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this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I don't doubt that relying on Red Hat's code makes life easier.
My needs are minimal. I can get by on openrc, runit, systemd or sysv.
Curious to see where s6 goes.
I lost interest in Arch when Tom Gunderson was aggressively promoting systemd whilst being funded by Red Hat, I was sad when Debian made the decision to rely on Red Hat to take care of the low level system plumbing.
My tinfoil hat from around 2010 still seems relevant.
Nobody's "relying" on Red Hat. You guys are being insanely dramatic. It's FOSS software. If Red Hat loses their minds, systemd will just be forked, or there will be a discussion on where to move to next.
Good god.
Red Hat are not losing their minds. A recent post from Ted here makes it pretty clear that IBM call the shots and couldn't give two fucks about anyone other than paying enterprise customers. Red Hat's recent rant about freeloaders and attempts to lock stuff down doesn't help the situation imo.
Pretty sure they are absolutely relying on Red Hat. Red Hat provide the system plumbing for most linux distros, under the lgpl, and are heavily integrated into RHEL, Fedora, Rocky, Alma, Cent, Wayland, Pulseaudio, Pipewire & Gnome development.
If no one relied on Red Hat the whole Cent/Rocky/Alma mess wouldn't be an issue at all and Rocky would have no need for this sort of entertaining gymnastics. Debian would not have had the most publicly painful year I've even seen it go through with the systemd debate and Lennart would not have issued Gentoo with a wakeup call from Red Hat.
I started using linux regularly around 2011 and the communities I joined then were concerned about Red Hat's future plans and putting safeguards in place. Pat Volkerding, Daniel Robbins, Gentoo, Void, Crux and many others are better prepped to manage Red Hat going postal as they have been cautious of their approach for a decade or more.
If Linus goes postal, not to worry, it's foss, we can just fork the kernel, write a new one or get hurd feature complete over the weekend.
Yes, and? If those things went closed source tomorrow, the previously open source would not disappear. People could continue to build on it.
There was a strong community discussion because a lot of people didn't like systemd. After a public democratic decision making process, a decision was made. If something significant happens, another discussion will happen. I don't understand why you're talking about disagreements as if they're the end of the world. "Publically painful"? What does that mean? Debian isn't a politican. Lennart issuing 'wake-up calls' to people is just him being a dipshit. It means nothing for Linux and it's usability.
Cool, the system is working as intended. Debian can swap Red Hat's technologies for the other ones. Do you think that it's not possible to run systemd free Debian, or use KDE instead of GNOME?
Yes. The decades of work on the kernel will not magically disappear, and people can continue that work. A new one wouldn't be necessary. Linus barely writes the majority of the kernel code any more. The kernel has shit loads of developers working on it regularly.
This is just FUD bullshit written by someone who doesn't understand how Linux has been working for the past decade.
I think we may agree that a lot of the ecosystem is dependent on Red Hat, if they close stuff even more stuff tomorrow someone else will need to step up and put in an awful lot of hours quickly. Suse are stepping up with a 10 million dollar claim in response to the current situation and Rocky and Oracle are exploring the legalities of the GPL which is entertaining.
Forking the kernel is non-trivial, a far bigger undertaking than a casual 10 million dollars from Suse. It's well over 30 million lines of code over decades with billions invested in it.
Again from Ted: * IBM hosted that meeting, but ultimately, never did contribute any developers to the btrfs effort. That’s because IBM had a fairly cold, hard examination of what their enterprise customers really wanted, and would be willing to pay $$$, and the decision was made at a corporate level (higher up than the Linux Technology Center, although I participated in the company-wide investigation) that none of OS’s that IBM supported (AIX, zOS, Linux, etc.) needed ZFS-like features,because IBM’s customers didn’t need them.*
I'm not a position to outcode IBM but I am very grateful there are distros out there that do ensure things largely work without them.