💾 Archived View for midnight.pub › replies › 5996 captured on 2023-03-20 at 18:21:48. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Howdy mate!
~bartender? Whatever the newcomer fancies.
And I ordered coffee already, so I'm all set. Thanks!
smol-world is a journey in my opinion.
I work as a systems engineer. And I am indeed getting paid to understand things like linux kernel modules, debian software packaging and the like. Which is cool. But I feel increasingly uneasy about Linux (the kernel). Why does it need a virtual machine in there (eBPF), which loads code from userspace? Why does it seem to others to be such a good idea to mix and match C and Rust in such a complex project? Is it only me? Am I getting old? Probably. Why do I tell you all this? Is it only me who starts to think that the Linux ecosystem has started to drown under its own weight?
Well, there are alternatives. None of them are sexy, but they are there. Go out, take the Microkernel dev room at FOSDEM as starters. Take a few deep dives in wikipedia. Find all sorts of interesting things.
there is more. Along the way I found "redo", which might some day replace make. And openrc and s6, which I have started to use as a replacement for systemd. I would not call me a "hater", but I do not like the complexity that comes with its code.
Ok, you didn't ask for a lecture, did you? Well, bear with me.
However, I am interested to hear, whether other folks are into finding smaller alternatives for their daily computing needs. Maybe you have something to share. If not about this stuff, I'm still interested to hear about your travels of the interwebs.
Cheers.
~ew
"Why does it need a virtual machine in there (eBPF), which loads code from userspace? "
A one word answer? --- Developers.
Can see your points, though. Had a chuckle seeing a group of folks actually selling a graphical sudo. As if it does not exist in nearly ever modern graphical distro freely? They were raking in $50 a pop off suckers.
We get those same suckers coming in as developers. Well yes, really easy to see your points. "Linux, oh, there goes the neighborhood."
Run Debian here myself at home. I'm mostly just a tinkering hobby hacker, ethical. Not really "formally" learned any language, but can cobble from many to do "stuff". Think if one spends a week "playing around" with ASM, they might better themselves or decide upon an honorable death. Self foot shoot in.
Have given thought to going for LPI 1 system admin course, testing. Not really seeing a market East Coast wise. Everyone is still all happy happy joy joy over Microsoft crap. No explaining that 99% of backend is some form of Unix/Linux anyway, why not keep it simple, silly?
Nope, got to have Access, Exchange, Visual [whatever]. That Microsoft Mushroom Cloud I call it, keeps work in system administration using *nix few and far between.
"You cannot fight nuclear son. Go on home and shelter in place."
And that kind of "turns me off" of trying to get certified. Well, I'm certifiable anyway, but that misses the point. ;)