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QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com)
Jennifer Cloer talks
with Matt Asay, COO of Canonical. "Asay: We have the chance to turn the technology world upside down. At Canonical we have Google or Apple-sized ambition, because we have community that dwarfs both of them put together. Our task is to work with the community to fulfill that opportunity. I believe we can. That's what I signed up to accomplish."
(Log in to post comments)
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 15, 2010 20:36 UTC (Mon) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
1)Is this the first public mention of an Ubuntu instant-on OS called "WebNow"? I've not run across that before.
2)Matt is misrepresenting the Cloud Market stats.
reference: http://nicolas.barcet.com/drupal/en/ubuntu-largest-os-on-...
-jef
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 15, 2010 21:20 UTC (Mon) by jwb (guest, #15467) [Link]
That is a curiously meaningless pie chart. Still, Ubuntu integrates into
Amazon's cloud very well, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that Ubuntu really is the dominant variety of Linux on EC2.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 15, 2010 23:01 UTC (Mon) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
A lot of possibly realities are plausible. Ubuntu dominance of EC2 is certainly among those. But the pre-determined plausibility of an hypothesis is no excuse for standing up misinformation and poor data analysis as fact.
Amazon is going to have to release information concerning the demographics of the breakdown of cputime of running AMI images for there to be a credible fact-based statement made. Something Amazon hasn't done...yet.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 15, 2010 20:45 UTC (Mon) by donbarry (guest, #10485) [Link]
This appropriation of "community" strikes me as rather impolite and
presumptuous. There are many "communities" in the free software world: simply buying a few dozen people amongst and outside of them and applying a triple-gloss marketing airbrush doesn't make them theirs.
But that's been Ubuntu's modus operandi all along. Find something
Free software *is* winning. But Ubuntu's relationship with that victory
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 15, 2010 21:14 UTC (Mon) by BrucePerens (subscriber, #2510) [Link] It does seem to be rapidly going more negative.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 15, 2010 21:56 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Don't confuse Ubuntu struggling to make a usable version of Linux with 'doing nothing'.
There are a crapload of developers working day in and day out to produce open source software,
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 15, 2010 23:18 UTC (Mon) by DDevine (guest, #60717) [Link]
They don't try to make it usable. They try to make it crashy. Call me a troll but it is true, and quite negative to Open Source's image.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 3:44 UTC (Tue) by donbarry (guest, #10485) [Link]
I agree with your observations of the "crashy" experience.
After my first few experiences of browsing with amazement through the mix of pilfered and curiously hacked packages on a stability-challenged Ubuntu system in hopes of helping a friend or colleague, I rapidly came up with a universal solution. My help is to tell them that going away from sane policy in favor of quick and usually dirty fixes has left their systems unmaintainable -- and then I show them how to install Debian.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 6:16 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
OK, you're a troll. Please name ONE Ubuntu dev that tries to make it crashy. If the entire company is doing it then this should be a fairly easy task.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 13:10 UTC (Wed) by TRS-80 (subscriber, #1804) [Link] The problem is the bulk import of Debian unstable regardless of the state of the packages at the time. It's the lack of one (or more) Ubuntu devs taking care of the import that makes it crashy.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 7:05 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Face it: The stability of the Linux desktop just kinda sucks.------------------------------ The Linux Audio stack is still a mess and a lot of people still have not figured out that Alsa without PulseAudio is just, well... bad. Until people can use PA without giving a crap about PA then the Linux audio situation for the desktop will be well on the way to decentcy. It's getting about 50-60% there. When PA works the ability to manage audio levels sanely and be able to deal with hotpluggable audio devices is just a work of art compared to the hell of trying to deal with Alsa directly. I'll take a nice GUI slider and pre-configured sound card defaults over hacking away at asoundrc and manually configuring the audio devices of each and every application I use. -------------------------------- Linux video stack is still trash, too. Xorg and Mesa folks are clobbering away at it and beating the open source graphics stack into a workable state. Still, unfortunately, the premier Linux solution for graphics involves shovelling MB's worth of Windows driver code into the kernel. Having a set of drivers for each API you have to support is just out and out nuts. Until Gallium3D comes along then even basic capabilities and