<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> Yaakov Nemoy wrote: <blockquote id="mid_7f692fec0905110735tf8a1bd4u7a71d85f6de7f14b_mail_gmail_com" cite="mid:7f692fec0905110735tf8a1bd4u7a71d85f6de7f14b@mail.gmail.com" type="cite"> <pre wrap="">This is trolling, not starting debates. 2009/5/11 Michael Nielsen <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:mike@thetroubleshooters.dk"><mike@thetroubleshooters.dk></a>: </pre> <blockquote id="StationeryCiteGenerated_1" type="cite"> <pre wrap=""> 1. Removal of features - the user interfaces are being dumbed down, like recently I've searched for the ability to remove the "Raise on Click" feature that is default for Gnome MetaCity, there does not appear to be any such feature anymore / argument being to simplify how it works.. Fine, create a simple view and an advanced view for the configuration tools, so that people who are clueless about any other way than the official Redmond way, can avoid being confronted with an alternative. </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> This is upstream and has to do with Gnome. Fedora stays as close to upstream as possible, which means if the Gnome developers think this is a good idea, then this is (possibly) a good idea. If you don't like it, get a clue and install a different window manager. Try Openbox. </pre> </blockquote> No need to get personal. I've been setting up my own window managers for years, and I tend to do so, however, it would be really nice if one was able to use the work that others had done, such as the menu system, etc that gnome, and KDE uses, however, I do not like the default click-to-front, that I used to be able to simply disable, however this feature is no longer trivial to find, initially I could still load a useful windowmanager, and thereby replace the underlying window manager in Gnome, nor KDE for that matter. I prefer other window managers, such as enlightenment, fwm, etc, I've used quite a lot of different ones in my time. However, it is getting rather annoying having to manually update the custom desktop environment to follow a moving target, thus it would be preferable to be able to follow one of the maintained ones, however, as I pointed out, their features are being eroded, and basic functions are being removed. <blockquote id="mid_7f692fec0905110735tf8a1bd4u7a71d85f6de7f14b_mail_gmail_com" cite="mid:7f692fec0905110735tf8a1bd4u7a71d85f6de7f14b@mail.gmail.com" type="cite"> <blockquote id="StationeryCiteGenerated_2" type="cite"> <pre wrap="">2. The network interfaces are being bound to the user interface, such that if your X fails for some reason, or you are running on a text console, you are unable to open the wireless configuration, at least it's not obvious how you do it, without X running. The configuration for the network interfaces are so tightly bound to the user interface, such that if there is no user interface there are no network interfaces. </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> This is the artifact of working in a desktop environment. If you need more functionality then you are a power user. There is a very advanced interface for configuring the network, we like to call it the command line. Not to be picky, but in your previous post, you commented you want a simple and advanced view. Think of the desktop as a simple view, and the command line as your advanced view. </pre> </blockquote> I have worked with UNIX since the time where X terminals were unknown, and text terminals was the normal way of working. I know how to do it, however, the problem is the default installation of Fedora installs a lot of things which conflicts, and prevents command line configuration, as the GUI seems to try to override my "advanced" configurations, I have eventually figured out to remove the NetworkManager, and disable the GUI networking. That works, however, I find it frustrating to see that Linux is forking at this level, because it means that someone who is not a Power user (or command line freak which I'm often catagorised as), will have more difficulty in setting up a simple web server, because the network configuration is personal if you use the applet approach., Thus the person will discover that once they log off, their system is no longer online, and their webserver doesn't work. What I'm asking why not make sure, that no matter which tool you use to set up anything, that it does it fundamentally the same way, so that the tool in the GUI will change the relevant configuration file (under privileged control ofc), and the system will be able to take things down properly... I beg to differ, it is not an artifact of working in a desktop environment, but more an artifact of fundamentally choosing another approach, where everything even system configuration is focued in the GUI, rather than in the Operating System. For-instance Gnome there is the administration Network configuration, which appears to do what I'm asking, and there is the network applet configuration, which does not update the configuration files - at least I've been unable to detect the changes. So you have two views, that in principle does the exact same thing, and yet, one is a system wide configuration, the other is a local user related change. This bound to be confusing to people. <blockquote id="mid_7f692fec0905110735tf8a1bd4u7a71d85f6de7f14b_mail_gmail_com" cite="mid:7f692fec0905110735tf8a1bd4u7a71d85f6de7f14b@mail.gmail.com" type="cite"> <blockquote id="StationeryCiteGenerated_3" type="cite"> <pre wrap="">3. Mounts are also embedded into the user interface, rather than in the unix mount system, which means that the shares are not accessible for non-gui programs, for instance, I like to script most thing I do often, however, there is no way for scripts to get a hold of a drive that is mounted through the gui mount system (kde and gnome). </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> You're