[plug] When did 'Linux' start moving away from it's simplicity?

[Tim White]

On 09/05/12 16:02, Andrew Cooks wrote:
> "When did 'Linux' start moving away from it's simplicity?"
>
> IMO, when it became acceptable for dbus, gconf and similar tools to
> hide things in files that you're not supposed to edit in a text
> editor. That was the point of no return.
Totally agree. At the least, they could have left the settings in files 
we could edit!
>
> Thing is, how do we know whether something like this, or the Gnome
> 3/Unity tablet revolution, is just a stupid idea or whether we're just
> too stuck in our way to see the progress? If you give the new thing
> enough time they'll eventually fix all the obvious flaws, but then it
> will be even harder to turn back to simpler times. Likewise, if you
> put enough effort into understanding the new thing, you may find that
> it's better than the old thing.

I have a great book here, "The Art of UNIX Programming" by Eric S 
Raymond. After reading it cover to cover multiple times, I can see so 
many advantages to Linux/Unix and our old simple ways. From a 
programmers point of view, I really can't see much use for a lot of the 
settings not in the standard place stuff. I can understand wanting to 
ensure that as the "format" changes, we have compatibility if the 
protocol stays the same, but hey, we have been able to do that from the 
start. Ignore the settings we don't understand (preserve them) and only 
update the ones we do!
>
> This is why so many people focus their frustration on Lennart
> Poettering and the disruptive changes he's involved in, but it's
> harder to find a single person to blame for the disruptions caused by
> KDE 4,  Gnome 3 or Unity.

Well, people blame groups/companies for the KDE/Gnome/Unity stuff. It's 
all the little stuff we don't see that gets me. Before we know it, we'll 
be sucked in and it's too late! The debian packages for cinnamon 
(desktop environment) recommends the "accountsservice" package 
(indirectly), so without telling apt to not install the recommends, we 
end up with accountsservice even if we don't want it! I wonder how may 
"new" services we are getting "recommended" to us until they are common 
place and "accepted" and then suddenly we are locked it! I'm highly 
tempted to set apt to not install recommends be default from now on.

Thanks for your thoughts Andrew.

Tim