openvms and xterm

[motk]

So, a really basic one here.

What's the current best practice to match term types between vms and ssh
clients? OpenVms doesn't see to understand a termtype of xterm, and I'm
not sure if it recognises termtypes from an (inbound session) openssh
config file.

It would probably be good for VSI to spend a bit of time documenting
this, maybe creating some client configs to try.

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by motk
So, a really basic one here.
What's the current best practice to match term types between vms and ssh
clients? OpenVms doesn't see to understand a termtype of xterm, and I'm
not sure if it recognises termtypes from an (inbound session) openssh
config file.
It would probably be good for VSI to spend a bit of time documenting
this, maybe creating some client configs to try.

If xterm supports VT200/VT300/VT400 then set terminal to
one of those.

In theory /INQUIRE should work, but but reality can be different.

Arne

[Scott Dorsey]

Post by Arne Vajhøj

Post by motk
So, a really basic one here.
What's the current best practice to match term types between vms and ssh
clients? OpenVms doesn't see to understand a termtype of xterm, and I'm
not sure if it recognises termtypes from an (inbound session) openssh
config file.
It would probably be good for VSI to spend a bit of time documenting
this, maybe creating some client configs to try.

If xterm supports VT200/VT300/VT400 then set terminal to
one of those.
In theory /INQUIRE should work, but but reality can be different.

/INQUIRE gets "xterm" and VMS doesn't know what to do with that. If it
just would set it to ansi when it gets "xterm" as a string it would be fine.
--scott

[Dave Froble]

Post by motk
So, a really basic one here.
What's the current best practice to match term types between vms and ssh
clients? OpenVms doesn't see to understand a termtype of xterm, and I'm not sure
if it recognises termtypes from an (inbound session) openssh config file.
It would probably be good for VSI to spend a bit of time documenting this, maybe
creating some client configs to try.

xterm is software, not a terminal type.

Terminal types include VT100, VT200, VT300, VT400, VT500, and Ok, VT52.

Good practice is:

SET TERMINAL /INQUIRE

Which will inquire what the terminal thinks it is.

VT400 is usually best ...

As always, HELP is your friend.

SET

TERMINAL

/DEVICE_TYPE

/DEVICE_TYPE=terminal-type

Informs the system of the terminal type and sets characteristics
according to the device type specified. You can specify any of
the following terminal types:


UNKNOWN LA100 PRO_SERIES VT102 VT200
FT1-FT8 LA120 VT05 VT105 VT300
LA12 LA210 VT52 VT125 VT400
LA34 LN01K VT55 VT131 VT500
LA36 LN03 VT100 VT132
LA38 LQP02 VT101 VT173

[Grant Taylor]

Post by Dave Froble
xterm is software, not a terminal type.

XTerm is both a program /and/ it's own terminal type. It actually has
multiple of it's own terminal types; xterm, xterm-color, and xterm-256color.

There are probably more pieces of software using the xterm terminal type
than are using vt100 terminal type.

[Scott Dorsey]

Post by Dave Froble
xterm is software, not a terminal type.

It is both, this is the problem. If you ask it what it it, it says it's
"xterm" and then VMS doesn't know what to do.
--scott

[Matthew R. Wilson]

Post by motk
So, a really basic one here.
What's the current best practice to match term types between vms and ssh
clients? OpenVms doesn't see to understand a termtype of xterm, and I'm
not sure if it recognises termtypes from an (inbound session) openssh
config file.

In my .Xresources, I have:

XTerm*VT100.decTerminalID: vt102

Then on OpenVMS, $ SET TERM/INQUIRE correctly identifies the device
type. This does _not_ affect the TERM environment variable that gets set
in Linux (e.g. `echo $TERM` still reports xterm-256color).

As others have mentioned, something like vt240 or vt420 would be ideal.
xterm's implementation of vt420 ends up making SET TERM/INQUIRE hang for
several seconds, which is annoying since I have SET TERM/INQUIRE in my
LOGIN.COM. This used to happen with vt240 as well, I think, but that has
been fixed and I just tested it: vt240 should be safe now.

I don't rememeber why I've left my xterm set to vt102...I have vague
memories that 'upgrading' to vt240 caused a problem with something not
at all related to VMS, and vt102 works fine in VMS, so I haven't changed
it.

Instead of setting X resources for your whole X session, you can also
launch xterm with "-ti vt240" to override what's in your X resources
database for that invocation of xterm.

-Matthew

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by Matthew R. Wilson

Post by motk
So, a really basic one here.
What's the current best practice to match term types between vms and ssh
clients? OpenVms doesn't see to understand a termtype of xterm, and I'm
not sure if it recognises termtypes from an (inbound session) openssh
config file.

XTerm*VT100.decTerminalID: vt102
Then on OpenVMS, $ SET TERM/INQUIRE correctly identifies the device
type. This does _not_ affect the TERM environment variable that gets set
in Linux (e.g. `echo $TERM` still reports xterm-256color).
As others have mentioned, something like vt240 or vt420 would be ideal.
xterm's implementation of vt420 ends up making SET TERM/INQUIRE hang for
several seconds, which is annoying since I have SET TERM/INQUIRE in my
LOGIN.COM. This used to happen with vt240 as well, I think, but that has
been fixed and I just tested it: vt240 should be safe now.
I don't rememeber why I've left my xterm set to vt102...I have vague
memories that 'upgrading' to vt240 caused a problem with something not
at all related to VMS, and vt102 works fine in VMS, so I haven't changed
it.
Instead of setting X resources for your whole X session, you can also
launch xterm with "-ti vt240" to override what's in your X resources
database for that invocation of xterm.

I believe that VT200/VT300/VT400 and 8bit gives the "best"
VMS experience.

Arne

[motk]

Post by Arne Vajhøj
I believe that VT200/VT300/VT400 and 8bit gives the "best"
VMS experience.

Thanks all - it's worth a bit more thought, given that X11 is basically
dead, and that most people just open a windows or linux default terminal
and they 'ssh ***@bar'. Windows Terminal does do a lot of work on
terminal emulation and by default presents as xterm.

Post by Arne Vajhøj
Arne

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by motk

Post by Arne Vajhøj
I believe that VT200/VT300/VT400 and 8bit gives the "best"
VMS experience.

Thanks all - it's worth a bit more thought, given that X11 is basically
dead, and that most people just open a windows or linux default terminal
terminal emulation and by default presents as xterm.

It is my impression that the majority of VMS terminal
users today use Putty.

Arne

[motk]

Post by Arne Vajhøj
It is my impression that the majority of VMS terminal
users today use Putty.

Putty is kind of ancient, and a huge pain in a11y and general usability.
It's time to look beyond it.

Post by Arne Vajhøj
Arne

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by motk

Post by Arne Vajhøj
It is my impression that the majority of VMS terminal
users today use Putty.

Putty is kind of ancient, and a huge pain in a11y and general usability.
It's time to look beyond it.

It is not new, but neither is xterm.

It works. And due to the large number of users then assistance
is usually possible to get. And you can get something on top
of it like MPutty to get tabbed multi windows.

But if you don't like it then you just use something else.

Arne

[Grant Taylor]

Post by motk
Putty is kind of ancient, and a huge pain in a11y and general usability.

PuTTY is younger than TCP/IP (both v4 and v6) and Ethernet.

Post by motk
It's time to look beyond it.

Is it time to look past TCP/IP (both v4 and v6) and Ethernet?

N.B. 802.11 WiFi is effectively Ethernet.

[motk]

Post by Grant Taylor

Post by motk
Putty is kind of ancient, and a huge pain in a11y and general usability.

PuTTY is younger than TCP/IP (both v4 and v6) and Ethernet.

Post by motk
It's time to look beyond it.

Is it time to look past TCP/IP (both v4 and v6) and Ethernet?

... what?

Post by Grant Taylor
N.B. 802.11 WiFi is effectively Ethernet.

I am aware of 802.foo, yes.

[Grant Taylor]

Post by motk
... what?

