Author Topic: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux  (Read 45321 times)

0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.

Offline hendorog

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1617
  • Country: nz
Re: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux
« Reply #125 on: April 05, 2016, 06:32:36 am »
I was going to install it on osx until I read this:
http://www.pyimagesearch.com/2015/06/15/install-opencv-3-0-and-python-2-7-on-osx/

Yeah, nah. Can't be bothered.

At least linux distro's have standards and policies for how this stuff should be done. OSX doesn't. Windows doesn't.

Maybe it doesn't always work perfectly, but its better than the alternatives.
 

Offline ade

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 231
  • Country: ca
Re: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux
« Reply #126 on: April 05, 2016, 06:43:02 am »
Coincidentally I just did an install of OpenCV 3 with Python 3 bindings for OSX last week.  Lots of experimentation and cmake option changes required.  My write up here:

http://peekay.org/2016/03/24/opencv-osx-python-3-bindings/

Ubuntu is a cinch in comparison.
 

Offline senso

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 951
  • Country: pt
    • My AVR tutorials
Re: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux
« Reply #127 on: April 05, 2016, 12:04:07 pm »
Then how come they caused me major pain in the rear installing OpenCV on a Ubuntu machine.

Have you thought about a computer course?

If you happened to need openCv 2.2 some years ago, ubuntu repos only had 2.0, and to put 2.2 was a "fun" experience..
findOpenCv was bugged/not cooperating and having it all work was a nightmare.
And it wouldnt astonish me that Ubuntu is still using old old versions of almost anything and to use up to date packages there is always the put this random ppa and it will work or recompile..
 

Offline CatalinaWOW

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 5170
  • Country: us
Re: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux
« Reply #128 on: April 05, 2016, 02:11:05 pm »
Linux is big (big!) business and today its core parts are primarily maintained by professional developers employed by large companies as part of their jobs.

E.g., if you look at the kernel, only about 10% of the contributions come from individual developers.  90% from the likes of IBM, Google, Samsung, Texas Instruments, Renesas, etc.   

Even Microsoft has been embracing Linux and open source (recently they announced SQL Server support for Linux). 

Similar stats can be derived from other major OSS projects.   E.g., Microsoft is now a major contributor to Apache, along with IBM, HP and ARM.    Eclipse was developed by IBM and continues to be heavily supported by IBM.   They are also a big force behind Node.js with Intel.  clang/LLVM gets major funding from Apple.  mysql is now Oracle.  Etc., etc.

So you don't think documentation is critical when coordinating the efforts of a dozen or so major organizations?  Many of the organizations you name have the same properties I described.  Waxing and waning support.  Turnover in the people assigned.  Any OS is a multi-decade process for both users and developers.  Long term success is likely to benefit from actions that make it easier for both groups to do their jobs.  The problem I see from many here is recognizing that for most users the OS is not their job.  Ideally it should be something that makes their real job easier.  At worst it shouldn't make it harder.  Apple has made a successful business out of their recognition of who their users are and making their job easier.  Linux has done pretty well when their user group is server operators.  Not so well expanding into the desktop.  Windows tries to serve everyone, and as a result has many flaws for most, particularly as they chase new markets like smartphones and tablets.
 

Offline ade

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 231
  • Country: ca
Re: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux
« Reply #129 on: April 05, 2016, 04:25:15 pm »
Quote
So you don't think documentation is critical when coordinating the efforts of a dozen or so major organizations? 
When & where did I say that?  Please provide reference.

Sure individuals come and go, but that's true for OSS as well as closed-source projects.

Many years ago I was a core team member of another major open-source project (FreeBSD) and at that time I put in a ton of effort in ensuring up to date documentation.  I inherited the job from someone else and another person took over from me.  And today FreeBSD remains highly documented, with a dedicated team (Docs team) vigilantly maintaining it.

I've found that the documentation for major open source projects tend to be as good as closed-source offerings.  I include all of the examples cited previously:  Linux kernel (and FreeBSD kernel of course), Apache, Eclipse, Node.js, etc., -- as well as open source end-user applications like Mozilla Firefox, LibreOffice, GIMP, KiCad, etc.
 

Offline Sal Ammoniac

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1662
  • Country: us
Re: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux
« Reply #130 on: April 05, 2016, 05:44:56 pm »
A while ago Microsoft hired they guy behind the sysinternals tools because he is the only one who actually understands how Windows works under the hood.

Nice joke... Or were you attempting to be serious?
Complexity is the number-one enemy of high-quality code.
 

