Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
amon schreef op 14-10-2016 18:11: I am not going to continue with this other than to correct some really strange assumptions. First, I was probably using Unix when the person who claims I must be amongst those who do not basics was still in nappies. Second, none of those suggestions will find you anything if gvfs has not even been installed. apropos only searched man pages that are installed, the last I heard :-^ Thank you for your response amon. I believe Unix people often make this mistake indeed to consider that once you have already learned something, it is easy to find, but not understanding that those who have not yet encountered it or gone through it, have an impossible way getting there. No key words that were obvious to this old Unix hacker on the web mentioned gvfs. Unless you already know it exists, such as the particular person who is not recognizing the difference between what is obvious only if you know it, and has absolutely no links if you don't already have the right key words. The only reason I knew it is because the gnome-disks application adds those options to fstab when you use it. No other reason. The man page to mount (or rather, fstab) could mention it just fine as it mentions systemd-specific options as well. The only thing that can discredit it is some anti-gnome sentiment in that sense. If you don't believe that, I suggest you go talk to a good technical writer or a librarian. Or an old Unix hand. There is the belief in Unix that good developers cannot be good writers and good writers cannot be good developers. This is repeated ad inifitum to prove that there is a good reason that documentation is so bad, and then instead of solving it, they hide behind that 'fact' that they don't know how to do it. Meanwhile they criticize any and all attempt to put that information in there, and sabotage those attempts even. Sometimes I wonder whether I am not the one who is insane, and question my judgement in thinking these man pages are bad and knowing I could do much better, when no one agrees with it and they also do not even allow you to put the content in. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, they say. Anyway. It really is not a good idea to say things about people who might possibly know more than you do about Unix systems in general. I am an industry guy. I don't show up often. I get paid a lot for making systems jump through hoops. Sometimes when I find something odd, I feel it my duty to inform someone who may or may not do anything about it, but having taken a few of those expensive minutes of my day to so inform, I feel I have discharged my duty. Much obliged ;-). And you're welcome :p. Not ever done I guess (for me). -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
On Fri, 14 Oct 2016 11:11:03 -0500, amon wrote: >none of those suggestions will find you anything if gvfs >has not even been installed. apropos only searched man pages >that are installed, the last I heard :-^ A default Ubuntu comes without a gvfs related man page installed? Somebody not using a default Ubuntu install should be an experienced user and be able to know where to get help, e.g. by using a user forum, even experienced users send requests to user mailing lists, after doing some research, Ubuntu Wiki, google, apropos. >No key words that were obvious to this old Unix hacker on the >web mentioned gvfs. Unless you already know it exists, such as >the particular person who is not recognizing the difference >between what is obvious only if you know it, and has absolutely >no links if you don't already have the right key words. You claim apropos mount didn't mention gvfs? I explicitly take care that it is not installed on any of my installs, by using empty dummy packages, usually soon or later something automatically tries to installs it. >When I suggest adding it to mount and fstab, I am thinking more >of references, See Also. The Mount man page, for those who have >read it, contains a section for commands relevant to each and >every supported file system type. But not gvfs. Because gvfs is GNOME software, it doesn't belong to the mount man page. >Many of them are of course kernel modules, but regardless, mount man >page is the very first place you go when you are looking for a problem >with a mount. That location should at the very least reference >you to other information. Again, should man ls mention the GNOME file manager? >If you don't believe that, I suggest you go talk to a good >technical writer or a librarian. Or an old Unix hand. > >It really is not a good idea to say things about people who >might possibly know more than you do about Unix systems in >general. I am an industry guy. I don't show up often. I get >paid a lot for making systems jump through hoops. Sometimes >when I find something odd, I feel it my duty to inform someone >who may or may not do anything about it, but having taken >a few of those expensive minutes of my day to so inform, I >feel I have discharged my duty. Could you provide a few examples of UNIX and/or Linux man pages related to basic CLI commands or configs that provide pointers to desktop environment related software? I'm willing to learn. Regards, Ralf -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
I am not going to continue with this other than to correct some really strange assumptions. First, I was probably using Unix when the person who claims I must be amongst those who do not basics was still in nappies. Second, none of those suggestions will find you anything if gvfs has not even been installed. apropos only searched man pages that are installed, the last I heard :-^ No key words that were obvious to this old Unix hacker on the web mentioned gvfs. Unless you already know it exists, such as the particular person who is not recognizing the difference between what is obvious only if you know it, and has absolutely no links if you don't already have the right key words. When I suggest adding it to mount and fstab, I am thinking more of references, See Also. The Mount man page, for those who have read it, contains a section for commands relevant to each and every supported file system type. But not gvfs. Many of them are of course kernel modules, but regardless, mount man page is the very first place you go when you are looking for a problem with a mount. That location should at the very least reference you to other information. If you don't believe that, I suggest you go talk to a good technical writer or a librarian. Or an old Unix hand. It really is not a good idea to say things about people who might possibly know more than you do about Unix systems in general. I am an industry guy. I don't show up often. I get paid a lot for making systems jump through hoops. Sometimes when I find something odd, I feel it my duty to inform someone who may or may not do anything about it, but having taken a few of those expensive minutes of my day to so inform, I feel I have discharged my duty. Done. -- +---+ | Dale Amon Immortal Data| | CEO Midland International Air and Space Port| | a...@vnl.com "Data Systems for Deep Space and Time" | +---+ -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Oliver Grawert schreef op 14-10-2016 12:06: hi, Am Donnerstag, den 13.10.2016, 18:31 +0200 schrieb Ralf Mardorf: On Thu, 13 Oct 2016 17:42:29 +0200, Xen wrote: > > Can you please come out of your psychosis now? On Thu, 13 Oct 2016 17:49:24 +0200, Xen wrote:. > > > Please quit, as you're not providing helpful advice. Another psychotic and unhelpful advice: can you two please calm down a little and tame your personal attacks, this isnt appropriate for an ubuntu list and this thread starts to slowly seem to go out of band ... please lean back, take a deep breath and consider if the topic really needs more discussion :) This thread was over until you restarted it. I don't even read his emails anymore, they go straight to the trash once I see what's in it. This is what they call "filling up the ditch once the calf has drowned" in my language. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
On Fri, 14 Oct 2016 12:06:51 +0200, Oliver Grawert wrote: >can you two please calm down a little and tame your personal attacks, >this isnt appropriate for an ubuntu list and this thread starts to >slowly seem to go out of band ... > >please lean back, take a deep breath and consider if the topic really >needs more discussion :) I'm relaxed and I even don't feed the troll, aka Xen. It's just important to correct bad encouragement done by Xen. For example, if a subscriber, in this case Amon, thinks "the simplest way to fix this issue is to add x-gvfs-show to the mount or fstab man page", it should be explained that "mount" and fstab" have absolutely nothing to do with a GNOME tool. Amon assumes "Those are the first place that most users of such a feature are going to look". A user who is aware that an issue is related to mounting and that there are man pages available, usually does know how to use man pages. So to use man pages, I would expect a user to at least having read man man and perhaps the already mentioned Ubuntu Wiki, too. So a user should tbe aware what a man page is and that it allows to search for keyword related content, e.g. man -k mount or apropos mount list gvfs, too. If the available gvfs man page or pages shouldn't provide the wanted information, than the gvfs related man page or pages might need to be corrected, but adding something unrelated to mount and fstab man pages is terribly wrong. There were other issues, too and I always tried to explain mistakes, not to argue with Xen, I completely don't care about this troll, just because I care about subscribers who are lead astray by getting false approval from Xen. Regards, Ralf -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
hi, Am Donnerstag, den 13.10.2016, 18:31 +0200 schrieb Ralf Mardorf: > On Thu, 13 Oct 2016 17:42:29 +0200, Xen wrote: > > > > Can you please come out of your psychosis now? > On Thu, 13 Oct 2016 17:49:24 +0200, Xen wrote:. > > > > > > Please quit, as you're not providing helpful advice. > Another psychotic and unhelpful advice: > can you two please calm down a little and tame your personal attacks, this isnt appropriate for an ubuntu list and this thread starts to slowly seem to go out of band ... please lean back, take a deep breath and consider if the topic really needs more discussion :) ciao oli signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
On Thu, 13 Oct 2016 17:42:29 +0200, Xen wrote: >Can you please come out of your psychosis now? On Thu, 13 Oct 2016 17:49:24 +0200, Xen wrote:. >Ralf Mardorf schreef op 12-10-2016 21:12: >> I seriously doubt that an Ubuntu maintainer will patch those man >> pages, in such a wrong way, but you are free to suggest it. >Ralf, maybe you should stop telling other people what they should do. > >Just saying. That no one needs your advice on what to do, no one is >asking for it. You don't determine what people are free to do and what >not, and you are no moderator here. > >You are producing a whole lot of noise giving senseless advice to >people who don't want it in an effort apparently to shut them up or >make them go elsewhere. > >Please quit, as you're not providing helpful advice. Another psychotic and unhelpful advice: [root@moonstudio ~]# apropos mount IOW instead of pointing from man mount and man fstab to gvfs, because users are not willing to learn how to use man pages correctly, how about suggesting to add missing information to the gvfs man pages, if the information should be missing? Do you expect pointers from man ls to the GNOME file manager, too? If a user would take a look at man mount , then why not also taking a look at "apropos mount" to see related man pages that are available? Some of us are editing and reading Wikis, before they spam a mailing list, just to ignore hints. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/man >From the above link: "It does not cover the tools apropos or whatis, both of which are used for searching parts of the manpage data, and both of which have equivalents in man using the -k and -f switches." So running [root@moonstudio ~]# man -k mount does the job, too. Regards, Ralf -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Ralf, maybe you should stop telling other people what they should do. Just saying. That no one needs your advice on what to do, no one is asking for it. You don't determine what people are free to do and what not, and you are no moderator here. You are producing a whole lot of noise giving senseless advice to people who don't want it in an effort apparently to shut them up or make them go elsewhere. Please quit, as you're not providing helpful advice. Regards. Ralf Mardorf schreef op 12-10-2016 21:12: I seriously doubt that an Ubuntu maintainer will patch those man pages, in such a wrong way, but you are free to suggest it. (...) Regards, Ralf -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Again, I don't need help on using my system, but thank you for your cooperation in not pestering me with it endlessly ok? Ralf Mardorf schreef op 12-10-2016 20:09: FWIW if a developer has got a user question or does notice a bug, even a developer is well-advised to use the appropriate forum. How do you expect the bugs and missing features to be fixed, resp. added, if you don't report it? If you notice it, it's up to you, to report it. Can you please come out of your psychosis now? You have nothing better to do than to pester people with sending them to the appropriate forums and giving them user help they did not ask for, do not need, and that serves no purpose whatsoever? You describe a way of using the system that is unfathomably difficult and filled with precautionary measures that really require setting defaults with aliases to be useful to begin with. This is a developer's work, not a user's, or you'd turn a user into a developer and then this would still be the right forum. You want him to specify the basic operation of the various tools by specifying the mode bits or flags they should normally come with? Don't you think that is a developer's job? To set defaults? You should also stop speaking for other people, please, while you have basically provided all of the noise in this thread and the reason for the rebuttals and responses to that. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
On Wed, 12 Oct 2016 09:23:11 -0500, amon wrote: >So I think the simplest way to fix this issue is to add x-gvfs-show to >the mount or fstab man page. Those are the first place that most users >of such a feature are going to look. I seriously doubt that an Ubuntu maintainer will patch those man pages, in such a wrong way, but you are free to suggest it. Regarding https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugsis this kind of feature request belongs to this list. Mentioning the GNOME Virtual file system by those man pages makes no sense. If completely unrelated man pages would be polluted with pointers to GVFS, using the man pages would become a PITA. The man pages are amazing, very useful and they should stay very useful. No man page user would expect GVFS mentioned by man mount or man fstab. Assuming that no Wiki/help page already should exist, consider to write a Wiki/help page, since this is the appropriate place, to connect mount, fstab and GVFS, the man pages for mount and fstab aren't. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ContributeToUbuntu#Wiki Regards, Ralf -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
If a user needs special privileges to do something, then only grant the user the required privileges, no need to give admin privileges. If root does something, root can remount read only, set the immutable bit temporarily, but most important, even the admin should only become root, if required and then be very careful rmdir does only delete empty directories unlink is as risky as rm, but it's good practise to be aware what you want to delete, so at least the awareness adds security, even while it could delete files, too mv -i and cp -i don't overwrite by accident, e.g. related to a typo Regarding typos an advice does follow btw. within a FS mv is an atomic operation, knowing this could be useful to make work more safe, too [root@moonstudio tmp]# ls -l very_important/ total 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Oct 12 19:18 very_important -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Oct 12 19:18 very_important1 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Oct 12 19:18 very_important2 [root@moonstudio tmp]# ls -l very_important/very_important{1,2} -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Oct 12 19:18 very_important/very_important1 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Oct 12 19:18 very_important/very_important2 before you rm, make a dry-run with ls. Oops, I don't want to delete the above, this is what I want to delete: [root@moonstudio tmp]# ls -l very_important/very_important{,2} -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Oct 12 19:18 very_important/very_important -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Oct 12 19:18 very_important/very_important2 Now replace ls -l by rm [root@moonstudio tmp]# ^ls -l^rm rm very_important/very_important{,2} [root@moonstudio tmp]# ls -l very_important/ total 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Oct 12 19:18 very_important1 Use the tab key, don't type, to avoid that rm very_important/very_important1 by accident does read rm very_important/ very_important1 FWIW if a developer has got a user question or does notice a bug, even a developer is well-advised to use the appropriate forum. How do you expect the bugs and missing features to be fixed, resp. added, if you don't report it? If you notice it, it's up to you, to report it. To some extend Ubuntu maintainers could patch provided software, but at some point it's up to upstream to do the work. You should become aware that you only waste your own time. Most subscribers do not read, at least not reply to this thread, those who do reply and try to explain you your mistakes only do it, when they have the time to do so and we don't do it to argue. We are not emotional involved, we only try to make clear, that you are on the wrong track. Hth, Ralf -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Xen: Thanks for the tip. That works. So I think the simplest way to fix this issue is to add x-gvfs-show to the mount or fstab man page. Those are the first place that most users of such a feature are going to look. -- +---+ | Dale Amon Immortal Data| | CEO Midland International Air and Space Port| | a...@vnl.com "Data Systems for Deep Space and Time" | +---+ -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Ralf Mardorf schreef op 11-10-2016 21:16: "These are all practically unused options." And they are. I have never come across a single file that had the immutable bit set or I would have found out. If the graphical tools don't support it it won't be much use unless automated system installs use it. Am I to immutibalize all of the files I don't want to be corrupted? Can apt work with that? This is not something a user can do on his own (or her own). I don't deny that the thing would be useful, in fact it sparks my interest. Besides, what was the topic. Oh yes, ensuring that you don't make drastic errors by mistake. And the reason for that was saying that the user is not protected from destroying his system. And the reason for that was saying that root access is /easy/ but convenience still is not!! Tough is it, when someone can draw the discussion back to where it started? And the reason for not saying that the user cannot protect itself is not that it would be easy for him to do so regardless. It is because people like you think it is easy and it is not. What I mean is that you won't refuse to acknowledge that this isn't working. If you actually knew what you were talking about. If a user is not willing to use the provided tools, than the better OS for such a user is a restricted OS. You say the user is protected, but now you go to great lengths to say that the user must go to great lengths to protect himself. So the user must obtain root (in a default install of Ubuntu, for example) and then go to great length making the entirety of the filesystem immutable, probably fucking up every other tool out there. Using Linux requires some amount of self-responsibility and a minimum of interest in learning how to use it. So what would happen to *your* system if you did "sudo rm -rf /*"? It is pretty clear -I is as dysfynctional as it can get: it prompts you whenever MORE THAN 3 FILES are getting deleted, and won't allow you to differentiate between that, and directories! That is the stupidest thing to do, and that designer probably didn't think much about it. Instead of making a /good/ default and using that as the default (requiring e.g. some --force to override) the default is that -f (that most people use) HAS NO GOOD USE OTHER THAN not telling you that you didn't just delete nothing, you actually deleted nothing. It just won't tell you if a file is missing, that is all it does. rm -rf <-- the f is useless for the most part rm -I <-- will prompt on more than 3 files rm -rI <-- will prompt on more than 3 files, and directories. When you hit rm -rI * it will only tell you the number of files in the directory, it will not give you their names, or the total amount of files you are going to delete, so it is just very much useless. It is a useless question and unless you pay specific attention you will force yourself to type "y " based on nothing more than a /number/. Which will quickly become a repetitive thing rendering the -I question pointless because you will be too fast at pressing "y " anyway for it to be of any use. This thing has no intelligence and I would not recommend using it. I very much doubt anyone does. For using Linux there's no need to become a geek, but Linux is not a replacement for a restricted OS, for completely clueless users, without any interest in leraning how to use it. You speak of Immutable bits and -I flags and then you say we do not need to become a geek. What are you then? Have you any clue what it does to a person when you tell him to use those options? We needed to learn how to use forks and knives and for a much more complex tool, the computer, some people are not willing to spend at least the same amount of time and effort as they spend in learning how to use forks and knives. You are comparing using a fork to recursively setting an Immutable flag that you don't want to be deleted that will have to be removed prior to using a tool like Apt /juust/ because "rm" does not by default provide any sense of useful protection and you call that "not geek stuff". Have you any common sense left in you? I think you have been in Arch for too long man, it's rotting your brain. No restricted OS provides that amount of choice as Linux does. To make it easy for clueless users, some distros, e.g. Ubuntu, provide some defaults. Could you please get off your high horse and venture among people once more? No Ubuntu system has Immutable flags anywhere. This is the default and what all users will see. No one uses a tool like rm -I when it is practically pointless to do so. For some reason "rm -rf" is the only practical choice and everyone uses it, as if it has some magic to it, that "rm -r" does not (the -f practically serves no purpose, but it is more 'rhythmically correct' to write rm -rf instead of rm -r. The -f should mean "force" but instead it means "Just don't tell me if you haven't done anything
