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Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Red Hat's desktop team has posted
an item saying that the company has no plans to offer a "traditional
desktop product" anytime soon. "An explanation: as a public,
for-profit company, Red Hat must create products and technologies with an
eye on the bottom line, and with desktops this is much harder to do than
with servers. The desktop market suffers from having one dominant vendor,
and some people still perceive that today's Linux desktops simply don't
provide a practical alternative. Of course, a growing number of technically
savvy users and companies have discovered that today's Linux desktop is
indeed a practical alternative. Nevertheless, building a sustainable
business around the Linux desktop is tough, and history is littered with
example efforts that have either failed outright, are stalled or are run as
charities." The article goes on to list a number of
desktop-oriented things that Red Hat is working on.
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Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 17, 2008 15:06 UTC (Thu) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link]
Well, I'm disappointed. I'd like to think that Red Hat could would find ways to make consumer desktop Linux a viable and profitable market segment, but instead, they're just giving up and conceding that market to Ubuntu. Yes, I realize that Ubuntu is a non-profit organization, but Red Hat's move sends a strong (and misleading) signal to the industry that there's no value in consumer Linux.
What a shame.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 17, 2008 15:10 UTC (Thu) by skvidal (subscriber, #3094) [Link]
Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, is not non-profit. Neither is Ubuntu, the distribution.
Ubuntu/Canonical not non-profit
Posted Apr 17, 2008 15:18 UTC (Thu) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link]
Well, then that just adds fuel to my argument that it's not impossible to make a successful (profitable) business out of consumer desktop Linux.
Thank you for the correction.
except that Ubuntu/Canonical has not actually made a profit.
Posted Apr 17, 2008 15:31 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]
I don't know how much money they're losing, or even if they're losing more or less than they used to, but Ubuntu is still one of those "charities" that RedHat alluded to.
except that Ubuntu/Canonical has not actually made a profit.
Posted Apr 18, 2008 8:24 UTC (Fri) by AlexHudson (subscriber, #41828) [Link]
I actually though that charity comment was aimed squarely at OLPC, with whom Red Hat did all that Sugar GUI work. The elephant in the room does seem to be Canonical in many ways, though. Even though Red Hat don't ship a consumer desktop type product, they put an awful lot into desktop-related technologies - that list in the article is pretty extensive really, and we know Novell do an awful lot of work too. When you think of what Canonical contributes, it seems to be basically be bzr and upstart, and various bugfixes. I can't think of much else.
except that Ubuntu/Canonical has not actually made a profit.
Posted Apr 19, 2008 2:14 UTC (Sat) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]
Funny thing, and if i remember correctly, is that the whole Linux movement started by "charitable" work on a i386... that couldn't be considered a server system by almost all of measures! But i think that this desktop vs server is getting to much bi-polarized and is full of "fuzzi" rhetoric, specially for the possible Linux business models. If RH ever had thoughted about making fortune selling "boxed" software... well, even MSFT can do it less and less, to the point of rumor of selling online software "features"... but all of this doesn't invalidate that the Desktop business is a no go... "au contraire"... Considering autovectorization & autoparalelization http://www.edn.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid... all other optimizations possible http://llvm.org/pubs/2004-01-30-CGO-LLVM.html Specially in the graphic arena, to the point of making graphic developers drool!... http://zrusin.blogspot.com/2008/02/openvg-and-acceleratin... http://zrusin.blogspot.com/2008/02/gpgpu.html Well its pretty obvious what i want. I want autovectorization & autoparalelization with a compiler framework designed to support transparent, lifelong program analysis and transformation for arbitrary programs, with compile-time, link-time, run-time and "offline" optimizations, specially for my desire for highly graphic workloads, to the point that i can use one GPU or several, or better said GPGPU, of which every model of AMD ATI above the R600 is already a GPGPU because it can run the open sourced "firestream" SDK, and so offload the CPU and get improvements that by Amdahl law i could get near 50% !... Well i'm not a professional programmer, or any good at it really, i could have much difficulty in pulling it off alone... and also because "au contraire" to all those enthusiasts on "charitable" pirated donations of MSFT soft often do, tweaking it full... this trick can reveal itself much more difficult. I'll make you a deal RH, build a live CD with a similar compilar infrastructure like mentioned, that could detect all my hardware on my command, so that i can install from online all the source code packages i need and that could be tailored for this vector & parallel job i want,... and install it by compiling in a more or less automatic fashion... well Gentoo, Gobo are more or less good examples,... but i want more, i want vector¶lell FULL optimization, and i want a very smart and capable installer. For crying out loud, if isn't for something like this, what in the hell is supposed to be the practical meaning of open source for non-developers !?.... what is the difference to MSFT!?... Sorry i don't want to be rude, i know that you RH, must have all there is of source code in Open format that exists on this planet in repository, and to be very frank i couldn't care less about desktop vs server rhetoric... if it wasn't because of "popular" desktop we wouldn't have neither Linux and RH... and i'm sure there is a market for desktop... lets see.. The only i care is about price; <$100:-to where i send the check; >$100 <$200 i'll see Canonical and Novell first, i'm gonna think; >$200 i'll try to do it myself all alone first. So do we have a deal ?
Ubuntu/Canonical not non-profit
Posted Apr 17, 2008 15:49 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Canonical is not a public company and afaik they haven't turned profitable yet. Besides they have already asserted that their desktop is a means to get a foot in the door and sell it to the enterprise eventually. http://www.news.com/A-Linux-start-up-on-the-path-to-profi... Besides Red Hat continues to invest heavily in core desktop components. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RedHatContributions I guess that wouldn't happen unless there is belief that there is profit to be made.
Ubuntu/Canonical not non-profit
Posted Apr 18, 2008 0:35 UTC (Fri) by szaka (subscriber, #12740) [Link]
70% of Ubuntu's business comes from server support: http://www.linux.com/feature/132575
And another thing...
Posted Apr 17, 2008 15:11 UTC (Thu) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link]
P.S. I'm not particularly a fan of Red Hat's Linux distribution, or Fedora for that matter, but I still admire(d) RH for demonstrating that a software vendor can make a profitable business based on Free/Open Source software. They're giving up on a big market segment by abandoning consumer desktops.
And another thing...
Posted Apr 17, 2008 15:53 UTC (Thu) by bfields (subscriber, #19510) [Link]
"They're giving up on a big market segment by abandoning consumer desktops." Or maybe they're approaching it in the way that makes sense for them, by first finding a few niche markets that allow them to continue to support desktop work.
Not necessarily.
Posted Apr 18, 2008 3:48 UTC (Fri) by jd (subscriber, #26381) [Link]
Microsoft and, to a degree, Apple essentially own the metaphor of a desktop... but they don't necessarily own the hearts and minds of home users. Just suppose there's a better metaphor, a better way to present information to users, a better design that is not based around the notion of a desktop with objects on it, but is based on some other paradigm entirely. The desktop model has been useful in the past, but how many people actually use their computer that way? I have no idea what alternative model you could use, but let's suppose there is one. What then? Well, it'd not competing with Microsoft on Microsoft's home turf, it'd not be playing catch-up with Microsoft's capabilities, it'd not be attempting to replace a very firmly entrenched user mindset. Rather, it would be seen as something altogether new (which is usually seen as good) and incidently doing eveything the user wants (which is also good). I imagine that was part of the idea behind XO, which has done a fairly decent job of coming across as something genuinely different but is unfortunately still somewhat desktop in look and feel. Could Linux try winning by entering a different race entirely? Fresco a.k.a Berlin seemed to be looking at trying a different approach - fragmetable linked windows isn't exactly a desktop concept. Xrooms also seemed to want to try going a different way. Both have long-since vanished into history. Clearly, if that is how to win, it isn't going to be easy.
Not necessarily.
Posted Apr 19, 2008 3:16 UTC (Sat) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]
"" Clearly, if that is how to win, it isn't going to be easy. "" You forgot Fluendo with its Elisa, you forgot miroTV... LinuxMC... i can think of a couple of business models around those applications only. OLPC-OX is not a business model not by a half millimeter... its government subsidy... how can anyone have mature and independent model based on subsidy ? Yes there is too much fragmentation in Linux desktop yet. It would be nice to have cross the desk the same look and fell. Common styles, icon sets, colors... whether KDE or Gnome or... that is, there should be a basic theme model for everyone, yet a good and extensible engine so that creativity would not be crushed. But if big players don't bother, they have other politics, its up to the small fish to carry the all load of progress into mainstream, though they tend to diverge a lot... and i say this because servers are invisible to the population. And people in Open Source are forgetting the most important of all, the source code must have a meaning for non developers. No way in hell could a Linux "commercial" company sell me a distro, not even for small server jobs. Lets not be hypocrites, its even true for MSFT, if it wasn't for the more and more draconian ways of locking their 'soft' from unauthorized use. I'm not even using one of the parallel to commercial distros (fedora,opensuse...) for that matter... but every company "commercial" or not, could sell me intelligent ways of using source code with great advantages... Pitty people only think of MSFT models... until they get subsidized into oblivion.