Offline Sal Ammoniac

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1662
  • Country: us
Re: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux
« Reply #131 on: April 05, 2016, 05:49:28 pm »
I've found that the documentation for major open source projects tend to be as good as closed-source offerings.  I include all of the examples cited previously:  Linux kernel (and FreeBSD kernel of course), Apache, Eclipse, Node.js, etc., -- as well as open source end-user applications like Mozilla Firefox, LibreOffice, GIMP, KiCad, etc.

That's because most of it has evolved over decades. Early documentation for most of your examples really sucked and it's only after years of effort that it's become passable.

My latest pet peeve is the declining quality of vendor documentation for microcontrollers and other ICs. Datasheets and user guides for these used to be quite good--accurate, thorough, and well-written. Recently it looks like the vendors are outsourcing this work by using writers for whom English is a second or third language to write their documentation, and it shows.
Complexity is the number-one enemy of high-quality code.
 

Offline ade

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 231
  • Country: ca
Re: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux
« Reply #132 on: April 05, 2016, 06:21:01 pm »
Quote
That's because most of it has evolved over decades. Early documentation for most of your examples really sucked and it's only after years of effort that it's become passable.
Again, that's no different than many closed-source commercial offerings.

E.g., I remember working on my first iPhone app (2008) and major aspects of iOS were not well documented at the time.  One often had to browse private APIs to understand how the public APIs work.   Today the iOS framework documentation is generally superb. 

Dr. Dobb's Journal had a regular column on poorly or undocumented features of major software/hardware from Microsoft, Intel, etc.
 

Offline Sal Ammoniac

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1662
  • Country: us
Re: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux
« Reply #133 on: April 05, 2016, 08:00:47 pm »
Quote
That's because most of it has evolved over decades. Early documentation for most of your examples really sucked and it's only after years of effort that it's become passable.
Again, that's no different than many closed-source commercial offerings.

There are undoubtedly examples of that, but in my experience, commercial products are usually documented better.

All of the examples you mentioned are large, well-known projects (Linux, Apache, etc.) There are thousands of other open source projects are are not as well known, and these are the ones that tend to have no documentation at all, or scant documentation written as an afterthought by someone who'd rather be coding.
Complexity is the number-one enemy of high-quality code.
 

Offline Koen

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 502
Re: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux
« Reply #134 on: April 05, 2016, 09:06:43 pm »
Well duh, the commercial option has to offer something more than the free option. If you need thorough documentation, direct support and hand-holding, you pay for it. If you expect the same from free software, get real.
 

Offline Sal Ammoniac

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1662
  • Country: us
Re: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux
« Reply #135 on: April 05, 2016, 09:24:48 pm »
If you need thorough documentation, direct support and hand-holding, you pay for it. If you expect the same from free software, get real.

That's exactly why I don't use free software, because "free" software usually ends up costing me more than software that I actually pay for.
Complexity is the number-one enemy of high-quality code.
 

Offline legacyTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 4415
  • Country: ch
Re: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux
« Reply #136 on: April 05, 2016, 09:28:47 pm »
That's exactly why I don't use free software, because "free" software usually ends up costing me more than software that I actually pay for.

precisely my point
 

Offline ade

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 231
  • Country: ca
Re: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux
« Reply #137 on: April 05, 2016, 10:02:40 pm »
Free vs. non-free has nothing to do with Linux or open-source.

RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is open-source, commercial, but NOT free.   You can download its source code and make your own derivative version (a la CentOS) but you can't get RHEL for free.
 

Offline Sal Ammoniac

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1662
  • Country: us
Re: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux
« Reply #138 on: April 06, 2016, 01:10:48 am »
Free vs. non-free has nothing to do with Linux or open-source.

RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is open-source, commercial, but NOT free.   You can download its source code and make your own derivative version (a la CentOS) but you can't get RHEL for free.

That's part of the problem. Free versus non-free. Free as in speech. Free as in beer. Yada yada yada. Confuses the hell out of people.
Complexity is the number-one enemy of high-quality code.
 

