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 Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 9:24 am Post subject: We need some Linux standardization! |
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Ok, here's something that's been going through my mind lately and I think it needs to be brought to the forefront, just like some of the other topics I've mentioned lately, such as my Distro Implosion article. But this time, instead of discussing the state of Linux distribution lists and distros in general, I think we need to discuss standardization. Yes, that dreaded word. While this seems like a bit of a non-subject, or even a mundane one, I still feel it should be discussed. First off, there are over thirty five different package distribution systems available out there. Thirty five! Just like the excess of Linux distributions, that's just too many. I'm not saying we should suddenly end choice in the Linux world. That's not what I said in my previous article, and that's not what I'm saying now. I'm all for choice. But I'm also a realist. You can't expect Linux to succeed in the world if there isn't standardization at least in this area. Or take this for example. Shagbag, one of our forum moderators, made this interesting observation about Linux: Quote: It seems every linux distro has its own way of configuring network access. For example:
Fedora: /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/ifcfg-eth0
Archlinux: /etc/rc.conf
Ubuntu: /etc/network/interfaces | And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I won't even go into all the nuttiness that exists out there. Sure, there's some standardization across all the distributions, but it's so little as to be difficult to spot. That shouldn't be the case, ever. Because of that, each distribution, or distribution group has to have their own custom built version of a given application for their own version of Linux. Another forum member, stolennomenclature had this to say about that: Quote: | I feel sorry for the application developers who want to supply binary packages, and need to build sometimes dozens of packages for all the different distros and their various incompatible versions. Of course in real life they seldom do - so the poor user is faced with having to try and compile the application from source if a binary package does not exist for their distro. | I think he makes an excellent point! Even the package systems are too diversified. As I said before, choice is good, but not on the core system, and packages are part of the core system. Sure, choice is important and choice is good. I very strongly support choice. But I'm a realist and reality says that sometimes choice can also be your own worst enemy. You can standardize the core of Linux, yet still leave users with all the choice they could ever want. And if we don't start standardizing at least the important things, Microsoft is going to beat us over the head. One of their biggest clubs against us is that we've got such a wide range of diversity, while they have a standardized one stop shop. Really, seriously. Think about it. Who needs fifteen different ways to do network configuration? Or how about hardware detection? Why do we need some 100 different systems for hardware detection? Everyone should get together, pool their resources, and come up with one, two, maybe even three really, really good hardware detection systems and then have everyone use them. Or how about the directory file tree? I absolutely hate it when each distribution has its own unique way to do the directory structure for system and user files. Everyone pick one thing that works, and run with it. Don't create a thousand unique ways to do things. Corporate america is where Linux is going to win big in the long run, and if there's one thing corporate america hates, it's diversity. They like to find one system and stick with it until they're forced to change. But they shouldn't be forced to do something ten different ways across ten different distributions. If you think it drives some of us nuts, imagine what it does in the corporate world. If Linux is ever going to become properly mainstream, some of our choice has to be surrendered. Why do you think Microsoft succeeded so well in the market? All conspiracy theories aside, they provided end users with a consolidated, single platform which was universal and provided a one stop shop for corporations where other previous operating systems didn't, preferring to each stick to their own unique and proprietary OS's, formats, file systems, and more. People loved how Microsoft was consistent and compatible no matter where you went and which version you had. (Yes, they actually believed in cross program and cross OS compatibility at one time) But it wasn't the home user that ended up making Microsoft so big. Microsoft targeted the corporate workplace. Apple went after the home and school market. You can see who won that war. So if Linux ever wants to truly become mainstream, some level of standardization needs to occur. Incompatibilities between distributions, the multiplicity in the ways applications need to be compiled to work on each distribution, and the variance of features across different versions is going to do more harm than good for us in the long term. I'm not saying we need to throw out all we've worked so hard for. But sometimes we have to give up a little to gain a lot. Isn't sacrificing a little choice in the underlying system to gain the victory in the world market better than keeping the tangled mess we have now and ultimately loosing the war? And for those who would use Benjamin Franklin's statement against me, (yes, this can be even applied to the computer world) that says "those that give up a liberty for safety, deserve neither liberty, nor safety". That could be reworded and applied to this argument as "those who would give up choice for success deserve neither." That would be one argument I could agree with. But at the same time, you could use the saying that "an army without common ammo is just a bunch of well dressed men with metal sticks." In other words, if we don't standardize at least the core of every Linux distro, we're going to find ourselves in a rather nasty stew pot in the near future. Now before you pick up your guns and start shooting (figuratively I hope) at me or each other, let's stop for a moment. All pride and egos aside, our enemy is not each other. Our enemy is a Redmond, Washington company who would like nothing more than to see choice wiped out of existence. If for no other reason, isn't that enough to make you want to lay down the sword with your fellow Linux geek and try working together towards Linux standardization? Or do you actually enjoy the idea of eventually having no choice in what you do on your computer? Think about it. If we don't start working together and standardizing things, that's all we'll have. One big bloated monster of an OS, a monopoly hellbent on telling you what you can and can't do, and more headaches than all the aspirin in the world can cure. So let's get moving.
