[HN Gopher] Linux Sucks 2021 - The End of Linux Is Nigh [video]
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Linux Sucks 2021 - The End of Linux Is Nigh [video]
Author : WoodenChair
Score : 37 points
Date : 2021-09-15 20:06 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lunduke.locals.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lunduke.locals.com)
| Alupis wrote:
| Bryan Lunduke revisits this talk every year at linux conventions.
| Usually good observations.
|
| BTW, he loves linux.
| gHosts wrote:
| I hate long slow videos? Any slides.
|
| He seems sometimes, if I remember previous years, to forget the
| point is open source, not linux.
|
| If a better Open Source OS appears tomorrow, I'd abandon linux
| for it without a backward glance.
|
| If it's closed source, it could be rainbows and ponies and I'd
| still turn it down.
|
| On the otherhand, I bet an Open Source OS could grow any
| rainbows and ponies I actually need and want.
| Alupis wrote:
| > to forget the point is open source, not linux.
|
| For you, perhaps. But for most companies, they use Linux
| because it's the best server OS around in regards to
| performance, compatibility, customizability, footprint,
| support, etc.
|
| Sorry BSD folks, I know BSD is great too, but it's just not
| as widespread as Linux and therefore doesn't quite have the
| compatibility and support Linux enjoys.
| gHosts wrote:
| The point is it became that _because_ it is open source.
| Alupis wrote:
| > The point is it became that _because_ it is open
| source.
|
| I still disagree. Most companies happily pay for their
| server OS's and support (Red Hat, SUSE, Oracle, etc), and
| don't even think about the open source aspects.
|
| Maybe a long time ago it got traction from being open
| source, but so is all the BSD's and they aren't nearly as
| prevalent as Linux is. Something else has to be a factor
| here besides it being open source.
|
| Perhaps you mean it became that way because open source
| attracted talented developers? Perhaps... although today
| most contributions to the kernel are from paid developers
| working for mega corps like Google, Amazon, IBM, etc, who
| do that as part of their day job.
|
| As an aside, I love and support open source projects, I
| just don't think it really matters for Linux (at least
| anymore). Plenty of folks would happily use it if it were
| closed source and proprietary - it's that good today.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "... but it's just not as widespread as Linux..."
|
| Of course "BSD" means more than just a kernel. Nevermind
| all those OSX and iOS users. Companies are interested in
| more than just the BSD kernsls. Many years ago, I remember
| someone from Google approached NetBSD asking about their
| libc.
|
| Most "BSD folks" seems to know a lot about Linux. Yet I
| dont get the same feeling from "Linux folks". I have never
| learned anything about BSD from "Linux folks", but I have
| learned various things about Linux from "BSD folks".
| raman162 wrote:
| This is a long form video, maybe the title should be adjusted to
| inform that
| skibz wrote:
| Much like Google's Fuchsia, FreeBSD is an alternative that has
| compatibility for Linux binaries.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| NetBSD kernel has Linux compatibility. (NetBSD had it for years
| before FreeBSD.) For simple applications it works well.
| Fortunately I prefer simple applications.
| pshirshov wrote:
| But not an alternative when we need memory safety or just damn
| 802.11ac wifi.
| mathfailure wrote:
| No, it has not, that's a myth. Nothing works there properly.
| Delk wrote:
| The kernel's still monolithic, and one of the arguments in the
| video was core system components becoming unsustainably large.
| I suppose the community woes the video mentions might apply
| equally to BSD, although I have no personal experience with how
| those work in that part of the world.
|
| If Google developing Fuchsia and (again, as postulated in the
| video) perhaps moving focus away from Linux is a concern, it
| might be worth noting that even if there are corporate backers
| and sponsors of FreeBSD, I don't think there are companies the
| size of Google, Intel or even Red Hat contributing massively to
| its overall development. I could be wrong, but I'm not aware of
| that going on.
|
| Pretty much all of the arguments given in the video could be
| true for FreeBSD or other Unix systems as well, at least if
| they had the breadth of Linux in terms of hardware support,
| size and visibility of the community, and corporate
| connections.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Google is famous for launching projects, spending billions, and
| then... just dropping them.
