Which Linux distro do you use?

[bd139]

Honestly if I had a choice I'd run FreeBSD and to hell with Linux.

uh, LLVM is going to be ready to compile Linux.
Sweet dreams are coming: to hell with GNUCC.

It's not just that. I rather want the FreeBSD core system, the libraries and the commands without all the bejewelled dog poop of GNU coreutils/libc for example.

I'm not going to cruise in and run a commercial op on FuckPoetteringOS am I?

Ahem. It's called Devuan.
 

I'm still hoping systemd will implode on its internal complexity and maintenance burden, but you know people are people, so expecting sanity is a bit much..

It's a death march. It's not going to change. Especially with this fuckwit at the helm: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/6237

[Nominal Animal]

Yup.  I don't care what kind of language my project leader uses, if it is on point.
However, when you have an essentially failed programmer as your project lead -- Poettering having had to start his own project, because his code was so shitty it was not accepted anywhere, and he is one of those idiots who refuse to ever admit any kind of blame or error, ever --, things turn to shit.

Fortunately, there is still freedom to choose.  It is becoming difficult, as desktop environments (Gnome, Cinnamon, KDE) integrate systemd-only features (I shudder to think xorg does as well), but it isn't yet impossible to replace that cancer with something modular instead.  On the embedded side, especially if you don't need a desktop environment, it is much easier.

[BravoV]

So cmiiw, most "common & popular" gui frontends, must be layered above the systemd layer ?

[legacy]

xorg

My team is having a serious problem with x11 and ... fonts, because we need them on our Sonoko project, which is, to sum up, a X11-terminal made on a Linux PowerPC embedded with a Matrox graphic card. We have  ramrootfs, which is tftpboot from the Lan, and it contains everything, including x11 and fonts, but for weird and still unknown reasons it takes an eternity to map them during booting.

Twenty five minutes to load 11Mbyte of fonts! And the font server is - buggy - so you have no choice, you have to include those blasted fonts locally, somehow/somewhere(1)

Fonts have always been a curse on X11. I have never seen a system running without issue, and even Mathematica on Irix (which cost something like 5K euro in license) had the same crappy problem with fonts when the application was used remotely from a big-iron computer (e.g. Onyx2, Origin ... ).

Why don't people fix it once and forever? When some bugs get shown the door, they re-enters from the window, just a few commits later.

The reason why it happens is a mystery 


(1) we have just hacked u-boot and implemented a modded version of "diskboot" able to load a raw partition without carring of which type

[Nominal Animal]

So cmiiw, most "common & popular" gui frontends, must be layered above the systemd layer ?

No; they use the messaging bus, dbus, for session control and events like new media detection; and dbus was subsumed into systemd years ago.

It is still possible to recompile most desktop environments to use alternate dbus implementations, and thus avoid systemd, and that's what Devuan does.

However, most of the daemons and services that provide session control and aforementioned events, have also already been subsumed into systemd, so the number of replacements one needs to find or implement, often with compatibility layers that make them look like their systemd counterparts (because it is easier for application developers to just assume systemd ones, instead of spend time and find out how to do it portably), is increasing day by day.

One of the nastiest parts is polkit.  If I were employed by an intelligence organization, that's where I'd put my backdoors.  (Anyone who has experience with Apache suexec security risks, knows how easy such mechanisms are to subvert; and polkit isn't exactly vetted for security.)

[Nominal Animal]

Fonts have always been a curse on X11.

No, not really; there's just been quite a few changes along the way, making things muddled if you aren't aware of the history.

Because of the client-server separation, there are two sets of fonts: core, and client side.  Most applications nowadays use client side fonts.  If you use a thin client, you'll need to disable font antialiasing, so that text is rendered on the server (machine containing the display hardware; what we normally consider the client) using the Render extension, with the minimum amount of data transferred.  With antialiasing enabled, the pixel data will flow back and forth between the server and the client.

You definitely want to ensure you have Render extension enabled (and EXA for Matrox Xorg drivers), and are using Xft2 and Freetype.

Twenty five minutes to load 11Mbyte of fonts!

Make sure you have just the bare minimum core fonts (/usr/share/fonts/X11/), and prefer Truetype client-side fonts (/usr/share/fonts/truetype/).

Old applications (on top of bare Xlib) may use the core fonts still, but Gtk+ and Qt (so Gnome, Cinnamon, LDXE, XFCE, and KDE) applications will use client-side fonts.  If you disable font antialiasing, the Render extension will be used to render them.