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
On Wed, 12 Oct 2016 12:26:22 +0200, Xen wrote: >And I agree that this is not a user problem because it would be /every >user/'s problem. Something like this must work by default, ie. gvfs >shouldn't prevent stuff from being mounted. And if it does mount, it >should honour fstab. If it doesn't work, it's a problem for the user. If it's broken, report the bug. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs Do you think the Ubuntu maintainers and upstream developers read your idiotic Windows mails on this mailing list? https://bugzilla.gnome.org/ To get it working, even if the cause should be an Ubuntu or upstream bug, the best way to get help, is the user mailing list, since it might take a while until a reported bug gets fixed. However, if nobody reports a bug, nobody will fix it. Regards, Ralf -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
amon schreef op 12-10-2016 4:37: The problem is that in my desktop I end up with a race. The desktop detects the new device and ignores cryptab and fstab and asks if I want to mount or whatever. I have to give it a NO and then go to a root shell and execute a manual cryptdisk_start and mount (or just mount if not encrypted). If it was just a plain mount, the GUI doesn't even do that, and I then have to unmount the device from /dev/meda/whomever/whatever before doing the mount command that actually uses /etc/fstab. So my question is, how do you make that userland automounter recognize that the disk is just not up for grabs? It does not seem to even look at cryptab or fstab for a hint. I guess we use a different one but in KDE this works automatically. I have not attempted Mint yet (which is like Gnome 3) but I will check before sending this email. It did not work in mint by default but needed the option x-gvfs-show in fstab for it to work at all: both fstab auto-mounting did not work and gvfs also did not work, but now it opens in gvfs (Cinnamon) AND it has the proper path that I have given to it. I assume for Ubuntu Unity it will be the same? It is a form of interference that is not very pleasant (it doesn't work out of the box, right) but still rather benign, because once you know this simple option (and accompanying, such as x-gvfs-name, x-gvfs-icon) it works reasonably and at least honours fstab to a reasonable degree. But in KDE it works by default and in Cinnamon/Gnome3 you need x-gvfs-show to render it functional. And I agree that this is not a user problem because it would be /every user/'s problem. Something like this must work by default, ie. gvfs shouldn't prevent stuff from being mounted. And if it does mount, it should honour fstab. But in my case without gvfs it is not even getting mounted at /media/user/*. It is not getting mounted at all. (On Mint). And I don't know the Ubuntu proper situation. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
On Wed, 2016-10-12 at 00:29 -0500, amon wrote: > > > Ralf replies: > > > On Tue, 11 Oct 2016 21:37:45 -0500, amon wrote: > > > So my question is, how do you make that userland automounter recognize > > > that the disk is just not up for grabs? It does not seem to even > > > look at cryptab or fstab for a hint. > > > > The appropriate mailing list for a user question, is the user mailing > > list. > > I respectfully disagree. It is my belief that the system simply > does not handle this correctly at all. I would be happy to be > proven wrong, but if I am correct, it would also be nice if > it could be put in the queue as something to be fixed. I don't know if the issue you experience is a bug or not. If you would send a request to the user mailing list, perhaps somebody is able to help you solving the problem. If you belief that it is a bug, report it to the bug tracker. Indeed, discussing a bug could be done on this list, but report the bug and post the link, too. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Ralf replies: On Tue, 11 Oct 2016 21:37:45 -0500, amon wrote: So my question is, how do you make that userland automounter recognize that the disk is just not up for grabs? It does not seem to even look at cryptab or fstab for a hint. The appropriate mailing list for a user question, is the user mailing list. I respectfully disagree. It is my belief that the system simply does not handle this correctly at all. I would be happy to be proven wrong, but if I am correct, it would also be nice if it could be put in the queue as something to be fixed. -- +---+ | Dale Amon Immortal Data| | CEO Midland International Air and Space Port| | a...@vnl.com "Data Systems for Deep Space and Time" | +---+ -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
On Wed, 12 Oct 2016 00:10:18 +0200, Xen wrote: >I would never allow unmaintained kernel updates on any system. If >there's nobody there to fix it, don't update it. Many other things can >go wrong too, but... booting is most important. This thread is a PITA. Stop spreading this FUD! Ubuntu allows to install a new kernel, without removing older kernels. Sure, if you start collecting kernels in a small /boot partition, it could cause issues, but then again, Linux requires self-responsibility. Keep an old and a new kernel and purge the old, after testing the new kernel. Btw. you can chroot or systemd-nspawn, you don't need to be able to finish boot, to fix an issue. Btw. the kernel policy is "no regressions", so if you use a distro that doesn't apply distro specific patches, you usually only experience issues for nice domains, such as abbreviated driver names for audio cards, that require fixing scripts to ensure rt priorities, but issues that affect many users are rare, even for kernels with e.g. Ubuntu patches. Regarding upgrades in general, they are needed for security reasons, so not upgrading is idiotic in most cases. Apart from this, no experienced Linux user ever would upgrade, without taking care about the upgrades, either by reading release notes, or by following community news. The advantage of Linux, over restricted operating systems is exactly this transparency, but yes, indeed, it requires to be interested in this. If a user has got no interested in getting minimal knowledge and a little bit of learning, on a level you also need to use a washing machine, a radio and similar gear, than Linux is the wrong choice. Please, stop using Linux, use Windows and complain in Windows forums, if Windows shouldn't provide the Linux features you like. They most likely welcome your input. On Tue, 11 Oct 2016 21:37:45 -0500, amon wrote: >So my question is, how do you make that userland automounter recognize >that the disk is just not up for grabs? It does not seem to even >look at cryptab or fstab for a hint. The appropriate mailing list for a user question, is the user mailing list. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Xens says: 2) I would love a feature in which I could add a blkid to fstab such that if I plug that particular USB or other storage device into my machine, that instead of mounting in /media/user/diskname, it would mount just like any other disk would at boot time. I do this all the time. All of my usb disks mount in specific locations. They are set to auto and nofail. I haven't seen a way to do this, although I believe old automounters were fine with such. defaults, auto won't do it because it will hang you up waiting at boot time (well, you can set other options to prevent the hang, but its not really what I'd like to see. Hmm... you speak of systemd probably. I do not know what other concerns you have. The problem is that in my desktop I end up with a race. The desktop detects the new device and ignores cryptab and fstab and asks if I want to mount or whatever. I have to give it a NO and then go to a root shell and execute a manual cryptdisk_start and mount (or just mount if not encrypted). If it was just a plain mount, the GUI doesn't even do that, and I then have to unmount the device from /dev/meda/whomever/whatever before doing the mount command that actually uses /etc/fstab. So my question is, how do you make that userland automounter recognize that the disk is just not up for grabs? It does not seem to even look at cryptab or fstab for a hint. -- +---+ | Dale Amon Immortal Data| | CEO Midland International Air and Space Port| | a...@vnl.com "Data Systems for Deep Space and Time" | +---+ -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Tom H schreef op 11-10-2016 22:36: What I mean by maintain is make sure that updates are installed, just like on Windows and macOS. Aye. To me it is a detriment. I used to turn Windows Update off completely for years while I was running XP and 7. For me the incessant updates are only a distraction and now with Windows 10 it is twenty times worse than it will ever be on Ubuntu. However some updates do break stuff not only on Windows. Mint has a policy to warn the user and not install kernel updates by default. I would never allow unmaintained kernel updates on any system. If there's nobody there to fix it, don't update it. Many other things can go wrong too, but... booting is most important. One of the laptops is my neighbor's. I whatsapp her to see whether it's a good time, and if it is, I switch to her wifi network, ssh in, and run apt-get. That's a lot of work ;-). In the sense of having to pay attention, to keep at it, to not abate, in that sense. I visit my parents once a week and I do the same on their laptops. I had zero maintenance on XP for years and the only thing that started bogging down is that I couldn't install new graphics drivers at a certain point. I literally had an installation that was at least 2 years old while seeing frequent installs and various updates to various things except Windows itself. Today I keep having to reinstall stuff constantly. I used to do the same as I now do with Ubuntu with my parents' laptops when they were running Windows six years ago. Well it's not necessary. There is almost no point to it. Very few machines are directly exposed to the internet and no one is actually at risk. The updates don't protect against the most common type of threat and most machines get infected by running things themselves. Could you take yourself out of the equation for those 3 laptops for a year without a problem? Absolutely. I'd switch on the update thingy for them to click OK for their systems to be updated. If they never had to install anything new... Microsoft currently enjoys releasing updates that break systems and then they release a fix several days later. I have also seen enough messages on these lists from people whose systems got broken by updates. There is a reason Mint has that policy. http://askubuntu.com/questions/781668/system-wont-boot-anymore-after-software-update Just one message I quickly found. These are pretty regular. It is absolutely not safe to let the system update itself without anyone present who could fix it. I don't trust it on Windows and I don't trust it on Linux. It has nothing to do with Linux this or Linux that, or Windows this or Windows that. I don't trust a company to deploy updates across a wide variety of systems although I guess OpenSUSE is renowned for running extensive safety tests across many different configurations. They don't take it lightly. I once broke off a Microsoft update. It was taking too long. I could reinstall the system afterward. So seeing the amount of maintenance you do today I suppose you have a reason for doing it manually, which gives me reason to believe that automatic updates would not suffice for you either. I don't believe this quick statement that these systems would be fine for a year. It's a risky game you play. Of course if you leave them without updates they would probably be fine still 20 years from now. Provided that KDE or Unity or whatever would not get corrupted. (Which it can also frequently do, especially if you install something). A few days I hooked up my system to a TV. Within minutes I had no longer a functioning KDE system. 'Nuf said? This is someone else, 4 days ago. Okay, maybe KDE is worse than the others. https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=136651&p=365369&hilit=kscreen#p365369 Someone hooks their laptop up to a projector and it basically stops working. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 2:27 PM, Xen wrote: > Tom H schreef op 11-10-2016 16:52: >> On Mon, Oct 10, 2016 at 1:01 PM, Xen wrote: I'll reply quickly to the beginning and read and reply to the rest tomorrow. >>> That's not really true. The vast majority of people would go screaming >>> for a Windows or Mac PC if they had Linux preinstalled. >>> >>> The level of system maintenance I would have to give to my family for >>> a Linux box is about 95%. >> >> Please don't extrapolate from your experience to all. >> >> I maintain three laptops for non-technical users and they're running >> Ubuntu quite happily. > > You say "maintain". I have never "maintained" anyone's Windows systems. I > just fixed stuff when it was broken and that was a very irregular event, > very very rarely. There was no maintenance in that sense. It is mostly "set > up and forget". What I mean by maintain is make sure that updates are installed, just like on Windows and macOS. One of the laptops is my neighbor's. I whatsapp her to see whether it's a good time, and if it is, I switch to her wifi network, ssh in, and run apt-get. I visit my parents once a week and I do the same on their laptops. > And I was not extrapolating from Ubuntu experience (in that sense, > supporting people with it) because I have never ever installed it on someone > else's System. I was extrapolating from my Windows experience. So, what you > say and what I say do not necessarily conflict, particularly if you attest > to "maintaining" those laptops for other peole which is precisely the > relationship I indicated. I used to do the same as I now do with Ubuntu with my parents' laptops when they were running Windows six years ago. > Could you take yourself out of the equation for those 3 laptops for a year > without a problem? Absolutely. I'd switch on the update thingy for them to click OK for their systems to be updated. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
My apologies, I know, I shouldn't have replied again, but it's hard to resist ;). -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
On Tue, 11 Oct 2016 20:27:18 +0200, Xen wrote: >Tom H schreef op 11-10-2016 16:52: >> From skimming of this thread, it seems to me that you might be trying >> to work against the system in order to achieve your goal rather than >> use the tools that are provided, like people who run "chattr -i >> /etc/resolv.conf". > >Never even knew about that tool and those flags ;-). You did read about the immutable bit on Sun, 9 Oct 2016 15:05:59 +0200: "Regarding your argument that by accident somebody could wipe out a Linux install, there are several security mechanisms to prevent users to delete important things. One is that users cannot use sudo to get root privileges, but even a superuser has levels of protection, for example to mount read only, to set the immutable bit, not to use rm -r, but instead rm -I files* and rmdir or e.g. unlink instead of rm to remove a link. You describe Windows user typical behaviour without self-responsibility." You replied to it on Sun, 09 Oct 2016 18:32:55 +0200: "These are all practically unused options." If a user is not willing to use the provided tools, than the better OS for such a user is a restricted OS. Using Linux requires some amount of self-responsibility and a minimum of interest in learning how to use it. For using Linux there's no need to become a geek, but Linux is not a replacement for a restricted OS, for completely clueless users, without any interest in leraning how to use it. We needed to learn how to use forks and knives and for a much more complex tool, the computer, some people are not willing to spend at least the same amount of time and effort as they spend in learning how to use forks and knives. No restricted OS provides that amount of choice as Linux does. To make it easy for clueless users, some distros, e.g. Ubuntu, provide some defaults. I can't remember that I ever read such complaints as your, on the Ubuntu user list, https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/ . I also do not understand, why a user who is satisfied with Windows, should use Linux and vice versa. Regards, Ralf -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Tom H schreef op 11-10-2016 16:52: On Mon, Oct 10, 2016 at 1:01 PM, Xen wrote: That's not really true. The vast majority of people would go screaming for a Windows or Mac PC if they had Linux preinstalled. The level of system maintenance I would have to give to my family for a Linux box is about 95%. Please don't extrapolate from your experience to all. I maintain three laptops for non-technical users and they're running Ubuntu quite happily. You say "maintain". I have never "maintained" anyone's Windows systems. I just fixed stuff when it was broken and that was a very irregular event, very very rarely. There was no maintenance in that sense. It is mostly "set up and forget". And I was not extrapolating from Ubuntu experience (in that sense, supporting people with it) because I have never ever installed it on someone else's System. I was extrapolating from my Windows experience. So, what you say and what I say do not necessarily conflict, particularly if you attest to "maintaining" those laptops for other peole which is precisely the relationship I indicated. Could you take yourself out of the equation for those 3 laptops for a year without a problem? From skimming of this thread, it seems to me that you might be trying to work against the system in order to achieve your goal rather than use the tools that are provided, like people who run "chattr -i /etc/resolv.conf". Never even knew about that tool and those flags ;-). Your impression may coincide with my