Just because something is not new doesn't mean that it's bad.

OpenVMS is not new by any stretch of the imagination.

It's an old technology that's still actively being maintained.

Old and actively maintained is okay.

Old and unmaintained is going to become a problem, it's only a question
of when.

[Dan Cross]

Post by Grant Taylor

Post by motk
... what?

Just because something is not new doesn't mean that it's bad.
OpenVMS is not new by any stretch of the imagination.
It's an old technology that's still actively being maintained.
Old and actively maintained is okay.
Old and unmaintained is going to become a problem, it's only a question
of when.

I think that motk's point was that X11 is essentially
unmaintained. There's some limited life support going
on, but no real active development, or even bug fixes.

- Dan C.

[Dave Froble]

Post by Grant Taylor

Post by motk
... what?

Just because something is not new doesn't mean that it's bad.

Yep! And the wheel is still doing well ...

[Dan Cross]

Post by Dave Froble

Post by Grant Taylor

Post by motk
... what?

Just because something is not new doesn't mean that it's bad.

Yep! And the wheel is still doing well ...

And yet, I don't think I'd try to put a wheel manufactured
200 years ago for a wagon on my truck, let alone on my
motorcycle. :-)

- Dan C.

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by motk

Post by Grant Taylor
N.B. 802.11 WiFi is effectively Ethernet.

I am aware of 802.foo, yes.

Worth clarifying that “Ethernet” is actually covered under 802.3, not
802.11. The parts they share in common (MAC addresses and the “frame”
concept) are defined in 802.2. These parts are also shared with the other
802.x specs.

[Grant Taylor]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Worth clarifying that “Ethernet” is actually covered under 802.3,
not 802.11. The parts they share in common (MAC addresses and the
“frame” concept) are defined in 802.2. These parts are also shared
with the other 802.x specs.

My understanding is that 802.11 is heavily influenced by Ethernet 802.3.
Something akin to generational evolution.

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by Grant Taylor

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Worth clarifying that “Ethernet” is actually covered under 802.3, not
802.11. The parts they share in common (MAC addresses and the “frame”
concept) are defined in 802.2. These parts are also shared with the
other 802.x specs.

My understanding is that 802.11 is heavily influenced by Ethernet 802.3.
Something akin to generational evolution.

You really do need to read more actual network specs before offering
opinions on them.

[Chris Townley]

Post by motk

Post by Arne Vajhøj
I believe that VT200/VT300/VT400 and 8bit gives the "best"
VMS experience.

Thanks all - it's worth a bit more thought, given that X11 is basically
dead, and that most people just open a windows or linux default terminal
terminal emulation and by default presents as xterm.

Post by Arne Vajhøj
Arne

That is why I always use PuTTY - even on linux.I run my console sessions
from that, then use virsh console <VM name> under KVM/QEMU

[motk]

Post by Chris Townley
That is why I always use PuTTY - even on linux.I run my console sessions
from that, then use virsh console <VM name> under KVM/QEMU

The promox serial console works very well too. A

[Chris Townley]

Post by motk

Post by Chris Townley
That is why I always use PuTTY - even on linux.I run my console
sessions from that, then use virsh console <VM name> under KVM/QEMU

The promox serial console works very well too. A

PuTTY may be old, but is well maintained, and it works

[Grant Taylor]

Post by Chris Townley
PuTTY may be old, but is well maintained, and it works

PuTTY, X11, XTerm, OpenVMS, yes they are all still actively maintained
and still work well.

[motk]

Post by Grant Taylor
PuTTY, X11, XTerm, OpenVMS, yes they are all still actively maintained
and still work well.

X11 is literally abandoned, apart from the X11 wayland bits. Please be real.

[Grant Taylor]

Post by motk
X11 is literally abandoned, apart from the X11 wayland bits.

No it is not.

I still see updates to X11, not Wayland, monthly if not weekly.

There are still people actively maintaining X11.

There have been 23 announcements of updates to X11 components since
March 23rd this year. ... 59 this year. Or if you include Wayland in
the subject, it's 26 / 63 in 2024.

That seems like the opposite of abandoned to me.

Post by motk
Please be real.

I am.

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by motk

Post by Grant Taylor
PuTTY, X11, XTerm, OpenVMS, yes they are all still actively maintained
and still work well.

X11 is literally abandoned, apart from the X11 wayland bits. Please be real.

I guess it depends on what you really mean by abandoned.

Is the X11 software still being maintained? Yes it is.

Will the X11 software evolve? Not likely - last major release 7.7 is
from 2012.

Is X11 being replaced by Wayland? Yes - I believe most Linux
distros are moving from x.org to Wayland.

Does any this matter at all? Not much - from a commercial software
perspective it is browser, Windows, macOS, Android and iOS that
matters - neither X11 nor Wayland are particular interesting.

Arne

[Dan Cross]

Post by Arne Vajhøj

Post by motk

Post by Grant Taylor
PuTTY, X11, XTerm, OpenVMS, yes they are all still actively maintained
and still work well.

X11 is literally abandoned, apart from the X11 wayland bits. Please be real.

I guess it depends on what you really mean by abandoned.
Is the X11 software still being maintained? Yes it is.

This is factually accurate, but the pace of maintenance
is glacial. I'd say it's on life support, but not much
more than that. The assertion was that X11 maintenance
is active; that's only true in so far that some modicum
of it exists.

- Dan C.

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by Dan Cross

Post by Arne Vajhøj

Post by motk

Post by Grant Taylor
PuTTY, X11, XTerm, OpenVMS, yes they are all still actively maintained
and still work well.

X11 is literally abandoned, apart from the X11 wayland bits. Please be real.

I guess it depends on what you really mean by abandoned.
Is the X11 software still being maintained? Yes it is.

This is factually accurate, but the pace of maintenance
is glacial. I'd say it's on life support, but not much
more than that. The assertion was that X11 maintenance
is active; that's only true in so far that some modicum
of it exists.

People can take a look:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/lib/libx11/-/commits/master

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/commits/master

Arne

[Dan Cross]

Post by Arne Vajhøj

Post by Dan Cross

Post by Arne Vajhøj

Post by motk

Post by Grant Taylor
PuTTY, X11, XTerm, OpenVMS, yes they are all still actively maintained
and still work well.

X11 is literally abandoned, apart from the X11 wayland bits. Please be real.

I guess it depends on what you really mean by abandoned.
Is the X11 software still being maintained? Yes it is.

This is factually accurate, but the pace of maintenance
is glacial. I'd say it's on life support, but not much
more than that. The assertion was that X11 maintenance
is active; that's only true in so far that some modicum
of it exists.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/lib/libx11/-/commits/master
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/commits/master

They can also look at the number of outstanding bugs that
are not getting fixed.

- Dan C.

[motk]

Post by Dan Cross
They can also look at the number of outstanding bugs that
are not getting fixed.

Quite. I know the people involved, have worked with them, and the
consensus from the industry is that X11 is dead. It gets attention when
a CVE appears, and when things break on XWayland, but X11 is dead.
Wayland is not X11, and the world has moved on. It's impossible to do
ssh forwarding with any reliability, xhost doesn't work as you'd expect,
etc. The entire _model_ is obsolete and the Big Players do only as much
as needed to keep legacy stuff working up until it gets rolled over into
a big k8s thing.

Anyway all I was saying is that maybe instead of hanging on to how
things were done in 2004 it might be more useful to make sure than
things like ssh from Windows Terminal or whatever work without too much
finagling.

[chrisq]

Post by motk

Post by Arne Vajhøj
I believe that VT200/VT300/VT400 and 8bit gives the "best"
VMS experience.

Thanks all - it's worth a bit more thought, given that X11 is basically
dead, and that most people just open a windows or linux default terminal
terminal emulation and by default presents as xterm.

Post by Arne Vajhøj
Arne

Some may be pushing to replace X11 with Wayland, (ugh), but most unix
desktops are still based on X11 at core, with the user desktop GUI
sitting on top of that, and will be for the forseable future.