|
| And just because Google does something, doesn't mean anyone else
| will use it.
|
| Not sure why Google doing something, means certain... anything.
| blagie wrote:
| I wish there were a TL;DR, a transcript, or something.
| TOMDM wrote:
| To quote his major points
|
| - Founders banished
|
| - Community in shambles
|
| - Companies losing linux focus
|
| - Core system components reaching unsustainability
|
| - Google building a replacement (Fuschia)
|
| - Statistically unlikely to stay active much longer
| smoldesu wrote:
| Their summary:
|
| - Founders banished
|
| - Community in shambles
|
| - Companies losing Linux focus
|
| - Core system components reaching sustainability
|
| - Google building replacement
|
| - Statistically unlikely to stay active much longer
| tored wrote:
| Bryan Lunduke makes some really good points especially
| regarding Google, that Google eventually will replace Linux. It
| is worrying how Google eats up every market and at the same
| time branding their actions as good will, "hey it is open
| source!"
|
| If the US ever wants to keep some of their liberties they need
| to break up Google.
|
| For Europe, we need to build our own web platforms without the
| American big tech.
| oytis wrote:
| European search engines and social networks do exist, they
| are just not very competitive even on the European market
| factorialboy wrote:
| Quite verbose for such limited content.
|
| Anyway, Linux has always been the under-dog. It was
| "statistically" much less likely to survive in the late-90s and
| early-00s.
|
| In my personal opinion, Linux offers me the best desktop
| experience today.
|
| I think I'm not in a bubble, I dabble with MacOS and Windows
| often. Linux feels liberating. It takes time to customize to
| one's preferences, but after that, it is smooth AF.
| jbhouse wrote:
| the bluetooth can be annoyingly wonky at times for me, but
| otherwise Linux is definitely the best in my experience
| handrous wrote:
| > Anyway, Linux has always been the under-dog.
|
| It's currently dominant on phones and servers. Google can
| snap its fingers and set one of those on a course to drop
| toward zero over a few years, and is well-positioned to push
| Fuchsia for cloud-related server purposes if it so chooses,
| so that'll likely go too, if they decide to do that. AFAIK
| most Linux desktops are ChromeOS devices, and that's Google
| again.
|
| That leaves traditional Linux desktop users, but if Fuchsia's
| GUI is any good and is well-integrated, and driver support is
| OK, those'll bleed to Fuchsia faster than they're replaced,
| too.
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| I could see Google wanting to get away from Linux,
| especially if they build more of their own silicon like
| Apple has, but I'm not confident that'll translate to
| servers outside of Google moving away from Linux.
|
| I can definitely see Google wanting to consolidate their
| codebase and switching all the consumer devices they
| maintain to Fuchsia sooner or later.
|
| As a part time Linux desktop user since ~2002, I don't
| think other traditional linux desktop users would bleed to
| Fuchsia. I could see some people switching from macOS to
| Fuchsia though.
| dnautics wrote:
| > It takes time to customize to one's preferences
|
| I don't even do that. I find the {mint, PopOS} defaults to be
| incredibly sane. I think I changed the background of mint.
| I'm always SO very confused when I need to use a MacOS or
| Windows machine.
|
| That said, you can get the feeling out of the corner of your
| usage that something's gonna give. There has been painful
| transitionary stuff going on (remember X vs wayland? ifupdown
| vs networkmanager vs netplan? systemd? musl vs glibc?) that
| somehow the community papered over in a sane fashion for GP
| use, but when I was "sysadminnnig" stuff as an accessory to
| the stuff I was coding, it was loads of pain normalizing
| between different machines and moving from distro to distro.
| This could get even worse as stuff moves to containerized
| work, so the people most likely to complain due to bearing
| the most pain just stop caring.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| This thing with the founders is interesting (remind me to make
| my own license with "I take it all down with me if you destroy
| me" clause), but I want to know much more.
