Larian Studios Forums General Chat Linux: GNUs and gdont's.

argh, calling Linux "GNU" is just wrong. D: Stallman's done a lot of great stuff, but The Linux Naming Controversy is right down there with emacs.

I hear you, vometia! Many diehard GNUs, after years of saying, "GNU+Linux", love to say just, "GNU" as there is now a fork of Linux, GNU Linux-libre, which is not under the Linux foundation, but instead GNU. (In the same way that GNU HURD is part of the GNU project.) The GNU Linux-libre kernel has an automated system to remove all the binary-blob stuff from the Linux kernel. I still also like to say GNU+Linux, for good old times' sake, and for the fine ring it has, but sometimes I like to throw off all inhibition and go outright GNU!

Here is a link to the GNU Linux-libre page. If your hardware needs proprietary drivers for wifi/ethernet etc, you might have some connectivity difficulties with it, so be aware of your hardware:

https://www.fsfla.org/ikiwiki/selibre/linux-libre/

Here is an image of the Linux-Libre mascot, Freedo. (Tux is the Linux mascot.)

https://www.fsfla.org/ikiwiki/selibre/linux-libre/100gnu+freedo.png

I think for me, Linux with all the binary-blob stuff removed also removes any reason for me to not just use FreeBSD instead: that's still my choice of server OS, and I did try to use it for desktop stuff too but while it can do it, it's always playing second-fiddle because so much stuff is developed primarily for Linux. Which admittedly isn't all encumbered software but a lot of it is. So I have a separate box for my desktop stuff running Linux Mint: I used to use Gentoo, but life's too short, and if I'm going to do the "sysadmin at home" thing, my server is quite enough work! And also physically on a separate box: I tried running it in a VM but the performance wasn't great. I think the PC architecture is too convoluted to work as well as the actual VM operating system.

I have such mixed feelings about GNU: there's no doubt that they've contributed a great deal of stuff and made so much possible. But they also tend to be extremely dogmatic (not just about licencing but The Correct Way To Do Things: see also their idiosyncratic but often imposed style of formatting; their refusal to convert stuff to regular man pages because Thou Shalt Use Info and so on) and that they also tend to be glory-hounds, such as the whole LiGNUx ludicrousness at the same time the various BSDers, X Consortium and even corporate entities were freely contributing a huge amount of stuff without making the same litany of demands.

It's a shame Hurd never seemed to take off; surely RMS's ire at Linux being called Linux would've been effort better spent on getting his team's own OS off the ground. I find different OSs interesting and actually having more choice would've been better for everyone.

The Gnu is imho a nice animal.

Stallman's and FSF's main contribution, in my opinion anyway, is the development tooling ( gcc, gdb, bunutils, make system etc; but definitely not emacs ) that allowed so much else ( open and closed source ) to flourish.

Even the GPL, with its restrictive covenants, is fine as one of number of choices as to how you want your freely given code contribution to be used by others.

Where RMS and the FSF adherents become anathema to me is when they choose to present their opinions and preferences as in being morally superior because they are unequivocally in the interests of software users.

Unfortunately, this is simply not true; rather, it is in the self-interest of RMS and small group of like-minded coders who revel in their ability to manipulate software, and are somewhat outraged by the notion that everyone else who writes software is not obliged to make this easy for them.

For the vast majority of the global population ( well in excess of 99% ), the ability to access source code is of zero value, because they can do nothing with it, and would not want to anyway. It may not even occur to RMS that the vast majority of software users don't care about source "freedom", simply because it is so important to his worldview and sense of self.

As you point out, the distribution naming fandango is just ridiculous. An operating system always was, and always will be defined by the kernel architecture, not by the programs that are written for it. Most Linux distributions have a wide variety of user-space programs to choose from, including ( but not limited to ) the user-space GNU programs and utilities. But equally, in most Linux distributions, you can happily delete every program that is sourced from the GNU project, and surprisingly you still have a working Linux operating system.

If the FSF had put half as much effort into the GNU operating system as they do into claiming kudos for everything, then they might have actually finished it and moved on to developing further useful software. As it is, they look like they may even lose their pre-eminence in tooling to LLVM.

I think thatis should be about to change. If the likes of Elon Musk (or rather his employees) succeed in creating more and more smart implants it will be of vital interest to take a look at the microcode. I won't forget his introduction of neuralink as "it will blow your mind". What a great description for a brain implant...
Some militaries purchase missiles and jets without access to the firmware. How convenient, no need to disguise backdoors as bugs.

I thought about using OpenBSD as desktop environment for a while but it was not exactly a smooth experience. When it comes to Linux i have grown lazy (Ubuntu).
Linux makes things so easy nowadays. It still lacks the charm of a good old long AIX boot sequence. Glory days.

