I didn't name it by name in my original post, but I believe Slackware will be one of those safe distributions. Nor do I ever see a need to go off of Linux.

I simply predict that in the future there will be two platforms - GNU/Linux and SystemD/Linux. The latter will have the lion's share of the users, and will indeed achieve World Domination. The former will continue to have something under 1% of market share, just where we've always been.

In this respect, BSD will not be any safer port in the storm than the old-school-Linux distributions. We all use pretty much the same userspace - we have to just hope that SystemD/Linux doesn't fiddle with that userspace so badly that we can't use it. As long as things are reasonable orthogonal - part of the Unix WAy - we're OK. But we know the new crowd has no respect for that, and indeed feels that it's part of what is holding Linux back.

But you see, Windows has the lion's share of the market, and many of them are happy there. We tend to look with our Linux/Unix blinders on can't imaging that anyone could be happy there, but there are.

Once upon a time Miguel De Icaza spoke of trying to make Gnome "Windows Done Right". That's what I think people are trying to do with systemd - Windows Done Right - on the Linux kernel. Except that because they came from Windows and were happy with Windows, they may also think that systemd is Linux Done Right.

Any mass migration to BSD is not "mass" when compared to the WIndows userbase. Depending on how many Windows users and developers have already moved to Linux, it may not even be that big a number compared to the current Linux userbase, any more.

I see systemd as the product of a culture clash between old and old-school Linux users/developers and new Linux users/developers.

Linux was really derived from Unix, and in a very important way RMS has always been correct in insisting it be called GNU/Linux. Because "GNU's Not Unix" only in the licensing aspect. Philosophically, GNU really IS Unix.

A few years back, Linus and Linux started getting a lot of attention in the computing and even general press. Linux started becoming cool and interesting. It started attracting new users, a new wave of early adopters, and since early adopters also tend to be developers, Linux attracted a new wave of developers.

But these developers has a key difference - they had no Unix background. They largely came from Windows, simply because that's the largest source of developers, by simple demographics. But they weren't "fleeing Windows", they were attracted to Linux. They also brought their background, attitudes and preferences with them, and that includes a heave dose of "The Windows Way" and little to nothing of "The Unix Way."

The result is systemd - the Windows Way ported on top of the Linux kernel.

Then there is the demographics issue. The classical Linux market share has been so small and Windows so big that it doesn't take many Windows users/developers to swamp out the old school Linux/Unix camp. We're bing "conquered by demographics." They don't see anything wrong with systemd because it fits their background and world view perfectly - in fact it's a better fit for them than SysV Init is. There's also a bit of the Windows "One Way" attitude at work, attempting to push systemd across the board.

Fortunately there are a few never-newbie distributions still around, and it seems that the old-school Unix users are congregating there and will keep them alive. Or there are always the BSDs..

I'm really surprised to find general agreement with my post. I hit the Submit button expect rather shortly to be "schooled" on my naive and stupid economic thoughts.

The rigtht way to do capitalism, as opposed to the way it's generally practiced in the US, with the cart in front of the horse.

Get your hands off of MY computer!

Please, by all means run a Cathedral OS on your own - it can even use the Linux kernel - I don't mind.

But quit insisting that I do so, too.

I run Gentoo, one of the less-used distributions. I chose it exactly because it was a geeky, nuts-and-bolts distribution. After all, at the time Linux was a hobby, and if you're in it for that kind of fun, go for it.

At the same time, I generally advise against using Gentoo. Unless you know why you want to use it, don't. New users should use something like Ubuntu, which I've installed for several people, or more recently Mint, which I've also done. We use RedHat at work because it's "Enterprise" and has a support contract, which bean-counters like.

But if Linux were a monoculture which kept me isolated from the nuts-and-bolts, I'd be running something else.

We will not solve the problem with illegal immigration until we figure out how to do something sane instead of the War on Drugs. Right now the unintended consequence of the War on Drugs is that south of the border, drug lords are about as well (if not better?) funded as the governments, destroying the local economies. Some of the people seeking jobs in those economies end up coming to the US in search of work.

Seconded. When the power and everything else is out, I call to report it on my land line.

10+ years ago, performance was more than doubling every two years through a combination of higher clocks, die shrinks, extra transistors, fundamental breakthroughs in logic circuit designs, etc. Right now, mainstream CPUs are only ~60% faster than mainstream CPUs from four years ago because clocks are stuck near the 4GHz mark, die shrinks are becoming much slower in coming, nearly all fundamental breakthroughs have been discovered and modern hardware is already more powerful than what most people can be bothered with so there is a general lack of demand for significantly faster low-mid-range CPUs to make things worse.

Progress is slowing down and I can only imagine it getting worse in the future.

Maybe there's another reason that our infrastructure is crumbling...

(Line up the conspiracy theories.)

Now we need the quasi-obligatory response that this is really a government problem, and if government weren't in there mucking about with needless regulation the free market would address the problem and we'd all be in broadband utopia at reasonable prices.

Maybe he was talking FADD.

In a float addition, you need to denormalize the inputs, do the actual addition and then normalize the output. Three well-defined pipelining steps, each embodying one distinct step of the process.

But as you said yourself, CPUs (and GPUs) generate a lot more heat. They are already challenging enough on their own, imagine how hot the CPU or GPU at the middle of the stack would get with all that extra thermal resistance and heat added above and below it. As it is now, CPU manufacturers already have to inflate their die area just to fit all the micro-BGAs under the die and get the heat out.

Unless you find a way to teleport heat out from the middle and possibly bottom of the stack, stacking high-power chips will not work.

At best, you could stack memory and CPU/GPU for faster, wider and lower-power interconnects.