[rescue] Linux wet paint, was Re: Spark10 CPU question (must fix - SPARC damnit :-) )

[Kevin Bowling]

The most accurate phrase I've heard to describe Linux is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tire_fire.  I'm surprised how complacent
people are with the relative mediocrity of the Linux kernel and
distribution landscape.  People confuse activity with progress.  How many
committers has grep had lately?  Is it still useful?  The Linux community
exists in an echo chamber of self-reflected superiority complex.  But the
year of the Linux desktop is always a year away, and the Linux graphics
stack and desktop experience remain mediocre at best.  Linux has leadership
in some important categories like large system scalability, but it is in
spite of the overall community and transplanted from a few old hats like
IBM/Sequent/SGI/HP.

I am a bit of a hater, but we can do better than this.  And the
self-congratulations and apathy of deploying Linux has chilled systems
development and industrial research greatly.  I would encourage people to
take Illumos and FreeBSD and OpenBSD and new paradigms like seL4.

Regards,

On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 10:14 PM, John Hudak <jjhudak at gmail.com> wrote:

> Well said, and from my perspective, very true.  Clever 'kids' who rush to
> judgement thinking they can always do it better, but lack the ability to
> ask and think about a critical question: I wonder why they did it that
> way??? Seems like everyone wants to make a name for themselves by making
> something "new n better." I've picked up more than a few pieces when
> something that was once solid, fell apart.
> J
>
>
> On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 12:55 PM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com>
> wrote:
>
> > On 12/15/2016 09:07 PM, Mark Brown wrote:
> > > Linux.  There is nothing -really- wrong with Linux. It's a little
> > > utilitarian. Almost too much of a good thing. It's in our TV's and in
> > > our phones. Who thought that was going to happen 20 years ago? It seems
> > > to take up new features pretty quick, and the paint is always a bit
> wet,
> > > either in the kernel, applications or even within the distribution.  I
> > > think it's always been like that, and I'm not convinced it will ever be
> > > better.  The paint around a feature will cure, but there is always wet
> > > paint somewhere.
> >
> >   I attribute this to a simple lack of discipline.  Working on stability
> > and cleanup, or drying the paint, isn't as much fun as working on the
> > next whiz-bang feature.
> >
> >   One thing that the Linux developer crowd seems to have a lot of fun
> > doing is getting rid of "old crufty stuff" (read: proven, standard
> > stuff) and replacing them with "better ideas" (from kids who are
> > brilliant but who don't yet have enough experience to know what not to
> > do) that are somehow better but they can never quite tell you why.
> > Systemd comes to mind here.
> >
> >   It's all about maturity and discipline, two things that are sometimes
> > lacking in that world.
> >
> >               -Dave
> >
> > --
> > Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
> > New Kensington, PA
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