A gnice animal, surely? Now rebranded to aGNUmal, (lack-of-© released under GNU licence, please see pages 872-2,429 for a brief summary) Richard Stallman.

Er anyway. Yeah, I think the restrictive GPL licence and Stallman's eternal quest for not just recognition but seemingly to be recognised as being the predominant contributor even when he isn't has really put me off a lot of GNU stuff. And as mentioned, their dogmatic attitude in other areas too, e.g. Thou Shalt Use Info (complete with emacs-style interface) instead of the established man pages, their bizarre choice of indentation and so on and so on. Where the manual is concerned, sometimes I find Unix's collection of exceedingly long pages to be unhelpful but if they're going to reinvent it, at least use as a basis something that actually works nicely such as VMS's help system.

As for source freedom, I want it when I want it, but that's increasingly theoretical rather than practical nowadays as way too much of it is a badly written tangle or a superset of that style of coding, i.e. C++. Not like the Good Old Days where Steve Bourne decided to write his eponymous shell by creating a bunch of #defines so that he could write Algol (or BCPL or whatevs) in C.

Re Elon Musk: noooo. D: I suppose I'd file him alongside Teh Zuck in that he's some obnoxious ageing rich kid who got lucky rather than being any sort of true visionary. I suppose it's the way of the world though, they're venerated, alongside Jobbies and Gates, a nastier shade of businessman you'll seldom find but he's absolutely succeeded in pulling the wool over people's eyes with his self-promotion foundation. The actual visionaries and geniuses tend to be a lot less well known, to use Jobbies as an example: nobody remembers that Dennis Ritchie died around the same time but his legacy is much more important. He was a genuinely nice guy too.

Er, where were we? Oh yeah, OpenBSD. Periodically I'm tempted because I like the idea of high security... in theory. In practice it's a pain in the arse unless you have a genuine need so it'd be much the same as using FreeBSD except more painful. I'm 52, I think my days of self-inflicted pain need to be in the past. I mean unless it's a curry and cider bender or something. Hence Gentoo going the same way: the purist in me likes it but the rest of me gets a headache.

AIX: never had the pleasure. I tried to get the mainframe guys at work to give me a VM account so I could play around and cause chaos in the privacy of my own system, but they just said "so how much is it worth to your manager?" Too much, apparently, as nice a guy as he was. I got free access once I worked at DEC because, yes, of course they'd bought a big mainframe from their main rival and made it available for everyone to play with, but by that time AIX had stopped being a thing on System/3X0.

Unfortunately a lack of space restricts me from getting a used zSeries. Maybe a good thing (considering the amount of hours needed to configure one)
I really like the philosophy of Theo de Raadt. The fantatics nice people at OpenBSD try do things the secure way no matter how painful. As the stakes get higher and the whole unnecessary IoT plague infests even the dumbest of devices with 5G SoCs such an approach is both needed and rare.
Firmware is becoming more problematic day by day. Most of the time it is one big chunck of arcane code consisting of makeshift solutions and bugfixes. To quote Todd Howard out of context "It just works"
But as to how it works? Open Firmware is much needed but platforms that have it are either expensive (open power) or slow (RISC-V)

Lots of people with a talent to surround themselves with smarter people claim the fame. There is an even worse approach often found in politics: Surround yourself with people incapable of replacing you. This very much ensures errosion of competence every time someone retires.
At a practical level I just want the source to be available. I personally prefer the BSD license.
The whole GNU affair reminds me a bit of the various theological schisms in the byzantine empire. As to GNU and Linux: The debat has been going on for quite some time and seems to be made for the ages. But history cares little for speaking the truth about it. We will see which narrative prevails in the long run.

I've never (knowingly) encountered a z-Series. I did encounter one of a former employer's System/370s: a 3090, quite a big bugger but a disturbing lack of flashing lights. It was mostly featureless except for the typical clunkity IBM on/off switch. I was allowed to stand within arm's length of said switch, which seemed rather ill-advised.

I'd love my own PDP-10, harbouring a fantasy that a KS10 CPU is small enough (i.e. about the size of a large fridge) that I really could have my own 36-bit mainframe. Then I discovered how much power it consumed. Given that I complain about the ~120W my i7 uses at full pelt and a PDP-10 CPU is about 200 times that amount... maybe not. I think I'll stick with emulators, which actually was the last time I encountered MVS. PDP-10 operating systems were cool and highly influential; MVS is... something that occasionally needs to be experienced to keep things in perspective, I think.

