CentOS - Feb 2015 - CentOS 7: software RAID 5 array with 4 disks and no spares?

On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 5:47 AM, Dennis Jacobfeuerborn
<dennisml at conversis.de> wrote:
> I think the problem is that you simply have to draw a distinction
> between technology and product.
> The rise of the Linux desktop will never happen because Linux is not a
> product but a technology and as a result has to be a jack of all trades.
I'm unconvinced. True, Chromebooks uses the linux kernel, and thus it
qualifies, sorta, as Linux desktop. But this is something analogous to
OS X using a FOSS kernel and some other BSD stuff, but the bulk of it
is proprietary. Maybe Chrome isn't quite that proprietary, but it's
not free either. And Chrome OS definitely is not jack of all trades.
What it can run is very narrow in scope right now.


> The reason Apple is so successful I believe is because they understood
> more than others that people don't care about technology but want one
> specific consistent experience. They don't core how the harddisk is
> partitioned.
> So I can see the rise of the "X desktop" but only if X is willing
to
> have its own identity an eschew the desire to be compatible with
> everything else or cater to both casual users and hard-core admin types.
> In other words the "X Desktop" would have to be a very
opinionated
> product rather than a highly flexible technology.
Hmm, well Apple as a pretty good understanding what details are and
aren't important to most people. That is, they discriminate. People do
care about technologies like disk encryption, but they don't care
about the details of how to enable or manage it. Hence we see both iOS
and Android enable it by default now. Change the screen lock password,
and it also changes the encryption unlock password *while removing*
the previous password all in one step. On all conventional Linux
distributions, this is beyond confusing and is totally sysadmin
territory. I'd call it a bad experience.

OK so that's mobile vs desktop, maybe not fair. However, OS X has one
button click full disk encryption as opt in post-install (and opt out
after). This is done with live conversion. The user can use the
computer normally while conversion occurs, they can put the system to
sleep, and even reboot it, and will resume conversion when the system
comes back up. Decrypt conversion works the same way. They are poised
to make full disk encryption a default behavior, without having
changed the user experience at all, in the next major release of the
software. I don't know whether they'll do it, but there are no
technical or usability impediments.

Linux distros experience on this front is terrible. Why? Linux OS's
don't have a good live conversion implementation (some people have
tried this and have hacks, but no distro has adopted this); but Ok the
installer could just enable it by default, obviating conversion. But
there's no one really looking at the big picture, looking at dozens of
packages, how this affects them all from the installer password
policy, to Gnome and KDE. You'd need the add user GUI tools to be able
to change both user login and encryption passphrase passwords, to keep
them in sync, and remove the old one. And currently LUKS has this 8
slot limit, which is probably not a big problem, but might be a
sufficient barrier in enough cases that this needs extending.

And so on...



-- 
Chris Murphy

On 19.02.2015 19:41, Chris Murphy wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 5:47 AM, Dennis Jacobfeuerborn
> <dennisml at conversis.de> wrote:
>> I think the problem is that you simply have to draw a distinction
>> between technology and product.
>> The rise of the Linux desktop will never happen because Linux is not a
>> product but a technology and as a result has to be a jack of all
trades.
> 
> I'm unconvinced. True, Chromebooks uses the linux kernel, and thus it
> qualifies, sorta, as Linux desktop. But this is something analogous to
> OS X using a FOSS kernel and some other BSD stuff, but the bulk of it
> is proprietary. Maybe Chrome isn't quite that proprietary, but it's
> not free either. And Chrome OS definitely is not jack of all trades.
> What it can run is very narrow in scope right now.
> 
> 
> 
>> The reason Apple is so successful I believe is because they understood
>> more than others that people don't care about technology but want
one
>> specific consistent experience. They don't core how the harddisk is
>> partitioned.
>> So I can see the rise of the "X desktop" but only if X is
willing to
>> have its own identity an eschew the desire to be compatible with
>> everything else or cater to both casual users and hard-core admin
types.
>> In other words the "X Desktop" would have to be a very
opinionated
>> product rather than a highly flexible technology.
> 
> Hmm, well Apple as a pretty good understanding what details are and
> aren't important to most people. That is, they discriminate. People do
> care about technologies like disk encryption, but they don't care
> about the details of how to enable or manage it. Hence we see both iOS
> and Android enable it by default now. Change the screen lock password,
> and it also changes the encryption unlock password *while removing*
> the previous password all in one step. On all conventional Linux
> distributions, this is beyond confusing and is totally sysadmin
> territory. I'd call it a bad experience.
> 
> OK so that's mobile vs desktop, maybe not fair. However, OS X has one
> button click full disk encryption as opt in post-install (and opt out
> after). This is done with live conversion. The user can use the
> computer normally while conversion occurs, they can put the system to
> sleep, and even reboot it, and will resume conversion when the system
> comes back up. Decrypt conversion works the same way. They are poised
> to make full disk encryption a default behavior, without having
> changed the user experience at all, in the next major release of the
> software. I don't know whether they'll do it, but there are no
> technical or usability impediments.
> 
> Linux distros experience on this front is terrible. Why? Linux OS's
> don't have a good live conversion implementation (some people have
> tried this and have hacks, but no distro has adopted this); but Ok the
> installer could just enable it by default, obviating conversion. But
> there's no one really looking at the big picture, looking at dozens of
> packages, how this affects them all from the installer password
> policy, to Gnome and KDE. You'd need the add user GUI tools to be able
> to change both user login and encryption passphrase passwords, to keep
> them in sync, and remove the old one. And currently LUKS has this 8
> slot limit, which is probably not a big problem, but might be a
> sufficient barrier in enough cases that this needs extending.
I'm not sure why you seem to disagree with what I wrote
("unconvinced")
and then basically say what I was saying.

Linux with a thousand knobs is never going become popular. Instead
somebody has to go and create an opinionated system where most knobs are
removed and replaced by sane/good/useful defaults. Like Google with its
Chromebooks.

Regards,
  Denis

Dennis Jacobfeuerborn <dennisml at conversis.de>
> I'm not sure why you seem to disagree with what I wrote
("unconvinced")
> and then basically say what I was saying.
you: result has to be a jack of all trades.

me: Chrome is not jack of all trades (yet) yet is very successful/growing

But also I'm unconvinced in general. I don't know how this all plays
out. But you and I are definitely on the same page with respect to
"Linux with a thousand knobs" popularity contest.

Granted, Windows made this work along with an army of sysadmins, so
there will be the cases where schools and governments (e.g. M?nchen,
Brasilia, etc.) and some businesses can make that work. Hopefully
there's enough understanding this is "freedom/libre software" and
not
"no cost" software. That former proprietary software license budget
needs to somehow get divvied up to e.g. the Document Foundation, Linux
Foundation, FSF, whatever. The concept that's important is not "no one
owns the software" it's "everyone owns the software". I think
it's
really questionable having public dollars spend money on license fees
especially when proprietary formats get used to store public data (all
of it is public data ultimately).

But, overwhelmingly (obviously) where Linux OS's are popular are the
totally sysadmin free ones that actually have polish: Chrome OS,
Android/Cyanogen. I think it's the polish, not the fact they're mobile
OS's, that make them successful.

Kinda jaw dropping is that Microsoft is starting to "get it" more than
Apple when it comes to being a better citizen on multiple platform,
and they've even been contributing to the linux kernel for a while,
and open sourcing some of their own stuff, and cooperating with the
Samba folks to make everything work better. Not perfect of course, but
Apple, as much as they some things right, they really face plant in
other areas. Most of their open source effort is languishing.

-- 
Chris Murphy