Re: It's official: Linux has become Microsoft Windows
On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 5:00 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen roz...@geekspace.com wrote: Your comments beg the question, *do* HAL and D-Bus ever actually need to be restarted (and, if so, why?). As far as I know, they need to be restarted on two conditions: (1) Some HAL/DBus config changes (2) Software changes (to HAL/DBus, or a library they use) * What should X applications do if the X server needs to be restarted? Well, I don't really grok HAL and DBus usage, but it would seem to me that there's a lot less state involved in a HAL or DBus client vs an X client. DBus is a message passing agent. If it restarts, the only state that is lost is the connection to it. So in the client, if the attempt-to-read-next-message routine fails, call the attempt-to-connect routine again. If the attempt-to-connect fails, the appropriate course of action depends on the application. Perhaps continue operation, attempting a reconnect periodically; perhaps notify the user; perhaps cough and die. HAL identifies hardware, and also reports on changes in hardware. Changes in hardware are reported via DBus. A restart of hald does not imply a change in hardware. So all your old hardware state is still good. And for future changes in hardware, see the DBus reconnect algorithm above. In contrast, X contains all of the UI elements for a program. There's a lot of complex, nested state there. If it was just a simple question of a connection to the X server, then I would still say the attempt-to-reconnect algorithm was the right approach to take. But if all that state goes away, too, that's rather more complicated. Maybe there's more going on here than I'm aware of. Even if it *was* a case of the client application reasonably needs to be restarted, then that means the client applications need to be restarted. It doesn't mean *everything* needs to be restarted. Upgrading my X server just means I need to log out and back in again. I don't have to reboot the whole computer. but what's your position on the `programs losing file-data in system-crashes with ext4' issue that came up back in March? :) (cf. http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/11/2031231) http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1157269cid=27161797 Can anyone recommend a Free, Unix-like operating system that supports a wide variety of hardware? That used to be Linux, but it now fails on the second item. Does this mean you're not coming to the Linux-UG party, after all? I haven't had time to reinstall my OS yet. ;-) -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: It's official: Linux has become Microsoft Windows
Ben Scott dragonh...@gmail.com writes: This is actually from 2005, but I just found it now: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/desktop-bugs/2005-August/002500.html Yes, that's right. Rather than fix broken software, the sanctioned course of action is to reboot the system if HAL or DBus need to be restarted/refreshed. After meditating on this for a while..., I think I can actually sort-of appreciate the other side's perspective; the `HAL and D-Bus are resources akin to the X server' comment was enlightening. Your comments beg the question, *do* HAL and D-Bus ever actually need to be restarted (and, if so, why?). If the answer to that is `they don't, ever', then I can appreciate how someone could take the position that it's just not worth the code-clutter to ensure graceful handling of a situation that should never happen anyway. Comparisons: * What should X applications do if the X server needs to be restarted? * What should SysV applications do if the message-queue subsystem needs to be restarted? Maybe the is in the archives and I just need to go find it..., but what's your position on the `programs losing file-data in system-crashes with ext4' issue that came up back in March? :) (cf. http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/11/2031231) Can anyone recommend a Free, Unix-like operating system that supports a wide variety of hardware? That used to be Linux, but it now fails on the second item. Does this mean you're not coming to the Linux-UG party, after all? -- Don't be afraid to ask (Lf.((Lx.xx) (Lr.f(rr. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: It's official: Linux has become Microsoft Windows
On Fri, 2009-10-16 at 10:59 -0400, Tom Buskey wrote: On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 10:47 PM, Ben Scott dragonh...@gmail.com wrote: This is actually from 2005, but I just found it now: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/desktop-bugs/2005-August/002500.html Yes, that's right. Rather than fix broken software, the sanctioned course of action is to reboot the system if HAL or DBus need to be restarted/refreshed. Can anyone recommend a Free, Unix-like operating system that supports a wide variety of hardware? That used to be Linux, but it now fails on the second item. NetBSD comes closest, especially for CPU architectures. FreeBSD might beat NetBSD for peripherals. I'm not sure if OpenBSD is head of OpenSolaris. Darwin is another possibility. Of course, these are Unix systems and you asked for Unix-like (which linux technically is). Haiku probably isn't unix-like enough. Is Hurd far enough along yet? Debian on BSD or Hurd? What about a Linux distro that doesn't use HAL or DBus. Slackware? I think you're confusing all of Linux with Ubuntu. The subject should be Ubuntu has become Microsoft Windows, or maybe even GNOME has become Microsoft Windows. In my case, I am not using GDM or XDM or any of the other *DMs, and instead just run X from the command line. If I upgrade hald or dbus, I simply log out of X11 (Using GNOME's System-Log out ...), then run startx again. No reboot necessary. This is running on FreeBSD, of course. Some of you