Re: [Dng] Puppy Linux-related thoughts - was Re: API: was (for who knows what reason): Dng Digest, Vol 6, Issue 75

[Joel Roth]

Apollia wrote:
> I've also increasingly been considering trying to build my own Linux from
> scratch, probably using this website as a guide:
> http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

There are more automated ways to do this:

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/alfs/

You may be interested to know that Gobo Linux is based on ALFS.

-- 
Joel Roth
  

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Re: [Dng] rumors on RMS about systemd at libreplanet

[KatolaZ]

On Sun, Mar 22, 2015 at 11:08:58PM +0200, Lars Noodén wrote:
> On 22.03.2015 22:00, KatolaZ wrote:
> > Well, we might all agree on despising the systemd-nonsense on a
> > technical level, but nobody can say it's not free software without
> > being considered a fool. The systemd-nonsense is distributed with a
> > free software license, therefore it *is* free software...
> 
> I think everyone is in agreement that they fulfill the letter of the
> license.  The spirit may be lacking especially in regards to access.
> Being an enormous, interdependent hairball simply puts the code out of
> reach for all practical purposes as well as restricting use.  Again,
> that's spirit and not letter and the license does not address that.
> There is however one large, long running project which does take code
> legibility and quality and those kinds of things into account, in
> addition to license.  Maybe that's something for GPLv4, or maybe not.


But why you raise such issues only when we talk about the
systemd-nonsense and not, e.g., about GNOME, KDE, Xorg, and the vast
majority of enormous, intedependent hairballs you are using every day?
:) 

My problem with the systemd-nonsense is not (exclusively) about its
*implementation*, through which I have not yet had the opportunity to
go, but about its *design principles*, which are clearly against two
simple concepts that have been the major strength of unix-like
systems: KISS and DOTADIW. 

Even a "clean" implementation of the systemd-nonsense, which still
tries to manage every single aspect of the boot in a single process,
would not be able to solve this issue. 

My2Cents

KatolaZ

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Re: [Dng] rumors on RMS about systemd at libreplanet

[KatolaZ]

On Sun, Mar 22, 2015 at 10:39:11PM +0100, devuan...@spamgourmet.net wrote:
> > I think everyone is in agreement that they fulfill the letter of the
> > license.  The spirit may be lacking especially in regards to access.
> > Being an enormous, interdependent hairball simply puts the code out of
> > reach for all practical purposes as well as restricting use.  Again,
> > that's spirit and not letter and the license does not address that.
> > There is however one large, long running project which does take code
> > legibility and quality and those kinds of things into account, in
> > addition to license.  Maybe that's something for GPLv4, or maybe not.
> 
> RMS admits that he wrote GCC as an interdependent hairball, simply to
> make it impossible to reuse parts of it in commercial applications. So
> I doubt that RMS will end up condemning "hairballs" in GPLv4 (or
> later). That change would require him to fight a project he started
> and to push it into a direction he is not at all comfortable with.
> 

This sounds strange and new at the same time, since GCC was indeed
designed to be portable and ported to several architectures since from
the beginning. Do you have any quote by RMS or by any guy who has
contributed to gcc to support your statement?  I don't think that GCC
is a hairball, to be honest. It's instead one of the few truly modular
compilers out there, and the proof is in the fact that it includes
front-ends for more than a dozen languages and back-ends for variuos
hundreds of different architectures

RMS is a quite strange character to deal with, but saying that he was
purposedly obfuscating GCC seems quite risible, to be honest

My2Cents

KatolaZ


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Re: [Dng] rumors on RMS about systemd at libreplanet

[Jaromil]

On Mon, 23 Mar 2015, KatolaZ wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 22, 2015 at 10:39:11PM +0100, devuan...@spamgourmet.net wrote:
> > RMS admits that he wrote GCC as an interdependent hairball, simply to
> > make it impossible to reuse parts of it in commercial applications. So
> > I doubt that RMS will end up condemning "hairballs" in GPLv4 (or
> > later). That change would require him to fight a project he started
> > and to push it into a direction he is not at all comfortable with.
> > 
> 
> This sounds strange and new at the same time, since GCC was indeed
> designed to be portable and ported to several architectures since from
> the beginning. Do you have any quote by RMS or by any guy who has
> contributed to gcc to support your statement?  I don't think that GCC
> is a hairball, to be honest.

This is not the first post in which this spamgourmet account is
spreading FUD. We may need to react to this beyond argumenting.

Actually, I'd be grateful if you, golinux and a few others can share the
burden of keeping trolls away from the list, as now I'm quite convinced
that if we go the moderation way we better do it full on and try to keep
around only the posts that are worth reading.

ciao




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Re: [Dng] Devuan commitments - will trade-off be applied?

[Didier Kryn]

Le 21/03/2015 17:52, Go Linux a écrit :

On Sat, 3/21/15, Miles Fidelman  wrote:

  Subject: Re: [Dng] Devuan commitments - will trade-off be applied?
  To: dng@lists.dyne.org
  Date: Saturday, March 21, 2015, 11:25 AM
  
Didier Kryn wrote:

 We all agree that Devuan was born to be systemd-free and this
looks like a sustainable goal to begin with. But I understood this
thread started with questioning the long term policy.

 For sure, if one wants systemd, this one should install Debian, or
RH. Also, to all of us, anybody trying to provide systemd for Devuan
would be suspect of being malevolent

 However, the long term policy of Devuan can't be "We hate systemd
and Lennart Poetering". Instead Devuan should advertize the reasons to
reject software like systemd, in the form of  a set of rules for
acceptability, in a sensible and attractive form, for users,
developpers, and distros to easily share. I see these rules as an
addendum to the definition of free software.

 These rules would obviously put systemd out of the free-software
category, let's call it anti-freedom, which is worse than non-free.
This does not mean there needs to be an anti-freedom repository, after
all :-)

  This leaves no room for systemd-contaminated software, except if
the systemd API can be replaced by  a do-otherwise/do-nothing stub.

That raises an interesting point - might be time to think about refining
the definition of "free software" (per
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html)

A program is free software if the program's users have the four
essential freedoms:

   * The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
   * The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does
 your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is
 a precondition for this.
   * The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor
 (freedom 2).
   * The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others
 (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance
 to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a
 precondition for this.

Perhaps it's time to add something along the lines of "the freedom to
install software without it taking over your machine" (obviously this
needs work, or we'd it would eliminate things like the kernel, file
system, etc.).

Miles Fidelman



Miles  . . . you might want to revisit hellekin's draft constitution:

https://git.devuan.org/devuan/devuan-project/wikis/HellekinConstitutionDraft

This is near the top:

"Devuan fosters a diversity of approaches to avoid technical lock-ins to specific 
implementations"

There are other interesting ideas in there also that answer to your concerns.

golinux

True. This description of the project contains already a lot of the 
ideas we are shaking on the list.


There are still concerns about the fact that some of the software 
we use are big hairballs and enforce technical lock-ins. Eg. the Linux 
kernel and the X-Window system. There's also the issue of non-free 
binary blobs, like proprietary firmwares and drivers. We must accept 
some of these for the sake of having a working OS.


BUT, everywhere there is choice, the solution(s) in the spirit of 
KISS and UNIX shall be preferred and the others rejected. Only when we 
haven't the choice will we install the non-KISS/non-UNIX.


For the moment, the only replacement for X-Window, Wayland is 
certainly also a big hairball; this may simply mean that it can't be 
otherwise. Same for the Linux kernel.


