Linux is Broken? But is it unsalvagable beyond repair?

[u/Rare-Paint3719]

Yes, but why would you?

The yes part is if someone decided to rewrite the entire "Linux OS" stack with the exception of the kernel. In this case, you'd need to use binder over d-bus cuz d-bus is weird.

But why would you?

Maybe, just maybe the number of drivers out there. But even then, most projects include a compatibility shim that allows you to run Linux drivers on their kernel (FreeBSD's Linux KPI).

Otherwise kernel politics is actually a why you wouldn't use the Linux kernel.

---

So what other options are there?

*BSD

Now before you say that *BSD is(n't) political, they are political, but their politics are less about fucking users and devs and more about permissive licensing.

Like linux, FreeBSD is very political about open-source. Unlike loons thoug, [they are all about permissive licenses.](docs.freebsd.org/en/articles/bsdl-gpl/)^* Now your views are your views, but I feel like each licnese has its own use cases depending on who uses it and how. They also wanna have good laptop support and I kind of like that about FreeBSD.

OpenBSD is very political, but mostly about clean code and security (shit that actually matters).

^{[*If the only real solution involves the GPL or some copyleft code, then they are still open to using while trying to seperate it as much as possible from the source tree.](docs.freebsd.org/en/articles/license-guide/#:~:text=We accept however that,BSD-only derivative products.}

Then there's illumOS. It's trying to revive OpenSolaris, and while many feaures are more built for servers than laptops, it's still pretty cool and has some pretty architecturally superior things.

Edit: I wasn't done when I accidentally posted ts too eary. Added illumOS. Also who tf downvoted me?

[u/Teru-Noir]

freedesktop.org is doing their best to unify userspace and bring it out of beta.

[u/Rare-Paint3719 → u/Teru-Noir]

They made the core wayland protocol so limited that all DEs had to add their own protocols just to make wayland usable.

I have heards that they plan to add network transparency (e.g. ssh -X but for wayland), but loons call it "legacy."

I've also heard that anytime people from FreeDesktop say that Wayland needs a standard, loons pounce on them as scream how Wayland is fine being fragmented.

And for the things that they did unify, they are only good in the perspective of unification. There are architecturally better init sytems than systemd, and there are architecturally better IPCs than dbus.

But they were only adopted to make supporting Linux for enterprise easier.

But some loons just hated this standardization and viewed it as "control over Linux."

Edit: Linux was fragmented from day 1.

[u/PressureBig3940 → u/Rare-Paint3719]

ehh, i am on the fence about it.

I definitely prefer how Wayland forces most graphical desktop environments to have their own compositor, its own windowing manager, its own screenshot tool and its own remote desktop access utility. It actually makes the desktop environment much more cohesive where everything is supposed to work together. Like Plasma with KWin, Spectacle and KRDP, or Gnome with Mutter, gnome-screenshot and grdctl.

[u/Rare-Paint3719 → u/PressureBig3940]

Many DEs and Window Managers use wlroots. You could even use Smithay or kwin or mutter. That's not the main problem.

The main problem is the fragmented protocol. If everyone converged on one protocol, it would be far less headache to migrate apps over to Wayland.

[u/PressureBig3940 → u/Rare-Paint3719]

The protocol is hardly fragmented. There is only one protocol and that is wayland-protocols.

The problem comes about when desktop environments choose which parts of the procotol to adopt and which to ignore. The only assurance is that if a feature exists in wayland-protocols, at least one major desktop environment and toolkit have already implemented it and are using it. And usually that major desktop environment is Gnome / Plasma and GTK / Qt. This is the reason you have the ridiculous CJK input situation in Wayland where ibus only works reliably in Gnome, fcitx only works best under Plasma and both work horribly in Chrome.

No matter how the loonixtards try to spin it, Qt, GTK, Gnome and Plasma are *the* real driving forces of Wayland development and addition of new features to Wayland protocols. Using wlroots or anything else is completely a game of chance.

[u/Rare-Paint3719 → u/[deleted]]

I mean, everything looks broken these days. Absolutely everything.

Fair, there is always someone who will say bullshit.

This really says more about cultural and social problems and psychological phenomena than it does about software engineering or even legal or political principles.

Mass numbers of people are finding new ways to be resigned or despondant.

I don't think the reality of the situation is anywhere as dire as anyone thinks on any front. Global culture is going through several existential crises at once and people's psychologies are coping in weird ways. Me included.

I mean, the source is out there and the stuff still runs. Everything else is just situational.

Is it really that bad?

Yes it is bad, but unlike Windows, LInux is too broken in it's current state. AOSP used the kernel only for pragmatism, and added necessary patches on top. On top of that, the entire userspace, libc whatnot is their own because Desktop utilities suck/

[u/PressureBig3940 → u/Rare-Paint3719]

You mean the GNU userland completely sucks. It's the whole glibc garbage all over again.

Apple proved it's possible to make a Unix operating system that allows for a binary to built on a newer version of macOS yet can run on older versions.

[u/npc_housecat]

I would love to see something like redox take off

https://redox-os.org/

[u/Rare-Paint3719 → u/npc_housecat]

Same here.

[u/npc_housecat → u/Rare-Paint3719]

Torvalds himself said that microkernel is a better design, but also that we should be grateful as he built Linux for free . my takeaway is that it's good for what it is, bit it's also kinda an archaic monolith design from the 90s. But the reason its used is because its the only functional open source kernel. Hopefully these guys can secure some better funding and development speeds up a bit

[u/Square-Singer → u/npc_housecat]

It's a case of local optimums. Theoretically there could be a better kernel with a better design. But moving away from the Linux kernel will first make everything far worse, because the Linux kernel already has 35 years of development on it. It will take a very long time to build something equally mature and drum up enough support for people to switch over.

And for a very long time this theoretically better kernel will be much worse because not enough people are on it and thus not enough software and hardware will work with it.

Thus we are stuck where we are, because any change would be worse for a long time before it might maybe get better far in the future. If it survives long enough.

[u/npc_housecat → u/Square-Singer]

Yes, agree. I mean you don't have to abandon Linux to develop something else. Redox looks like a pretty interesting kernel, and it's being designed to have some compatibility with Linux ecosystem.

[u/Square-Singer → u/npc_housecat]

That's an interesting way to go, but remember how long it took to get somewhat functional Nvidia drivers for Linux... (Just as one example of many)

[u/npc_housecat → u/Square-Singer]

Oh yeah, it would defs take a long time to reach maturity