might argue that this amounts to a reboot. Let me assure you, from a time-consumed perspective it most certainly does not. Ubuntu gratuitously seems to want a reboot for any upgrade of a service process running in X, or in the init system. This seems to be a heavy-handed anti-foot-shooting measure intended to ensure a stable experience at the expense of some efficiency. As far as all the complaints go in that issue, there is still one striking difference between Ubuntu and Microsoft Windows: You, the user, are empowered to fix the behavior if you don't like it so much, because you have access to the source code to the whole system. Ubuntu doesn't *have to* be restarted after every invasive upgrade, if you would just add the code to those packages that would fix the problem. I'm certain that there's even a boilerplate recipe out there for this exact problem that applies to both hald and dbus. The only reason Ubuntu opts for this is the same 80/20 rule that Microsoft employs: For 20% more rebooting, you can avoid 80% of the work that would need to be performed to achieve a fully no-reboot-necessary-on-upgrade OS. -- Coleman Kane ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: It's official: Linux has become Microsoft Windows
Along similar lines to Ben's original link, apparently stability problems in Ubuntu have frustrated the Eeebuntu developer to the point that he is giving up on maintaining Eee utils for Ubuntu for the EePC. http://www.fewt.com/2009/10/i-give-up.html -Shawn On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 11:11 AM, Coleman Kane ck...@colemankane.orgwrote: On Fri, 2009-10-16 at 10:59 -0400, Tom Buskey wrote: On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 10:47 PM, Ben Scott dragonh...@gmail.com wrote: This is actually from 2005, but I just found it now: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/desktop-bugs/2005-August/002500.html Yes, that's right. Rather than fix broken software, the sanctioned course of action is to reboot the system if HAL or DBus need to be restarted/refreshed. Can anyone recommend a Free, Unix-like operating system that supports a wide variety of hardware? That used to be Linux, but it now fails on the second item. NetBSD comes closest, especially for CPU architectures. FreeBSD might beat NetBSD for peripherals. I'm not sure if OpenBSD is head of OpenSolaris. Darwin is another possibility. Of course, these are Unix systems and you asked for Unix-like (which linux technically is). Haiku probably isn't unix-like enough. Is Hurd far enough along yet? Debian on BSD or Hurd? What about a Linux distro that doesn't use HAL or DBus. Slackware? I think you're confusing all of Linux with Ubuntu. The subject should be Ubuntu has become Microsoft Windows, or maybe even GNOME has become Microsoft Windows. In my case, I am not using GDM or XDM or any of the other *DMs, and instead just run X from the command line. If I upgrade hald or dbus, I simply log out of X11 (Using GNOME's System-Log out ...), then run startx again. No reboot necessary. This is running on FreeBSD, of course. Some of you might argue that this amounts to a reboot. Let me assure you, from a time-consumed perspective it most certainly does not. Ubuntu gratuitously seems to want a reboot for any upgrade of a service process running in X, or in the init system. This seems to be a heavy-handed anti-foot-shooting measure intended to ensure a stable experience at the expense of some efficiency. As far as all the complaints go in that issue, there is still one striking difference between Ubuntu and Microsoft Windows: You, the user, are empowered to fix the behavior if you don't like it so much, because you have access to the source code to the whole system. Ubuntu doesn't *have to* be restarted after every invasive upgrade, if you would just add the code to those packages that would fix the problem. I'm certain that there's even a boilerplate recipe out there for this exact problem that applies to both hald and dbus. The only reason Ubuntu opts for this is the same 80/20 rule that Microsoft employs: For 20% more rebooting, you can avoid 80% of the work that would need to be performed to achieve a fully no-reboot-necessary-on-upgrade OS. -- Coleman Kane ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/ ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: It's official: Linux has become Microsoft Windows
And it's going to get worse. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/424927Sadly, I'm quite excited about the brain f*#k scheduler. Susan-Original Message- From: Shawn O'Shea <sh...@eth0.net> Sent: Oct 16, 2009 7:36 PM To: Greater NH Linux User Group <gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org> Subject: Re: It's official: Linux has become Microsoft Windows Along similar lines to Ben's original link, apparently stability problems in Ubuntu have frustrated the Eeebuntu developer to the point that he is giving up on maintaining Eee utils for Ubuntu for the EePC.http://www.fewt.com/2009/10/i-give-up.html -ShawnOn Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 11:11 AM, Coleman Kane ck...@colemankane.org wrote: On Fri, 2009-10-16 at 10:59 -0400, Tom Buskey wrote: On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 10:47 PM, Ben Scott dragonh...