The New GNU News Of 2015

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The New GNU News Of 2015

As part of our round-ups of the most popular open-source/Linux content over the course of the year, many year-end performance benchmarks, etc, here's a look at the most exciting GNU news of the year...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Most-Viewed-GNU-News-2015

[Michael_S]

That's mostly negative stuff. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. On one side, controversies and disappointment get a lot of attention.

On the other side, the Free Software Foundation and GNU project really aren't conquering the world like their supporters would like. I don't blame the FSF for that. If the only laptop that fully respects your freedom is seven years old, it's going to be crazy difficult to convince the average person to sacrifice their 2015 Macbook/Ultrabook/whatever with Netflix and Hulu and Amazon Prime and Google Play and iTunes for something with a street value of $75 and only creative commons content and free software games.

But just because we're losing the battle, that does not mean fighting it is wrong. Our privacy and our rights can only be protected by using free software.

[Calinou]

Meanwhile, free software (including GNU software) is better than ever. For example, look at the new GIMP and Guile sites.

There's no need to be overly pessimistic.

[Michael_S]

Meanwhile, free software (including GNU software) is better than ever. For example, look at the new GIMP and Guile sites.

There's no need to be overly pessimistic.

Well, GNU has two goals that are tied together, right? Goal 1 is making excellent free-as-in-freedom software. Goal reached. Goal 2 is persuading the general public to switch from proprietary software to free-as-in-freedom software. The GNU foundation is running towards that goal as fast as they can go, but the governments and businesses of the world stuck the goal on a plane, and that plane is in the area moving away from the runner at Mach 3.

There is much to lament.

[matsbtegner]

You don't have to go so far as running GNU/Hurd if you want to avoid systemd. GNU/Linux distributions such as Gentoo, LFS and Slackware still use OpenRC or System V init.

[Michael_S]

You don't have to go so far as running GNU/Hurd if you want to avoid systemd. GNU/Linux distributions such as Gentoo, LFS and Slackware still use OpenRC or System V init.

Right.

But further, the biggest problem with systemd is not technical: it's the community schism and endless flamewars over it. If the collective free software nerds had taken half the energy we put into systemd and turned that into writing free software, we'd all be running Linux desktops with Wayland and the Wine project would support Windows 7 applications better than Windows 10 does.

[Nelson]

Right.

But further, the biggest problem with systemd is not technical: it's the community schism and endless flamewars over it. If the collective free software nerds had taken half the energy we put into systemd and turned that into writing free software, we'd all be running Linux desktops with Wayland and the Wine project would support Windows 7 applications better than Windows 10 does.

I think you're a little too overly optimistic about the effort people put in to arguments and the ability to harness that energy. The most vocal systemd critics don't contribute anything. It's just noise and it shall pass.