Fedora Present and Future: a Fedora.next 2014 Update (Part I, "Why?")

[lee]

Chris Murphy <lists at colorremedies.com> writes:

> On Mar 23, 2014, at 3:56 PM, lee <lee at yun.yagibdah.de> wrote:
>> 
>> There`s nothing weird or exotic about it.  I`ve always had /usr on its
>> own partition until the F17 installer refused that, which it shouldn`t
>> have.
>
> Old news.
>
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove#I_have_.2Fusr_as_a_separate_partition._What_changes_for_me.3F
>
> and
>
> http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken/

So Fedora failed miserably because these articles point out that /usr
can be mounted read-only and assume that /usr can be on it`s own
partition, maybe shared over network.

And following the arguments for moving everything to /usr, you would
have to say that /usr should be in /boot.  You can then use symlinks
from there.

>> RAID isn`t exotic, either.
>
> It kinda is. The definition of exotic is "not ordinarily encountered."
> And that's even if you look at just the Linux universe, because
> overwhelmingly most users don't use it. If you look at the rest of the
> computing world it's either not an install time option or not
> possible.

It`s a a recipe for failure not to use raid, and which Linux
distribution doesn`t support it?  It`s "ordinarily encountered" not only
with Linux distributions.  Perhaps an overwhelming majority of users use
it, you don`t know that.  You could as well say that being able to
define styles for paragraphs with WYSIWYG word processors is an exotic
feature because the great majority of users don`t use it.

>> I always use separate partitions.  It has lots of advantages.
>
> It also has many disadvantages. Hence LVM thinp and btrfs subvolumes
> as alternatives.

Nobody says that you have to use either --- except the F17 installer not
only telling you but not even allowing you to have /usr on its own
partition like it should be.

>>> I might split off /var on a server but I'd need a remarkably
>>> persuasive use case, and on servers, I use extra-stable distros
>>> without GUIs, not something like Fedora.
>> 
>> /var can get full, and it`s written to, same goes for /tmp.
>
> Use quotas.

Why the hassle?  And quotas don`t magically adjust the performance of
the disks.

>> Nowadays you may have SSDs which supposedly last longer when not written
>> much to but mostly read from, so you might put the partitions that can
>> be read-only on the SSDs and use magnetic disks for things like /var,
>> /tmp, /home and swap.
>
> It's in the realm of 20+GB written per day every day, for the warranty
> period. If you're doing that, get an enterprise SSD. Or stick with
> HDDs.

How long the warranty lasts is pretty irrelevant.

>> Why wouldn`t you use different partitions?  I can see it (and have done
>> it) for when the available disk capacity is extremely limited, but
>> otherwise it doesn`t make any sense and has nothing but disadvantages.
>
> It's cute when people project their world view in such narrow
> terms. Looking over at Windows and OS X, for 20+ years they've had at
> most two partitions, one for boot and one for everything else. OS X
> only just went from one partition for everything to two just a few
> releases ago in order to support full disk encryption (around a decade
> after Linux had it, but then it's also on-the-fly COW online
> convertible bidirectionally). So there isn't an inherent good for
> partitioning. It's useful for certain use cases. It's a negative for
> others.

Windoze is a total mess.  Try to keep the applications you have
installed separate from the data and the system and you`ll see.  I don`t
know what OS X does.  Sure you can mess everything together without
using partitions.  That doesn`t mean it`s a good idea.

>>> But this just illustrates the breadth of scenarios a successful
>>> installer must cope with!
>> 
>> It`s merely a reasonable standard thing to use separate partitions and a
>> requirement to use RAID, and encrypted partitions for laptops, not
>> something in any way unusual.
>
> It is in fact unusual. What you're doing is proposing that what works
> for you, as a default for everyone. And your arguments for changing
> the paradigm are completely uncompelling.

There`s nothing unusual about it.  You may have done things differently,
and whatever reasons you might have for that are not convincing.  That
doesn`t mean that everyone should be forced to do it the same way as you
do.

> "a requirement to use RAID" is particularly irritating because you're
> saying everyone without boot from SAN capability, or a laptop, should
> be required to have two like sized drives to do an install. Otherwise
> it wouldn't be "required". So what you're writing doesn't even make
> sense.

I`m not saying that.  Disks fail, and especially when you have your data
on them, it`s a hassle when it happens and you might lose data.  Backups
only help so much.  If you don`t care about your data and/or don`t need
reliability, don`t use RAID, you`d make things unnecessarily complicated
and be wasting your money.  When you want to keep your data and don`t
want the hassle with failing disks, RAID is a requirement.  Or do you
know something better?

The SAN device you`re booting from doesn`t store data in thin air, does
it?

> The Fedora installer will use existing layouts: partitions, PV/VGs,
> Btrfs, and md RAID. Click on the existing logical device and then
> specify a mount point for it.

Like I said, it finally worked after I created the partitions otherwise.
It still wasn`t easy to tell it what to use for what.

>>  Why not give them a choice, like either cfdisk or
>> parted, then tell the installer what to do with each partition and let
>> them switch between these until they are done
>
> Use kickstart?

What is kickstart?

> I think letting users switch between two tools means both tools are
> failures, or the user is neurotic.

Each user has preferences.  Nobody says that when you can choose between
cfdisk and parted that you are forced to use both.  You can simply use
the one you prefer.

I don`t remember what I used to create the partitions when Fedoras
installer didn`t work, it was either cfdisk or parted and it doesn`t
matter.  I did have to switch between tools, i. e. the installer and a
partitioning tool.  By your logic, both tools were failures, or a user
for whom the installer doesn`t work is neurotic.

Your logic is flawed.  The partitioning tool did it`s job fine.  The
installer failed to do that part of its job, and I`m not neurotic.

Anyway, it is not a failure to give users choices.  It`s merely a week
point of Fedora that it doesn`t give choices and that it hides those
that there are from the users.

> Pick a tool for a task, move on to the next tool. Switching back and
> forth isn't going to be stable. You're talking about a tiny percent of
> users doing what you suggest, which means an infinitesimal number are
> testing it.
>
> Seldom used or seldom tested things have no place in a GUI installer.

Try the Debian installer.


-- 
Fedora release 20 (Heisenbug)