Hi, Larry, I am surprised you have so many problems. It looks like
some of the trouble is caused by 3rd party packages. I have seen
two types of trouble: missing shared libraries and dodgy installers.

For shared libraries there is always trouble when installing i.e.
a "we support red hat linux" package on ubuntu. ldd can identify the missing
librarty, but then you need access to the "supported" system so you
can copy the correct library. Sometimes it is quite a chase, I remember
making quite a few hops looking for one of the 32-bit gcc-internal libraries.

For dodgy installers, I always direct them to use /opt or something
similar where they are the least likely to mess up the whole system,
and where they can be removed using "rm -rf /opt" instead of their
own dodgy uninstaller. Next steps I never had to do here is to use
the chroot virtual invironment and the next step of stuffing it
into a virtual machine.

> Next: ... then we will try BSD.

By the vibes I am getting, FreeBSD may be the right thing for you.

There will be some pain switcing from linux "ls" to BSD "ls" and you will
have to copy all the linux shared libraries to get your 3rd party
packages to run, but that's a one-time investment. And for sure,
FreeBSD will not "do a Red Hat" on you.


> If you look at Linux over the last 20 years it has gone no place.

The linux kernel is abolutely excellent. If you need absolute best
drivers, absolute best memory management, absolute best os services,
you want to run the linux kernel (consider, there is fork of FreeBSD,
they run FreeBSD userland on top of the linux kernel!).

If you want to just run some apps, things are different, of course.

> If Linux had any leadership group or company it could have been by now a
> world class OS.

MacOS is the example. Apple took an early BSD OS (NextStep) and
had a run with it. If only we could run MacOS on non-Apple hardware...

> SystemD is a pleague that will kill linux.

Somehow systemd on Ubuntu is much less (say, zero) trouble compared
to RHEL/SL/CentOS. But yes, the less code, the fewer bugs, the fewer problems.

> IBM will abandon the users just as it did with the development of OS/2 ...

Never used OS/2 but I gather people who did still miss it.

But to remember, back when, Red Hat only existed to provide a non-windows OS
for IBM "big iron" machines - massive blade servers, etc - and as IBM exits
from the hardware business (following the steps of Westinghouse, GE & co),
the need for Red Hat to exist also goes away.

> My Boss's words.  Each keystroke or mouse click costs $,  If you measure
> the time it takes to find and run a task the new scheme is many times
> more expensive than running an app with a 4 char. name.

On the music side, it is said that mandolin players are payed per 16th and 32nd note,
On the work side, I wish we were paid per keystoke...

> Sill in search of 6.5 replacement

Probabably the best linux ever. "peak linux", anyone?

But the world moved on, need c++11/17/20, need python3, etc.


K.O.


On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 11:33:36AM -0500, Larry Linder wrote:
> Evaluation criteria.
> 
> Cost of getting a task done X $ / hr.  & $ / keystroke
> 
> Summary:  
> Cent8 we spent about 40 hr working on this and basically got no where.
> 	Score: cost infinity.
> 
> RH 8 took so much fooling around to get a sample we gave up.
> 	Score: cost not defined, never tried it due to complexity of
> requirements to download.
> 	
> Mint 20.1 wee have spent about 40 hr.  We could load it and it worked.
> There were a number of ugly parts to this.
> 
> 1.  It created a extanded fat partition to load the OS, this a 250G SSD
> This is serious problem when you load a bunch of applications and they
> are in /opt and /usr/local etc.
> 
> 2.  The real killer is the absence of /root.  The fist login during
> installation is "whoever", there is no option for "usid" or a home
> directory that is other then /home/whever and userID = 1000.  We set up
> users on /engr/users/whoever with a consistent user ID across all
> systems.  It get started crooked and may not be fixable.  userID is my
> choice and not sysemd's.
> 
> 3.  Passwd and shadowpw, group and shadowgrp are a front - it apears
> systemd keeps another set of files that it uses. It looks OK but these
> are ignored.  Fixing things may be almost impossible.
> 
> 4.  Serious Security flaw.
> When you add "ftp" and "ssh" to system, on the next boot all the users
> displayed on the screen have gone away.  Over night it somehow synced up
> with our server and added a bunch of closed accounts from the server -
> ****
> If you can get access to a network and attch Mint box it will create the
> users that exist on the server even the ones that are set to mode 000.
> These are Complete with account name and userID. !!!!!
> 
> 5.  Last but not least:
> I wanted to install KiCad using the SW manager.  It worked, crated the
> icon and put the files in /usr/bin/1001/bla/bla/bla.  So I can install a
> program.  A typical system in our shop may have 12 logins from engineer,
> software engineer, manufacturing, purchasing etc and the list goes on.
> So each has to load a copy of the program.  Remember owner, groups,
> userID doesn't work properly.  you can inspect the passwd and group, and
> they look good.  Run pwconv and grpconv to update shadows, run the check
> programs it looks good, it still doesn't work.  I have not stumbled on a
> way to set it up so it works. 
> 
> 6. We downloade VMware 16, it install and worked.  Thank You VMware.  We
> are going to buy it.
> 
> 7. Now the real insidous part:  I used the sw manager to remove the
> KiCad and it worked.  Ten minutes later I became root and tried to
> install it again.  It worked but the install was the same place as
> before.  I then removed it and went for another cafeene fix.  It was
> still removing files.  What it was doing was doing was running rm -rf *
> from /  as root.  All there disks about 1.5 T of file were gone.   Nice
> programming botch. 
> It tells you a lot lot about the lack of testing that has gone into
> these systems. 
> Just think if you did this on cloud setup result, a clear blue sky.
> 
> Fortunately we have several back ups.
> 
> 	score: $4000 / 2 programs  - 0 working system  Not a costly as Cent8
> and non available RH.
> 	Trashed DVD and removed.
> 
> Conclusion:  Systems using systemd are not able to be set up to do what
> we need done. You basically have swaped "Bill" computer for "IBM's"
> computer.  You can't set /opt and /usr/local/bin to other disks. We
> don't use LVM.  I can only imagine the cost of running our 50 systems.
> 
> We chucked Cent8, and Mint 20.1 DVD's, and reformated Flash drives.
> 
> Next:  Devian - a fork in Debian with out systemd is next. Std UNIX
> flavor and then we will try BSD.
> 
> If you look at Linux over the last 20 years it has gone no place. things
> are still broken.  Contributors have spent time working on eye candy,
> hiding functionality and trying to make it like Windows 10 - another
> convoluted disaster. It is "moron aware" sw.
> 
> If Linux had any leadership group or company it could have been by now a
> world class OS. the 20 years have been wasted, Windows 10 would never
> have happened, you wouldn't have a zillion distrobutions that have the
> same flaws.
> 
> SystemD is a pleague that will kill linux.  IBM will abandon the users
> just as it did with the development of OS/2 and what MS did with windows
> 3.0.  Don't trust them.
> 
> My Boss's words.  Each keystroke or mouse click costs $,  If you measure
> the time it takes to find and run a task the new scheme is many times
> more expensive than running an app with a 4 char. name. 
> 
> Sill in search of 6.5 replacement
> 
> Larry Linder

-- 
Konstantin Olchanski
Data Acquisition Systems: The Bytes Must Flow!
Email: olchansk-at-triumf-dot-ca
Snail mail: 4004 Wesbrook Mall, TRIUMF, Vancouver, B.C., V6T 2A3, Canada