If it ain't broke, why fix it ?...

Chris

[motk]

Post by chrisq
Some may be pushing to replace X11 with Wayland, (ugh), but most unix
desktops are still based on X11 at core, with the user desktop GUI
sitting on top of that, and will be for the forseable future.

[tears out hair in clumps]

Wayland is not X11. X11 is long dead. Explaining why is way too much
effort for this medium, what 'most user desktops' are still X11 at their
core? Arrgh, I'm a hair old greybeard and we need to let go of this.

Post by chrisq
If it ain't broke, why fix it ?...

Because it's _broken_. ssh x11 forwarding has been deliberately broken
by _design_ for a _decade_, if you're found using X11 in a corporate
environemt you will get an earnest conversation with people with no
sense of humour, the world is real and here and now.

Post by chrisq
Chris

[John Dallman]

Post by motk

Post by chrisq
If it ain't broke, why fix it ?...

Because it's _broken_. ssh x11 forwarding has been deliberately
broken by _design_ for a _decade_, if you're found using X11 in a
corporate environemt you will get an earnest conversation with
people with no sense of humour, the world is real and here and now.

That's an extremely sweeping statement. I'm working for a very large and
paranoid corporation. I wouldn't try using X11 across the internet, but
for working with a lot of different Linuxes, macOS and Solaris in a
secured development lab, it is truly excellent, and nobody is trying to
stop me.

It lets me have editors and terminal windows on lots of different Linuxes
without needing to deal with their different GUIs and desktop
environments. As far as I can see, Wayland doesn't offer that unless you
slap on a remote desktop protocol. I actively don't want remote desktop:
it is not useful to me, it will suck bandwidth, and it gives me much,
much more setup to do.

I produce closed-source commercial shared libraries that have to work on
as many Linuxes as possible. The list of ones I have running in the lab
isn't ludicrous, but nor is it short:

x86-64: CentOS 7.9, RHEL 8.9, Rocky 8.9, Alma 8.9, Alma 9.3, SLES12sp5,
SLES15sp5, Ubuntu LTS 20.04 and 22.04. I need to add Ubuntu LTS 24.04
soon, of course, and I'm getting extended support on the CentOS 7.9s so
that products released on them can serve out their maintenance lives.

Aarch64: Ubuntu 20.04, Amazon Linux 2, and RHEL 8.9. I need to add Amazon
Linux 2023, Ubuntu LTS 22.04 and 24.04.

Would you want to set up desktops for all those different Linuxes?

John

[chrisq]

Post by John Dallman

Post by motk

Post by chrisq
If it ain't broke, why fix it ?...

Because it's _broken_. ssh x11 forwarding has been deliberately
broken by _design_ for a _decade_, if you're found using X11 in a
corporate environemt you will get an earnest conversation with
people with no sense of humour, the world is real and here and now.

That's an extremely sweeping statement. I'm working for a very large and
paranoid corporation. I wouldn't try using X11 across the internet, but
for working with a lot of different Linuxes, macOS and Solaris in a
secured development lab, it is truly excellent, and nobody is trying to
stop me.
It lets me have editors and terminal windows on lots of different Linuxes
without needing to deal with their different GUIs and desktop
environments. As far as I can see, Wayland doesn't offer that unless you
it is not useful to me, it will suck bandwidth, and it gives me much,
much more setup to do.
I produce closed-source commercial shared libraries that have to work on
as many Linuxes as possible. The list of ones I have running in the lab
x86-64: CentOS 7.9, RHEL 8.9, Rocky 8.9, Alma 8.9, Alma 9.3, SLES12sp5,
SLES15sp5, Ubuntu LTS 20.04 and 22.04. I need to add Ubuntu LTS 24.04
soon, of course, and I'm getting extended support on the CentOS 7.9s so
that products released on them can serve out their maintenance lives.
Aarch64: Ubuntu 20.04, Amazon Linux 2, and RHEL 8.9. I need to add Amazon
Linux 2023, Ubuntu LTS 22.04 and 24.04.
Would you want to set up desktops for all those different Linuxes?
John

Absolutely, Solaris, Linux, Freebsd and even cygwin + X + xfce4, all
depend on X11 at core. VMS as well, though not sure of current status.

As with systemd, Wayland looks like yet another attempt at power grab,
and even after years, still doesn't work properly, nor is it complete
compared to X functionality. Who cares if X isn't completely secure,
just use it accordingly...

Chris

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by chrisq
Absolutely, Solaris, Linux, Freebsd and even cygwin + X + xfce4, all
depend on X11 at core. VMS as well, though not sure of current status.

DEC was a key contributor in the development of X11. But that was then.

Post by chrisq
As with systemd, Wayland looks like yet another attempt at power
grab ...

I wonder who you think is “grabbing” this “power”. Both systemd and
Wayland are open-source projects, created by people who see a problem and
are trying to fix it. Those in the community who see value in these
efforts adopt their solutions, others don’t. There is no Monopolistic™
BigCorp® forcing any of these things down our throats. If you don’t want
to use them, don’t use them.

[chrisq]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Post by chrisq
Absolutely, Solaris, Linux, Freebsd and even cygwin + X + xfce4, all
depend on X11 at core. VMS as well, though not sure of current status.

DEC was a key contributor in the development of X11. But that was then.

Post by chrisq
As with systemd, Wayland looks like yet another attempt at power
grab ...

I wonder who you think is “grabbing” this “power”. Both systemd and
Wayland are open-source projects, created by people who see a problem and
are trying to fix it. Those in the community who see value in these
efforts adopt their solutions, others don’t. There is no Monopolistic™
BigCorp® forcing any of these things down our throats. If you don’t want
to use them, don’t use them.

systemd originally came from redhat. I rest my case.

A suffocating carbunkle on what was an elegant os that really didn't
need it...

[Dan Cross]

[snip]
A suffocating carbunkle on what was an elegant os that really didn't
need it...

Linux is a lot of things: incredibly useful, very powerful, and
arguably the most important software project in the world. But
"elegant" is not something that comes to mind when I think look
closely at it.

- Dan C.

[Single Stage to Orbit]

Post by Dan Cross
Linux is a lot of things: incredibly useful, very powerful, and
arguably the most important software project in the world.  But
"elegant" is not something that comes to mind when I think look
closely at it.

if you /really/ want to be a purist, then I reckon NetBSD fits the
bill. It runs on way more platforms than Linux and the other *BSDs ever
did.

[chrisq]

Post by Dan Cross

[snip]
A suffocating carbunkle on what was an elegant os that really didn't
need it...

Linux is a lot of things: incredibly useful, very powerful, and
arguably the most important software project in the world. But
"elegant" is not something that comes to mind when I think look
closely at it.
- Dan C.

Which is why I dumped Linux for FreeBSD a few years ago now, systemd
really was the last straw.

Still have some machines running Linux, but no longer the main driver
for development...

[Bob Eager]

Post by chrisq
Which is why I dumped Linux for FreeBSD a few years ago now, systemd
really was the last straw.

I started with BSD in about 1978, and FreeBSD in about 1991. Never touched
Linux!

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by Bob Eager

Post by chrisq
Which is why I dumped Linux for FreeBSD a few years ago now, systemd
really was the last straw.

I started with BSD in about 1978, and FreeBSD in about 1991. Never
touched Linux!

There are maybe half a dozen BSD variants still undergoing some kind of
development, versus about 50× that number of Linux distros. Yet it is
easier to move between Linux distros than it is to move between BSD
variants.

Linux is able to offer a great deal of variety with minimal fragmentation,
while the BSDs have more fragmentation and less variety.

[Bob Eager]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Post by Bob Eager

Post by chrisq
Which is why I dumped Linux for FreeBSD a few years ago now, systemd
really was the last straw.

I started with BSD in about 1978, and FreeBSD in about 1991. Never
touched Linux!

