The Other Shoe Drops: Founder Announces Retirement, Fuduntu End of Life

by Dietrich Schmitz

It was only last evening that I posted my story Developer Dissatisfaction Looms with Systemd.

Sadly, following on the heels of that story, Founder +Andrew Wyatt made a formal announcement this morning regarding his planned retirement from active work on and end of life for the Fuduntu project.

It is regretful to see this happen and I hope it is not a trend for other smaller Distros to close camp in similar fashion.

The struggle to keep Linux on an even keel continues in spite of systemic infrastructural changes.

Add to the mix that Gnome has coded a forced dependency on systemd complicates the situation further insofar as non-systemd Distros that may wish to use Gnome and also obstructs the ability of continued use of Gnome on BSD platforms by virtue of the fact that systemd does not support BSD interfacing.

I ask you: Is this good programming or 'lazy' programming?  You tell me.

-- Dietrich

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'Bitrot' Not a GNU/Linux Issue

by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

In computing, everything should ideally scale linearly or logarithmically if/where possible, except perhaps for innovation in hardware which can be nearly exponential in some terms due to multidimensionality and various other factors. Linux takes good advantage of hardware and, owing to reuse of code, programs are rarely bloated. With Windows, contrariwise, common practice/advice is to assume bloat is normal and reinstallation a routine task which mitigates bloat. Those are two separate issues; one deals with scalability and the other with the steps needed to remediate. In GNU/Linux, where malware is rare, optimising a system is often possible without radical measures like clean-installing.


It is not uncommon to see distributions of BSD or GNU/Linux running for years without a reboot or a reinstallation. These systems, which first found widespread use in (gradually more mission-critical) servers, required a high degree of tolerance, robustness, stability, and minimal downtime or rebuilding time. Windows, which had primarily emerged through the desktop, took over a decade to get the basics of networking and user privileges almost right -- an issue that still makes it attractive to rogue programs.

The three Rs, restart (application), reboot , and reinstall, have made infamous a class of box booters who are sometimes synonymous with Microsoft-certified administrators. Whereas UNIX and Linux professionals tend to deal with complicated issues of automation and troubleshooting, many of their Window-centric counterparts spend their days wrestling with issues associated with performance (setting aside restrictive licensing that impedes expansion) and malware, which are two related but separable issues. Over the years I have narrowed down the low efficiency of maintaining Windows clusters (requiring more administrators per cluster) to what some call bitrot, or the notion that digital data -- or an executable program - inevitably needs to erode over time, requiring one to revert it back to a pristine condition.

A solid GNU/Linux distribution is unlikely to slow down or break down on its own. On my main workstation (since 2008), for example, I never had to reinstall an operating system unless I switched between distributions (Mandriva was losing its corporate backing at the time). I could use the system for months at a time without any reboot. I could install over a thousand packages without it resulting in slowdown or performance degradation of any kind. It is harder to achieve the same thing with Windows, based on people to whom I speak. The three Rs are essential there.

More and more enterprises pursue GNU/Linux and people who know how to maintain it. For continuity of service and for minimal intervention it takes a system that will not 'rot' over time or be made deprecated because the company which has exclusive rights to the source code decides so.

-- Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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War is Peace, Diversity is Fragmentation, Versatile is Difficult

by Dr. Roy Schestowitz



Companies that are crazy about control wish to own everything from software down to hardware. Apple could not tolerate BSD code without closing it and Microsoft just couldn't stand the idea of companies creating their own Windows shells -- a subject of antitrust litigation almost two decades ago.

Linux, as a kernel with a lot of development activity, has become the Swiss army knife for many who wish to rapidly create operating systems. Android is probably the most ubiquitous among those, depending on the assessed criteria. GNU is the Swiss army knife further up in the software stack and Apache is extremely popular in page-serving devices. All of those are Free/Open Source software (FOSS).

The flexibility of this software is hard to compete with. Corporations and/or large communities surround those projects. Due to the old tricks of newspeak, propaganda, spin and FUD we have become accustomed to hearing words like 'fragmentation' wherever FOSS goes. Recently, a lot of this has been said about Android. The other day a notable Linux advocate, SJVN, addressed the Android "fragmentation" FUD by writing a tongue-in-cheek report about Windows:

The transition from XP to Vista, to Windows 7 and most recently, both iterations of the newest version of Windows, 8 and RT, as well as all patch iterations and dot versions in between, has left a scattered landscape of PCs in various states of OS upgrade version malaise. (Cough) This has created problems for Windows developers when coding applications, and when they test against different versions of the OS and different target devices. (Oh my!) The introduction of multiple versions of PCs, as well as Windows virtual machines and emulators running in Mac OS X and Linux, has further complicated this situation by creating additional "forks" of Windows, which have their own unique application issues that developers need to address. (The horror! The horror!)

This puts in perspective one aspect of the FUD's shortcomings. Because Windows also supports nearly as much hardware as Linux does, the 'fragmentation' may relate to hardware too. Let's face it. A power which is diversity -- something that Apple actively discourages -- should not be portrayed as a weakness. Linux and GNU are very compatible with UNIX owing to POSIX. GTK applications are quite compatible with applications that use Qt, and vice versa (narrowed down to two options just for the sake of concision). This took a while to achieve, but we are there now. Diversity is secured in the compatibility/standards sense, owing in part to compartmentalisation. People who chastise GNU/Linux over 'fragmentation' are either dishonest or have not kept up with GNU/Linux for nearly a decade. To say that GNU/Linux is 'hard' because it facilitates advanced features is also to overlook the progress made in the past half a decade in KDE and GNOME. But that's a subject for another day...

- Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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Graphical User Interface Survey

by Dietrich Schmitz

Alright.  It seems to me that most everyone understands the importance of a good graphical user interface (GUI).

You fall into one of several camps in terms of preference, depending on which operating system you use.  However, what you prefer to use verses what you use most often (i.e., at work) may be two different answers.  So, I am trying to find out what you 'prefer', not necessarily what you use most often.  (Image Credit: Wikipedia)

And, it would be most instructive to see how responses are across all operating systems, Apple OSX, Microsoft Windows, BSD and Linux (edit and Chrome OS)[1].

So with that, please give your feedback in the survey below.

View ongoing results using this link

The survey will close on Friday March 22, at midnight.  I will post the final results during the day Friday.

Thank you in advance for your participation!

-- Dietrich

[1] Edit: I've tacked on one more answer option: Aura Window Manager (Chrome OS)

Survey tools

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