Fedora is desktop
Posted Apr 17, 2008 16:00 UTC (Thu) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]
There is a difference between 'desktop Linux is not viable' and 'we cannot find a way to make money out of selling Linux on the desktop'. I think Red Hat's position is the latter. Having grown out of a business which made and sold a Linux distribution for desktop users, they have some experience here. Fedora is a good desktop distribution and Red Hat puts a lot of work into it. They just haven't turned it into a business unit or tried to sell it directly.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 17, 2008 15:51 UTC (Thu) by LWN_net (subscriber, #47938) [Link]
This is just pointing out what has been obvious for a long time. The year of the Linux desktop has been coming for years, but in reality it's a fantasy that will never be realized. Red Hat has been tagged by these "year of the Linux desktop" people for years as, "the Microsoft of Linux", and in their mind rightfully so, you get the impression they hate you. But really they never wanted you. So you buy a Mac and get over it.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 17, 2008 15:57 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Look, another troll (with a trollish name). How depressingly predictable.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 17, 2008 16:56 UTC (Thu) by sumC (subscriber, #1262) [Link]
At least he's a paying troll :)
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 17, 2008 16:11 UTC (Thu) by elanthis (subscriber, #6227) [Link]
I have to agree with Red Hat's position on this. Linux still just isn't ready for traditional desktop use. It works great for geeks who don't mind constantly tinkering and upgrading and fixing things, and it works great as an "appliance desktop" where the user has a single static set of software he never needs change (some office deployments, set-top boxes, kiosks), but otherwise it's still just too much of a pain in the ass to use.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 17, 2008 16:49 UTC (Thu) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]
I agree with you to an extent. For the most part your average mainstream Linux distro is really easy to use, performs well, and just works. What Linux distros are missing are the same old things that people have been bitching about for a while... and that isn't going to change anytime soon: 1) Legal video/audio codecs OR as an alternative the mainstreaming of patent unencumbered video/audio codecs AND mainstream sites that provide a buttload of content in the patent unencumbered formats 2) A major increase in FOSS desktop applications and a maturing of many of the existing apps: CAD, Educational titles for children, a consumer friendly GUI desktop database, etc, etc. OR as an alternative porting of commercial applications from those other OSes including such things that add access to online services that are currently Windows/Mac only... like iTunes for iTMS (the number one retailer of music). Linux has to work with more/all of the online services that people are using. 3) Games - either FOSS and/or commercial - Of course the availability of FOSS ATI and/or nVidia drivers would help that and some of that is in the works. 4) More OEMs selling Linux preloaded in retail and online outlets and advertising to show that they are serious While all of those things are in the works on way or another... it will be a while before (or if) a perfect storm type scenario were to happen that would make a consumer Linux desktop profitable. In the mean time... those who want Linux on the desktop and are very happy with it in its current condition... have little barriers... so it isn't the end of the world if Red Hat has decided to continue supporting desktop development (via RHEL for the business desktop and Fedora for the geek desktop) but has decided it doesn't want to throw away money in the consumer desktop market. People keep pointing to Ubuntu as the current/next big thing... but in my mind, Red Hat has been there and done that already... like 7 years ago... and having tens of millions of non-paying desktop users was more of a drag on their business model... and is currently a drag on Ubuntu's business model. Until Ubuntu... err... sorry... make that Canonical... until Canonical can actually make a profit and do so over several quarters... newsflash, Desktop Linux has not arrived via Ubuntu.
until until Canonical can actually make a profit
Posted Apr 17, 2008 18:37 UTC (Thu) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link]
...until Canonical can actually make a profit...
I don't suppose that, with enough money to buy a $20 million joyride to the International Space Station, Mark Shuttleworth and his company are in imminent danger of running out of money anytime soon1. Not that I don't admire what he's doing for Linux--I do appreciate his Linux advocacy efforts with Canonical and Ubuntu.
1 (Slightly off-topic) I'm reminded of a quote from Orson Welles' movie Citizen Kane:
I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place in... 60 years!
until until Canonical can actually make a profit
Posted Apr 17, 2008 18:55 UTC (Thu) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]
Exactly... Red Hat too could piss away money... but you see, the are trying to make money, not lose it. My point was that Red Hat's point was valid... that no one has really made any money selling Desktop Linux because the market isn't ready yet... and that until someone does (the example I gave was the seeming contenter Ubuntu/Canonical) it looks like Desktop Linux as a commercial product... isn't doable. Desktop Linux as a free product, now that has been doable for a long, long time now.
until until Canonical can actually make a profit
Posted Apr 17, 2008 21:20 UTC (Thu) by wtogami (subscriber, #32325) [Link]
> the are trying to make money, not lose it. My point was that > Red Hat's point was valid... that no one has really made any > money selling Desktop Linux because the market isn't ready yet I think this is a misrepresentation or misunderstanding of what Red Hat's blog post said. It was business sustainability reasons for Red Hat to choose not to create a "traditional desktop product for the consumer market". The blog post said nothing about linux desktop being "not ready yet".
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 18, 2008 4:08 UTC (Fri) by jd (subscriber, #26381) [Link]
I agree with your points, especially with respect to games and codecs. Possibly more with games. The console wars are vicious with all sides trying to shave off whatever costs they can to maximize both sales and profits. If top-end game engines would run better under Linux, proprietary possibly custom-modded embedded OS' would be less attractive. They cost money to maintain, money I'm sure the vendors would prefer to be profit. That ideally requires Linux to provide even better real-time guarantees, better low-latency performance at the same time, to have an alternative GUI that has the necessary performance requirements whilst being highly compact, to have truly hot parallel performance on something like the Cell processor, to support any weird hardware used on consoles (such as cartridges), and to have some easy way of porting existing code which, because it won't be inteded to be portable, will be ugly. If a distro provider could satisfy even 3 or 4 of those 5 and approached a console vendor with a sackfull of cash and a viable strategy, Linux would gain more games in a week than it has in the past 16 years.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 19, 2008 4:18 UTC (Sat) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]
"" OR as an alternative porting of commercial applications from those other OSes including such things that add access to online services that are currently Windows/Mac only... like iTunes for iTMS (the number one retailer of music)... "" Porting ? why ?... with virtualization, it could be possible to join KVM, with qemu or virtualbox running a tailored version of ReactOS, all from the official Linux kernel tree... and so Linux could have native support for a lot of windows applications... and believe me it can support much more applications than most people would think possible... Better it could mean a whole new grand opportunity for "commercial" companys like codeweavers with its crossover techs and others that could pop up, making also a profit opportunity for the distros that would bundle them. I believe that with time most if not all of the most relevant applications can be supported natively. Why it hasn't been done yet ?... i don't now!... politics!?... but in 4 posts in this thread among all the griefs, i seem the only guy that could have done already some money out of Linux desktop !?... what is wrong with me!??...
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 18, 2008 13:48 UTC (Fri) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]
Ubuntu or similar are OK for not very ambitious users who just want to install a few simple games and other apps from the distro repositories - Synaptic makes it very easy to find and install applications, and the Add/Remove tool even gives the new user star ratings to guide them to the most popular apps.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 19, 2008 3:58 UTC (Sat) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]
"" Linux still just isn't ready for traditional desktop use. It works great for geeks who don't mind constantly "" Have you haver tried to use a Linux desktop? What makes you say that ?... I'm no geek or developer and have tried them all, and i wouldn't change my Linux desktop system for Vista or OSX. Its not so polished in the corners but is so damn close. Security, reliability, *customization possibilities* are simply unmatched... and be baffled, i very very rarely use command lines for desktop customization... there are guys now(though could be better) for almost all of configurations... normal system installation and configuration, for tech unaware people, can be possible without using CLI ever... ever... Don't really understand!... a big player say no Linux desktop, though that in practice means very little... yet people start with all sorts of griefs. Bet if RH sad Linux desktop with all possible power and involvement, but did nothing really, yet people would be singing and happy thinking that tomorrow would be a "festival" of adoption!!...
smart thinking!
