[HN Gopher] Google's in-house desktop Linux ___________________________________________________________________ Google's in-house desktop Linux Author : signa11 Score : 229 points Date : 2022-07-31 05:57 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.computerworld.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.computerworld.com) | cripblip wrote: | A recent debconf talk on supporting the same | | https://debconf22.debconf.org/talks/11-scalable-support-for-... | flakiness wrote: | The canonical blog post: | https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/developers-practitioner... | sirjaz wrote: | But I thought Google was all in om ChromeOS and chromebooks? | WaffleIronMaker wrote: | Those target a demographic consisting of schools and non- | developers. Internal Software Engineers have different needs. | racl101 wrote: | gLinux | | are they finally calling it GNU/Linux? | mabbo wrote: | I would love to see a similar article diving into Amazon's use of | RHEL5, and the eventual slow move to "Amazon Linux". | | At one point, I had a RHEL5 desktop in Seattle, which I could | (and had to) develope remotely on from the Toronto office[0]. The | software libraries we used depended on _something_ that RHEL5 had | and newer versions of Red Hat didn 't, as I understood it. | Eventually a new and fantastic manager joined the Toronto office | and convinced senior management to at least ship the desktops to | Toronto. | | [0] At the time, the 'office' was the warehouse in Mississauga. | setheron wrote: | I was always surprised how fast they got NoMachine to work on | the VPN. | | In today's world with tools like Nix and more hermetic build | systems that include libc, the need to build on RHEL5 wouldn't | exist. | | Of course it's always good practice to test on the environment | you're going to eventually deploy. | andrewclunn wrote: | Why can't we get it? Is this not a violation of the GPL? | userbinator wrote: | The GPL has a clause that mentions internal use. | tlhunter wrote: | > Whenever Sieve spots a new version of a Debian package, it | starts a new build. These packages are built in package groups | since separate packages often must be upgraded together. Once the | whole group has been built, Google runs a virtualized test suite | to ensure no core components and developer workflows are broken. | | That must have required an impressive amount of effort! | | > Better still, thanks to the rolling release schedule, Google | can patch security holes on the entire fleet quickly without | compromising stability. Previously, security engineers had to | carefully review each Debian Security Advisory (DSA) to make sure | the fix was in. | | I can only imagine Google upstreams an incredible number of | patches from this process. | GekkePrutser wrote: | > Besides, the "effort to upgrade our Goobuntu fleet usually took | the better part of a year. With a two-year support window, there | was only one year left until we had to go through the same | process all over again for the next LTS. This entire process was | a huge stress factor for our team, as we got hundreds of bugs | with requests for help for corner cases." | | Ummm.. No? Ubuntu LTS has a 5-year support window. Not 2. | | Or maybe it didn't all the way back then? I don't recall. | | A rolling distro does make sense though. Especially in a large | org where you have a relatively homogenous usepatterns. All the | edgecases you can find centrally and pre-empt them before rolling | out the updates. | midasuni wrote: | Desktop was 3 years from 6.06 onwards, only server had 5 years. | Might have changed recently. This meant you had a year to | upgrade the old LTS before it went end of life (from 2008 | releases moved back to April, 6.06 was the first LTS and I | assume they took a little longer getting it out. I think the | version before was 5.10) | weberer wrote: | They changed it in 2012. Desktop gets 5 years of support and | server gets 10. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_version_history#Version. | .. | amelius wrote: | Do they use M1 MacBooks? | nexus7556 wrote: | Yes. I'm a Googler who uses a 15" M1 MacBook Pro | amelius wrote: | Do you run gLinux on it? | nexus7556 wrote: | I do not, it's not an option. If it's a Mac it has to run | macOS | simonebrunozzi wrote: | Google could also simply buy Canonical, and then decide what to | do with Ubuntu. And doing some damage to the Microsoft monopoly, | as a side bonus. | lysergia wrote: | Is there any Google branding in the OS? I'd love to see some | screenshots of it in action. | AlbertCory wrote: | What a laugh. | | I left in 2017, and I was one of the last SWEs to use a Linux | laptop. _Everyone_ had moved to a Mac, after the Christmas | Windows security disaster (which I won 't detail here). It was | pretty much forbidden for a SWE to use Windows, and for a while | Linux had a lot of users but over time it became all Mac. Finally | in 2016 I caved in and drank the Kool-Aid too. | | I'd go to the Tech Stop for something or other, and the staff | would never _object_ , since, after all, it was the official | Google Linux. But you could tell that they didn't see this very | often. | | _Side note: the Tech Stop staff were some of the best, nicest, | and most competent people I ever encountered in that role._ | | Furthermore, whatever I needed seemed to almost always require | them to keep it overnight and wipe the machine completely. | bubblicious wrote: | perhaps read the article before commenting, especially if you | aim at criticizing what is written? the word "laptop" isn't | even mentioned in the article, this talks about desktops only | and how Google runs its own linux distri on those... | malkia wrote: | Does chromebook classify as linux? I had mac laptop, but | granted I could not do anything in the shell, but just "remote" | into an actual (or provided through ganeti ) machine, it was | forbidden to check out locally on your laptop (makes sense). | | But clearly remember my team at LAX (part of Ads-Quality) had | mix of mac, linux and I think two or three people windows | laptops... But all were dumb terminals. Also taht was 2014-2017 | draw_down wrote: | kllrnohj wrote: | Seeing as MacOS build support for AOSP was dropped entirely | over a year ago ( | https://source.android.com/setup/build/initializing ) I'm going | to guess your corner of the world is very not representative. | AlbertCory wrote: | "over a year ago" was 2021. | eklitzke wrote: | Obviously YMMV but my team is at least 75% Linux laptops, so my | experience doesn't match yours at all. | utopcell wrote: | > I left in 2017, and I was one of the last SWEs to use a Linux | laptop. | | Categorically not true, not then, not now. | Cidan wrote: | Yeah, agreed. This isn't even close to true, not sure where | he got that from. | gravypod wrote: | (Opinions are my own) | | I am a gLinux user. Before google I just installed linux on | my laptop at previous companies. | AlbertCory wrote: | shawabawa3 wrote: | I think it's a misunderstanding of the phrase "one of the | last" which can have a connotation that there are no longer | any remaining | hahnchen wrote: | do you know what the situation is right now? | iron2disulfide wrote: | There are still SWEs that use the Linux laptops. There are | dozens of us! | AlbertCory wrote: | I love it. | | Like I said: it was not _unheard of_ to use one -- just a | bit unusual. | yadaeno wrote: | People still use glinux but as a remote host. Everything is | done on the browser so laptop choice is less important. | AlbertCory wrote: | > Everything is done on the browser | | Not quite. There is security hardware there, as I recall. | cowmoo728 wrote: | I strongly requested a Linux laptop (thinkpad x1 carbon) but | got a Chromebook. It would have been easier to get a Mac, and | all of my coworkers got new Macs when they joined. I'm going | to strongly protest for a Linux laptop again when my hardware | refresh date comes. | | I think I fell into some bureaucratic limbo because I joined | near the beginning of covid lockdowns. I don't think my | recruiter fully understood my request for a Linux laptop | either, and there was a general shortage of them at the same | time. | zem wrote: | yep, i held off on my laptop refresh until i was assured a | thinkpad, but several of my colleagues made the switch to | chromebook at the time. | brnt wrote: | But you got a Linux machine! What you wanted however is a | GNU/Linux machine. | colonwqbang wrote: | Google ran out of Linux laptops? Even at my