acceleration methods enjoyed by Windows users are going to remain completely absent. It's not even a question of performance right now. that is still a year off. Maybe two before end users will start to see the benefits of it. ------------------------------------ Until some fundamental things like that are delt with all Ubuntu can really do is worry about eye candy and presentation. That's their job, that is what they are created for. REALY. What are you comparing Ubuntu against? Debian's stability is better then Ubuntu, but usability is just a f-ing nightmare. Debian does not even _pretend_ that they are making a usable system. Unless your willing to dedicate a sizable chunk of your life learning to use Debian then you really should not even think about using it. I mean, hell, it takes me about 2-3 weeks to get PA hammered into a usable state on Debian unstable. Just little niggling things just pop up all the time like I forgot to install the PA version of the SDL lib package, or the volume control for Metacity is just wrong, and crud like that. I like it and use it heavily, but for anybody who is not a complete Linux fan? Forget it. Completely worthless. Humanity in general can never hope to deal with Debian being Debian. Debian caters to people that are already Debian. This is perfectly and 100% fine, but it's not really going to benefit other people except for the amount of work that they put into making nice packages that Ubuntu ends up using. ( Not to mention I can't use it for anything other then my own personal desktop at work since they still refuse to follow anything remotely resembling a release timetable.) Fedora? Fedora's stability record makes Ubuntu look like the rock of Gibraltar. I like Fedora a lot, but they are never going to cater to anybody except other Fedora users and themselves. They care about pushing the technology. Which is 100% fine and proper, but it's not going to go anywere on "The Desktop". CentOS and Redhat are fine and can make good business desktop, but they are too old and crusty for anything else and so far Redhat has pretty much abandoned the Linux desktop for something that can actually make them money. So your right that Ubuntu is 'crashy' and it sucks and it's full of odd hacks and work arounds and sometimes they screw things up. But that only looks bad until you compare it to the rest of the LInux OSS ecosystem out there from the perspective of 'which one can the average person most likely benefit from using'. And from that perspective Ubuntu has done a good job. It may sound like I am coming down on Debian or Fedora or whatever, but I am not. I like them a lot. If your a big Linux user and like to spend time learning to get the most out of your OS then they can be fantastic systems and the developers for those systems deserve a lot of credit. But have all fallen into their nitch and cater to the audiance they already have so while this is good for existing users it does not mean much to anybody else.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 8:39 UTC (Tue) by rqosa (guest, #24136) [Link] > I'll take a nice GUI slider and pre- configured sound card defaults over hacking away at asoundrc and manually configuring the audio devices of each and every application I use. I usually don't have to bother with .asoundrc / asound.conf, and ALSA-using applications usually use the device called "default" (which is dmix-enabled) by, well, default. (One major exception to this was phonon-xine, which seems to be severely broken to me. It doesn't even offer "default" as a choice of device, but instead prefers to use "x-phonon"; what's worse, when I tried to make a custom asound.conf defining an "x-phonon" device, it refused to use the device I created, printing libasound errors on the console, despite the fact that all other ALSA programs (such as aplay) had no problems using the "x-phonon" device! I tried running strace on the Phonon-using program, and it appeared to show that the ALSA configuration files were being read twice, whereas aplay would read them only once...) (Another exception was that dmix seems to be disabled on the "default" device when using an old ISA Sound Blaster AWE64. It was pretty easy to find an asound.conf which fixed this, though.) However, isn't it true that ALSA dmix only supports stereo? (At least, trying to play a 5.1 audio stream on the "default" device doesn't seem to work for me.) If PulseAudio can mix multiple 5.1 streams, and mix 5.1 streams with 2.0 streams, that would be nice. > Until Gallium3D comes along "Comes along"? Wikipedia says that Gallium3D is in Mesa since 7.5, and that the Intel and nouveau drivers use it too. > I mean, hell, it takes me about 2-3 weeks to get PA hammered into a usable state on Debian unstable. It probably won't remain difficult like that for much longer. For example, Debian was kind of slow in adopting Fontconfig and font anti-aliasing compared to other distros, but now it "just works".
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 11:19 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (subscriber, #52523) [Link]
""Comes along"? Wikipedia says that Gallium3D is in Mesa since 7.5, and that the Intel and nouveau drivers use it too."
It's technically in Mesa, but in reality is not used by any major production OpenSource 3D driver now. Intel and Radeon drivers both use classic Mesa.
r300g has only this month "moved off all-kitten diet" (Corbin Simpson rocks!), and Nouveau is way too young.
