Lunduke on the end of Linux

Linux Discussion
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In the spirit of Rule 64

USER_LEVEL += $(( $ENCOURAGEMENT * $CRITIQUE * $DETERMINATION ))

Lunduke’s had some very interesting takes lately that I haven’t heard much of elsewhere and they’re quite an eye opener. That isn’t to say they’re all perfect but I think some things ring true.

WireGuard and Wayland for example are considered very positive moves away from OpenVPN and XOrg largerly because of their comparatively simple codebase leading to better security, ease of development, bug finding, ect. The Linux Kernel appears to be on the opposite path adding millions of lines per year without much pressure to do otherwise.

In a perfect World i’d hope the better parts of these criticisms become a call to action and I think Linux is as awesome as it is today because it’s always dissatisfied with itself.

Lunduke on Chris Titus Tech

“Where do you think Linux is gonna go?”

Linux Sucks 2021

(recorded before the return of Stallman)

Odysee: Odysee
YouTube:

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Keep in mind that Lunduke’s Linux sucks broadcasts were all a tongue in cheek look at all the frustrations we have with Linux.

It never meant he hated the OS…

So death of Linux?
I would take that with a grain of salt.

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I think enemies only criticize, fair weather friends only praise and real friends do both.

I never watched much of Lunduke but i’ve adored Linux Sucks for years. Some types of introspection are REALLY hard to deliver and I think that “break it down, build it back up” combo is one of few ways to do that well.

The latest ones have been changing tone but if I put myself in Lunduke’s shoes and authentically believed Linux was crossing a social and technical debt point-of-no-return, then I saw almost no one talking about it… i’d be looking to drive that point home as hard as I possibly could even at the risk of losing my Linux loving audience.

I’m reminded of the old saying…

“Backups are worthless, restores are priceless.”

because you can never honestly say you’ve backed something up till you’ve proven you can restore it.

If Lunduke’s claims are false, what’s the harm in testing what should have already been tested at least among the issues easy to falsify? If it’s already been tested then lets look at the report so we can cheer. If the claims are true… well thank God someone pushed hard enough for a test.

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I watched I think he’s feeling a LOT of heat from being Part of Purism and thats why HE thinks its doomed. (Granted there’s ton wrong with Purism but not the topic) I think he’s slightly right in a sense but it’ll never be Dead . At least from the moment while Linus is in charge. You have fantastic people working on there own fork depending on what Company you go to . I think He’s putting his Feels and he got BURNT from the community by being with Purism .

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Oh man Bryan Lunduke thinks there is a cultural problem in the Linux community stop the presses.

I’m not sure that’s why he “got burnt.” He turned into an unapologetic victim who pretends he got exiled because of his too-subversive-for-the-man big brain opinions and his politics.

Important Edit:

Just to keep things clear, this is not a statement against or mocking Lunduke’s opinions and politics. There are plenty of people around the DLN who identify politically as conservative or libertarian or similar with who I may disagree and have disagreed. We all interact with each other just fine across the DLN and we share ideas and opinions with low to no problems. There are a variety of religious people and non religious people here and we seem to get on okay for the most part. We have engineers, coders, and math people. We have liberal arts and humanities people here too. We all post tech memes and laugh together and we barely ever rag on anyone.

I’m just critical of Lunduke’s ability to hold an opinion or position and have an argument in good faith. Not critical of the content of those opinions or positions.

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Yup and I’m sure if you peddle something for so long you start to believe it so whilst his Linux sucks Video / speeches are supposed to be ironic . I wonder if he straight up does believe it now . He’ll prob of COURSE deny it but that’s probably plays a roll in him thinking about “the end of linux.”

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What makes the DLN community so great imho <3 <3, well said!

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Im familiar with brians stances, but ive always had some questions about them. When people talk about the expanding code of the linux kernel, does that include the addition of new drivers necessary for modern hardware? If so, then I imagine the solution would be to drop support for older hardware, which doesnt sound very awesome to me. Thats personally one of my favorite parts of linux and why i got into it in the first place. watching 32 bit go the way of the dodo is sad even if i understand why. I also see why projects like the BSDs and early linux might need a very small code base considering the amount of people working on the project. Since the amount of eyes on the code is expanding, should the amount of code we accept expand as well? If i remember correctly the smaller code base actually hurt linux. Was it better when linux ran smoother on intel or is it better that BSD doesnt play nicely with AMD all the time just to minimize code?