But for system startup/shutdown and service supervision, there's a 
host of solutions. This also means systemd violates KISS and UNIX not by 
necessity but either by inconsideration or by intention.


Do you think it could be a valid criteria, "Software violating GPL, 
KISS or DOTADIW is accepted only if there is no possible replacement" ?


Didier

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Re: [Dng] rumors on RMS about systemd at libreplanet

[devuan . kn]

On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 11:18 AM, Jaromil - jaro...@dyne.org
 wrote:
> On Mon, 23 Mar 2015, KatolaZ wrote:
>> This sounds strange and new at the same time, since GCC was indeed
>> designed to be portable and ported to several architectures since from
>> the beginning. Do you have any quote by RMS or by any guy who has
>> contributed to gcc to support your statement?  I don't think that GCC
>> is a hairball, to be honest.

Oh, a hairball can be portable in its entirety:-) It is just hard to
use parts of it.

GCC was deliberately making things interdepend on each other, even
without technical reasons, simply to prevent commercial entities to
replace the e.g. front-end of the compiler with some proprietary code
and then have that use the GPL backend. This would enable a new,
proprietary language to leverage all the optimizations gcc has. So
this prevents what Apple does with swift on llvm right now, and I
understand the reasoning behind that decision, even though I regret it
since it prevents us from having many valuable tools for code analysis
and refactoring.

https://lwn.net/Articles/629259/ covers the most recent flare-up when
somebody wanted to make the AST of GCC accessible.

> This is not the first post in which this spamgourmet account is
> spreading FUD. We may need to react to this beyond argumenting.

I don't see anything I said on this list to be related to be spreading
Fear, Uncertainty or Doubt.

I did argue for some of things I think are sensible, just like
everybody else here. All of them can be implemented _without_ systemd
(and I have or had them running that way). Yes, one of the ideas I
like was first proposed by Lennart, but is this about building a new
distribution or about holding a grudge?

If it is the later, then you won't need to bother to ban me.

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Re: [Dng] rumors on RMS about systemd at libreplanet

[Jaromil]

On Mon, 23 Mar 2015, devuan...@spamgourmet.net wrote:
> I did argue for some of things I think are sensible, just like
> everybody else here. All of them can be implemented _without_ systemd
> (and I have or had them running that way). Yes, one of the ideas I
> like was first proposed by Lennart, but is this about building a new
> distribution or about holding a grudge?

no grudge at all, Devuan is the first and foremost initiative to not
undertake any personal attacks and we are proud of it and the overall
channeling of energies into constructive matters. We have also banned
people for hatespeech against Debian developers and we would do the same
for anyone attacking systemd developers.

OTOH your interventions in this discussion place has been overall:

- OT (as of the subject of this thread)

- misquoting RMS for "admitting that he wrote GCC as an interdependent
  hairball voluntarily" (reference? well no, don't even bother please)

- making false statements while debating with vdev developer, which he
  promptly pointed out.

I hope you understand we don't need your criticism here, because it is
admittedly biased and because me and others perceive it as bringing
forward false arguments.

> If it is the later, then you won't need to bother to ban me.

I'd rather make this a gentlemen process, suggest you take your coat,
use the front door and farewell. I sincerely hope you will find ways to
use your time in a more productive way, perhaps developing systemd.

ciao



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[Dng] Puppy Linux-related thoughts - was Re: API: was (for who knows what reason): Dng Digest, Vol 6, Issue 75

[Wolfgang Pirker]

Hello,

speaking of lightweight Linux distros with a systemd-free choice.

There is also AntiX. The main developer behind it seems also not to be 
happy about how Debian Jessie users are forced to use SystemD:

http://antix.freeforums.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5280

(if anyone is more interested about a AntiX (Jessie-based) release 
without SystemD - a Beta release:

http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=08851 )

About two years ago I used this distro for a while and quite liked it. 
The main release comes with IceWM as default, I used a flavor with JWM 
as default desktop. It supports booting the live medium to RAM and 
creating persistend usb pendrives is also possible. Now I prefer linuxes 
with XFCE and 64-bit support. But for ancient systems with less than 2 
GB RAM, I would still use it.



--
Wolfgang
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[Dng] Moderation: was rumors on RMS about systemd at libreplanet

[Steve Litt]

On Mon, 23 Mar 2015 11:18:39 +0100
Jaromil  wrote:


> Actually, I'd be grateful if you, golinux and a few others can share
> the burden of keeping trolls away from the list, as now I'm quite
> convinced that if we go the moderation way we better do it full on
> and try to keep around only the posts that are worth reading.

I wonder if Don Armstrong is available for the moderation job.

Personally, I haven't seen enough BS on this list to necessitate any
kind of moderation, and I well remember the harm Debian did itself by
its agenda-based moderation of Debian-User. 

What I'd recommend is that everybody do this: When you become convinced
that somebody is a [troll | fool | falseflagger | a$$ | headcase], pipe
him to /dev/null instead of arguing with him. And when a newbie argues
with him, a simple "don't feed the troll" should be sufficient.

You know what's worse than a multiplicity of trolls? Agenda based
moderation. And I don't think even Mother Theresa or Mahatma Gandhi
could moderate with complete fairness.

Just to get the ball rolling, here's how I handled it in procmail:

===
# "Stallman obfuscates gcc" devuan...@spamgourmet.net
:0:
* ^List-Id:.*dng.lists.dyne.org
* ^From.*devuan...@spamgourmet.net
$GARBAGE
===

If everyone votes with their filters, we won't need moderation.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

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Re: [Dng] Puppy Linux-related thoughts

[Robert Storey]

Puppy Linux is interesting. I used it for awhile and liked that it was
fast, and fun. A bit lacking in software, but with the Slacko packages you
can make it better. My main concern about it was that it logs you in as
root (without even a password). A lot of people have expressed concern
about this apparent security hole, but Puppyistas are insistent that it's
no problem. I remain somewhat sceptical. Anyway, kudos to the developers
for remaining systemd-free. On the other hand, I just took a look at their
forum, and I was dismayed to see several posts by users practically
demanding that systemd be brought into Puppy. Hopefully, the developers
will resist the urge to surrender.

Wolfgang Pirker wrote:
> There is also AntiX. The main developer behind it seems also not to be
> happy about how Debian Jessie users are forced to use SystemD:
> http://antix.freeforums.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5280
>
>(if anyone is more interested about a AntiX (Jessie-based) release
> without SystemD - a Beta release:
>  http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=08851 )

Wow! I'm familiar with AntiX, having used it long ago, but I hadn't
realized that the latest beta is Jessie-based and systemd-free. So now I
have to ask: Isn't that pretty much what we're doing here with Devuan?
Perhaps I should rephrase that: In what ways is AntiX different from
Devuan? And is there any possibility of collaborating with Anticapitalista
(the developer)?

cheers,
Robert
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Re: [Dng] Devuan commitments - will trade-off be applied?

[Hendrik Boom]

On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 12:04:17PM +0100, Didier Kryn wrote:
> 
> True. This description of the project contains already a lot of
> the ideas we are shaking on the list.
> 
> There are still concerns about the fact that some of the
> software we use are big hairballs and enforce technical lock-ins.
> Eg. the Linux kernel and the X-Window system. There's also the issue
> of non-free binary blobs, like proprietary firmwares and drivers. We
> must accept some of these for the sake of having a working OS.
> 
> BUT, everywhere there is choice, the solution(s) in the spirit
> of KISS and UNIX shall be preferred and the others rejected. Only
> when we haven't the choice will we install the non-KISS/non-UNIX.