humble place of | employment we can just give any old computer to IT and they | will install Linux on it without any fuss. I would imagine | the IT wizards at Google also know how to do it. | [deleted] | aposm wrote: | I find it very interesting that they're using Debian Testing as | essentially a rolling-release distro. I did this in the past for | a few years, and stopped (switched to Fedora), but I am pleased | to see there is at least one other group of people who think | that's a reasonable setup. | pja wrote: | I've been doing this for years. I generally suggest holding off | on upgrades in the weeks immediately following a Debian stable | release is a good idea: when everything that has been held back | from testing suddenly arrives at once, bugs sometimes get | missed. But otherwise, generally a really solid experience. | | Of course, it's not officially supported by anyone, so when the | (very) occasional bug does hit, you have to sort out rolling | back to something that works yourself. Sounds like Google | automated this side of things? | neilv wrote: | Doing a rolling distro sounds like a great idea for Google, at | their scale, and they also have the expertise and resources to | handle any downsides of that. | | For early startups, I've been doing "Debian Stable" as the | default, partly so that we don't have to spend any time on any | surprise distro changes when we're focused on MVP, etc. | | And in 2 years, the startup will probably have a lot more | resources, and we can look at whether that still makes sense, | though we might just end up doing an in-place APT `dist-upgrade`, | or coast on `oldstable` awhile if the timing is not right yet. | | I also try to use the same distro on workstations and in | production, to permit lightweight efficiencies, like | experimenting and debugging outside of containers on | workstations, without special tooling, while still having a close | match to production. So, Debian Stable everywhere. | | A recent Ubuntu LTS would also work for this (and sometimes be | easier for things like Nvidia SDK), though Debian has been | arguably a bit better for security and stability lately. | | For things not in the Debian Stable we're using, such as if we | need a bleeding-edge version of some key thing, and we have big | security/reliability requirements... I manage non-Debian-packaged | third-party dependencies in our own Git repo, and track and vet | updates. This also means trying to minimize these dependencies, | more than we would if we were pulling in 100 packages casually | from a language-specific package manager, since each package is | additional work. | krzyk wrote: | Debian Stable (same as Ubuntu LTS) doesn't have newer package | versions, it might sound OK for Windows people, that are | accustomed having release once every few years, but in case of | mode hardcore Linux users it wouldn't be the best user | experience. | | Even just the git has many releases during Debian Stable/Ubuntu | LTS, which enhance user experience, that holding back users is | not the best idea. And in most cases security fixes land first | in the newest versions and are backported, so it is most likely | to have a fix in HEAD than in some random older release. | jpace121 wrote: | I work for a smaller company running most of our stuff on | older Ubuntu LTS versions. While there are things we want to | update faster than the distribution does, most of them are | leaf packages near the stuff we're directly working on and | are easy enough to either package ourselves or find a more | recent package for from a trust worthy source. | | It's really nice to have the rest of the distribution more or | less set it and forget it. | Melatonic wrote: | For a general desktop OS though that does not sound like a | huge problem at all - long term stable always is behind. | Thats part of the selling point in a way. | raegis wrote: | > Even just the git has many releases during Debian Stable... | | It just so happens the software you mentioned, git, is in | stable backports, so it is updated frequently. Regardless, | I've been on Debian stable since 2007, and running "bleeding | edge" stuff is trivial, depending on your desired workflow. | (For example, I just install Debian testing packages in a | schroot.) I used to bounce from distribution to distribution | in the old days (Red Hat, Mandrake, Slackware, Gentoo, etc.) | but once I found Debian _Stable_ I could concentrate on | getting work done. | brnt wrote: | I thought distros were stable until I tried Debian | stable... It's stable! I use it everywhere, even my dev | machine. Might switch to testing though on the dev machine, | 2-3 years of no user software updates is a long time. I | know it's unreasonable to ask, but a yearly new stable | would be the best of all worlds. | jrockway wrote: | I use Debian stable for my workstation, but get everything I | care about from somewhere else. Go, Node, Emacs, Postgres... | all installed from some other package repo. (I actually like | Homebrew a lot on Linux.) | | So I might be two years out of date on ls, but it probably | hasn't changed in the last 2 years anyway. | istillwritecode wrote: | I'm a linux user for over 25 years. I want my development | environment to match production and that almost never | involves new software. | zozbot234 wrote: | Debian has a backports repository, providing newer versions | of software for the existing stable release. This "Debian | Stable has old software" canard is way out of date. | rahen wrote: | Not only that, but there are so many ways to get newer | versions of software on Debian Stable when required: | backports, Nix, pkgsrc, Docker containers, Appimages, | flatpak, snaps... | | Debian Stable tends to hand pick the latest LTS version of | packages everywhere applicable, so it's actually a good | base to standardize on. Packages might be a bit older but | they are reliable, predictable, and kept secure by a | constant roll of security updates. | | In other words, if it doesn't work on the latest Stable, | you're probably moving too fast for a good part of the | industry. Lots of customer and production stacks are not in | the "move fast, release early, release often, and link the | crap to the very latest bleeding edge dependency" | bandwagon. | dataflow wrote: | > in case of mode hardcore Linux users it wouldn't be the | best user experience. | | The "best" user experience you're referring to is getting | surprises like your OpenSSH 9 suddenly stopping to work with | your key agent [1] out of the blue because they decided to | change the protocol (no big deal right?) without any hint of | this whatsoever during normal usage, and you just casually | upgraded your packages because, well, when did Linux package | upgrades ever hurt anybody? | | (Just the latest _incredibly_ frustrating surprise your | fellow "Windows person" literally had to spend hours on | tracking down. And that I actually remember. Most | _definitely_ not the only one.) | | [1] https://www.openssh.com/agent-restrict.html | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | ... or when an ill-advised and insufficiently tested change | to the internals of glibc suddenly causes threaded | applications to misbehave ... great that it was fixed | quickly, but for the "regular users" who suddenly found a | variety of applications malfunctioning (but they each | typically only used one, and hence blamed the application | they used), a strong argument against rolling releases. | nickelcitymario wrote: | Having never worked at a place the size of Google, I'm surprised | that their IT team directly manages 100,000 machines. In my | (apparently naive) mind, if you're smart enough to work at | Google, you're smart enough to manage your own OS. | | Is it a security thing? Are Googlers not allowed to directly | control their own computers? | danpalmer wrote: | Googler opinion, it feels like the right balance between | letting me be in control while automating away the boring stuff | that I don't want to deal with. | dvirsky wrote: | (recent Xoogler here) There is quite a lot of freedom, though | if you do custom stuff it's just not supported. I usually | replaced the desktop, installed a custom terminal app, etc. | There is also a lot of freedom in IDE choice - you can use | literally whatever you want, it's just that the support is | crappy if you don't use a supported one. And Vim support was | IIRC completely volunteer based - there was no vim team, just | people working on plugins and building releases as 