And yeah, firmware is subject to the same problem as the rest of software: programming and IT in general aren't really considered to be "proper" professions by management types and can therefore be tendered to the lowest bidder. And it shows. Firmware is worse than most as it's largely invisible, and so are its indiscretions. I suspect that's due to much the same reason you pointed out, incompetent people surrounding themselves with the even more incapable.

The Linux/FreeBSD thing gave rise to the interesting treatise, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, though I think that's not any sort of schism and there seems to be a lot of mutual respect. Maybe that's where GNU went wrong.

Emulators are nice to have... but they do lack the charm of the real thing. I think I could get access to a zSeries per VM but... I don't have a good practical reason to do so. And when it comes to emotional reasons remote VM or emulators won't do. Wind machines with blinking, chirping 15k disks or (even better) spinning tape. Dot-matrix printes close to meldown emitting the aroma of freshly heated ink spitting out the contents of an entire file due to a console error.

A few years ago the german army had some nice jobs for people proficient in cobol. Some devices stay in service for decades and at some point most of the people who know how to maintain them retire. Even though some operating systems and languages disappear they tend to be very influential. Linux is its own thing but it would be nowhere near what it is today without contributions from other OSes. SGI and SUN in particular ported many things from IRIX and Solaris to the linux world. The heretic in me still wonders about a SGI Octane case mod. Of course based on a defunct Octane.

Did you manage to capture a few of those IBM Model M clones with DEC branding for your own while working there? clappetty clap

Talking firmware: Cars. Dozens of microcontrollers shipped by various suppliers and tied together using CAN. Enter the engineers "Wireless pressure sensors for the tires would be nice" So far so good. But it translates to "We have some little feature that provides a few small benefits sometimes. We would like wireless access to the same bus that all these obscure makeshift devices are coupled to" Along comes the EU "Starting from next year all new cars must have a GSM modem".
Bad firmware is one thing: Bad firmware with wireless communication is another. Some nuclear powerplants run on software that would suite your appetite for cheese in terms of holes but they are not available for remote access. The combination will lead to very big trouble.

I was not referring to Linux/BSD reminding me of a schism. It was more the Linux-world that seems to be occupied with its own ideological battles sometimes. There is some tension between Linux and BSD but it seems to be more limited. Maybe I am mistaken about that. When it comes to BSD my pragmatic interest is security and therefore OpenBSD. Yet without open firmware it was incomplete. Build on top of Intels management engine whatever you want, it will always by default have some doors outside of your control.

gnu do? too many things
gnu dont? have a good file system layout. thanks bsd

as someone who has used unix-like systems for over a decade....

yea dude, for one bsd, macos, windows, the entire operating system is maintained by the same company for better or worse. this provides a more seemless, cohesive experience. ( even if open source software is included ) as security holes are maintained, patched. lots of benefits to this. we linux folks are a community full of wikis, self help groups, elitism, and need for alternatives. this has its pros and cons too.

the systemd debate going strong for 10 years it feels, the forking, all the things are so much to keep up with. equally our filesystem /usr/bin vs bsds nice clean local bin arrangement. its just messy, which happens with so many hands on.

and dont get me started on the gnu+linux vs linux vs gnu name debate. the herd project still cant get off the ground and a filesystem isnt a reason to claim ownership especially without a working kernel. in short i dont care what you call it as long as you dont care what i call it.

my actual real frustration with my own community is ever since we got access to a steam client... *what feels like* every single game i look at someone has created 1 if not several "linux port?" posts. though i do love having access to native stuff, i think our self sufficient approach has left us frustrated with those who do not give us access to/hand us native ports or ability to create them.

patience is a virture that takes too long < my summery of *nix ( and im not gonna get into posix complience etc, unix is dead is a nice way to sum that up )

Oh, Unix was dead when I first started using it in 1986 too. It had already been a case of "why is it even still a thing" for several years. But it had a nice shiny Vax 8650 mainframe to live on that would comfortably support 100 interactive users; which was less than the same computer running VMS (I think its arbitrary limit was 160) but as much as VMS was really friendly and Unix was some scratchy cat on the way back from the pub, it was much easier to program.

Gnu, though. I invariably end up thinking if they spend the time they do in politics and pontification instead writing code, they'd be awesome. But no, it's the same old GNU, yay, we have a manual page. As well-established as it is, we don't like it. We like Info... which means emacs and though we're aware there are people who doing like emacs, they shouldn't be allowed near a computer. Oh, and we never bothered to install the info stuff either, so you need to go some other website which is probaby a porn-parking site. But it's still better than man pages! Admit it!

Er, how about no.

lol yea that gnu for ya. it border fanaticism in a way that really hurts its own progress... meaning freesoftware, gnu applications, the opensource community as a whole ... they all feel the effects of this very militant demand. which though in spirit in noble, in no way lives in that spirit as a unit