Online Mechatrommer

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11534
  • Country: my
  • reassessing directives...
Re: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux
« Reply #139 on: April 06, 2016, 03:48:13 am »
Well duh, the commercial option has to offer something more than the free option. If you need thorough documentation, direct support and hand-holding, you pay for it. If you expect the same from free software, get real.
the reality is that. some people choose to pay exactly just because of this reason (documentation). the reality is that, "free" will not go boom if this kind of archaic mentality is still intact. M$ and the ecosystem surrounding it will survive, good thing for them. most will think and figured out that, profitability in reality is not measured by revenue/tco (total cost of ownership), but |revenue| (absolute magnitude) = revenue - tco. having less time tinkering with program's code compile, more time to do real productive tasks means more |revenue|, ymmv.
Nature: Evolution and the Illusion of Randomness (Stephen L. Talbott): Its now indisputable that... organisms “expertise” contextualizes its genome, and its nonsense to say that these powers are under the control of the genome being contextualized - Barbara McClintock
 

Offline mongo

  • Contributor
  • Posts: 44
  • Country: us
Re: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux
« Reply #140 on: April 07, 2016, 11:21:56 pm »
Note that this change was documented, and it is the error of the programer and not the toolset.  If you upgrade make to something past 4.1 it is a non-fatal error again.

Here is where the change was documented...the fact that all programers seem to ignore compiler warning is the issue.  For some reason this is a human thing, ignore that you are doing it wrong until it actually won't compile.

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2010-07/msg00023.html

Quote
* WARNING: Backward-incompatibility!
  As a result of parser enhancements, three backward-compatibility issues
  exist: first, a prerequisite containing an "=" cannot be escaped with a
  backslash any longer.  You must create a variable containing an "=" and
  use that variable in the prerequisite.  Second, variable names can no
  longer contain whitespace, unless you put the whitespace in a variable and
  use the variable.  Third, in previous versions of make it was sometimes
  not flagged as an error for explicit and pattern targets to appear in the
  same rule.  Now this is always reported as an error.


And GNU changing it back because people still refused to fix their code over those 4 years.

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2014-10/msg00000.html

Quote
* Change the fatal error for mixed explicit and implicit rules, that was
  introduced in GNU make 3.82, to a non-fatal error.  However, this syntax is
  still deprecated and may return to being illegal in a future version of GNU
  make.  Makefiles that rely on this syntax should be fixed.
  See https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?33034

Like any system out there GNU as issues...but they are pretty good about warning people for years before enforcing good behavior.
 

Offline nctnico

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 26751
  • Country: nl
    • NCT Developments
Re: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux
« Reply #141 on: April 08, 2016, 09:41:54 am »
Here is where the change was documented...the fact that all programers seem to ignore compiler warning is the issue.  For some reason this is a human thing, ignore that you are doing it wrong until it actually won't compile.
This is where your thinking is backwards. Even though it was 'wrong' it worked as expected so it isn't wrong after all. So what the author of the software did from a functional point of view was remove a useful feature.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline Marco

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6693
  • Country: nl
Re: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux
« Reply #142 on: April 08, 2016, 10:01:11 am »
If you happened to need openCv 2.2 some years ago, ubuntu repos only had 2.0, and to put 2.2 was a "fun" experience..
findOpenCv was bugged/not cooperating and having it all work was a nightmare.

This is just a fact of life on Ubuntu, if you want to be on the bleeding edge with Ubuntu with something you either need someone to maintain PPA for it or you are almost certainly better off on Debian testing/unstable.

Or you get to build it from source yourself.
 

Offline legacyTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 4415
  • Country: ch
Re: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux
« Reply #143 on: April 08, 2016, 10:29:22 am »
and … there is something strange in gentoo with the last autobuild stage3/x86-2016-April :o :o :o :o :o :o :o
what hell is happening ?!?!?!? why the "mount" is not working as it should ?!?!?!? are you fooling me ?!?!?!?
things changed TOO much in just 2 years  :palm: :palm: :palm: :palm:

I need a life-extension to follow all these "rolling approach", I can't support all the effort that loooooooooooniiiiiixxxxxx and open source  requires

(not mentioning that I am not payed enough, e.g. the "software" task is payed 400 euro per week,
thus no doubt  my business would make more per year in profit  with ice cream …
&& with less frustration and stress  :-DD :-DD :-DD )
 

Offline legacyTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 4415
  • Country: ch
Re: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux
« Reply #144 on: April 08, 2016, 10:34:22 am »
I have emerged and installed 4 toolchains
thus one can choose what he/she needs/wants (1)


Code: [Select]
uc-builder # gcc-config -l
 [1] i686-pc-linux-gnu-4.1.2 *
 [2] i686-pc-linux-gnu-4.9.3

 [3] powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu-4.1.2 *
 [4] powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu-5.3.0




(1) that is kind way to say that ... gcc-v4.9 won't compile kernel 2.6.39 on x86
as good as gcc-v5.3 won't compile kernel 2.6.19/23 on PowerPC
thus you need to switch to gcc-v4.1.2 in both cases …
… I have NO time to fix all of that crap  :-//
 

Offline Marco

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6693
  • Country: nl
Re: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux
« Reply #145 on: April 08, 2016, 11:25:28 am »
not mentioning that I am not payed enough, e.g. the "software" task is payed 400 euro per week

Lets get real here for a moment and look at this from a customer point of view. With what other solution could a customer get this major a software upgrade on a hardware platform which hadn't seen active software support for this long for this cheap?

