[CentOS] wifi on servers and fedora [was Re: 7.2 kernel panic on boot]

Thu Dec 10 21:43:02 UTC 2015
Warren Young <wyml at etr-usa.com>

On Dec 9, 2015, at 11:55 AM, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
> 
> Matthew Miller wrote:
>> On Wed, Dec 09, 2015 at 01:05:15PM -0500, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
>>>>> 
>>> So, you're saying that end users need to go poke their noses into the
>>> development process
>> 
>> If you want to go out of your way to read it that way, it's hard to
>> stop you. However, it's not what I'm saying. The development process is
>> conducted in the open for a reason.
> 
> I don't see that as going "out of my way". Let's put it this way: how many
> times have folks on the development side poked their nose in here - the
> general redhat list is pretty dead - and asked anything?

So…you want veto power over Fedora?  You want every proposed change to cross your desk for a yea/nay?

What if the Fedora project gatewayed the low-traffic development mailing list to this one, so that you don’t even have *that* barrier to participation?  Now ask yourself: what user-visible changes do you expect in the world afterward?

Hint to the correct answer: F/OSS is a do-ocracy: those who do the work, rule.

People give Poettering a lot of static, but the fact is, he Gets. Stuff. Done.  If you want different stuff done, you’re going to have to make that happen somehow.  Shouted complaints from a soapbox don’t compile.

And don’t play the “underfunded government agency” card.  LANL, LLBL, ORNL, NASA, USGS…all have given back lots of code to the open source world.  As well they should, because they derive an awful lot of benefit from that world.

I’m not against your basic position, Mark.  I, too, have shaken my head in dismay at several of the desktop-focused behaviors in recent versions of CentOS.[*]  I think where we actually differ is that I realize that I have no right to complain all that loudly about them, because I have the means to change them, but do not.

Partly that’s because of differing priorities, partly it’s out of rational self-interest (i.e. I know how many OS forks fizzle) and yes, it’s partly just laziness.  But there’s that difference: I know why I’m not out there trying to change it.

What are your reasons?



[*] My favorite fumble is the one where a 2-NIC box with one DHCP interface and one static will swap the configurations silently when you boot with only the DHCP cable plugged in.  Because *obviously* you want the static IP to be available all the time, right?  This is great for wifi + Ethernet laptops, where you want the static IP to move when you plug the wired LAN cable in, but it doesn’t work out so great for servers where the DHCP NIC is normally disconnected, and exists only so the boots on the ground can move the cable in an emergency to reestablish the Internet link after they roached the LAN config somehow.  This behavior means the broken static IP moves to the secondary NIC, where it remains broken.  Solution: Plug both network cables in so NetworkManager doesn’t get Clever.™