What Makes GLIBC 2.27 Exciting To The Clear Linux Folks

[phoronix]

Phoronix: What Makes GLIBC 2.27 Exciting To The Clear Linux Folks

Released at the beginning of February was Glibc 2.27 and it's comprised of a lot of new features and performance improvements. But what's the best of Glibc 2.27?..

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GLIBC-2.27-Features-For-Clear

[MadCatX]

Since this is phoronix, I have to ask. Are there any pre and post glibc 2.27 benchmarks on some of the common distros against Clear Linux in your pipeline, Michael?

[monraaf]

Michael, honest question: What's with all the hype for ClearLinux? Is performance in benchmark seriously all that counts for you when it comes to choosing a Linux distribution?

What about a security tracker? Where does ClearLinux inform its users about vulnerabilities? For the major Linux distributions, I can check LWN and get a quick overview. I did a quick websearch and couldn't find anything similar for ClearLinux.

What about the software that has been packaged for ClearLinux? Do they have a full TexLive distribution? What about Perl? What about the Python library?

Honestly, I don't understand why some people hype these mini distributions whose sole purpose is apparently to brag about single features like benchmark performance or a shiny desktop but none of these people actually seem to care about the actual usability of such distributions in day-to-day use and the security support for the complete distribution, not just a number of core packages.

Really, being 5% faster in a benchmark is completely irrelevant when the rest of the distribution isn't suitable for day-to-day use.

[Calinou]

Michael, honest question: What's with all the hype for ClearLinux? Is performance in benchmark seriously all that counts for you when it comes to choosing a Linux distribution?

What about a security tracker? Where does ClearLinux inform its users about vulnerabilities? For the major Linux distributions, I can check LWN and get a quick overview. I did a quick websearch and couldn't find anything similar for ClearLinux.

What about the software that has been packaged for ClearLinux? Do they have a full TexLive distribution? What about Perl? What about the Python library?

Honestly, I don't understand why some people hype these mini distributions whose sole purpose is apparently to brag about single features like benchmark performance or a shiny desktop but none of these people actually seem to care about the actual usability of such distributions in day-to-day use and the security support for the complete distribution, not just a number of core packages.

Really, being 5% faster in a benchmark is completely irrelevant when the rest of the distribution isn't suitable for day-to-day use.

Currently, Clear Linux is not really usable as a daily driver, but it's a nice preview of what can be done to improve Linux performance. Its point isn't to replace Ubuntu or Debian; experimentation has its place.

[arjan_intel]

What about the software that has been packaged for ClearLinux? Do they have a full TexLive distribution? What about Perl? What about the Python library?

We currently don't have texlive integrated yet. Wrt perl and python (well, python3, python2 is being phased out slowly), Clear Linux has a pretty reasonable set of content that both performs well and is kept up to date.

[arjan_intel]

Honestly, I don't understand why some people hype these mini distributions whose sole purpose is apparently to brag about single features like benchmark performance or a shiny desktop but none of these people actually seem to care about the actual usability of such distributions in day-to-day use and the security support for the complete distribution, not just a number of core packages.
.

I'll disagree with the characterization of Clear Linux as a "mini distribution"; that's not its goal and most folks would not call something that has both a Gnome 3 and a full machine learning stack as "mini"....

In terms of securitly, Clear Linux is no different than other distros, we scan multiple times per day for CVEs (our tool is available on github and used by other folks as well), we fix any that show up with urgency (obviously based on CVSS severity).. mostly within 24 hours, and generally update packages as a rolling release distro (which also means often we updated to a new minor upstream release before the CVE goes public).

[Vistaus]

I agree with arjan. Plus it's also not "mini" in the sense of "obscure" as Intel is developing it.

[Sonadow]

I'll disagree with the characterization of Clear Linux as a "mini distribution"; that's not its goal and most folks would not call something that has both a Gnome 3 and a full machine learning stack as "mini"....

In terms of securitly, Clear Linux is no different than other distros, we scan multiple times per day for CVEs (our tool is available on github and used by other folks as well), we fix any that show up with urgency (obviously based on CVSS severity).. mostly within 24 hours, and generally update packages as a rolling release distro (which also means often we updated to a new minor upstream release before the CVE goes public).

I say, just ignore those morons and work on ClearLinux the way you envisioned it.

If those complainers could not be bothered to even read the first set of text in the huge banner that clearly says:

Clear Linux* Project for Intel® Architecture

The Clear Linux* Project for Intel® Architecture is a distribution built for cloud and IoT use cases. We want to showcase the best of Intel architecture technology and performance, from low-level kernel features to complex applications that span across the entire OS stack. We're putting emphasis on Power and Performance optimizations throughout the operating system as a whole.

then they have no use for ClearLinux. Typical case of empty vessels and loudest noise.

[pipe13]

Just got back from the Victor Rodriguez Bahena blog post that Michael linked. It's a concise, easy read. Well worth a few minutes.

[starshipeleven]

Michael, honest question: What's with all the hype for ClearLinux? Is performance in benchmark seriously all that counts for you when it comes to choosing a Linux distribution?

What about a security tracker?

Clear Linux is more an experimental test bed than a daily driver.
It is exciting because they are pushing the performance, and since they are opensourced others can take their optimizations for their systems/distros too (I mean distro maintainers or people recompiling their packages, or Gentoo users).