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/lib even 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.
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.