On Tue, 2009-05-12 at 08:01 -0700, Otto Rey wrote: > +1 in everything!!! > > We must to back to basics... > I don't see anything wrong with the way Fedora is heading. I say this as a non-redhat-affilated person, a desktop/laptop user and a sysadmin. Are there problems in some of the ways things get done? Sure, but that's true of every distro/OS (especially if the issues in question are from upstream). If the quirks of Fedora you so much, then perhaps Fedora isn't the distro for you... So, with that said, Fedora developers: Great job. Especially in light of the constant stream of "bikeshed flamewar of the week" Is there a fedora-devel list faq somewhere, like the LKML faq? It might be useful to short out some of these threads...kind of like the annual "Why don't we rewrite the Linux kernel in C++?" that shows up on lkml. I think its important to have fedora-direction discussion here, but unfortunately a lot of the "starter" messages are out of touch with practicality...or aren't aware of why things are done the way they are. Brian > > > ----- Mensaje original ---- > De: Michael Nielsen <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > Para: fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx > Enviado: lunes 11 de mayo de 2009, 10:56:00 > Asunto: Fedora (Linux) is Destroying it self > > Hi, > > I've been told this is the right place to place this debate starter. > > > Not to demean the fine work that has been done in maintaining fedora, however the distribution is slowly killing itself, being destroyed by contradicting philosophies. Many of the problems have been directly copied from the Windows world. > > The main problems are. > > 1. Removal of features - the user interfaces are being dumbed down, like recently I've searched for the ability to remove the "Raise on Click" feature that is default for Gnome MetaCity, there does not appear to be any such feature anymore / argument being to simplify how it works.. Fine, create a simple view and an advanced view for the configuration tools, so that people who are clueless about any other way than the official Redmond way, can avoid being confronted with an alternative. > > 2. The network interfaces are being bound to the user interface, such that if your X fails for some reason, or you are running on a text console, you are unable to open the wireless configuration, at least it's not obvious how you do it, without X running. The configuration for the network interfaces are so tightly bound to the user interface, such that if there is no user interface there are no network interfaces. > > 3. Mounts are also embedded into the user interface, rather than in the unix mount system, which means that the shares are not accessible for non-gui programs, for instance, I like to script most thing I do often, however, there is no way for scripts to get a hold of a drive that is mounted through the gui mount system (kde and gnome). > > 4. Everything is thrown in huge collective directories, such as /usr/bin, /usr/lib etc, and it is a huge mess, just like windows with it's system32 directory, which is also a huge mess. really the /usr/bin,/bin/sbin, /lib etc, has very specific purposes, and should represent a core operating system, that is capable of being used as repair, with no major applications present. However even Open office is stored in these directories. > > 5. More and more services are bound up in the userinterface, such as the pulse audio, which is started by the GUI, this means if you use 2 user environments, which I often do for testing, where I have X:0 and X:1 running, the GUIs will conflict, because you cannot run two instances of pulseaudio. In addition pulse audio is crap, I have yet to see any installation actually work without crackling, and chopping like crazy. I like the concept that is the basis of pulse audio, but it just does not work. > > 6. NetworkManager which appears to be installed default, does not work with shared drives, because, the NetworkManager is shut down before the network drives are detached, and you need to modify the NetworkManager to start properly, before you mount the network drives. I've gotten used to explicit uninstalling the NetworkManager, because it just doesn't work properly. > > It is a lengthy discussion to describe what i mean. > > However, if I take a sample application like firefox, it presents a reasonable proxy for what I mean. > > currently default installation of firefox on my machine installs firefox in these following places. > > /usr/lib64/firefox > /usr/lib64/firefox-3.0.7 > /usr/lib/mozilla > /usr/lib64/mozilla > /usr/share/mozilla > /usr/bin/mozilla-plugin-config > /usr/bin/firefox > > etc. > > All of which are related to the firefox installation. If something goes wrong, it's a real pain to clean it up, or even to detect what went wrong. The original concept for unix was to install an application such as firefox in either, /opt or /usr/local/. Such that the entire application was contained within a single installation directory, and then to use the PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH to allow the execution of the application. > > The standard approach with /opt or /usr/local installation also makes it triviel to have multiple installations, and configurations operating in paralellel, by simply creating. > > /opt/mozilla/firefox -> /opt/mozilla/firefox-3.0.7 > /opt/mozilla/firefox-3.0.7 > /opt/mozilla/firefox-2.0.9 > > A user can then easily conifgure their account to use either version of the application, without installation problems. > > Additionally using that installation method, also means that if someone wants to use a newer version of an application, they can download the source, and trivially install it in parallel to the package managed application, by using the --prefix option, and the installation can easily be removed, by simple rm -rf /opt/mozilla/firefox-3.0.7. > > With the current installation, it is nearly impossible, or at least very difficult to find out if the package manager has cleaned up properly, or if there is something left behind - something which is identicial to the problem on windows. > > > > A UNIX based system is intended to have everything accessible through standard accesses, such as the file system, and the network, however, the current trend in moving away from having the system control things (which I can see is easier), breaks with the ability of scripting. > > If this tendency keeps going, Linux is going to become a useless mismatch of junk, that no one can really use for anything but a toy. > > In my opinion, the trend has been visible for about a decade, but it has really gone downhill from about rethat 7/8.. though in Fedora 8, everything worked fine on most machines that I installed on, apart from some obscure drivers, however, since Fedora 8, i've yet to have a system where the audio works properly, and with Fedora 10, the kernel Ooopses so often it's not funny, on quite a few of my machines, to such a degree that I'm recommending that people do not upgrade past Fedora 8, and I'm considering dropping the Fedora line of Linux, because it is becoming just too messy, and clumsy. > > The divergence between the "GUI" focused approach, and the "Server" approach is not good for Linux, as it means there will be a fork, which will be incompatible. There really isn't a good reason for this split. > > > I am wondering is anyone else concerned about, what in my opinion, is the copying of the mistakes that Microsoft made with windows, to the Linux environment. > > IMO it is really badly time to do a "back-to-basics" approach, and to clean up the system. > > I'm really curious as to the reasoning for moving everything from the standard configuration mechanisms to the gui layer, breaking compatibility with scripting, and other standard UNIX featuers.. I'm also curious as to the reasoning for throwing everything in one huge mess in the /usr/bin, /bin, /sbin, etc.. As all that is achieved is to make it hard to strip the system back to a minimal setup. > > regards > mike. > > -- fedora-devel-list mailing list > fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list > > > > ____________________________________________________________________________________ > ¡Viví la mejor experiencia en la web! > Descargá gratis el nuevo Internet Explorer 8 > http://downloads.yahoo.com/ieak8/?l=ar > -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