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RobLinux
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| Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 3:45 pm Post subject: |
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My positive suggestion is some kind of object oriented model , that hides these differences.
Each distro, provides a method to configure the interface, with common basic parameters, show the configurations and also lists it's config files and recommends a detailed configuration tool. 99% of time, the common stuff would suffice, but you retain the flexibility for the 1% when it doesn't.
The problem is, that to implement such, probably some kind of XML database that's easily machine readable, but also Admin readable would need to be used. Parsing, ramshackle collections of scripts, and 100's of tiny little 'tweak' files is inefficient and tends to leave "ordering" dependencies, where package interactions occur via lots of little programs, which an Admin has to follow. Table driven approach (traditional BSD type config file) was much simpler, than SyS V scripts.
The danger is that this could look too much like something called a "Registry".
Do commercial distro's actually want to standadise, or are they competing and attemp
ting a type of Vendor Lock In? There's some recent publicity on FireFox 3 beta, and in that I saw some implications of politics and vendor manoevring to shut out ISVs, on one of the Blogs, I don't know how reliable this is.
To redress some balance into my discussion contributions so far, which may appear to be anti-standardisation...
The historical reason I do not use Red Hat / Fedora, is due to what happened when LSB came out :
RH 7.0 :
RPM - New incompatible RPM format, which broke LSB standard
gcc-2.96 - New binary ABI, which was not the coming gcc-3.0 format, guaranteed to break compatability
Then there was the charging for Online Update including security fixes, something that M$ hadn't even tried. The final straw, and when they launched Fedora, I had already moved on.
So I just feel cynical, there's real commercial interests and OTOH Debian also has a huge amount of inertia; it is very difficult to get ppl to change, and working together involves sacrificing much of the customisations that they did chasing "added value". |
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Lord Raiden
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RobLinux
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| Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 5:05 pm Post subject: |
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| Lord Raiden wrote: | | Quote: | | The danger is that this could look too much like something called a "Registry". |
haha. Yeah, very true.  This should all be achievable with simple flat files if possible.
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Fast boot up speed is very important to end users, and file opening is quite expensive. I think XML is good compromise, and having it de-compressed on the fly, would likely be even faster loading into memory.
Of course some kind of FUSE based pseudo-filesystem could be employed for die-hards which map your XML into /etc/sysconfig so you can do your ed(1) or vi(1) on zillions of different text files if that floats your boat.
| Quote: |
EDIT: One thing I've been thinking of is getting distributions to standardize into groups. |
Don't they kind of do that de-facto?
RPM -based v Debian based
Been thinking on, and frankly I don't think RedHat, Ubuntu or Novell's business models want standardisation, because that leads to commoditised distro's and support, rather than lucrative services. Also the big distro's competive advantage in Enterprise is based on certification of top $ Applications like Oracle & Notes etc.
The more I think about it, the more I think the way to attack this is from the bottom. Let's assume a project called "Unify" :
1) Provide standard hooks for application packagers to write to
2) Provide standard configuration methods for Admins
3) Initially translate to 3 strategic core distro's, say Debian, Gentoo & Fedora
4) Support well a "native" mode, no translation; must be low enough level to work in single user mode, with just '/' mounted; or even in a RAM fs like initrd at start boot sequence.