There are maybe half a dozen BSD variants still undergoing some kind of
development, versus about 50× that number of Linux distros. Yet it is
easier to move between Linux distros than it is to move between BSD
variants.
Linux is able to offer a great deal of variety with minimal
fragmentation,
while the BSDs have more fragmentation and less variety.

But there is not need to move between BSD distros in the first place. And
they share a great deal anyway.

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Post by Bob Eager

Post by chrisq
Which is why I dumped Linux for FreeBSD a few years ago now, systemd
really was the last straw.

I started with BSD in about 1978, and FreeBSD in about 1991. Never
touched Linux!

There are maybe half a dozen BSD variants still undergoing some kind of
development, versus about 50× that number of Linux distros. Yet it is
easier to move between Linux distros than it is to move between BSD
variants.

That is because you compare oranges to apples.

You are comparing BSD's that are different OS'es (they do share
a lot of code but that is pick and choose) with
Linux distros that all run the same kernel but are available
in many different bundles. A Linux distro is not a separate
OS, but a bundle of Linux kernel + choice of C RTL + choice
of bunch of other stuff. You could probably create a Linux
distro where the only thing you added was the logo displayed.

Arne

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by Arne Vajhøj

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
There are maybe half a dozen BSD variants still undergoing some kind of
development, versus about 50× that number of Linux distros. Yet it is
easier to move between Linux distros than it is to move between BSD
variants.

You are comparing BSD's that are different OS'es (they do share
a lot of code but that is pick and choose) with
Linux distros that all run the same kernel but are available
in many different bundles.

Why is it the Linux distros are able to maintain a common kernel, but the
BSDs are not? Aren’t the BSD kernels flexible enough for such different
uses? Which aren’t even that different, compared to how distinct the
various Linux distros can be?

[Andreas Eder]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Why is it the Linux distros are able to maintain a common kernel, but the
BSDs are not? Aren’t the BSD kernels flexible enough for such different
uses? Which aren’t even that different, compared to how distinct the
various Linux distros can be?

Because they do not want to! They have different objectives and they are
really different projects. Not at all comparable to Linux distributions.

'Andreas

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by Andreas Eder

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Why is it the Linux distros are able to maintain a common kernel, but
the BSDs are not? Aren’t the BSD kernels flexible enough for such
different uses? Which aren’t even that different, compared to how
distinct the various Linux distros can be?

Because they do not want to! They have different objectives and they are
really different projects. Not at all comparable to Linux distributions.

And yet the range of variety they are able to offer, with their fragmented
kernels, is only a small fraction of what Linux distros have achieved,
with their unified kernel base.

The fact that the BSDs needed to make incompatible kernel changes to
support their userland variants is simply an admission that that kernel
wasn’t all that flexible to begin with.

[Scott Dorsey]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Post by Arne Vajhøj

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
There are maybe half a dozen BSD variants still undergoing some kind of
development, versus about 50× that number of Linux distros. Yet it is
easier to move between Linux distros than it is to move between BSD
variants.

You are comparing BSD's that are different OS'es (they do share
a lot of code but that is pick and choose) with
Linux distros that all run the same kernel but are available
in many different bundles.

Why is it the Linux distros are able to maintain a common kernel, but the
BSDs are not? Aren’t the BSD kernels flexible enough for such different
uses? Which aren’t even that different, compared to how distinct the
various Linux distros can be?

Because Linus owns the trademark and controls what can be called Linux and
what cannot be. Linus decides what goes into the kernel, and therefore
if he wants there to be one Linux kernal, there is. If he wanted there to
be two, he could do that too.

I rather like the idea of having one person in charge of deciding what
goes into the kernel and what does not, although I disagree philosophically
with Linus about many things that have gone into Linux in the past decade.

BSD is not like that. There is no one person who decides what is BSD and
what is not.
--scott

[Grant Taylor]

Post by Scott Dorsey
Because Linus owns the trademark and controls what can be called
Linux and what cannot be. Linus decides what goes into the kernel,
and therefore if he wants there to be one Linux kernal, there is.
If he wanted there to be two, he could do that too.

On one hand I agree. But on the other hand I disagree.

Given that the Linux kernel is released as source code, people can
reconfigure it as they want. People can even add patches to it to add
additional functionality that's not in the upstream vanilla kernel
source. OpenZFS and some binary BLOB drives from vendors being perfect
examples of such things not in the upstream vanilla kernel source.

[Scott Dorsey]

Post by Grant Taylor

Post by Scott Dorsey
Because Linus owns the trademark and controls what can be called
Linux and what cannot be. Linus decides what goes into the kernel,
and therefore if he wants there to be one Linux kernal, there is.
If he wanted there to be two, he could do that too.

On one hand I agree. But on the other hand I disagree.
Given that the Linux kernel is released as source code, people can
reconfigure it as they want. People can even add patches to it to add
additional functionality that's not in the upstream vanilla kernel
source. OpenZFS and some binary BLOB drives from vendors being perfect
examples of such things not in the upstream vanilla kernel source.

That's true, but they can't just call it Linux. I run Linux+RT-PREEMPT myself.
--scott

[motk]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Linux is able to offer a great deal of variety with minimal fragmentation,
while the BSDs have more fragmentation and less variety.

All the BSD's are great! I'm especially fond of FreeBSD, but even they
have issue with service (rather than process) management.

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by motk
All the BSD's are great! I'm especially fond of FreeBSD, but even they
have issue with service (rather than process) management.

A client of mine has office routers running pfSense, which is based on
FreeBSD. I find some oddities, compared to Linux. For example, the “route”
command (for maintaining the routing table) has no option to list the
contents of the routing table: instead, you have to use an entirely
different command, “netstat -r”, for that.

There was a time when the BSDs had a much superior network stack to Linux.
Those days are gone.

And by the way, the BSD world is working on its own systemd-lookalike,
too. It’s called “InitWare”.

[motk]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
A client of mine has office routers running pfSense, which is based on
FreeBSD. I find some oddities, compared to Linux. For example, the “route”
command (for maintaining the routing table) has no option to list the
contents of the routing table: instead, you have to use an entirely
different command, “netstat -r”, for that.

Muscle memory is like that.

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
There was a time when the BSDs had a much superior network stack to Linux.
Those days are gone.

They're working on it all the time at least, it's still performant and
the BSD/Linux network guys have an amicable rivalry.

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
And by the way, the BSD world is working on its own systemd-lookalike,
too. It’s called “InitWare”.

Of course. Once you realise that you're not just doing the
fork-child-daemonise thing for a single binary (which had all sorts of
exciting edge cases), you have to start thinking is services. What are
you expecting to be up? What state should it be in? What should a
running target look like?

Further: modern IT optimises for cattle, not pets.

People forget that sysvinit and crontab and stuff were just itches
scratched. People made a lot of money with proprietary service managers,
batch managers, etc, for the legacy unixes. Now you have systemd which
just works and now you can go home and drink beer. Bonus: don't have to
deal with sweaty-palmed salespeople at trade shows.

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by chrisq
Which is why I dumped Linux for FreeBSD a few years ago now, systemd
really was the last straw.

Open Source is all about choice. Not clear why you had to dump all of
“Linux” just because some distros use systemd.

And some BSD folks feel the need to work on their own systemd-lookalike,
too. It’s called “InitWare”.

[Scott Dorsey]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Post by chrisq
Which is why I dumped Linux for FreeBSD a few years ago now, systemd
really was the last straw.

Open Source is all about choice. Not clear why you had to dump all of
“Linux” just because some distros use systemd.

The problem is not systemd. Systemd is a symptom of the problem. The
problem is change for change's sake. Let's rewrite this thing and make
it different... not better, just different.

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
And some BSD folks feel the need to work on their own systemd-lookalike,
too. It’s called “InitWare”.

There's some argument for a service manager. But a service manager should
not replace everything with one big monolithic chunk. I am not a fan of
service managers and I didn't like when Solaris implemented it, but I can
see some arguments in favor.
--scott

[Grant Taylor]

Post by Scott Dorsey
The problem is not systemd. Systemd is a symptom of the problem.

