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by nanoscopic 4252 days ago
Most people don't know much about any of the details. They have simply done things one way for a long time and now it is changing. You haven't addressed that besides accusing those people of being "ignorant about good design principles" and "having huge misunderstandings that leads to a lot of wasted energy."

From the perspective of the average linux user ( one that knows little to nothing about linux internals ) the entire discussion is the real waste of energy.

The people who know a ton are a different category altogether; you have addressed those.

The category of people you are ignoring is those who did it one way now they are suddenly "forced" to change.

I feel the same way about firewalld as I do about systemd. Iptables was confusing, but I used it till I was able to do what I needed. Now all of that knowledge is useless because I have to use a different system to stay with the rest of the group.

Is systemd better? Sure. Is firewalld better? Dunno; I think so. Am I ignorant and clueless and misunderstanding everything? No... I just have a different perspective than all of the people fighting about this. All I want is to continue my simple life. Learning new stuff is a drag if it worked fine before. ( I'm aware of how sucky 'fine' is... )

This is not an argument; it's just a statement of how I and a lot of people feel. We used to have a normal car; now the steering wheel is gone and replaced by a grid of 20 buttons that control an automated robot who steers for us. We were used to the wheel. We ask for the wheel back and we are told we are clueless and ignorant and should use the buttons.

1 comments

> From the perspective of the average linux user ( one that knows little to nothing about linux internals ) the entire discussion is the real waste of energy.

If all distros adopt "systemd/linux", a future plan for systemd according to lead developers, what happens if systemd collapses? It would take GNU/Linux with it. Remember how pulseaudio adoption by ubuntu drove users away. I want others to have access to UNIX, the best OS in the world, just like I had the opportunity.

> I want others to have access to UNIX, the best OS in the world, just like I had the opportunity.

Thankfully, there are several alternative free unix-like operating systems these days. Are they are popular as Linux? Do they have as much big business/corp backing as Linux? No and No. However, if Linux implodes there are great alternatives these days. I personally use and quite enjoy FreeBSD. ymmv.

* Linux (topic of discussion) * BSD derivatives: * FreeBSD / NetBSD / OpenBSD / DragonFlyBSD * Illumos (opensolaris) derivatives * SmartOS / OmniOS / OpenIndiana * Minix * more[1]

[1]: [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_operating_systems#Unix...

I agree completely, those operating systems are great, as good or better than GNU/Linux. But with that phrase I was thinking people without prior experience, like Windows users, FreeBSD install is fairly involved for them, there's PC-BSD, but it seems to me, distros like Mint are easier for beginners and useful as a stepping stone to those OSs.
I think Linux has an edge in driver support, and corp vendors -- especially for gaming with things like Steam.

I really like some of the things the pc-bsd folks are doing though. Lumina seems to be coming along nicely.

> I think Linux has an edge in driver support, and corp vendors -- especially for gaming with things like Steam.

Still, remember when using linux meant compiling the kernel ten times, editing some .c file, changing some obscure flag. And then you needed to open that .doc, .ppt or use msn messenger. You tried dual booting, but windows kept rewriting the bootloader...

Now, with VMs and tech like PCI pass-through this is just SO easy, that issue is less relevant and will result in more popularity for other OSs and a reversing of the consolidation trend.

You think the systemd debate is bad? The same people who made systemd intend to totally change the way the entire system works, way past just services.

See: http://0pointer.net/blog/revisiting-how-we-put-together-linu...

Kiss goodbye to what you knew; it may be going the way of the dodo.

Remember what happened to ReiserFS? Despite what you are saying being FUD it's not entirely unreasonable.

> You think the systemd debate is bad?

I think the debate is good and necessary, I don't like any software imposed without a debate.

Yes, I know, I was referencing partly that. Again, my position may be shocking to you: 1) I like change 2) I use a dozen init systems (!), each for a different situation, and I'm interested in keeping it that way.

You'll also be surprised to know that I use varios OSs! Never used ReiserFS, though.