right, they could potentially do a bit better. Except that they do, most of your mounts should be available in /media. If you have a specific complaint, please file a bug report on Gnome or KDE. </pre> </blockquote> Personally I just don't use those features, what I'm trying to do here is to get people to think about what is happening, because, I can see a lot of feature forking in the system, which will make the system extremely confusing for people to start using Linux. All that is really needed is to mount things properly, and logically. eg /home/mike/mnt1 instead of /home/mike/.gvfs/blablah.. which is a hidden file. What I'm trying to do here is to point out problems with the Fedora distribution, yes some things are specific to other subsystems, but the reflect back on Fedora as a distribution. <blockquote id="mid_7f692fec0905110735tf8a1bd4u7a71d85f6de7f14b_mail_gmail_com" cite="mid:7f692fec0905110735tf8a1bd4u7a71d85f6de7f14b@mail.gmail.com" type="cite"> <blockquote id="StationeryCiteGenerated_4" type="cite"> <pre wrap="">4. Everything is thrown in huge collective directories, such as /usr/bin, /usr/lib etc, and it is a huge mess, just like windows with it's system32 directory, which is also a huge mess. really the /usr/bin,/bin/sbin, /lib etc, has very specific purposes, and should represent a core operating system, that is capable of being used as repair, with no major applications present. However even Open office is stored in these directories. </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> This is by design. Complaining about the design isn't going to start a debate unfortunately. If the design really does bother you, try Gobo. <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.gobolinux.org/">http://www.gobolinux.org/</a> </pre> </blockquote> I'm not complaining I'm pointing out a problem in the system, the current "design" (as you call it), prevents the management of multiple versions of an application, as they will conflict in the package manager, I have become used to manually installing all applications that I use regularly, and thus overcoming the system limitations. The annoying part is that the limitations only arise because everything is thrown into one directory - for instance 32 bit and 64 bit packages often conflict because their documentation files conflict - and unfortunately it is often necessary to have 32 bit compatibility installed. <blockquote id="mid_7f692fec0905110735tf8a1bd4u7a71d85f6de7f14b_mail_gmail_com" cite="mid:7f692fec0905110735tf8a1bd4u7a71d85f6de7f14b@mail.gmail.com" type="cite"> <pre wrap=""> </pre> <blockquote id="StationeryCiteGenerated_5" type="cite"> <pre wrap="">5. More and more services are bound up in the userinterface, such as the pulse audio, which is started by the GUI, this means if you use 2 user environments, which I often do for testing, where I have X:0 and X:1 running, the GUIs will conflict, because you cannot run two instances of pulseaudio. In addition pulse audio is crap, I have yet to see any installation actually work without crackling, and chopping like crazy. I like the concept that is the basis of pulse audio, but it just does not work. </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> Read the answer to #2. Also, if you have a specific complaint, file a bug on Pulseaudio and Alsa. </pre> </blockquote> Why, the problem is related to the fact that Fedora default uses Pulse Audio, however, I've yet to see a system where it works well on, though, with work-arounds it is possible to get it to work, basically there is some configuration issue on Fedora systems, where a lot of applications become impossible for non-advanced users to install. For-instance Skype, is choppy as hell, using the default configuration that Fedora 9-10 uses, it turns out you need to explicit change the input device to be hardware, not default and not pulse. Most ordinary users would give up on running Skype on Linux, and perhaps even give up on Linux, because the configuration per-default does not work. The problems have arisen since Pulse Audio was chosen as a standard for Fedora, pre Pulse-Audio, everything worked nicely, thus as I see it, it is a distribution choice that is causing the problem, PulseAudio isn't quite ready for mainstream yet, and yet it is not trivial to remove, nor to configure - makes it hostile to less experienced users, so it is a consideration for the distribution managers, not for PulseAudio. <blockquote id="mid_7f692fec0905110735tf8a1bd4u7a71d85f6de7f14b_mail_gmail_com" cite="mid:7f692fec0905110735tf8a1bd4u7a71d85f6de7f14b@mail.gmail.com" type="cite"> <blockquote id="StationeryCiteGenerated_6" type="cite"> <pre wrap="">6. NetworkManager which appears to be installed default, does not work with shared drives, because, the NetworkManager is shut down before the network drives are detached, and you need to modify the NetworkManager to start properly, before you mount the network drives. I've gotten used to explicit uninstalling the NetworkManager, because it just doesn't work properly. </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> Again, you're a power user. Reorder your shutdown sequence. </pre> </blockquote> Again, Yes I can, and I do, but what about less experienced users ? Are we not trying to get Linux to be mainstream ? It is not encouraging for people that things do not work properly out of the box! I know Fedora is defined as a "bleeding edge" distribution, which is all good and well however, it scares a lot of people away from the distribution. <blockquote id="mid_7f692fec0905110735tf8a1bd4u7a71d85f6de7f14b_mail_gmail_com" cite="mid:7f692fec0905110735tf8a1bd4u7a71d85f6de7f14b@mail.gmail.com" type="cite"> <pre wrap=""> </pre> <blockquote id="StationeryCiteGenerated_7" type="cite"> <pre wrap="">It is a lengthy discussion to describe what i mean. However, if I take a sample application like firefox, it presents