Hi,

Am 22.07.2012 10:18, schrieb Jorge Almeida:
> what should they do when the KISS
> principle is in a collision course with upstream trends?

You could easily argue that a single rc.conf file is *not* very KISS,
whereas on the other hand a bunch of small files - with a name already
telling you what it is supposed to do - is *very* KISS.

I'm running Arch for a few years myself and to be honest, I never quite
liked the idea of rc.conf, as this was something very specific to Arch.

Furthermore this whole effort of trying to stop this change by a kind of
blackmail is lame, especially the threat that some of you would switch
over to Fedora when considering that Fedora is already implementing all
of this and probably will always be the first to do so in the future.

If you really want to stop it, you should come up with some technical
reasons. I haven't heard any so far and I'm not even sure whether there
are any. Arch was always - if nothing else - about upstream
compatibility and this is just the next step. Considering that you don't
change this stuff often anyway, I don't see a problem here, especially
because your old rc.conf's will work just fine in the near future.

Best regards,
Karol Babioch

Am 22.07.2012 10:58, schrieb gt:


You can try aptosid, or linux mint debian edition.



Really Mint ? I switched FROM Mint TO Arch because upgrading Mint ended
up in a re-installation of the whole system :-(

On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 02:29:44PM +0200, Karol Babioch wrote:

> Arch was always - if nothing else - about upstream
> compatibility and this is just the next step.

Fair enough, but for this sort of thing, who is 'upstream' ?

Ciao,

--
FA

A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia.
It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris
and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)

Hi,

Am 22.07.2012 14:43, schrieb Fons Adriaensen:
> Fair enough, but for this sort of thing, who is 'upstream' ?

Then let us call it commonality in this case. Although it was introduced
by systemd, in principal it has nothing to do with it. Probably most of
the major distributions will implement this (and/or already have).

Anyone who had to work with different distributions knows what pain in
the ass it can be to deal with this kind of differences between
distributions. I'm not arguing that every distribution should handle
everything in the same way, but some agreement on trivialities like
this, is always appreciated.

Best regards,
Karol Babioch

Am Sun, 22 Jul 2012 12:43:39 +0000
schrieb Fons Adriaensen <fons@linuxaudio.org>:

> Fair enough, but for this sort of thing, who is 'upstream' ?

In this case the super-ingenious Lennart Poettering, I guess.

That said, Gentoo always had separate config files located
in /etc/conf.d. So the idea of not having one single rc.conf is not
this new. Nevertheless one single /etc/rc.conf makes the administration
a bit more comfortable, because you have all settings at a glance and
don't need to cat or edit several files.

Regarding the threats of switching from Arch to Fedora: Fedora is
Redhat. As far as I know Lennart Poettering is an employee of Redhat.
So do you guys really think that Fedora is better in this regard and
won't support systemd and those single config files?

Heiko

On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 03:02:05PM +0200, Heiko Baums wrote:
> Am Sun, 22 Jul 2012 12:43:39 +0000
> schrieb Fons Adriaensen <fons@linuxaudio.org>:
>
> > Fair enough, but for this sort of thing, who is 'upstream' ?
>
> In this case the super-ingenious Lennart Poettering, I guess.

I switched to Arch some years ago to get rid of all that
Poetterix stuff. It's become near impossible on most distros.
If Arch goes the same way, I'll have to look for something else.

Ciao,

--
FA

A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia.
It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris
and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)

Hi,

Am 22.07.2012 15:36, schrieb Fons Adriaensen:
> to get rid of all that
> Poetterix

Once again this is not a technical argument, but a very subjective
reason with - at least for me - no basis. Its more of a philosophy and
that's not what this should be about.

If you *really* like an audio stack without PulseAudio (which I would
consider quite useless on a modern desktop) and an init system based
upon something as old, "stupid" and slow as SysVinit, then you are free
to stick with it. Nobody forces you to use PA and/or systemd, and you
are always free to come up with something better than that. But don't
try to force your personal agenda against Poettering onto others.

Maybe this is what it is really about: These changes come - more or less
- from Poettering and there is quite a bunch of people who for whatever
reasons don't like that idea.

Best regards,
Karol Babioch

I have used Arch for more than a year, and I can say that it still does more to keep things simple yet powerful for as many users as possible than any other distro I have tried. Ubuntu is still one of the best for n00bs, but I personally can't stand Unity, and package creation and maintenance can be a real pain. Fedora, don't even get me started; I left it years ago and refuse to go back unless I'm dragged kicking and screaming with the choice of either Fedora or Windows. Gentoo, now there's an interesting option, but it still seems to be for geekier geeks than me. *BSD, well, it looks good from what I've read, but there's no version as of yet that will just come up talking so I can get it installed without eyes. The Talking Archinstaller is definitely the most simple and minimalist way of making this happen quickly and painlessly..