Fortunately, r600g work is now underway and hopefully we'll move along quicker now.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 18:00 UTC (Tue) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
Nouveau has been working fine for me ever since I first tried it, perhaps a
year and a half ago. There were problems with DPMS at one point, but IIRC those were in general X server code and affected other graphics too.
Nouveau has actually been more stable for me than intel graphics in the same
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 18:17 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] For me to consider Gallium to be 'there' it is going to have be to provide the basis for all the common open source video drivers, be stable, and be used by default. No build process, no upgrading mesa, no nothing like that. Be there, be used by default, be stable, be used across all decent Linux desktop systems. No user intervention required and reliable enough for general use. And it's not just the drivers them selves, but the API support for applications using the various Gallium state trackers have to be there and can be used by default by application developers with little-to-no reservations.Its coming along and it is improving, but it's going to be a while from now before Linux is going to be able to effectively support accelerated shaders, opencl, accelerated video decoding, and other related things across commonly used/needed open source video drivers. At a very minimum Intel, Nvidia, and ATI open source drivers. Probably Via also. And my thanks to the Nouveau driver developers. Their work is going to improve the Linux user experience and be a huge benefit in the near future (and right now for Fedora users).
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 19:23 UTC (Tue) by DOT (subscriber, #58786) [Link]
Obviously it's not quite there yet, but I am a happy user of the X.org-edgers repository for Ubuntu. It provides me a nouveau driver with OpenGL 1.5 support, and it runs Compiz very well. It does not support transparency (not properly anyway), but it does support wobbly windows, the desktop wall, the cube, zooming. And I can even play OpenArena on it.
I won't dare updating the packages from the repository though... I don't want to end up without even a console.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 11:33 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
OpenGL 1.5 == no shaders.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 8:58 UTC (Tue) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]
While I tend to agree with some of your opinions, there I have to disagree.
PulseAudio works fine in all of my (five) systems, without a glitch. It's completely transparent. In my opinion it's a great success.
The same for Video. Agreed, I only use Intel graphics, but still everything just works.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 13:13 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Yeah, well. PA worked wonderfully for me, until 2.6.21. Now every video player I own either hangs or crashes when being asked to play anything back if I dare to fast-forward, pause, or rewind: the alsa-plugin stutters intolerably and then hangs; and mpd locks up whenever I try to play a new song without stopping the current one first. The only thing that seems to work is playing something from start to end without once pausing it. It's plainly a PA bug. (The hangs are so hard that only a kill -9 will rescue them. Unfriendly.)
I've submitted gdb tracebacks of the hangs and every diagnostic I can think of, along with an offer to run any other diagnostic or test patch anyone suggested, to the PA mailing list, over a month ago. You know what happened? Nothing, that's what happened. Not a flicker of attention (well, no, Colin Guthrie said that Lennart might be interested: apparently not: maybe he's on holiday?), yet searching distro bug-tracking systems back then I found reports of an apparently identical bug in Ubuntu, Gentoo, and Debian, all unsolved. So this is not a particularly rare bug, and it is definitely reproducible with upstream PA.
One of these days I'll track it down myself, but there are so many other bugs with worse effects to hunt down first... at least this has a workaround. For now I just stop everything using PA before trying to play any videos or music back, and repeatedly readjust the ALSA volume all the time.
(Hm, actually, I haven't tested trunk for some weeks, maybe it's been silently fixed there. I'll try that this evening.)
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 14:02 UTC (Wed) by broonie (subscriber, #7078) [Link]
IIRC Lennart is/was actually on holiday recently :)
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 18, 2010 11:14 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
I thought it might be something like that. I shall not damn people for being on holiday in these bleak months :)
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 18, 2010 2:13 UTC (Thu) by maro (subscriber, #34315) [Link]
You could try applying some of patches Fedora carries against 0.9.21:
0001-dbus-remove-filter-functions-only-if-they-were-actua.patch
Fedora is my preferred desktop distribution, in large part because of Red
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 18, 2010 8:43 UTC (Thu) by michich (subscriber, #17902) [Link] The patches are from the 'stable-queue' branch of the PA git repository. Distribution packagers are expected to apply the patches from there. See this message from Lennart and the referenced wiki page.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 18, 2010 8:58 UTC (Thu) by michich (subscriber, #17902) [Link] ... at least Mandriva seems to pick patches from there too as seen in their SVN.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 18, 2010 11:16 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Yeah, I know: this happens with stable-queue tip. I'll test with tip soon, but I'm afraid I found out how well dosbox and d1x-rebirth work yesterday so I've been a little, uh, preoccupied. (dosbox works so well that actual 1990s *demos* work. The hardware and CPU emulation must be nearly flawless for the sort of horrendous tricks that demoscene coders played to work.)
