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

[Liam Proven]

On 24 March 2014 16:11, Ralf Corsepius <rc040203 at freenet.de> wrote:
>
> These aren't old-fashioned, these are technically out-dated. Makes a huge
> difference!

I am not sure it does. I would tend to consider them as 2 sides of the
same coin.

> The fact you haven't encountered it doesn't mean there are no use cases.

Agreed. That was my point to Mr Murphy. :¬)

> Just think about non-desktop HW (e.g. phones, tablets, routers, switches,
> NASes), which usually are equipped with different types of memory, being
> used for different purposes ("Linux as firmware").

OK, true, but does Fedora run on any of these? Or even RHEL? I don't think so.

> Definitely. Such setups are not uncommon on servers and are even sold by big
> brands. e.g. HP.
>
> E.g. the HP ProLiant N36/40/54L - These are equipped with a built-in usb-2
> socket, designated to take an USB-stick to boot the OS from.

I have just been robbed of £92 by a bad eBay vendor trying to buy one,
actually, or I would have known this. It was my plan to boot if off a
hard disk, though.

> Similar setups also aren't uncommon on HTPCs, NAS-boxes and similar boxes
> where "non-data partition"-filesystem performance is not of much importance.

Hmm. OK. I will take your word for it; I have some experience with
such things and [a] I have /very/ rarely seen strange partitioning
layouts and [b] I've almost never seen Fedora on them.

> But is it used, is it really accessed? I guess no.

Yes, really, it is. Most commonly 1 LCD/keyboard-with-trackball on a
KVM in each rack.

> Also think about NASes or boxes being used as routers. No need for graphics
> on them.

No need, no, but it is built into even low-end CPUs these days!

> No need to do so. RH has implemented facts which have rendered this
> discussion moot. IMO, some hidden cabal at RH had decided to pick the
> ancient (> 20 years old) idea to abandon separate partions for /usr and /
> and to sell it as "revolutionary novelty", instead of shooting it down such
> proposals as "Windows way of thinking", as it has been done for 20 years
> before :)

Well, actually, I am generally in favour of people reconsidering
tradition and looking for better ways to do things, as a rule.

One of my favourite experimental distros is GoboLinux, which
completely gets rid of the traditional Unix hierarchy; all packages go
in their own subtrees, with plain English names, and the traditional
Unix directories full of huge collections of libraries from hundreds
of different programs is faked with symlinks. It is very clever and
*much* more accessible and comprehensible than traditional Unix
systems.

http://www.gobolinux.org/

I also really like projects like OSv, to design dedicated OSes just to
run inside VMs serving single tasks, reducing the huge duplication
involved in current whole-system-emulation x86 virtualisation.

http://osv.io/

Throwing out tradition is good sometimes. And yes, that will sometimes
break old workflow and practice. That's OK if there is a clear
benefit.

-- 
Liam Proven * Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
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