Debian/Ubuntu: Why was the service renamed from bind9 to named?

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

On 7/22/2020 9:59 PM, Michael De Roover wrote:
>
> On 7/23/20 6:28 AM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>> Linux is 10 times worse because they aren't even including the c
>> compiler or development tools
>> anymore.
> Every distribution I've laid my hands on so far has GCC packages and
> most development packages affixed with either -dev or -devel (most of
> the time).
>> But many "systemadmins" out there think they are Unix admins
>> yet are afraid to compile programs.  They will go to the FreeBSD port or
>> the Linux precompiled apt-get stuff.  The reason is more and more
>> non-technical people are getting their hands on this stuff.
>
> I don't disagree with this but I also think there's more to it than
> that. For me personally I avoid compiling from source when I can get
> away with it - not because I can't run make - but simply because binary
> packages are convenient. Having a package manager take care of updates
> in the whole system is convenient. Having distribution maintainers that
> say "okay we are going to go stable, bleeding edge or whatever with the
> whole project" is useful when they can spend the time looking at the
> upstream projects, and choose the most fitting software versions and
> such to suit that goal. And when there's billions of machines running
> very similar architectures, there is an argument to be made that making
> every single one of them compile everything from source is rather
> pointless. Why should every machine in existence be tasked with
> CPU-intensive compilation workloads when a handful of dedicated
> compilation servers can do exactly that, and a million times better?
>

Well for starters there is no way for ME to validate that the compiled
software you built for me isn't busy running your Doom network server
behind my back.  (do people still even run Doom servers?)

You are making an argument that is a desktop argument.  That is, the
argument goes Those That Know Better Will Do It For You.

Also, I have had at least 5 Open Source programs over the years that
I found Really Useful to have that the authors decided they wanted to
"take commercial" or they had other religious conversions that made them
decide to go on a rampage and issue take down notices everywhere they 
could find their source.  One of those for example was when 
Nasty-Company-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Graced-With-A-Mention decided to start 
charging
for software that created .gif files and the graphics community went
on a ballistic rampage jihad and destroyed every scrap of .gif code it 
could find so as to force users to migrate to .png.  I did not wish to 
migrate to .png so I was very glad that I had saved all the old code, 
safe from the fires of the religious zealots.

Lastly, the way I look at it is when I field a new server, if it cannot
recompile it's OS, kernel, make world, and all of it's applications from
source, then it's a piece of excrement that I do not want in service.

It is also a fact that I have had pre-production servers blow up on 
"make worlds"  In a few cases this was bad ram, in one case the server 
was returned to the manufacturer under warranty.  These are machines 
that did not display any issues before the OS load.  Do not ask me why 
it was possible to install all the binaries for the OS and have it boot
with no problems yet blow chunks/blue screen/abend/take a dive into the
toilet/whatever your preferred term for crashing and burning is.

I don't generally run FreeBSD or Linux as a desktop OS, BTW so that
does affect my view of things.

So yes, there is definitely an argument in favor of compiling the
stuff at least on a server.

Ted