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 15:57 UTC (Tue) by Topaz (guest, #60130) [Link] "Debian's stability is better then Ubuntu, but usability is just a f-ing nightmare. Debian does not even _pretend_ that they are making a usable system. Unless your willing to dedicate a sizable chunk of your life learning to use Debian then you really should not even think about using it."Pure BS. If you're willing and able to read and follow directions, then you can use Debian. It's really no more difficult than Ubuntu. This perpetual myth that Debian is so difficult is why more people don't discover the beauty and wonder of it. Ubuntu and a whole bunch of other user-friendly Debian derivatives owe their ease-of-use to Debian being first to be so easy to configure and use. The much-touted derivatives followed.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 18:04 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
I use Debian every single day. I am using it right now. I am very familar with it. I also, have the
unfortunate pleasure of writing technical documentation for non-technical folks and it's my judgement that it's actually difficult.
It is not really a question of following along with the documentation provided (which is the best
Debian is for professionals and enthusiests right now. There is nothing wrong with that.. having a
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 20:04 UTC (Tue) by davi (guest, #18853) [Link]
> Debian is for professionals and enthusiests right now. There is nothing wrong with that.. having a very powerful and flexible OS is a good thing, but it's not going to 'win the desktop' or produce a high level of usability for the average person; which is what Ubuntu is aiming for.
You forget Ubuntu is just Debian repacked, with some bugs added.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 12:26 UTC (Wed) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
IME you need to know all that stuff *and more* to fix Ubuntu when it goes horribly wrong, because there the system is trying to fight you every step of the way. Ubuntu might seem fine at first glance if you have the fortune of being one of the people for whom it works out of the box, but if you ever want to customise *anything*, or if you have a system which is slightly unusual, then you'd better be both deeply knowledgeable and extraordinarily persistent.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 18:20 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
> Pure BS. If you're willing and able to read and follow directions, then you can use Debian.
Uh... you don't see the contradiction in what you just said? For the vast majority of people, reading files on a computer and following directions found in /usr/share/doc IS hard.
The timeless quote...
"Unix is user friendly! It's just very picky about who its friends are."
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 8:10 UTC (Tue) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]
My Ubuntu 8.04 box has only very rare crashes (once or twice a year) - still too much but I am running proprietary NVidia drivers and VMware, and it's heavily used for Samba, VMs and gaming.
Even if it was crashy, it's a big leap to say "try to make it crashy". Clearly you are a troll.
Getting the balance between hardware support, usability and stability is difficult. I think Ubuntu does a better job than Windows, which is what matters to gaining desktop users - you can boot Ubuntu on almost any PC with a good chance that everything works, or some simple tweaks can make it work. The enormous and helpful forum community is a huge asset here.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 10:04 UTC (Tue) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] you can boot Ubuntu on almost any PC with a good chance that everything works, or some simple tweaks can make it work.Well, it depends on your definition of "everything". A friend of mine bought an Ubuntu netbook for his daughter, and the first problem was that the pidgin version in that Ubuntu couldn't connect to MSN. Actually I was quite surprised that with a little googling I've found a couple of commands that I could paste into the shell and the commands installed a newer version of pidgin which could communicate with MSN. But I have to note that although my friend knows his way around Windows, he haven't got the slightest clue on how to install software on Linux, how to start a shall or what is a command shell at all... Yesterday I've visited them again, this time the problem was that some flash game on Facebook didn't work. I've checked the Adobe flash plugin and it seemed a little out of date, so I've tried to download a newer. Too bad that the "Continue" button on the Adobe webpage didn't work from Firefox (didn't work in the Windows Firefox too - it's just ridiculous in 2010). So we've downloaded with Internet Explorer, I've installed the plugin (again, the plugin install was surprisingly similar), yet to no avail, the flash game in Facebook still doesn't work. Even though it's probably a problem in the proprietary Adobe plugin, I do think Linux has a really long way to go before "everything" will work.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 12:28 UTC (Wed) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
"Getting the balance between hardware support, usability and stability is difficult. I think Ubuntu does a better job than Windows"
Clearly this is a new meaning of the word 'better', with which I am unfamiliar.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 9:57 UTC (Tue) by fb (subscriber, #53265) [Link]
I whole heartedly agree with Drag's post below. Ubuntu is the only _large_
desktop oriented distribution out there. I say 'large' as in "I am fairly confident Ubuntu will still be releasing and maintaining their releases 2 years from now".