Regarding recent changes, it is extremely important to be as simple as possible, but to also work as closely with upstream as possible. In spite of all the recent changes, Arch has done this with less pain and frustration than I expected. The change to multiple config files from a single /etc/rc.conf is not a major stressor for me, me, because geeks like me have been dealing with this in other distros for years, and it seems to be one step closer to upstream, which IMO can only be a good thing. So call me an Arch fanbou if you like, and keep your Fedoras and Ubuntus off my computer, except for the occasional virtual machine so that I can offer tech support. Give me Arch, and I will make it sing louder and burn brighter than all the others combined. To the devs, thanks for all the great work you do to make Arch the best available distro.
~Kyle
--
Kyle is a droid.
The whole world knows it.
This e-mail shows it.

On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 04:17:13PM +0200, Karol Babioch wrote:


> Am 22.07.2012 15:36, schrieb Fons Adriaensen:
> > to get rid of all that
> > Poetterix
>
> Once again this is not a technical argument, but a very subjective
> reason with - at least for me - no basis. Its more of a philosophy and
> that's not what this should be about.
>
> If you *really* like an audio stack without PulseAudio (which I would
> consider quite useless on a modern desktop) and an init system based
> upon something as old, "stupid" and slow as SysVinit, then you are free
> to stick with it. Nobody forces you to use PA and/or systemd, and you
> are always free to come up with something better than that. But don't
> try to force your personal agenda against Poettering onto others.

For any serious audio (music production, acoustic research, etc.) the
first thing to get rid of is PA. It maybe great for the typical desktop
user but is quite useless and a pita otherwise.

The reason to go to Arch years ago was very technical. I was building
a system using 5 PCs to drive a total of 320 audio channels. All but
one of those are headless, and everything done on them is via ssh or
remote control protocols. So there is no 'local' login or any concept
of 'session' on those machines. Yet the processes running there (for
normal users, not root) need e.g.access to the audio hardware and other
privileges. So what should I do with a system like (at the time) Fedora
that forces polkit and consolekit on me, together with their stupid
'session' and 'seat' based logic ? Oh, yes all this could probably have
been bypassed or configured, but why should I have parallel security
systems anyway. So dump it, and find a distro without that madness.

Of course pk and ck have nothing to do with L.P., but they are part off
the same movement as Poetterix. If I'd want a system like those people
are dreaming I'd buy a MAC. But I prefer one without a zillion daemons
trying to outsmart me and making any secure, static system configuration
near impossible.

> Maybe this is what it is really about: These changes come - more or less
> - from Poettering and there is quite a bunch of people who for whatever
> reasons don't like that idea.

I've no personal gripes with Lennart. I had the pleasure to meet him
and he's quite a nice person. I just don't like the way some people
are trying to 'improve' Unix or redefine Linux.

Ciao,

--
FA

A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia.
It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris
and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)

On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 3:17 PM, Karol Babioch <karol@babioch.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Am 22.07.2012 15:36, schrieb Fons Adriaensen:
>> to get rid of all that
>> Poetterix
>
> Once again this is not a technical argument, but a very subjective
> reason with - at least for me - no basis. Its more of a philosophy and
> that's not what this should be about.

Sure, it is called "Unix philosophy", for what the word "philosophy" is worth.
No one says it is the best possible one, but it has shown its worth (I'm sure
the same could be said about Mr. Poettering's achievements, but I wouldn't
know). Everyone is entitled to have a different one and implement it. No need
to start from scratch, they can fork linux. I already suggested a very
descriptive name for their new OS. But we end-users of Linux have a reasonable
expectation that by using Linux we use a OS that
--is Unix-like
--is under the user's control and not the other way around

>
> If you *really* like an audio stack without PulseAudio (which I would
> consider quite useless on a modern desktop) and an init system based
> upon something as old, "stupid" and slow as SysVinit, then you are free
> to stick with it. Nobody forces you to use PA and/or systemd, and you
> are always free to come up with something better than that. But don't
> try to force your personal agenda against Poettering onto others.

Wrong, they are going to ram systemd down our throats. Believe you me. And why
is the onus always on the end-user? *There is* something better, namely the
BSD init system and the SysVinit init system. Is SysVinit stupid? By all
means, produce something better if you feel you're better that the author(s)
of SysVinit. Is SysVinit slow? Maybe lots of bash processes are slowing it
down? There are alternatives that don't require a change of init system (for
example, http://www.skarnet.org/software/execline/index.html). Should a
service be supervised? We don't need systemd (nor launchd, for that matter) to
tell us that:
http://cr.yp.to/daemontools.html
http://smarden.org/runit/
http://b0llix.net/perp/
http://www.skarnet.org/software/s6/
Do you *really* have to use a different init system? runit and s6 do that.
What they won't do is to replace other unrelated programs like *chron, and for
a good reason: they are made by Unix people.


>
> Maybe this is what it is really about: These changes come - more or less
> - from Poettering and there is quite a bunch of people who for whatever
> reasons don't like that idea.
>

Maybe there is a reason for that? Like, I don't know, maybe a bunch of people
find advantageous to run a unix-like system?

Best regards,

Jorge Almeida