Posted Apr 17, 2008 16:50 UTC (Thu) by sbishop (subscriber, #33061) [Link]
I've thought for a long time that Red Hat is playing this just right. Anyone in a competitive undertaking has to work from their strengths--build on them--if they are going to have any chance of winning. If I were in the Linux distribution business, I do would do the following: 1. Start with servers. That's where Unix has already been, and people are willing to pay for reliability and support. 2. Become viable as a workstation OS. (CAD, EDA, and desktops for programmers.) This has the same upsides as #1, and it's good desktop practice. 3. Become the OS of choice for embedded work. This pays, but not as well. It also gives people another reason to use your OS on a workstation. 4. Target large, restricted deployments, like phone centers and kiosks. These also pay well, and it's more desktop practice. 5. The enterprise and consumer desktop. I don't think you can maintain 1-4 without a presence here. I'm just a programmer; I could have it all wrong. (I also fudged the difference between "OS" and "distribution", but that's inherent with Linux.) Red Hat, however, seems to be doing exactly what I would be doing. And I would say that they're between 3 and 4. Let's be patient with them, shall we?
smart thinking!
Posted Apr 18, 2008 6:33 UTC (Fri) by tuna (guest, #44480) [Link]
I would like to add: 2.5: Support the best free software OS (Fedora) and watch it become #1 in the Free Software world.
smart thinking!
Posted Apr 19, 2008 5:15 UTC (Sat) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]
"" Start with servers. That's where Unix has already been, and people are willing to pay for reliability and support. "" People are willing to pay for "SERVICES" that they could not do by themselfs. Buying a "box" and installing something with fancy guys that even a child could do, can never be a sustainable business model IMHO... yes MSFT... but they will get their day of recognition. You could start with Desktop for that matter. "Support":You get it relatively big, and avoid the SOHO and the small business that don't have a IT department like the plague, or you can get toasted very soon, even if you have the best servers and the best technicians in the world... Because very soon the bosses or someone very close, would be "making" changes to your server configurations and blaming troubles on you!... and you shouldn't get deals where only you have exclusive access to root, because then expect a real flush of calls at the most strange hours and days!... and for the most stupid reasons!... they own you. Why do you think MSFT never really got on that support business model? Unless you get it big, and only do real companys, support on servers is not a safe bet... but is a temptation because the small fry represents almost 80% of business opportunitys out there. "Web services": Software installation can be a web service if made from source code and online as example... everything that a software applications can offer from online is a good bet. Servers are there with "hosting", but believe desktop can be much better, because the target audience can be several orders of magnitude higher.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 17, 2008 17:54 UTC (Thu) by dlang (subscriber, #313) [Link]
RedHat got into the corporate servers due to the fact that the sysadmins were running it on their desktops. they seem to have forgotten this fact, but it also may be that they are now a big enough name to survive without that foot in the door. but they leave the field wide open for someone else to move in and gain a foothold in the datacenter. having multiple distros supported by the big commercial products would be a good thing for Linux, but it may not be as good for RedHat
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 17, 2008 20:39 UTC (Thu) by bfields (subscriber, #19510) [Link]
"RedHat got into the corporate servers due to the fact that the sysadmins were running it on their desktops." And I assume that's part of their justification for continuing to work on Fedora. What they're avoiding for now is "a traditional desktop product for the consumer market". That doesn't exclude non-traditional desktop projects that target particular niches (enthusiasts, in the case of Fedora).
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 17, 2008 23:37 UTC (Thu) by motk (subscriber, #51120) [Link]
Uh, what do you think Fedora (and CentOS to a lesser extent) is for? When I bought my copy of Red Hat 4 back in the day, I did it not because I needed support - but because I would've been running it anyway, and wanted to give a little back. I doubt my $40 made a huge difference in the scheme of things but that's fine. And I'm sure if you gave Red Hat a bag of gold and said "desktop us, right now" they'd happily do so. They simply don't currently see a market for throwing shrinkwrapped boxes on the shelves right now, and I don't blame them.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 17, 2008 20:57 UTC (Thu) by danhah (guest, #51567) [Link]
I think that is great news. Now anybody (Developers or users) that uses fedora on the desktop should move to debian and contribute to making debian the best distribution for all its users. A community distribution for its community.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 17, 2008 23:39 UTC (Thu) by motk (subscriber, #51120) [Link]
Debian fans, please cut out the partisan nonsense. I know you have a love of libre software and want to spread the word, but You're Doing It Wrong.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 18, 2008 6:33 UTC (Fri) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]
Speaking as a long-time exclusively Debian user... ya srsly.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 18, 2008 12:39 UTC (Fri) by danhah (guest, #51567) [Link]
Can somebody explain to me why redhat, ubuntu, any commercial organisation can get enthusiasts to help them find bugs and stabilise a product, only for them, once stable, to sell it as a stable enterprise os. The point is - let commercial organisations look after themselves, I'm sure they can afford to do that. The not-for profit ones need other means to compete and the best way to do that is to get people to work on that distro and make that better than the rest. Dont get me wrong, I expect people to get paid for their work but I would rather donate time and money for apps like ardour, gimp, cinelerra, scribus etc because they need the time and money. Encourage all app devs to make their newer releases integrate into a truly stable (with security releases) distro. I just think this is a better way. I am certainly open to suggestions as to why I am wrong.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 18, 2008 16:16 UTC (Fri) by geertj (subscriber, #4116) [Link]
> I am certainly open to suggestions as to why I am wrong. You are wrong because you fail to see the big picture. The community and Red Hat mutually benefit from each other. It is a symbiotic relationship. Without the community, Red Hat would be just another software vendor and would not be able to provide the value that it does. So Red Hat needs the community. But, by being able to sell its products at a profit, Red Hat can make contributions back to the same community that are an order of magnitude larger than it would be able to do if it were not making money. See this list that details some of the contributions that Red Hat has made and is making: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RedHatContributions. Disclaimer: I work for Red Hat, but this post is entirely my personal opinion.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 18, 2008 17:59 UTC (Fri) by danhah (guest, #51567) [Link]
The big picture is - If you continue to have (how many distros are there now 300+) lots of distributions then all efforts are duplicated, triplicated etc etc, resulting in a lot of wasted effort. (If the kernel development was to split into 15 different seperate kernels would that still work as efficiently as it does now. probably not.) Redhat, suse, ibm, HP, ubuntu etc will still contribute because like you say we all benefit from the community around open source software. The kernel, samba, apache, that kind of enterprise software will continue because they all contribute to it and need it for their business to survive. What does linux run on now, mobile phones, super duper multi 57 processor super computers, 500+ network clusters but if I upgrade mplayer to convert a video to an ipod playable file then it can take me 4 days to find out that the latest release has broken ipod/ffmpeg compatibility, but it was spotted in ubuntu and that was fixed but not in fedora and only in debian experimental. That is helpful to me. The desktop is still a problem area, and there again must be millions of people trying linux and being put off by the desktop usibility (for the want of a better phrase). I dont think all home/multimedia users expect to get all there apps for free, but how do they financially contribute. Do they contribute to each and every piece of software that they use or do they donate to gnu or what. A single place that pushes the desktop/multimedia as hard as the commercial distros push the serverside might address the balance. Now if everybody contributed to one distro. (To be fair it doesnt have to be debian) and make that the best stable system then the commercial businesses can work from that. In the end it means even less work for them because it will have potentially millions of users reporting bugs/regressions etc.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 18, 2008 20:10 UTC (Fri) by geertj (subscriber, #4116) [Link]
> Now if everybody contributed to one distro. (To be fair it doesnt have to > be debian) and make that the best stable system then the commercial > businesses can work from that. In the end it means even less work for > them because it will have potentially millions of users reporting > bugs/regressions etc. I'm afraid not. Open source works like evolution. Many different solutions to a problem are tried in parallel, but only a few viable ones survive. At first sight this may seem horribly inefficient (as you state above), but it is this very property that has gotten open source where it is today because it ensures one thing: consistent innovation. If everybody would contribute to one distro then in fact that distro would either die because of lack of innovation, or it would turn into a second Microsoft. But as long as human psychology remains what it is, there is no danger of everyone working on the one distro and therefore the end of open source is not in sight yet.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 18, 2008 20:49 UTC (Fri) by danhah (guest, #51567) [Link]
The trouble is they are all the same. Just different little bugs in different places for the user to fall over. Thats why every linux user has tried all the main distros (they just want something better) only to find out that they are all pretty much the same. but they all introduce slightly different little bugs in different places. I dont want to stop innovation. But lets face it all distros are the same or certainly can be made to act the same with very little effort. Application innovation should be encouraged and if it has to fork then so be it. But it can still fork and be made to work in one distro so any security patches doest mean the user has to switch distro or get a version from an unknown source or build 20 different packages that are not in a given repository. Or we could stick to the same process and linux will be great for servers but desktop users (no matter how good linux performs on the desktop) will keep falling over those little bugs that always will get through.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 19, 2008 8:05 UTC (Sat) by geertj (subscriber, #4116) [Link]
I can definitely think of technology that would allow distributions to leverage off each other more than they do now. But I also think you are underestimating how much innovation goes into just in the integration of basic system components and applications. It is not only the applications but also how they are integrated in a consistent whole that makes an OS useful.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 19, 2008 13:59 UTC (Sat) by danhah (guest, #51567) [Link]
Not a lack of understanding just frustration. From my first experience with linux (and it just happen to be redhat 5.1) it looked good and everything seemed to work, but when I really wanted to do something there would be the odd bug that would stop me doing it. The solution was to upgrade, upgrade the app but when I tried, that the old problem of dependency hell ( now I know that has changed with yum ). Ok mandrake had a slightly newer version so I installed that. Great that worked - oh no some other app now has a different bug so that means upgrade or down grade. dependency hell again. Suse same again. Debian same again. Either upgrade to testing and then again risk slightly different bugs in different places. (I know in debian you can mix stable and testing but it practice it is pretty much a dist upgrade.) Nothing has changed. I do happen to use debian stable as much as possible because of security updates and the amount of packages. But even now if I click 3 times with my mouse in amarock it takes the whole system down needing a hard reset. So although things have progressed, for me nothing has changed. Honestly I cannot believe any other person who uses linux for more than 12 months has not been in that same position. Well certainly a home/multimedia user. To me its an obvious problem. Surly I am not the only person who thinks this?