[legacy]

I don't like things like systemd, dbus, udev, ... I really do prefer simply things and static dev names, plus a static dependency list during the boot process

Code: [Select]

[*] rte
boot: cold-start
[*] mount-rootfs
[*] kernel-modules-dep
[*] mount-others
[*] mount-swap
[*] system-clean
[*] memory-clean
[*] date-and-time
[*] machine-identify
[*] hostname
[*] machine-onthelan
[*] wifi_init
wlan0
[*] networking-bridge
networking-devices[]={  eth0  eth1  eth2  } -> mybridge0
[*] networking-loopback
[*] networking-gateway
[*] networking-ipforwarding
[*] net
[*] env-shared-libraries
[*] http-tini-server
[*] sftp-server
[*] ssh-server
[*] tftp-server
[*] iperf-server
[*] ttyS-init
ttyS [ ttyS0 ttyS1 ttyS2 ttyS3 ttyS4 ttyS5 ttyS6 ttyS7 ttyS8 ]
[*] uart-init
uart [ ttyS0 ttyS1 ttyS2 ttyS3 ttyS4 ttyS5 ttyS6 ttyS7 ttyS8 ]
[*] ttyget
agetty tty[ ttyS0 ], waiting for cr-lf

This is a custom /sbin/init which loads services from a static list from /etc/system/conf/myinit-runlist. It was made from scratch and it only does what we need, on both routers, NASs, and X11-terminals (all Linux embedded profiled), as well as it can be used for PDA (like the C1K in the previous pic) and even laptop.

This profile is also used by our Catalyst-builder-machine, so we can accordingly create stages built on this way: without any dependency to dbus, udev& their friends, which can go hell

[Nominal Animal]

eudev is nice if you have hot-pluggable devices, and want to support them without polling.  For example, routers with USB 2.0 can be made to support 3G/4G/LTE dongles, if they can provide enough current (something like up to 1000mA in bursts, much less on average) on the USB bus.

(You need usb-modeswitch eudev rules for those, you see.)

[legacy]

eudev is nice if you have hot-pluggable devices, and want to support them without polling

they only ones that make sense are:
- usb pendrives -> they work pretty good without  *udev
- usb harddrives -> they work pretty good without  *udev
- usb to serials -> tried FTDI, it works pretty good without  *udev
- usb-LCDs -> developed our own (defio), it works pretty good without  *udev
- usb to CF2 -> they work pretty good without  *udev
- usb to PS/2 -> they work pretty good without  *udev

Conclusion: we do not want/need *udev, since the kernel does not need any helper in userspace, and it's already able to see the device when on probe events (cause forced to static dev name, this might require hack to each kernel module involved), and for the above we do not need any post-event configuration

[magic]

I am an iPhone user and I choose to be one

Truth be told, Apple may be better than plugging yourself into Google Skynet. But I don't touch those things at all.

Honestly if I had a choice I'd run FreeBSD and to hell with Linux.

Probably coming to me at some point as well. But I became familiar enough with Linux and able to keep it going despite bullshit that it will take a major shitshow to push me over. What they came up with so far is too easy to fix or disable

[Nominal Animal]

Note that eudev is a fork, and not part of systemd.  It provides both the daemon and the udevadm utility, and is standalone service.  I use it/udev mostly to create symbolic links and manage the owner/group and permissions of various USB-connected devices (microcontrollers, mostly), and it works well for that.  For me, it is complementary to the kernel: it applies my userspace policy for me.

eudev stays mostly blocked on the netlink, so it does not consume any CPU time unless something happens, but it does consume some RAM.  IMO, whether one uses it or not, is a question of whether the memory use (and storage needed and effort of configuration) is worth the flexible policy or not.

[legacy]

Code: [Select]

*  sys-fs/eudev
      Homepage:      https://github.com/gentoo/eudev
      Description:   Linux dynamic and persistent device naming support (aka userspace devfs)
      License:       LGPL-2.1 MIT GPL-2

Yup, it's in the default Gentoo's profile 

[nctnico]

Just wondering... why isn't Redhat on the list of options? Redhat is regulary on the list of supported distros of commercial software. Or has Redhat changed it's name? I have not kept track.

[bd139]

CentOS is Redhat.

[Halcyon]

Just wondering... why isn't Redhat on the list of options? Redhat is regulary on the list of supported distros of commercial software. Or has Redhat changed it's name? I have not kept track.

