On 10/11/2014 12:49 PM, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
On Sb, 11 oct 14, 12:19:29, Marty wrote:>Could it be that a modular design for such complex tasks becomes too >difficult to *do it right*? I don't know, but I think given its history, the burden of proof is on monolithic, not modular design. A better question may be whether a distributed volunteer project can do real system architecture? (Where is CERN when you need them?)Who's history, Linux' (the kernel)? :p
I was thinking of Windows, but opened Pandora's box instead. :/
Couldn't it be that the fact that so many are embracing the "monolithic" design of systemd is a sign that the modular design was... suboptimal and nobody came up with a better one?
Modular design addresses large complex system design, and it seems counter intuitive to say that higher complexity can favor monolithic design. Maybe the people "embracing" don't fully understand this, or just don't care. It's one of the classic debates of computer science, but for unix in particular, modular design has always been the time tested, core design philosophy.
It seems ironic that just at the point where unix design superiority is enabling it to overtake Windows in some areas, we get a monolithic rewrite of the core system. In their minds, it seems, unix modularity is a bug and Windows is the model for fixing it.
Components like sysvinit are dinosaurs, but modularity was the key design feature that made piecewise-replacement possible while keeping the whole modular system running smoothly. They threw out the methodology for no sound technical reason, that I can see. They replaced the Unix tool box with this:
http://partsolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Worlds_largest_Swiss_Army_knife_wenger_giant_knife.jpgIt is no coincidence that it promotes vendor lock-in extending from boot to DE. It's a predictable result of their monolithic design philosophy.
Looking at the bright side, now that Debian is in the business of replacement monolithic OS's, let's include Cyanogenmod and Chrome OS. The future is mobile. :)