I can agree to that.

Post by Scott Dorsey
The problem is change for change's sake. Let's rewrite this thing
and make it different... not better, just different.

I feel like there is a HUGE dose of ignorance on some contemporary
developers and they are repeating old mistakes and making new mistakes.

I know that some oft maligned changes are actually rooted in good
reason. I'm thinking about the deprecation of ifconfig, netstat, and
route. The kernel grew, changed, and gained a LOT of new options that
the old tools had no idea how to work with. I can get behind that.

What I can't stand is why there aren't new versions of ifconfig,
netstat, and route that use the new framework while providing command
compatibility with nearly 50 years of Unix and Unix like OS history.
Not providing a compatible wrapper is stupid in my opinion.

Post by Scott Dorsey
There's some argument for a service manager. But a service manager
should not replace everything with one big monolithic chunk. I am not
a fan of service managers and I didn't like when Solaris implemented
it, but I can see some arguments in favor.

At least Solaris stopped SMF at managing services and didn't try to take
over DNS, NTP, and many other things.

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by Grant Taylor

The problem is not systemd.  Systemd is a symptom of the problem.

I can agree to that.

The problem is change for change's sake.  Let's rewrite this thing and
make it different... not better, just different.

I feel like there is a HUGE dose of ignorance on some contemporary
developers and they are repeating old mistakes and making new mistakes.
I know that some oft maligned changes are actually rooted in good
reason.  I'm thinking about the deprecation of ifconfig, netstat, and
route.  The kernel grew, changed, and gained a LOT of new options that
the old tools had no idea how to work with.  I can get behind that.
What I can't stand is why there aren't new versions of ifconfig,
netstat, and route that use the new framework while providing command
compatibility with nearly 50 years of Unix and Unix like OS history. Not
providing a compatible wrapper is stupid in my opinion.

There's some argument for a service manager.  But a service manager
should not replace everything with one big monolithic chunk.  I am not
a fan of service managers and I didn't like when Solaris implemented
it, but I can see some arguments in favor.

At least Solaris stopped SMF at managing services and didn't try to take
over DNS, NTP, and many other things.

I don't know systemd well - only its reputation.

But my impression is that it missed on the main criteria: keeping
things simple.

To illustrate the point and somewhat move back to VMS let me confess
something: I really like SYS$MANAGER:SYSTARTUP_VMS.COM to manage
what get started on VMS.

VMS start the stuff that has to run and one put in what one
want to start in SYS$MANAGER:SYSTARTUP_VMS.COM usually in the
form of @SYS$STARTUP:something$STARTUP.COM.

A simple text file that after a little cleanup typical
will be only 20-50 lines. Easy to understand. Easy to edit.

My perspective is based on some assumptions:
- that there is no need to start many hundreds of products
- that there are not crazy many dependencies
- that the system manager know how to edit a text file in
a terminal window

But I think they should hold true for practically all VMS
systems.

Arne

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

But my impression is that [systemd] missed on the main criteria: keeping
things simple.

But it does. Service definitions (and “unit” definitions in general) are
written in config files following the classic text-based .INI format. If
you remember, Microsoft created this format back in the 1980s for Windows
config files, then abandoned it in favour of that horror known as the
Registry. Well, it lives on in the open-source world.

A service file consists of a series of directives, each of which is there
for a purpose. Compare creating sysvinit scripts (I have done both), where
you end up copying and pasting a whole lot of boilerplate from some
existing script into the new one, maybe not really understanding why it’s
needed.

To illustrate the point and somewhat move back to VMS let me confess
something: I really like SYS$MANAGER:SYSTARTUP_VMS.COM to manage what
get started on VMS.

That’s the equivalent of the old /etc/rc.local, that some distros (and I
think also BSDs) still support. OK for a small handful of services, but it
doesn’t scale.

A simple text file that after a little cleanup typical will be only
20-50 lines. Easy to understand. Easy to edit.

Not so easy to selectively add/remove, enable/disable or start/stop
individual services.

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Post by Arne Vajhøj
To illustrate the point and somewhat move back to VMS let me confess
something: I really like SYS$MANAGER:SYSTARTUP_VMS.COM to manage what
get started on VMS.

That’s the equivalent of the old /etc/rc.local, that some distros (and I
think also BSDs) still support. OK for a small handful of services, but it
doesn’t scale.

It does not scale.

But it should not need to scale.

You should not run that many services on a single system.

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Post by Arne Vajhøj
A simple text file that after a little cleanup typical will be only
20-50 lines. Easy to understand. Easy to edit.

Not so easy to selectively add/remove, enable/disable or start/stop
individual services.

add/enable : put $ @sys$startup:something$startup in that file
remove/disable : change to $! @...
start : @sys$startup:something$startup
stop : @sys$startup:something$shutdown

Simple!

Arne

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by Arne Vajhøj
You should not run that many services on a single system.

I call that a “Windows Server” mentality. I think it has to do with
proprietary apps, each one assuming it owns the system. So if you try
running more than one, and they interfere, the vendors will simply point
the finger at each other.

It has been traditional, going back decades, for *nix servers to be multi-
role.

[Andreas Eder]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

But my impression is that [systemd] missed on the main criteria: keeping
things simple.

But it does. Service definitions (and “unit” definitions in general) are
written in config files following the classic text-based .INI format. If
you remember, Microsoft created this format back in the 1980s for Windows
config files, then abandoned it in favour of that horror known as the
Registry. Well, it lives on in the open-source world.

But .INI format is not a classic unix file format and not as easy to
parse as the real, classic unix file formats. I think of it as an
abomination.

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

To illustrate the point and somewhat move back to VMS let me confess
something: I really like SYS$MANAGER:SYSTARTUP_VMS.COM to manage what
get started on VMS.

That’s the equivalent of the old /etc/rc.local, that some distros (and I
think also BSDs) still support. OK for a small handful of services, but it
doesn’t scale.

A simple text file that after a little cleanup typical will be only
20-50 lines. Easy to understand. Easy to edit.

Not so easy to selectively add/remove, enable/disable or start/stop
individual services.

In fact it is easy to do all that if you know how to edit text filesm
either by hand or with tools like awk or sed.

'Andreas

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by Andreas Eder
But .INI format is not a classic unix file format and not as easy to
parse as the real, classic unix file formats. I think of it as an
abomination.

It’s very easy to deal with, and very popular among open-source
developers. It’s so popular, there’s even a module in the standard Python
library for parsing it. That’s why systemd adopted it.

I think it is Windows programmers who were conditioned to hate it, by
Microsoft marketing.

Post by Andreas Eder

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Not so easy to selectively add/remove, enable/disable or start/stop
individual services.

In fact it is easy to do all that if you know how to edit text filesm
either by hand or with tools like awk or sed.

Not really the best idea, when you can separate out the definitions into
individual files. Less chance of accidentally altering something you
didn’t mean to.

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Post by Andreas Eder
But .INI format is not a classic unix file format and not as easy to
parse as the real, classic unix file formats. I think of it as an
abomination.

It’s very easy to deal with, and very popular among open-source
developers. It’s so popular, there’s even a module in the standard Python
library for parsing it. That’s why systemd adopted it.

People may have different opinions on what is "very popular".

The 3 most widely formats for config files today are XML, JSON
and YAML.

But INI and Java properties may be the next 2 in usage.

Arne

[motk]

Post by Arne Vajhøj
But my impression is that it missed on the main criteria: keeping
things simple.

I can assure you it's much more simple than dealing with shell scripts
in init.d, rc.d, /opt/foo/product/bin/etc/local/init.d/rc.d etc etc. Let
alone stuff glommed into inittab that called stuff that did god knows
what. This script calls a binary, that writes out a shell script with a
BASE64 encoded portion that extracts itself and execs it and writes out
a pid somewhere and what the hell.

Someone said "bugger this" and wrote something much neater and with
clearly defined configuration. It was a godsend.

