Erik Johnsondistractal@hachyderm.io
Aug 10, 2026, 4:38 PMReplies
- Erik Johnsondistractal@hachyderm.ioAug 10, 2026, 4:41 PM
It's times like this I'm glad I'm on Debian stable.
James WidmanJamesWidman@mastodon.socialAug 10, 2026, 4:53 PM@distractal coooooll... cool cool cool cool cool...
well i guess it's extra appropriate to have a penguin for a mascot now (because all the other penguins will be watching the water see if 7.2 becomes a leopard seal's early lunch or something)
- James WidmanJamesWidman@mastodon.socialAug 10, 2026, 5:10 PM
@distractal But ofc the bigger question is whether the new code being generated actually lives in the head of any human being.
So... hopefully that fork begins sooner rather than later.
Daniel GibsonDoomed_Daniel@mastodon.gamedev.placeAug 10, 2026, 8:54 PM@JamesWidman @distractal
I recently learned why official Linux (kernel) documentation is so utterly lacking: Apparently information in commit messages and bugreports are considered sufficient documentation - "People should be able to use search engines or AI, right?"However, there will be no (viable) fork.
The Linux kernel is just too big for this to be feasible without massive resources.- Daniel GibsonDoomed_Daniel@mastodon.gamedev.placeAug 10, 2026, 8:55 PM
@JamesWidman @distractal
Similar with other free operating systems (*BSD, …) taking Linux' place (esp. on the desktop) - just the GPU drivers are so massive monsters that it's not feasible to recreate them in competitive quality (and if you "just port" them from Linux you inherit all that slop code).
And then there's shittons of quirks for shitty hardware that are needed to make things like suspend work on most consumer devices... - Erik Johnsondistractal@hachyderm.ioAug 10, 2026, 9:14 PM
@Doomed_Daniel @JamesWidman RE: kernel docs, WOW.
That's... incredibly amateurish and naive.
- Erik Johnsondistractal@hachyderm.ioAug 10, 2026, 9:17 PM
@Doomed_Daniel @JamesWidman Further, it's anti-spirit-of-open-source. It means that they are knowingly gatekeeping (albeit through laziness and incompetence, and not paywalls or something) access and deterring people who are not of a certain level of technical skill or initiation.
- Daniel GibsonDoomed_Daniel@mastodon.gamedev.placeAug 10, 2026, 9:20 PM
@distractal @JamesWidman
It's not even just laziness (or lack of time), I recently contributed a quirk to a kernel module that can be enabled with a parameter, and I wanted to document it in a document that holds similar information and was told that this kind of information is not wanted there.Maybe that guy was just an outlier (big kernel contributor though, maintaining some subsystems, not some rando), but it indicates a pretty misguided culture.
- Erik Johnsondistractal@hachyderm.ioAug 10, 2026, 9:21 PM
@Doomed_Daniel @JamesWidman Holy shit. That's so antithetical to what they are claiming to be doing.
- Daniel GibsonDoomed_Daniel@mastodon.gamedev.placeAug 10, 2026, 9:17 PM
@distractal @JamesWidman
It certainly explains the state of things.I certainly am able to use git blame on kernel source and follow links from commit messages etc to hopefully find context for a kernel module parameter. But many people are not, and either way it's really fucking annoying and should not be "normal" or expected.
- Erik Johnsondistractal@hachyderm.ioAug 10, 2026, 9:18 PM
@Doomed_Daniel @JamesWidman Starting to think that "Linux" should only be considered the first draft of a true FLOSS OS.
- Erik Johnsondistractal@hachyderm.ioAug 10, 2026, 9:20 PM
@Doomed_Daniel @JamesWidman Tangentially -- is there a better term for this that isn't tied to Stallman?
- Daniel GibsonDoomed_Daniel@mastodon.gamedev.placeAug 10, 2026, 9:28 PM
@distractal @JamesWidman
no idea, I always found those fights about the "correct" term like "open source" vs "free software" silly, and now it turns out that even the ones who pretended to tie ethics to it were mostly full of shit and that the BSD people, who were generally more pragmatical about things, often take a stance against slop while Linux embraces it.FWIW Stallman dislikes "Open Source" so why not just stick to that term
- Erik Johnsondistractal@hachyderm.ioAug 10, 2026, 9:30 PM
@Doomed_Daniel @JamesWidman I like his concept of "free as in free speech" even if he's an asshole.
I think it's a worthy aim to make something that is just supposed to be for anyone, and they can use it and modify it, no restrictions, and it's part of the development process to make it as accessible and widely usable as possible.
- Daniel GibsonDoomed_Daniel@mastodon.gamedev.placeAug 10, 2026, 10:13 PM
@distractal @JamesWidman
Yes, that's a great concept.I just DGAF about specific terms like OS vs FOSS vs FLOSS or whatever that only a couple of nerds understand anyway. doesn't help if key people defining it turn out to be cunts.
"open source" at least is somewhat clear (unlike "free software" that's easily confused with "freeware") and further ethical considerations should probably explained where needed instead of encoded into some cryptic acronym.