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Last post Author Topic: A rant on religiousness about OSes  (Read 37231 times)

40hz

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Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes
« Reply #25 on: December 17, 2008, 11:29 PM »
Although Solaris is awfully sexy, I have been playing with it and that file system... that file system...
OK, I'll bite.
At least 3 times in this thread you've fawned over the file system, and that makes me quite curious...

Are you talking about zfs?
Hoo boy, it sure looks promising

I wouldn't call that "fawning." Possibly an over-the-shoulder smile or two - but definitely not fawning. ;D

If it is ZFS, there's a nice presentation on it here:

http://www.youtube.com/bsdconferences

This discusses the BSD port of ZFS, but I'd suspect it works the much the same as the Solaris implementation.


Looks like the benefits outweigh the detriments, so just out of curiosity I downloaded the OpenSolaris 2008.11 and am going to give it a fly-by and see if it ends up on a spare disk to play with.

Edvard: Dude!

When you're done playing with it, start a thread on the topic and share your impressions?

---------------

iphigenie: if he does, please be sure to chime in?


I keep hearing all this great stuff about Solaris. I have very little experience with it, but it didn't seem to be so exceptional as to be obvious to a very interested albeit casual observer like myself. I'd welcome any input.

(I'd be tempted to try it myself, but I'm up to my ears in W2k8 Server and FreeBSD 7.1 RC1 right now, so I doubt I'll get a chance to look at Solaris before year's end.)


iphigenie

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Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes
« Reply #26 on: December 18, 2008, 05:13 AM »
I will do -

zfs is bootable, it is the default file system used for 2008.11 - at least I think it is! Must check now, I might have assumed wrongly.

What I really like about it is that it is what I always wanted a filesystem to be:

Truly virtual. We have now reached the point where we have virtual machines created on top of pooled real machines, and the same thing needs to happen with the filesystem.

Dynamic. I dont have the spare hardware to test this but this virtual nature can allocate extra space to mission critical systems, optimise faster/slower drive usage (not yet supporting solid state drive but that is on the way)

Solid. I have just pulled the plug off the machine while disk activity was happening and no repair or anything needed to be done on reboot. That's the limit of my testing

Ease of use. Create a new "partition" or "virtual machine" in seconds, one command, no waiting. Turn some off, shrink some, grow some. Especially with the virtualization this is cool. I currently have no need for it but next time I have an infrastructure project I would have to consider it seriously.

I hear the performance is excellent too, I know smugmug are starting to use it for their mysql databases, with compression on, and were impressed. I also know that wikipedia has just decided to go for it for all their media hosting.

Enough for zfs - i am by far not a filesystem specialist, just a user who has set up and managed web datacentres a few times and to me it seems that zfs (and some of the additional things in solaris) would remove a lot of the pain we had in day to day operations.

As for opensolaris as a whole, i'm ambivalent - the core is a great package but I am both intrigued by some of the features annoyed by any OS which forces so much down my throat - full desktop with tons of apps preinstalled. My normal mode of operation is BSD core, then everything from ports, and only the minimum necessary... I'm from the school that saw anything that is installed and not used as both a waste of resources and a security risk.

The solaris machine is dual boot with FreeBSD7 and I am tempted to revert to freebsd, because i know where to go and what to look for and how to find what is available. On opensolaris I am unsure what is available, unsure how to go about certain things. I am sticking with it mostly because I am curious to see if I can find all that is promised. And an old nostalgic love for Solaris from when I was a student and my first jobs.

But I have too many things to do and haven't sat down for a straight amount of time with a straight goal, which is why I am unsure and uneasy with it still.
« Last Edit: December 18, 2008, 05:21 AM by iphigenie »

Edvard

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Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes
« Reply #27 on: December 19, 2008, 10:26 AM »
So far, I've fired up the Live CD and poked around.
Indeed, ZFS is default, and the desktop is Gnome with a veritable handful of default-installed apps.
I accidentally started the package manager that looks suspiciously like Synaptic, and it filled up my memory and crashed. No problem, really, this was a Live CD and I only have 512G in this machine, although I would have liked a "Cancel" button.


I'll dig up an old drive and slap it in for fun and see what the package manager will offer me, although my first impression of it smells like Ubuntu with a Solaris kernel and Sun Java pre-installed ;)

Solid. I have just pulled the plug off the machine while disk activity was happening and no repair or anything needed to be done on reboot. That's the limit of my testing
Nice. Journalling file systems have come a long way in preventing data corruption from power failures/panic resets but it's good to hear first-hand experience on this one.

Ease of use. Create a new "partition" or "virtual machine" in seconds, one command, no waiting. Turn some off, shrink some, grow some. Especially with the virtualization this is cool. I currently have no need for it but next time I have an infrastructure project I would have to consider it seriously.
Seriously cool. Ever since I started seriously poking around computers, this one always hung me.
Why can I not just grow a partition as needed? Shrinking I can understand the difficulty, but at least the other way around should be just as you described. One command, done. Good to hear this one swings both ways.

I'll keep you posted, but I'll do it in another post.

f0dder

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Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes
« Reply #28 on: December 19, 2008, 11:16 AM »
A journalling filesystem won't save you from data corruption, imho. It will save you from having a fubar inconsistent filesystem, yes, but not from corrupted files. What happens if you have a power outage halfway through updating some big index file? :)

That said, iirc ZFS supports inexpensive versioning/snapshots, which could be at least part of the solution to avoiding file (as opposed to filesystem metadata) corruption.
- carpe noctem

Edvard

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Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes
« Reply #29 on: December 19, 2008, 07:03 PM »
As always f0dder, I can depend on you to correct technical details I get muddled about.
Yes, if you pulled the plug during a big operation, the file is going to get borked, no matter what you do.

What impressed me was the claim that ZFS is almost immune to it.
...All operations are copy-on-write transactions, so the on-disk state is always valid. There is no need to fsck(1M) a ZFS file system, ever. Every block is checksummed to prevent silent data corruption, and the data is self-healing in replicated (mirrored or RAID) configurations. If one copy is damaged, ZFS detects it and uses another copy to repair it.
...
ZFS provides unlimited constant-time snapshots and clones. A snapshot is a read-only point-in-time copy of a filesystem, while a clone is a writable copy of a snapshot. Clones provide an extremely space-efficient way to store many copies of mostly-shared data such as workspaces, software installations, and diskless clients.

ZFS backup and restore are powered by snapshots. Any snapshot can generate a full backup, and any pair of snapshots can generate an incremental backup. Incremental backups are so efficient that they can be used for remote replication — e.g. to transmit an incremental update every 10 seconds.

Also, check out http://opensolaris.o...community/zfs/intro/
And http://uadmin.blogsp...hy-zfs-for-home.html
(a little dated, but it's first-hand experience...)

Looks like a peach to me.
« Last Edit: December 19, 2008, 07:09 PM by Edvard »

Josh

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Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes
« Reply #30 on: July 31, 2010, 03:48 PM »
In an attempt to respark a good debate, I would like to bring up the recent actions of Apple with regards to iOS and their software in general. With the recent hit on Apple for it's fiasco with the iPhone4 and software causing "decreased signal strength", I would like to ask how the folks here at DoCo feel about Apple's stance on such issues?

Renegade

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Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes
« Reply #31 on: July 31, 2010, 05:08 PM »
In an attempt to respark a good debate, I would like to bring up the recent actions of Apple with regards to iOS and their software in general. With the recent hit on Apple for it's fiasco with the iPhone4 and software causing "decreased signal strength", I would like to ask how the folks here at DoCo feel about Apple's stance on such issues?

[irrational hatred]Apple... Grrr...[/irrational hatred]

Now, setting aside my irrational hatred for a company run by an irrational jackass, and worshipped by a bunch of other irrational retards...

Oooops... Missed the irrational hatred tags there... Oh well.

iPhone 4 has a definite problem in their hardware, but the underlying OS is very good. Heck. It's BSD, and BSD is simply about the best for a solid TCP/IP stack, so +1 for it anyways.

My problem with Apple is their licensing and their agreements. It's NOT the computer that's the problem. It's the business aspect of the computer. The company is run by a religious tyrant who is nothing short of sinister.

This is a portion of the license email that I send out to people:

Your license code is just for you, and you may use it on multiple computers if you use different computers as long as they are for your own use.

There is such a thing as being decent to people and treating your customers with some trust and respect.

Apple has failed there. Their products are broken not because of the products themselves, but because of how they are licensed.

I am not an OS zealot. I am not a computer language zealot. I am not a technology zealot. However, I am a "decency" zealot. (And hence my irrational hatred for Apple.)

While I do not use much GPL software, I am very glad that it is available. It's a good thing.

I don't use *NIX much as I do primarily Windows programming.

Microsoft treats their developers with much more respect than Apple treats theirs. "Developers? Who needs them? They work for Apple". What does that tell you about Apple and the Apple corporate mentality?

I am a zealot when it comes to supporting decent companies and products. I could list a huge number of software titles that I use and regularly rave about because they are so good. Similarly with a few companies. I can't say much positive about Apple.

That Apple has been so deceitful with their iPhone 4 problems only shows what kind of a company they are, and what the people behind it are like. This is in stark contrast to other companies that admit their errors and try to fix them. The most obvious being Microsoft as they end up with more problems publicly than anyone else.

Apple has shamed itself. "Use duct tape." or "Get a $30 bumper." or "We'll give our idiot users a free bumper." Really? Oh wow Steve, you're soooo generous and kind. Please bend over for a kiss... <puke color="rainbow" sound="loud" />


Sigh... In short, Apple is simply being Apple. "They can do no wrong..."


Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

xtabber

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Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes
« Reply #32 on: August 03, 2010, 08:51 AM »
A couple of academics have now weighed in with a formal paper describing Apple worship as a religion. See this article for links to the abstract and some other information:

Apple as a religion: How the iPhone became divine 'Imbued with sacred significance'

http://www.theregist...apple_as_a_religion/

J-Mac

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Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes
« Reply #33 on: August 03, 2010, 03:29 PM »
Personally I love every OS I've seen!

Personally I hate every OS I've seen.

The above statements are NOT contradictory..... just time-sensitive.

Thank you.

Jim

tomos

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Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes
« Reply #34 on: August 03, 2010, 04:16 PM »
A couple of academics have now weighed in with a formal paper describing Apple worship as a religion. See this article for links to the abstract and some other information:

Apple as a religion: How the iPhone became divine 'Imbued with sacred significance'

http://www.theregist...apple_as_a_religion/

comes with all the characteristics that make me run a mile from any organised religion, and most 'sub-culture' groups* for that matter (even though I have been guilty at times of, eh, slightly over-enthusiastic support of certain softwares - okay, I confess I have been a fan-boy :-[ - but never to this extreme.)

macreligion.png

* not that I consider 'regular' culture much (or any) better... oh dear, I'll shut up now :o
Tom

Tuxman

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Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes
« Reply #35 on: August 03, 2010, 05:45 PM »
A couple of academics have now weighed in with a formal paper describing Apple worship as a religion.
Well, Satanism is some kind of a religion, too.

Renegade

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Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes
« Reply #36 on: August 03, 2010, 06:11 PM »
A couple of academics have now weighed in with a formal paper describing Apple worship as a religion.
Well, Satanism is some kind of a religion, too.

Yeah, but Apple is *actually* twisted & evil. :P

Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

Tuxman

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Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes
« Reply #37 on: August 03, 2010, 06:20 PM »
Although it seems that there are more Appleists than Satanists around.

Josh

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Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes
« Reply #38 on: August 03, 2010, 07:04 PM »
The correct term is MACINTOLOGIST

Tuxman

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Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes
« Reply #39 on: August 03, 2010, 07:06 PM »
No, it would be too close to "science".  :D

Renegade

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Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes
« Reply #40 on: August 03, 2010, 07:11 PM »
No, it would be too close to "science".  :D

True. Even the Scientologist would take offense there~! :)
Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

iphigenie

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Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes
« Reply #41 on: June 19, 2011, 10:41 AM »
The mac religion topic just had a revive last week  :tellme:

Renegade

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Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes
« Reply #42 on: June 19, 2011, 10:57 AM »
The mac religion topic just had a revive last week  :tellme:

WWDC?
Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

iphigenie

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Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes
« Reply #43 on: June 19, 2011, 11:36 AM »
and since i dug the old thread from the grave, let me see what has changed.. not much :) (well, Solaris is gone as an option...)

In the past month I have read at least a dozen of Z sucks I am switching to Y posts in all directions, including this one http://batsov.com/Li...-on-the-desktop.html

now i will agree with most of his list of problems/pain encountered in GNU/Linux systems in the past 10 years, but I also must say that I totally remember having the same kind of problems on windows in the same time period. Driver issues, graphics issues, sound issues, hardware not working after a new version, issues around power management and suspend/restore... I have had near all the problems he lists both in gnu/linux and in windows

at the moment as a minimalist desktop person - as someone who wants an interface that gets out of the way, not in the way - I much prefer the experience I get on the gnu/linux desktop with "old" wms than I do the up-to-date gnome/unity/kde stuff OR windows 7. They all suck, as per rule #1  ;)

I'd like a simple linux desktop/wm but with all my windows apps and tools... and am looking at alternative shells on windows to see if i can simplify it (I used to use Object Desktop suite for that on windows but they have pretty much given up on all the non eye candy tools and features so I have to find a new way to get a clean, keyboard driven interface with right click menu and no clutter...)

Edvard

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Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes
« Reply #44 on: June 19, 2011, 01:56 PM »
One reason I've stuck with Xfce as my Desktop of choice.
It just keeps getting nicer without overhauling the whole gestalt.
Menus, icons, launchers, etc. all right where you want them, doing what they're told.

BTW - I've got a few notches on my belt with Litestep, which can be VERY minimal but retain quite a bit of functionality, and Liteshell is about as minimal as you can get with a desktop right-click menu and configurable hotkeys, if you need assistance, give me a shout.
Caveat: these alternative shells and their communities aren't what they once were, and Vista/7 hasn't played nice. Be careful...




zridling

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Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes
« Reply #45 on: June 20, 2011, 01:33 AM »
Good points on Linux, when you consider the point of interaction for everyone coming to Linux is the particular Desktop Environment -- Xfce, KDE, Gnome, Unity, Enlightenment, etc. If you like one of those, you'll likely enjoy "Linux" in the broad sense. I just need a handful of icons on the desktop and about a dozen in the taskbar. Nothing more complex than one-click and I'm good to go.

iphigenie

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Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes
« Reply #46 on: June 20, 2011, 06:31 AM »
BTW - I've got a few notches on my belt with Litestep, which can be VERY minimal but retain quite a bit of functionality, and Liteshell is about as minimal as you can get with a desktop right-click menu and configurable hotkeys, if you need assistance, give me a shout.
Caveat: these alternative shells and their communities aren't what they once were, and Vista/7 hasn't played nice. Be careful...