@gmail.com wrote: This is actually from 2005, but I just found it now: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/desktop-bugs/2005-August/002500.html Yes, that's right. Rather than fix broken software, the sanctioned course of action is to reboot the system if HAL or DBus need to be restarted/refreshed. Can anyone recommend a Free, Unix-like operating system that supports a wide variety of hardware? That used to be Linux, but it now fails on the second item. NetBSD comes closest, especially for CPU architectures. FreeBSD might beat NetBSD for peripherals. I'm not sure if OpenBSD is head of OpenSolaris. Darwin is another possibility. Of course, these are Unix systems and you asked for Unix-like (which linux technically is). Haiku probably isn't unix-like enough. Is Hurd far enough along yet? Debian on BSD or Hurd? What about a Linux distro that doesn't use HAL or DBus. Slackware? I think you're confusing "all of Linux" with Ubuntu. The subject should be "Ubuntu has become Microsoft Windows", or maybe even "GNOME has become Microsoft Windows". In my case, I am not using GDM or XDM or any of the other *DMs, and instead just run X from the command line. If I upgrade hald or dbus, I simply log out of X11 (Using GNOME's "System-Log out ..."), then run startx again. No reboot necessary. This is running on FreeBSD, of course. Some of you might argue that this amounts to a reboot. Let me assure you, from a time-consumed perspective it most certainly does not. Ubuntu gratuitously seems to want a reboot for any upgrade of a service process running in X, or in the init system. This seems to be a heavy-handed anti-foot-shooting measure intended to ensure a stable experience at the expense of some efficiency. As far as all the complaints go in that issue, there is still one striking difference between Ubuntu and Microsoft Windows: You, the user, are empowered to fix the behavior if you don't like it so much, because you have access to the source code to the whole system. Ubuntu doesn't *have to* be restarted after every invasive upgrade, if you would just add the code to those packages that would fix the problem. I'm certain that there's even a boilerplate recipe out there for this exact problem that applies to both hald and dbus. The only reason Ubuntu opts for this is the same 80/20 rule that Microsoft employs: For 20% more rebooting, you can avoid 80% of the work that would need to be performed to achieve a fully no-reboot-necessary-on-upgrade OS. -- Coleman Kane ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/ ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: It's official: Linux has become Microsoft Windows
On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 11:11 AM, Coleman Kane ck...@colemankane.org wrote: I think you're confusing all of Linux with Ubuntu. Read the link target again. The HAL/DBus people in Ubuntu wanted to do the right thing, and just restart the daemons. All the upstream package maintainers -- the people writing the apps -- can't be bothered to write proper code. I don't know if this is because they grew up on Windoze and that's just the way they think computers work, or if they're just more generally brain damaged, but that's the environment we've got these days. Normally, I'd just dismiss them as some brain damaged programs that's not effecting me, but as Martin Pitt observes, there's this big push to infect everything on the system with this stuff. You can't compile hello.c without linking in DBus these days, it seems. :-( In my case, I am not using GDM or XDM or any of the other *DMs, and instead just run X from the command line. I start into X, but only so I don't have to wait for it to load. And I use X primarily to open lots of xterms. :) If I upgrade hald or dbus, I simply log out of X11 ... Some of you might argue that this amounts to a reboot. Let me assure you, from a time-consumed perspective it most certainly does not. If all you're counting is the time it takes for the system to reboot, sure. I dunno about you, but I actually use my computer for stuff, and like to leave lots of windows with stuff I'm working on open until I finish it. Having to close all that down, and then open it all back up after -- *that's* the big cost for me. You, the user, are empowered to fix the behavior ... Sure. But when you see the entire community infected with defective thinking, like some kind of semantic plague, one quickly finds oneself in the position of trying to bail out the ocean. :-( ... work that would need to be performed to achieve a fully no-reboot-necessary-on-upgrade OS. Of course, there's a whole hell of a lot more than this to just not rebooting. A system which can properly recover from suboptimal conditions is a robust system. These people are instead building a system that will fall down if you look at it the wrong way. :-( -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: It's official: Linux has become Microsoft Windows
Coleman Kane ck...@colemankane.org writes: On Fri, 2009-10-16 at 10:59 -0400, Tom Buskey wrote: On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 10:47 PM, Ben Scott dragonh...@gmail.com wrote: This is actually from 2005, but I just found it now: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/desktop-bugs/2005-August/002500.html Yes, that's right. Rather than fix broken software, the sanctioned course of action is to reboot the system if HAL or DBus need to be restarted/refreshed. Can anyone recommend a Free, Unix-like operating system that supports a wide variety of hardware? That used to be Linux, but it now fails on the second item. NetBSD comes closest, especially for CPU architectures. FreeBSD might beat NetBSD for peripherals. I'm not sure if OpenBSD is head of OpenSolaris. Darwin is another possibility. Of course, these are Unix systems and you asked for Unix-like (which linux technically is). Surely, unix itself has the unix nature Haiku probably isn't unix-like enough. Is Hurd far enough along yet? Debian on BSD or Hurd? What about a Linux distro that doesn't use HAL or DBus. Slackware? I think you're confusing all of Linux with Ubuntu. The subject should be Ubuntu has become Microsoft Windows, or maybe even GNOME has become Microsoft Windows. Indeed--why would you expect that these applications would behave any differently in the face of a HAL or D-Bus restart when running atop any other kernel? -- Don't be afraid to ask (Lf.((Lx.xx) (Lr.f(rr. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