impression that I am often running "behind schedule" because other systems advance faster than I can keep up with. The result is that you don't have the "time" to learn to "work" with the new system because complication constantly goes up. An example is today when I am trying to prevent KScreen from resizing my X display. I don't know where I can disable it. I can either go on an endless and probably fruitless search for the answer, or I can write a script that checks syslog and reverts its changes when they have happened. You can call that "working against the system" but finding information on how to change the workings of kscreen will prove harder. I just learned I can disable it, but the way to do it was only evident through some stackexchange question, a site I am trying to avoid and if all my browsers supported the google addon they would never show up in my search results anymore. Writing the script empowers me because the next time it will be easier and I do not need any other knowledge than what I can already readily discover on my own to effectuate it. Most of Linux these days is completely and utterly dependent on external sources to know how to do anything. I just want to get to work changing my current system but they keep changing it faster than I can keep up with! Completely disabling KScreen is also quite unsatisfactory. Thus far I have learned to: use journalctl's --show-cursor functionality, its after-cursor functionality, of course the udev rule that was necessary, how to give a root user access to my X session, and so on. I prefer to be in control of my own systems but many of the "let me do that for you" systems we have today don't make that easier. KScreen's functionality is extremely borked and killed my X session or its display within minutes of me trying to configure dual monitor. I have stayed away from it ever since and run xrandr commands myself. The "system" works against ME!! Now KDE has started to give "copy / search" popups and now I have to find how to disable THOSE. ANOTHER THING TO DO. Fuck it, I'm leaving here ;-). Actually, it is Opera that started doing that, I blame the wrong person. I was able to turn it off. :D. It seemed to be site-wide because I often use it for e-mail. But KDE also has these things, like popups when you move a file (drag and drop) that I hate. The system is working against ME and doing stuff for me that I don't want. I was perfectly content with the simple way it worked in Windows 95 and things shouldn't have changed since then. A plus sign indicated copying, ctrl makes it into copying, a minus sign makes it moving or something like that, shift turns it into moving; that's all I need, as simple as that. People try to improve stuff that doesn't need improving and then I have to work against it in order to disable it again. So yes I am most definitely 'working against the system' because it keeps automating stuff (in the wrong way) I don't want to be automated. It is not making my life better by doing the wrong thing forcibly. I don't have the time to learn all of these new systems, I want to get my system working now, not three years down the road with scarce documentation available or documentation that requires you to read books before you can do anything. Why on earth should I learn to work with the system if it always opposes me? If it doesn't even make it easy? Those systems consider themsel
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
On Mon, Oct 10, 2016 at 1:01 PM, Xen wrote: > > That's not really true. The vast majority of people would go screaming > for a Windows or Mac PC if they had Linux preinstalled. > > The level of system maintenance I would have to give to my family for > a Linux box is about 95%. Please don't extrapolate from your experience to all. I maintain three laptops for non-technical users and they're running Ubuntu quite happily. >From skimming of this thread, it seems to me that you might be trying to work against the system in order to achieve your goal rather than use the tools that are provided, like people who run "chattr -i /etc/resolv.conf". -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
JMZ schreef op 10-10-2016 11:58: The vast majority of consumer boxes run Windows because of Microsoft's bundling deal with the manufacturers. It's nothing really to do with Windows performance or ease of use (both of which are poor). It's just that Mr./Ms. Everyday User doesn't really know much about computers, plugs the box in, and just uses what's presented to him/her. That's not really true. The vast majority of people would go screaming for a Windows or Mac PC if they had Linux preinstalled. The level of system maintenance I would have to give to my family for a Linux box is about 95%. The level of system maintenance for an ordinary Windows machine (provided it worked like Windows XP or Windows 7) would probably be some 20% for Windows XP and some 25% for Windows 7. That would mean that they could do some 75% of maintenance tasks themselves, such as adding a new user, changing power settings, moving their files around, installing Dropbox, and my brother and sister could perfectly handle installing a printer. Setting up OneDrive... those things I would never need to do for any of them. If you gave people the choice of Windows for pay or Linux for free I bet some would choose to experiment with Linux. Perhaps 25% would be willing to try it at least once, I'm not sure, as long as they could return the thing and get Windows on it at the second chance. "Just works" is a fantasy. There's plenty of Windows programs which don't "just work" -- I spend my days bouncing from one Windows box to another, trying to iron out small bugs or teach panicky users simple tasks. This is more said of the Mac than of Windows. Mac users use those terms to differentiate between Windows and their own systems. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
amon schreef op 10-10-2016 15:53: Since the topic seems to be mounting of devices from user space... 1) You can use sshfs to mount pretty much any directory, anywhere to which you have password access on any mount point for which you have privs. I used to use it a lot. Works great. I read a post from 2005 that said the old smbmount did it as well, if you made the smbmnt program suid. Personally I think it is too "light weight" in a certain sense although I think I once imagined a use case for myself. Apparently suid mounting on user directories is nothing new. Someone on that page (lwn.net) said "Whether that is a bug or a feature is an exercise for the reader". 2) I would love a feature in which I could add a blkid to fstab such that if I plug that particular USB or other storage device into my machine, that instead of mounting in /media/user/diskname, it would mount just like any other disk would at boot time. I do this all the time. All of my usb disks mount in specific locations. They are set to auto and nofail. I haven't seen a way to do this, although I believe old automounters were fine with such. defaults, auto won't do it because it will hang you up waiting at boot time (well, you can set other options to prevent the hang, but its not really what I'd like to see. Hmm... you speak of systemd probably. I do not know what other concerns you have. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Since the topic seems to be mounting of devices from user space... 1) You can use sshfs to mount pretty much any directory, anywhere to which you have password access on any mount point for which you have privs. I used to use it a lot. Works great. 2) I would love a feature in which I could add a blkid to fstab such that if I plug that particular USB or other storage device into my machine, that instead of mounting in /media/user/diskname, it would mount just like any other disk would at boot time. I haven't seen a way to do this, although I believe old automounters were fine with such. defaults, auto won't do it because it will hang you up waiting at boot time (well, you can set other options to prevent the hang, but its not really what I'd like to see. -- +---+ | Dale Amon Immortal Data| | CEO Midland International Air and Space Port| | a...@vnl.com "Data Systems for Deep Space and Time" | +---+ -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
The vast majority of consumer boxes run Windows because of Microsoft's bundling deal with the manufacturers. It's nothing really to do with Windows performance or ease of use (both of which are poor). It's just that Mr./Ms. Everyday User doesn't really know much about computers, plugs the box in, and just uses what's presented to him/her. "Just works" is a fantasy. There's plenty of Windows programs which don't "just work" -- I spend my days bouncing from one Windows box to another, trying to iron out small bugs or teach panicky users simple tasks. Most people can't set up a wireless router or configure a wireless printer, so Linux is a planet away. Linux-based distributions are still heavily reliant on the cli, and must remain so. We shouldn't give up the robustness of bash work so that linux desktop environments may mimic a dysfunctional proprietary OS. Jordan On 10/05/2016 08:59 AM, Himanshu Shekhar wrote: Moreover, I think that Linux has come a long way and gained much maturity on the server and enterprise side, thanks to parallel efforts of "Canonical" and "RedHat" (and "Google"). The sector which Linux has long way to go is Desktop / Laptop and daily computing. Why do you think people prefer to use Windows or MacOS? That's what needs to be improved in Linux. Standardized things, at least for a distro. Lots of customization available, but it should work out of the box. My dad would not like to go in depth about synaptic and libinput stuff, or the free/proprietary stuff. Things need to work like a charm, at least to the maximum extent we can provide. On Wed, Oct 5, 2016 at 6:23 PM Himanshu Shekhar mailto:himanshushekhar...@gmail.com>> wrote: I appreciate Xen's first response stating how things go on in Windows and Apple. I know that snaps and containers are very different things and function differently. I was less concerned about snaps coming to Ubuntu, than two standards, namely Snaps and Flatpak coming to Linux. Both are good in their intentions but they would again lead to confusion, they way we have today. Snaps/Flatpaks are intended to make applications distro-independent and unify Linux development. However, two things for the same task would again cause confusion about which to use / what will become the de-facto standard. **REPEAT** This reminds me of the state of Upstart, which after much development was replaced by systemd **REPEAT** I repeat that my concerns are Snaps/Flatpak and Wayland/Mir, not which of them is better. (I didn't start this thread to debate which is better). It is true that XServer is old and desktop/GUI computing has come a long way than the client-server model. I was eager to know how they are different, and how things in future are planned to be, as the current state of development branches in Linux make me feel like the chaotic scenario between distributions, packaging and graphics server would continue for long. -- Regards Himanshu Shekhar -- Regards Himanshu Shekhar -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Daniel Llewellyn schreef op 09-10-2016 21:43: On 09/10/16 20:35, Xen wrote: Personally I think SystemD is lower level and in that sense more dependable and more broad...ly available. It might not do the same things but... at least it is something both parties could use. Well, I would love a SystemD-based user-level mounting support as you suggest, the problem is that the BSD projects have all suggested that they will not or cannot implement anything SystemD, partly due to it's integral nature with the Linux kernel. Unfortunately this means that any implementation of user-mounting will either not work at all on BSD or will need to be independent of SystemD if you desire it to be accepted by BSD, which _may_ (I don't know for sure) be requisite for acceptance into Gnome and/or KDE.. I think it's still the only thing I can do myself. I have never used BSD so it is no worry to me from the beginning at least, and I just want something that works for me, as well, I am sure you can understand that ;-). I just believe that creating a model is foremost. If the model is right, the solutions will follow. What I mean is that if you create something that is modular enough, other people can recreate it. I know SystemD is not very modular in that sense... it is not like you can take many pieces out, right. I also object to some of their command line interfaces in that sense, but... you know, you can't always have everything the way you want and you sometimes just have to go with what is available and what is functional and achievable, you know. I don't really even know what BSD has to do with a user-level GUI, but... I'm not aware of BSD being more popular than 1% of Linux? I could be wrong... Sometimes you just have to create something that works and if the model is right you can expand it to something else... The autofs developer... has also not been unkind... to me, but autofs regularly failed for me while using it so I stepped away from it. And that leaves libpam_mount which works reasonably well albeit a bit rough. So you see, I have been around a bit :p. Even discovered a smb mounting bug (or limitation) in which having the same hashed password for different users creates a problem (if the usernames are identical, but the domains aren't). If you want to know what I've been doing... I've just been patching smb to have a new option for mounting that works with my system... so I am just doing groundwork... not anything big in that sense... Sorry about that, you know. But the big things can wait until the smaller pieces are in place, I feel. One can perform a hundred smaller operations in the same time it would take to take on 1 big project. Even much more than that... So we do the groundwork first, is what we do. Regards ;-). -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Daniel Llewellyn schreef op 09-10-2016 21:37: On 09/10/16 20:17, Daniel Llewellyn wrote: On 09/10/16 19:53, Xen wrote: As a feature request that you could try to get implemented by the gnome guys you could suggest to their issue-tracker that gvfs support KIO-slaves. Also would be worth suggesting to the KDE guys the inverse, for KIO to support gvfs-mounts. Having just read your other reply to Ralf, I wanted to say that I don't mean to be saying "don't do the work, ask someone to do it for you". Filing a feature request was a suggestion for those that don't have the developer mindset. As you indicate you have such, I would revise my suggestion to opening a dialog with the two teams, individually, and detail your ambitions. Try to get them to assist you in understanding their code-bases. Fork each of the systems and implement the cross-polination, before asking for them to merge your changes when you think it's ready. Alternatively attempt to unify the two systems (licenses permitting) into a single back-end and publish independently. Then send patches to each of the projects to switch their front-ends to use your back-end. Of course that could be a good path forward if that was the first thing to do, thank you. What I mean by that is that if you start creating a house and you talk about a room people may tell you how to create the room but maybe you are only discussing the room and you are still building the foundation of your house, you see? This automount stuff is not my primary objective as of today so I won't be doing that but... The first thing you do is to get your own systems working in a certain way. It does not help if you have food in a month if you have to be hungry today. So first my own systems must be in operating order in that sense, you know. Then when you have rudimentary levels of support and functionality you start publishing these rudimentary things (or you were already doing so). Then at a certain point you may find that you cannot advance in your functionality without going higher level and getting the cooperation of other systems or people that already exist. But you must first have a basis to start from: that rudimentary thing. Rudimentary things require rudimentary systems so you first focus on understanding them and getting those basic building blocks working together as they should. That is why I say that high level functionality is not much use because /a developer can't use them/. You can't use bits and pieces of snaps to create something else. This is hardly possible. Systemd is both high and low level, annoyingly so. And I have many different goals but as it stands you know what I've said is that the problem is that the user has very little focus and the system has a lot of it. And you must start to work across the spectrum to move that in the direction of the user, a single system will not suffice. And then you can get a more secure system because the administrator becomes less used than the regular user. See for me it is more about the broader concepts than working hard to fix a single system in isolation. That is why I discuss this here, of course. Or, at least, I hope to Because without a deeper understanding you cannot solve anything I believe. And it also helps if other people also have that deeper understanding before you start making anything, at least in isolation, or at least with the idea that eventually they will turn around but you have never spoken to them before? That doesn't work, you know it. So I'm not gonna be some slave to their code bases ;-). No one should, really, they have enough problems with it themselves already ;-). (You should see what madness the plasma developers have to deal with -- (I was on their list once)) -- and really I just feel everyone should just do their own thing and that requires (being able to make use of) building blocks. But if the bigger parties make it so that the building blocks disappear, we have a problem. And that is also perhaps why I am arguing here today: don't turn everything into high-level things that have no components. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 On 09/10/16 20:35, Xen wrote: > Personally I think SystemD is lower level and in that sense more > dependable and more broad...ly available. It might not do the same > things but... at least it is something both parties could use. Well, I would love a SystemD-based user-level mounting support as you suggest, the problem is that the BSD projects have all suggested that they will not or cannot implement anything SystemD, partly due to it's integral nature with the Linux kernel. Unfortunately this means that any implementation of user-mounting will either not work at all on BSD or will need to be independent of SystemD if you desire it to be accepted by BSD, which _may_ (I don't know for sure) be requisite for acceptance into Gnome and/or KDE.. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2 iQEcBAEBCAAGBQJX+p3iAAoJEFx8XrpDpVlRBFoH/2NqSIL/5H8uI2Qj62BOO6nP TFgVrPyue0EMEts2xNDMf+9QRKljfskCWN2/k2IBE/+NLNLyWAkwMLE+L7g4SRm/ vGrngRSFuE3CQInmHBe7Fp3YVfZFnrXHY5kgStASuxxFkpiNx3aZGsBOI8EB/snU NnRhGHWJzQZYHSq66zhojDQm6Sy/t7fi9+5fEz0lFBa5RprUyPbMfQgLestmUfXP UMtd/n3bjOs3wrKiyWpioS+G5KV4AZtGaRvgUW3UXGLFd31XlcGrhVbbOQhqbbx/ pyQw++sT8XBgBWwNlIeaJyMLy3D8F80NEzUNw8CtXV819YTshEuTX4RJyJG+Hdg= =UotU -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 On 09/10/16 20:17, Daniel Llewellyn wrote: > On 09/10/16 19:53, Xen wrote: As a feature request that you could > try to get implemented by the gnome guys you could suggest to their > issue-tracker that gvfs support KIO-slaves. Also would be worth > suggesting to the KDE guys the inverse, for KIO to support > gvfs-mounts. Having just read your other reply to Ralf, I wanted to say that I don't mean to be saying "don't do the work, ask someone to do it for you". Filing a feature request was a suggestion for those that don't have the developer mindset. As you indicate you have such, I would revise my suggestion to opening a dialog with the two teams, individually, and detail your ambitions. Try to get them to assist you in understanding their code-bases. Fork each of the systems and implement the cross-polination, before asking for them to merge your changes when you think it's ready. Alternatively attempt to unify the two systems (licenses permitting) into a single back-end and publish independently. Then send patches to each of the projects to switch their front-ends to use your back-end. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2 iQEcBAEBCAAGBQJX+pxgAAoJEFx8XrpDpVlR4RQIAJ9+nSYsJfezHTXwJdexZ19a aaFzpSKfSLrvUoB+eEZqx4vSEhUYB5W6/5wn8TT8BOeRY2f4s+EFnLbUKYN7PkPy an3ykfO2DsYRhOEX9GPbaTnhRI24FrD54B9ULHKlDwH4xECw+cXiZbLg1USsqAkF aXhZ8mZ211E7K4nH04gjwFJxLYENxaHMOG7IHOaPL7tqe6jfxntmt7N+F93hlWW1 MsqBNIXYJIR+QhtO2x/+SChybCHJRqUzHA8msQMeg3v1WMbCRTDgAa8TSEh5EXmt kQFYwfqUMDcnIAyyP8TTwhZHV5e7m/rIBoTvTKWt7L9s7eAsjMypV7JuPvh44xY= =YTEe -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Daniel Llewellyn schreef op 09-10-2016 21:17: On 09/10/16 19:53, Xen wrote: I am pretty sure that any application that does not support GVFS will not see those mounts so easily. You will have to symlink them and that defeats the purpose of the system in a certain sense. There is no default system that everyone can use Well, thank you for your comments. You're quite right that the two incumbents don't recognise each other's mounting mechanisms. With the gvfs system I do successfully use the command-line to access the mounted filesystem, which suggests that KDE applications should be able to access also. I believe the problem you encountered is due to the daemon that gvfs-mount talks-to isn't running (is it called gvfsd?), which you _might_ be able to manually invoke in your KDE session, but I'm not sure on that - there might be other dependencies that need to be running (dbus-services and the like..?). I personally believe KDE should easily be able to but I have this feeling that they don't want to use anything from the gnome camp... Actually gvfsd was running. I believe that there are more systems from Gnome that I would consider superior but at the same time GTK seems to be not very good at all. And I have some experience because I have coded a bit of GTK (2). I have heard more of this from other developers. On the other hand Cinnamon looks amazing and KDE just doesn't look all that good in its controls and the like, certainly not with Breeze. So naturally Ubuntu (Unity) would also normally look better than KDE, I feel. KDE is just the most of a fully featured system that I know and feels more like a stable 'broad' environment that I can use. KDE feels more solid (even when it might not be). As a feature request that you could try to get implemented by the gnome guys you could suggest to their issue-tracker that gvfs support KIO-slaves. Also would be worth suggesting to the KDE guys the inverse, for KIO to support gvfs-mounts. But KIO itself does not provide any mount points so that would not readily solve a thing unless they called gvfs-mounts to provide that, yes. But I don't think they ever will. I sense the best overall solution would be to unify the daemon-side of both KIO and gvfs into a single daemon that both desktops back-onto, but I wonder about how much pushback or otherwise such a unified effort might encounter from both camps, and others. I bags the name GKVFIOS and GKVFIO (hybrid nomenclature between GVFS and KIO :-p). ;-). That might be some intermediate daemon that will just provide a new API that both can agree to ;-). It has to be a joint effort and not one having to use the other. And I still wonder whether they will like it and whether it is really a good effort to make. I feel a systemd approach is really a superior choice here if it can be had. If you can have some system that will simply save mounts as SystemD services, you already have an example and a solution, although the user interface might not be so good (as it is with gvfs-mount and the other bin-utils, supposedly). Personally I think SystemD is lower level and in that sense more dependable and more broad...ly available. It might not do the same things but... at least it is something both parties could use. However filing feature requests is nonsensical unless the feature request is fully featured which means developing the idea prior to filing the feature request which comes down to developing the feature to begin with. You can't just say "Hey, I want that, can you make it?" and then assume everything will be alright, you know? You have to play an active role in these things or it won't come to be and I seriously cannot understand how anyone can see these emails as not playing an active role in this thing. Besides if you filed a random open-ended feature request it might turn out to be exactly what you don't want when they make it, if they make anything, if "they" actually exist and it is not you. Is all I am saying. Regards, and thanks for the help. Kudos, Bart. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Ralf Mardorf schreef op 09-10-2016 20:12: Hi, this time I read your complete mail, I just didn't watch the video. A very last reply from me. If you notice, that low level software requires improvement, you could assume that this isn't something Ubuntu developers could change. A feature request send to upstream makes more sense, than a discussion about missing functionality on an Ubuntu mailing list. There is no upstream for what you want, idiot. You will have to create it yourself. Step out of that mode please. The only ones who could want any kind of functionality like this are feature-rich environments like Ubuntu. This is precisely the place to discuss such things. It has no place on sometyhing like Debian, for instance, for the most part. Unless you have already created something that works, then you can show it to them. If we all would agree with you, nothing would change. The one who feels the need for a feature request needs to file one. Why should I file a feature request for something I don't want? No answer required, it's just a rhetorical question, I likely will mark this thread a spam. You seriously cannot step out of this lazy attitude of yours. I don't request features, I create them. You are telling me to do stuff. Apparently you have an interest then in seeing it happen. Oh but you don't, so all of your remarks were insincere, as I thought they were. You don't want it, but you're telling me to create it. No, you're not, you're sending me into the woods so I'll never create it, if I follow your advice. You are insincere to begin with and you are insincere at the end, trying to instill doubt in other people using your "cheap rhetorical tricks" (I would call them tactics) as you've put so well (but perhaps mistakenly, because you accuse yourself with these words, they are not coming from me (not even once, I merely repeated your words without quotes there)). You don't have the mindset of a developer at all, so what are you even doing here? Developers don't file feature requests. They create them. I honestly can't understand how anyone could have an attitude like you. Letting other people do your work for you. And then blaming me with such sentiments. Remarkable. I just hope that everyone understands that I am not asking anyone to do work for me. I am merely discussing things, but discussion is often seen as a "feature request" and these people know only two modes of operation: not do anything, or beg for things. So when you complain about the status quo they see it as begging and not as a way to move forward with what you want to create. And that's all I can say here. And I am sorry to offend, but a huge amount of energy in Linux is just expended at stopping people who want to create something great. Everything you want to do you will find jealous people who say you can't, or should not do it. Or should be doing something else that would render you compeletely ineffective or even dysfunctional. Because filing requests for stuff is simply not a functional way of achieving stuff, I hope people can understand. And I am spending time debating people who only try to stop what I am doing. And I could also be spending that time on functional stuff, but many people are only interested in bringing other people down than doing anything good. Criticising people for what they are doing, instead for what they are not doing. And it doesn't help much if everything you do is getting criticised. Meanwhile these same people never come up with anything else, they only break down what you do, but do not come up with any alternative that is actually creative and advancing in the slightest sense, no, you must be happy with what already is. And then they propose the least-effective and least-creative form of moving forward that is "filing feature requests". I am sorry, but that just blew my hat off. All slaves to the wage, I guess...? -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 On 09/10/16 19:53, Xen wrote: > I am pretty sure that any application that does not support GVFS > will not see those mounts so easily. You will have to symlink them > and that defeats the purpose of the system in a certain sense. > There is no default system that everyone can use You're quite right that the two incumbents don't recognise each other's mounting mechanisms. With the gvfs system I do successfully use the command-line to access the mounted filesystem, which suggests that KDE applications should be able to access also. I believe the problem you encountered is due to the daemon that gvfs-mount talks-to isn't running (is it called gvfsd?), which you _might_ be able to manually invoke in your KDE session, but I'm not sure on that - there might be other dependencies that need to be running (dbus-services and the like..?). As a feature request that you could try to get implemented by the gnome guys you could suggest to their issue-tracker that gvfs support KIO-slaves. Also would be worth suggesting to the KDE guys the inverse, for KIO to support gvfs-mounts. I sense the best overall solution would be to unify the daemon-side of both KIO and gvfs into a single daemon that both desktops back-onto, but I wonder about how much pushback or otherwise such a unified effort might encounter from both camps, and others. I bags the name GKVFIOS and GKVFIO (hybrid nomenclature between GVFS and KIO :-p). -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2 iQEcBAEBCAAGBQJX+pelAAoJEFx8XrpDpVlRL88H/R8eYeiHgwPzysRUC7l+E1ZX NyTwGKr6WLcaCs2wryayGekjaWYCFGisL8AJBi87VbaGZncTfs2BuMjTIM7AG1St wMRYky6PMr/trhyXk0PrK4CZY8BGFB65JvINpec1IBNF4v39UesBFsXBGLDuSeJ5 zxyhVKtJB0EodZS+b6ffQqSsETR5mDcBEG4SlTPaTnDpc3s36rCNEmD8Hq8ncU+y H/arNEd9M/kamkL1jrd4FTbYe+6ks2vkGA6ADini9paXJXsO+6ZA8jT4sVZiAArX eWIXV+MGCbvjno0YDfJm/Wt8SEaa2nWtWFizxQ7TjpRV4FphhqINjFqBmDqqmmA= =t6NQ -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Daniel Llewellyn schreef op 09-10-2016 19:39: OK, I'll bite.. On 09/10/16 18:26, Xen wrote: Daniel Llewellyn schreef op 09-10-2016 19:07: These are not consistently mounted, is what I was talking about. You will have to go to that mount point (browse to that network share) every time you reboot the system. Every time you re-login to the system, maybe even. To replicate my mount at boot I can open "startup programs" from the dash and add an entry with the command-line: gvfs-mount smb://freenas/videos Moreover, try to answer me what actual filesystem path these mounts are getting, if you want. Sure, it's at: /run/user/1000/gvfs/smb-share:server=freenas,share=videos Well thank you, I am reading up on these things. gvfs-mount doesn't work on my Kubuntu system: Error mounting location: volume doesn't implement mount Well actually now it does work. But I get no mountpoint. I have no way to know how to get this running at this point. I just installed Nemo from Cinnamon. Should do the same thing. And it does mount but not with a mount point, so I don't know why. Great that you can add those autostart mounts, I must say. Since, I've been googling, can you also answer whether today in every program you are capable of accessing those mounts? I mean programs like Chrome and Firefox. Do they see the mount in the available list of volumes in their left-pane (or whatever) file-browser file-open dialog? Point being I did experience your mounts in Ubuntu when I ran it (just not persistent) but to me the command lines that were opened (the full path) was much too long (when opening it in Terminal) making many actions from the command line near impossible to really do well (because you hardly have space for typing your commands) and of course you can link it to e.g. ~/mounts but I always opened a terminal from the menu/GUI/dialog. So that mount location is for me a no-go, in essence. Also the mounts from KDE would not show up in Gnome applications and vice versa (some KDE "place" will not be visible to a Gnome application, and some Gnome "gvfs mount" will then not be visible to KDE applications, or something like that). Stuff mounted in Nemo is definitely not visible in Dolphin and this is also just one reason why I consider GUI-based solutions not very good. GVFS is no GUI but it is related to Gnome of course. And "KIO" is no GUI either but it is related to KDE. Basically every KDE application will not see those mounts. KDE has an application called SMB4K I just discovered. Never knew about it. It is a feature-rich Network Neighbourhood browser, but it just fails to work for me due to a permission error in /var/samba/something and it just doesn't work out of the box for me. It allows you to mount stuff easily in ~/smb4k. People are apparently not happy about the new direction of gvfs: "This whole thing worked a lot better when the gvfs mount point was within the users home directory but it was changed because developers like to change things until they break." (2013) "In the GTK/Gnome world you have to waste your life typing arcane commands into terminal trying desperately to get the same functionality. Yes, I am aware of 'gigolo' but due to the fundamental design flaws of GTK/Gnome (GVFS/GIO) it will not allow the ease of use and transparency expected. Mark my words." (some KDE person, 2013, same thread) "In Gnomelandia when Nautilus or any other file manager accesses a remote share it creates an actual mount point automatically and until this new buggy gvfs was implemented all a user had to do was access that mount point ( ~/.gvfs ) for non-compliant applications." -- very convenient and I apologize, because I am coming to this from a KDE perspective and on my Mint install the network browser doesn't work at all. Can you really blame me that I think it doesn't work anywhere? KDE does not have default mountable shares and you have to use that SMB4K that doesn't work out of the box on my system and I have no special system in that regard, just Kubuntu 16.04 (oops?). I mean this was a convenient post: https://colan.consulting/blog/how-mount-windows-file-share-ubuntu-1304 But I *personally* do not have this functionality that you mention. :/. You are more lucky than I am, in a sense. Also it is annoying as hell if those mount points are not available but you can fix that with symlinks and bookmarks, I guess. Personally at this point I am using: mountpoint="/nas/home" fstype="cifs" options="user,credentials=/home/%(USER)/.samba-creds,uid=%(USER),gid=nas,forcegid,file_mode=0644,dir_mode=0755" /> mountpoint="/nas/media" fstype="cifs" options="user,credentials=/home/%(USER)/.samba-creds,uid=%(USER),gid=nas,forceuid,forcegid,file_mode=0640,dir_mode=0750" /> Just a small part of it and not that easy to set up as you can. But autofs consistently fails me at times and now I have these locations available for myself: /nas/home /nas/me
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Hi, this time I read your complete mail, I just didn't watch the video. A very last reply from me. If you notice, that low level software requires improvement, you could assume that this isn't something Ubuntu developers could change. A feature request send to upstream makes more sense, than a discussion about missing functionality on an Ubuntu mailing list. If we all would agree with you, nothing would change. The one who feels the need for a feature request needs to file one. Why should I file a feature request for something I don't want? No answer required, it's just a rhetorical question, I likely will mark this thread a spam. Regards, Ralf -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 OK, I'll bite.. On 09/10/16 18:26, Xen wrote: > Daniel Llewellyn schreef op 09-10-2016 19:07: These are not > consistently mounted, is what I was talking about. You will have to > go to that mount point (browse to that network share) every time > you reboot the system. Every time you re-login to the system, > maybe even. To replicate my mount at boot I can open "startup programs" from the dash and add an entry with the command-line: gvfs-mount smb://freenas/videos > Moreover, try to answer me what actual filesystem path these mounts > are getting, if you want. Sure, it's at: /run/user/1000/gvfs/smb-share:server=freenas,share=videos -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2 iQEcBAEBCAAGBQJX+oDoAAoJEFx8XrpDpVlRZ1kH/2kYEEWJN4TXHVQz7mbtmRB5 oh31N6AExCilrmrj1zEeZiMHw+uxaUz8qo5drlC+poR4NY99wRspxrXNvyeSZEUd EzihveHQ9N8ramVcETeizkRymwrqxThstiCsB97Kin7Fr45oNXsOKwunJ9Gsy9Pp y/WR6+nBRwRrg58riyqXdoBQbgGzjJm3BR1rtWSeUEMcnHakxpmh/WmkoCUBOjd+ FyZ+EFvgQVH2PA1MgI0btCfVJFy2kBUzpxDB2xFsweE7Qqi8mMl545K9KalKp3Dk WLMeDbUjMU8rUxtBWvZIbYjZBAbkFftHaU/uWwrh8q9Svb76hztHnVyV19BLuHQ= =z0qp -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Daniel Llewellyn schreef op 09-10-2016 19:07: On 09/10/16 17:32, Xen wrote: The same is true with mounting samba shares, it is not possible with any degree of ease, today. Of course, I want to work on it, but I can't do everything alone, or at the same time. I'll just leave this here (copy+paste both lines of the link to see the image/video): https://www.dropbox.com/s/mgilyc6vlqyhnq4/Peek%202016-10-09%2018-00.gif? dl=0 These are not consistently mounted, is what I was talking about. You will have to go to that mount point (browse to that network share) every time you reboot the system. Every time you re-login to the system, maybe even. Moreover, try to answer me what actual filesystem path these mounts are getting, if you want. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 On 09/10/16 17:32, Xen wrote: > The same is true with mounting samba shares, it is not possible > with any degree of ease, today. Of course, I want to work on it, > but I can't do everything alone, or at the same time. I'll just leave this here (copy+paste both lines of the link to see the image/video): https://www.dropbox.com/s/mgilyc6vlqyhnq4/Peek%202016-10-09%2018-00.gif? dl=0 -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2 iQEcBAEBCAAGBQJX+nlKAAoJEFx8XrpDpVlR69UH/2wncQTucL8NYS6dLRXV19XT 1MeAuFv8TqfDjnje2bHOBV6DGYmzTBbqpevtMKW4bLeK41upM3c2xWMXrm5qxZhI muWJWShdu4PPUwbGYxp8EhK6DW69yujkG01uis/5HP/5LWWsS8ZClAPKNZbIwebD z28vHVPazCWJguwGQtj6pHKs34zm6nH9WCublU486q398QTI8SoMXGxjORf/wxRu aF3TYb+wP2T7BGcr2G36qYe+vYipC/UEFm+WJ74ow51pJp9L4RLn/B6PZyRR0HWA hCL8VQjDfO6iSBDvM7YXsRzziavok4mADPXdD0+j6hvl+d5tt6LCkykwWV5DAbk= =vVUq -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Colin Law schreef op 09-10-2016 16:48: On 9 October 2016 at 15:43, Xen wrote: Colin Law schreef op 09-10-2016 14:38: On 9 October 2016 at 12:56, Xen wrote: Colin Law schreef op 09-10-2016 9:28: ... I was not commenting on any particular topic, merely pointing out that that Ralf (I think) said there are some things that Linux "does not allow" and you answered this with a post referring to things that Linux "can't" do and the two things are not the same. I also stated that things that Linux will not allow are generally security related. Is any of that untrue? You might as well state that the sun is not green and that might also not be untrue. But the question is whether that is relevant or related or whether it is a showstopper. That is one question, but as I said it was not my point. I was merely pointing out that you had misread or misinterpreted the earlier post. Nothing more or less than that. And that is simply not true. And apparently you are arguing for the sake of arguing. In what way is it not true, it was my first post on this thread and all I said was: "I think there is a difference between *can't* meaning is not able to and *won't allow* meaning there is something specifically stopping that from happening. The *won't allow* features are generally for security reasons." I've responded to this to Ralf, but... I had said Windows can do something that is impossible in Linux. Ralf responded by saying that it is allowed in Windows but not in Linux and that that would probably be for a good reason, or something of the kind. So it was Ralf who muddled the waters between "can" and "be allowed to do" and not me. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Ralf Mardorf schreef op 09-10-2016 15:05: I didn't read all your trolling, If you are going to call other people trolls for having different opinions, do you then still expect your own opinions to be respected by those people, or by other people in general? however, what I already read is simply stupid. Fair enough but let's see what you have. Users by default cannot use sudo to get user privileges for good reasons. The first default user always has sudo rights. Any additional user can be made administrator simply by ticking a box. This is the very same on Microsoft Windows. The Ubuntu default should be, that just the first user, with the ID 1000, is able to get root privileges by sudo. That is often the only user. On a multi-user system it's not wanted, that everybody is allowed to mount what ever she wants. That is your opinion but you throw internal disks together with remote resources here, as I have repeatedly pointed out is a difference. Yes, some users cannot access what they want, due to security reasons. But the primary user can. And it is still not convenient at all. Regarding your argument that by accident somebody could wipe out a Linux install, there are several security mechanisms to prevent users to delete important things. One is that users cannot use sudo to get root privileges, but even a superuser has levels of protection, for example to mount read only, to set the immutable bit, not to use rm -r, but instead rm -I files* and rmdir or e.g. unlink instead of rm to remove a link. These are all practically unused options. You describe Windows user typical behaviour without self-responsibility. What, me? For the averaged Ubuntu desktop PC user on a single-user environment, by default this user could use sudo, gksudu. This is what I've said. There are several solutions to realise what you want, wide spread is usage of e.g. pkexec. Which is another word for sudo in practical implications. Indeed, some things cannot be done with Linux, but could be done using other operating systems. Usually this is related to nieces that require much money and manpower for the development. For those nieces there sometimes is non-free software for Linux available, too and sometimes FLOSS coders simply need more time, due to the lack of manpower and money. Or they keep saying that the features are not needed, like you do. And then they keep working on features that are unneeded in practice. Because no one was allowed to say what was actually needed. If you need something Linux doesn't provide, than either get your hands dirty or use another OS that already provides what you need. Oh boy, I am sure you are a great developer yourself? Do you think I do nothing all day? Oh, and let me just tell you: there is another option, and that is to converse with other people as to what is needed. How is that for a bright-minded idea? Makes you think of community, doesn't it? I'm even not against adopting something good from another OS, I'm not against Windows. I'm against half-truth and complains that others should get their hands dirty, to fulfil your needs. So what is this "half-truth" you are stating? That I fail to mention that there are practically unused alternatives that are so hard to use in practice that no one does it at all, but still theoretically they exist and very theoretically they could solve the problems if they were actually used? Where have I said that others should get their hands dirty? They are already getting their hands dirty, but often in the wrong way or direction. I am asking no one to "start developing for Linux". I am talking to people who are apparently already working on it, already spending perhaps the most part of their life on it, and still nothing good really surfaces but some less than ideal things do surface. I am telling them they might work less and accomplish more. You are the one that says *I* should get my hands dirty (when I do nothing other than work on this, in essence, and in actual fact, from seeing what I do all day with my time, these days, not even having time to play computer games anymore because I can't play them on Linux ;-) and I am spending time to get Linux in working order first before I venture elsewhere) so you are accusing me of something you do. Even for my taste the DEs you mentioned aren't good. Openbox fits to my needs, so I don't care about e.g. KDE. I don't think you are representative of the masses who use Linux nor the targets of Ubuntu's audience. You claim that Linux doesn't fit to your needs, but Windows does. If I need a knife, I don't use a fork. Why do you use the OS that doesn't fit to your needs, if there's another OS that does? I never claimed that. If having a car without brakes but having a bike with breaks mean that saying a car should have breaks imply that you want a bike instead? Maybe the car is just broken and you need to fix it inste
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
On 9 October 2016 at 15:43, Xen wrote: > Colin Law schreef op 09-10-2016 14:38: >> >> On 9 October 2016 at 12:56, Xen wrote: >>> >>> Colin Law schreef op 09-10-2016 9:28: ... I was not commenting on any particular topic, merely pointing out that that Ralf (I think) said there are some things that Linux "does not allow" and you answered this with a post referring to things that Linux "can't" do and the two things are not the same. I also stated that things that Linux will not allow are generally security related. Is any of that untrue? >>> >>> >>> >>> You might as well state that the sun is not green and that might also not >>> be >>> untrue. But the question is whether that is relevant or related or >>> whether >>> it is a showstopper. >> >> >> That is one question, but as I said it was not my point. I was merely >> pointing out that you had misread or misinterpreted the earlier post. >> Nothing more or less than that. > > > And that is simply not true. And apparently you are arguing for the sake of > arguing. In what way is it not true, it was my first post on this thread and all I said was: "I think there is a difference between *can't* meaning is not able to and *won't allow* meaning there is something specifically stopping that from happening. The *won't allow* features are generally for security reasons." Colin -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Colin Law schreef op 09-10-2016 14:38: On 9 October 2016 at 12:56, Xen wrote: Colin Law schreef op 09-10-2016 9:28: ... I was not commenting on any particular topic, merely pointing out that that Ralf (I think) said there are some things that Linux "does not allow" and you answered this with a post referring to things that Linux "can't" do and the two things are not the same. I also stated that things that Linux will not allow are generally security related. Is any of that untrue? You might as well state that the sun is not green and that might also not be untrue. But the question is whether that is relevant or related or whether it is a showstopper. That is one question, but as I said it was not my point. I was merely pointing out that you had misread or misinterpreted the earlier post. Nothing more or less than that. And that is simply not true. And apparently you are arguing for the sake of arguing. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
On Sun, 9 Oct 2016 15:05:59 +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: >Users by default cannot use sudo to get user privileges >for good reasons. ^ ^superuser ;) -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
I didn't read all your trolling, however, what I already read is simply stupid. Users by default cannot use sudo to get user privileges for good reasons. The Ubuntu default should be, that just the first user, with the ID 1000, is able to get root privileges by sudo. On a multi-user system it's not wanted, that everybody is allowed to mount what ever she wants. Yes, some users cannot access what they want, due to security reasons. Regarding your argument that by accident somebody could wipe out a Linux install, there are several security mechanisms to prevent users to delete important things. One is that users cannot use sudo to get root privileges, but even a superuser has levels of protection, for example to mount read only, to set the immutable bit, not to use rm -r, but instead rm -I files* and rmdir or e.g. unlink instead of rm to remove a link. You describe Windows user typical behaviour without self-responsibility. For the averaged Ubuntu desktop PC user on a single-user environment, by default this user could use sudo, gksudu. There are several solutions to realise what you want, wide spread is usage of e.g. pkexec. Indeed, some things cannot be done with Linux, but could be done using other operating systems. Usually this is related to nieces that require much money and manpower for the development. For those nieces there sometimes is non-free software for Linux available, too and sometimes FLOSS coders simply need more time, due to the lack of manpower and money. If you need something Linux doesn't provide, than either get your hands dirty or use another OS that already provides what you need. I'm even not against adopting something good from another OS, I'm not against Windows. I'm against half-truth and complains that others should get their hands dirty, to fulfil your needs. Even for my taste the DEs you mentioned aren't good. Openbox fits to my needs, so I don't care about e.g. KDE. You claim that Linux doesn't fit to your needs, but Windows does. If I need a knife, I don't use a fork. Why do you use the OS that doesn't fit to your needs, if there's another OS that does? Apart from this, you could recommend that Ubuntu should consider to provide other defaults, but actually you mentioned that already the low level of Linux (user space? or the kernel?) needs radical improvements. Indeed every technology needs improvements, but radical changes to provide the same, as is already provided by another operating system, that is known for its issues, aren't improvements. I decided to use Linux in the first palace (I didn't migrate from Windows) because Linux is the way it is. I also had and have critic against Linux. Some things perhaps should be adopted from proprietary operating systems. A lot of those already were adopted and indeed, people who were hostile to me, now prefer those changes, too. OTOH some changes other like, are a PITA to me. Linux is community driven. Why don't you file feature requests to upstream and the Ubuntu bug tracker? Insinuating that people who discussed with you, would just use cheap rhetorical tricks, to stop you, is a bare lie. You repeat yourself again and again, seemingly not many people agree with your opinion, so you seem to have a problem and to solve this you don't provide something useful. Could you post links to the feature requests? To file feature requests doesn't require to provide patches, so everybody could do this. Sure, KDE, GNOME etc. don't like to become Windows clones, but you could file feature requests to the underlying low level software you criticize. Regards, Ralf -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
On 9 October 2016 at 12:56, Xen wrote: > Colin Law schreef op 09-10-2016 9:28: >> ... >> I was not commenting on any particular topic, merely pointing out that >> that Ralf (I think) said there are some things that Linux "does not >> allow" and you answered this with a post referring to things that >> Linux "can't" do and the two things are not the same. I also stated >> that things that Linux will not allow are generally security related. >> >> Is any of that untrue? > > > You might as well state that the sun is not green and that might also not be > untrue. But the question is whether that is relevant or related or whether > it is a showstopper. That is one question, but as I said it was not my point. I was merely pointing out that you had misread or misinterpreted the earlier post. Nothing more or less than that. Colin -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Colin Law schreef op 09-10-2016 9:28: On 8 October 2016 at 23:58, Xen wrote: Colin Law schreef op 08-10-2016 18:29: On 8 October 2016 at 17:21, Xen wrote: Ralf Mardorf schreef op 06-10-2016 12:42: Just a very laste note. On Wed, 2016-10-05 at 22:29 +0200, Xen wrote: >> In Windows Yes you conveniently break off my statement but (I had to look for it) it was about something that has *nothing* to do with security as it dealth with network shares. Yes, you mentioned Windows allows to do this and that, but Linux doesn't, so I pointed out, that Windows is insecure and Linux isn't. I assume causality. There are reasons that Linux does work different to Windows. And so whenever Linux can't do something, it is for security? Don't make me laugh. I think there is a difference between *can't* meaning is not able to and *won't allow* meaning there is something specifically stopping that from happening. The *won't allow* features are generally for security reasons. A root user also cannot do the things just mentioned. The required software does not exist, for the most part. There are also no security considerations whatsoever pertaining to the local system regarding the mounting of remote network shares on a user supplied home directory or equivalent. It is utter bull. You can make such generalized statements all you want but I hear nothing that actually addresses the topic. I was not commenting on any particular topic, merely pointing out that that Ralf (I think) said there are some things that Linux "does not allow" and you answered this with a post referring to things that Linux "can't" do and the two things are not the same. I also stated that things that Linux will not allow are generally security related. Is any of that untrue? You might as well state that the sun is not green and that might also not be untrue. But the question is whether that is relevant or related or whether it is a showstopper. These generalized statements are only meant to instill doubt in people as to the validity of what has just been said. Someone says "Linux can still not do this thing" and someone else says "Linux is not Windows" as if that answers the thing. If this topic at hand has *nothing* to do with security, then mentioning security as a reason for certain features not to exist, is not a valid thing to mention at all. It merely makes people believ "Oh, that's why, I better stop complaining, there are good reasons for this." No, there aren't. That was not valid. Of course, the question between what a user is allowed to do (no gray area) and what an admin is allowed to do, IS a security related question. But consistently, current, we find that even when security is *not* at play, we still cannot do a certain thing. After all, something that is not possible quickly becomes possible when you use sudo. So why can't we? The answer lies in the fact that many system settings are system-wide and that there is barely any infrastructure to keep settings per user. That is what I had wanted to mention... and the example of mounting personal network resources is actually something that has no reason whatsoever as to why it cannot be done with a setuid program in complete safety as the setuid program can simply check for user permissions before mounting. The mount program does the same: when it is in fstab, it is allowed, but when it is not in fstab, it is suddenly not allowed. That doesn't make much sense, particularly if we were to be talking about a mount point owned by the user, and when there are not actually any system resources at play internally in the system, that are at risk of being accessed (and perverted or destroyed). User mounting fails when the user does not have access (write access) to the mount point. That could be the same for network mounts, you know. Dolphin et. al. already can access remote shares, they just cannot mount them. There is the ability to automatically mount stuff in /media/user/*, but this is a managed infrastructure where the user can't write, the user directory is actually owned by root. It is also not a very convenient place to access, these days. With mount namepaces we could easily have per-user mount points. But the point was, before I started editing this, that the /media structure is not actually user-editable or user-configurable. There is no place wherever that can remember these things, unless it was in the file manager, but that is not a good place to remember anything "system wide" or even "user wide". We can create high level solutions to these problems but where does that leave the non-GUI user? Any good solution is going to have to be a non-GUI solution in the first place, that can then be managed by a GUI. And the only facility that is needed to begin with is to mount network shares by a user without any root rights to a directory owned or controlled by the user. Why has this traditional
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
On 8 October 2016 at 23:58, Xen wrote: > Colin Law schreef op 08-10-2016 18:29: >> >> On 8 October 2016 at 17:21, Xen wrote: >>> >>> Ralf Mardorf schreef op 06-10-2016 12:42: Just a very laste note. On Wed, 2016-10-05 at 22:29 +0200, Xen wrote: > > > >> In Windows > > Yes you conveniently break off my statement but (I had to look for it) > it was about something that has *nothing* to do with security as it > dealth with network shares. Yes, you mentioned Windows allows to do this and that, but Linux doesn't, so I pointed out, that Windows is insecure and Linux isn't. I assume causality. There are reasons that Linux does work different to Windows. >>> >>> >>> >>> And so whenever Linux can't do something, it is for security? Don't make >>> me >>> laugh. >> >> >> I think there is a difference between *can't* meaning is not able to >> and *won't allow* meaning there is something specifically stopping >> that from happening. The *won't allow* features are generally for >> security reasons. > > > A root user also cannot do the things just mentioned. > > The required software does not exist, for the most part. > > There are also no security considerations whatsoever pertaining to the local > system regarding the mounting of remote network shares on a user supplied > home directory or equivalent. It is utter bull. You can make such > generalized statements all you want but I hear nothing that actually > addresses the topic. I was not commenting on any particular topic, merely pointing out that that Ralf (I think) said there are some things that Linux "does not allow" and you answered this with a post referring to things that Linux "can't" do and the two things are not the same. I also stated that things that Linux will not allow are generally security related. Is any of that untrue? Colin -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Colin Law schreef op 08-10-2016 18:29: On 8 October 2016 at 17:21, Xen wrote: Ralf Mardorf schreef op 06-10-2016 12:42: Just a very laste note. On Wed, 2016-10-05 at 22:29 +0200, Xen wrote: >> In Windows Yes you conveniently break off my statement but (I had to look for it) it was about something that has *nothing* to do with security as it dealth with network shares. Yes, you mentioned Windows allows to do this and that, but Linux doesn't, so I pointed out, that Windows is insecure and Linux isn't. I assume causality. There are reasons that Linux does work different to Windows. And so whenever Linux can't do something, it is for security? Don't make me laugh. I think there is a difference between *can't* meaning is not able to and *won't allow* meaning there is something specifically stopping that from happening. The *won't allow* features are generally for security reasons. A root user also cannot do the things just mentioned. The required software does not exist, for the most part. There are also no security considerations whatsoever pertaining to the local system regarding the mounting of remote network shares on a user supplied home directory or equivalent. It is utter bull. You can make such generalized statements all you want but I hear nothing that actually addresses the topic. The infrastructure to do these things easily does not exist, not even if you supply a root or sudo password. That is simple fact. There are many things you can do after supplying a root or sudo password, including wiping the filesystem clean, and these are also not prevented for 'security reasons'. We are 2016 and we still cannot mount samba shares easily. And when you mention this everyone that doesn't matter tries to wiggle out from under your gaze and pretends there are very good reasons why this is so. I wish people would just stop lying about Linux so some actual work could actually be done. Every problem that is not acknowledged is also not solved. And what do we solve instead? Non-problems for the most part. Because non-problems won't offend anyone if they are being addressed. No one's ego is harmed when you don't say something is wrong. Or not wrong, whatever you want. You will find "improvements" left and right that are actually detrimental and nothing much is advancing. The services we have today cannot really do more than those of the past. SystemD makes stuff easier but previously this functionality did also exist. Hacking around Linux was a lot easier in the past, I believe. Don't count my word for everthing but complexity has gone up, not down. Unity is not really a great success from my point of view and it is worse than Cinnamon that has much less resources to go at it. Cinnamon in the meantime also makes improvements that are detriments, such as reversing all "yes/no" buttons and "okay/cancel" buttons in their order, which just messes up your mind completely. KDE does everything but the right thing and of all the window-switchers none suffices. Until you edit the "large icons" theme so it becomes the "medium icons" theme and suddenly you have something that is actually pleasing to use. Why they supply big icons (that are too large) and small icons (that are too small) but no medium icons in between (that would actually work) is beyond me. Constantly trying to invent new stuff when it is not necessary. Constantly trying to be "different" from the main protagonists but there is no reason to. Cinnamon does so well regardless because many choices are just obvious: Cinnamon /does/ have a medium icon Window Switcher that just works. Something that doesn't require any configuration and works out of the box in a nice style. Why people constantly try to come up with new ideas that then subsequently do not even work, is beyond me. Just in order to be different... Just so you can claim you are "not windows"? I don't know... Windows makes it convenient, so you make it inconvenient. Windows makes it insecure, so you make it secure. Everything in response to something else, reactionary. There is not actually a reason to base yourself on something else, you can take yourself as your own point of reference and only try to be better than what you were before. You can simply create what you want and do not have to look at something else to claim you don't want to be that. I must say I applaud Ubuntu selling paid apps though and I think that is something Linux needs. And pardon this bad writing, once more. Regards. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