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 19, 2008 17:32 UTC (Sat) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]
Yes you are right. But i sincerely believe that online installations from source code can take away that hurdle from tech and non tech aware "costumers" hands. Dependency and bug checking would be automatic... and would make distros to collaborate more closely because a particular bug or dependency hell could have had a solution somewhere else, and no need to repeat costly cycles or live things hanging in the wild... The current "status quo" only stands because there is not commercial profit incentive to do it otherwise. Political Statement: right where the "ma$ters" want it to be.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 19, 2008 18:38 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Automatic bug detection? Are you joking? Do you have any *idea* how hard that would be?
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 20, 2008 17:03 UTC (Sun) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]
If a machine profile is generated before the installing from *source code* takes place, so to speack, and if a good debugging system is in place, i don't see why a proper formated compiler dump cannot be generated and sent "home"... Better!... much better... not only *obvious* bug squash but also dependency resolve...since the installation should be done from online, that is, the actual packages reside in the server, and as i mentioned above something like LLVM is used, i don't see why a distro cannot offer distribution in SSA IL format and vectorLLVM and or Gallium3D IL format!... that is, the distros can make a full good job debugging at compile and link-time and what mostly is used in the client/costumer machine is the backend infrastructure for native code generation and transformation and part of the "optimization" envelope. That is why i mentioned offering also *high profile* commercial apps and even for Windows(R) environment that could be run in a virtualization environment with proper format to take *wine*(ReactOS is basically wine on top of a microkernel if i'm not mistaken) into new levels. I doubt that if RH or any other distro approach Adobe, peoplesoft, PHP, Sage or other softhouse and say your source code will be transfered around *plainly* over the internet, they would accept... they would refuse!... obvious!... But if they say, don't worry they will go in SSA format, and we have good security measures any way, they will probably say *yes*... its all advantages. But, yes you are right, difficult to track bugs would be a completely different history... but that is why there will be all advantages for the distros to collaborate more closely.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 20, 2008 18:13 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Why would RH or other distros *want* to approach a closed-source company with an offer to distribute their closed source for them? Offering code in some intermediate representation is plausible, except that said representation, if it is at all portable and stable across compiler releases (which it would have to be for your scheme to work) would also enable people to compile stuff with *other compilers* into that IR, and then hit them with GCC's optimizers: and RMS is dead set against that, so you won't ever see it happen with GCC. (What *is* happening with GCC is a completely compiler-specific 'don't expect this to work on another architecture or even with a copy of GCC built with different options' intermediate representation, for link-time optimizations. But that's definitely *not* a suitable format for distributing software in.) Most of the rest of your scheme seems identical to what many distros are already doing with separated debugging info and a core_pattern-hooked program which captures and compresses core dumps and optionally sends the backtrace or the core dump itself off to the distributor. (The latter especially has to ask permission: being a memory dump, coredumps can *easily* contain private information.) (I don't really know what a 'machine profile' is, so I can't say anything about that part.)
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 20, 2008 20:19 UTC (Sun) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]
"" Why would RH or other distros *want* to approach a closed-source company with an offer to distribute their closed source for them? "" Why not ?... if costumers what they want is a particular app, why not offer them what they want and take a small profit out of it ?... if i remember FOSS philosophy is not opposed to profit... If the idea is then to make those "close source" full optimized for vector & parallel architectures i can't see why the original softhouses would not want to cooperate. They could even do part of the job in partnership without revealing any source code if they want to. In this approach all apps will be half-way into transforming themselfs into a FOSS approach... The idea is to make a *CLOSE* to an *universal* OS, idea that would make all sort of shills and strong traditional views in flame... but sincerely believe that FOSS should stand by itself into any area where there is need of a particular application, because its a better model, not because of politics or auto-segregating approaches. There will be more incentive for native porting, because i believe that *FOSS CAN WIN* if developers want it to. But please lets face it. There will always be a "niche" for closed source applications and an important one if i may say so,... and i don't think is necessary to mention the extreme of Nuclear facilities and weapon building... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ""Offering code in some intermediate representation is plausible, except that said representation, if it is at all portable and stable across compiler releases (which it would have to be for your scheme to work) would also enable people to compile stuff with *other compilers* into that IR, and then hit them with GCC's optimizers: and RMS is dead set against that, so you won't ever see it happen with GCC. (What *is* happening with GCC is a completely compiler-specific 'don't expect this to work on another architecture or even with a copy of GCC built with different options' intermediate representation, for link-time optimizations. But that's definitely *not* a suitable format for distributing software in.)"" Politics!?... Compiler specifics won't depend of IL, but IL should depend of compiler specifics, is that it ?... In other words GCC would not tolerate the dominance of something like LLVM... GCC would be made to diverge from LLVM. But why can't GCC co-opt something like LLVM which is copyleft BSD ?... it wouldn't be the first time that something similar happened!?... and them take a fork approach... or invent its own similar model ? But very important to have such kind of infrastructure independent of language front end and of ISA backend representations IMHO... if that IL is not completely suitable change it... fork your way or risk to be forked instead... "Offering code in some intermediate representation is plausible, except that said representation, if it is at all portable and stable across compiler releases" and " But that's definitely *not* a suitable format for distributing software in. " Seems a contradiction. IL should be more important IMHO. Modular "optimization" much more flexible and practical. LLVM was just an example. Its not perfect. What is not good about it, could be made much better in another similar approach... Compiler approaches IMHO are in need of a serious overhaul.. new ideas!... because the chips that are coming, and the development models needed are different from the usual... the clock is ticking, HW manufacturers wont wait for long debates... if FOSS loses this boat... we'll came to LWN, but with nostalgia... -------------------------------------------------------------------------- "" Most of the rest of your scheme seems identical to what many distros are already doing with separated debugging info and a core_pattern-hooked program which captures and compresses core dumps and optionally sends the backtrace or the core dump itself off to the distributor. (The latter especially has to ask permission: being a memory dump, coredumps can *easily* contain private information.) "" If the machine has nothing, the OS is about to be installed i can't see that happening. Besides that debug work could be done already at the server side... the code transfered in IL, possible generated dumps terribly diminished then, to the point that most of times there are none. "" I don't really know what a 'machine profile' is, so I can't say anything about that part.) "" Well its not my field really, but : how many cores present, GPGPU capabilities if any, IOMMU present or not, etc etc... Nevertheless if many utilities can detect all that, inclusive benchmark them, why not something like that running from the installation Live CD generating then a file that could be used to determine what versions of software and what compiler settings are more suitable ?
