On Tue, Nov 5, 2024 at 2:01 PM Evan Leibovitch via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
On Tue, Nov 5, 2024 at 12:53 PM o1bigtenor via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
[...] the M$ world loves complexity that is supposed to be hidden from the user because they are not wupposed to know anything about anything except how to pay someone how to set things up etc etc etc.
In a former life I made decent money from "people paying someone how to set things up" ... on Linux.
And I've been paid to make things work that the bean counters morphed into cheap trash - - - got to think that such thinking was really really short sighted!
There are people who just don't care about what's under the hood so long as it works. Apple has arguably perfected products for such consumers even better than Microsoft.
Yup and they really enjoy locking you into their changes - - whenever and however they happen. IMO for the multilingual the Mac (early Mac environment - - - haven't been on since before 2000!) was the slickest writing environment I have ever used!
In some ways, then, are we witnessing a mutation of the old Stallman complaint? - Some people prefer free software over proprietary because of its philosophy - Some people prefer open source over proprietary because it just works better and more transparently
Possibly.
If it's open source, it's not hidden. Bob Young's old analogy is recalled with fondness. Just because your car maker won't weld its hood shut, doesn't mean you need to be a mechanic to use it. (paraphrased)
You mean - - -you know how to change the code on the umpteen different control systems - - - - wow I've got this problem w my little p/u . . . .
So along comes systemd - - - - espoused by a more than rather arrogant young 'person' which will remove this area (init systems) that was not as neat nor worked as well as it could have except he was espousing changing things to something quite foreign to 'unix' style thinking
A very persuasive person indeed, to swing the preponderance of an entire community behind his path. Or, based on what I can read in the Wiki places, swing Red Hat which put it in Fedora in 2011. It didn't come to Debian until 2014. Then Ubuntu adopted it and I guess you could call it mainstream by then.
Well the company he was then working for likely helped place him in such a fashion that he was 'the guru' - - - IMO Red Hat saw that the change would enhance their market due to tie in and and and so he was given lots of airtime +.
I'm amused that this is still an annoyance to people a decade later.
Well - - - I find that when a 20 something year old that's loud obnoxious and abrasive starts running down people with 25 and 30 years of experience - - - doesn't matter the field the annoyance factor in the group is usually NOT small. No different in this area.
said individual trampled upon it and then with loud roars of glee declared said philosophy to be quite dead.
And yet ... after a full-throated debate, the Debian tech committee went with systemd even though that decision caused some developers to resign. Perhaps the functionality trumped the philosophy?
Not really - - - - as I'm remembering it there was a massive push for corporate acceptance from slightly before this. Corporate interests espoused the changes. By the time Debian was voting on it - - it seemed quite a bit like monkey see monkey do - - there was an extreme desire to please corporate think. What's fascinating to me is following what the early Unix developers did - - - yes they were working for major corporate interests - - - but - - they were given very large amounts of autonomy and primarily driven by results. This is something that really hasn't been prevalent since well before even RedHat moving to systemd in 2011. The mantra now is - - - - make money (make money make money chant this for about another 5 minutes) not so much about creating a product that reliably does anything.
After all, there are many other complex systems in a typical Linux distro. Some people still have problems making the audio work well. And let's not even start about desktop environments.
Just to make things more interesting said individual is now directly employed by M$ which, at least in my mind, begs some questions.
The only question begged from me is ... in 2024, is the use of "M$" still a thing?
Hmmmmm - - - you find M$ to be benign and caring - - - - if so I suggest you try removing either your painted over glasses or try a lesser dose of the mind bending substances for a bit.
What next? I₿M?
(Its like driving a model T or a modern car - - - one you have to think a bit and the other one want to treat you like an idiot so it will try to do all your thinking for you.
These days I hesitate to call people "idiots" for just wanting their tools to work without needing to know how. Perhaps their expertise and/or enthusiasm lies elsewhere. Indeed maybe this seems also a debate between those who see Linux as just a tool to do something else and those who care about the OS as an end in itself.
Well - - - we've gotten to where one is supposed to be helpless and dependent on experts for everything. Guess that I like doing, love learning and have found far too many experts who really only know how to wield a large shovel and really don't know what they're talking about.
Heaven help you in stupid conditions if you're in the latter. Think the modern car with its automatic transmission being driven in 6 to 8" of fresh snow and the temperature is just under freezing - - - if you have to stop for some reason - - - good luck getting going again - - - in a manual transmission - - - piece of cake!!!)
Maybe there's a good parallel here. The simple method has fallen out of favour (I think latest figures have manuals at 2% of sales in North America), while an even more-complex solution (all-wheel and four-wheel drive) has become dominant. It addresses the edge case above without subjecting the user to the hell of using a manual transmission in bumper-to-bumper urban traffic on a hill (a far more common situation for many).
Except by that thinking all those vehicles should be controlled by a central computer to make sure everything works well. The standing joke is that the vast majority of all-wheel and 4 wheel drive vehicles never ever see off road. I have had 1 - 4 wheel drive - - - learned more bad habits with that thing than much else and also the inadequacies of such. Have found its much much more about knowing what you're doing and far less about having perfect tools.
I appreciate the high-level explanation of this as being one of simplicity versus complex innovation, but there was a lot more here.
Oh yes there was - - - I am surprised that you don't remember any of this - - - I'm quite sure you were around through all of this time. I was trying to keep things at least somewhat polite and trying not to just rant. (Some of the comments at the time from some individuals were really not the kind of thing that should have even been thought even if the lightning rod was an incredibly brass obnoxious quite young person.) Regards