|
| But who/what is the attack vector? Is it a coordinated attack
| and if so, what is the method and who are the backers? Are
| there other founders included in this trend? Granted, those
| three are pretty big but ...
| dnautics wrote:
| I'm not sure it matters... Even if it was completely
| uncoordinated or by accident, it's not good for the
| ecosystem.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I would disagree. If it were coordinated, it _could_
| possibly be exposed and countered.
| dnautics wrote:
| that's a fair assessment, but it's also already happened,
| so, even if the outcomes are reversible, it's still a bad
| "leading indicator", as it were.
| Melkman wrote:
| If it were a coordinated attack then the chance of
| successfully countering it with a loosely knit community
| would have been be slim at best.
| krapp wrote:
| It's always either Marxist feminists or agent provocateurs
| for proprietary software. Or both.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I think I would want a few more data points before signing
| off on the first one, but perhaps not the second.
| dnautics wrote:
| I don't want to put words in Lunduke's mouth, but since it
| seems to be a politically charged issue, I think that in this
| video the perspective of why "Founders banished" matters has
| nothing to do with whether or not you agree with why any given
| one of them (or all of them) have been banished, the fact that
| it's all happening at once - whether or not it's a coincidence
| - suggests a bad future for the ecosystem.
| lavabiopsy wrote:
| I disagree, out-of-touch founders being kicked out is a good
| thing. It's a sign that the community is strong enough and
| can move forward irrespective of any one person's opinion.
| This video has it totally backwards.
|
| Like, I get that there is an aspect of founder worship on
| this forum but there is no inherent value in this beyond the
| idea that someone can keep control indefinitely, which
| doesn't matter for an open source project. Maybe it matters
| if you want to hang onto your company's bank accounts but
| that's a fundamentally different thing compared to a project
| that exists entirely on public github.
| gHosts wrote:
| Hint: The community has always been in shambles. It's a
| feature, not a bug.
|
| Founders aren't banished, they aren't in any gulag. They can
| carry on. If they produce something better, they are still the
| drivers.
|
| A commentator below said, "remind me to make my own license
| with "I take it all down with me if you destroy me" clause....
|
| That is explicitly _not_ and open source license.
|
| The point is no one, neither the founders, nor any that may
| replace them, "take it all down with me".
|
| You may get a fork, well then, may the best fork win.
|
| A while back gcc was forked. Remember egcs? It was the best
| fork for awhile.
|
| Then the fork merged again with gcc again.
|
| Yup. It happens.
|
| Life moves on.
| trav4225 wrote:
| Yeah, this is almost like criticizing democracy for being
| messy. The mess is sort of the point. :-)
| na85 wrote:
| >Founders banished
|
| Linus was banished?
| Melkman wrote:
| Not yet. There were some hot headed debates during the height
| of #metoo about his communication style including calls for
| him to change his ways or stand down. Linus choose to change
| his ways and change the code of conflict to the code of
| conduct. https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torv
| alds/lin...
| butz wrote:
| As long as Linux sucks less than Windows and macOS - I'm a happy
| Linux user.
| hk1337 wrote:
| macOS UI > Linux UI > Windows UI
|
| but macOS has weird quirks that bumps them down in the CLI
| space.
|
| Linux CLI > macOS CLI > Windows CLI
|
| Linux CLI and macOS CLI are really close, I think but Linux
| beats it.
| ladyanita22 wrote:
| Windows software library >>> macOS software library >> Linux
| software library
| smoldesu wrote:
| At the peak of it's game (Mojave), MacOS was _really_
| competitive for my workflow. One evening I made a simple
| realization that kinda trashed it all, though: I was spending
| more time making MacOS like Linux than I spent making Linux
| like MacOS. By the time Catalina came out (and trashed 32-bit
| libs along with it) the value proposition was squandered once
| again. It 's funny how transient the usability of a 'stable'
| OS can be, even on the Linux side of things.
|
| Of course, Windows is still bringing up the rear. WSL is
| mighty competitive though, and I'm giddy with anticipation of
| what Windows 11 will do with it.