They are also the only ones that take marketing and presenting the distro to a
Why do people have to complain so much about it?
[...]
Some food for thought: Everybody I knew (personally) that used Linux a couple
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 12:30 UTC (Wed) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
>They are also the only ones that take marketing and presenting the distro to a non-Linux audience seriously.
>Why do people have to complain so much about it?
Because they are presenting something that gives a soul-wrenchingly bad impression.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 17:05 UTC (Wed) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
That's bull, both Mandriva and (Open)Suse are very large (if not far larger) distributions in terms of users and especially developers than Ubuntu. Yes, Ubuntu has a big mouth, but that doesn't mean it has a lot of developers or users, just that it makes more noise...
Mandriva and Suse both have been around far longer than Ubuntu, and I'm 'fairly confident' they'll be releasing software for the next 5 years.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 17:39 UTC (Wed) by andrel (subscriber, #5166) [Link] Ubuntu is on about 1.5 million computers. (Because of various biases in the popcon data that's an undercount, but I have no idea by how much.) Are there any estimates on the number of Mandriva or Opensuse installs?
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 17:57 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Fedora stats are at
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics
Total count based on IP's at this point is 23,722,314
From smolts.org, we know that most of these machines are desktop/laptops as
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Red_Hat_contributions#Deskt...
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 19:02 UTC (Wed) by andrel (subscriber, #5166) [Link]
Oh interesting, I didn't know that Fedora was publishing IP counts. 23 million is WAY higher than I'd have guessed.
I think popcon deletes entries after a few weeks. If I'm right, unique IPs over the last week is probably the most natural number to compare with the popcon number.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 19:20 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Fedora's method is the closest to hard numbers that I am aware of but there
is a discussion recently in Fedora about a better method.
http://lwn.net/Articles/373656/
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 19:22 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
the default number of days to keep in upstream popcon's processing script is 20. But that is configurable by those running the service and not exposed in the summary analysis so its a setting that needs to be confirmed if you want to do correlated studies.
-jef
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 18, 2010 0:48 UTC (Thu) by andrel (subscriber, #5166) [Link]
Years ago I looked at Debian's popcon server code, so the 20 days must be what I'm remembering. You're right, the lack of jitter in the Ubuntu graphs is suspicious.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 18:05 UTC (Wed) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
I don't believe there are hard numbers for any distribution, popcon probably being the closest... srry :D
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 18:59 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
The raw popularity contest data from Ubuntu is..fascinating.
Especially the popularity-contest versioning information.
Gutsy...an EOL'd offering...more currently popular an usage target that either jaunty or intrepid? What? Really?
That's a bit unexpected. So for clarity...I'm going to ask the following question. Are the total 1488745 of unique UUID seen in the current Ubuntu popcon stats accumulative across the entire history of popcon submissions or is that 1488745 the number of unique UUIDs seen in the last X number of days of submission? And if so what is X?
If it is accumulative submissions since the dawn of time..then you can explain that high gutsy and fiesty versioning presence as UUIDs which are no longer in active service and represent an overcount of active installs. You can't say what happen to those UUIDs..they could be running newer versions of Ubuntu and regenerated a new UUID as well as no longer running Ubuntu at all. But then you can't easily stand up the popcon number as a representation of a lower bound for current install base size. It's like measuring human birth rate without accounting for corresponding death rate to estimate current population.
It's really too bad Ubuntu doesn't include the versioning graph like Debian does on the popcon page...to be able to visualize what happens when versions of Ubuntu reach EOL.
-jef
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 19:38 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
And I find it further suspicious that ubuntu's popcon is accumulative that all the architecture graphs are monotonicly increasing in time. No downward jitter in any of the graphs at all. No fall off of ppc usage at all over time? No fall off in sparc usage at all over time? That is very surprising and in stark contrast to the trending seen in Debian's popcon.