On 8 October 2016 at 17:21, Xen wrote: > Ralf Mardorf schreef op 06-10-2016 12:42: >> >> Just a very laste note. >> >> On Wed, 2016-10-05 at 22:29 +0200, Xen wrote: >>> >>> >> In Windows >>> >>> Yes you conveniently break off my statement but (I had to look for it) >>> it was about something that has *nothing* to do with security as it >>> dealth with network shares. >> >> >> Yes, you mentioned Windows allows to do this and that, but Linux >> doesn't, so I pointed out, that Windows is insecure and Linux isn't. I >> assume causality. There are reasons that Linux does work different to >> Windows. > > > And so whenever Linux can't do something, it is for security? Don't make me > laugh. I think there is a difference between *can't* meaning is not able to and *won't allow* meaning there is something specifically stopping that from happening. The *won't allow* features are generally for security reasons. Colin -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Ralf Mardorf schreef op 06-10-2016 12:42: Just a very laste note. On Wed, 2016-10-05 at 22:29 +0200, Xen wrote: >> In Windows Yes you conveniently break off my statement but (I had to look for it) it was about something that has *nothing* to do with security as it dealth with network shares. Yes, you mentioned Windows allows to do this and that, but Linux doesn't, so I pointed out, that Windows is insecure and Linux isn't. I assume causality. There are reasons that Linux does work different to Windows. And so whenever Linux can't do something, it is for security? Don't make me laugh. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
On Wed, Oct 5, 2016 at 4:34 PM, Xen wrote: > Ralf Mardorf schreef op 05-10-2016 17:05: >>> On 05 Oct 2016, at 16:30, Xen wrote: >>> Ralf Mardorf schreef op 05-10-2016 15:31: let alone that some people don't use fstab at all on systemd installs. >>> >>> So what do they use instead? >> >> systemd > > Are you intentionally saying half-complete answers here? > > You mean that they use mount unit files? Mount services, then. For gpt-labelled disks, you can have an empty fstab and systemd'll use the partition-type GUIDs to generate .mount unites under "/run/systemd/system/" if you set up your partitions correctly. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Brendan Perrine schreef op 06-10-2016 23:54: On Wed, 05 Oct 2016 14:49:21 +0200 Xen wrote: might not even be a problem. I honestly wonder why you need to run programs off a usb stick. I remember even when I was a windows users thinking why do I need that. I have run entire installed systems off an external hard drive but not one program. http://portableapps.com You can basically install thousands of programs into an encrypted container if you want and place it on usb stick. Every program that is available for free basically has a portable edition. This means that instantly your email, for example, is not only portable, but also secure. You have your entire work environment on a stick without requiring it to be a complete system. Hence it is a plug-in thing that you can plug into your computer and get started. Then you take it with you to someone else's computer and get started. It's that easy. This doesn't have to be on a stick, but it can be an internal harddrive partition as well, or some external harddisk if you want. Then you just sync the internal partition to a stick and you have a copy to go if you want. Mostly for me it was about data, not applications, on the stick, but I had the applications inside a crypt container. The kinds of applications that keep their own database then also have the database inside the container. It's a completely localized version of everything whereas in Linux mostly everything is always dispersed across the system. That's all. The only 'downside' is that windows keeps traces of files you access and folder locations you access in some registry location. You'd really have to constantly wipe that clean, automatically. But apart from that, you can just put a hidden volume inside the crypt container and put other junk that you also use (or a copy of it) onto the outer volume. A pretty feel-good system I must say. But anyway. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
On Wed, 05 Oct 2016 14:49:21 +0200 Xen wrote: > might not even be a problem. I honestly wonder why you need to run programs off a usb stick. I remember even when I was a windows users thinking why do I need that. I have run entire installed systems off an external hard drive but not one program. -- Brendan Perrine -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Colin Watson schreef op 05-10-2016 21:44: On Wed, Oct 05, 2016 at 04:23:38PM +0200, Xen wrote: Oliver Grawert schreef op 05-10-2016 14:41: >along with that click packages are user packages and being used in >ubuntu products on sale since 2015 (snaps will replace them >eventually). That just means a user can install them, not that they are installed specifically for a user? Not so; click packages may be installed (technically, "registered") specifically for one or more users. The process is mediated by a system facility, certainly, but it can be per-user. (It's also possible to register them for use by all users, which is roughly equivalent to a system-wide installation.) I understand that there can be good reasons for this yes. The reason for it to be mediated by a system facility was so that ten users all installing the same click package don't end up using ten times the storage. Not very interesting on a single-user phone, but potentially interesting on e.g. a multi-user tablet and would have been pretty important if click packages had ever made it to the desktop in a big way. In principle all of this is good idea. The issue I have with it (in principle) is that they are high level solutions to things that do not yet have low level solutions. What I mean is that you craft some functionality and then you limit its use case, e.g. Say you write some script (as I have done) to forcibly close all open handles to a filesystem. Your script can operate on any kind of device; on plain volumes as well as device-mapped ones. However now you restrict the functionality to only work on device-mapped volumes. And then you further restrict it to only work on LVM, as that is your use case. Now you find a need to force-close an encrypted volume with a plain filesystem in it, and you can't do it (anymore). Because the functionality is there but it does not comply with the target: it is no logical volume. Oops. Now suddenly you are screwed and you have to dig in your script to find the required calls to other programs to enable the functionality runtime for your specific use case now in this moment. This is what I mean by having high level functionality as a solution to a problem that should have been solved at a lower level prior to this. Now we have snaps (or clicks) and they do something everyone wants but not everyone wants snaps (or clicks). They contain functionality everyone wants as a lower level thing but because the thing has been entirely tailored for Ubuntu or even tablets perhaps, other people can't use it. For example You see it already but. The deduplication is a good strategy for the use case described. But it also involves system-wide installation as per the strategy and the solution wanted. But /in principle/ the same functionality could also simply be realized for a very simple system where some random user just puts a package file in his home directory and she then mounts it like you have and can access the program without any system-wide things (loopback mounting must be supported for a user without priviledges). It would be the smallest possible solution to the problem. Once you have that as a building block (as I had with my script, but chose to throw it away), you can construct your high level solution easily on top of that. But since we present or provide a complete solution to our users and nothing other than that, it is take it or leave it. And so some take it and some leave it but there is no middle ground for them. Add to that the fact that your mount output (/bin/mount, no parameters) is now getting polluted with EVERY app you have installed. It is already impossible to use because of all the cgroups and other crap, but now it is getting worse even ;-). Actually (it is much better than the cgroup crap because this at least has some meaning to the user). Regards. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Just a very laste note. On Wed, 2016-10-05 at 22:29 +0200, Xen wrote: > >> In Windows > > Yes you conveniently break off my statement but (I had to look for it) > it was about something that has *nothing* to do with security as it > dealth with network shares. Yes, you mentioned Windows allows to do this and that, but Linux doesn't, so I pointed out, that Windows is insecure and Linux isn't. I assume causality. There are reasons that Linux does work different to Windows. Regards, Ralf -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
I reread all mails and read the new mails. I'm not interested in continuing the discussion. > > On 05 Oct 2016, at 16:23, Xen wrote: > > Oliver Grawert schreef op 05-10-2016 14:41: > >> > >> there is ... see ~/.xsession-errors and ~/.cache/upstart/ > >> (and there will be a systemd one as well, once switched to systemd user > >> sessions) > > > > The first file is loaded with random errors but I see some services being > > started. Btw. Oli perhaps doesn't mean the content of the files. Regards, Ralf -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Ralf Mardorf schreef op 05-10-2016 17:05: On 05 Oct 2016, at 16:30, Xen wrote: Ralf Mardorf schreef op 05-10-2016 15:31: let alone that some people don't use fstab at all on systemd installs. So what do they use instead? systemd I still use systemd with fstab. Are you intentionally saying half-complete answers here? You mean that they use mount unit files? Mount services, then. [Unit] Description=something Before=local-fs.target DefaultDependencies=no [Service] Type=oneshot RemainAfterExit=yes ExecStart=/bin/mount crap crop ExecStop=/bin/umount crop [Install] WantedBy=local-fs.target That's what you mean? -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Ralf Mardorf schreef op 05-10-2016 17:02: o a On 05 Oct 2016, at 16:23, Xen wrote: Errors? Hopefully warnings, such as the GTK GUI crap. When launching a GUI by CLI I sometimes add 2>/dev/null ;). KScreen. Lots of it. Of course there are probably "session" services but I have no clue how it works and 99% of users that have spent less than 5 years on Linux probably don't know how to do it either. This is related to the advantage and the disadvantage of Linux user space. The best approach for those who are clueless and don't want to learn, is a fruit based OS. However, Ubuntu already is the best Linux distro for this target group. Like a Raspberry :). You basically keep saying that there is no need to improve things, but you are taking this from a reactionary approach, not a creative one. You are that person that says "Oh please, not again" or "Does that party need to take place in my house???". In Windows Yes you conveniently break off my statement but (I had to look for it) it was about something that has *nothing* to do with security as it dealth with network shares. ...nothing is secure at all. Users are free to chose Windows. Linux is for another kind of computer user. Yes, the one that needs no user-friendliness. Completely not to the point here. You can enable that same functionality in Linux and none would be the worse for it. A user could chose what ever OS fits best to the individual needs and moneybag. Apropos standards, if Ubuntu would follow Richard Stallman's ideas, it would be les to your needs, IOW there is no standard able to please everybody. You would first need to argue why *anyone* would need to follow Stallman's ideas, and then, why I would need or want to. I think it is quite irrelevant. You might just as well cite someone that wants to blow up the whole world (such as me) and then claim that the field of opinions is too diverse to make sense of it. Disregard that which is irrevant. Pick only ideas that further the goals of a usable system. Everything else is beside the point. (In other words you are only throwing up excuses). So refuted, here. So it is not really about system disks for the most part, there is no real great issue with having a user having to use sudo or gksudo or the like. Because to this day system maintenance really has to be done from the shell anyway. For good reasons not all users get root privileges ;). Keep in mind that Linux not necessarily is a single user desktop environment. I just said root privileges were not required for the majority of use cases. That you just said were unwarranted on a Linux system. But they can be achieved easily anyway if people want to. The system stands not in the way of the solution (only you do, in that sense ;-)). It is only unwilling people that create unrealized solutions. However on Windows every user... you know. Why don' t you use Windows instead of Linux? Both operating systems follow a different approach. Because both operating systems follow a different approach. Graphical systems change and are often independable, so we need systems that will always be there and remain unsullied by anything being done in Gnome or KDE or Unity. It is no good if GUIs create their own systems: they should just interface with systems that already exist and that you can also access through the command line or console. I'm not using a DE, that doesn't mean that changes of Qt or GTK wot cause issues for me, but At least I don't suffer from DE related issues. Windows and Apple don't give you a choice at all. Yes and my neighbour doesn't use a computer so doesn't suffer any of that at all. Great solution to every problem: just don't use it. I skipped all that systemd related stuff, since it's a little bit to late to complain about systemd. When people were planning the war, disconcert was avoided by saying that people needed to be focused and not take away from efforts to solve the problem. When the war had started, disconcert was condemned by saying that people needed to be patriotic and support the troops. You want standards and if there is one, you dislike it. I never said I wanted standards. I would almost every day prefer a system lacking certain functionality rather than a system with functionality I have to work my ass off to avoid. But this is a relative notion, obviously you cannot choose everything. I am not happy at all with advances I need to spend time and effort on on how to learn to revert. Every step I make, someone else takes me a step back. Or a step and a half. Then I have to spend time learning that system before I can advance again. We already had the systemd discussions before it was introduced. Note, I'm not a systemd fan, but now we have to become used to it. I also din't read the snap related part. We don't need to use snaps, neither on Ubuntu, let alone other distros. You still haven't mentioned or re
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
On Wed, Oct 05, 2016 at 04:23:38PM +0200, Xen wrote: > Oliver Grawert schreef op 05-10-2016 14:41: > >along with that click packages are user packages and being used in > >ubuntu products on sale since 2015 (snaps will replace them > >eventually). > > That just means a user can install them, not that they are installed > specifically for a user? Not so; click packages may be installed (technically, "registered") specifically for one or more users. The process is mediated by a system facility, certainly, but it can be per-user. (It's also possible to register them for use by all users, which is roughly equivalent to a system-wide installation.) The reason for it to be mediated by a system facility was so that ten users all installing the same click package don't end up using ten times the storage. Not very interesting on a single-user phone, but potentially interesting on e.g. a multi-user tablet and would have been pretty important if click packages had ever made it to the desktop in a big way. -- Colin Watson [cjwat...@ubuntu.com] -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
> On 05 Oct 2016, at 16:30, Xen wrote: > Ralf Mardorf schreef op 05-10-2016 15:31: >> let alone that some people don't use fstab at all on systemd installs. > > So what do they use instead? systemd I still use systemd with fstab. Regards, Ralf -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