| zeusk wrote:
| Android on W11 is something that was much more possible
| thanks to the work on WSL and WSLg
| scns wrote:
| Form or function what do we value more?
| azalemeth wrote:
| I agree with this. I genuinely think that linux is the best
| "developer" machine there is, particularly if you are cross-
| compiling. You have complete control over _everything_ and
| can _really_ get to the bottom of problems if required. I
| really like the fact that I can _look at the kernel sources
| if I need to understand how the &!%$ something works_. You
| don't often need to do this, but when you do, _you really
| do_. The one thing that perpetually just pees me off about
| basically all Linux DMs /WMs that I have used a lot is that
| occasionally they just hang, horribly, even when the system
| isn't hosed, and even when you are trying to use it. It's
| hard to understate how jarring this is as a user, and MacOS
| in particular seems very well optimised to prevent it ever
| occurring. I don't quite know how, but if you ever see the
| seconds not updating on a 1 s tick in MacOS, _something is
| wrong_. Even with renice 'd -20 xfce on linux on a machine
| with TiB of ram and 96 cores, sometimes the UI _just hangs_.
|
| That being said, Apple's documentation is nowadays oft-
| lamented as being outdated -- I remember it being excellent,
| including the first ever description of OO code I ever read,
| as a teenager. (Aside: It involved "a faucet". Not being a
| speaker of en-US, I remember distinctly looking up that word
| and trying to understand what on earth they meant, until
| "tap" appeared later on in my brain). I've never really
| written MacOS apps but I gather you have to "drink the kool
| aid" at every available opportunity and to some extent this
| shows.
|
| My experience of Windows over the last 30+ years is one of
| confusion, culture clash, a lack of understanding, and
| frustration. I am not qualified to comment on it, but it does
| seem to be the case that people can spin up GUIs very quickly
| very routinely, and they tend to keep running for a bloody
| long time as well, unlike both other options.
| gralx wrote:
| Linux is "just" the kernel, and statements like
|
| XNU UI > Linux UI > Windows NT UI
|
| don't make sense because Linux has many different UIs. I'm
| pretty sure there is no macOS UI comparable to my preferred
| tiling window managers Sway and i3, and in that sense which
| UI is better is a question of personal preference and habit.
| In fact, I'm pretty sure only one macOS UI is available. Same
| for Windows: only one Windows UI available per Windows
| version.
| pshirshov wrote:
| macOS UI is written in memory unsafe language
|
| Linux is written in memory unsafe language
|
| Windows is written in memory unsafe language
|
| Where is my memory-safe desktop OS?
| throwawayswede wrote:
| I'm aware that Brian has been trolling with such a title over the
| years, but I really think that it's the epitome of clickbait.
| Totally a personal opinion, but I absolutely hate such farcical
| titles.
|
| I'd honestly feel more compelled to watch yet another one of
| those with a title like "What still sucks about Linux"
| TOMDM wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| Not to mention he takes ages to say not much.
|
| There are some good points buried in here, but it takes him
| over 5 minutes before he's even on topic.
| mrintegrity wrote:
| i was grateful for the 1.75x speed option on the video!
| ziml77 wrote:
| He's not trolling or clickbaiting. The title is referring to a
| future that we are always teetering on the edge of where Linux
| fades away. The video is a list of the things that he thinks
| the Linux community should be looking to fix to avoid that
| decline.
| yellowapple wrote:
| Kinda surprised he didn't mention WSL, on the topic of companies
| trying to enable transitioning away from Linux onto their own
| operating systems. On that note, if the end is indeed nigh, then
| replicating Linux compatibility across as many other platforms as
| possible - beefing up the existing support on FreeBSD and NetBSD,
| reintroducing it for OpenBSD, getting it going on something like
| Haiku - seems like an important next step. Linux the kernel might
| have numbered days, but Linux the ABI could still have a future.