Weird. And very suggestive that Ubuntu's popcon is showing accumulated submissions for a very very long time and not a snapshot of the last 20 days.
-jef
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 0:31 UTC (Tue) by MattPerry (guest, #46341) [Link]
> They are arguably doing more harm than good on many fronts, as their
> appropriations increasingly breed ill will.
Such as?
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 1:08 UTC (Wed) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link] Speaking only for myself -- I still use Ubuntu, but an awful lot of my good will has evaporated since they started patching an ad for proprietary software into a GPL'ed application I use every day, and 6 months later they still haven't provided any public explanation whatsoever. At least that I can find.(At least the ad is currently missing from the current Lucid pre-release. They took it out temporarily because the software being advertised is currently broken. Yay?)
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 19:41 UTC (Wed) by DaleQ (subscriber, #4004) [Link]
Disclaimer: I work for the above mentioned company.
I believe that some effort [1] based on user feedback has gone into making the "ad" fit more appropriately in 9.10.
[1] http://0b10.blogspot.com/2009/11/revolution-computing-ubu...
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 20:22 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Is this ad inserted into a Ubuntu package based on a commercial deal between
your company and Canonical? Can you give more details?
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 21:03 UTC (Wed) by MattPerry (guest, #46341) [Link]
R is in the universe repository which isn't supported by Canonical and is maintained by volunteers. Your criticism and ill will should be directed towards the person who is the R package maintainer for the Universe repository. It seems that some of these packages come from Debian and are built automatically. That makes me wonder if this ad is in the Debian packages or if this is something that a Ubuntu package maintainer decided to do on their own.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 21:49 UTC (Wed) by jordanb (subscriber, #45668) [Link]
I can confirm that R in Debian does *not* have that notice. I use R pretty often and would be very pissed off to see something like that. In fact, a maintainer attempting to do something like that would probably be removed from the Debian project as a propagator of mal-ware.
Par for the course for Canonical though. They sure are getting evil quickly.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 21:53 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
No.. this is not a simple merge from Debian. You can browse the changelogs in both the Ubuntu and Debian package web interface for the r-base package as a simple indication of that.
And its important to point out that Ubuntu doesn't use a maintainer per package model in Universe..so there isn't a primary package maintainer to go talk to who is accountable for this package.
But if you are satisfied with the changelog text.
The first edition of the text was introduced in the mainline ubuntu r-code package here:
It was subsequently edited a couple of more times in the karmic branch:
The associated bug report for revision 10:
Obviously Canonical's Server team wanted this...so there is some impact here for Canonical.
None of this however proves there was or was not a formal Canonical/Revo-R business relationship in place to make this happen. None of the people associated with the revor ppa appear to be Canonical employees and I can't find an archived discussion from Karmic UDS associated with revo-r to gain context as to why supporting revo-r side-by-side with gnu-r was important for the server team.
-jef
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 23:02 UTC (Wed) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link]
> None of this however proves there was or was not a formal Canonical/Revo-R business relationship in place to make this happen. None of the people associated with the revor ppa appear to be Canonical employees
Revolution R is in multiverse proper, not just a PPA:
If Canonical's distributing this stuff and hasn't at least had their lawyers take a look at the EULA that they're thereby agreeing to be bound by: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/multiverse/r/revolu...
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 23:12 UTC (Wed) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link]
If you re-read the above thread, I believe we were talking about Ubuntu's goodwill, not Canonical in particular. I would in fact like to see some clarification from Canonical -- see the rest of this thread for why -- but even aside from that, I don't see how you can say that the responsibility lies only with the individual maintainer. A distribution isn't a bunch of individuals; it's a collective system maintained by the actions of individuals, but in a way that's more than the sum of those parts. The community works together to enforce certain community norms, and those norms and their enforcement are what we're choosing when we choose a distribution, far more than any individual's idiosyncratic preferences.
If a maintainer tried doing this in Debian, it'd get reverted in about 10 seconds, and they'd get kicked off the package if they kept it up. In Ubuntu, that bug report has gone unresponded to by anyone with any knowledge or authority for nearly 6 months. Obviously there are lots of other things Ubuntu does well, but this is enough to make me stop and think carefully about whether Ubuntu is a community I want to be involved with.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 18, 2010 14:32 UTC (Thu) by MattPerry (guest, #46341) [Link]
> I don't see how you can say that the responsibility lies only with the
> individual maintainer.
