sysvinit VS initng VS upstart VS launchd (Was: Future New Init for FC7?)

[Trond Danielsen]

2007/4/5, Patrice Dumas <pertusus at free.fr>:
> On Thu, Apr 05, 2007 at 05:30:05PM +0200, Trond Danielsen wrote:
> > 2007/4/5, Patrice Dumas <pertusus at free.fr>:
> > >I think this is a very wrong direction for fedora. Free software is
> > >about choice. And also being able to test innovative technologies.
> >
> > Free software is indeed about choices, but creating a distribution is
> > also about making choices. If the distribution does not make them, but
> > leave them to the user, then a distribution is nothing more than
> > collection of packages bundled together.
>
> I also disagree. There is something between 'a collection of packages
> bundled together' and a distribution where all the choices are made for
> the user. To take the example of Fedora it is more than a collection of
> packages, but not because of the choice of packages bundled, but because
>
> * there are some packaging standards
> * there are some defaults
> * the packages are integrated into the distribution
>
> It was explicit in fedora extras that the only reason not to accept a
> package was a license issue, or a conflict with core. I hope that
> it hasn't changed.
>
> > Power users are indeed welcome to test new things. That does not mean
> > that everything has to be in the main repositories and thereby risking
> > breaking things for many users.
>
> Breaking what? Theya re parallel installable and not installed.
>
> > I remember asking many years on #fedora why some cheezy window manager
> > that I wanted to try wasn't available in Fedora. My question was
> > exactly the same as yours: "Isn't free software about choices?". The
> > answer I got was the same as the one I've given here. This lead me
> > into a dark journey through many distributions, looking for the
> > answer. But eventually I grew up, and wanted a distribution that made
> > some sane decisions for me, and not forcing me to deal with every
> > little detail of the system.
>
> Maybe you are not using the right distribution then. Thanks to fedora
> extras, there are now plenty window managers, including fluxbox, wmx,
> blackbox, fvwm, icewm, mwm, twm, pekwm, windowMaker and many others.
> The only one I know about that I know isn't in fedora is rox.
>
> I reviewed some of these (including icewm, fvwm and pekwm) and I always
> made sure that they were rightly integrated in fedora, by having the
> freedesktop menuu, an entry in /usr/share/xsessions/, using xdg-open
> to open files, htmlview instead of a random browser. That, is our
> packager work, not removing user choice.

Ok, maybe it was a bad example. My point is that there is a
distinction between low level stuff such as kernels, init system and
other basic software, and applications such as wm's and mua's. There
is not problem to provide two or more different email clients, as
there affect each other very little. But something like the init
system would have an impact on all packages that depend on it. That is
why I think it is a bad thing to try to put everything into the
repositories.
-- 
Trond Danielsen