|
| One thing the video misses re: Linux's prognosis is the breadth
| of hardware/driver support. Linux is, if not _the_ most
| comprehensive collection of actively maintained device drivers
| out there, pretty darn close to it. Other platforms implementing
| Linux 's userspace ABI? Big whoop. It's the kernelspace drivers
| that will entrench Linux for a long while, and it's those drivers
| that a Linux replacement will need to provide - whether from
| scratch or through compatibility with Linux's kernelspace APIs -
| before Linux's death is even possible, let alone probable. Even
| Fuchsia is highly unlikely to be the Linux replacement Bryan
| suspects it to be without substantially expanding its hardware
| support (which is still AFAICT in its infancy; even Haiku
| supports more hardware, and that's developed with a budget that
| might as well be a rounding error compared to what Google's able
| to throw around).
| type0 wrote:
| > Kinda surprised he didn't mention WSL
|
| - How could you make Linux suck more? - You install it on
| Windows!
| gnabgib wrote:
| This was posted 7 months ago [0] with a fairly sizable discussion
| (74 comments)
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26203471
| kvark wrote:
| Linux has never been scale-able, starting from the days of the
| Tanenbaum-Torvalds debate. You can't grow a monolithic kernel
| indefinitely. It's amusing how it managed to reach the state it
| is now.
| dnautics wrote:
| can I introduce you to something called x86?
| kvark wrote:
| That's an interesting analogy! I think it's going to be
| history as well, just in a much longer term. Apple has jumped
| the ship already.
| dnautics wrote:
| (i'm not arguing it's good, I agree with the video, just
| pointing out that low-level "inscalability" can be kludged
| indefinitely, it seems)
| outworlder wrote:
| Why do you need to grow a kernel indefinitely? Surely there's a
| limit on what kernelspace is responsible for.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Linux includes all drivers in-tree (in theory anyway) and
| there's definitely no limit to the number of drivers you
| need.
| kvark wrote:
| I don't want to grow a kernel. Linux grows by 2M LOC a year,
| as reported by the author of the video. That's just what
| happens.
| Alupis wrote:
| Most of that is driver code... and a lot of new devices and
| do-hickeys are created every year. Seems normal, given you
| can plug just about anything into a linux system and it
| "just works".
| kvark wrote:
| That's the problem. The system is very centralized.
| Drivers have to be constantly upstreamed to the kernel.
| Any other way introduces a ton of pain for all involved,
| since Linux has no binary compatibility guarantees.
|
| Compare it to Windows NT kernel, which only have a few
| essential drivers in it, but you can go online and
| download drivers for anything you need, and it mostly
| works out of the box.
| Alupis wrote:
| What is the problem, exactly? As a user, it's completely
| transparent to me.
|
| Besides, not 100% of the drivers are upstreamed... see
| Nvidia for example. It just means nearly 100% of hardware
| works out of the box with zero fuss or configuration.
|
| The same really cannot be said about Windows, which
| sometimes still requires drivers just to see hard disks
| during the install.
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| On the plus side, rms returned to the FSF about a month after
| this video was made. Maybe things are slightly less nigh?
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/22/22344910/richard-stallman...
| lavabiopsy wrote:
| I don't understand why that would be relevant, Richard Stallman
| has nothing to do with Linux and has never worked on Linux at
| all.
| type0 wrote:
| relevant link (would otherwise have this copypasta):
| https://wiki.installgentoo.com/index.php/Interjection
| jlkuester7 wrote:
| Man, this does make me wonder if Linux today is the FireFox of
| 2007.... An absolute juggernaut that is far superior to its
| cooperate competitors (IE/Safari), but can't quite comprehend
| what is about to happen when Google releases this little thing
| called Chrome...
|
| Fuchsia is definitely a vastly underrated project (just from the
| fact that it has survived 5? years without the overlords at
| Google killing it off should indicate something).
| hr2016 wrote:
| Ok
| pshirshov wrote:
| Well, Linux definitely sucks.
|
| By a chance - is there anything better? Pretty please?..
|
| Actually in case Fuchsia manages to replace - well, I would be
| happy. But would it really happen?..
| dnautics wrote:
| > Actually in case Fuchsia manages to replace - well, I would
| be happy. But would it really happen?..