Exactly.  Prioritizing, not prohibiting.

> Do you think it could be a valid criteria, "Software violating
> GPL, KISS or DOTADIW is accepted only if there is no possible
> replacement" ?

Let's not screw existig users by kicking something they are relying 
on out of the archives when a clean alternative becomes available.
Leave it out of the default install, perhaps.

Prioritizing, not banishing.

-- hendrik
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Re: [Dng] rumors on RMS about systemd at libreplanet

[Martijn Dekkers]

> https://lwn.net/Articles/629259/ covers the most recent flare-up when
> somebody wanted to make the AST of GCC accessible.
>
> > This is not the first post in which this spamgourmet account is
> > spreading FUD. We may need to react to this beyond argumenting.
>
> I don't see anything I said on this list to be related to be spreading
> Fear, Uncertainty or Doubt.
>

Wow, I am really surprised by this turn of events. It appears to me, from
reading the LWN link as well as the links within the LWN article, that
devuan.kn actually has a solid point. I cannot speak for the other stuff
that he(she?) mentions but this GCC/hairball statement appears at the very
least highly plausible, and certainly not reason for expulsion.

This isn't the first time we have scared away new/potential community
members because they didn't subscribe to the "One Correct Truth", or even
simple miscommunication/language barriers, or where new members were picked
for "excommunication" both off-list as well as on-list. At that time I
dropped my list involvement significantly, moving to more of a lurker
instead of being a participator.

Whilst I really believe in the goals and technical directions behind
Devuan, I am increasingly uncomfortable with the evolution of the social
environment. Personally, I am a great believer in live and let live. It is
starting to feel like the Manor Farm around here
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Re: [Dng] rumors on RMS about systemd at libreplanet

[Hendrik Boom]

On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 12:17:07PM +0100, devuan...@spamgourmet.net wrote:
> 
> GCC was deliberately making things interdepend on each other, even
> without technical reasons, simply to prevent commercial entities to
> replace the e.g. front-end of the compiler with some proprietary code
> and then have that use the GPL backend. This would enable a new,
> proprietary language to leverage all the optimizations gcc has.

This happened, except for the proprietry part, with Modula 3.
The currently most common Modula 3 compiler has been fitted with a 
back end generating intermediate code acceptable to a modified gcc 
back end.

The modifications to the back end consist mainly of code that reads 
in intermediate code from a file instead of getting it passed in 
from previous passes in memmory.

Modula 3 is released under the SRC public license, which is somewhat 
more free than the GPL.  But it has been declared incompatible with 
the GPL by the FSF, so Modula 3 compilation always has to go though 
this efficency-destroying inrermediate file.

Modula 3 is no longer of any interest to the SRC (or its legal 
successors) so there's no hope of getting them to change the license.

>...
> 
> https://lwn.net/Articles/629259/ covers the most recent flare-up when
> somebody wanted to make the AST of GCC accessible.

There's a good quote in the comments to this article:

 "We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus 
and running code".

-- hendrik

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Re: [Dng] rumors on RMS about systemd at libreplanet

[KatolaZ]

On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 01:04:43PM -0400, Hendrik Boom wrote:

[cut]

> 
> >...
> > 
> > https://lwn.net/Articles/629259/ covers the most recent flare-up when
> > somebody wanted to make the AST of GCC accessible.
> 
> There's a good quote in the comments to this article:
> 
>  "We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus 
> and running code".
> 

That's indeed a good link, and I thank you guys for posting it, but I
start missing the whole point here :)

We were talking about RMS not having a strong opinion about systemd
and of the person who asked him the question, who was considered
automatically a troll just for asking that question. Then we slipped
over discussing of hairballs and badly conceived software, which I
think does not have that much to do with what is discussed in the
thread you posted (which is about the possibility of allowing AST to
be exported from GCC, which has been *deliberately* made difficult for
*political* reasons, a fact that we might accept or despise, according
to personal taste). Then, this argument about the presumed
"obfuscation" in the management of the AST by GCC has been implicitly
used against RMS to justify the fact that he didn't have an opinion
about systemd, erroneously suggesting IMHO that he did not since he
himself has been loving coding obscure and hairball-like software.

I personally don't like this kind of recursive and circling lines of
thought, so if you want to continue on this thread you are free to do
so. If you want to prove that RMS is wrong on this or that, or even
evil-minded for this or that reason, or if you want to put RMS and Mr
Poettering in the same box, then please go on and have fun :)

I just don't care about what RMS thinks of the systemd-nonsense, or at
least not much more than I care about what meself and you guys think
of it. The reason is that, IMHO, when it comes to political choices,
as the ones made by RMS and other influential guys in the last thirty
years, then technical aspects might become secondary or even
irrelevant. While in some other cases, instead, the technical
shortcomings of a formally "good" piece of software (like the
free-software-compliant systemd-nonsense) might be enough to consider
it dangerous.

The same is valid for the systemd-nonsense: I think that it is first
of all a *politically* wrong decision, since it is forcing the whole
system to be subjected to the wills of one single producer
(RedHat). On this side, I am apparently not in agreement with RMS, who
doesn't have anything against the systemd-nonsense since, as he
admitted, it's free software and this is enough *for him*.

But on top of that, I think that the systemd-nonsense is also an
overall *technically unsound* project, since its functioning goes
against the same basic principles that are behind the *nix philosophy:
KISS and DOTADIW. RMS didn't enter this technical querelle, since his
mission is "free software" not "compliance to the founding principles
of *nix". And I think I can live with this.

Finally, I am not in a position to judge whether the systemd-nonsense
is also *architecturally flawed*, as repeatedly suggested by other
guys here, since I have not had the opportunity of looking through the
code, or of studying its implementation in details. RMS has saind
nothing about that, but this would not change the fact that systemd
remains nonsense, IMHO, since even a very good, portable, modular,
documented implementation of a bad underlying concept, which is also
ill-conceived from a political point of view, is unacceptable for me
:)

In a word, the fact that RMS does not have a strong opinion (yet)
about the systemd-nonsense doesn't change anything. He does not have a
strong opinion on any technical aspect of GNOME or KDE or Xorg, so why
should we expect tech-savvy directions from him about the
systemd-nonsense?

RMS's mission is to spread free software, fullstop. He has done a lot
for our community, but he's not king, or dictator, or president of
anything. We are all grown-up and should be able to take autonomous
decisions (and actions) without RMS telling us what to do or approving
our endavours. That's why they call it "community" and not "kingdom"
:)

My2Cents

KatolaZ

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[Dng] FW: Devuan commitments - will trade-off be applied?

[T.J. Duchene]

 
> > >
> >  True. This description of the project contains already a lot of
> > the ideas we are shaking on the list.
> >
> >  There are still concerns about the fact that some of the software
> > we use are big hairballs and enforce technical lock-ins. Eg. the Linux
> > kernel and the X- Window system.

This is going to be a bit of a rant, and while I think it is "on topic", some 
might
not.  I'm old school UNIX: VAX, Solaris, Digital and so on.  Linux is nice, but 
it
really is just the "Johnny-come-lately" as they used to say.  When I make
these comments about Linux, please understand where I am coming from.