5) Support for non-native distro's to extract out info and write plain text files, by translation like 3)
6) Provide standard for GUI tools at GNOME/KDE/XFCE/fluxbox level to write to (even ncurses text menu style)
That provides a method to boot, the project up, and obviously a little marketing creates end-user pressure for "native mode", which must offer higher performance than the legacy approaches, taken like SyS V init and zillions of files. In the beginning, "Unify" would have to alter many standard packages to rely on it's support as a demonstration, with market share that load would become distributed.
What issues does that solve, what does it fail to do? Who benefits and who would lose out with such a core engine, under hood of Linux distros?
How do you win mind-share of busy Packagers, Admins and the "just want it to work" End-user? |
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Lord Raiden
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| Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 5:33 pm Post subject: |
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Those are good points and I don't have an answer to that at the moment.
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TeeAhr1
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| Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 6:12 pm Post subject: |
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"if we don't start standardizing at least the important things, Microsoft is going to beat us over the head."
Bull. We're winning. We're growing, they're shrinking, we're winning. And we're winning by doing what we've always been doing, and people who say "Linux needs to do $THING to succeed!" (where the value of "succeed" depends solely on their opinion), or "Linux needs to standardize $OPTION!" (where the value of "option" depends solely on what's irking them at the moment) are totally missing the point. The lack of centralized direction, the lack of central authority (beyond the kernel team, who have authority over the kernel and nothing else), the lack of centralized [i]anything[/i], are the weapons that have been winning the war.
(Further, there's a lot more standardization than you're suggesting. Debian-based distros are pretty standard among themselves. Slack-based distros are almost completely interchangeable with each other.) |
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Lord Raiden
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| Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 6:28 pm Post subject: |
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Well, my statement that standardization needs to happen refers to all distributions, not just a few. I realize that some distro trees are all standard across their code base and their derivatives. But the vast majority are not. That's my big argument. Now some of that could easily be remedied if all of the derivatives stuck to that model seen under debian or slackware based distributions. But it's not. It's causing too much work to be repeated. We can still have diversity and choice without having to constantly repeat work that doesn't need to be.
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RobLinux
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| Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 7:10 pm Post subject: |
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Put yourself in new postition, CEO of Red Hat.
Do you still want standardisation, or do you want "Freedom to Innovate" and your distro to be a de-facto standard that the competition has to track, and imitate?
What I'm getting at, is that our wish for standardisation is possibly a pipe-dream, as the big Vendors interests are to undermine it, as shown by RH's contempt for LSB when it got ratified, immediately making it obsolete and just a tick in a check-box. Yes they supported it in theory, but they moved their user base off it, so that LSB couldn't gain a critical mass. But I'm not sure if LSB's specification of exact library versions etc was wise, I prefer POSIX style standards that define functions, but leave implementations free. |
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Lord Raiden
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| Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 7:26 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah, I like POSIX myself as well.
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WrenchGuy
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| Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 8:27 pm Post subject: |
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Standardization, rather the lack thereof, is something that has always rubbed me raw about Linux, and is one of the major reasons I have not really gotten into it as a desktop OS.
Third party applications need to have the ability to install to default locations across the majority of desktop distros if Linux is ever to make serious inroads with mainstream PC users.
This is vital in two different and equally important ways...
1 - Developers need to be able to provide a single, standard binary version of their software, especially if the app in question is not an OSS package. This will make it easier and safer to use closed proprietary software when needed, and further encourage Linux versions of familiar Windows software.
2 - New Linux users usually have no knowledge or desire to work from the command line, and need a simple click-through installation (and removal) process for their desired applications.
Before the "purists" (read elitists) poo-poo that off-hand, remember that I'm speaking of desktop Linux for maistream PC users, not commercial server or special use distros.
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RobLinux
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| Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 9:40 pm Post subject: |
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If you're just a point & click person, how do you know there's not "default" locations? When you install Linux, you simply use the package manager provided and download and install applications at no cost. Program installation is actually easier than windows, no more searching for drivers on dodgy sites, or worrying about if this site is a safe download.
In other words 2. is done and has been for years!
On the desktop, there's very few 3rd party vendor applications that will actually be bought, rather than Free alternatives. Many will see difficulty for commercial binary vendors as a benefit!
The reason there isn't a thriving market backed by advertising for Linux Desktop software is because ppl haven't needed to buy this 3rd party application softare.