20% etc. I | contributed one plugin which sadly not a lot of people used, | but Googlers out there - try BlazeDebugCurrentTest (it's part | of the Blaze plugin) or something like that! | | Actually one of my favorite Google experiences starting out was | that I wanted to work with an Apple Magic Keyboard, and to get | proper support for it I needed to compile some kernel driver I | found on github. I asked IT support if I can do that, and the | answer was "you're a SWE, review the code, make sure it looks | legit and doesn't contain any security holes, and then it's | your responsibility if you mess anything up". Which I did, and | it worked just fine. It was in 2018 so it's not like I'm | referring to some early days thing. | adtac wrote: | vim support had only gotten better since 2018. With CiderLSP | (LSP support for all of google3), it was a breeze navigating | the massive codebase. | dvirsky wrote: | Before WFH I used CLion for cpp. When we were locked down I | found Cider to be annoying (I think mostly because you | couldn't tab switch to a a chrome window on MacOS) so I | took a couple of days to really master vim and configure | all the plugins (and wrote the one plugin I was missing), | and it worked just fine for a while, I would just ssh to my | workstation and use that. Later on they fixed the tab | switching thing so I found myself drifting more towards | Cider, then Cider-V came along, and I was back at the | office, so I was mostly using that, though by that time I | wasn't writing cpp anymore. | ptero wrote: | I never worked at Google, but based on my experience elsewhere | it is partly security and partly standardization of guaranteed | minimum functionality. | | For example, security aside, as an engineer working on X that | depends on internal tools Y, Z and W, I do not particularly | care what variant of Linux is under the hood as long as I can | run my favorite WM, editor and user apps. But I do want support | on Y, Z and W if they misbehave. If I run a non-standard OS or | distro I will likely get a lukewarm support because those teams | will put debugging problems in "non-standard configurations" as | a low priority. | | Personally, I learned to live with most Linux distros. When I | did roll out a non-standard setup I had a standby system in a | standard configuration that I can show failures on before | asking for help. My 2c. | wayne wrote: | I've worked at large tech companies where very capable software | engineers struggled to install or upgrade their OS, let alone | be familiar with the intricacies of Linux. I was surprised at | first too, but I do think there's a large class of engineers | who think about code who don't think at all about the other | stuff, and engineering is broad enough that that's totally | fine. | | Not to mention all the non-engineers, even in tech roles like | PM, design, etc. | cactacea wrote: | This. There's a lot of I shaped people out there that don't | have the first clue about anything beyond their day-to-day. | matheusmoreira wrote: | I think it depends on what the priorites are. I care a lot | about my own systems but when I'm working I really don't want | to have to care about anything but the activity I'm getting | paid for. | drewzero1 wrote: | The way I see it, the engineers aren't being paid to install | and repair hardware and operating system stuff. Even if they | are perfectly capable, it makes sense to have IT handle that | and let the engineers get on with their engineering. | charcircuit wrote: | It's also a matter of efficiency. I can spend more time on | projects that matter instead of on system administration. The | people doing the system administration are more efficient since | they don't need to spend extra time figuring out what to do. | It's not a matter of being smart enough to do it, but instead | it's a matter of time efficiency. | yathaid wrote: | "In my (apparently naive) mind, if you're smart enough to work | at Google, you're smart enough to manage your own OS." | | This is a bit like saying if you can operate on human brains, | you should absolutely be able to take apart your car and put it | back together. | tryauuum wrote: | I wish people never used analogies. It adds nothing to | conversation and you are always inclined to pick the most | ridiculous one. Neurosurgeon disassembling and reassembling a | whole car, sounds indeed crazy. | jnwatson wrote: | We have root on our own (personal) boxes, so we can essentially | do what we want (within reason). | | There's a tremendous value in having a somewhat homogenous | environment. We have our own package repo and .deb packages to | access internal resources. Even little stuff like editor | plugins customized to our internal stuff we have packages for. | | Plus, we hire a great deal of folks that aren't Linux experts. | Have a sane set of defaults gets people going faster. | | It makes a lot of sense to have our own distro when we're | talking this kind of scale. | thrashh wrote: | Try doing support when everyone has a different setup | | Or your software has all these customization options | | Or your product has a bunch of different configurations | | What was already hard just became a thousand times more painful | anonquixey wrote: | I am a google engineer, and a fairly successful one. | | I would absolutely despise it if I had to manage my own OS, | just like I despise thinking about my keyboard layout or text | editor. | | Hacker News overrepresents the hacker type which loves the | feeling of full control but I'd estimate that at least 33% of | engineers, including many very talented ones, don't want that, | and only want to focus on the concrete problems they are trying | to solve. | number6 wrote: | Did the even more successful engineers liked the experience | more or less than you? | mattnewton wrote: | It's for security and for homogeneity, a lot of google is setup | around the principle that "works on my machine" is terrible, | and also removing needless cleverness. You have root and can | run anything you want*, but you have to go out of your way to | configure anything differently than others, and the result is | (hopefully) it just works the same everywhere. The monorepo | also runs only natively on these Linux machines through a | magical fuse interface so most development is either using the | web ide or ssh-ing into the Linux box if you aren't sitting in | front of it. There were big economies of scale running this way | and at least this setup, definitely felt pretty great and | efficient I gotta say. | | * By default, a tool called "Santa" keeps a naughty and nice | list of runnable programs but all it took to get a program | added to the nice list is any other googler vouching for it in | an automated web tool. | dehrmann wrote: | Santa is open-source: https://github.com/google/santa | bityard wrote: | > Are Googlers not allowed to directly control their own | computers? | | First, if the computer is provided by the company, for company | work, they're not "their own computers." They're the company's | computers. And I don't know about Google, but yes it is VERY | common in most mid- to large-size organizations that employees | are not allowed to change things on the machines they use for | work. | | The IT department is usually required by either contracts or | regulation to follow certain security standards and many of | those prohibit end-user modification of machines. And further, | these are often enforced through annual, semi-annual, or | quarterly audits. Failure to follow these standards can result | in the loss of a sales contract, a critical certification, or | fines. | | So, just like a manufacturing worker is not allowed to modify a | machine on the factory floor (even to fix it, or improve it, | regardless of their skill to do so), employees are not allowed | to modify the organization's computing equipment. | | And, it's important to note, the IT department generally has NO | say in these rules since they are a business or legal | requirement. | | Edited to add: I've also worked in companies where the | developers who write the in-house software might be masters of | the business problem domain and their programming language, but | have exactly ZERO knowledge of hardware or the most basic | system administration principles. It doesn't cross their mind | that RAM and disk space are actually finite things, for | example, and that it makes for a Bad Day when one of their | programs starts to consume ALL of it. These are the people who | should not really