I understand the concerns over corporate influence in the linux space. I probably have a different reason for that than most, but ultimately I dont know how that balances between adoption and community. Because software relies on hardware that must be corporately controlled, if not owned by the workers themselves, can we ever break loose from corporate influence? If linux is to stay completely devoid of corporate influence can there be any expectation of adoption at a higher level? The thing i like about the GPL vs BSD or MIT licenses is that corporations are beholden to a different standard based on copy left. I prefer GPL3 because it is much more clear about the expectations of corporations using free code.

In a lot of ways, i think brian’s concerns feel more like a nostalgia for a burgeoning world. Like the punks who looked up and saw blink 182 on MTV, brian is seeing linux lose its unlimited potential in favor of a more refined and public image. That feels plenty natural, but im not sold that attempting to go backwards is the solution.

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Yes I completely agree nostalgia on his part Image and the way you present yourself is very important and you know What Brain may not like that change . Thus thinking its dead . When really its not it will grow beyond what we know of it today. Who knows What it will be 100 yrs from now could we even recognize it?
To him thats prob where the concerns lay with him and why he thinks it’ll be “dead” . But really it won’t be .

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That’s a good point, not all size is bad size and “millions of line of code every year” is pretty vague.

Issues with drivers are isolated to specific models and brands, a lot of them are actively maintained by their respective companies and there’s also code quality… i’d rather 10,000 drivers that are easy to maintain than a handful of monolithic spaghetti code ones so size isn’t the ultimate determinant. A lot of it is down to gatekeeping.

Asking myself I wonder where Linux would be without corporate influence? As i’ve gotten deeper into manpages i’m blown away by how many Red Hat and Canonical (Ubuntu) names I keep seeing in Fedora and Debian. They also donate to developer groups and do prizes, the drivers that are running my processor right now were made by freedesktop.org which Red Hat funds, I think they serve a critical money bridge to financial markets and they tend to have a certain clarity of pragmatism that comes from their level of competition.

Then there’s corporate domination… and I think that’s the meat of what Lunduke was getting at.

To most companies Linux is just a natural resource to be exploited and people who make that difficult are increasingly easy to remove. Recent cultural changes have given board of directors incredible power to project fear (even over CEOs and founders) as it’s become somewhat easy to character assassinate just about anyone making them easy to remove if their not cooperative. It can even double as a branding exercise to offset concerns over loss of talent and productivity.

The board of directors of the Linux Foundation is filled with big tech and it’s perhaps no mistake that the ability for individuals to vote for who’s on the board was removed in 2016.

The Linux Foundation is responsible for Torvalds’s paycheck along with funding general Kernel development, running events, training and certifications, open source projects and hosting them such as the Linux kernel, Kubernetes, the Xen Project, Cloud Foundry and so on… that’s quite a lot of influence for the likes of Facebook, Huawei, AT&T and TenCent to start squeezing people that are more interested in Linux than their ability to turn a quick buck and keep development costs low.

Just to say again… nothing’s perfect, I personally love Linux, I haven’t had to use Windows in several years gratefully because of Linux and I think loving something has to be in recognition of all it’s strengths and weaknesses. If nothing else it lets you know when and how to push for making it better if you’re always poking around to understand it.

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General topic discussed on the latest DL!

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Yeah I really enjoyed that episode. My only issue with people saying it’ll end are the ones that have issues with the community not the people who are in charge of it . I also wonder , If those people understand how munch weight they hold in the community. Cause depending on what they say could really damage some one self esteem to even try out Linux . It’s a really important topic . Should not be taking lightly they did a really good job at talking about it .

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Really good episode on the general topic by DLN Xtend:

Researched by Matt of DLN Xtend:

Phoronix report: Jan, 2020

“While the commit count is lower for the year, on a line count it’s about average with seeing 3,386,347 lines of new code added and 1,696,620 lines removed.”

The Linux Kernel Enters 2020 At 27.8 Million Lines In Git But With Less Developers For 2019 - Phoronix

3,386,347 lines added - 1,696,620 lines removed = 1,689,727 lines added

1,689,727 lines added / 4,189 authors = avg. 403 lines added per author

On average only 403 lines were added per author during 2019 as an example of the manageability of these additions when distributed across authors.

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