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 20, 2008 20:55 UTC (Sun) by danhah (guest, #51567) [Link]
No offense but we are in 2008 not 3008. It is difficult enough to track bugs at the moment (hence the fact that I have one in amorok well actually not amorok, one of the libs) but can you imagine if every person on the planet was to compile there own software. How many different optimisations would there be. Where would the bug be. It could be in any of a hundred different optimised setting. And I could then imagine sun redhat etc only supporting the software if you bought there hardware because they could only test it on that. And even then the potential to fall over an optimisation bug. That could mean finding a missing ( in about 3 million lines of code. That os would cost quite a lot of money. Lets keep it simple. Try and reduce the number of bugs not increase them.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 20, 2008 21:01 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
We'd be running Gentoo or one of the BSDs. :) `Build from source' is not implausible. mmarq's IR-distribution thingy (I can't entirely work out what he's driving at but that's what it seems like to me) is.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 20, 2008 21:22 UTC (Sun) by danhah (guest, #51567) [Link]
Hey I dont mind build from source as long as everybody contributes to the same source and we try to simplify things. But 10 people could have the exact hardware and just one of them could have a bug how long do you think it take to track that down. Forever I would think. I tell you what he wants a super optimized system. The extra 1% gain just isnt worth the extra hassle. Speed is never a problem for (on my PIII 700) its just the bugs that are killing me.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 21, 2008 0:42 UTC (Mon) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]
Have you read other of my postings ? hey!... but was you yourself that complained vigorously in this thread "" Can somebody explain to me why redhat, ubuntu, any commercial organisation can get enthusiasts to help them find bugs and stabilise a product, only for them, once stable, to sell it as a stable enterprise os."" Do you think that is what is really happening ?... without "life long optimization", that is, without a permanent tunning and seeing, what conflicts with what really, how can you tell that the apps and libs that you "guess" are conflicting, are not running great as ever in RH "commercial" or other offerings, and no need to issue patches and or warnings ? "" The solution was to upgrade, upgrade the app but when I tried, that the old problem of dependency hell ( now I know that has changed with yum . Ok mandrake had a slightly newer version so I installed that. Great that worked - oh no some other app now has a different bug so that means upgrade or down grade. dependency hell again."" Isn't that because all possible combinations are impossible to track ? But if a really optimization effort was made to be possible, because a revenue stream is been generated, and the projects specially in desktop, and many more projects developers could be supported and funded,... wouldn't this dependency hell me much more attenuated ? I was in your side, because you and thousand more are in cold right now... i was in the cold many times, and could be tomorrow again... but your arguments only give reasons for RH not get involved in the mainstream desktop. Your objections to my posts seem to be that; - what would be made "commercial" and installed from those repositorys from online, would be much different from the *free*, and there would be a permanent winter!? How much worst could it be from what is now ?... wouldn't a real catch the bug and dependency, generating much more involvement from the original projects, so that apps can be changed and evolve to be vectorized and parallelized... help a lot ? Source Code: awareness track marketing mobility, specially for that source code if 'exposed' in a practical way... profits can generate a lot of improvements, dead RH, or Ubuntu or Novell... no!... and how much different would it be from "box checking" a package manager that install a binary, from the same thing that downloads the pre-formated source code or IL representation, compiles it and installs it ????........... The changed/optimized source code must be available anyway... its in the license. But yes, the generated "profile file" and then aplayed compiler settings could not... But do not *fear*, because there would be plenty of FAQs, wikis and howtos availables... profile generators too, and that LLVM infrastructure *DOES LIFE LONG CHECK AND OPTIMIZATION*, you would never be *LEFT BEHIND*, if savvy and willing to waste several days doing everything possible to get the most optimization out of it... chances are that your installation could even be better than the "commercial" installation !!!....... The idea of *TAKING FROM THE HANDS* of final users, *INITIAL* debugging and dependency hell, by installing from online, is only a *VERY GOOD SERVICE DESERVING A HONEST PROFIT*, because there are plenty out there that have a *gross mania* that they know a lot about computers, but the only thing they do is f..k up real good!!.. Otherwise why would a company waste resources, good engineers and high qualified technicians time, to support a zoo ( i wont pay royalties) of the utmost imbecility and 'ubber' idiocy, that is not only scary but is an horror movie that defies believe... getting itself under because of it ? ...i know!... i once get a really angry boss, and not of a corner shop, complaining furiously against my little company because why was that Windows(R) installs completely in the C: partition !!??... we was right the technician "supposedly" could have installed it in D:, the only think that was not accounted for is that that boss 'thing', with admin rights, would render MSFT the service of changing what was inside of the windows folder from place, because he felt that then would make much more sense and be much more aesthetic appealing!!!.... its only an example!... Why do you think that MSFT never got directly involved in this kind of direct support of desktop end users ???.... it gots plenty of patsys!... So what could be more simple, on the exploding need for bug squashing and dependency hell, than to fund the original projects and projects developers for the task ?... yes... can only be done if there is profit to justify it. What is the difficulty of making *part* of that "optimization" using virtual machines that mimic very closely the intended targets ? Why would it be that pernicious of having several *different optimizations* if there gonna be several different machine configurations, with different possible ISAs to support, and not only in the CPU ? 3008 ?... stream computing is already possible now and not only for HPC jobs, Fusion chips will be out in 2009, and the same for Intel Larabee, and Nvidia similar approaches... watch the news...
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 21, 2008 10:45 UTC (Mon) by danhah (guest, #51567) [Link]
I am sure we have similar goals. All I am saying is lets try to simplify things to where it just works. Be it source or binary packages. Once that happens then lets look at optimisation. All that you are saying is a great idea and obviously something to aim for but I think we need to walk a little faster before flat out sprinting. Dependency hell will always be possible because if libc changes compatibility then things break. It is about acknowledging that and fitting that into a stable system.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 21, 2008 19:11 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
libc isn't going to break, full stop. However, what *is* a concern is a more general case of something which we did see in the last major upgrade. Remember the wtmp format change? Remember the GCC exception-handler errors, back when libgcc was always statically linked? This is a special case of a more general problem, which is that if some library code manages some shared resource, and more than one variety of it gets to run in the same address space (as happens with static linking, and with differing-soname shared linking), and those varieties have different expectations of some shared resource, things will break. Unix doesn't really have a good answer to this other than `soname breaks that affect shared libraries that are linked both into libraries and into the users of those libraries should force relinking of all those libraries at once, or changes of the intermediate libraries' sonames', both of which avoid having multiple copies of different versions of the same shared libraries in the same address space at once. Neither of these situations are exactly ideal, but as far as I know nobody's thought of a better way. (Has anyone?)
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 21, 2008 19:46 UTC (Mon) by danhah (guest, #51567) [Link]
Wasn't there a problem with native threads? and libc. I remember a whole back some of the audio guys complaining about a problem with debian but a workaround was to use -ntpl or something like that. Interesting thread though, pity there is only 3 people reading it. :)
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 20, 2008 21:20 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Why not ?... if costumers what they want is a particular app, why not offer them what they want and take a small profit out of it ?... if i remember FOSS philosophy is not opposed to profit...No, but it is opposed to distributing closed-source vendors' code for them. I'd have thought this would be obvious.
Nuclear facilities and weapon buildingWell, the nuke embedded systems are classic examples of vertical apps, passed around among interested parties (largely by technology transfer and outright spying). The toolchains that build those, well, I'd be surprised to find all of them devoid of GNAT, which is of course free as in copyrighted by FSF and based on code written by RMS :)
Politics!?... Compiler specifics won't depend of IL, but IL should depend of compiler specifics, is that it ?RMS's objection was that a persistent IL in any form would provide an irresistible temptation to others to provide ways to effectively replace parts of GCC with non-free software.
He was eventually persuaded that enough other free compilers now exist that GCC alone cannot prevent this, and that further an IL which is written with no particular attempt to make it GCC-independent is unlikely to be used by many non-free GCC-replacers. We shall see if this is right :)
But why can't GCC co-opt something like LLVM which is copyleft BSD ?Last I looked LLVM's copyright wasn't owned by the FSF (though neither is ecj, which is now used as GCJ's parser). There is substantial feedback between LLVM and GCC: some people work on both projects. Co-opting it whole is probably impractical, the architectures are too different: if you did that you'd basically end up with LLVM, in which case why not use that to start with?
But very important to have such kind of infrastructure independent of language front end and of ISA backend representations IMHO...Well, duh. Depending on how you look at it, this has been present since the early 2000s (in the form of tree-ssa and the GENERIC and GIMPLE representations), or since the start of GCC (in the form of RTL). You simply can't write a multilanguage or multitarget compiler without some form of IR.
if that IL is not completely suitable change it...It's hard to make major changes to an IR once you have dozens of passes depending on it. e.g. the mem-ssa changes (which were changes to *representation* not semantics) were really quite difficult and substantial. Making changes to semantics, particularly the semantics of something like RTL which is wired into the quasidocumented and heavily-coupled guts of Ancient GCC, is dramatically harder.
Seems a contradiction. IL should be more important IMHO. Modular "optimization" much more flexible and practical. LLVM was just an example. Its not perfect. What is not good about it, could be made much better in another similar approach... Compiler approaches IMHO are in need of a serious overhaul.. new ideas!... because the chips that are coming, and the development models needed are different from the usual... the clock is ticking, HW manufacturers wont wait for long debates... if FOSS loses this boat... we'll came to LWN, but with nostalgia...I'm afraid this makes no sense at all to me. Why would hardware manufacturers care how code was distributed?