be managing their own operating systems at | work. | [deleted] | closeparen wrote: | Which business and legal requirements, do you think, bind | most small and medium enterprises to lock down workstations | while engineers across Silicon Valley have root on their | MacBooks from huge important companies? | number6 wrote: | Money for lawyers | mistrial9 wrote: | I gave a demo in Mountain View of some excellent viz, on | their big screen in some room. I wanted to make some tiny | change to (plug something in) _edit_ no not a new device, | being polite, I suggested to move a device of theirs already | on that network, closer to the overhead projector .. the | alarm, consternation and definite NO that rippled through the | three quickly-relaying employees there, was literally like an | electric current. I was amazed that they couldn 't change | even the smallest thing, ever. | | of course I was trying to get my brilliant colleague without | a degree, noticed with that code; zero response, like | stonewall. Later I read, that year Google got over 1million | job applications. | | weird place | lupire wrote: | dsl wrote: | > I suggested to move a device of theirs already on that | network, closer to the overhead projector | | What you didn't know is that it wouldn't work. | | There is also an expectation that you don't just randomly | start changing things in shared conference rooms. If there | is an issue, you open a GUTS ticket and someone comes and | solves the problem. Chances are if you discovered a real | issue, there are 90 other rooms with the same issue that | also would be updated. | dekhn wrote: | What were you trying to connect? Connecting to an ethernet | port wouldn't work as they use ethernet authentication. | Connecting to the projector's input ports instead of using | Meet to present? Certainly something I wouldn't have | protested if somebody external was giving a demo, back when | I worked there. | ska wrote: | > if you're smart enough to work at Google, you're smart enough | to manage your own OS | | Regardless of the scale, that is a recipe for having your | highly capable, highly paid engineers losing hours, days, even | worse - to annoying configuration issues etc. Sometimes it's | the right thing to do (e.g. very early stage, no IT infra) but | if you can have an IT person who is actually good/experienced | at this sort of thing sort out the core problems, it's way more | efficient. | | It's astonishing how much collective time can be wasted on | "well, it works on my machine" issues. This makes it worth | coming up with some sort of systematic way to avoid (mostly) | it. | miggol wrote: | There probably a lot of brilliant minds at Google who have | their very first taste of Linux there. Designers, management | types, even developers, who suddenly need a Linux install to | run a specific tool or dev build. Having a consistent Distro | for them to just turn on and go is very useful. | | If something doesn't work, they can communicate back to the | (well-bearded) developer who sent them that weird build. The | developer surely has some crazy esoteric distro on their bring- | your-own device, but they also have desktops running the | consistent distro available to them all around the office to | reproduce the issue on. It's a bridge between worlds. | | I work in academia and we manage our own Ubuntu spin for this | reason, despite everyone we ship it to being very | conventionally smart. | | > if you're smart enough to work at Google, you're smart enough | to manage your own OS. | | I also like to think of myself as "smart" for self-managing | most OS and cloud things. But the role of smarts is probably | minor compared to the decade+ of experience I have doing it. | When it's something I'm good at, I think it's because of | intelligence. When it's something I can't do, I assume the | people who can have lots of practice. | mistrial9 wrote: | the word is not "smart", the word is "autonomy" and there is | none in that network environment. (see post above for real | example) | happyopossum wrote: | > The developer surely has some crazy esoteric distro on | their bring-your-own device | | Nope. If you want access to more than just the basic corp | resources, you're doing it from a fully managed and approved | OS on a company owned machine or VM. | dman wrote: | Google was the only employer I had where I had root on my | machine, so I would say that developers have control over their | machine. | baobob wrote: | Was this pre or post 2009? | sulam wrote: | I have root right now on my Linux and MacOS systems. | compiler-guy wrote: | I have root on my Google machine right this second. | geekbird wrote: | I had root on my Linux desktop box at my university job, but | I was in IT, administering a Linux service. Most of my | coworkers were using Macs only. | raggi wrote: | > Having never worked at a place the size of Google, I'm | surprised that their IT team directly manages 100,000 machines. | In my (apparently naive) mind, if you're smart enough to work | at Google, you're smart enough to manage your own OS. | | Smart isn't really a key point here. You can be smart and make | choices that solve your immediate needs but may not be good for | the company in the long run. The distro provides for some | standardization and baseline in among other variance. | | > Is it a security thing? | | Yes, one of the forms of standardization are audit solutions | that keep track of all kinds of data about the machines. In the | time I worked there, I once received outreach because a service | I had started on the machine had retained an outgoing port to a | third party service provider for an extended period of time. I | explained what it was, and I did not get in trouble, but I also | shut it down. There are many other forms of audit systems. | | > Are Googlers not allowed to directly control their own | computers? | | It depends on your role, but many roles have root on their | machines. You can of course do just about anything from there, | however some things may get undone by periodic scripts if | they're defensive (e.g. removal of certain software), or in | other cases trigger some kind of outreach as described above. | For certain other policies, you may need to file a bug with a | business justification to request specific policies - you can | also do this for entire teams if it applies to their work. | summerlight wrote: | Not everyone is interested in playing with their own customized | OS configurations. Perhaps 90% of the employees would be okay | if everything "just works". This is especially true due to lots | of internal tooling and figuring out the right configurations | for most of them would be a very painful time-consuming process | for newcomers. | isatty wrote: | I work at google, and I'm also someone who has used and messed | around with Gentoo for like 12 years. When it comes to my day | job I rather not spend time messing around with my own OS (my | workflow aside) and leave it to other people. Multiply that by | 100k or so engineers and the productivity boost is insane. | | We're root on both desktops and laptops though, I just rather | use my time for work and I'm sure my employer would rather I do | that too. | prmoustache wrote: | > I rather not spend time messing around with my own OS (my | workflow aside) and leave it to other people. | | I don't really understand what "messing around mean" in your | context. Exotic things like slackware or alpine aside, all | major popular distros now offer unattended updates, easy | upgrade path between major releases. | | Your vscode, neovim, jetbrains whatever or emacs do not work | differently from one distro to another and since nowadays | many external stuff is either distributed as static binaries, | containers or flatpacks or appimages everything is quite | straightforward and not distro specific. | TulliusCicero wrote: | Why would I want to manage my own Linux distro? I use it to | code for work, that's it. | | > Is it a security thing? Are Googlers not allowed to directly | control their own computers? | | This and simplicity I think. There's definitely some controls | over what kind of things you install on the MacBooks as well, | though it's actually not that restrictive. | poopypoopington wrote: | Software Engineers are worth more to the company when they're | writing code, not when they're debugging issues with the OS. | It's much more worthwhile to standardize the machines people | have and let people focus on doing their actual work more | effortlessly. | [deleted] | dangus wrote: | > if you're smart enough to work at Google, you're smart enough | to manage your own OS. | | No disrespect to you but this is a really naive take on how IT | management works. | | For one thing, not everyone at Google is an OS expert. There | are people working for Google in marketing, sales, support, | data science, graphic design, hardware design, and other fields | where you can't depend on every person to "do the right thing" | when it comes to "managing their own OS." | | And even if they can, is that where you want them spending | their time? Manually managing their OS? Don't you want them to | do the job they were hired to do instead? Their computer is a | work tool, not tinkertown. | | Basically, the opposite of what you're saying is true: because | 100,000 people work at Google, each person represents another | way to potentially mess something up and cause problems for the | whole company. | | Assign each employee with probabilities: | | - Probability of falling for a phishing scam | | - Probability of installing malware | | - Probability of an employee missing an announcement regarding | OS/security policy | | - Probability of an employee opening a support ticket with IT | | These probabilities are very low for people who are computer- | savvy, educated, very highly qualified people. The thing is, | all you have to do is multiply those probabilities by 100,000 | and now you've got a big problem. | | It's much easier to run with zero IT automation if you've only | got 10 people in your company and they all know each other. | jms703 wrote: | Most of the people you listed don't run Linux desktops at | Google. Of those that do, most are able to manage their own | OS. | | For your probabilities, you describe many issues that aren't | big issues at Google. Phishing credentials is mitigated by | mandatory FIDO tokens, binary whitelisting heavily reduces | installs of malware, security policy isn't needed on these | desktops (really just needed for mobile devices incl | laptops). | joshuamorton wrote: | Software distribution becomes distinctly more complicated | if you're running multiple distros. As is, I can install a | lot of software from an internal apt. Saying "hey now we | need to maintain an internal yum and pacman and also deploy | internal packages to those" or alternatively come up with | some bespoke cross platform binary distribution method | seems effortful. | TulliusCicero wrote: | Most _could_ , sure. I could do so. But why would I want | to? It would take research and investment into something I | don't give a shit about. I don't particularly care what | Linux variant is being used, as long as it works. The less | I have to think about it, the more I can spend time on | other, more important stuff. | duped wrote: | I've worked with Xoogler SWEs who didn't know how to use the | command line. They're not hiring for computer literacy. | jokethrowaway wrote: | Weird. Why not just use Arch Linux? | | They could have simply done what Manjaro did: start as Arch, add | some packages and over time fork completely and manage your own | testing and stable (by getting inputs from mainstream Arch) | pessimizer wrote: | Because Debian-testing is wonderful? | bluedino wrote: | Don't a lot of _Googlers_ [1] use Macs? And is it still not | encouraged to run Windows there, or was that just something | created by the media? | | [1]: Are they still called _Googlers_? | coryrc wrote: | Yes, yes Windows discouraged, yes. | readams wrote: | Lots of people have Mac laptops but you can't use them for | anything but remote into a gLinux desktop or virtual machine to | do development. Or you can use a web-based development | environment. Basically, at Google, a laptop is just a web | browser. | rob74 wrote: | So a MacBook Air is just a really expensive web browser with | a weird keyboard layout (it's probably Ok for US keyboards, | but I hate the way they hide keyboard mappings essential for | development like square and curly brackets, pipe, backslash, | tilde etc. on German keyboards with no other plausible | explanation than that some designer didn't want the keyboard | to look cluttered)? | lesuorac wrote: | I think it's mostly MacBook Pros (not Airs). | | Most of Google's services have a corresponding iOS app | which requires a Mac to build / run a simulator. So if | you're not actually picky about computer then it's more | practical to have a Mac as it can handle debugging for | Web/Android/iOS. | | If you're at a desk you can have a dock with a different | keyboard. | wil421 wrote: | Can you post a pic of what you are talking about? My | mappings for everything you said are one keyboard click or | a shift click away. | Arainach wrote: | [Bias disclaimer: I have previously worked on Windows and | ChromeOS] | | When your choices are: | | 1) A 16" MBP with an awful keyboard layout (death to the | Command key, and put Ctrl in the corner) but a great screen | and battery life | | 2) A Chromebook that's straightforward, reliable, but for | some reason not available in a size >13" with a resolution | >1080p (so a dealbreaker for development for many people) | | 3) A Linux laptop with all of the fun bluetooth, driver, | and battery quirks that implies | | Many people will choose #1. OS X is by far my least- | favorite desktop OS for a wide variety of UX reasons, but | when my workflow for the most part requires browser | windows, terminals, and enough pixels to use many of them | at once the 16" MBP is a pretty good choice (when I'm not | paying, at least). | jjoonathan wrote: | > MBP with an awful keyboard layout | | OSX lets me remap caps lock to control without digging in | the registry or playing "find where they moved | Xorg.conf." It's just an option in the preferences. | | Emacs movement shortcuts like C-a and C-e (move- | beginning-of-line and move-end-of-line) work everywhere | out of the box. ^C can be kill and ^p can be previous- | line because they don't collide with copy and print, so | terminals Just Work instead of each having their own | convention to memorize. Also, for some reason the OSX | terminal is the only one that reliably gets SIGWINCH and | unicode reliably correct, and has for a decade. It's | weird that linux terminals are so bad at this, but | whatever. | | This is what good design looks like. | xdennis wrote: | > OSX lets me remap caps lock to control without digging | in the registry or playing "find where they moved | Xorg.conf." It's just an option in the preferences. | | In Linux you just have to add 'include | "capslock(escape)"' in xkb symbols file and it works on | any Linux distro. I just set it up in my dotfile | installer in 2013 and never had to fiddle with the | interface since. | | I never have to wonder "where did they moved the option | in the interface this time?". It's just a script I have | to run when I set up a new distro install. | Arainach wrote: | >OSX lets me remap caps lock to control without digging | in the registry or playing "find where they moved | Xorg.conf." It's just an option in the preferences. | | For native apps. Sort of. | | * Though you can assign Ctrl to the Fn key, you cannot | assign the Fn action to any key so you can't swap them | without giving up the ability to use the Fn key at all. | | * This doesn't work for web apps. Google Docs etc. will | still use Command key shortcuts and will thus be | different locally versus remoted into a machine. | | * Some key mappings break in text boxes. I've remapped | Find to Control+F, which works most of the time, but not | if my cursor is in a text box, because then it moves the | cursor forward. Control+B for bold and Control-A for | select all are likewise. To make it worse, this only | happens for certain text boxes, and heck if I can figure | out the pattern. | | In all, it's an incredibly frustrating experience. | happyopossum wrote: | > is it still not encouraged to run Windows there | | My experience was that the only encouragement one way or | another was toward trying ChromeOS a first, and switching away | if you wanted to later. | jawilson wrote: | As of a few years ago, most engineers in my group had Apple | laptops but linux desktops and mostly the laptops were being | used as "terminals" via remote desktop and Chrome (as you were | not supposed to store source code on a laptop anyways in case | it was stolen but with some exceptions). I often used a linux | laptop (or chromebook) and mostly just ssh'd into a "screen" | session running lots of emacs which worked