o > On 05 Oct 2016, at 16:23, Xen wrote: > > Oliver Grawert schreef op 05-10-2016 14:41: >> >> there is ... see ~/.xsession-errors and ~/.cache/upstart/ >> (and there will be a systemd one as well, once switched to systemd user >> sessions) > > The first file is loaded with random errors but I see some services being > started. Errors? Hopefully warnings, such as the GTK GUI crap. When launching a GUI by CLI I sometimes add 2>/dev/null ;). > Of course there are probably "session" services but I have no clue how it > works and 99% of users that have spent less than 5 years on Linux probably > don't know how to do it either. This is related to the advantage and the disadvantage of Linux user space. The best approach for those who are clueless and don't want to learn, is a fruit based OS. However, Ubuntu already is the best Linux distro for this target group. > In Windows ...nothing is secure at all. Users are free to chose Windows. Linux is for another kind of computer user. A user could chose what ever OS fits best to the individual needs and moneybag. Apropos standards, if Ubuntu would follow Richard Stallman's ideas, it would be les to your needs, IOW there is no standard able to please everybody. > So it is not really about system disks for the most part, there is no real > great issue with having a user having to use sudo or gksudo or the like. > Because to this day system maintenance really has to be done from the shell > anyway. For good reasons not all users get root privileges ;). Keep in mind that Linux not necessarily is a single user desktop environment. > However on Windows every user... you know. Why don' t you use Windows instead of Linux? Both operating systems follow a different approach. > Graphical systems change and are often independable, so we need systems that > will always be there and remain unsullied by anything being done in Gnome or > KDE or Unity. It is no good if GUIs create their own systems: they should > just interface with systems that already exist and that you can also access > through the command line or console. I'm not using a DE, that doesn't mean that changes of Qt or GTK wot cause issues for me, but At least I don't suffer from DE related issues. Windows and Apple don't give you a choice at all. I skipped all that systemd related stuff, since it's a little bit to late to complain about systemd. You want standards and if there is one, you dislike it. We already had the systemd discussions before it was introduced. Note, I'm not a systemd fan, but now we have to become used to it. I also din't read the snap related part. We don't need to use snaps, neither on Ubuntu, let alone other distros. Regards, Ralf -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Ralf Mardorf schreef op 05-10-2016 15:56: On 05 Oct 2016, at 14:59, Himanshu Shekhar wrote: Standardized things, at least for a distro. Each distro has got it's policy, a distro specific standard. We could chose the distro that fits best to our needs. I didn't want to respond to this idea, but. People have more choice than just choose which of the bad guys they want. It's a deficiency if you claim nothing could ever be changed or that you can't work with a distro to change some things or that you can't invite people to like what you are doing -- you can have a developer mindset all you want, and there is no reason to say that you can only remain an island and that you have to make your changes only for yourself. This fatalistic and nihilistic approach to change is just utterly self-defeating and ugly to me. The FLOSS approach is to share things and to find common standards, so it could take longer to find something all people involved agree. My country is lauded for this. They call it the Poldermodel. But if nothing else the Netherlands is quite an ineffective country. The politicians are completely impotent. "The term polder model and especially the verb polderen (to polder) has been used pejoratively by some politicians to describe the slow decision-making process where all parties have to be heard. The model flourished under the "Purple" governments of Dutch prime minister Wim Kok, a coalition including the traditional rivals the Labour Party (a social-democratic party, whose colour is red) and the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (right-wing liberals, whose colour is blue). In the declining economic climate of the early 21st century the model came under fierce attack particularly from right-wing politicians and Pim Fortuyn in his book entitled De puinhopen van acht jaar Paars ("The wreckage of eight years Purple")." Internally the thing has some sway. But externally the country is completely shackled. It has no power to effect anything really, and not because of its small size. That's all I wanted to say here. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Ralf Mardorf schreef op 05-10-2016 15:44: On 05 Oct 2016, at 14:49, Xen wrote: Ion Windows it is very easy to put some application on some usb stick and run it from there, but this is hardly possible even in Linux. You don't need to link against shared libraries. Neither a container, nor snap is required to do this. Sure. I will concur. It's just last time I tried I couldn't get it to work. Maybe that's my deficiency but at that time I did not find a way to get that particular package statically compiled, it only spewed out error after error that I could not fix with my limited C skills. Regardless that is not really a great way to make an app portable, it should suffice to keep your libraries in your own small little directory structure. These apps usually cannot be made portable because they have fixed links to libraries. My /opt directories disagree with your claim. Sure, by default upstream for good reasons usually links against shared libs. The nature of solutions is that they first have to be available. It is not good enough if they theoretically exist. It is not even good enough if they practically exist. They first have to be accessible and available. I do not know what packages or applications you are mentioning under /opt. Did you compile them yourself? That is hardly accessible to a regular user, isn't it. Chrome is portable though at least with regard to its own files. Not with regard to the system. That's something packaged by Google. I mean I think the efforts made by Ubuntu to find a solution to this problem is very good. We were just mentioning the difficulties of such an approach. You cannot on the one hand say: Ubuntu has seen a good need for this and its snaps system is a solution. And then on the other hand say to me: Wah, you're complaining about nothing. You are speaking with a split tongue here. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Ralf Mardorf schreef op 05-10-2016 15:31: Not to mention that there at least is one daemon that should run with user privileges only:http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/xenial/man1/jackd.1.html Jackd sounds very good but it probably won't be installable *by* a user ever even if you did so, and possibly you could, if you did it manually. Regardless *one* counter example only shows the great lack (dearth) of these things. It doesn't demonstrate abundance, quote the opposite. simply because nobody had the balls yet to switch a system completely to systemd.mount units i guess, but also because it is a security nightmare to allow people to randomly mount/umount system disks That's why I mentioned privileges. It's possible to mount all available devices by fstab, but only to grant privileges per user, let alone that some people don't use fstab at all on systemd installs. So what do they use instead? -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Oliver Grawert schreef op 05-10-2016 14:44: i must say that in many aspects i find nmcli more powerfull than ifconfig for scripting ... it changed a lot within the last years ... one big disadvantage is still that it requires a lot of dependencies ip or ifconfig do not require ... but disk space is cheap in most cases To me nmcli is unusable and impossible to remember (how to use it). Scripting sure but you may not need to remember much if you use it a lot and then the script works and you don't need to remember so much. I don't use ifconfig for scripting much, there are "ip" commands for that now? -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Oliver Grawert schreef op 05-10-2016 14:41: hi, On Mi, 2016-10-05 at 04:05 +0200, Xen wrote: Xen schreef op 05-10-2016 3:32: > > In short, the discrepancy between what a user can do and what root > can > do, is too big. The result of this is that most services are installed completely system-wide and there is nothing less than that. how would you deal with ... say 20 users all installing a mongodb server on your multi user system that all want to use the same privileged network port ? The point is not that it would be the best solution in all instances but that it is not possible in any instance. To do it differently (install something by a user). Besides, what you say is incomprehensible: a user-installed package cannot use a priviledged network port, that is the whole point. Now you may think containers are a solution to that but if you use e.g. LXC for that you still have the same programs running equally system-wide but now they are just doing that inside of a container. That doesn't change the programs, you know. no, but it makes the above possible (by applying a container based sub- network like ubuntu-fan does for example)... though note that snaps have nothing to do with containers (quite the opposite actually). Still doesn't answer whether they can be user-specific. In terms of logging: why is there not a daemon that can run for a user specifically? there is ... see ~/.xsession-errors and ~/.cache/upstart/ (and there will be a systemd one as well, once switched to systemd user sessions) The first file is loaded with random errors but I see some services being started. Of course there are probably "session" services but I have no clue how it works and 99% of users that have spent less than 5 years on Linux probably don't know how to do it either. Why is there not a user fstab in which the user can specify mounts he or she wants to use? It is possible for libpam-mount but not for regular fstab. simply because nobody had the balls yet to switch a system completely to systemd.mount units i guess, but also because it is a security nightmare to allow people to randomly mount/umount system disks (though there is fstab-free mounting of USB disks today with udisks2 on every standard ubuntu system (or flavour))... That's true but we have the "disk" group since long and the typical user just wants to mount network shares and USB sticks, as you mention. In Windows any user (not even just an administrator) can take a network share and mount it on a drive letter. Just like that. Takes 5 seconds. In Linux thus far it has been impossible. Any accessible network share should be allowed to be mounted on any accessible user folder just like that (anything to which the user already has permissions). The situation for USB sticks is pretty decent these days although the paths are horrible and for other types (e.g. camera) it doesn't quite work so well. My camera started working recently (in Kubuntu) before I needed gphotofs to mount it which had its own issues (won't dismount automatically if the camera is removed, which is also still true of usb sticks, you can have a lot of issues if you just pull a stick out). Reinserting the stick may not update the view that the user has. So it is not really about system disks for the most part, there is no real great issue with having a user having to use sudo or gksudo or the like. Because to this day system maintenance really has to be done from the shell anyway. I have spent like, years, first trying to get autofs to work and it often fails (just doesn't work all of the time) and now I have libpam-mount setup so that I can mount shares for every applicable user and also shares that become different for each user while having the same name (home directory on server). However on Windows every user... you know. Why are there so few user-oriented systems that a user can use in a convenient smaller environment? - there is no user init system, unless you run stuff through e.g. .bashrc or some xinit script or whatever. That is extremely arcane and impossible for a regular user to do. this is possible since ages, see http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#session-job Well upstart was better than SystemD I just had no experience with it. And I've been around for a while you know. I have also never seen anyone else mention it, ever, anywhere. also see https://cfp.systemd.io/en/systemdconf_2016/public/events/8 it is actively being worked on for sysstemd sessions ... I haven't thought much about user-centric vs session-centric but one of my main requirements has always been that the system must also work for console, ie. it must work even without a graphical system. Graphical systems change and are often independable, so we need systems that will always be there and remain unsullied by anything being done in Gnome or KDE or Unity. It is no good if GUIs create their own systems: they shoul
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
> On 05 Oct 2016, at 14:59, Himanshu Shekhar wrote: > Standardized things, at least for a distro. Each distro has got it's policy, a distro specific standard. We could chose the distro that fits best to our needs. There are many other standards, some are unix alike, some are Linux specific and others are general standards. For example, Linux MUAs tend to fulfill RFC, Window has tendencies to ignore RFC. Another topic are innovations regarding inventions for a specific domain, such as plugins for DAWs. Companies programing proprietary software have a boss who could introduce a standard for software from this company. The FLOSS approach is to share things and to find common standards, so it could take longer to find something all people involved agree. Regards, Rlaf -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
> On 05 Oct 2016, at 14:49, Xen wrote: > Ion Windows it is very easy to put some application on some usb stick and run > it from there, but this is hardly possible even in Linux. You don't need to link against shared libraries. Neither a container, nor snap is required to do this. > These apps usually cannot be made portable because they have fixed links to > libraries. My /opt directories disagree with your claim. Sure, by default upstream for good reasons usually links against shared libs. Regards, Ralf -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
> On 05 Oct 2016, at 14:44, Oliver Grawert wrote: > disk space is cheap in most cases Full ACK. This is very important. I dislike bloatware, but at least disk space is no issue nowadays. Regards, Ralf -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
> On 05 Oct 2016, at 14:41, Oliver Grawert wrote: >> On Mi, 2016-10-05 at 04:05 +0200, Xen wrote: >> In terms of logging: why is there not a daemon that can run for a >> user >> specifically? > > there is ... see ~/.xsession-errors and ~/.cache/upstart/ > (and there will be a systemd one as well, once switched to systemd user > sessions) Not to mention that there at least is one daemon that should run with user privileges only: http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/xenial/man1/jackd.1.html >> Why is there not a user fstab in which the user can specify mounts he >> or >> she wants to use? It is possible for libpam-mount but not for >> regular >> fstab. > > simply because nobody had the balls yet to switch a system completely > to systemd.mount units i guess, but also because it is a security > nightmare to allow people to randomly mount/umount system disks That's why I mentioned privileges. It's possible to mount all available devices by fstab, but only to grant privileges per user, let alone that some people don't use fstab at all on systemd installs. Regards, Ralf -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Moreover, I think that Linux has come a long way and gained much maturity on the server and enterprise side, thanks to parallel efforts of "Canonical" and "RedHat" (and "Google"). The sector which Linux has long way to go is Desktop / Laptop and daily computing. Why do you think people prefer to use Windows or MacOS? That's what needs to be improved in Linux. Standardized things, at least for a distro. Lots of customization available, but it should work out of the box. My dad would not like to go in depth about synaptic and libinput stuff, or the free/proprietary stuff. Things need to work like a charm, at least to the maximum extent we can provide. On Wed, Oct 5, 2016 at 6:23 PM Himanshu Shekhar < himanshushekhar...@gmail.com> wrote: > I appreciate Xen's first response stating how things go on in Windows and > Apple. > I know that snaps and containers are very different things and function > differently. > > I was less concerned about snaps coming to Ubuntu, than two standards, > namely Snaps and Flatpak coming to Linux. > Both are good in their intentions but they would again lead to confusion, > they way we have today. > Snaps/Flatpaks are intended to make applications distro-independent and > unify Linux development. However, two things for the same task would again > cause confusion about which to use / what will become the de-facto > standard. > **REPEAT** This reminds me of the state of Upstart, which after much > development was replaced by systemd **REPEAT** > > I repeat that my concerns are Snaps/Flatpak and Wayland/Mir, not which of > them is better. (I didn't start this thread to debate which is better). > It is true that XServer is old and desktop/GUI computing has come a long > way than the client-server model. > > I was eager to know how they are different, and how things in future are > planned to be, as the current state of development branches in Linux make > me feel like the chaotic scenario between distributions, packaging and > graphics server would continue for long. > -- > > Regards > > Himanshu Shekhar > -- Regards Himanshu Shekhar -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
I appreciate Xen's first response stating how things go on in Windows and Apple. I know that snaps and containers are very different things and function differently. I was less concerned about snaps coming to Ubuntu, than two standards, namely Snaps and Flatpak coming to Linux. Both are good in their intentions but they would again lead to confusion, they way we have today. Snaps/Flatpaks are intended to make applications distro-independent and unify Linux development. However, two things for the same task would again cause confusion about which to use / what will become the de-facto standard. **REPEAT** This reminds me of the state of Upstart, which after much development was replaced by systemd **REPEAT** I repeat that my concerns are Snaps/Flatpak and Wayland/Mir, not which of them is better. (I didn't start this thread to debate which is better). It is true that XServer is old and desktop/GUI computing has come a long way than the client-server model. I was eager to know how they are different, and how things in future are planned to be, as the current state of development branches in Linux make me feel like the chaotic scenario between distributions, packaging and graphics server would continue for long. -- Regards Himanshu Shekhar -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Ralf Mardorf schreef op 05-10-2016 14:11: On 05 Oct 2016, at 12:09, Xen wrote: [snip] Main problems in Linux have not been solved and now big solutions are built on top of it, and the consequence is that those high level solutions must be as shabby as the low level underneath, but now a 1000 fold worse, because you cannot get around it anymore. [snip] gvfs-udisks2-volume-monitor.service [snip] Hi, what are your main problems? That is not relevant here but it has nothing to do with gvfs for me. I was talking about the same things I have already mentioned: on Windows it is very easy to put some application on some usb stick and run it from there, but this is hardly possible even in Linux. These are basic problems created by bad design of systems that already have solutions but they are not getting implemented and users suffer site-wide as a consequence... At least, well, it is the same topic as snaps right? These apps usually cannot be made portable because they have fixed links to libraries. e.g. when I compile Calligra I have to specify the path it will run in in advance even before compiling (using configure). If I change the location of the /binary/ (including its libs) (that I just compiled) it will no longer run!! So for that program the locations were already fixed prior to compilation even!!! This is the same problem sphere as snaps. As what snaps could be a solution to (if done..., you know...). The complete dependences on the complete FHS has always been a problem. Can you explain exactly what you think you are responding to and what my sentiment would have been to you? I just feel you might be responding to something I have not said. My apologies if that is the case for not being very clear. For example: "Why is there not a user fstab in which the user can specify mounts he or she wants to use?" I mean what you think I intend by saying that, not my verbatim words (I remember them). Because your response seems to want to discuss a great many things that might not even be a problem. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
hi, On Mi, 2016-10-05 at 14:21 +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: > PS: Since you mentioned Network Manager, I'm using scripts to either > connect by PPPoE or DHCP to the Internet. I don't have other needs > regarding networks. What is wrong with Network Manager, to provide > user-friendly network access? You are not forced to use Network > manager, you could use other tools and/or use command line by > launching scripts during startup, as I do. In some regards Ubuntu is > less expert-friendly as other distros might be, but we could chose > the distro that fit best to our needs. > i must say that in many aspects i find nmcli more powerfull than ifconfig for scripting ... it changed a lot within the last years ... one big disadvantage is still that it requires a lot of dependencies ip or ifconfig do not require ... but disk space is cheap in most cases ... ciao oli signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
