The role of the Linux distro in modern computing
John Mark Walker recently published a post on how the Linux distribution has lost prominence in the DevOps ecosystem (right around the time we started using the term “DevOps”) and how it might be poised for a comeback. His take is centered around the idea of the “download your dependencies on the fly as you build and deploy software” being a risky proposition, supply-chain-securitally-speaking.
I can’t disagree with that. I’ve always felt that modern language ecosystems are bonkers in that regard. Yes, it’s great that there are better dependency relationships than in C/C++ where the relationships might as well be “LOL, GFY”. But the idea that you’d just download some libraries on the fly and hope it all works as expected? Well, we’ve learned a few times how that can go sideways.
So, yeah. I generally agree with what John Mark says here. Heck, I’ve even given a talk on several occasions with a premise of “operating systems are boring.” So can the Linux distribution become un-boring again and help us fix our woeful supply chains?
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I’m not sure I see distributions making the comeback that John Mark hopes for. Enterprise distros move too slowly, by and large, to address the needs of language ecosystems. And there’s not a ton of value in distributions blindly packaging language libraries.
John Mark suggested that organizations would want to “outsource risk mitigation to a curated distribution as much as possible.” I don’t disagree. But community distributions can’t take on the risk that companies want to outsource.
That said, the problem won’t fix itself, so let’s work toward something. If that ends up being Linux distributions, then great. If not, distributions will still have an important role to play.