OK on the google | bus. | | The only folks with Apple desktops were people doing iOS work | and I think they may have had linux desktops as well. | | It was fairly easy to get another linux "desktop" which was | really just a virtualized linux machine in the cloud. | | [1] Yes, still called googlers. | dsl wrote: | > is it still not encouraged to run Windows there | | You can get a Windows machine, but they are not trusted devices | and you can't access a lot of stuff. (At least that was the | case a few years ago when I left) | AdmiralAsshat wrote: | Google can keep their in-house distro. Just release their damn | Linux Google Drive client, and I'll be happy. | krono wrote: | Perhaps https://rclone.org/ would be of use to you. It handles | other cloud storage providers as well, comes with convenient | encryption functionality, and its synchronisation is far more | reliable and controllable (at least this is my experience using | it with OneDrive and S3). | Barrin92 wrote: | I've been very happy with insync for years, it works very well. | gumby wrote: | A working google drive client for the mac would be nice too. It | sucks less than it did a few months ago, but is still so bad it | makes Dropbox look good! | dsl wrote: | For the longest time Drive never actually enforced users | quotas. This was recently "fixed" and they are getting things | under control. | | Quota enforcement was a blocker for official Drive linux | support because it would have made the abuse issues even worse. | (Not saying its going to happen now, but one blocker has been | cleared) | colonwqbang wrote: | Could you explain what you mean by this? Why would an | official Linux client lead to more abuse compared to the | current situation of several unofficial clients in common | use. | jeffbee wrote: | Google released BSD-licensed Drive integration a decade ago. | The only reason there isn't a "Linux Drive client" in the sense | that you implied is the complete lack of initiative among open | source developers. | | If you want a mature, maintained Drive integration on Linux you | can have it right now with ChromeOS. | | https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:chr... | Macha wrote: | If open source developers were going to do all the work, why | would they do it for Google's walled garden, rather than | Syncthing? | | And that's why we now have N open source third party | syncthing interfaces and no clone of the GDrive client. | shadowgovt wrote: | Exactly. Which is fine. | | * Google doesn't see enough gain in supporting a Drive | client for Linux | | * Linux users don't see gain in feeding the beast | | ... so nobody dedicating their finite lives to solving this | problem is win-win. | solar-ice wrote: | It is not reasonable to demand that open-source developers | build a product for one of the world's largest companies | because it is "too hard" for that company to ship a | functioning product. | lern_too_spel wrote: | If the competitor offers https://www.dropbox.com/install- | linux, developed in the open with a GPL license, is it | reasonable to tell other people to take on the cost of | building and maintaining a client for your paid service? | jeffbee wrote: | Which aspect of chromiumos drive integration and sync | engine is not "developed in the open"? The dropbox source | is distributed as a tarball and if you want to contribute | to it "contact us". That doesn't meet my definition of "in | the open". | lern_too_spel wrote: | I didn't claim that ChromiumOS's code wasn't developed in | the open. The fact remains that Google neither supports | nor provides a Google Drive client for Debian and its | derivatives or Redhat and its derivatives, while its | competitor does. It is reasonable for people to complain | about this. | reaperducer wrote: | _is it reasonable to tell other people to take on the cost | of building and maintaining a client for your paid | service?_ | | Google barely squeaked by with $76 billion in revenue last | year. It only has 156,500 employees. | | You can't possibly expect something like that from a | company this resource-constrained. | Willish42 wrote: | They're actually not even as "resource constrained" as | this comment implies, as the numbers here are off. | | Per https://abc.xyz/investor/, Alphabet made $75 billion | in Revenue _in Q4_. They made $76 billion _in net income_ | for all of 2021. | wrycoder wrote: | $480,000 per employee is quite decent, but hardly radical | these days. | smm11 wrote: | Not related to Google at all, but I've been in Windows places | with Sun, OS/2 and NeXT providing the data. Not a single install | was newer than the 90s. | | Consider this happened after 2011. | | Having a few different Linux distros at Google, okay then. | kodah wrote: | I'd really love if more companies embraced desktop linux, much | less maintaining their own distro configuration. | gitowiec wrote: | Where I could download gLinux? I thought article said it's | available for all... | hundchenkatze wrote: | It says you can't get it in the second paragraph. | shortlived wrote: | Can you create a Debian derivative and not release the source | code? | yjftsjthsd-h wrote: | Of course; even GPL only requires that you share source | code _with people that you distribute binaries to_. | | EDIT: The only FOSS license I know about that _doesn 't_ do | this is AGPL, which Google is known to be extremely averse | to. | kmeisthax wrote: | There's a few other supra-GPL copylefts that impinge on | the freedom to privately fork: | | * The OpenWatcom license requires source code publication | on _use_. This was approved by the OSI but not FSF, which | means its one of the few times a license can be described | as Open Source but not Free Software. | | * SSPL extends AGPL's copyleft clause to include support | utilities, which didn't pass muster at either OSI or FSF | (which is inconsistent with the OSI's prior opinion on | OpenWatcom but ) | | IMHO, Google's not wrong to reject AGPL. The license | makes it very difficult to use modern fork-and-pull- | request workflows unless you write all your code to be a | quine. And the lack of people using it makes it mostly | useful as an exception sales vector rather than a | legitimate renegotiation of the copyright bargain like | GPL is. But Google's objection to it is rather weird, | based on some hypothetical scenario of "GPL virality" | making them publish internal tools. This is a misreading | of underlying copyright law; I have yet to see a court | demand specific performance of any source code | publication requirement[0]. They will give you money | damages and _possibly_ an injunction prohibiting use of | the specific application in question - not your entire | internal stack. | | [0] Practical example: that one time Atari hired a | subcontractor to republish old Humongous Entertainment | games on Wii and wound up infringing the GPL on SCUMMVM. | Atari actually considered GPL compliance, but then | realized that this would violate their obligation from | Nintendo not to disclose game source at all. | | http://sev-notes.blogspot.com/2009/06/gpl-scummvm-and- | violat... | lupire wrote: | Mikeb85 wrote: | It's not distributed outside Google so yes, you can. | | Read the GPL... | kps wrote: | What is "the source code" of Debian? | Xylakant wrote: | Definitely. The GPL triggers on distributions, so as long | as you don't distribute you're in the clear. Company- | internal use doesn't usually count as distribution. | Karliss wrote: | The thing with GPL is that you must provide source to users | of software not to to everyone publicly. So if compiled | binaries are only available internally the same can be done | with source code. | bityard wrote: | The article says it's just Debian testing with some (presumably | proprietary) Google provisioning and dev tools bolted on. | readams wrote: | Regular users really wouldn't want glinux. It's really just | debian with a lot of things added for Google's corporate fleet | management. | igetspam wrote: | Correction: The first official distro internally was "grhat." It | was born out of need. We used LDAP+kerberos for auth and our | homedirs mounted on first login. This had all kinds of fun | problems (looking at you, nscd!) but worked well enough most of | the time. Goobuntu came a couple years later. In the in between, | lots of people ran their own installed version and we worked | together to get things working (even Slackware). | V-eHGsd_ wrote: | > This had all kinds of fun problems (looking at you, nscd!) | | "can someone