Red Hat: no desktop products coming [LWN.net]

Red Hat: no desktop products coming

Posted Apr 18, 2008 16:16 UTC (Fri) by geertj (subscriber, #4116)
In reply to: Red Hat: no desktop products coming by danhah
Parent article: Red Hat: no desktop products coming

> 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.

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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 building

Well, 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 GPLv3

sigh. 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.)

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 ?

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.)

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 ?...