What you are describing to me, is the ham-fisted attitude of Linux, that Linux
is somehow self-contained, and not part of a larger whole.  Everyone else
can be damned.  There is a lot of resistance to the "old guard" notion that
Linux should follow any standard beyond its own.  Linux does not care about
portability anymore.

The whole X/Wayland thing is yet another example.  No one in their sane
mind denies that X isn't a total (bleep) disaster.  The source code is such a
mess that not even the people who maintain it can unscramble it, and that is
not exaggerating.  There are blocks of code that no one knows why they
were added, but if they are removed it breaks compatibly with things.   A lot
of the screen rendering is out of date and very slow.  That is why DRI was
added.  DRI bypasses a lot of the cruft to render things directly, but since the
core of X is essentially network transparent, you are still wasting a lot of
overhead on network calls that could be done far more efficiently if X were
redesigned.


What X really needs is to be gutted: a complete rewrite, while providing a
compatibility layer for X11.  Rather than do that, the Linux crowd chose to go
with Wayland, which could be described as much the same thing. Fair
enough, and even reasonable.  At least it would be, except for the fact that
Wayland is designed to work only on KMS, which makes it dependent on
Linux.  (Deliberate sarcasm: what a shock.)


> There's also the issue of non-free binary blobs, like
> > proprietary firmwares and drivers. We must accept some of these for
> > the sake of having a working OS.
 
 On that we agree.  The simple fact of the world is that even if someone like
 NVidia or AMD WANTS to make a completely open driver, they can't.  The
 video cards use technology that has been licensed from someone else, and
 those license agreements prevent them from disclosing all of the details
 needed to make a driver that works as well as the blobs.  The only way to get
 around that would be to get legal consent from all parties, and that is not
 going to happen.  It's a shame that the patent system works as it does, but
 that is life.  As for the Linux fans who demand completely open drivers, they
 are going to have a very long wait: probably on the order of 20 years for the
 patents to expire.
 
> >
> >  BUT, everywhere there is choice, the solution(s) in the spirit of
> > KISS and UNIX shall be preferred and the others rejected. Only when we
> > haven't the choice will we install the non-KISS/non-UNIX.
> >
> >  For the moment, the only replacement for X-Window, Wayland is
> > certainly also a big hairball; this may simply mean that it can't be
> > otherwise. Same for the Linux kernel.
> >
> >  But for system startup/shutdown and service supervision, there's
> > a host of solutions. This also means systemd violates KISS and UNIX
> > not by necessity but either by inconsideration or by intention.
 
 I say this with respect, but I think you are dreaming, Diedler.  That spirit of
 KISS is dying with the minority of the "old school UNIX"  and Linux is
 becoming something completely unrecognizable.   In another decade or so, I
 do not expect Linux to be compatible with anyone else.   Another example is
 GTK.  It is being "molded" around Gnome 3's needs, and has subsequently
 been abandoned by projects who switch to Qt.  Right now, Linux userspace is
 being "molded" around systemd.
 
 While init systems like systemd are arguably not covered by POSIX, following
 an interface standard is the only way to prevent source code from being tied
 to things like systemd.  Unfortunately, no one seems to consider that a
 benefit.   More than once, I've heard calls for Linux to completely abandon
 POSIX in favor of doing its own thing.   To me, that sounds exactly like the
 same arguments that Microsoft used to make regarding Windows when they
 backed out of the POSIX standard in 2000.  We all know what happened
 there: code lock-in.  How the wheel turns.  Linux has become its own worst
 enemy, because it has become too successful, just as Microsoft once did.
 
 I would have a lot less objection to a lot of what the majority of the Linux
 community does if they would learn to play nice, with everyone else and just
 work with POSIX rather than think that they can ignore it all the time.
 
 T.J.


_

Re: [Dng] rumors on RMS about systemd at libreplanet

[Nate Bargmann]

* On 2015 22 Mar 22:09 -0500, Peter Olson wrote:
> > On March 22, 2015 at 6:29 AM Jaromil  wrote:
> > 
> > On Sat, 21 Mar 2015, Peter Olson wrote:
> > 
> > > RMS didn't call me a troll, he answered the question.  Somebody else
> > > took it upon himself to refer to the question as trolling.  I haven't
> > > decided yet whether to speak to that person tomorrow about it.
> > 
> > Stefano refused my definition of bullying, which indeed may be debated.
> 
> Stefano and I had an amicable conversation about the issue and I
> understand his point of view.

That's one way, but how about the other, does he appreciate your POV or
does he still consider the question to be trolling?

- Nate

-- 

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Re: [Dng] rumors on RMS about systemd at libreplanet

[Jaromil]

On Mon, 23 Mar 2015, Nate Bargmann wrote:

> * On 2015 22 Mar 22:09 -0500, Peter Olson wrote:
> > > On March 22, 2015 at 6:29 AM Jaromil  wrote:
> > > 
> > > On Sat, 21 Mar 2015, Peter Olson wrote:
> > > 
> > > > RMS didn't call me a troll, he answered the question.  Somebody else
> > > > took it upon himself to refer to the question as trolling.  I haven't
> > > > decided yet whether to speak to that person tomorrow about it.
> > > 
> > > Stefano refused my definition of bullying, which indeed may be debated.
> > 
> > Stefano and I had an amicable conversation about the issue and I
> > understand his point of view.
> 
> That's one way, but how about the other, does he appreciate your POV or
> does he still consider the question to be trolling?

On these regards Stefano wrote "troll as action != troll as a person"
https://twitter.com/jaromil/status/579594919767064576 so he still
considers the action of asking a systemd question to RMS to be trolling

I think this is unacceptable under so many ways... some of which I've
tried to explain. I'm also !flabbergasted! to see the discussion averted
into the AST for GCC debacle with a touch of RMS bashing. Either someone
is really missing the point of what is happening here, or really doesn't
wants us to acknowledge that a Debian leader and OSI board member is
acting this way, which I keep perceiving as bullying not only against an
elderly member of our communities, but against anyone concerned.

I think this situation says *a lot* about what has been going on in
Debian's governance for the past, err, 4 years or so? including the
dust-storm sweeping this thread, which is about a precise issue. And
that is why - maybe wrongly so as Martijn points - I'm very nervous.

ciao


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Re: [Dng] rumors on RMS about systemd at libreplanet

[Mark R. White]

>On these regards Stefano wrote "troll as action != troll as a person"
>https://twitter.com/jaromil/status/579594919767064576
 so he still
>considers the action of asking a systemd question to RMS to be trolling

>I think this is unacceptable under so many ways... some of which I've
>tried to explain. I'm also !flabbergasted! to see the discussion averted
>into the AST for GCC debacle with a touch of RMS bashing. Either someone
>is really missing the point of what is happening here, or really doesn't
>wants us to acknowledge that a Debian leader and OSI board member is
>acting this way, which I keep perceiving as bullying not only against an
>elderly member of our communities, but against anyone concerned.

>I think this situation says *a lot* about what has been going on in
>Debian's governance for the past, err, 4 years or so? including the
>dust-storm sweeping this thread, which is about a precise issue. And
>that is why - maybe wrongly so as Martijn points - I'm very nervous.
>
>ciao

Exactly! Well said. Stefano's take on this is abominable.  That's why we're
here, right?  To escape Debian governance and the fact it's being
monopolized by Gnome developers and systemd fan boys.

Devuan - All the apt you can handle with none of the systemd headache.