telnet to 10200 on my box to reset nscd!?" | temp0826 wrote: | >> LDAP+kerberos for auth and our homedirs mounted on first | login | | My first "real" job as a sysadmin had this kind of setup, | albeit with Sun servers and workstations running Solaris 8. I | was impressed by how well it actually worked most of the time | given all the quirkiness of kerberos/nfs/nsc/etc.. | dekhn wrote: | I've used kerberos + some auth (actually AD in addition to | LDAP) and automounted home (and data dirs) a number of times | (various clusters, departmental servers, corps). I'd say it | was fairly mature (the OS stack supported it, it didn't crash | all the time, etc) but still had (and has) sharp edges when | it comes to high throughput computing. | buildbot wrote: | Same, though much newer! UW CSE did the same when I worked | there as a help desk tech, student directories mounted on | login to the machines. IIRC, it was just a samba share linked | into kerberos auth somehow. | bryan_w wrote: | My first job at University was dealing with this type of | setup (Solaris workstations) except we weren't dealing with | LDAP, Kerberos, and NFS, but rather AD and Microsoft DFS. | | It did NOT go that well, but was a good learning experience. | politelemon wrote: | For all the talk I've heard over the years about their in house | Linux distro. Their desktop application support, and sometimes | web application support, for Linux is non existent. | | Most of their server estate will be Linux based, including what's | powering their desktop applications. But almost none of their | efforts give back and enrich the desktop ecosystem. That said | they do contribute a lot towards frameworks, libraries and the | kernel. Certainly they are among the top alongside Microsoft in | recent years and Facebook. So I do recognize my entitled call for | more... with good cause | rvz wrote: | Well their contributions and 'desktop support' only go | towards... ChromeOS. | | The fact that this effort is going towards this OS tells us | they don't care about open-source and especially the Linux | Desktop either. It is only to the Kernel which is fine, but it | clear that the wider Linux Desktop ecosystem has had the same | 20 year old issues still present today. | hammyhavoc wrote: | As a Fedora user writing this from my brand new Google Pixel | phone, who uses Gmail and YouTube, and pretty much nothing else | from Google in 2022, what is missing? | [deleted] | quadrifoliate wrote: | A lot of the stuff that annoys me and gets in my way while | using Linux is still the same basic quality-of-life stuff | that has been broken forever. Bluetooth pairing fails | occasionally. Plugging in a new display doesn't immediately | work. A USB microphone fails to register as an input sound | device. | | I cannot imagine that Google engineers would live with such | deeply broken systems as daily drivers. So whatever _that_ | secret is, whether it consists of drivers, known hardware | configurations, or even just config files they use to ensure | optimal operation - that 's what I'd like them to Open | Source. I'm happy to buy whatever laptop spec Google uses for | gLinux for myself to go along with their OS. | vlovich123 wrote: | > I cannot imagine that Google engineers would live with | such deeply broken systems as daily drivers. So whatever | that secret is, whether it consists of drivers, known | hardware configurations, or even just config files they use | to ensure optimal operation - that's what I'd like them to | Open Source. I'm happy to buy whatever laptop spec Google | uses for gLinux for myself to go along with their OS. | | Then your imagination could be improved in a few ways: | | 1. Google has complete say over the software you're allowed | to run at work. They can mandate using whatever tools they | want as terms of your employment. | | 2. Google has complete say over the hardware they purchase | you. Random drive incompatibility isn't a thing. They pick | hardware that's been validated to work so they don't have | random IT complaints. | | 3. This is a IT / compliance / security thing. The grand | total of UX people dedicated to this probably amounts to | designing the splash screens. The grand total for bug | fixing is for issues impacting an obscene number of users. | If you f'ed up your OS install you'll basically have to fix | it yourself (IT will offer to reimage your machine and | you'll be responsible for making sure you correctly managed | your backups by hand - you get limited storage space at | least when I worked there, so you had to make sure to | exclude certain folders from backups). | | 4. They do have a slightly better story for Android | development but most of that relies on Google3 / Blaze. I | think they're doing some work to migrate to Bazel finally | but I imagine they'll always have a bit better internal dev | story. | | About the only value-add they could be giving here is the | hardware configurations but they're not really different | from stock Linux laptops you'd buy as a consumer. | coryrc wrote: | > I cannot imagine that Google engineers would live with | such deeply broken systems as daily drivers. | | Heh, most use Macs. Linux laptop users have the same | problems, don't worry. My laptop hard locks up on suspend | once every couple weeks, plus all the things you mentioned. | Oh, I also have a weird audio latency bug. | ajross wrote: | > Bluetooth pairing | | BT is just a disaster everywhere. My experience is that for | "normal" use cases (input devices & headphone audio, | basically) Linux is no worse than anywhere else, but still | bad. Apple users think it's great because Apple made | AirPods work, but that's a testament to Apple's integration | engineering and not the underlying technology. | | > Plugging in a new display doesn't immediately work | | I haven't seen this with Intel drivers on a major distro in | a long time. But yes, the driver story for other hardware | remains somewhat weak. And obviously the farther you get | from "Gnome on Ubuntu/Fedora" into the weeds of desktop | choices, the weirder the feature set is going to get. | | > A USB microphone fails to register as an input sound | device | | No idea here. I haven't seen a USB audio failure in a | _LONG_ time (closest I can think of is a Razer headset that | has two chat /game output streams and Linux sees only one | by default). Mostly likely you had a broken piece of | hardware that worked in windows only by installing its own | driver. And that sucks, but poor standards compliance is | just something we all live with. | dm319 wrote: | I get terrible USB mic issues but only with native MS | Teams (linux is terrible, Windows is not much better). | These issues are weirdly resolved using the web client | through Chrome on both platforms. | philliphaydon wrote: | > but that's a testament to Apple's integration | engineering and not the underlying technology. | | So no one outside of apple is smart enough to get it | working. | | What bothers me about non apple stuff is. I can pair my | AirPods to my phone, tv, and laptop. Even if they connect | to the laptop if I press connect on the Apple TV or phone | they switch. | | With any non apple headphones. (Bose, Audio-Technica, | Sony, Asus) I have to press Bluetooth pairing button and | connect on the decide again. So switching between two | laptops is a pain. | | Why can't other brands do what apple can? It's not the | tech problem when someone solves it... | ajross wrote: | > So no one outside of apple is smart enough to get it | working. | | Pretty much, yeah. And the reason is that Bluetooth is a | disaster of complexity. One implementer thinks function X | in state Y means "frob", but another interprets that as a | "glim" command. Apple makes it work by controlling | variables: their controller, their driver stack, their | library framework, their app integration. If one team | doesn't understand why another team's layer is doing | something, they walk across campus and ask them. | ska wrote: | > So no one outside of apple is smart enough to get it | working. | | You have to have the capability _and_ be given /assigned | the time to do it properly. | | Things that are genuinely a mess (e.g. bluetooth?) often | only work smoothly when there was a mountain of effort | put into it - that consumers can't see. | zhengyi13 wrote: | > So no one outside of apple is smart enough to get it | working. | | Eeehhh... Specs are big, complex documents with fuzzy | terms like SHALL, MAY, MUST and weird corner cases that | no