|
| Would you be happy? Google has a poor track record of
| maintenance, not to mention monstrosities like angular, golang,
| kubernetes... I shudder to think about what a Google OS would
| look like.
| pshirshov wrote:
| Well, fuchsia seems to be better designed and from what I've
| heard they had intention to rewrite their kernel in Rust.
| Eventually.
|
| Fuchsia seems to be FOSS.
|
| So, in case a new userland appears on top of this legacy-free
| system I, probably, would be happier than I am right now on
| damn Linux where nothing works as it should and everything
| segfaults.
| dnautics wrote:
| I think rust is a singularly poor choice to write a kernel,
| due to the datastructures required, poor support and
| interop between libraries and nostd, in the long run macros
| obscuring code and making understanding timing attacks
| difficult, e.g. but that's just my opinion... If you have
| the resources of google, you might as well write it in
| another language and apply a proof solver for security
| assurances (or just use SeL4).
| tored wrote:
| Problem is that the software license has become irrelevant
| for the largest tech companies. In the old days there was a
| fear among them, and probably rightly so, that their
| software would be "stolen" if they went open source.
|
| But today every large corporation is running projects as
| open source without any fear. What happened? For one these
| projects are so complex it is not feasible for Joe the
| programmer to read thru all of it, it takes a company of
| the size of Google or Microsoft to manage it.
|
| The other thing is that the business model changed. Now
| they give stuff away for "free" to lock you in and spy on
| your every move and then monetize it.
|
| Third is the close integration of hardware and software, so
| even if someone forked Fuchsia it would be utterly
| pointless because of hardware.
|
| What Google has shown is that it is possible to operate one
| of that largest spying agencies in the world all on open
| source.
| koolba wrote:
| Linux is like Democracy, it's the worst except for all the
| alternatives.
| dnautics wrote:
| I want to know the answer to this. I have a really good track
| record of picking things that are about to get hot (julia,
| elixir, zig). As much as I love linux, I also hate it. I'm
| ready for the next OS.
| pshirshov wrote:
| Noone is working on the next general purpose OS for the end
| user. Maybe apart of Google.
|
| For some reason people wish to stick with dated unsafe crap
| from prehistoric era.
| hatmatrix wrote:
| GNU Hurd should be ready any day now...
| pshirshov wrote:
| Ready for what?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| For being put out to pasture?
|
| Right, I'll show myself out...
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| They got _audio support_ in a basic form a few years ago.
| That 's how far behind they are.
| zekrioca wrote:
| You may do some more research [1].
|
| [1] http://www.barrelfish.org/
| pshirshov wrote:
| Looks like another pile of memory-unsafe C crap: http://g
| it.barrelfish.org/?p=barrelfish;a=blobdiff;f=usr/dri...
|
| This will never become a modern OS. Wasted effort, wasted
| time, wasted money.
| yissp wrote:
| [something].js https://xkcd.com/1508/
| dnautics wrote:
| M.E.T.A.L (https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-
| birth-and-death...) - hopefully "pandemic" won't take the
| place of the 5 years war between 2020 and 2025
| bumblebritches5 wrote:
| Fuscia
| Ekaros wrote:
| Windows
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| What's your definition of "better"?
| pshirshov wrote:
| Sorry, but what is "Windows"?
| Ekaros wrote:
| Nice little OS, has been around for a bit. Good backwards
| compatibility to boot.
| pshirshov wrote:
| I had a look at it, looks like another inconsistent pile
| of unsafe C crap stirred with tons of legacy frameworks
| and complete incoherence.
|
| Doesn't look like an OS at all.
| cybernautique wrote:
| Why is Windows better than Linux?
| amatecha wrote:
| You may want to check out the *BSD OSes like FreeBSD, OpenBSD
| and NetBSD. Just try them. Watch some videos to see what
| they're about. They might very well appeal to you. I personally
| think they are great and am embracing them over Linux for most
| new computers I set up.
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(page generated 2021-09-15 23:01 UTC)