On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 4:42 AM, Dale <rdalek1...@gmail.com> wrote: > Mark David Dumlao wrote: >> On Tue, Dec 25, 2012 at 10:38 AM, Dale <rdalek1...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> Feel free to set me straight tho. As long as you don't tell me my >>> system is broken and has not been able to boot for the last 9 years >>> without one of those things. ROFL >> Nobody's telling you _your_ system, as in the collection of programs >> you use for your productivity, is broken. What we're saying is that >> _the_ system, as in the general practice as compared to the >> specification, is broken. Those are two _very_ different things. > > From what I have read, they are saying what has worked for decades has > been broken the whole time. Doesn't matter that it works for millions > of users, its broken.
Yes, that is exactly what they are saying. What I am pointing out, however, is that there is, informally, a _technical meaning_ for the word "broken", which is that "the specs don't match the implementation". And in the case of /usr, the specs don't match the implementation. For like, maybe all of the Linuxen. > They say it is broken so they can "fix it" with a > init thingy for EVERYONE. Sorry, that's like telling me my car has been > broken for the last ten years when I have been driving it to town and it > runs just fine. NOBODY is telling you your system or that the systems of millions of users out there aren't booting. You're assigning emotional baggage to technical language. To push your analogy, oh, your car is working just fine. Now anyone with a pair of spark plugs and a few tools may be able to start it without you, but your startup _works_. Now imagine some German engineer caring nothing about you lowly driver, and caring more about the car as a system, and he goes using fancy words like "authentication systems" and declaring that "all cars have a flaw", or more incensingly, "car security is fundamentally broken" (Cue angry hordes of owners pitchfork and torching his house). Thing is, he's right, and if he worked out some way for software to verify that machine startup was done using the keys rather than spark plugs, he'd be doing future generations a favor in a dramatic reduction of carjackings. And if somehow it became mandated for future cars to have this added in addition to airbags and whatnot, it'd annoy the hell out of car makers but overall still be a good thing. And here the analogy is holding up: NOBODY is breaking into your car and forcefully installing some authentication system in its startup. And NOBODY is breaking into your servers and forcing you to switch to udev/systemd or merged /usr. You can still happily plow along with your system as is. Heck, you can even install current udev without changing your partition setup. Just modify the ebuild and have it install it into / instead of /usr. Or use an early bootup script. Or use an init thingy. > > The udev/systemd people sound like politicians. If anything, Lennart is the worst possible politician on the planet. He makes unpopular decisions, mucks around in stuff people don't want touched, talks snide and derisively, etc etc etc, because he's a nerd's nerd that knows nothing about PR and goodwill. The software is good, but that's about all he knows how to write. He's like DJB on crack. -- This email is: [ ] actionable [ ] fyi [x] social Response needed: [ ] yes [x] up to you [ ] no Time-sensitive: [ ] immediate [ ] soon [x] none
