Davin McCall

systemd has made packaging easier, and it's good at full process management, but still, it is nice to have alternatives in major distros. Even though I'm a Gentoo user, I still prefer void's runit or openbsd's rc.d system when it comes to simplicity, over OpenRC. Also, dinit looks really promising as well: https://davmac.wordpress.com/category/dinit/

late reply, I know - I only just saw this discussion - I didn't post this story to HN myself. However: I recently wrote a blog post discussion why I created Dasynq, here: https://davmac.wordpress.com/2017/12/17/introducing-dasynq/ Though I don't specifically discuss boost::asio there, I believe some of the points made there apply. Also, last time I checked, boost::asio mandated linking with threads library (at least for some features) whereas Dasynq doesn't, and boost::asio didn't offer support for watching POSIX signals or child process termination (Dasynq does). Finally, the boost::asio multi-threading model is awkward, for reasons I try to explain here: https://davmac.wordpress.com/2016/06/18/boost-asio-and-resource-deallo…

One potential problem is if Gnome make breaking changes, it's hard for Canonical (or anyone) to use it as a base for their own UI. I've not experienced this first-hand, since I haven't used Gnome or written GTK+ apps since the 2.x days, but judging by what I've seen online they like to break APIs at each release, drop working features if/when their opinions change, and be semi-hostile to any use-case other than their own default settings ("brand"), e.g. https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotting-in-thre… https://davmac.wordpress.com/2016/07/05/why-do-we-keep-building-rotten… I suppose Canonical are big enough to have their needs taken into account, unlike other app authors.

> If you're willing to fiddle around, there are a few good themes that don't waste so much space. The point of this "first impressions" exercise was to explore the happy path. > It's not just Gnome that does that. There's an entire generation of designers that's cargo-culting mobile designs at the moment. Breeze, KDE's default theme, is equally space-wasting. I would agree with that sentiment, though I didn't want to get into that flame war today. I think a lot of other people have already written extensively on this subject and I don't feel I can contribute anything new. Here are some relevant articles... Several of these are about CSDs, which I think are a big point of contention with respect to the design philosophy of GTK/Gnome 3.X. This list does not include much about the KDE/Qt side, which I'm less familiar with. I would certainly like to expand the side of this list on the "Pro Gnome" side in the interest of a more fair and balanced debate. Pro Gnome 3.x: Client-Side Decorations Initiative - https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/CSD Restyling apps at scale - https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2018/10/15/restyling-apps-at-scale/ Introducing the CSD Initiative - https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2018/01/26/csd-initiative/ Against Gnome 3.x: Why do we keep building rotten foundations? - https://davmac.wordpress.com/2016/07/05/why-do-we-keep-building-rotten… GNOME (et al): Rotting In Threes -…

> Given that C++ now has a defined memory model, it might very well be that it's now impossible to implement C++ in a standard conforming way on exotic architectures. Also C has a defined memory model since C11 > https://davmac.wordpress.com/2018/01/28/understanding-the-c-c-memory-m… and it is the same as the memory model from C++11: > https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Memory_model_(programming)&… "After it was established that threads could not be implemented safely as a library without placing certain restrictions on the implementation and, in particular, that the C and C++ standards (C99 and C++03) lacked necessary restrictions, the C++ threading subcommittee set to work on suitable memory model; in 2005, they submitted C working document n1131 to get the C Committee on board with their efforts. The final revision of the proposed memory model, C++ n2429, was accepted into the C++ draft standard at the October 2007 meeting in Kona. The memory model was then included in the next C++ and C standards, C++11 and C11.".