Just to be clear: I've seen a lot of cross talk about the possibility of
systemd being put into Devuan via a sandbox or even having the systemd API
written in.  Is it safe to assume that going forward that there will be no
systemd in Devuan?  Because if there is, I'm in the wrong place.


> > * On 2015 22 Mar 22:09 -0500, Peter Olson wrote:
> > > > On March 22, 2015 at 6:29 AM Jaromil  wrote:
> > > >
> > > > On Sat, 21 Mar 2015, Peter Olson wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > RMS didn't call me a troll, he answered the question.  Somebody
> else
> > > > > took it upon himself to refer to the question as trolling.  I
> haven't
> > > > > decided yet whether to speak to that person tomorrow about it.
> > > >
> > > > Stefano refused my definition of bullying, which indeed may be
> debated.
> > >
> > > Stefano and I had an amicable conversation about the issue and I
> > > understand his point of view.
> >
> > That's one way, but how about the other, does he appreciate your POV or
> > does he still consider the question to be trolling?
>
> On these regards Stefano wrote "troll as action != troll as a person"
> https://twitter.com/jaromil/status/579594919767064576 so he still
> considers the action of asking a systemd question to RMS to be trolling
>
> I think this is unacceptable under so many ways... some of which I've
> tried to explain. I'm also !flabbergasted! to see the discussion averted
> into the AST for GCC debacle with a touch of RMS bashing. Either someone
> is really missing the point of what is happening here, or really doesn't
> wants us to acknowledge that a Debian leader and OSI board member is
> acting this way, which I keep perceiving as bullying not only against an
> elderly member of our communities, but against anyone concerned.
>
> I think this situation says *a lot* about what has been going on in
> Debian's governance for the past, err, 4 years or so? including the
> dust-storm sweeping this thread, which is about a precise issue. And
> that is why - maybe wrongly so as Martijn points - I'm very nervous.
>
> ciao
>
>
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-- 
Mark R. White
410.300.1437
@LinuxOBeardly
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Re: [Dng] FW: Devuan commitments - will trade-off be applied?

[Jude Nelson]

> What X really needs is to be gutted: a complete rewrite, while providing a
> compatibility layer for X11.  Rather than do that, the Linux crowd chose
to go
> with Wayland, which could be described as much the same thing. Fair
> enough, and even reasonable.  At least it would be, except for the fact
that
> Wayland is designed to work only on KMS, which makes it dependent on
> Linux.  (Deliberate sarcasm: what a shock.)

Wayland is basically just that--a complete rewrite of X, built around
design requirements that were not present when X11 was designed.  Think of
Wayland as X12, and think of Xwayland as the X11 compatibility layer.

Also, userspace mode setting these days is a racy prospect at best that is
incredibly difficult to coordinate without the kernel's help.  This is
because the sequencing of low-level hardware events from contemporary video
devices (i.e. DMA, power changes, suspend/resume, external displays) can
interfere with the sequence of user mode setting ioctl()'s to the point
where the state of the video hardware can easily get out-of-sync with
userspace's understanding of it, causing userspace to issue ioctls that
leaving you with a locked-up display.  The kernel *should* be handling
mode-setting requests these days, because only the kernel is in a position
to correctly sequence mode-setting requests with ongoing low-level hardware
events (such as by blocking or deferring the relevant hardware interrupts).

This isn't a Linux-only thing, by the way.  All the BSDs have or (in
NetBSD's case) will soon have KMS enabled by default.  Windows NT has had
it for decades.

>  I say this with respect, but I think you are dreaming, Diedler.  That
spirit of
>  KISS is dying with the minority of the "old school UNIX"  and Linux is
>  becoming something completely unrecognizable.   In another decade or so,
I
>  do not expect Linux to be compatible with anyone else.   Another example
is
>  GTK.  It is being "molded" around Gnome 3's needs, and has subsequently
>  been abandoned by projects who switch to Qt.  Right now, Linux userspace
is
>  being "molded" around systemd.

KISS is not dying.  What OS researchers have discovered is that KISS and
DOTADIW are actually very, very, very hard to get right.  It's *easy* to
write a ball of mud--I was doing that since I was 12 years old, on TI
graphing calculators no less.  It's hard to write software that is
functionally decomposed into independent, interchangeable, reusable
modules, because it's not clear what factorization will lead to future
reusability (even for short time horizons).  It's even harder to do so when
you're on a budget or deadline, where adding layering violations and
unnecessarily coupling in order to get a product shipped on time is
preferable to designing it right, because missing the deadline means you're
not getting paid (i.e. capitalistic software development works against
sound design).

-Jude

On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 2:16 PM, T.J. Duchene  wrote:

>
>
> > > >
> > >  True. This description of the project contains already a lot of
> > > the ideas we are shaking on the list.
> > >
> > >  There are still concerns about the fact that some of the software
> > > we use are big hairballs and enforce technical lock-ins. Eg. the Linux
> > > kernel and the X- Window system.
>
> This is going to be a bit of a rant, and while I think it is "on topic",
> some might
> not.  I'm old school UNIX: VAX, Solaris, Digital and so on.  Linux is
> nice, but it
> really is just the "Johnny-come-lately" as they used to say.  When I make
> these comments about Linux, please understand where I am coming from.
>
>
> What you are describing to me, is the ham-fisted attitude of Linux, that
> Linux
> is somehow self-contained, and not part of a larger whole.  Everyone else
> can be damned.  There is a lot of resistance to the "old guard" notion that
> Linux should follow any standard beyond its own.  Linux does not care about
> portability anymore.
>
> The whole X/Wayland thing is yet another example.  No one in their sane
> mind denies that X isn't a total (bleep) disaster.  The source code is
> such a
> mess that not even the people who maintain it can unscramble it, and that
> is
> not exaggerating.  There are blocks of code that no one knows why they
> were added, but if they are removed it breaks compatibly with things.   A
> lot
> of the screen rendering is out of date and very slow.  That is why DRI was
> added.  DRI bypasses a lot of the cruft to render things directly, but
> since the
> core of X is essentially network transparent, you are still wasting a lot
> of
> overhead on network calls that could be done far more efficiently if X were
> redesigned.
>
>
> What X really needs is to be gutted: a complete rewrite, while providing a
> compatibility layer for X11.  Rather than do that, the Linux crowd chose
> to go
> with Wayland, which could be described as much the same thing. Fair
> enough, and even reasonable.  At least it would be, except for th

Re: [Dng] rumors on RMS about systemd at libreplanet

[Nuno Magalhães]

On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 6:59 PM, Mark R. White  wrote:
>
> Just to be clear: I've seen a lot of cross talk about the possibility of
> systemd being put into Devuan via a sandbox or even having the systemd API
> written in.  Is it safe to assume that going forward that there will be no
> systemd in Devuan?  Because if there is, I'm in the wrong place.

+1
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Re: [Dng] FW: Devuan commitments - will trade-off be applied?

[T.J. Duchene]

 

 

[T.J. ]   Hi Jude!  




Wayland is basically just that--a complete rewrite of X, built around design
requirements that were not present when X11 was designed.  Think of Wayland
as X12, and think of Xwayland as the X11 compatibility layer.