Your pain is his gain :)
 

Offline legacyTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 4415
  • Country: ch
Re: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux
« Reply #146 on: April 08, 2016, 11:44:43 am »
Your pain is his gain :)

emmm ….. (cough … cough) … Bob(who?) charges 50 euro per hour, his customer pays him for "software development"
which means … that he never fixes legacy things, he always "develops" new things (which breaks old things) :palm: :palm: :palm: :palm:
a week is composed by 5 working days of 8 hours each, it means he charges 400 euro in 1 day

and oh my goodness my pocket calculator is saying that 50x8x5 is 2000 euro per week
which sounds "unbelievable" for my wallet, since It gets loaded by 2200 euro per month

thus the science might have a good explanation for the British way of saying "Middling to average!" :-DD :-DD :-DD :-DD
 

Offline legacyTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 4415
  • Country: ch
Re: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux
« Reply #147 on: April 08, 2016, 12:08:20 pm »
according to the Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, Bob (a true developer) lives in another planet
one month of Life in Hell is equal to one week of Life on Earth (he also lives in Palm Springs California)
at least, paid the same money, thus, I believe I will get my devil horns and tail
Hey ho? Dandy for Halloween :-DD :-DD :-DD

(my dry humor)
 

Offline Kilrah

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 1852
  • Country: ch
Re: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux
« Reply #148 on: April 08, 2016, 12:20:27 pm »
(not mentioning that I am not payed enough, e.g. the "software" task is payed 400 euro per week
That is entirely your problem! These things are known and expected, updates WILL cost... they must be factored in and if the customer isn't happy he can stay with his existing solution.

The problem is simple - the devs working on those things do that daily. They will naturally start by doing things easier for themselves and for whatever their own goals are and others who will see an updated dependency and care for it the same day in 5 minutes, then for new users, and only as a last priority try not to break it too much for existing users - and if you were in that position you'd likely do the same.

The open source game is simple - you get to benefit from decades of engineering work done by others for free, but it's your responsibility to glue the parts together to make it work. Nothing forces you to use it, if you're not happy you can go roll your own ( :-DD ) or pay up for a commercial solution.

You apparently offered the choice to your customer to go with a commercial solution that was deemed too expensive, and improperly budgeted the alternative open source solution, which obviously even if the code itself is free does have costs - that might actually be higher than the commercial solution!

Linux/open systems are a rolling ball, as mentioned when you're working on it daily you'll see small things break due to updated dependencies etc as they come so it's a minor task to fix at this point as only one thing is likely to get broken at a time making the source of the issue obvious, and the creator of that dependency will likely have limited and documented the impact of the incremental update as much as possible. Now the longer something stays unattended the more things will break and the harder each of the fixes will be, so it gets exponentially more complex to get up to speed with. At some point it's actually better to start the actual project over with the currently available tools than trying to get the old thing to work again.

But that's something that can easily be modeled and turned into a budget estimation for a client. Count a rough amount of time you would have to spend to keep the project up to date on a weekly basis, and turn that into some amount per week the codebase has stayed unmaintained, and add that up. It should pretty much average out the simplifying factors like "lib X was already mature" and the more difficult ones like "platform was completely dropped from support so current versions can't be used and old ones have to be dug out". After 8 years that number should become so huge that it will be obvious it's not a viable option, in which case you have to evealuate others, like redeveloping the whole thing from scratch or going for a completely different solution, whether software, hardware or both.

But as mentioned if you keep an entire build setup as is in the state it was at the time of the last build so you can reuse that then you're bypassing all that. It has a cost too, so must be billed accordingly with proper explanations.

So yeah, the TL;DR is that you're somehow surprised about the obvious, have offered yourself for a job for way too cheap, but are trying to put that responsibility on people who gave you their work for free instead of admitting your mistakes  ::)
 

Offline legacyTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 4415
  • Country: ch
Re: [solved] I really HATE gnu and linux
« Reply #149 on: April 08, 2016, 01:04:19 pm »
if you're not happy you can

do you want it with lemon and coffee ? do you prefer "stracciatella" ?
it's an Italian soup containing eggs and cheese, plus chocolate

two ice cream flavors, two dollars  :D :D :D :D

(kidding, I understand your points, and I still HATE loooooniiiixxxx and GNU)
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf