Linux distributions problems

I use Linux since many years. Like many other developers I was keen on it on studies. Learning new operating system quickly involved me. I started my journey with PLD distribution, commonly used in my academy. I remember like today … I said to myself Let’s start and during weekend I was reading all posts from PLD forum – yes, all of them, one by one. Second step, which probably makes each serious Linux user is switch from currently used system into Linux. In some day you just realise that you work more often on Linux than for example Windows. Most of people stays on that level, I made a step forward and decided to become a PLD developer. After many reported patches, few new Spec files developers addmited me to their body. As you might expect, I was overjoyed, still I committed patches, I tracked when new version of software where released and bumped it in my distribution. Such ordinary work as serial developer.

But, when I cooled of a little, reflection came what am I doing? I searched many Linux forums in exploration clues how to fix some issue. And what is obvious I found out that many other developers make exactly the same work like me, but in favour of other distribution. When I realized that in few days I decided to stop working for PLD.

Sad true about Linux is that so many people make the same work, in other words – wasteing time instead of creating new things. Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean Linux distributions diversity. It’s great when people have different approach to the same problem, but they should work together and learn something from each other. This mainly applies to different software package management systems: rpm, deb, tar. You can’t just like that install package from one system into another. Even worse. Many distributions use the same software package manager system but what is ridiculous you can’t install packages between distributions, because they have:

• different name of packages (requirements),
• different paths where files are installed,
• even different rules for setting package version!

Of course, there are half measures, which allows you transplant package, but they don’t work on each package. For today I don’t see any simple solution of that problem. Obviously big distributions have processing power and they decide who will be on the market. If they start working together then gains of they work will be shared between all of them. But, are they interested to cooperate? I don’t think so. And to be clear, I’m not talking about monopoly on package management system. I think about consistent way to describe building package which might be translated into each system, like Yaml might be translated into Json and vice verse.

Longer usage of Linux distribution might lead you to second problem. At some point you should (sometimes you have to) upgrade your current version into new release. To be honest, only on PLD (on one machine) I made upgrades from Ra (1.0) to Ac (2.0) and finally to Th (3.0) without any issues. But on most common used distributions like Ubuntu this procedure might be painful. Always something blows up – old configuration of X.org server stop working, graphic card driver problem occurs, sound layer on Linux – specially Pulse Audio made me sick many times. As a programmer you know how to deal with it, but issue makes regular user suffer. I’ve talked about upgrades with few people and they left Linux only because they didn’t know how to resolve some problems. Here, without serious approach to the subject, specially creators of distribution, will be hard to react against it. Core packages, not only kernel with modules, but also systemd (yet another monster which replace sysVinit) should have upgrade tests. Like a simple thing: we have predefined configurations of version A and we just check that all of them where upgraded into version B without any problems. A little work with docker and jenkins and we have tests.

And on the end one small idea. Linux might be used more often if installation process would be simple. Yes, I remember how it was in old days – command line, sometimes chroot. Modern Linux distributions right now have good wizard, only few steps, but that’s not what I mean. Still you have to know more about your computer, like graphic and network card and chose proper drivers. So, I would like to have CD, USB (whatever) which detects all devices and suggest the best drivers free and non free. With that report on internet page I chose meta packages, see predefined configuration – paragraph above, like Gnome, Xfce. On the end I receive link to small net installation image which have info about all my needs. During installation of final image in most cases I chose next, next, to confirm licences to non free drivers, etc. Finally, I have fully working system out of the box and perfectly fitted rescue image.

And really the last but not least. Today Bryan Lunduke inspired me to write this post. I have a lot of fun during watching this:

I also have seen few of his previous videos and I think that you will enjoy them too.