Post by Arne Vajhøj
To illustrate the point and somewhat move back to VMS let me confess
something: I really like SYS$MANAGER:SYSTARTUP_VMS.COM to manage
what get started on VMS.
VMS start the stuff that has to run and one put in what one
want to start in SYS$MANAGER:SYSTARTUP_VMS.COM usually in the
A simple text file that after a little cleanup typical
will be only 20-50 lines. Easy to understand. Easy to edit.

Sure, you can still do that, but you now have the problem of knowing
what the state of the system is, being able to interrogate that in a
machine readable way, and being able to be managed as a fleet.

[Andreas Eder]

Post by Grant Taylor

Post by Scott Dorsey
The problem is not systemd. Systemd is a symptom of the problem.

I can agree to that.

Post by Scott Dorsey
The problem is change for change's sake. Let's rewrite this thing and make
it different... not better, just different.

I feel like there is a HUGE dose of ignorance on some contemporary
developers and they are repeating old mistakes and making new
mistakes.

I think the problem is that they grew up in a Windows dominated world,
not like us greybeards.

Post by Grant Taylor
I know that some oft maligned changes are actually rooted in good reason.
I'm thinking about the deprecation of ifconfig, netstat, and route. The
kernel grew, changed, and gained a LOT of new options that the old tools had
no idea how to work with. I can get behind that.
What I can't stand is why there aren't new versions of ifconfig, netstat,
and route that use the new framework while providing command compatibility
with nearly 50 years of Unix and Unix like OS history. Not providing a
compatible wrapper is stupid in my opinion.

+1

'Andreas

[Grant Taylor]

Post by Andreas Eder
I think the problem is that they grew up in a Windows dominated world,
not like us greybeards.

I really would like to agree. However we have some 20 year old
developers that have been using Linux their entire life making these
types of questionable decisions.

I think it's more apt to say that they have grown up with frameworks
that abstract things away from them and they have no idea how the
underlying infrastructure works.

It used to be that Unix, and I'll include VMS, system administrators
were full stack LONG before "full stack" was a thing. Now people think
"full stack" is a honor and rarely achieved because they seem to think
that there is too much to learn / know. Yet there are those of us that
have been doing full stack from the SCSI bus all the way up to the
encryption that web traffic runs through and all the equipment in between.

I remember when a 486 could serve up static web pages with the best of
them. Now some developers think you need multiple high end physical
boxes in a cluster to run the stack to serve up a simple web page that
is now dynamically created, half of it rendered client side in JavaScript.

Post by Andreas Eder
+1

:-)

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by Andreas Eder
I think the problem is that they grew up in a Windows dominated world,
not like us greybeards.

If only Windows had Linux-style service management, don’t you think?
Imagine being able to add/remove, enable/disable and start/stop individual
services without having to reboot the entire system!

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Post by Andreas Eder
I think the problem is that they grew up in a Windows dominated world,
not like us greybeards.

If only Windows had Linux-style service management, don’t you think?
Imagine being able to add/remove, enable/disable and start/stop individual
services without having to reboot the entire system!

They don't need to imagine. They have been doing that for decades.

Arne

[motk]

Post by Andreas Eder
I think the problem is that they grew up in a Windows dominated world,
not like us greybeards.

My beard is as grey as anybody! I refuse to wear suspenders, or socks
with sandals. Have to draw a line.

[motk]

Post by Grant Taylor
At least Solaris stopped SMF at managing services and didn't try to take
over DNS, NTP, and many other things.

Those are entirely optional, but very handy for embedded/cloud image/iot
stuff, where you don't want to pull in an entire distros worth of stuff.

This is all a bit sad in 2024.

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by chrisq

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Post by chrisq
Absolutely, Solaris, Linux, Freebsd and even cygwin + X + xfce4, all
depend on X11 at core. VMS as well, though not sure of current status.

DEC was a key contributor in the development of X11. But that was then.

Post by chrisq
As with systemd, Wayland looks like yet another attempt at power grab
...

I wonder who you think is “grabbing” this “power”. Both systemd and
Wayland are open-source projects, created by people who see a problem
and are trying to fix it. Those in the community who see value in these
efforts adopt their solutions, others don’t. There is no Monopolistic™
BigCorp® forcing any of these things down our throats. If you don’t
want to use them, don’t use them.

systemd originally came from redhat. I rest my case.

Most Linux users don’t use Red Hat. It seems to be mainly a North American
thing.

What “case” were you talking about, exactly?

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Post by chrisq

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Post by chrisq
As with systemd, Wayland looks like yet another attempt at power grab
...

I wonder who you think is “grabbing” this “power”. Both systemd and
Wayland are open-source projects, created by people who see a problem
and are trying to fix it. Those in the community who see value in these
efforts adopt their solutions, others don’t. There is no Monopolistic™
BigCorp® forcing any of these things down our throats. If you don’t
want to use them, don’t use them.

systemd originally came from redhat. I rest my case.

Most Linux users don’t use Red Hat. It seems to be mainly a North American
thing.

RHEL is the big one in on-prem enterprise Linux. The US is the
country with most RHEL customers - but India, UK, Italy, France, Canada
also has a lot of RHEL customers.

RHEL clones are some of the major gratis Linux distros (among a bunch
of others).

For many years Redhat was the biggest contributor to Linux kernel.

Redhat has a pretty big place in the Linux space.

Arne

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by Arne Vajhøj
RHEL is the big one in on-prem enterprise Linux.

Like I said, that seems to be a North America thing.

Post by Arne Vajhøj
RHEL clones are some of the major gratis Linux distros (among a bunch of
others).

Most Linux distros are offshoots of Debian, not Red Hat.

[John Dallman]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Post by Arne Vajhøj
RHEL is the big one in on-prem enterprise Linux.

Like I said, that seems to be a North America thing.

It has a significant presence worldwide, although it's most popular in
North America. SUSE Enterprise is popular in Europe, Ubuntu LTS is used
everywhere, but doesn't dominate anywhere AFAIK, and China is a weird mix,
with its own RHEL work-alikes and some others.

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Most Linux distros are offshoots of Debian, not Red Hat.

There are enough Linux distros that ISVs have to be selective about what
they support. Fortunately, most of the popular Debian derivatives are
more directly Ubuntu derivatives.

John

[motk]

Post by chrisq
systemd originally came from redhat. I rest my case.

uh

Post by chrisq
A suffocating carbunkle on  what was an elegant os that really didn't
need it...

uh

[motk]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
I wonder who you think is “grabbing” this “power”. Both systemd and
Wayland are open-source projects, created by people who see a problem and
are trying to fix it. Those in the community who see value in these
efforts adopt their solutions, others don’t. There is no Monopolistic™
BigCorp® forcing any of these things down our throats. If you don’t want
to use them, don’t use them.

If you've ever spend two days awake chasing races in shell scripts
across pacemaker/corosync you'd do anything for systemd or something
similar, like the solaris stuff.

This is what I'm saying here, it's possible to neckbeard yourself into
irrelevance and then you end up looking like some dude complaining
that's no such thing as rock and roll anymore. It's just cringe.

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by motk
This is what I'm saying here, it's possible to neckbeard yourself into
irrelevance and then you end up looking like some dude complaining
that's no such thing as rock and roll anymore. It's just cringe.

I see that around me all the time. systemd is one obvious trigger for
them, but there are others (e.g. Wayland, iproute2). Some of these people
may be physically no older than me (I’m guessing), but mentally it seems
they already have one foot in the grave.

[Robert A. Brooks]

Absolutely, Solaris, Linux, Freebsd and even cygwin + X + xfce4, all depend on
X11 at core. VMS as well, though not sure of current status.

That's a pretty pliable definition of "depend on" regarding VMS, since
there is literally no dependency on X11 within VMS.

Yeah, if you want a non-character cell interface, then X11 is the only option
on VMS, but to claim a dependency is a bit much. Even then, your X11 experience
will be using a lot of DECterm windows most of the time.

