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doing more damage than good
QUOTE: As if an OS can deserve anything.
You're dodging the issue with semantic BS and playing stupid. If I was going to play the same game, I'd have just pointed out that I was talking about core utilities, and not an OS, phrasing it so it implies you have the IQ of a carrot -- but instead I just called you out on your own ludicrous games, evading real discussion in favor of wanton attacks on others.
QUOTE: that still doesn't explain how Linux stole BSD's thunder, if BSD never had any to begin with
That must be why BSD Unix was the most-used Unix-like OS for years before the early 1990s, why Linux keeps stealing code from BSD Unix systems, and why BSD Unix systems have a very strong presence in the server space. That might also be why FreeBSD had support for the amd64 architecture before Linux, why the best widely-available packet filtering firewall is part of the OpenBSD project, why several Linux distribution projects are creating their own sub-distributions based on the FreeBSD kernel, why Gentoo imitated BSD Unix systems in the development of its own software management model, and why MacOS X (which has a greater desktop market footprint than all Linux distributions put together) uses a lightly modified FreeBSD userland over a Mach kernel with FreeBSD extensions to the kernel (and Apple contributes code back to the FreeBSD project from time to time, too).
QUOTE: We let you guys in at out conventions, what else do you want?
1. BSD Unix conventions let Linux guys in, too.
2. Seriously? Is this seriously your "argument"?
QUOTE: The point remains that BSD has been living off Linux's table scraps for quite some time now.
Right -- like Linux lives off BSD Unix table scraps, using network stack, driver, system control, security software, and other tools developed by BSD Unix projects. The difference is that the BSD Unix systems just make sure that all those applications built for Linux (and a lot of them that are developed as cross-platform applications, but Linux fanboys like you seem to think they were designed only for Linux-based systems) will run on BSD Unix systems as well, but the Linux community steals base system code to incorporate -- and I don't normally use "steal" in circumstances like this, but wrapping such code in restrictively licensed derivative works so that they cannot be contributed upstream feels a bit more like "stealing" than "borrowing" or "sharing".
QUOTE: That is the funny thing about volunteers, if you don't let them do basically what they want, but rather whip them to tasks, you end up driving away your help. It can be argued that understanding this is the basis of Linux success, and BSD's failure.
. . . or, alternatively, it could be argued that justifying the incorporation of random garbage into the system just because someone wrote it and makes inflated claims about its usefulness is the basis of BSD Unix success and Linux community failure. It is better to reject bad software (such as pretty much anything from Lennart Poettering, from what I've seen) than to make it a largely inescapable part of the entire family of OSes so that instability pervades the system.
If your system falls apart in a stiff wind because of all that coddling of incompetent volunteers (rather than trying to guide them down a better path or simply rejecting bad code), I'd call that a tremendous failure.
QUOTE: If they ever get Pulse Audio to work it will be an impressive thing
That's a big if. PulseAudio implements some cool features, but it does so at the expense of losing some very important functionality that you only get if you avoid PulseAudio, and on top of that PulseAudio was absorbed into a majority of the major Linux distributions long before even its developers thought it was ready for production use -- guaranteeing problems for everyone involved. By contrast, BSD Unix developers tend to stick to what works, and adopt replacement software as "the way to do things" only when it works properly and is not going to cause more harm than good. Obviously, these are trends, and not immutable laws, but they're trends worth observing, and planning accordingly is just the smart thing to do. In my case, "planning accordingly" results in preferring FreeBSD over any Linux distribution I've encountered.
QUOTE: Network-Manager is already useful now. It is the only thing I've found that gets wi-fi working on my laptop.
I take it you haven't tried a system that does not have anything related to NetworkManager installed on it (and never did), just using the basic, native system tools. Unfortunately, in the case of Debian, some of those native system tools have been allowed to rot in recent years, probably because of the growing ubiquity of NetworkManager; ifconfig isn't even guaranteed to work for common use cases now. It's maddening stupidity like this that makes me loathe the one Debian system I have right now.
NetworkManager does a great job for probably 80% of common "desktop" use cases, I suppose. 20%, however, is a living hell once NetworkManager has been installed, even if you try to uninstall it and use something else -- because uninstalling NetworkManager, at least on some Linux-based systems, becomes an exercise something like that of the Colonial Marines' job in the movie Aliens, involving a bughunt through the bowels of an industrial plant fraught with hidden dangers. One of the reasons it fails to account for that other 20% is that it tries to guess what the user wants, and in some cases it guesses wrong, but there's often no way to override it effectively. Another reason is that trying to use some other tool results in any remaining NetworkManager-related software on the system often just prevents other network configuration software from working properly.
I've actually started work on a separate network management tool of my own just to get around the stupidities of network configuration and control on Debian in the post-NetworkManager world. It's not just a competitor to NetworkManager; it's a solution to the damage the presence of NetworkManager appears to have done to the rest of the Linux-based networking world as well. At present, it works brilliantly for me, but it's going to take a fair bit more work to be ready for widespread use.
QUOTE: I don't find the two mutually exclusive of each other. Quite the opposite in fact.
I didn't say that having an attitude problem and being capable of having a meaningful discussion are mutually exclusive. I just said that you have an attitude problem and are apparently incapable of having a meaningful discussion. That's a conjunction. It's not a statement of causality.
QUOTE: I think my attitude, and capabilities make me a rather lively debater.
Maybe . . . if you equate "trolling" with "debate". You actually make enemies of people initially on "your side" of a debate with that pissant attitude of yours.