a reasonable proxy for what I mean. currently default installation of firefox on my machine installs firefox in these following places. /usr/lib64/firefox /usr/lib64/firefox-3.0.7 /usr/lib/mozilla /usr/lib64/mozilla /usr/share/mozilla /usr/bin/mozilla-plugin-config /usr/bin/firefox etc. All of which are related to the firefox installation. If something goes wrong, it's a real pain to clean it up, or even to detect what went wrong. The original concept for unix was to install an application such as firefox in either, /opt or /usr/local/. Such that the entire application was contained within a single installation directory, and then to use the PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH to allow the execution of the application. The standard approach with /opt or /usr/local installation also makes it triviel to have multiple installations, and configurations operating in paralellel, by simply creating. /opt/mozilla/firefox -> /opt/mozilla/firefox-3.0.7 /opt/mozilla/firefox-3.0.7 /opt/mozilla/firefox-2.0.9 A user can then easily conifgure their account to use either version of the application, without installation problems. Additionally using that installation method, also means that if someone wants to use a newer version of an application, they can download the source, and trivially install it in parallel to the package managed application, by using the --prefix option, and the installation can easily be removed, by simple rm -rf /opt/mozilla/firefox-3.0.7. With the current installation, it is nearly impossible, or at least very difficult to find out if the package manager has cleaned up properly, or if there is something left behind - something which is identicial to the problem on windows. </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> Wrong, see Gobo if this is a feature you want. Using this split up file system layout is by design, it's a standard of the Unix Way of Doing Things. Everything that ships in Fedora and/or a 3rd party repo that is designed to integrate with the core functionality will use this layout. /opt is for third party software that doesn't want to behave. /usr/local is for bits that are specific to your machine. If your installation fails it's because of two things. A) there is a bug in RPM/Yum that needs to be fixed. The design goal is for these bits to be rock solid reliable. They should never fail. 2) Your power went out. RPM and Yum really should recover and continue from where they left off. Handling such a use case is really a very difficult to solve problem. If you have any concrete ideas, let's hear them, but complaining about the file system layout is not going to solve the problem one bit. <snip> </pre> </blockquote> Oki, I need Firefox-2.0 installed, and Firefox-3.0 installed, hmm, they conflict, in the package manager. So I install them manually, now I also need to manage the applications manually. And so forth. Most UNIX systems, do not install the development environment - eg eclipsse, the desktop publishing (read open office) as a part of the system, but rather as 3rd part add ons. The problem as I see it, is that Fedora has decided that everything is an integral part of the operating system, which is creating the mess I'm trying to describe. Relying on Yum and RPM to do all the work, will eventually cause the same "Sanding up" of the operating system, that you can see on windows, in that not everyone cleans up properly, and eventually junk is left all over the place, rather than isolated. So basically you are saying that OpenOffice, Eclipse, Firefox, MySQL et. al. are integral parts of the operating system, and therefore are not to be installed as independent applications. Yes that is one view of the world, however, it is a lazy argument, for doing something in a bad way. <blockquote id="mid_7f692fec0905110735tf8a1bd4u7a71d85f6de7f14b_mail_gmail_com" cite="mid:7f692fec0905110735tf8a1bd4u7a71d85f6de7f14b@mail.gmail.com" type="cite"> <pre wrap=""> </pre> <blockquote id="StationeryCiteGenerated_8" type="cite"> <pre wrap="">I'm really curious as to the reasoning for moving everything from the standard configuration mechanisms to the gui layer, breaking compatibility with scripting, and other standard UNIX featuers.. I'm also curious as to the reasoning for throwing everything in one huge mess in the /usr/bin, /bin, /sbin, etc.. As all that is achieved is to make it hard to strip the system back to a minimal setup. </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> Is there anything concrete that breaks? Can you give us an example of shell code that doesn't work in Fedora 11 anymore? -Yaakov </pre> </blockquote> Automatic scripting that operates on mounts created by users - sorry, user not logged, in mount point not available. Multiple ways of creating mounts, some are bound in the user interface, and has non-obvious names hidden in .gvfs (I think). Wireless configuration bound to the GUI, if you use the most obvious configuration tool, and NTP does not function because it is run before the user logs in. Network created by one user via the GUI, is taken down, before an NFS/CIFS created by another user on the system, or by the operating system, thus causing the system to hang on shutdown. Reordering startup scripts won't solve this, because once the GUI goes down and takes the network connection down, then the operating system will hang on unmounting any manually mounted mounts. Thus you can combine the manual mounting with the GUI networking, however the system does not handle the take down properly. and so forth - the list is very long. The problem is that there is a tendency to not use the normal operating system controls to take things up and down, and that results in that you are forced to use one method or another. Basically I'm pointing out that there is a consistency problem in Linux, which would scare a lot of poential users away. </body> </html>