Rereading your older posts in this thread, you seem to be suffering under the misconception that there's some sort of magic representation we could use to ship J. Random Unix Program so that it would Just Work, only faster, on massively multiprocessor systems, GPUs, and so on. This simply isn't the case. Making programs capable of effective massive parallelization requires pervasive algorithmic changes: worse, the field is young, and we don't even know in many cases what the right algorithms are (e.g. lockless algorithms are obviously preferable to locky ones, but so far comparatively few lockless algorithms are known, and they're substantially harder to understand than those that use locks).
It's trivial, in a built-from-source distro like gentoo, to probe hardware requirements and set compiler flags appropriately (although this is also largely pointless with GCC on x86 these days thanks to -march=native, -mtune=generic and friends). But magically turning single-threaded CPU hogs into multithreaded processes that run on your graphics card isn't going to happen anytime soon, I'm afraid.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 21, 2008 2:44 UTC (Mon) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]
"" No, but it is opposed to distributing closed-source vendors' code for them. I'd have
thought this would be obvious.""
You mean,... who ever puts in their repositorys win4lin or the free vmware player that anyone
can download and install for free... ha! not to mention the commercial version of crossover
that always lags several months what is then release to the wine tree... is gonna to be
banished from the community. I 'm a strong supporter of FOSS, under my possibilities probably
is not you that is more supportive... but i really find that an hypocrisy...
Happily is not true. Doesn't anyone offer close source apps ?... Linspire CNR ?, Mandriva Club
?,... Xandros ?.... i haven't really checked but i believe they do. ah!... Adobe reader is not
FOSS and i have installed it from my distro repository...
"" RMS's objection was that a persistent IL in any form would provide an irresistible
temptation to others to provide ways to effectively replace parts of GCC with non-free
software. ""
And so what!?... if GCC gets in the same kind of agglutination paradigma, that Linux with its
LSF gets with everybody wanting to participate eagerly including big industry players, then
GCC has nothing to fear, because GCC will always be better... let them try !?
Better GCC can be in GPLv3, and be very watchful of the Industry lobbying and influence. What
GCC should not do, IMHO, is be in the fear and refuse splendid ideas and and potential tech
innovations because of the fear that other can do of abuse.
I'm not implying that GCC and RMS should loose their principals... never!
What i'm saying is that GCC and RMS have nothing to fear from abuse if they can get the clear
technologic superiority...
Its like the so much talked about court of law prove about GPL validity. People have abused
GPL several times, but abusers have always steped back,... FOSS is too dynamic and technologic
acute for law suits. What is the point of litigation even if an abuser think in his mind that
he can win , if by the time it is settled, things have moved so rapidly that the pieces of
code involved don't make sense anymore?...
Now if GCC is left behind technologically, it will be much more prone to abuse, than if it
risks and gets into techs that are clearly not screen free from abuse.
ILs... nothing should be set in stone forever, specially an IR format... there can be always
jumps... new headings... new ideas...
"" I'm afraid this makes no sense at all to me. Why would hardware manufacturers care how code
was distributed? ""
Well that is the whole point, they don't.... but the whole idea about "Fusion" style chips,
and "streaming" optimizations being for ATI/SSE5 or Intel AVX or whatever Nvidia cooks, is
going to be here fast, and its going to catch the whole set on fire... multicore, manycore,
will be even on entry level desktops and wont take that many years to be in embedded...
Many users will be wonting "streaming", i want it too... the current approach of GCC doesn't
seam to me completely adequate... its not an insult... its only a temporary and minor issue i
want to believe...
Get "bold" please.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 21, 2008 6:57 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
You mean,... who ever puts in their repositorys win4lin or the free vmware player that anyone can download and install for free... ha! not to mention the commercial version of crossover that always lags several months what is then release to the wine tree... is gonna to be banished from the community.No, simply that free software vendors are unlikely to do it, because a compiler intermediate representation of Adobe Whatever is not free software.
GCC has nothing to fear, because GCC will always be better...Unfortunately, GCC is not better at single-machine optimization than many vendor compilers (although it is getting better). So this really would be a temptation. (What's worse is the temptation of hooking up a new frontend, and this has been tried: if GCC had been partitionable as you suggest, we wouldn't have a free Objective C frontend today.)
Better GCC can be in GPLv3sigh. GCC has been GPLv3 since that license's release. Do pay attention.
Now if GCC is left behind technologically, it will be much more prone to abuse, than if it risks and gets into techs that are clearly not screen free from abuse.If GCC gets left behind technologically, nobody will want to stick their favourite proprietary frontend on it.
(Anyway, it's not me you've got to convince; it's RMS. Getting RMS to change his mind when he has reasons to think one thing is hard. Good luck. I'd not even bother trying until your ideas are much more coherently presented.)
Get "bold" please.I just don't think optimizers are magic. You seem to think they are. (Again, the magic autoparallelize-everything optimizer does not exist. It's not just that oh look nobody's written one: nobody knows how such a thing might be written.)
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 21, 2008 16:46 UTC (Mon) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]
Really don't understand your objections!... "" No, simply that free software vendors are unlikely to do it, because a compiler intermediate representation of Adobe Whatever is not free software."" Neither is the binary, even packed in RPM format, that Adobe does using GCC, and that distros include in their repositorys. "" Unfortunately, GCC is not better at single-machine optimization than many vendor compilers (although it is getting better). So this really would be a temptation. (What's worse is the temptation of hooking up a new frontend, and this has been tried: if GCC had been partitionable as you suggest, we wouldn't have a free Objective C frontend today.) "" Why not ?... is the Objective C frontend close source ?... Doesn't LLVM include an open source Objective C/C++ frontend, and isn't LLVM partitioned and modular like you say ? "" If GCC gets left behind technologically, nobody will want to stick their favourite proprietary frontend on it."" So its better that way, be left behind so that nobody will be tempted to abuse, is that it ?... my way or no way ? But if that happens wouldn't it be a clear GPL violation ?... Why would anybody risk it, if they can enjoy all the advantages of distributed development and the power that FOSS enjoys, instead of law suits ? Still i believe the biggest problem would be in the backend... But taking an example, isn't AMD CTM/CAL open sourced ?... what is so terrible wrong about cooperation so that the lower parts of that driver could be modular and treated by GCC the same way that Linux treats firmware ?... (only an example because i don't know if CTM/CAL is really open sourced all the way into the clear naked metal) They might do exactly that, putting that lower level as firmware for HW, if they feel that they are being accepted. And who says AMD, can say Intel or Nvidia... "" (Anyway, it's not me you've got to convince; it's RMS. Getting RMS to change his mind when he has reasons to think one thing is hard. Good luck. I'd not even bother trying until your ideas are much more coherently presented.) "" I don't have to convince nobody. Time is a cure for everything. I'm sorry about the coherency anyway. But i think what i'm saying is that, is about time, to GCC to open a new development tree!... yes, like in the time there was a stable and development Linux tree. Certainly is not that easy, nor even magic or something like that... but certainly would prove the power of GCC. The current GCC tree can still be supported for many more years... But what is the point of supporting archaic language front ends, that only 3 guys are using, and one is 80 years old and is forgetting constantly where the return key is ?!... That way would be close to impossible for GCC to evolve, there would be more PITA than anything else, and tech forums would be full of "exposed" technical impediments and hurdles... nobody would bother even to start... the new tree should tackle new problems and new ideas!...
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 21, 2008 19:21 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Neither is the binary, even packed in RPM format, that Adobe does using GCC, and that distros include in their repositorys.Distros that don't ship non-free software don't ship that binary (assuming you mean Flash). (Is it even redistributable? I thought most distros shipped a script that downloaded it from Adobe.)
No, but had it been easy to get it to emit something that GCC's backend could have processed, the frontend would have been closed-source. (This is a matter of historical record by this point. If I'm wrong, Joe Buck can tell me I'm full of crap, if he's still reading.)if GCC had been partitionable as you suggest, we wouldn't have a free Objective C frontend today.)Why not ?... is the Objective C frontend close source ?
But if that happens wouldn't it be a clear GPL violation ?If GCC emits a stable intermediate representation (as it would have to for distros to usefully ship things in that form), and accepts that representation for further processing, then having some closed-source program emit it probably would not be a GPL violation: at least it would be very hard to prove. This is why GCC doesn't, and won't, emit a stable intermediate representation. (The representation used for link-time optimizations is, as I understand it, by design not stable enough to be usefully emittable by anything but GCC, and definitely not intended as a medium to transport code between machines in.)
isn't AMD CTM/CAL open sourced ?... what is so terrible wrong about cooperation so that the lower parts of that driver could be modular and treated by GCC the same way that Linux treats firmware ?This is already doable by implementing a GCC backend that accepts whatever representation the CTM/CAL code generator accepts. It's just like cross-compilation, in fact it is cross-compilation: exactly the same mechanism is used to generate code for the Cell SPUs.
