The Future of GNU/Linux

So let's discuss the current and upcoming developments in GNU/Linux, because from what it looks like, there's gonna be major shifts happening in the next few years that will make everything look and work far different from how it has over the last decade or more.

First is Wayland. This is set up to be the replacement for X, which has been used on UNIX and UNIX-likes since forever.
While it was suspected that such a dramatic shift would require a ridiculous amount of porting work, the fact that GTK and Qt have both added support for it, and that popular distros like Ubuntu, Fedora, and eventually Debian, are starting to ship with GNOME Wayland out of the box suggests that the switch will happen much sooner than we thought.
wayland.freedesktop.org/

Then there's Pipewire. From what I can tell, PulseAudio was started in 2004, and JACK has been around for a similar amount of time. Pipewire plans to replace both of these, while also including enhanced video support.
pipewire.org/

And of course, the new application distribution systems. The most popular of these would be Flatpak, but I'll also throw in the other two. I honestly don't fully understand these yet, but I can tell that they will be making a big change in how GNU/Linux works.
flatpak.org/
snapcraft.io/
appimage.org/

Flatpack won't change how GNU/Linux works but how proprietary software can be distributed.

Do you think the existence and rise in popularity of such a system will make it more likely for Adobe to port Photoshop to GNU/Linux?

unlikely, the target market of photoshop is not using linux based OSes.. if they ever need to edit something they fire up gimp or inkscape + VMs make it usable quite nicely

examples of professional software with full linux ports: Mathematica, Maple etc. they maybe even sell more copies for *nix than for Windows

>Wayland
three reasons I still use X:
1)login into remote ssh with -X option (to spawn X windows in my laptop served thru ssh)
2)waylands admin:/// strangeness for running root apps
3)no brightness control for OLED on wayland (yea I know, thats an elitists problem)

If Adobe makes that port Windows is dead and burried. Microsoft has a lot of money to spare to prevent this.

Wayland can't be tunneled over ssh? If that's true than don't fear for X because that feature is pretty critical for a lot of enterprises.

>If Adobe makes that port Windows is dead and burried
That's what I was getting at. I know we have GIMP, and it's great, but there are many people who will never stop using Photoshop.

If we get a port, Windows is 100% dead.
Didn't know X had that. Not really sure what the purpose of that would be, but I guess that's a feature.

Sorry if I got this wrong for you. Wayland also has this feature, but it regulary breaks down.

Use case:
ssh -X serve.ip
gnuplot render-me-an-image-pls-options

X will always pop up, Wayland sometimes gets everything wrong. Maybe I should test a new version.

Maybe Xwayland applications work better than native Wayland applications at this time?

>If we get a port, Windows is 100% dead.
imagine being this dilusional

>imagine being this dilusional
imagine spelling delusional like that

there's no future for linux
the kernel is too big

Well yeah it's big.
It has to be in order to support all the hardware it supports.

Too big? Compared to other kernels? Like which one?

bump + akarin

what did he mean by this?

>wayland
>freedesktop gang
can't take screenshot unless WM has functionality built in
can't xdo
can't "muh network transparency"
half-baked interfaces outside of core pixel pushing
>pipewire
>redhat
>freedesktop gang
>"like pulseaudio, but for video"
no comment
>app bundling systems
have fun patching critical bugs and vulns in your thousand copies of a library
especially when a decent chunk of these "apps" are proprietary abandonware, or their vendor doesn't care to fix old versions

yeah, things are looking real fucking peachy with this discount Windows shit coming

Linux turning into shit, Windows being shit already and macOS on the side getting more shit

This is sad, sad.