hi, On Mi, 2016-10-05 at 04:05 +0200, Xen wrote: > Xen schreef op 05-10-2016 3:32: > > > > > In short, the discrepancy between what a user can do and what root > > can > > do, is too big. > > The result of this is that most services are installed completely > system-wide and there is nothing less than that. how would you deal with ... say 20 users all installing a mongodb server on your multi user system that all want to use the same privileged network port ? > > Now you may think containers are a solution to that but if you use > e.g. > LXC for that you still have the same programs running equally > system-wide but now they are just doing that inside of a container. > > That doesn't change the programs, you know. no, but it makes the above possible (by applying a container based sub- network like ubuntu-fan does for example)... though note that snaps have nothing to do with containers (quite the opposite actually). > > In terms of logging: why is there not a daemon that can run for a > user > specifically? there is ... see ~/.xsession-errors and ~/.cache/upstart/ (and there will be a systemd one as well, once switched to systemd user sessions) > > Why is there not a user fstab in which the user can specify mounts he > or > she wants to use? It is possible for libpam-mount but not for > regular > fstab. simply because nobody had the balls yet to switch a system completely to systemd.mount units i guess, but also because it is a security nightmare to allow people to randomly mount/umount system disks (though there is fstab-free mounting of USB disks today with udisks2 on every standard ubuntu system (or flavour))... > > Why are there so few user-oriented systems that a user can use in a > convenient smaller environment? > > - there is no user init system, unless you run stuff through e.g. > .bashrc or some xinit script or whatever. That is extremely arcane > and > impossible for a regular user to do. this is possible since ages, see http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#session-job also see https://cfp.systemd.io/en/systemdconf_2016/public/events/8 it is actively being worked on for sysstemd sessions ... > > Suddenly your personal documents are maintained in > /var/lib/something!! > I have been fighting this for a long time. you should really read up about snaps ... no user data lands in /var, by default, user data goes to $SNAP_USER_DATA which is a subdir in your home (unless you run a system wide daemon that was explicitly set up for not doing that that indeed) > > And now we have snaps but snaps are equally system-wide. Ubuntu's > snappy > page mentions the following command: > > $ snap install hello > > But you can't actually do that. > > error: access denied (try with sudo) > > Oops, busted. You need a root prompt for that. > the error is mis-leading ... if you use "snap login" to set up your U1 account, you can install snaps without root privs. along with that click packages are user packages and being used in ubuntu products on sale since 2015 (snaps will replace them eventually). ciao oli signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
PS: Since you mentioned Network Manager, I'm using scripts to either connect by PPPoE or DHCP to the Internet. I don't have other needs regarding networks. What is wrong with Network Manager, to provide user-friendly network access? You are not forced to use Network manager, you could use other tools and/or use command line by launching scripts during startup, as I do. In some regards Ubuntu is less expert-friendly as other distros might be, but we could chose the distro that fit best to our needs. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
On 05 Oct 2016, at 12:09, Xen wrote: > [snip] Main problems in Linux have not been solved and now big solutions are > built on top of it, and the consequence is that those high level solutions > must be as shabby as the low level underneath, but now a 1000 fold worse, > because you cannot get around it anymore. > > [snip] gvfs-udisks2-volume-monitor.service [snip] Hi, what are your main problems? One of my main problems is, that some software from bloated desktop environments wakes up sleeping green drives, so I simply don't use software from developers, who don't care about damaging green drives. This means you won' t find gvfs on any of my installs, let alone that I anyway just use a window manager without a desktop environment and that even while there are tools available to mount devices by mouse click, without waking up and damaging green drives, I mount devices by command line. On 05 Oct 2016, at 12:09, Xen wrote: > Ralf Mardorf schreef op 05-10-2016 9:16: >> On 05 Oct 2016, at 04:05, Xen "questioned" the way things are managed > > Can you explain exactly what you think you are responding to and what my > sentiment would have been to you? I just feel you might be responding to > something I have not said. > > My apologies if that is the case for not being very clear. For example: "Why is there not a user fstab in which the user can specify mounts he or she wants to use?" - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2016-October/016968.html Regards, Ralf-- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
JMZ schreef op 05-10-2016 7:50: Is there really a huge learning curve for .bashrc and xinit? .bashrc is mostly a way to make an alias list. What I fear about snappy and other modularized systems is unnecessary complexity. I fear that simple commands such as tar -t are going to be replaced with a multiplicity of commands which may actually be more confusing in the terminal. This complexity will take from terminal users and give to gui users. I am not clear on why snappy would have anything to do with tar, unless you mean that we would use *other* commands to list the contents of archives, rather than tar? I don't really also see why snappy or anything like it would be more GUI friendly? It might do more /for you/ in a way you don't want, and hence -- much like e.g. NetworkManager -- makes it easy for those who are okay with bad defaults. That's the general problem I have also: more high level solutions but they are quite crappy compared to what you would do yourself. And because they are there, it is hard to get around them. They have not been thought out fully enough and now a complete solution exists that just sucks. This makes it harder for other people who want to do the things themselves and want to do it right. The problem is not the high level nature of it, but that the building stones are still incomplete and downright awful. Main problems in Linux have not been solved and now big solutions are built on top of it, and the consequence is that those high level solutions must be as shabby as the low level underneath, but now a 1000 fold worse, because you cannot get around it anymore. SystemD has already addressed my needs but it is one of those solutions that is built on bad underneath, which is why it is so hard to use and like. This is the contents of /usr/lib/systemd/user: (On my system, currently): basic.target gvfs-metadata.service sockets.target bluetooth.target gvfs-mtp-volume-monitor.service sound.target busnames.target gvfs-udisks2-volume-monitor.service systemd-bus-proxyd.service default.target obex.service systemd-bus-proxyd.socket exit.target paths.target systemd-exit.service glib-pacrunner.service printer.target telepathy-gabble.service gvfs-afc-volume-monitor.service pulseaudio.service telepathy-salut.service gvfs-daemon.service pulseaudio.socket timers.target gvfs-goa-volume-monitor.service shutdown.target gvfs-gphoto2-volume-monitor.service smartcard.target All of the user services there are dbus except one, and it is disabled. aug 27 22:45:12 xenpc systemd[4003]: Reached target Shutdown. aug 27 22:45:12 xenpc systemd[4003]: Starting Exit the Session... aug 27 22:45:12 xenpc systemd[4003]: Stopped target Default. aug 27 22:45:12 xenpc systemd[4003]: Stopped target Basic System. aug 27 22:45:12 xenpc systemd[4003]: Stopped target Paths. aug 27 22:45:12 xenpc systemd[4003]: Stopped target Sockets. aug 27 22:45:12 xenpc systemd[4003]: Stopped target Timers. aug 27 22:45:12 xenpc systemd[4003]: Received SIGRTMIN+24 from PID 5286 (kill). This is the only log I can find (journalctl --user). So the system is not actually getting used much, if at all. (The above will get executed also for session close; this is not just reboots or system shutdowns). Basically I should be able to put a service file in there and it will run (or one of the equivalent directories). -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Ralf Mardorf schreef op 05-10-2016 9:16: On 05 Oct 2016, at 04:05, Xen "questioned" the way things are managed system wide and per user. I recommend to do either a minimalist Ubuntu install, e.g. use the server image and uncheck all recommended package groups, then start to install and set up everything on your own, if you install packages disable everything that gets autostarted, or install Arch Linux. My everyday Linux is Arch Linux, but to help Linux novices, I also installed a minimalist Ubuntu, that fit to my needs. Everything you questioned isn't worth questioning, you could set up a Linux install, in a way that it will fit your requirements. Sure, fstab, is fstab, is fstab, even not required by systemd, but fstab is a cross-platform approach, system wide for good reasons, that doesn't mean that you couldn't set up individual automatically mounted devices per user. If this would make sense or if usage of permissions would be the better approach, is something to take into account. Anyway, Ubuntu's policy is user-friend lyness, so a default Ubuntu install tries to provide, what is expected by the majority of computer users. Arch Linux is not user- friendly, at least not for the mentioned target group, it's user-centric, in the sense of expert-friendly. You cannot change _quasi_ UNIX/POSIX alike behavior and common things such as the way fstab works. You cannot blame Linux for the policy of a distro. You cannot blame a distro for the policy it does chose. You could ask Ubuntu to provide some features for inexperienced users or you could become more familiar with Linux and user space and set up everything exactly the way you want. JFTR fstab is used by the system, before it's clear which user or users will start a session. There's an order for mechanisms that are well-wrought. Can you explain exactly what you think you are responding to and what my sentiment would have been to you? I just feel you might be responding to something I have not said. My apologies if that is the case for not being very clear. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
My apologies for sending it off-list first, iPad MUAs are a PITA, unfortunately Linux based tablet PC can't be used for making music. On 05 Oct 2016, at 04:05, Xen "questioned" the way things are managed system wide and per user. I recommend to do either a minimalist Ubuntu install, e.g. use the server image and uncheck all recommended package groups, then start to install and set up everything on your own, if you install packages disable everything that gets autostarted, or install Arch Linux. My everyday Linux is Arch Linux, but to help Linux novices, I also installed a minimalist Ubuntu, that fit to my needs. Everything you questioned isn't worth questioning, you could set up a Linux install, in a way that it will fit your requirements. Sure, fstab, is fstab, is fstab, even not required by systemd, but fstab is a cross-platform approach, system wide for good reasons, that doesn't mean that you couldn't set up individual automatically mounted devices per user. If this would make sense or if usage of permissions would be the better approach, is something to take into account. Anyway, Ubuntu's policy is user-friend lyness, so a default Ubuntu install tries to provide, what is expected by the majority of computer users. Arch Linux is not user- friendly, at least not for the mentioned target group, it's user-centric, in the sense of expert-friendly. You cannot change _quasi_ UNIX/POSIX alike behavior and common things such as the way fstab works. You cannot blame Linux for the policy of a distro. You cannot blame a distro for the policy it does chose. You could ask Ubuntu to provide some features for inexperienced users or you could become more familiar with Linux and user space and set up everything exactly the way you want. JFTR fstab is used by the system, before it's clear which user or users will start a session. There's an order for mechanisms that are well-wrought. Regards, Ralf -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Is there really a huge learning curve for .bashrc and xinit? .bashrc is mostly a way to make an alias list. What I fear about snappy and other modularized systems is unnecessary complexity. I fear that simple commands such as tar -t are going to be replaced with a multiplicity of commands which may actually be more confusing in the terminal. This complexity will take from terminal users and give to gui users. I use linux because I _really don't_ want a Mac. I'm a bit frightened by Canonical's desire to force the terminal into obsolescence. Then again, if we linux users want desktop linux, it will have to be more gui friendly. Jordan On 10/04/2016 10:05 PM, Xen wrote: Xen schreef op 05-10-2016 3:32: - there is no user init system, unless you run stuff through e.g. .bashrc or some xinit script or whatever. That is extremely arcane and impossible for a regular user to do. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Xen schreef op 05-10-2016 3:32: In short, the discrepancy between what a user can do and what root can do, is too big. The result of this is that most services are installed completely system-wide and there is nothing less than that. Now you may think containers are a solution to that but if you use e.g. LXC for that you still have the same programs running equally system-wide but now they are just doing that inside of a container. That doesn't change the programs, you know. In terms of logging: why is there not a daemon that can run for a user specifically? Why is there not a user fstab in which the user can specify mounts he or she wants to use? It is possible for libpam-mount but not for regular fstab. Why are there so few user-oriented systems that a user can use in a convenient smaller environment? - there is no user init system, unless you run stuff through e.g. .bashrc or some xinit script or whatever. That is extremely arcane and impossible for a regular user to do. - where are the services a user can configure, for example as part of first logging on to a system? Why is there no "smaller version" of the "greater system"? If there was actually a good init system it would be dead easy to retain the shape of it and just make a smaller version of it, for the user specifically. I am slightly aware of efforts in the past by some sponsor to the Linux Foundation that wanted to lesson security in a certain sense by allowing users to install packages and this effort was refuted by one of the employees that was subsequently fired for it. We still do not have user packages. There are plenty of services that could run on unpriviledged ports just as well as they could on privileged ones. There is absolutely no requirement that something like Dokuwiki would require admin rights. So why do we only have stuff admins can install? This creates issues for wiki's notably because personal wikis are never system-wide in concept and yet you cannot run them for your own user??? Suddenly your personal documents are maintained in /var/lib/something!! I have been fighting this for a long time. And now we have snaps but snaps are equally system-wide. Ubuntu's snappy page mentions the following command: $ snap install hello But you can't actually do that. error: access denied (try with sudo) Oops, busted. You need a root prompt for that. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Himanshu Shekhar schreef op 03-10-2016 16:33: 3. Flatpak vs Snaps. Both are about to turn great. However, I feel like all major decision makers should come together to work on one standardized desktop ecosystem, and rule out the chaos of different distributions. Both are independent efforts to standardize the same. However, if both process continue with full potential, the result lead to another debate : Flatpak vs Snaps, the same way we discuss today : rpm vs deb. My personal take on snaps: It is going to make stuff explode but not in a good way. There is a danger with "containerizing" things to begin with. The people in #bash are hostile to Docker, for example. I don't really know why. Apple used "containered" (or at least, packed) applications for a long time since OS X at least and we know how convenient it is but it also seems to be a limiting factor. "Installing" programs onto the system seems not such a bad thing at all. The idea of having contained filesystems is not amenable (we can't be hostile to it) because it seems to make life so much easier. Personally I still feel the MS Windows approach is best. For I now see these alternatives that currently exist: - Linux with shared libraries and fixed paths for the most part. - Windows with a high degree of independence and "full package" installs including libraries and dependencies because the base system does not receive many "core" updates. - Mac with applications as a package that is never really installed but only "dropped in place" after which the system provides access to them. The only upgrades that Windows ever received were VC++ redistributables, later .NET redistributables, and DirectX. There was nothing more than that. These were usually easy and solit to install and easy to distribute with your application. This "base system with updates" seems to work very well. But having isolated instances may make things very much harder to diagnose as well, I am sure. The thing Microsoft was missing was a way for an application to define an /addition/ to the system that could easily be removed (or reverted). It needed layers where applications added to the registry in such a way that this addition could easily be removed again. Not isolated containers, but layering on top of each other as a consistent state of being or at least as a way to record transactions so as to be able to play them back. A form of 'jailing' that Windows is still missing to this day. So what about snaps then? - please, not another top level directory - I wish they would improve existing packages (format, structure) as it exists on the hard disk, not create something entirely new again - I wish first they would just solve the "portability" issue of regular packages and introduce the solutions to the dynamic linking problem (with paths) that already exist. - I wish, then, that they would first just enable regular systems to have "portable applications" and for the system administrator (system wide systems such as syslog, and cron) to become less important and for the user to have more ability without constantly needing to attain root rights. * There are user crontabs, but it is an arcane technology * It's not really possible for a user to easily configure logging without being root (and system-wide). * There is not really anything that runs *for* the user that allows task scheduling without it being run by a system-wide thing. In short, the discrepancy between what a user can do and what root can do, is too big. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world
Today, I gave a try on Unity 8 with Mir server. I appreciate the effort done by Canonical to bring Linux experience cross-platform. However, I have a few concerns: 1. The idea of convergence is good, but Desktop is Desktop and Tablet is Tablet. Desktop/Laptops have different input and communication interfaces, a.k.a keyboard, mouse and touch. So, the convergence should be able to retain the essence of Laptop. 2. I was also concerned about the progress and retentiveness of Canonical on a specific technology. For example, Ubuntu emphasized on Upstart and tried to standardize it. However, due to various reasons they accepted "systemd" which they denied to use earlier. The same happened with the software center. Things change, I agree with that. Still, the largest problem facing Linux desktop world is the chaos of distros and changing standards. 3. Flatpak vs Snaps. Both are about to turn great. However, I feel like all major decision makers should come together to work on one standardized desktop ecosystem, and rule out the chaos of different distributions. Both are independent efforts to standardize the same. However, if both process continue with full potential, the result lead to another debate : Flatpak vs Snaps, the same way we discuss today : rpm vs deb. I know that the team at Canonical are much more mature and experienced as well as visionary than a kid like me. However, being an enthusiast, I had some concerns/doubts which I wanted to share. I may be wrong, or have misconceptions, or am not knowing what things are actually like. I would like to have your views regarding the same. Finally, it's FOSS. Everyone is free, and that's how great things have been built. Regards, Himanshu Shekhar -- Regards Himanshu Shekhar -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss