Linux

48317 readers

833 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
No misinformation
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

166

Are there any things in Linux that need to be started over from scratch? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

272 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm curious how software can be created and evolve over time. I'm afraid that at some point, we'll realize there are issues with the software we're using that can only be remedied by massive changes or a complete rewrite.

Are there any instances of this happening? Where something is designed with a flaw that doesn't get realized until much later, necessitating scrapping the whole thing and starting from scratch?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Libxz

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

One might exist already: lzlib.

I admit I haven't done a great deal of research, so maybe there are problems, but I've found that lzip tends to do better at compression than xz/lzma and, to paraphrase its manual, it's designed to be a drop-in replacement for gzip and bzip2. It's been around since at least 2009 according to the copyright messages.

That said, xz is going to receive a lot of scrutiny from now on, so maybe it doesn't need replacing. Likewise, anything else that allows random binary blobs into the source repository is going to have the same sort of scrutiny. Is that data really random? Can it be generated by non-obfuscated plain text source code instead? etc. etc.

[–] SleveMcDichael 3 points 7 months ago

Personally I quite like zstd, I find it has a pretty decent balance of speed to ratio at each of its levels.