But it's not something that magically kicks in: there'd be a different version of a package that had code like this in it, or perhaps a new glibc hwcap and corresponding subdirectories searched by the dynamic linker for shared libraries containing object files in the appropriate form.
I don't have to convince nobody. Time is a cure for everything.If you want to get GCC to emit a stable intermediate representation, you have to convince RMS :)
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 21, 2008 3:28 UTC (Mon) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]
I forgot to mention; "" But magically turning single-threaded CPU hogs into multithreaded processes that run on your graphics card isn't going to happen anytime soon, I'm afraid. "" Of course not. Wild guess, but i believe that 50% of what is in a normal desktop installation, in a foreseeable future, wont see any vectorization and only mild parallelization if any at all. Start with the obvious ones So benchmarks, of which i urled one in my first post show possibilities of more than 2 orders of magnitude improvement, for hand tuned and for that code base that can benefice higly. All in all, if only 50% of the code base installed gets improvements of only a little more than 1 order of magnitude average, in overall the improvement can still be in the various of thens of % (Amdahl law). And here is the beauty of source code!. It shouldn't just be a recompile. FOSS permits always some sort of hand tunning... start with the obvious, start conservative... i don't think that everything will be possible... but in the end it can prove more than worthed.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 21, 2008 6:59 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
If you use OpenMP (which has a really nasty #pragma-based syntax but works quite well, and which recent GCCs have native support for) then there is no need to recompile at all: you just compile with OpenMP, and the program itself probes for the number of cores at startup. I see no reason why an enhanced OpenMP runtime couldn't probe for a GPGPU and run bits on there if it wanted to, all without any need for this elaborate IR-shipping you seem to be discussing.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 21, 2008 17:01 UTC (Mon) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]
Others also obvious targets are Intel open sourced IBB, and AMD open sourced "framewave"... and you can bet that similar approaches would be getting here like the rain.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 19, 2008 22:17 UTC (Sat) by danhah (guest, #51567) [Link]
I would just like to add a few more points before this thread becomes a bit too complicated. 1. I think mmarq is missing the point of FOSS. FOSS is not necessarily about making a profit (although there is nothing wrong with that) it is a concept a philosophical point of view. Some people write FOSS just to scratch an itch, some because they need a specific app or feature, some purly as a learning experience, some to make a profit and some to get a job. The community is bigger than one single entity. But for it to continue and grow we need to especially encourage people to write code and develop applications. Now I living in the UK could afford to pay for an os, but the world is a big place and not everybody can afford to pay for an os. Do we stop them from using FOSS. Do we say to people in (for example) china. africa, bloody hell even in parts of the uk some people could not even afford a computer let alone pay for an desktop os. We want to say to them come and join us and with a bit of luck they will contribute back to the community and we will have a steady stream of willing developers/helpers way into the future. You might want to give redhat $500 for a stable os/Desktop. I would rather donate $500 to debian (or some other nonprofit body) hoping that money would trickle down to the developers who write the code. The likes of Paul Davis who has spent years writing and developing ardour, Sven Neumann and the gimp developers, scott dylewski who writes dvd-slideshow, etc etc etc. 2. Back to this profit word. I dont have a problem with companies making a profit from FOSS. RedHat, Suse, Sun, HP, IBM etc they see a way of making money and thats great for them. If I was CEO of a large company I would like to buy from IBM or Redhat and have a bloody good support contract to bail me out if my server ever went down. But if I was a small business owner I would just as comfortably rely on a small local computer consultancy business to keep my systems in shape. And that works if you are in turkey, china, africa, pretty much anywhere. Now yes hopefully they would make a profit and hopefully they would see fit to contribute back to the community. (In some way isnt that what trolltech did? ) If suse, redhat, debian, gentoo, ibm, sun, hp, novel, all contributed to one distro then maybe they wouldnt need to support the desktop as it would be so intuitive and stable and it would just work. 3. Just one last point If I was microsoft and linux became too much of a threat this is what I would do. I would pay some developers to work on linux and contribute code until I was part of the community. Then I would fork the kernel maybe with a slightly better file system and tell everybody how great this new system is and how much faster it is- genuinely providing a better system. Then I would guarantee that other developers would try it out, and then they would say but my network card doesnt work so I will patch that, then another dev would find his sata drive doesnt work so he would patch that, and before long you would have two completely different competing kernels that would be very hard to keep in sync. Each one would probably have twice as many bugs as one all encompassing kernel would. And then I would fork again. Bloody hell everyone would need a support contract then. If a car is made with a slight fault and four years down the line owners have to replace the part then the manufacturer profits from there mistake I hope that is not what is happening with linux. (OK in theory this probably might get enough coverage to force the manufacturer to cover it on warranty but only if enough people complain.) Now I am not saying that Redhat Suse etc are doing this on purpose to split the effort of the community (I honestly am not), but If you are going to do contribute something then you should jump in wholeheartedly or not at all. Now I feel that they are doing that for the server market but not on the desktop. Sure they are putting a desktop out, yes they contain gimp and firefox and all the usual programs but do they package dvbcut or qvamps or little smaller apps that can be very important to a home desktop/multimedia system . No that is the problem. Just one last little point The new Ubuntu is coming out soon and they have packaged firefox 3 beta 5. Now I know these packages have to be tested, but should a beta not even a rc copy of an important piece of software get into a stable distro. Now no wonder they sell support contracts! I wonder if the next debian stable will come with an optional support contract.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 20, 2008 17:37 UTC (Sun) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]
Sincerely i can't see *where or why* what i've wroted invalidates any of what you mention!... FOSS will go on as usual only reinvigorated, because now open source will have a clear practical meaning for non developers... and plain source code would still be completely available, its part of the license, and developers will get heaven better support because dependency hell and bug squash will get a new meaning... And vectorization and parallelization will be a top of the list requirement for all the *many-core* and Fusion style chips that are around the corner. Projects, and project developers can have a new whole bunch of funds available for this alone, if a good profit revenue can be generated from it. But if FOSS loses this boat i'm afraid it will be finished! Yet poor people, and tech savy people, can still benefice. Isn't there already "commercial" and non commercial counterparts ?... What invalidates that you pick all the source code you need, use LLVM+other and compile it *exactly the same way* that the "commercial" approach i devise, should be doing "automaticly", so to speack, from online ? Donations are good, but they can't be the principal reason to sustain the whole ecosystem... it simply will not be possible!
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 19, 2008 17:17 UTC (Sat) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]
"" But, by being able to sell its products at a profit, Red Hat can make contributions back to the same community that are an order of magnitude larger than it would be able to do if it were not making money. "" But why cannot RH do it also for desktop ?... that is sell it for a profit ?... I bet if RH was willing to sell not RH (something), but a "RH danhah" and or a "RH mmarq", costumizing the distros for a particular taste and operation environment!..: * every app translated into the native language... * extensive template support for commercial and legal documents, in OOo or other, for that particular costumer country... that is, i would like to have many of those document templates out of the box already with my organization "timbre" or "stamp" on them, for my country model... * extensive template support for other apps in the lines of work desirable * Art work provided by the costumer or tailor made for a particular organization... that is, i would like to have wallpapers with my company name and logo, icon sets more familiar, font packs suitable for graphic works... * distros with the possibility of FULL optimization, because they are installed from source code.. that is, a small app that scans the system and generates from online a compiler profile file with all the settings necessary, so that upon installing, the code gets optimized for a particular system be it Intel, AMD or VIA... * Extensive repository available for "free" apps and non "free" apps, a little like Linspire CNR or Mandriva Club, with Linux natives and or other "commercial" apps,... but much better because RH could include some high profile "commercial" apps for Windows(R)( i'm thinking of virtualization possibilities) of which in this late case RH could get a deal with other software houses (Adobe, PeopleSoft, Sage .. and even maybe MSFT!?...)so that those apps can be installed from source code and optimized... why not ? * Partner with google for particular lines of business for best searches upon particular needs, with browsers filtered and setted up,... partner with online stores from music, video... VoIP telcos... every possible offer that can could have a desktop app suitable... even money transfer!... * Site building with online support, from an extensible pool of templates, with a true drag&drop, copy&paste online RAD environment, and a good "hosting" for company... very good for small business... and google would be trilled!... * Offer online server support for Thin Client deployments... i'm thinking of http://www.2x.com/applicationserver/, one of the very few server business model that makes sense to me for SOHO and small enterprise... * Sell hardware with "things" pre-installed... Of course all this requires extensive investment and time to get to those levels. But RH could pull it out with the help of the community so that the investment don't get to be exorbitant. So what do you think ? ... would i buy a "Vista Ultimate edition" for $300 or a "RH mmarq edition" for $500 ?...