[bill]

Post by Robert A. Brooks

Post by chrisq
Absolutely, Solaris, Linux, Freebsd and even cygwin + X + xfce4, all
depend on X11 at core. VMS as well, though not sure of current status.

That's a pretty pliable definition of "depend on" regarding VMS, since
there is literally no dependency on X11 within VMS.

I think he was referring to DECWindows which is also X11 based.

Post by Robert A. Brooks
Yeah, if you want a non-character cell interface, then X11 is the only option
on VMS, but to claim a dependency is a bit much.  Even then, your X11
experience will be using a lot of DECterm windows most of the time.

Nothing wrong with DECTerm. But there was a lot more you could do with
DECWindows. Worked great back when I had labs of X-terminals to support
both VMS and SunOS for the students (and yes, faculty liked it, too.)

bill

[Grant Taylor]

Post by bill
Nothing wrong with DECTerm. But there was a lot more you could do
with DECWindows. Worked great back when I had labs of X-terminals to
support both VMS and SunOS for the students (and yes, faculty liked
it, too.)

I think that X11's ability to work across platforms is something that's
unmet by any other protocol that I'm aware of.

GUI applications could run on their native / optimal platform and
display on whatever platform the user wanted to use.

No, I don't consider web based interfaces to be comparable.

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by Grant Taylor

Nothing wrong with DECTerm.  But there was a lot more you could do
with DECWindows.  Worked great back when I had labs of X-terminals to
support both VMS and SunOS for the students (and yes, faculty liked
it, too.)

I think that X11's ability to work across platforms is something that's
unmet by any other protocol that I'm aware of.
GUI applications could run on their native / optimal platform and
display on whatever platform the user wanted to use.
No, I don't consider web based interfaces to be comparable.

Cool feature.

But how many does really need it?

Closest equivalent may be the "screen copy" technologies
(RDS, Citrix etc.).

Arne

[John Dallman]

Post by Arne Vajhøj

Post by Grant Taylor
I think that X11's ability to work across platforms is something
that's unmet by any other protocol that I'm aware of.
GUI applications could run on their native / optimal platform and
display on whatever platform the user wanted to use.

Cool feature.
But how many does really need it?

Not everyone. But those who need it, really need it. I have done Windows
development on machines that were too noisy to have in an office
environment, before Windows had Remote Desktop. Walking back and forth to
the machine that had my e-mail on it was a ludicrous waste of time. I'm
not interested in repeating the experience.

John

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by Grant Taylor
No, I don't consider web based interfaces to be comparable.

At least some at Microsoft seem to think they’re “good enough”. Look at
Visual Studio Code: they could have used their own Dotnet to build it, but
no, instead they built it on Electron.

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Post by Grant Taylor
No, I don't consider web based interfaces to be comparable.

At least some at Microsoft seem to think they’re “good enough”.

Most do. Web interfaces are pretty dominant today. Maybe not
comparable, but good enough. And in most cases more than
good enough.

Who would pick a bank that insist on a desktop GUI instead of a
web interface?

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Look at
Visual Studio Code: they could have used their own Dotnet to build it, but
no, instead they built it on Electron.

Not much of a choice.

First release of VSC happened a year before .NET Core 1.0 was
released, so if the requirement was to support other platforms
than Windows, then .NET was not an option (they could have
tried Mono, but that was not theirs at the time).

It probably didn't hurt that the product they intended to
displace was also using Electron (Atom).

Arne

[motk]

Post by Arne Vajhøj
It probably didn't hurt that the product they intended to
displace was also using Electron (Atom).

It'll probably move on to react/fluent/webview2, like teams did.

Using a display engine used in anger on billions on devices is probably
a good call, there's a lot more react coders in the world that qt or
similar.

Post by Arne Vajhøj
Arne

[chrisq]

Post by Robert A. Brooks

Post by chrisq
Absolutely, Solaris, Linux, Freebsd and even cygwin + X + xfce4, all
depend on X11 at core. VMS as well, though not sure of current status.

That's a pretty pliable definition of "depend on" regarding VMS, since
there is literally no dependency on X11 within VMS.
Yeah, if you want a non-character cell interface, then X11 is the only option
on VMS, but to claim a dependency is a bit much.  Even then, your X11
experience will be using a lot of DECterm windows most of the time.

Sigh,

Perhaps a poor choice of words, but are there any desktop / GUI systems,
other than windows, that do not depend on X11 ?. The point was that it
is a standard, and not optional. Can't remember if the old Motif based
CDE used X11 libs or not, but that's long gone anyway. VWS, ditto...

[Chris Townley]

Post by chrisq

Post by Robert A. Brooks

Post by chrisq
Absolutely, Solaris, Linux, Freebsd and even cygwin + X + xfce4, all
depend on X11 at core. VMS as well, though not sure of current status.

That's a pretty pliable definition of "depend on" regarding VMS, since
there is literally no dependency on X11 within VMS.
Yeah, if you want a non-character cell interface, then X11 is the only option
on VMS, but to claim a dependency is a bit much.  Even then, your X11
experience will be using a lot of DECterm windows most of the time.

Sigh,
Perhaps a poor choice of words, but are there any desktop / GUI systems,
other than windows, that do not depend on X11 ?. The point was that it
is a standard, and not optional. Can't remember if the old Motif based
CDE used X11 libs or not, but that's long gone anyway. VWS, ditto...

I remember well DR Gem on the Atari ST. It sat on top off the aptly
named TOS

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by chrisq

Post by Robert A. Brooks

Post by chrisq
Absolutely, Solaris, Linux, Freebsd and even cygwin + X + xfce4, all
depend on X11 at core. VMS as well, though not sure of current status.

That's a pretty pliable definition of "depend on" regarding VMS, since
there is literally no dependency on X11 within VMS.
Yeah, if you want a non-character cell interface, then X11 is the only option
on VMS, but to claim a dependency is a bit much.  Even then, your X11
experience will be using a lot of DECterm windows most of the time.

Perhaps a poor choice of words, but are there any desktop / GUI systems,
other than windows, that do not depend on X11 ?. The point was that it
is a standard, and not optional. Can't remember if the old Motif based
CDE used X11 libs or not, but that's long gone anyway. VWS, ditto...

I don't think macOS use X either (for native macOS
applications - can run X applications).

And even though Android and iOS does not qualify as desktop, then
Windows + macOS + Android + iOS is like 99% of all GUI.

Arne

[motk]

Post by Arne Vajhøj
I don't think macOS use X either (for native macOS
applications - can run X applications).

I think it dropped X support a decade ago. The could probably do a
headless thing but nobody needs it. There are third party apps of course.

[Scott Dorsey]

Post by motk

Post by Arne Vajhøj
I don't think macOS use X either (for native macOS
applications - can run X applications).

I think it dropped X support a decade ago. The could probably do a
headless thing but nobody needs it. There are third party apps of course.

XQuartz is supplied by Apple and provides X under MacOS which works pretty
reliably, although slower than native MacOS graphics. It's used by a lot of
applications from Matlab to the various open-source ports to MacOS.
--scott

[Dan Cross]

Post by chrisq

Post by Robert A. Brooks

Post by chrisq
Absolutely, Solaris, Linux, Freebsd and even cygwin + X + xfce4, all
depend on X11 at core. VMS as well, though not sure of current status.

That's a pretty pliable definition of "depend on" regarding VMS, since
there is literally no dependency on X11 within VMS.
Yeah, if you want a non-character cell interface, then X11 is the only option
on VMS, but to claim a dependency is a bit much.  Even then, your X11
experience will be using a lot of DECterm windows most of the time.

Sigh,
Perhaps a poor choice of words, but are there any desktop / GUI systems,
other than windows, that do not depend on X11 ?

Sure! Tons, both historical and contemporary. The obvious
modern examples are ChromeOS and macOS, both of which are highly
graphical, neither of which uses X11 natively (but support for X
exists for at least macOS, and I believe for ChromeOS as well).

