this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
353 points (98.6% liked)
Linux
48083 readers
870 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
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Eventually it’ll be easier to create a compatible drop-in replacement than maintain the decades old code, if it isn’t already
Unlikely, unless you drop backwards compatibility for undefined behaviour. Unless you write a complete specification on it, you'll end up either breaking old stuff, or slowly rebuilding the same problems.
Like what's happening to X. Wayland is replacing it.
Wayland is not a drop-in replacement tho. It's like if glibc developers declared it obsolete and presented a "replacement" that has a completely different API and has 1/100 of glibc functionality and a plugin interface. And then all the dozens of Linux distros have to write all the plugins from scratch to add back missing functionality and do it together in perfect cooperation so that they remain compatible with each other.