2010/10/24 Ubuntu Maverick: Plymouth Is the Worst Thing That Happened To Linux | ||
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2010-10-24 01:01
in Linux, Public
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Here is a list of older linux event reports I made before my blog was started, then the rest are below
1996/11/18-21: | Linux Pavillion Comdex Fall 1996 (photos only). I've been going since then to help at the linux pavillion. |
1997/11/18-21: | Linux Pavillion Comdex Fall 1997 (photos only) |
1998/05/28-30: | Linuxexpo 1998 (photos only) |
1998/11/16-20: | Linux Pavillion Comdex Fall 1998 (full report) |
1998/11/11: | Silicon Valley Tea Party (report with pictures) |
1999/02/15: | Windows Refund Day (report with pictures) |
1999/03/20: | SVLUG KTEH night (photos only) |
1999/03/01-04: | LinuxWorld Expo Winter 99 (complete report with many pictures) |
1999/03/31: | Mozilla Party one year anniversary (photos only) |
1999/05/18-22: | Linuxexpo 1999 (complete report with many pictures) |
1999/06/07: | June 99 Balug meeting with Linus |
1999/08/09-12: | LinuxWorld Expo Summer 99 (complete report with many pictures) |
1999/11/15-19: | Linux Business Show at Comdex Fall 1999 (full report with pictures) |
2000/08/14-17: | LinuxWorld Expo Summer 2000 (complete report with many pictures) |
2001/01/17-20: | Linux.conf.au/LCA 2001 (complete report with pictures) |
2001/07/25-28: | OLS 2001 (photos only) |
2001/08/25: | Linux 10th Anniversary (report with pictures) |
2001/09/27-30: | LinuxWorld Expo Summer 2001 report with pictures) |
2001/11/05-10: | ALS 2001 (photos only) |
2002/06/26-29: | OLS 2002 (photos only) |
2003/01/20-25: | LCA 2003 (photos only) |
2003/07/23-26: | OLS 2003 (photos only) |
2004/01/12-17: | LCA 2004 (photos only) |
2004/07/21-24: | OLS 2004 (photos only) |
2005/04/18-23: | LCA 2005 (photos only) |
2006/01/24-28: | LCA 2006 (photos only) |
2007/01/17-21: | LCA 2007 (photos only) |
Here is a list of all the talks I've given:
And below are my blog posts:
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2010/10/24
Ubuntu Maverick: Plymouth Is the Worst Thing That Happened To Linux
So, linux upgrades can always be a bit painful: software gets upgraded, things change (not always for the better), and there is not always a lot of (or any) QA on upgrade paths, so things do break.
There is nothing new there, I've been doing this for 15 years, so I'm used to it.
Just to say that I'm not picking on plymouth, other random things broke during my recent upgrades, and I fixed it (including Xorg switching to kernel modesetting, and requiring i915.modeset=1). Usually it's just a matter of googling for error messages and applying the answers.
(plymouth is a new 'feature' that hides all the boot messages by default, replaces them with a splash screen and tries to capture text output from the boot and log it, which it still does improperly as of today, including by dropping them if there are too many).
A few release backs, the switch to upstart was a bit painful. I can't say I was super thrilled with it, especially when at the time documentation and debugging info was sparse. This has however been fixed (the documentation that is), and while there are still bugglets here and there (statd won't start properly on my laptop), at least my boot doesn't randomly hang on networking dependencies anymore ( https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/499361 ). But the main part is that I'm willing to be more patient and understanding with upstart because it is a clear win for linux: it is good progress on functionality.
And this brings up to the trainwreck otherwise known as plymouth.
So, you might ask, what is so wrong with plymouth? Well, how about this:
So, that's really my beef with canonical on this one: I care much much more about having a system I can upgrade mostly safely like I can in debian, than this graphical crap that is downward hurtful to my system. I really don't care about how windows-like you can make linux look like (up to an un-debuggable and opaque boot), I'm really not interested.
noplymouth INIT_VERBOSE=yes
at the lilo prompt seems to do it for me right now, but where on earth is that documented?
Ubuntu/Canonical, stop the madness, please. Do impose some standards on your eager developers who think they came up with the last 'this is so cool' thing to add to linux, especially when it affects essential parts of the system.
I think I'm also specifically bitter about plymouth in ubuntu because its presence could have been made optional in init scripts (Red Hat even had such support in their init scripts), but in ubuntu "it's obviously good enough for everybody, so eat it and shut up".
For more details on what went wrong this time with plymouth, if you are curious:
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