The Plan 9 graphical environment, Rio, does not use X11.

Historical examples abound: the Blit; VGTS and W on the V
microkernel; CMU's WM; MGR; the Xerox Alto, Star, etc; Sun's
SunTools/SunView; SGI's MEX; I would argue Sun's NeWS initially,
etc. Even the initial graphical system on SRI's NTS.

Post by chrisq
The point was that it
is a standard, and not optional. Can't remember if the old Motif based
CDE used X11 libs or not, but that's long gone anyway. VWS, ditto...

Motif was a user interface toolkit built on top of X and most
Motif applications used the underlying X libraries (Xlib, the
intrinsics toolkit, etc). The main competitor was Sun's
OpenLook toolkit, which was in some ways better, but didn't
quite grab the industry. DECWindows was clearly based on Motif,
but X on VMS always felt a bit like an impedence mismatch. I
guess it worked OK. ost serious Unix people ran a more minimal
window manager (ctwm, tvtwm, twm, uwm, etc).

- Dan C.

[motk]

Post by chrisq
Perhaps a poor choice of words, but are there any desktop / GUI systems,
other than windows, that do not depend on X11 ?. The point was that it
is a standard, and not optional. Can't remember if the old Motif based
CDE used X11 libs or not, but that's long gone anyway. VWS, ditto...

Literally ... all of them? GNOME, KDE, none of them require X11 for
anything, and they all work perfectly fine. Xwayalnd exists and is
actively maintained so you can still use X11 and not notice anything.
You will get the occasional wrinkle (copy/paste finagling) but it's my
daily drive now. The people who actually do the coding, xfree86/xorg
people, are now making enormous strides in a post-x11 world. People are
even writing entire desktop environments in rust now, which is exciting.

If you're looking for standards, it's now wayland/xdg-portal/dbus.

It really is worth doing the research here and seeing what modern best
practice is. Ignore phoronix commenters of course.

[motk]

Post by chrisq
As with systemd, Wayland looks like yet another attempt at power grab,
and even after years, still doesn't work properly, nor is it complete
compared to X functionality. Who cares if X isn't completely secure,
just use it accordingly...

Deeply unserious summation. Feel free to keep righting spaghetti bourne
in rc.d, but the actual working world will just leave it behind.

Post by chrisq
Chris

[motk]

Post by motk
Deeply unserious summation. Feel free to keep righting spaghetti bourne
in rc.d, but the actual working world will just leave it behind.

Argh, 'writing'

[motk]

Post by John Dallman
That's an extremely sweeping statement. I'm working for a very large and
paranoid corporation. I wouldn't try using X11 across the internet, but
for working with a lot of different Linuxes, macOS and Solaris in a
secured development lab, it is truly excellent, and nobody is trying to
stop me.

I'd love that sort of gig myself, but everywhere I've been for the past
twenty years would have conniptions if I asked to open firewall holes
for X, or to add stuff to /etc/skel for xhosts, or to add selinux
policy, etc etc.

Post by John Dallman
It lets me have editors and terminal windows on lots of different Linuxes
without needing to deal with their different GUIs and desktop
environments. As far as I can see, Wayland doesn't offer that unless you
it is not useful to me, it will suck bandwidth, and it gives me much,
much more setup to do.

Wayland is not X. It was never designed to do that, and I've personally
berated Keith et al about that decision. RDP pretty much exploded and
all interest in replicated X in that way vanished, but there is yet
hope, ie https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mstoeckl/waypipe/

Post by John Dallman
I produce closed-source commercial shared libraries that have to work on
as many Linuxes as possible. The list of ones I have running in the lab
x86-64: CentOS 7.9, RHEL 8.9, Rocky 8.9, Alma 8.9, Alma 9.3, SLES12sp5,
SLES15sp5, Ubuntu LTS 20.04 and 22.04. I need to add Ubuntu LTS 24.04
soon, of course, and I'm getting extended support on the CentOS 7.9s so
that products released on them can serve out their maintenance lives.
Aarch64: Ubuntu 20.04, Amazon Linux 2, and RHEL 8.9. I need to add Amazon
Linux 2023, Ubuntu LTS 22.04 and 24.04.
Would you want to set up desktops for all those different Linuxes?

I'd probably just use RDP to be honest. Easy enough to set up on most
thing, and the corp environment would be already glued together to allow
it. I've used NoMachine when maintaining a farm of windows/osx/linux
desktop/servers before.

Post by John Dallman
John

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by John Dallman
I produce closed-source commercial shared libraries that have to work on
as many Linuxes as possible. The list of ones I have running in the lab
x86-64: CentOS 7.9, RHEL 8.9, Rocky 8.9, Alma 8.9, Alma 9.3, SLES12sp5,
SLES15sp5, Ubuntu LTS 20.04 and 22.04. I need to add Ubuntu LTS 24.04
soon, of course, and I'm getting extended support on the CentOS 7.9s so
that products released on them can serve out their maintenance lives.

And related to the other topic about RHEL significance then that is:
RHEL + 3 RHEL clones + SLES + Ubuntu

Post by John Dallman
Aarch64: Ubuntu 20.04, Amazon Linux 2, and RHEL 8.9. I need to add Amazon
Linux 2023, Ubuntu LTS 22.04 and 24.04.

And RHEL + 1 RHEL clone + Ubuntu.

Arne

[Marc Van Dyck]

Post by Arne Vajhøj
I believe that VT200/VT300/VT400 and 8bit gives the "best"
VMS experience.

Thanks all - it's worth a bit more thought, given that X11 is basically dead,
and that most people just open a windows or linux default terminal and they
and by default presents as xterm.

Post by Arne Vajhøj
Arne

As dead as it looks, it's still what I'm using today... Just a Putty
login to start a good old VMS session manage,r and I'm in business.
Mostly DECterms, but also LSE. I must admit that the lack of support
for the mouse wheel in DECterm sucks. Otherwise it's still the terminal
that best fits my needs. Oh, and on the PC side, still using Excursion
too. Free, works all the time, even on my Windows 10 PC. What I miss is
the VT emulator that DEC made a long time ago. Was that VT320.EXE ? Can
it still be found somewhere ?

[Hans Bachner]

Hi Marc,

Post by Marc Van Dyck
[,,,]
As dead as it looks, it's still what I'm using today... Just a Putty
login to start a good old VMS session manage,r and I'm in business.
Mostly DECterms, but also LSE. I must admit that the lack of support
for the mouse wheel in DECterm sucks. Otherwise it's still the terminal
that best fits my needs. Oh, and on the PC side, still using Excursion
too. Free, works all the time, even on my Windows 10 PC. What I miss is
the VT emulator that DEC made a long time ago. Was that VT320.EXE ? Can
it still be found somewhere ?

Yes, it's on the freeware CD #7:

https://www.digiater.nl/openvms/freeware/v70/vtstar/

I'm still using it in my internal environment, mainly for VMS nodes and
serial consoles. Excellent VT terminal emulation. It's only drawback is
the missing SSH support, and here PuTTY enters the game...

Hans.

PS: as an X11 server on a PC, I'm using the free version of Xming.

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by Hans Bachner

Post by Marc Van Dyck
As dead as it looks, it's still what I'm using today... Just a Putty
login to start a good old VMS session manage,r and I'm in business.
Mostly DECterms, but also LSE. I must admit that the lack of support
for the mouse wheel in DECterm sucks. Otherwise it's still the terminal
that best fits my needs. Oh, and on the PC side, still using Excursion
too. Free, works all the time, even on my Windows 10 PC. What I miss is
the VT emulator that DEC made a long time ago. Was that VT320.EXE ? Can
it still be found somewhere ?

https://www.digiater.nl/openvms/freeware/v70/vtstar/
I'm still using it in my internal environment, mainly for VMS nodes and
serial consoles. Excellent VT terminal emulation.

Indeed.

I just tested if it can handle a VT soft font.

It can.

(it is one of the few things Putty can not do)

Arne