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xgivolari
n00b
Joined: 26 Jul 2021
Posts: 73
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 Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2021 8:02 pm Post subject: What software do you avoid, and why? |
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I'd like to hear your reasonig on why you avoid specific software, such as elogind or dbus, and what you replace it with. Systemd goes without saying  |
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alamahant
Advocate
Joined: 23 Mar 2019
Posts: 3879
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| Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2021 8:29 pm Post subject: |
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Web browsers because they take forever to compile.
Rust for same reason.
I use -bin instead.
Gnome and kde because IMHO they are bloated and disgusting.
I use xfce instead.
I have experienced and currently maintain a kit*-pam(only partially)-udisks-elogind-ipv6-bluetooth-less install but its more out of experimentation and fun for being radical than real necessity.
The feeling of putting that on the face of developers and organizations who want more and more control and resources of your machine filling it up with useless bloat --oh that is a great feeling!
And Gentoo gives you the means.
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Last edited by alamahant on Tue Aug 24, 2021 8:46 pm; edited 4 times in total |
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NeddySeagoon
Administrator
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54270
Location: 56N 3W
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| Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2021 8:30 pm Post subject: |
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xgivolari,
My package.mask
| Code: | # an over my dead body hard mask
# dump GNOME and anything else that has this as a hard dependency at any version
sys-apps/systemd
# go back to a static /dev
sys-fs/eudev
sys-fs/udev
sys-auth/polkit
sys-auth/consolekit
media-sound/pulseaudio
net-dns/avahi |
elogind is inferred masked as it depends on virtual/udev.
Its not replaced, its all left out. It does mean I have a bit of of manual configuration to do in exchange for excluding all the autoblackmagic.
_________________
Regards,
NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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CooSee
Veteran
Joined: 20 Nov 2004
Posts: 1441
Location: Earth
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| Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2021 11:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Gnome and kde because IMHO they are bloated and disgusting |
+1
and annoying.
| Code: | | Total: 839 packages |
that's enough for me - Mate with OpenRC and small number of Tools.
greetings (...programs)
_________________
" Die Realität ist eine Illusion, die durch Mangel an ehrlicher Kommunikation entsteht "
---
" Der Mensch ist von Natur aus neugierig, was am Ende übrig bleibt ist die Gier " |
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sitquietly
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 23 Oct 2010
Posts: 143
Location: On the Wolf River, Tennessee
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| Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2021 11:21 pm Post subject: |
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| alamahant wrote: | Web browsers ... I have experienced and currently maintain a kit*-pam(only partially)-udisks-elogind-ipv6-bluetooth-less install but its more out of experimentation and fun for being radical than real necessity... Gentoo gives you the means.
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Love Gentoo! The flexibility is great for creating a self-defined system. I avoid systemd and elogind because they have caused me serious problems repeatedly over the years, I have read about the overall design and don't agree with the overly clever approach and consequent baroque declarative language needed to specify units, and I conclude that it is 99% reliable whereas I expect 99.99%. Errors such as I have experienced I will only tolerate once in lifetime. So those huge subsystems are out for me (1). I have s6 on the back-burner. When I have time I'll look more closely at the distros that are built on s6. But OpenRC and SysVInit are fine and I find the shell scripts that they use to be very readable and far preferable to the constantly-growing systemd unit-language (whatever it's called).
I also run Gentoo without systemd or elogind or polkit. Gentoo's handling of user overlays is great and really empowers competent users. I run a full KDE Plasma desktop by simplifying the plasma ebuilds in my own overlay. I only lack partitionmanager gui. I provide reboot and sleep actions using my own scripts requiring use of doas. I get everything that I need (sematic-desktop, activities, search, desktop-grid, pager, a very clean Plasma interface with add-ons that give me clean and readable interface with easy to read color preferences, simple menu, etc.) All the usability and none of the pain.
Browsers are very worrisome. In the BSD's there is occasional talk amongst developers of simply dropping the big browsers because they are huge, very complicated (probably even deliberately obfuscated) and use damned awful build systems. I generally use Falkon (yeah, webengine) but I do keep both Firefox and Chromium installed. Epiphany is suprisingly good and builds in a fraction of the time.
I avoid gtk3 -- build some software myself to stick with gtk2. I actually do most of my work in a custom-themed fluxbox with a fork of rox-filer and local builds of rox widgets such as the pager, load indicator, clock, etc. I've started reading a couple of the old books on gtk+2 development and will look at the STLWRT fork when I'm ready to understand it. gtk3 is very threatening long-term because it assumes design changes in the UI that are unacceptable.
(1) In FreeBSD and OpenBSD I sometimes allow consolekit2 which is actually still being maintained and serves the purpose as well as it has for years. |
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steve_v
Guru
Joined: 20 Jun 2004
Posts: 388
Location: New Zealand
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| Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2021 11:34 pm Post subject: |
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Systemd, pulseaudio and avahi, because they have caused me gratuitous pain in the past.
GTK3 based applications in general, especially those that don't support xdg-desktop-portal, because CSD is braindamage and the GTK3 file-picker is an essay in unusable UX design.
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Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. Four times is Official GNOME Policy. |
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Goverp
Advocate
Joined: 07 Mar 2007
Posts: 2011
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| Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2021 8:33 am Post subject: |
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avahi, xinitd and anything that either starts services without asking me, or broadcasts a menu of exploitable services to the universe.
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Greybeard |
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pietinger
Moderator
Joined: 17 Oct 2006
Posts: 4168
Location: Bavaria
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| Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2021 11:14 am Post subject: |
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| I avoid any software which tries to hide some complexity from underlying software ... only to make it more difficult to understand what is going on, like UFW or SHOREWALL instead of native iptables, or genkernel instead of doing it myself ... |
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Goverp
Advocate
Joined: 07 Mar 2007
Posts: 2011
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| Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2021 11:17 am Post subject: |
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| pietinger wrote: | | I avoid any software which tries to hide some complexity from underlying software... |
Like compilers? Real men use assembler.
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Greybeard |
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pietinger
Moderator
Joined: 17 Oct 2006
Posts: 4168
Location: Bavaria
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| Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2021 11:23 am Post subject: |
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| Goverp wrote: | | pietinger wrote: | | I avoid any software which tries to hide some complexity from underlying software... |
Like compilers? Real men use assembler. |
Once apon a time I had to "programm" an assembler for my CBM3016 ... I went into the (built-in) hex-editor and typed the complete listing in hex into it, to get an assembler ...  |
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pa4wdh
l33t
Joined: 16 Dec 2005
Posts: 812
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| Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2021 1:21 pm Post subject: |
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Software I avoid:
- Poettering-ware (all of systemd, pulseaudio), only exception is eudev
- Network "managers", only netifrc
- *kits (polkit, consolekit, etc).
- Closed source software packages
- -bin packages
- I don't avoid huge packages like rust, i do update them less frequently because of their compile times
Software i don't like but have to tolerate because other software i want depends on it:
- Avahi (unfortunately hplip can't work without it anymore, i used to work around that with package.provided  , so i now have one server container with avahi installed (but not running))
- dbus (unfortunately required to use bluetooth)
_________________
The gentoo way of bringing peace to the world:
USE="-war" emerge --newuse @world
My shared code repository: https://code.pa4wdh.nl.eu.org
Music, Free as in Freedom: https://www.jamendo.com |
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NeddySeagoon
Administrator
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54270
Location: 56N 3W
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| Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2021 4:18 pm Post subject: |
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pa4wdh,
| Quote: | | - Avahi (unfortunately hplip can't work without it anymore, |
USE=-snmp is your friend.
net-print/hplip hates (-udev) though. I have to fix that in my overlay.
_________________
Regards,
NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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pa4wdh
l33t
Joined: 16 Dec 2005
Posts: 812
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| Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2021 5:05 pm Post subject: |
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I should have been more precise, my printer is connected via ethernet so i actually need USE=snmp. The ebuild always depended on avahi, but i used package.provided to make sure it didn't install. hplip's configure script detects the avahi precense and also worked without ... until now, now it just stops when it doesn't find avahi.
_________________
The gentoo way of bringing peace to the world:
USE="-war" emerge --newuse @world
My shared code repository: https://code.pa4wdh.nl.eu.org
Music, Free as in Freedom: https://www.jamendo.com |
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figueroa
Advocate
Joined: 14 Aug 2005
Posts: 2963
Location: Edge of marsh USA
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| Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2021 8:37 pm Post subject: |
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I don't avoid much. The purpose of software on a desktop computer is to reasonably make using the computer easy, practical, safe. I'm having a hard time getting paranoid over *kit and elogind.
My NOT USE list in make.conf keeps getting shorter as I move flags into package.use, so currently, NOT USE = -bluetooth -gnome -kde -pulseaudio -samba -systemd.
My package.mask is also short:
dev-lang/rust
sys-apps/systemd
sys-fs/udev
But I do use rust-bin and eudev (for now).
I've grown weary of desktop environments in general. I'm using OpenBox.
ADDED: UEFI -- I avoid it like the plague. So far so good on my personal computers.
_________________
Andy Figueroa
hp pavilion hpe h8-1260t/2AB5; spinning rust x3
i7-2600 @ 3.40GHz; 16 gb; Radeon HD 7570
amd64/23.0/split-usr/desktop (stable), OpenRC, -systemd -pulseaudio -uefi |
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CaptainBlood
Advocate
Joined: 24 Jan 2010
Posts: 3628
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| Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2021 4:23 pm Post subject: |
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I don't avoid any package per see.
I avoid profile USE flag blanket by defaulting to unsupported "USE=-*", cherrypicking in /etc/portage.use/ with 1 file per package.
It allows to minimize amount of installed packages.
Doing so uncovers USE cross package flag inconstancy cases, because relying on the profile blanket.
Fallback to regular isn't straight forward.
Thks 4 ur attention, interest & support.
_________________
USE="-* ..." in /etc/portage/make.conf here.
LT: "I've been doing a passable imitation of the Fontana di Trevi, except my medium is mucus. Sooo much mucus. "
Last edited by CaptainBlood on Fri Aug 27, 2021 5:13 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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NeddySeagoon
Administrator
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54270
Location: 56N 3W
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| Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2021 4:59 pm Post subject: |
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pa4wdh,
I think that net-print/hplip only needs USE=snmp for printer discover on the network.
If you don't use printer discovery say because you know the IP address of your printer, you can set it up manually in cups.
It continues to work without USE=snmp.
_________________
Regards,
NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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wjb
l33t
Joined: 10 Jul 2005
Posts: 609
Location: Fife, Scotland
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| Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2021 5:00 pm Post subject: |
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www-servers/caddy
Because the ebuild file made my eyes bleed.  |
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Hu
Moderator
Joined: 06 Mar 2007
Posts: 21644
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| Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2021 5:09 pm Post subject: |
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| wjb wrote: | www-servers/caddy
Because the ebuild file made my eyes bleed. |
Once you get past the 1135 Go modules it depends on, it doesn't look too bad. |
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Tony0945
Watchman
Joined: 25 Jul 2006
Posts: 5127
Location: Illinois, USA
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| Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2021 5:13 pm Post subject: |
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| wjb wrote: | www-servers/caddy
Because the ebuild file made my eyes bleed. |
Oh! That SRC_URI ! "Azure" isn't that some Windoze thingie? |
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Hu
Moderator
Joined: 06 Mar 2007
Posts: 21644
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| Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2021 6:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Azure is Microsoft's cloud offering, as a competitor to Amazon Web Services, Google App Engine, etc. Although run by Microsoft, it has significant Linux usage. |
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wjb
l33t
Joined: 10 Jul 2005
Posts: 609
Location: Fife, Scotland
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| Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2021 6:23 pm Post subject: |
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| Um. It's not just the size of the list, take a look at the version numbers in the list. |
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Hu
Moderator
Joined: 06 Mar 2007
Posts: 21644
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| Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2021 7:00 pm Post subject: |
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| I didn't bother to look into the list, because its sheer size was enough to be shocking. I was being sarcastic with my "once you get past" remark. It is weird that it seems to pull several versions of the same package, in many cases. |
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Goverp
Advocate
Joined: 07 Mar 2007
Posts: 2011
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| Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2021 10:10 am Post subject: |
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| wjb wrote: | www-servers/caddy
Because the ebuild file made my eyes bleed. |
Kids, just say No to Go!
Sheesh, that ebuild's frightening.
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Greybeard |
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pa4wdh
l33t
Joined: 16 Dec 2005
Posts: 812
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| Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2021 5:36 pm Post subject: |
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| NeddySeagoon wrote: |
I think that net-print/hplip only needs USE=snmp for printer discover on the network.
If you don't use printer discovery say because you know the IP address of your printer, you can set it up manually in cups.
It continues to work without USE=snmp. |
You made me curious and i just did a test. With net-print/hplip-3.20.11-r2 and a HP OfficeJet Pro 6970 this didn't work . The scanner and the printer didn't work anymore after compiling hplip with -snmp (and restarting cups and sane), they both came back to life when i recompiled again with USE=snmp. At first the printing function still seemed to work, but as soon as i actually gave it something to print cups would report it as being paused and unable to resume.
| Quote: | www-servers/caddy
Because the ebuild file made my eyes bleed.
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Wow, this looks really bad. Looking at the URI's i seems it's also pulling in lots of dependencies, shouldn't that be separate packages?
_________________
The gentoo way of bringing peace to the world:
USE="-war" emerge --newuse @world
My shared code repository: https://code.pa4wdh.nl.eu.org
Music, Free as in Freedom: https://www.jamendo.com |
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spica
Apprentice
Joined: 04 Jun 2021
Posts: 288
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| Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2021 6:04 pm Post subject: |
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| pa4wdh wrote: | | Wow, this looks really bad. Looking at the URI's i seems it's also pulling in lots of dependencies, shouldn't that be separate packages? |
Those entries are not a list of dependencies to be downloaded, but a hint for Portage which files need checksum verification. This list is taken from upstream go.sum.
Dependencies are in go.mod file which comes with source code. |
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