>>freedesktop gang
Oh no! The people who are responsible for developing the foundation for the linux desktop... are developing the foundation for the linux desktop?
THE HORROR!
>can't take screenshot unless WM has functionality built in
Even obscure shit like sway already has this figured out.
>can't xdo
What purpose could there possibly be for this?
"I need to close a window. Hmmm."
"Should I click the X in the top right/left?"
"Should I use a keyboard shortcut?"
"Nah, I should totally open up an extra terminal and use this random tool on github"
>can't "muh network transparency"
Apparently according to other anons, this feature is pretty critical. Hopefully it gets made.
>half-baked interfaces outside of core pixel pushing
what did he mean by this?
>>pipewire
>>redhat
But not Poettering. That's an improvement.
>>freedesktop gang
Again, what the fuck is your problem with freedesktop?
>>"like pulseaudio, but for video"
>no comment
yeah that's kinda weird, but on the plus side, there will be only one additional sound server rather than two: JACK and PulseAudio.

>Linux turning into shit
wat

>not aware of freedesktop's reputation
>fuck separation of concerns, who cares
>every bloody WM needs to implement all functionality ever needed

obviously I'm shitposting, but after learning a bit more than "wayland newer than xorg", I sure as fuck ain't gonna be an early adopter, even tho video tearing is a fuckin' embarrassment. I prefer to not have yet more freedoms/choice taken away from me, which is what a transition to Wayland/sway looks like at the moment.
Not making an ideological argument here, merely a risk reduction one. Cuz when the devs suddenly decide your workflow is not a priority, lack of "user-serviceability" means you're SOL. As is the case with DE monoliths, Wayland's "WM needs all features hardcoded cuz we didn't design protocols when needed", various types of Poetterware and so on.
Sway and the KDE gang were working on a screenshot-related protocol, but the fact they have to do that (and we all know how well the GNOME devscum are going to want to play along) shows that Wayland is far from a drop-in replacement for the Xorg ecosystem for the time being.

System d not being auditable is the initial decline into shit and all popular distros are using it. Linux is pointless if you can't audit it its like having a closed source os which osx rapes it

>osx rapes it

Not sure about this, I mean there's this new fucking bug with app store settings. That doesn't bode well.

osx is buggy shite

>what is openssl
semi-kidding

interestingly
>redhat introduces SELinux, an overly-complicated clusterfuck project into linux
>redhat introduces systemd, an overly complicated clusterfuck project into linux
PulseAudio, dbus, the attempt at kdbus, etc
the behemoth with strong connections to the US defense budget suckers seems to be operating with a bit of a pattern

Well Wayland has an X compatibility layer. If I remember right you can actually run a full X server as a Wayland client, and anything that needs real gen-u-wine X can use it while letting everything else talk to Wayland natively. I bet this sort of thing's gonna be a common configuration for years, actually.

it has fewer lines of code than the kernel by an order of magnitude. If Systemd is too much of a risk for you, then Linux should have already been too much of a risk for you.

>it has fewer lines of code than the kernel by an order of magnitude. If Systemd is too much of a risk for you, then Linux should have already been too much of a risk for you.
This. Don't get me wrong, it's had some shitty design decisions, but I really don't buy this conspiracy theory about it.

>shitware by shitdevs has fewer LoC than project by devs that have proven themselves to not be behaving like pissy teenagers
wow, how will sysvtards ever recover

>how will sysvtards ever recover
They won't sysv was garbage. Even if you don't like systemd, there are way better options out there now like OpenRC and Runit.

>Some of you might now ask themselves "Is systemd THAT bad?". And my answer to it is: No. It is even worse. Systemd developers split the community over a tiny detail that decreases stability significantly and increases complexity for not much real value. And this is not theoretical: We tried to build Data Center Light on Debian and Ubuntu, but servers that don't boot, that don't reboot or systemd-resolved that constantly interferes with our core network configuration made it too expensive to run Debian or Ubuntu.
>Think about it not in a few repeating systemd bugs or about the insecurity caused by a huge, monolithic piece of software running with root privileges. Why do people favor Linux on servers over Windows? It is very easy: people don't use Windows, because it is too complex, too error prone and not suitable as a stable basis. Read it again. This is exactly what systemd introduces into Linux: error prone complexity and instability.
>With systemd the main advantage to use Linux is obsolete.

yup, I was mocking lennartbots' favorite "sysvinit or systemd, no other options exist" false dichotomy

>Red Hat has managed to do what everybody compains about Windows. Embrace Extend & Extinguish. Open source means jack squat when 1 or 2 corporte entities control the whole infrastructure stack.