one thought of, being read by engineers with varying | linguistic prowess, implementing them in disparate | hardware and software vendors with radically different | manufacturing/release pressures, different skillsets, | different interpretations of the same damned specs... | It's a wonder any of this shit works at all. | | Apple's the only vendor out there with something | approaching a consistent experience because they're the | vendor with the greatest degree of control/integration | over the entire stack. BT, ACPI, all the same. | ghaff wrote: | My impression from being in the industry far too long is | that Bluetooth was one of a variety of what I think were | being touted as personal area (wireless) networks once | upon a time with Bluetooth seemingly being pushed for | relatively simple use cases like keyboards. But none of | those other protocols panned out so Bluetooth ended up | being the general non-WiFi wireless standard for things | that the original spec never contemplated. The standard | has been updated over time of course but I imagine a lot | of early-on decisions still have an impact on things. | hadlock wrote: | I have a bluetooth audio receiver in the home office, bt | in my car and bt headphones and none of it has given me | any trouble. Just works. The only issue I have is which | phone the car decides to pair with when we get in to go | somewhere together. Oh, I guess we also have one of those | bluetooth battery powered speakers for taking to the | park. It works fine too. I connect to the bluetooth audio | receiver with my linux, mac and windows laptops on an | almost daily basis, no problem. | | What problems are you running into? | ori_b wrote: | > _So whatever that secret is_ | | A large IT team. | mxuribe wrote: | I would imagine that not only large, but also likely | quite capable. If the IT staff to be hired at google goes | through a similarly tough gauntlet as the software devs | and SREs (and other similar product-producing) roles, | then i can imagine those IT staffers really know what | they're doing...at least they'd have to be good enough to | get into the doors of google; which i guess is not easy. | jszymborski wrote: | > Bluetooth pairing fails occasionally | | Anecdata, my airpods have been pairing seemlessly with | Xubuntu out-of-the-box for over a year. I've similarly not | have had any problems pairing with my Bose portable speaker | or soundbar. | jjoonathan wrote: | The secret is using hardware that's known to work with | Linux. Inside Google, I'm sure IT does this (or | writes/fixes drivers when it must). Outside google, you | have to do this yourself. Find someone with a working setup | and duplicate exactly. | | > Bluetooth | | Bluetooth is a dumpster fire and Linux bluetooth is a | radioactive biohazardous dumpster fire. Stay away. My | workaround: Linux -> SPIDF -> 1Mii B03Pro bluetooth | transmitter. The chipset drivers that output 3.5mm and | SPIDF are ancient, stable, and dumb as rocks, so they | actually work. SPIDF beats 3.5mm because 3.5mm can detect | connectedness and punish you by scrambling your sound | settings every time you bump a cable. SPIDF can't do this | so software can't screw it up. | | Also, even if you get linux bluetooth working it will tend | to scramble if you reboot into a different OS. Just say no. | Use an external bluetooth transmitter. | Morgawr wrote: | > I cannot imagine that Google engineers would live with | such deeply broken systems as daily drivers. So whatever | that secret is, whether it consists of drivers, known | hardware configurations, or even just config files they use | to ensure optimal operation - that's what I'd like them to | Open Source. | | Hey there, Google engineer here (opinions are my own, etc | etc). I work in the ChromeOS platform team. We have | hundreds if not thousands of very talented (not me) | engineers who work on low-level firmware, drivers, kernel, | performance optimization, etc on Linux. ChromeOS is still | Linux and almost entirely open source[0], we also upstream | most of it[1]. A lot of the improvements that ChromeOS has | had for multi-monitor support, plug-and-play devices, | wayland, keyboard/touchpad firmware, etc have all entered | mainline Linux kernel and should be perfectly usable by the | whole Linux ecosystem and other distributions. | | I don't work with the gLinux team anymore (used to in the | past) so I don't know how what exactly they do with their | stuff, but regardless of the "it's not a real linux | distro!" hate ChromeOS might get, we still run on a fully | open Linux environment ourselves. | | [0] https://source.chromium.org/chromiumos/chromiumos/codes | earch | | [1] The stuff we don't upstream it's usually because either | we can't (ChromeOS-specific hacks that the Linux kernel | mainline wouldn't accept) or we haven't been able to yet | due to needing to clean up patches before they are | accepted. Regardless we'll still open source it in our | kernel tree | Melatonic wrote: | From an enterprise management perspective nobody (as far | as I know) has made some kind of tooling to manage linux | desktops in a similar way admins can do with ChromeOS or | Windows. I think that is the real dealbreaker for linux | in the enterprise for general use. | praptak wrote: | Plugging in a new display doesn't immediately work on | gLinux. It may be me, because I'm on i3wm which is not the | official wm. | | I have a manually crafted autorandr config but it's kind of | hit and miss. | tialaramex wrote: | > Plugging in a new display doesn't immediately work. A USB | microphone fails to register as an input sound device. | | I have these problems with the Dell laptop running Windows | 10 which I use for work, but not with my own desktop or | laptop running Fedora. So, my experience is more or less | the opposite apparently. This makes it harder for me to buy | the theory that there's something uniquely inferior about | these Linux desktops. | dkarl wrote: | When I switched from Linux to Macs for my daily drivers | ten years ago, I was really shocked by how much stuff | just works. But there's plenty of stuff that doesn't | work, even on Mac. When I am struggling to get something | working with one of my Macs, I often joke to myself that | stuff like this is why Linux on the desktop will never be | popular. | | For example, my work laptop, a Macbook Pro, is always on | my desk in my office. When I'm working, I have an | external monitor plugged into it. If the laptop goes to | sleep, then a bit later the monitor goes to sleep. But | when the monitor goes to sleep, the laptop wakes up. Then | a few minutes later the laptop goes to sleep and starts | the cycle again. So every evening when I'm done working I | have to unplug the laptop and manually put it to sleep. | Then every once in a while (rarely, but multiple times | this year) something else keeps waking the laptop up, or | maybe I accidentally wake it up and don't manually put it | to sleep again, who knows. When that happens, I have a | dead Macbook Pro on my desk in the morning, and I say, | "[Stuff] like this is why Linux on the desktop will never | be popular. | JasonFruit wrote: | I'm honestly a little disappointed at how smoothly | everything works on my Linux machines. It ruins the | impression that I'm doing eldritch magic, issuing gnomic | commands inherited from the primal hackers, immersing my | very self in the unknowable gnostic wisdom of Unix. | | Maybe I need to run OpenBSD. | lsc36 wrote: | Googler here, opinions on my own. Here are a few sentences | from our internal "supported configurations" page: | | - Bluetooth accessories are not guaranteed to work. | | - GNOME is the only supported desktop environment. (Used to | be Cinnamon but we're switching away) | | - X11 is the only supported display server protocol. (They | tried pushing wayland but broke tons of stuff) | | People struggle with screen configurations all the time. | Nvidia driver updates are still a nightmare. I'm pretty | sure there's no secret sauce. | kristjansson wrote: | That's really nice to hear, actually. | jszymborski wrote: | I'm curious about the change from Cinnamon to GNOME. Are | you aware of any particular reason why? I feel like | attitudes towards GNOME haven't particularly changed over | the year, but that just might be my bubble. | raggi wrote: | > I cannot imagine that Google engineers would live with | such deeply broken systems as daily drivers. | | Oh yes, yes they do. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-01 23:01 UTC)