Consider where you're getting your info from and who's advertising is bank rolling their publications, may be that'll explain why your thoughtful views are based on skewed data. |
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WrenchGuy
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| Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 10:12 pm Post subject: |
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No its not even close, the current state Linux package MISmanagement is far from the simplicity of point and click. =;
There are different package management systems for different distros, (RedHat, Debian, Slackware, and their assorted progeny) which do not work with one another  ...and like it or not, point and click is the mainstream.
We know that Linux geeks like the command line and understand that for many things it is faster and easier than dealing with the GUI, but I'm talking mainstream here...you try to teach most PC users about package managers and command line, their eyes glaze over. 
Linux must MUST be more user friendly to be of interest to most Windows users.
The mainstream lives in the GUI, get over it. :smt016
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Lord Raiden
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| Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 10:15 pm Post subject: |
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lol. I take it you haven't tried Synaptic yet? It's one of my favorite package managers.
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Crosscourt
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WrenchGuy
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Lord Raiden
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| Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 10:32 pm Post subject: |
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Actually, a lot of distros use it.
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RobLinux
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| Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 10:58 pm Post subject: |
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| WrenchGuy wrote: |
There are different package management systems for different distros, (RedHat, Debian, Slackware, and their assorted progeny) which do not work with one another ...and like it or not, point and click is the mainstream.
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So if you're not trolling here, just attempting a wind up; with well worn and unoriginal unimformed canards.
You just pick a big distro, that has a large package repositary, and stick with it. Just be loyal. Use your GUI, point & click and have no worries. You must be loyal to M$ (once you've invested in a slew of apps) where there's no choice of package management, you take Windows Updates / Install Shield and you better enjoy it! You would only have confusion if you decided to say, move from OpenSuSE to Ubuntu, or from PC Linux OS to Fedora. How can having a choice, be a problem; when you are free to not exercise it? How can you worry about distro X having a different package management system if you never are going to run it?
This just looks like you're trying to find problems where there is not one.
You know in another forum, I asked about simple fun games for Vista, preferably Free (may be shareware) and there wasn't much response, just things like download game demos etc. So my nieces were very pleased to run Linux, because it had lots of fun softeware and games for them to try, and I didn't have to spend a penny on entertainment. So this great software catalogue that Windows users boast of may not in practice be very useful, especially when the software is complete crap and crashes all the time on a slightly complicated system, which was my last experience of bought Win software. Totally shodddy... worthless waste of time and money. |
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Crosscourt
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| Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 11:27 pm Post subject: |
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Hey RobLinux Im going to comment on the game side as ill let Wrench discuss your other points.
Not sure what forum you were in as most game forums could answer that question rather easily plus the fact Vistas compatibility mode works very well with older games or you can use dosbox for the real oldies.
There is alot of free software and cheap software for windows. I suggest you go to www.gametunnel.com and see whats available at very low cost or free for windows users most of the games done by independents. If you dont find anything pm me anytime and ill direct you to many sites that have thousands of games available for windows both free,shareware or at very low cost.
Now that said Ive been gaming since the 70s and Linux has very little to offer gamers unless they want to run games in emulation which degrades performance and doesnt always support the latest graphics features. Older games are a better bet with Linux but recent games it varies alot as far as performance is concerned with WINE.
The majority of games dont support Linux at all even though companies like id Software and Epic have a long tradition of creating Linux versions.
Hard core gamers or even mature mainstream gamers arent going to use Linux for their game use with recent to fairly recent games.
A few Linux members here commented that they were surprised to see me here when they spotted my game guru title as Linux and gaming are rarely said in the same sentence.
Im glad your nieces are enjoying the free games in Linux but windows has just as many options, as well as a huge library of games recently with some amazing titles like Bioshock.
I run games in win98se,win2k,winxp and vista with no issues whatsoever and I test,review and benchmark games for several sites.
Everyones experience is different but to say windows is worthless with gaming is to ignore that fact that Windows is the dominant platform for gaming presently.
I can direct you to developers sites like www.gamedev.net if you want a developers perspective or to www.gamespy.com if you want the gamers point of view on this topic.
Couldnt disagree with you more....... but if you need any info please feel free to contact me anytime,CC
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Lord Raiden
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