>Redhat wanted more control of Linux so they pushed systemd.
>GNOME developers are easily distracted by shiny things (as proof I submit GNOME 3) so they went ahead and made GNOME dependent on it.
>And then Debian (which most Linux distributions are based upon) adopted systemd because GNOME depended on it. There were some other excuses, but that's the biggest reason.
>You can blame Redhat and Debian for this clusterfuck, and really, only a small handful of people in the Debian community are actually responsible for Debian's involvement. Debian's leaders were split almost down the middle on whether they should go to systemd. This is why major changes should require a 2/3 vote (or more!)

>I came to announce routinely that Solaris pre-Version-10 had the worst init system in the word to admin, but the worst Unix in the world was definitely HPUX because HPUX was the only Unix where I could not, with absolute certainty, know that if I kill -9 a process - that process would definitely be gone.
>SystemD brought to Linux an init system that replicated everything I used to hate about the Solaris 8/9 init system - but what's worse than that, it brought the one breakage that got me to declare HPUX the absolute worst unix system in history: it made kill -9 less than one hundred percent absolutely, infallibly reliable (nothing less than perfect is good enough - because perfect HAS been achieved there, in fact outside of HPUX and SystemD - no other Unix system has ever had anything LESS than absolute perfection on this one).
>I absolutely despise it. And yet I'm running systemd systems - both professionally and at home, because I'm a grown man now, I have other responsibilities, I don't want to spend all my time working and even my home playing-with-the-computer time is limited

>I live with systemd. I tolerate it. It's not an unsurvivable trainsmash -but I still hate it. It still makes my life harder than it used to be.
>It makes my job more difficult and time-consuming. it makes my personal ventures more complicated and annoying. It adds no value whatsoever to my life
>the best thing I can say about it is that it adds LESS extra effort than avoiding it does, but that's not because it's superior to me in any way - it's because it's taken over every distro with a decent sized package repository that isn't "built-by-hand" like arch or gentoo.

RedHat CEO
>It is best not to blame systemd for problems that go away when you stop using systemd

Solus is the future.

>Windows is a very complex system. Not necessarily because it needs to be complex, but rather because of "wouldn't it be great if we could also..." thinking.
>systemd now brought this to the Linux world. Yes, it can do a lot. But unfortunately it does so, whether you need it or not. And it requires you to take these "features" into account when configuring it, even if you have exactly zero use for them
>systemd is as overengineered as many Windows components. And thus of course as error prone. And while it can make things more manageable for huge systems, everything becomes more convoluted and complicated for anyone that has no use for these "wouldn't it be great if it also..." features.

pic related

also this thread had nothing to do with systemdicks. We all know it's cancer.

>The Future of GNU/Linux
>systemd not related

At this point though, systemd is the present of GNU/Linux.

Although if we're gonna be on this topic for the ten millionth time, we might as well bring up the possibility that systemd will be replaced. I mean PulseAudio was Lennartware, and Redhat is now getting rid of it.

>PulseAudio was Lennartware, and Redhat is now replacing it with even more EnterprisePulseAudioVideo
if we apply the situation to systemd, I don't think that's very encouraging
>At this point though, systemd is the present of GNU/Linux.
mainstream users, yes
thankfully Debian is still mostly functional without it if one doesn't need Gnome garbage

>Systemd is the most visible part of a clear trend within Red Hat, consisting in an attempt to make their particular version of Linux THE canonical Linux, to the point that, if you are not using Red Hat, or some derived distribution, things will not work. In essence, Red Hat is attempting to out-MS MS by polluting and warping Linux needlessly but surely. The latest: they have come up with the 'timedatectl' command, which does exactly the same as 'date'. The latter is to be deprecated. Red Hat, the MS wannabee. They will not pull it off, but they are inflicting a lot of damage on Linux in the process.

>They will not pull it off
not too certain about that one tho