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 19, 2008 2:11 UTC (Sat) by interalia (subscriber, #26615) [Link]
Debian fans, please cut out the partisan nonsense.Woah there Nelly, that was just a single person! I'm a Debian user and fan but had no reason to post until I saw you tarring everyone with that brush.
The one true way
Posted Apr 21, 2008 22:13 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]
Non-debian pagans, please repent and renounce your evil ways. And you lukewarm believers, please let the one true way shine through all your shiny circuits. (We may be fanatics, but there is no reason not to be polite.)
Red Hat, please just shut up about the desktop
Posted Apr 18, 2008 1:26 UTC (Fri) by grouch (subscriber, #27289) [Link]
Generally, Red Hat is a refreshingly clueful company, but they have a collective brain blockage where personal use of GNU/Linux is concerned. From Szulik's infamous, clueless recommendation to the trademarking of an existing software project's name to the current blurb, Red Hat changes from an example of a corporation which values its supporting community to a bumbling, damaging idiot every time it upchucks something in the news about "desktop linux"."[T]echnically savvy users" do not need Red Hat's interference. Lots of un-savvy users become savvy exactly through the use of GNU/Linux, which frees them from the monopoly which depends upon keeping them uninformed and dependent. There is no show-stopper technical requirement which prevents even those who have at best a partial understanding from using GNU/Linux. Even the most "technically savvy users" are ill-equipped to deal with the monopoly's product, but kids love Linux. (Strange, the kids in that last article love Fedora. Please don't try to tell them they're wrong, Red Hat. Just stay out of their way).
Please, Red Hat, continue your good work saving companies money, which saves me money as a customer, and make your profits, but just shut up about the use of GNU/Linux on the desktop. You obviously haven't gained a clue about it in all these years and you're just embarassing yourself by revealing your ignorance of the subject, plus interfering with the rescue of trapped 'newbies', each time you spout about the subject to a reporter.
Red Hat, please just shut up about the desktop
Posted Apr 18, 2008 2:54 UTC (Fri) by motk (subscriber, #51120) [Link]
Just a point - the Fedora had been Red Hat's trademark since, what, 1997? Also, it's in a completely different field - cf: the whole Firebird nonsense.
Red Hat, please just shut up about the desktop
Posted Apr 18, 2008 5:39 UTC (Fri) by grouch (subscriber, #27289) [Link]
Just a point - the Fedora had been Red Hat's trademark since, what, 1997? Also, it's in a completely different field - cf: the whole Firebird nonsense.
Sorry, I think your memory is playing tricks on you:
Warren Togami founded the original Fedora Project as a school project during 2002 while studying Computer Science at the University of Hawaii. That project has since merged with Red Hat to become the Fedora Project of today, which is at the forefront of Research & Development for Red Hat.
-- Fedora wiki
Note the date.
The Flexible Extensible Digital Object and Repository Architecture (Fedora) began as a DARPA and NSF-funded research project of Carl Lagoze and Sandy Payette at Cornell University's Digital Library Research Group in 1997, where the first reference implementation and a CORBA-based technical implementation were built. Fedora was designed on the principle that interoperability and extensibility is best achieved by architecting a clean and modular separation of data, interfaces, and mechanisms (i.e., executable programs).
Again, note the date. Old documents are available concerning the trademark dispute, but I've seen nothing new (including a resolution) since 2003.
"the Fedora" (picture) vs. the word "Fedora"
Posted Apr 28, 2008 4:45 UTC (Mon) by kevinbsmith (subscriber, #4778) [Link]
The earlier poster said "the Fedora", which I believe was referring to the little picture of a fedora hat, not to the word "Fedora". I'm not justifying what Red Hat did (nor am I prepared to condemn it based on what little information I have). Just trying to clarify a miscommunication.
Red Hat: Always againt the desktop preferred by the majority.
Posted Apr 18, 2008 13:51 UTC (Fri) by morhippo (subscriber, #334) [Link]
I still recall when Red Hat boycotted the KDE project due to alleged licencing problems, heavily funded Gnome. This basically doomed their desktop efforts. Despite heavy corporate (Eazel, Sun, Redhat, Simian, Novell...) funding and much money being put into Gnome, it still has not reached the level of functionality present in the community effort KDE-3. There is a lot of polish, but the foundations are shaky and furure progress slow. Remember Mandrake? They started as Redhat plus KDE. I think Redhat's experience and difficulties with marketing Gnome forever spoiled any Redhat desktop efforts, as no one wanted to admit that they put their money on the wrong horse from the very beginning. Even when any licensing issues Qt may have ever have had fell away, they were too proud to admit their misunderstanding of user preferences.
Red Hat: Always againt the desktop preferred by the majority.
Posted Apr 18, 2008 21:00 UTC (Fri) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]
Enough with the war-mongering, please. We have two different major DE's which serve rather different needs. I'm glad I don't have to use KDE. And I'm glad that people who prefer KDE are not clogging Gnome mailing lists with requests to make it like KDE. And I am pretty sure that my counterparts in KDE-land feel conversely. I'm going to assume that you are one of those counterparts. Do you really want me and my friends on your mailing lists every day complaining about the (perceived) sucky interface? If we did not have the choices that we have, that's where we would be: All on one set of mailing lists bickering over the one true way to design a user interface.
Red Hat: Always againt the desktop preferred by the majority.
Posted Apr 21, 2008 19:19 UTC (Mon) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]
""" I think Redhat's experience and difficulties with marketing Gnome forever spoiled any Redhat desktop efforts, as no one wanted to admit that they put their money on the wrong horse from the very beginning. """ The #1 home desktop distro is Gnome-based. The #1 enterprise desktop distro is Gnome-based. The #2 enterprise desktop distro is Gnome-based. Hardly the "wrong horse". Hard as it may be for some people to swallow, there is not enough money in consumer Linux desktops to make it a reasonable business proposition at this time. If there were, Canonical would be profitable, and it's still existing on Shuttleworth's funds. I'm afraid we have a continued wait ahead of us.
Red Hat: Always againt the desktop preferred by the majority.
Posted Apr 21, 2008 20:37 UTC (Mon) by morhippo (subscriber, #334) [Link]
Most polls in recent years have constantly shown that KDE is the preferred desktop even though Redhat has pushed Gnome and even though Novell has started to favour Gnome after the acquisition of Ximian. Basically, even though companies have always preferred Gnome, as it makes the development of unfree applications easier and cheaper due to being Lesser GPL(btw, where are these great unfree commercial applications for gnome? - never seen anything substantial), the users and the community have carried on preferring KDE. Several of the consumer focussed desktop distributions have KDE as default: Kubuntu, Knoppix, PcLinuxOs, Slackware, Mepis, Xandros (EEEPC), ....)
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 18, 2008 16:25 UTC (Fri) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link]
My personal take on the message is that Redhat is saying that there simply isn't money to be made on the personal desktop. What I think you all are failing to understand is that key point. Money, Redhat makes money by providing support, how many individual users are going to purchase support? (Redhat used to offer support to individuals, even rather cheap, they don't anymore, probably because they couldn't make money on it) If DELL or HP or one of the other OEMs starts selling Linux to home users they aren't going to contract support out to Redhat, they are going to hire their own staff and try to manage the costs of the support. But beyond even that, Linux is still less than 5% of the desktop and I bet a good 50% or more of that figure is because of corporate installations, not home installations. I personally agree with what Redhat said in their statement, there isn't a market for home support right now and that the way to make money off the desktop is through corporate desktop support. IMO the path to the desktop for Linux involves wide adoption on the corporate desktop first, before it becomes viable as a commodity home use OS. Only when people are first trained on using at work are they going to accept a move to using the system at home. Microsoft traversed this same path from the corporate desktop into the home. I like Ubuntu and maybe it will dominate the home desktop, but I have a feeling based on what I've seen that once desktop's start reaching maturity that the market will shift again and Redhat may move that direction, but only if there is money to be made. Frankly I think if Linux sees wide adoption that there will be a DELL and HP branded distribution and they will roll their own OS in house along with support. Microsoft spent years preventing the OEM's from trying to rebrand windows as the OEM's product, without the contract restrictions on Linux I bet the OEM's roll their own distributions.
Red Hat: no desktop products coming
Posted Apr 19, 2008 18:01 UTC (Sat) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]
yes i agree with lot of parts, but: "" there isn't a market for home support right now and that the way to make money off the desktop is through corporate desktop support. IMO the path to the desktop for Linux i