jun 7, 2022 at 10:30 AM Theodore Ts'o wrote: > On Tue, Jun 07, 2022 at 09:28:14AM +1000, David Arnold wrote: > > Lest it be thought that all is sweetness and light in Linux-land, > > there were years of fairly intense competition involved in getting > > installers to the point that you can start with a downloaded image, > > burn it to a USB, boot it, run it, and (optionally) make it persist > > over a reboot, all with very minimal need to understand or care > > about the many, many things going on under the hood. > > On Sun, Jun 05, 2022 at 09:40:44PM -0400, Dan Cross wrote: > > > > But every distribution has its own installer, and they vary wildly. > > The key is I think *competition*. Distributions were competing to > attract a user base, and one of the ways they could do that was by > improving the install experience. There were people who reviewed > distributions based on which one had the better installer, and that > helped users who were Windows refugees choose the ones that had the > better installer. My point is that this is something that varies from distro to distro; it is therefore inaccurate to claim that "Linux solved it" since many different distros that have widely varying installation processes fall under the very large "Linux" umbrella. > The other advantages of having a many distributions is that gave more > people to opportunity to exercise leadership --- you can "drive the > big red firetruck" by founding a distro like Debian or Slackware, and > the people who are interested in improving a distribution can be > different from those who drive kernel development. This is one of the > things that I've learned from my rector at my church, who had a > background in community organizing. One of the big differences > between community organizing compared to the corporate world is that > it's more important to give more people --- volunteers --- > opportunities to contribute, and very often this is far more important > than efficiently organizing a corporate-style team to get some job > done. Was it inefficient to have multiple teams competing on > installer development, and release engineering? Sure, but it also > drew more people into the Linux ecosystem. That's an interesting angle and one that I think bears more on the topic at hand than many folks are willing to let on: the barrier to contribution is, in a lot of important ways, lower in the Linux ecosystem than it is in the BSD world. At least historically speaking, and perhaps still true. Anecdotally, I was able to get a patch into the KVM unit tests (not precisely Linux but related) in pretty short order recently while the OpenBSD people simply ignored my problem report and patch. YMMV. > > The ABI compatibility thing breaks down, too. A colleague was trying > > to get the host-side of a Salae logic analyzer working on Arch, and it > > doesn't. They more or less require Ubuntu 18.something, and that's > > not what he runs. As far as most end-users are concerned, your > > distribution of choice is "Linux", and distributions vary in all kinds of > > ways. > > There are three different things that's worth separating. One is a > consistent kernel<->user space interface, this is what Linus Torvalds > considers high priority when he says, "Thou shalt not break > userspace". This is what allows pretty much all distributions to > replace the kernel that was shipped with the distribution with the > latest upstream kernel. And this is something that in general doesn't > work with *BSD systems. Eh? I feel like I can upgrade the kernel on the various BSDs without binaries breaking pretty easily. Then again, there _have_ been times when there were flag days that required rebuilding the world; but surely externalities are more common here (e.g., switching from one ISA to another). > The second is application source-level compatibility, and this is what > allows you to download some open source application, and recompile it > on different Linux distributions, and it should Just Work. In > practice this works for most Linux and *BSD users. This, I think, is where things break down. Simply put, the way people build applications has changed, and "source-level" compatibility means compatibility with a bunch of third-party libraries; in many ways the kernel interfaces matter much, much less (many of which are defined by externally imposed standards anyway). If a distro ships a too-old or too-new version of the dependency, then the open source thing will often not build, and for most end users, this is a distinction without a difference. > And the third is application *binary* level compatibility. And this > is what is important if you have some binary that you've downloaded, > or some commerical application which you've purchased, and you want to > run it on Linux distribution different from the one which is > originally designed. Static linking solves most of the problems, but > if the user needs to use proprietary/commercial binaries, if they > stick to RHEL, Fedora, Ubuntu/Debian, they will generally not have > issues. Yup. But then that you're running Linux is mostly immaterial; it could be Windows and the same would be true. - Dan C.