Red Hat (as you knew it) is now a non-free enterprise version of Linux (owned by IBM). CentOS is the free "consumer" version of what Red Hat was.

[Black Phoenix]

Just wondering... why isn't Redhat on the list of options? Redhat is regulary on the list of supported distros of commercial software. Or has Redhat changed it's name? I have not kept track.

Red Hat (as you knew it) is now a non-free enterprise version of Linux (owned by IBM). CentOS is the free "consumer" version of what Red Hat was.

Fedora project is sponsored by Red Hat, so basically the end user consumer version.

[NiHaoMike]

they will "monetize" their product by making it download advertisements to your "documents" folder. By that time no alternative software will exist because all distributions jumped on the hype train and use S***mD.

Then some disgruntled user makes a fork that not only disables the ads, but also has a "BURN_BANDWIDTH" option that repeatedly downloads the ads to /dev/null in an infinite loop.

[olkipukki]

Ooh… a mythical creature with many faces so called Linux 

As today, end up with:

* CentOS: 
   at the time Xilinx Vivado has supported only this (or commercials)
   CentOS was a primary OS in AWS, not anymore since everything have migrated to FreeBSD 

* Ubuntus (in plural):
    well, most ‘drivers’ supports only this distro

* Debian-hybrid
   own choice, Proxmon as in-house virtualization platform


If I could, I would prefer to ditch these and reduce animals in my zoo.

[legacy]

Gentoo-derived (means Gentoo-Catalyst building custom stuff) on this PowerMacG4 PowerPC machine, loaded with a SCSI WIDE LVD controller, a SCSI NARROW SE, a WIFI module, a SATA SAS controller.

The RAM is limited to 2Gbyte, and the PCI subsystem is a bit slow. The SAS doesn't get more than 70Mbyte/sec from the SAS 4X.

Nothing special, and it's slow, but it's what I daily use remotely, and *the* premium was adding an Ada compiler, and Pascal compiler. Erlang still doesn't work, GNU Prolog neither.



I have always dreamed about owning this PowerMac, since the first time I read about it from an article written more than 10 years ago by Luigi Genoni and Andrea Arcangeli on a Magazine

[Black Phoenix]

Nothing special, and it's slow, but it's what I daily use remotely, and *the* premium was adding an Ada compiler, and Pascal compiler. Erlang still doesn't work, GNU Prolog neither.

This Pascal?



I learned that at school, back in 2002, it was the programming language everyone learned first at school to learn good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring.

Then after one year and an half of that you would start with C.

[frozenfrogz]

I am running Kali Linux and have nothing to complain. Yes, it is primarily designed for security testing etc. but ever since I tried it, I somehow felt right at home.
So basically I am using Debian I guess. XFCE GUI has come a long way since I had first tried it back in the SuSe 6 / 7 days. xD

[legacy]

This Pascal?

The above in the pic is Borland Turbo Pascal. It runs on DOS, it can be executed under DOSBox and even on a PowerPC machine, but the DOS IDE interface has some issue due to the emulation.

I think the problem must be related to the CONIO library (console I/O). There must be something weird in the required BIOS. Who knows  ?

The same applies to RISCPC with RiscOS v4.19 Adjust with a 486 guest card installed and the control software "!PC v308".

Both these two examples do not use a 100% compatible PC-BIOS, and the Borland IDE randomly shows weird behaviors. Anyway, I am able to use Turbo Pascal and Turbo Vision (Object Oriented Pascal + OOP libraries) without the IDE interface, similar to how we use GCC on the text console.


On my PowerMac, I use FreePascal and GNU Pascal. The first is still supported, the second is EOL since 2007, but I did somehow resurrect old versions and built a toolchain.

PowerPC/ADA was dropped by Gentoo's mainteiners in 2010, and partially supported by volunteers, who have -90% dropped the interest recently, so that stuff required a lot of work, especially for resurrecting almost-modern version Ada.

[legacy]

it was the programming language everyone learned first at school to learn good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring.

Some University prefered Modula2(1). I did a couple of examinations in 2004. Good memories


(1) it's in my TODO list for PPC, at least.

[bd139]

I did turbo pascal in the early 90s. Enjoyed it to be honest. It felt like what you were producing was going to be robust and it was! Plus the whole thing fits in your head.

[Nominal Animal]

It felt like what you were producing was going to be robust and it was!

Except for the division-by-zero fatal error bug on faster machines.

Yeah, I liked Turbo Pascal, too.  Even did my first commercial software job on it, in early nineties.