[T.J. ] Yes, I know.  =)

 

Also, userspace mode setting these days is a racy prospect at best that is
incredibly difficult to coordinate without the kernel's help.  This is
because the sequencing of low-level hardware events from contemporary video
devices (i.e. DMA, power changes, suspend/resume, external displays) can
interfere with the sequence of user mode setting ioctl()'s to the point
where the state of the video hardware can easily get out-of-sync with
userspace's understanding of it, causing userspace to issue ioctls that
leaving you with a locked-up display.  The kernel *should* be handling
mode-setting requests these days, because only the kernel is in a position
to correctly sequence mode-setting requests with ongoing low-level hardware
events (such as by blocking or deferring the relevant hardware interrupts).

 

This isn't a Linux-only thing, by the way.  All the BSDs have or (in
NetBSD's case) will soon have KMS enabled by default.  Windows NT has had it
for decades.


[T.J. ] That is like saying that everyone uses the same mouse.  They might
work the same to the average person, but a developer knows the difference.
Wayland at present only works on Linux and  it is not being designed with
portability in mind.  The actual Wayland devs are working only with Linux
and that is really all they are concerned with.  Granted, there are efforts
to patch Wayland for other systems, but they not really high priority.  
 

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Re: [Dng] rumors on RMS about systemd at libreplanet

[Jaromil]

On Mon, 23 Mar 2015, Nuno Magalhães wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 6:59 PM, Mark R. White 
> wrote:
> >
> > Just to be clear: I've seen a lot of cross talk about the
> > possibility of systemd being put into Devuan via a sandbox or even
> > having the systemd API written in.  Is it safe to assume that going
> > forward that there will be no systemd in Devuan?  Because if there
> > is, I'm in the wrong place.
> 
> +1

I am aware of the discussions, but I haven't followed them in detail
because of lack of time.

I can only repeat what we always wrote: we struggle to have no systemd
at all in Devuan, with the implied advantages of better compatibility
with BSD userspace, possibility to keep around uclibc, Hurd etc.

If we have Systemd in the alpha release cycle is just because of a few
desktop requirements and mostly the fact that udev now is incorporated
in systemd (that's why vdev is very important to us).

In the alpha releases there is *no systemd daemon running* so this is a
first goal achieved. The systemd package is there and may stick around
for a while until vdev is in good shape.

ciao


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Re: [Dng] rumors on RMS about systemd at libreplanet

[KatolaZ]

On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 07:44:30PM +0100, Jaromil wrote:

[cut]

> 
> I think this is unacceptable under so many ways... some of which I've
> tried to explain. I'm also !flabbergasted! to see the discussion averted
> into the AST for GCC debacle with a touch of RMS bashing. Either someone
> is really missing the point of what is happening here, or really doesn't
> wants us to acknowledge that a Debian leader and OSI board member is
> acting this way, which I keep perceiving as bullying not only against an
> elderly member of our communities, but against anyone concerned.
> 

Dear Jaromil, 

the problem is not (just) of bad leaders but of the people who have
chosen them as leaders, and silently hailed to their wills just
because they were...err...the leaders... 

You are definitely right: it's unbelievable that one of the most
renowkn Debian and OSI member reacts to such an innocent question like
Zacchiroli did, but this unfortunately tells a lot about the current
state of the Linux community. And also the silent inglobation of the
systemd-nonsense by all distros, just "for the better of the users" is
another sign that something has gone terribly wrong.

I think we can't do that much, if not pointing out clearly that this
is not the community we dreamed of and we lived in until a couple of
years ago. And put all efforts in providing users with a credible
alternative. I have started believing that the mission of Devuan is
not just that of putting together a systemd-nonsense-free GNU/Linux
distribution, but more importantly to show that the community is still
holding tight on some founding concepts, despite some of the "leaders"
are pointing in a completely different direction. Succeding on this
front will be the ultimate win, not just for Devuan, but for the
community itself.

My2Cents

KatolaZ

-- 
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[ me [at] katolaz.homeunix.net -- http://katolaz.homeunix.net -- ]
[ GNU/Linux User:#325780/ICQ UIN: #258332181/GPG key ID 0B5F062F ]
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Re: [Dng] rumors on RMS about systemd at libreplanet

[Jim Murphy]

On Sun, Mar 22, 2015 at 5:48 AM,   wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 22, 2015 at 2:40 AM, Jude Nelson - jud...@gmail.com
>  wrote:
>>> The only way not to be forcing anybody is to stick with the least
>>> common denominator for everything. That flat out stops progress.
>>
>> This is simply not true.  A key hallmark of good application design is to
>> keep the business logic as decoupled as possible from the layers beneath it,
>> thereby enabling both freedom of choice for the user and independence from
>> the application's needs for the stack's developers.  Often, this is achieved
>> by means of a "driver" that translates requests from the business logic to
>> the underlying layers and back.
>
> There is no application design in that proposal whatsoever. It is only
> a proposal to split up a distribution into a set of files with similar
> properties and how to use mount to combine those sets again.
>

I believe this may be beyond a proposal, with or without an application
design.  In an email to linux-btrfs called "Recursive subvolume snapshots
and deletion", Lennart states:

"Since a while systemd has now by default creating btrfs subvolumes for
/var/lib/machines for example."

The full text can be found here:
http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-btrfs@vger.kernel.org/msg42455.html

He also makes this statement in the email:

"We could work around this in userspace, of course,
but it would not be atomic, and I'd much prefer if the kernel could do
this on its own!"

Just an FYI.
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Re: [Dng] rumors on RMS about systemd at libreplanet

[Jude Nelson]

> GCC was deliberately making things interdepend on each other, even
> without technical reasons, simply to prevent commercial entities to
> replace the e.g. front-end of the compiler with some proprietary code
> and then have that use the GPL backend. This would enable a new,
> proprietary language to leverage all the optimizations gcc has. So
> this prevents what Apple does with swift on llvm right now, and I
> understand the reasoning behind that decision, even though I regret it
> since it prevents us from having many valuable tools for code analysis
> and refactoring.

GCC was also built at a time when proprietary compilers were the norm, and
notions of "free software" and "open source" did not exist outside a few
close-nit circles.  What RMS did with GCC's design was make it very
difficult to create and distribute proprietary extensions to GCC without
violating the GPL.  He did so by designing GCC such that the only supported
way to add new extensions was to *statically* link them into GCC at
compile-time.  For example, NeXT tried to distribute a proprietary
Objective-C module as a .o file that had to be linked into GCC by the
developer, but were ultimately compelled by the GPL to release the code.

It's worth pointing out that GCC has since become a lot less monolithic (it
was still modular internally, however), in part due to competition with
LLVM/Clang, in part because it make interoperability easier, and in part
because the market expects open source compilers.

Not sure how this is related to systemd exactly, but suggesting that we
prioritize LLVM/Clang over GCC because we prioritized sysvinit and other
daemons over systemd would be disingenuous.  Systemd has the opposite
trajectory, for one--it's becoming *more* monolithic, not less.  Also, one
can have LLVM/Clang and GCC installed and running at the same time without
loss of functionality.  This is not true for systemd versus any other init
system, since there can be only one PID 1.