You're dodging the issue with semantic BS and playing stupid. If I was going to play the same game, I'd have just pointed out that I was talking about core utilities, and not an OS, phrasing it so it implies you have the IQ of a carrot -- but instead I just called you out on your own ludicrous games, evading real discussion in favor of wanton attacks on others.
QUOTE: that still doesn't explain how Linux stole BSD's thunder, if BSD never had any to begin with
That must be why BSD Unix was the most-used Unix-like OS for years before the early 1990s, why Linux keeps stealing code from BSD Unix systems, and why BSD Unix systems have a very strong presence in the server space. That might also be why FreeBSD had support for the amd64 architecture before Linux, why the best widely-available packet filtering firewall is part of the OpenBSD project, why several Linux distribution projects are creating their own sub-distributions based on the FreeBSD kernel, why Gentoo imitated BSD Unix systems in the development of its own software management model, and why MacOS X (which has a greater desktop market footprint than all Linux distributions put together) uses a lightly modified FreeBSD userland over a Mach kernel with FreeBSD extensions to the kernel (and Apple contributes code back to the FreeBSD project from time to time, too).
QUOTE: We let you guys in at out conventions, what else do you want?
1. BSD Unix conventions let Linux guys in, too.
2. Seriously? Is this seriously your "argument"?
QUOTE: The point remains that BSD has been living off Linux's table scraps for quite some time now.
Right -- like Linux lives off BSD Unix table scraps, using network stack, driver, system control, security software, and other tools developed by BSD Unix projects. The difference is that the BSD Unix systems just make sure that all those applications built for Linux (and a lot of them that are developed as cross-platform applications, but Linux fanboys like you seem to think they were designed only for Linux-based systems) will run on BSD Unix systems as well, but the Linux community steals base system code to incorporate -- and I don't normally use "steal" in circumstances like this, but wrapping such code in restrictively licensed derivative works so that they cannot be contributed upstream feels a bit more like "stealing" than "borrowing" or "sharing".
QUOTE: That is the funny thing about volunteers, if you don't let them do basically what they want, but rather whip them to tasks, you end up driving away your help. It can be argued that understanding this is the basis of Linux success, and BSD's failure.
. . . or, alternatively, it could be argued that justifying the incorporation of random garbage into the system just because someone wrote it and makes inflated claims about its usefulness is the basis of BSD Unix success and Linux community failure. It is better to reject bad software (such as pretty much anything from Lennart Poettering, from what I've seen) than to make it a largely inescapable part of the entire family of OSes so that instability pervades the system.
If your system falls apart in a stiff wind because of all that coddling of incompetent volunteers (rather than trying to guide them down a better path or simply rejecting bad code), I'd call that a tremendous failure.
QUOTE: If they ever get Pulse Audio to work it will be an impressive thing
That's a big if. PulseAudio implements some cool features, but it does so at the expense of losing some very important functionality that you only get if you avoid PulseAudio, and on top of that PulseAudio was absorbed into a majority of the major Linux distributions long before even its developers thought it was ready for production use -- guaranteeing problems for everyone involved. By contrast, BSD Unix developers tend to stick to what works, and adopt replacement software as "the way to do things" only when it works properly and is not going to cause more harm than good. Obviously, these are trends, and not immutable laws, but they're trends worth observing, and planning accordingly is just the smart thing to do. In my case, "planning accordingly" results in preferring FreeBSD over any Linux distribution I've encountered.
QUOTE: Network-Manager is already useful now. It is the only thing I've found that gets wi-fi working on my laptop.
I take it you haven't tried a system that does not have anything related to NetworkManager installed on it (and never did), just using the basic, native system tools. Unfortunately, in the case of Debian, some of those native system tools have been allowed to rot in recent years, probably because of the growing ubiquity of NetworkManager; ifconfig isn't even guaranteed to work for common use cases now. It's maddening stupidity like this that makes me loathe the one Debian system I have right now.
NetworkManager does a great job for probably 80% of common "desktop" use cases, I suppose. 20%, however, is a living hell once NetworkManager has been installed, even if you try to uninstall it and use something else -- because uninstalling NetworkManager, at least on some Linux-based systems, becomes an exercise something like that of the Colonial Marines' job in the movie Aliens, involving a bughunt through the bowels of an industrial plant fraught with hidden dangers. One of the reasons it fails to account for that other 20% is that it tries to guess what the user wants, and in some cases it guesses wrong, but there's often no way to override it effectively. Another reason is that trying to use some other tool results in any remaining NetworkManager-related software on the system often just prevents other network configuration software from working properly.
I've actually started work on a separate network management tool of my own just to get around the stupidities of network configuration and control on Debian in the post-NetworkManager world. It's not just a competitor to NetworkManager; it's a solution to the damage the presence of NetworkManager appears to have done to the rest of the Linux-based networking world as well. At present, it works brilliantly for me, but it's going to take a fair bit more work to be ready for widespread use.
QUOTE: I don't find the two mutually exclusive of each other. Quite the opposite in fact.
I didn't say that having an attitude problem and being capable of having a meaningful discussion are mutually exclusive. I just said that you have an attitude problem and are apparently incapable of having a meaningful discussion. That's a conjunction. It's not a statement of causality.
QUOTE: I think my attitude, and capabilities make me a rather lively debater.
Maybe . . . if you equate "trolling" with "debate". You actually make enemies of people initially on "your side" of a debate with that pissant attitude of yours.
Posted by apotheon
31st Jul
