this post was submitted on 28 May 2026
56 points (92.4% liked)
Linux
66195 readers
486 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 7 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Back in the time when I disliked it and, to a lesser extent, AppArmor, the reason was pretty simple:
It forces services to lie to me / It gets in the way of software doing what I tell it to do.
The examples would be rather simple. Need to spin up a second instance of a database server, sure, just set up the given config file with
datadir=/mount/point/second/disk/var/lib/database. Should work... Nope. Database errors out despite the directory existing and being writable and all permissions being right. Insists it's "file permissions". Try to look around, to no end. Then it turns out there is some secret NSA Cabal infiltrated in my server already that... for some weird reason, forces databases to be installed on/var/libeven though when that is almost full and I mounted a second disk to have more room. And thus the service lies to me, says file permissions, well I checked them several times and they were alright.Stupid NSA cabal thing stupidly getting in the way of configuring things and adding more entrypoints you have to edit and services you have to configure just to start up a program. I want to start a database, not set up a DEFCON 1 line! Those days I was beginning to miss SQLite already...
Similar issues I had with webservers, network share servers, joysticks and gamepads, and even audio devices. Never got a clear idea of what it was, software says something like "permission error" or "not a device file" but I checked and those are alright. A long sigh, remember than when you install a new computer you have to disable SELinux and AppArmor and reboot, boom, done, everything magically works.
Fortunately things have improved a long way since, but back in the day, they were one of the most grating obstacles to me for getting friends, let alone clients, to adopt Linux.