-Jude

On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 7:17 AM,  wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 11:18 AM, Jaromil - jaro...@dyne.org
>  wrote:
> > On Mon, 23 Mar 2015, KatolaZ wrote:
> >> This sounds strange and new at the same time, since GCC was indeed
> >> designed to be portable and ported to several architectures since from
> >> the beginning. Do you have any quote by RMS or by any guy who has
> >> contributed to gcc to support your statement?  I don't think that GCC
> >> is a hairball, to be honest.
>
> Oh, a hairball can be portable in its entirety:-) It is just hard to
> use parts of it.
>
> GCC was deliberately making things interdepend on each other, even
> without technical reasons, simply to prevent commercial entities to
> replace the e.g. front-end of the compiler with some proprietary code
> and then have that use the GPL backend. This would enable a new,
> proprietary language to leverage all the optimizations gcc has. So
> this prevents what Apple does with swift on llvm right now, and I
> understand the reasoning behind that decision, even though I regret it
> since it prevents us from having many valuable tools for code analysis
> and refactoring.
>
> https://lwn.net/Articles/629259/ covers the most recent flare-up when
> somebody wanted to make the AST of GCC accessible.
>
> > This is not the first post in which this spamgourmet account is
> > spreading FUD. We may need to react to this beyond argumenting.
>
> I don't see anything I said on this list to be related to be spreading
> Fear, Uncertainty or Doubt.
>
> I did argue for some of things I think are sensible, just like
> everybody else here. All of them can be implemented _without_ systemd
> (and I have or had them running that way). Yes, one of the ideas I
> like was first proposed by Lennart, but is this about building a new
> distribution or about holding a grudge?
>
> If it is the later, then you won't need to bother to ban me.
>
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[Dng] Which DE will initially be fully supported in Devuan?

[Anto]

Hello Everybody,

I hope I am not too early to ask this.

I have been switching desktops that are available in Debian so many 
times. But I always go back to XFCE. I have been on XFCE (again) for 
almost a year now.


From the recent discussions, it seems KDE, Gnome (and its forks), and 
(perhaps) Unity are out of the options. I think there are a lot of good 
options like XFCE, LXDE, Enlightenment, etc. But which one is going to 
be *initially* fully supported in Devuan?


Kind regards,

Anto

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Re: [Dng] FW: Devuan commitments - will trade-off be applied?

[Jude Nelson]

*> [T.J. ] That is like saying that everyone uses the same mouse.  They
might work the same to the average person, but a developer knows the
difference.   Wayland at present only works on*
*> Linux and  it is not being designed with portability in mind.  The
actual Wayland devs are working only with Linux and that is really all they
are concerned with.  Granted, there are efforts *
*> to patch Wayland for other systems, but they not really high priority. *

Technically, Wayland is the protocol definition, not the implementation
(i.e. think X11 vs X.org).  Weston is the reference implementation.

While it is true that most of the Wayland/Weston developers are also X.org
developers (and most come from Linux), they are making all the right moves
to avoid lock-in to Linux or a particular Wayland implementation.  For
example, while there are multiple Wayland implementations (i.e. a Wayland
window manager or widget toolkit is effectively a Wayland protocol
implementation), inconsistencies between an implementation and the
specification are treated as bugs in the implementation.  As another
example, Wayland avoids relying on FreeDesktop technologies like dbus and
systemd.

You may be interested to know that the Wayland protocol is not tied to a
particular rendering technology or paradigm.  To use the OSI analogy,
Wayland lives in the presentation layer--it's concerned with helping
applications identify and interact with the host's output devices, input
devices, and pixel memory buffers (on both an individual level and by
groupings).  The protocol itself is not concerned with users, sessions, or
GPU infrastructure, nor is it concerned with widget sets, windowing,
decorations, etc.

-Jude



On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 3:16 PM, T.J. Duchene  wrote:

>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *[T.J. ]   Hi Jude!  *
>
> Wayland is basically just that--a complete rewrite of X, built around
> design requirements that were not present when X11 was designed.  Think of
> Wayland as X12, and think of Xwayland as the X11 compatibility layer.
>
> *[T.J. ] Yes, I know.  =)*
>
>
>
> Also, userspace mode setting these days is a racy prospect at best that is
> incredibly difficult to coordinate without the kernel's help.  This is
> because the sequencing of low-level hardware events from contemporary video
> devices (i.e. DMA, power changes, suspend/resume, external displays) can
> interfere with the sequence of user mode setting ioctl()'s to the point
> where the state of the video hardware can easily get out-of-sync with
> userspace's understanding of it, causing userspace to issue ioctls that
> leaving you with a locked-up display.  The kernel *should* be handling
> mode-setting requests these days, because only the kernel is in a position
> to correctly sequence mode-setting requests with ongoing low-level hardware
> events (such as by blocking or deferring the relevant hardware interrupts).
>
>
>
> This isn't a Linux-only thing, by the way.  All the BSDs have or (in
> NetBSD's case) will soon have KMS enabled by default.  Windows NT has had
> it for decades.
>
>
>
> *[T.J. ] That is like saying that everyone uses the same mouse.  They
> might work the same to the average person, but a developer knows the
> difference.   Wayland at present only works on Linux and  it is not being
> designed with portability in mind.  The actual Wayland devs are working
> only with Linux and that is really all they are concerned with.  Granted,
> there are efforts to patch Wayland for other systems, but they not really
> high priority.   *
>
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Re: [Dng] Which DE will initially be fully supported in Devuan?

[Anto]

I guess I missed reading 
http://lists.devuan.org/dwn/54F5606A.20909.dyne.org.html. XFCE it is then.


On 23/03/15 21:44, Anto wrote:

Hello Everybody,

I hope I am not too early to ask this.

I have been switching desktops that are available in Debian so many 
times. But I always go back to XFCE. I have been on XFCE (again) for 
almost a year now.


From the recent discussions, it seems KDE, Gnome (and its forks), and 
(perhaps) Unity are out of the options. I think there are a lot of 
good options like XFCE, LXDE, Enlightenment, etc. But which one is 
going to be *initially* fully supported in Devuan?


Kind regards,

Anto

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Re: [Dng] Which DE will initially be fully supported in Devuan?

[Nuno Magalhães]

On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 8:44 PM, Anto  wrote:
> From the recent discussions, it seems KDE, Gnome (and its forks), and
> (perhaps) Unity are out of the options. I think there are a lot of good
> options like XFCE, LXDE, Enlightenment, etc. But which one is going to be
> *initially* fully supported in Devuan?

>From the recent discussions, it seems XFCE.
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Re: [Dng] FW: Devuan commitments - will trade-off be applied?

[T.J. Duchene]

 

 

From: Jude Nelson [mailto:jud...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Monday, March 23, 2015 3:50 PM
To: T.J. Duchene
Cc: dng@lists.dyne.org
Subject: Re: [Dng] FW: Devuan commitments - will trade-off be applied?

 

Technically, Wayland is the protocol definition, not the implementation
(i.e. think X11 vs X.org).  Weston is the reference implementation.

 

[T.J. ] Good point. I was using the term Wayland more or less generically.
Yes, I know, but thank you for the correction.  Hopefully, it will be less
confusing.  

 

While it is true that most of the Wayland/Weston developers are also X.org
developers (and most come from Linux), they are making all the right moves
to avoid lock-in to Linux or a particular Wayland implementation.  For
example, while there are multiple Wayland implementations (i.e. a Wayland
window manager or widget toolkit is effectively a Wayland protocol
implementation), inconsistencies between an implementation and the
specification are treated as bugs in the implementation.  As another
example, Wayland avoids relying on FreeDesktop technologies like dbus and
systemd.



[T.J. ] Also correct.  