I havent tried any yet - being careful! - just made a list of what is available that is from 2010-2011. Ones that caught my eye wich I hadnt heard from before (ok, twas 2004 or 2005 last time i'd looked) were "Cameo" http://cameo.binarybums.com/ (portable, very intriguing), "Emerge desktop" http://emergedesktop.org/, "bblean" http://bb4win.sourceforge.net/bblean/ (attractive since I use fluxbox on Slack but there are a zillion variants none seem all that stable), "Wez’s Evil Shell" http://evildesk.wezfurlong.org/ and "SharpEnviro" http://www.sharpenviro.com/wp

iphigenie

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Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes
« Reply #47 on: June 20, 2011, 06:42 AM »
Good points on Linux, when you consider the point of interaction for everyone coming to Linux is the particular Desktop Environment -- Xfce, KDE, Gnome, Unity, Enlightenment, etc. If you like one of those, you'll likely enjoy "Linux" in the broad sense. I just need a handful of icons on the desktop and about a dozen in the taskbar. Nothing more complex than one-click and I'm good to go.

A presentation I saw recently made the interesting point that if you put a windows user (or mac user) in front of the "big" environments, Kde, Gnome or Unity, they are not impressed. They know their way, but it is very same-ey. And often not quite as polished looking. Whereas if you show someone a customised-to-work barebones wm - with a clean desktop, transparent-ey shells, multiplexers, only a few bars and things that seem to fly on a keystroke... it is more intriguing :)

Finding and learning the tools is the challenge though - obviously on windows I had years and years to find the right tools one by one, and when you get to a new OS it's daunting.

Edvard

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Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes
« Reply #48 on: June 20, 2011, 09:52 AM »
I havent tried any yet - being careful! - just made a list of what is available that is from 2010-2011. Ones that caught my eye wich I hadnt heard from before (ok, twas 2004 or 2005 last time i'd looked) were "Cameo" http://cameo.binarybums.com/ (portable, very intriguing), "Emerge desktop" http://emergedesktop.org/, "bblean" http://bb4win.sourceforge.net/bblean/ (attractive since I use fluxbox on Slack but there are a zillion variants none seem all that stable), "Wez’s Evil Shell" http://evildesk.wezfurlong.org/ and "SharpEnviro" http://www.sharpenviro.com/wp

Emerge and SharpEnviro are very similar, but for Emerge, each "element" (desktop, launcher, menu) is a separate process and has it's own menu-driven configuration.
A bit confusing at first, but less confusing than trying to text-file configure Litestep.
Sharpe is similar, but configured from a central menu/dialog box; I found it to be the more polished of the two.

BBLean proper I found stable enough, and most things can be configured by ctrl-right click menu, but some digging in the text files may be necessary.
Cameo sounds like a variation of the *box shells.

Wez's Evil Shell was too evil for me... it wouldn't run.
I'll have to give it a try in my VMWare XP just to see if it was just a fluke.
« Last Edit: June 20, 2011, 10:01 AM by Edvard »

40hz

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Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes
« Reply #49 on: June 20, 2011, 12:48 PM »
One reason I've stuck with Xfce as my Desktop of choice.
It just keeps getting nicer without overhauling the whole gestalt.
Menus, icons, launchers, etc. all right where you want them, doing what they're told.

+1 w/Edvard. I'm pretty much sold on Xfce for most distros - or Openbox if I'm running CrunchBang Linux.


at the moment as a minimalist desktop person - as someone who wants an interface that gets out of the way, not in the way - I much prefer the experience I get on the gnu/linux desktop with "old" wms than I do the up-to-date gnome/unity/kde stuff OR windows 7. They all suck, as per rule #1  ;)

I'd like a simple linux desktop/wm but with all my windows apps and tools... and am looking at alternative shells on windows to see if i can simplify it (I used to use Object Desktop suite for that on windows but they have pretty much given up on all the non eye candy tools and features so I have to find a new way to get a clean, keyboard driven interface with right click menu and no clutter...)

I think if you shut off the Conky monitor (and didn't use the #! logo "wallpaper" on the desktop) you'd have something very close to what iphigenie is talking about.  ;)

Here's the default desktop for Crunchbang:

CBAngNix.gif

Since the image below strongly resembles what most of my Linux sessions look like, minimal (as in sans GUI) works fine for me about 70% of the time!

CBangNix2.gif

 :Thmbsup:



« Last Edit: June 20, 2011, 01:00 PM by 40hz »