Which areas of Linux would benefit most from further standardization?
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The diversity of Linux distributions is one of its strengths, but it can also be challenging for app and game development. Where do we need more standards? For example, package management, graphics APIs, or other aspects of the ecosystem? Would such increased standards encourage broader adoption of the Linux ecosystem by developers?
Filesystem interactions. For example, in file open/save dialogs directories are sometimes grouped at the top and sometimes mixed in alphabetically with files. My preference is for them to be grouped, but being consistent either way would be nice.
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One that Linux should've had 30 years ago is a standard, fully-featured dynamic library system. Its shared libraries are more akin to static libraries, just linked at runtime by ld.so instead of ld. That means that executables are tied to particular versions of shared libraries, and all of them must be present for the executable to load, leading to the dependecy hell that package managers were developed, in part, to address. The dynamically-loaded libraries that exist are generally non-standard plug-in systems.
A proper dynamic library system (like in Darwin) would allow libraries to declare what API level they're backwards-compatible with, so new versions don't necessarily break old executables. (It would ensure ABI compatibility, of course.) It would also allow processes to start running even if libraries declared by the program as optional weren't present, allowing programs to drop certain features gracefully, so we wouldn't need different executable versions of the same programs with different library support compiled in. If it were standard, compilers could more easily provide integrated language support for the system, too.
Dependency hell was one of the main obstacles to packaging Linux applications for years, until Flatpak, Snap, etc. came along to brute-force away the issue by just piling everything the application needs into a giant blob.
The term "dependency hell" reminds me of "DLL hell" Windows devs used to refer to. Something must have changed around 2000 because I remember an article announcing, "No more DLL hell." but I don't remember what the change was.
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Generally speaking, Linux needs better binary compatibility.
Currently, if you compile something, it's usually dynamically linked against dozens of libraries that are present on your system, but if you give the executable to someone else with a different distro, they may not have those libraries or their version may be too old or incompatible.
Statically linking programs is often impossible and generally discouraged, making software distribution a nightmare. Flatpak and similar systems made things easier, but it's such a crap solution and basically involves having an entire separate OS installed in parallel, with its own problems like having a version of Mesa that's too old for a new GPU and stuff like that. Application must be able to be packaged with everything they need with them, there is no reason for dynamic linking to be so important in Linux these days.
I'm not in favor of proprietary software, but better binary compatibility is a necessity for Linux to succeed, and I'm saying this as someone who's been using Linux for over a decade and who refuses to install any proprietary software. Sometimes I find myself using apps and games in Wine even when a native version is available just to avoid the hassle of having to find and probably compile libobsoletecrap-5.so
Disagree - making it harder to ship proprietary blob crap "for Linux" is a feature, not a bug.
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Domain authentication and group policy analogs.
I'm surprised more user friendly distros don't have this, especially more commercial ones
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The diversity of Linux distributions is one of its strengths, but it can also be challenging for app and game development. Where do we need more standards? For example, package management, graphics APIs, or other aspects of the ecosystem? Would such increased standards encourage broader adoption of the Linux ecosystem by developers?
interoperability > homogeneity
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The diversity of Linux distributions is one of its strengths, but it can also be challenging for app and game development. Where do we need more standards? For example, package management, graphics APIs, or other aspects of the ecosystem? Would such increased standards encourage broader adoption of the Linux ecosystem by developers?
Manuals or notifications written with lay people in mind, not experts.
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Domain authentication and group policy analogs.
I've never understood putting arbitrary limits on a worker's laptop. I had always been seeking for ways to hijack them. Once I ended up using a VM,
without limit... -
Stability and standardisation within the kernel for kernel modules. There are plenty of commercial products that use proprietary kernel modules that basically only work on a very specific kernel version, preventing upgrades.
Or they could just open source and inline their garbage kernel modules…
I don't use any of these, but I'm curious. Could you please write some examples?
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Flatpak is very useful for a lot of things, but i really dont think it should be the default. It still has some weird issues. For example if you run a seperate home and root partition flatpak by default will install things into your root partition which quickly fills up. You have to go in and do a bunch of work to get it to use the home partition.
Or for example issues with themeing and cursors. Its a pretty common issue for flatpaks to not properly detect your cursor theme and just use the default until you mess around with perms and settings to fix it.
They also generally get updates slower. I guess maybe if its adopted more that would change but flatpak is already pretty widely used and thats still an issue. Especially for smaller programs not used by as many people.
Keeping it as just something that is good to use for the ones who like a GUI experience and want something simple and easy is great. But if we were to start doing like what ubuntu does with snaps where theyll just replace things you install with the snap version then im not in favor of that at all.
I agree that flatpak is not there yet. The API is limited, and it is also hard to package an app. But I really want to see ot succeed
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I've never understood putting arbitrary limits on a worker's laptop. I had always been seeking for ways to hijack them. Once I ended up using a VM,
without limit...I mean, it sucks, but the stupid shit people will do with company laptops...
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The diversity of Linux distributions is one of its strengths, but it can also be challenging for app and game development. Where do we need more standards? For example, package management, graphics APIs, or other aspects of the ecosystem? Would such increased standards encourage broader adoption of the Linux ecosystem by developers?
Actual native package management and package distribution
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I don't use any of these, but I'm curious. Could you please write some examples?
It mostly affects people working with ”fun” enterprise hardware or special purpose things.
But to take one example, proprietary drivers for high performance network cards, most likely from Nvidia.
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The diversity of Linux distributions is one of its strengths, but it can also be challenging for app and game development. Where do we need more standards? For example, package management, graphics APIs, or other aspects of the ecosystem? Would such increased standards encourage broader adoption of the Linux ecosystem by developers?
- find something Lennart built. Eg. systemd
- remove that
- go to 1
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- find something Lennart built. Eg. systemd
- remove that
- go to 1
Would you mind providing some reasoning so this doesn't come off as unsubstantiated badmouthing?
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Actual native package management and package distribution
cpio/tar for the one, mqtt/http/smtp/scp/dcc/tftp/uucp/dns for the other
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ARM support. Every SoC is a new horror.
Armbian does great work, but if you want another distro you’re gonna have to go on a lil adventure.
Wouldn't it make more sense to focus on an open standard like RISC-V instead of ARM?
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Wouldn't it make more sense to focus on an open standard like RISC-V instead of ARM?
Not really. There are barely any chips out there.
Oct 2021: 200 billion ARM chips
Nov 2023: 1 billion RISC-V chips, hoping to hit 16 billion by 2030
Nov 2024: 300 billion ARM chips
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interoperability > homogeneity
interoperability == API homogeneity
standardization != monopolization
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- find something Lennart built. Eg. systemd
- remove that
- go to 1
Systemd is fine. This sounds like an old sysadmin who refuses to learn because "new thing bad" and zero logic to back it up.
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I've never understood putting arbitrary limits on a worker's laptop. I had always been seeking for ways to hijack them. Once I ended up using a VM,
without limit...Because people are stupid. One of my coworkers (older guy) tends to click on things without thinking. He's been through multiple cyber security training courses, and has even been written up for opening multiple obvious phishing emails.
People like that are why company-owned laptops are locked down with group policy and other security measures.