You may be interested to know that the Wayland protocol is not tied to a
particular rendering technology or paradigm.  To use the OSI analogy,
Wayland lives in the presentation layer--it's concerned with helping
applications identify and interact with the host's output devices, input
devices, and pixel memory buffers (on both an individual level and by
groupings).  The protocol itself is not concerned with users, sessions, or
GPU infrastructure, nor is it concerned with widget sets, windowing,
decorations, etc.


[T.J. ]  Yes,  I know.


While I am not commenting  as to their ultimate aims, which OVERALL are
actually quite admirable and agnostic, it is still less than desirable that
a key technology: KMS IS part of the initial implementation, which in turn
becomes the "reference implementation" for all practical purposes.  KMS as a
software is Linux specific. While there are equivalents out there, they are
certainly less developed.  When I criticize Wayland, it is over concern that
Linux-isms have worked their way into the final version of the stack, making
it less portable to systems not using Linux KMS.  I think you can agree that
that concern is not entirely unjustified, given that a number of supposedly
platform agnostic software projects have Linux peculiarities in their code
that make them difficult to port to other UNIXes.  

 I freely admit that until we see the final version of Wayland, it is hard
to judge if it is merely overcaution.

T.J.

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Re: [Dng] rumors on RMS about systemd at libreplanet

[Go Linux]

On Mon, 3/23/15, KatolaZ  wrote:

 Subject: Re: [Dng] rumors on RMS about systemd at libreplanet
 To: "Jaromil" 
 Cc: dng@lists.dyne.org
 Date: Monday, March 23, 2015, 2:22 PM
 
On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 07:44:30PM +0100, Jaromil wrote:

[cut]

>
> I think this is unacceptable under so many ways... some of which I've
> tried to explain. I'm also !flabbergasted! to see the discussion averted
> into the AST for GCC debacle with a touch of RMS bashing. Either someone
> is really missing the point of what is happening here, or really doesn't
> wants us to acknowledge that a Debian leader and OSI board member is
> acting this way, which I keep perceiving as bullying not only against an
> elderly member of our communities, but against anyone concerned.
>

Dear Jaromil,

the problem is not (just) of bad leaders but of the people who have
chosen them as leaders, and silently hailed to their wills just
because they were...err...the leaders...

You are definitely right: it's unbelievable that one of the most
renowkn Debian and OSI member reacts to such an innocent question like
Zacchiroli did, but this unfortunately tells a lot about the current
state of the Linux community. And also the silent inglobation of the
systemd-nonsense by all distros, just "for the better of the users" is
another sign that something has gone terribly wrong.

I think we can't do that much, if not pointing out clearly that this
is not the community we dreamed of and we lived in until a couple of
years ago. And put all efforts in providing users with a credible
alternative. I have started believing that the mission of Devuan is
not just that of putting together a systemd-nonsense-free GNU/Linux
distribution, but more importantly to show that the community is still
holding tight on some founding concepts, despite some of the "leaders"
are pointing in a completely different direction. Succeding on this
front will be the ultimate win, not just for Devuan, but for the
community itself.

My2Cents

KatolaZ



A link to Revolution OS was recently posted on irc.  I had never seen it 
before. It seems that the cycle has come full circle and now Devuan is going 
back to the future and reinventing the wheel all over again. Only this time the 
escape isn't from MS or Apple.  It is from the enemy within.  If history 
teaches us anything it is that nothing lasts for long and that freedom has to 
be continuously reclaimed from those who profit from control of ideas, goods 
and services.  I see Devuan returning to its roots as the future of Linux and 
cooperative freedom in the digital age . . . a light in the darkness . . .

golinux


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Re: [Dng] FW: Devuan commitments - will trade-off be applied?

[Jude Nelson]

Hi T.J.,

> *While I am not commenting  as to their ultimate aims, which OVERALL are
actually quite admirable and agnostic, it is still less than desirable that
a key technology: KMS IS part of the*
*> initial implementation, which in turn becomes the "reference
implementation" for all practical purposes.  KMS as a software is Linux
specific. While there are equivalents out there, they*
*> are certainly less developed.  When I criticize Wayland, it is over
concern that Linux-isms have worked their way into the final version of the
stack, making it less portable to systems not*
*> using Linux KMS.  I think you can agree that that concern is not
entirely unjustified, given that a number of supposedly platform agnostic
software projects have Linux peculiarities in *
*> their code that make them difficult to port to other UNIXes.  *

I don't think I follow.  KMS is a generic OS design concept, in the same
way that "memory paging" and "preemptive multi-tasking" are generic OS
design concepts.  Each OS that does video mode setting in the kernel has
its own API and implementation for doing so.  Maybe one day POSIX will
specify a consistent API that OS developers could implement, but that day
is a long way off.

The BSDs are on-board with not only adding KMS, but also GEM.  Both are
much simpler to implement and reason about than trying to get DRM and user
mode-setting to cooperate with X while getting decent performance and good
security.  Here's a good perspective from the OpenBSD journal in 2008 on
the subject, for example:
http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20081029164221

-Jude


On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 6:36 PM, T.J. Duchene  wrote:

>
>
>
>
> *From:* Jude Nelson [mailto:jud...@gmail.com]
> *Sent:* Monday, March 23, 2015 3:50 PM
> *To:* T.J. Duchene
> *Cc:* dng@lists.dyne.org
> *Subject:* Re: [Dng] FW: Devuan commitments - will trade-off be applied?
>
>
>
> Technically, Wayland is the protocol definition, not the implementation
> (i.e. think X11 vs X.org).  Weston is the reference implementation.
>
>
>
> *[T.J. ] Good point. I was using the term Wayland more or less
> generically.   Yes, I know, but thank you for the correction.  Hopefully,
> it will be less confusing.  *
>
>
>
> While it is true that most of the Wayland/Weston developers are also X.org
> developers (and most come from Linux), they are making all the right moves
> to avoid lock-in to Linux or a particular Wayland implementation.  For
> example, while there are multiple Wayland implementations (i.e. a Wayland
> window manager or widget toolkit is effectively a Wayland protocol
> implementation), inconsistencies between an implementation and the
> specification are treated as bugs in the implementation.  As another
> example, Wayland avoids relying on FreeDesktop technologies like dbus and
> systemd.
>
>
>
> *[T.J. ] Also correct.  *
>
> You may be interested to know that the Wayland protocol is not tied to a
> particular rendering technology or paradigm.  To use the OSI analogy,
> Wayland lives in the presentation layer--it's concerned with helping
> applications identify and interact with the host's output devices, input
> devices, and pixel memory buffers (on both an individual level and by
> groupings).  The protocol itself is not concerned with users, sessions, or
> GPU infrastructure, nor is it concerned with widget sets, windowing,
> decorations, etc.
>
>
> *[T.J. ]  Yes,  I know.*
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *While I am not commenting  as to their ultimate aims, which OVERALL are
> actually quite admirable and agnostic, it is still less than desirable that
> a key technology: KMS IS part of the initial implementation, which in turn
> becomes the "reference implementation" for all practical purposes.  KMS as
> a software is Linux specific. While there are equivalents out there, they
> are certainly less developed.  When I criticize Wayland, it is over concern
> that Linux-isms have worked their way into the final version of the stack,
> making it less portable to systems not using Linux KMS.  I think you can
> agree that that concern is not entirely unjustified, given that a number of
> supposedly platform agnostic software projects have Linux peculiarities in
> their code that make them difficult to port to other UNIXes.   I freely
> admit that until we see the final version of Wayland, it is hard to judge
> if it is merely overcaution.*T.J.
>
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