Someone always has final authority. It is my understanding that, as the maintainer, the responsibility ultimately lies with them for what goes into their package.
> A distribution isn't a bunch of individuals; it's a collective system
I agree, but I don't feel that some text in a program suggesting that one can install another complementary package, proprietary or not, is a problem. It's no different than when I attempt to run a program that's not installed and see output such as:
The program 'foo' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
The presence of the text certainly isn't malware, as one person here mentioned, nor does it make Ubuntu evil. That's just absurd. It's easy enough to remove by editing one configuration file. I don't see that as unreasonable.
You also pointed out that the proprietary revolution-r package is in the non-free multiverse repository. If a user doesn't want non-free software, they don't have to add the multiverse repository and won't be able to install this package, even by accident. That also seems reasonable.
> The community works together to enforce certain community norms, and
Speak for yourself. Not everyone cares about that. Some people, including me, just want to complete their computing tasks. I choose a distribution based on a variety of factors from hardware support, ease of use, ease of maintenance, to how well it can help me accomplish my tasks. I still test software, file bug reports, and submit patches where I have the skills to create them, but only because it's in my best interest to do so. My interest in community norms only goes so far as to make sure I follow the proper procedures when I do the things listed in the previous sentence. Aside from that, I don't care about a given distribution's community.
It seems clear to me that Ubuntu's norms differ from some other ideologically pure distributions and that has upset some people. I can appreciate that point of view. Those people might be happier with a distribution that was more closely aligned with their norms rather than complaining about Ubuntu.
I like what Canonical is doing with Ubuntu and I think they are making good decisions. I like that it's easy to install and mix Free Software and proprietary software. I like that they choose a default search provider (Yahoo) that gives them more revenue. I like that I will be able to purchase MP3s right from within Rhythmbox, and that it's MP3 and not an obscure format such as Vorbis. I don't have a problem with any of these actions. In fact, I encourage them. From my point of view there is nothing wrong with Ubuntu's goodwill; It's better than ever.
> In Ubuntu, that bug report has gone unresponded to by anyone with any
According to http://blog.revolution-computing.com/2009/10/revolution-r..., Debian developer Dirk Eddelbuettel was involved in getting the package into Ubuntu. He might be able to provide more information.
Ubuntu's own-goals Posted Mar 18, 2010 16:19 UTC (Thu) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link] I like that I will be able to purchase MP3s right from within Rhythmbox, and that it's MP3 and not an obscure format such as Vorbis. When a distinct organisation like, say, the BBC claims that it can't offer Vorbis because not enough people have support for it bundled (through anticompetitive behaviour) with their computers, that's what some people would regard as a "pragmatic" reason: the BBC can't change the competitive landscape, although one could argue that they should support genuinely open formats as a public broadcaster and encourage change in that landscape. When an operating system distribution vendor, supposedly supporting software freedom and who does bundle support for Vorbis, decides to choose MP3 in this way, one has to wonder what kind of spectacular own-goal they're trying for. Firstly, the format isn't "obscure" to the audience - they can all use it - and the only limitation of such "obscurity" would be the potential inability to share the music files with their friends or to use them on devices which refuse to support anything other than the patent cartel's favourite formats. Secondly, Ubuntu should be encouraging people to use such "obscure" formats in order to increase demand for them and to undermine the convenient "pragmatic" excuse mentioned above. From my point of view there is nothing wrong with Ubuntu's goodwill; It's better than ever. Good for you, then. For many people, Ubuntu/Canonical seem to be hell-bent on giving them reasons to use something else.
Ubuntu's own-goals Posted Mar 18, 2010 17:19 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Uhm... I'm going to give Canonical the benefit of the doubt on the choice of format. Can you point me to an online retailer that Canonical could have partnered with that offers a mainstream catalog of music in ogg format? I'm hard pressed to recommend a single mainstream music retailer that does provide ogg or even flac.
No, Magnatune and Jamendo don't count as applicable answers.. as they don't provide music from artists signed up under mainstream record labels. I very much appreciate what these retailers are doing for independent artists and for listeners (and I highly recommend the Red Hat Summit compilation at Magnatune), but its not the same segment of the marketplace that 7digital (Canonical's retail partner providing the music) competes in.
Instead of coming down hard on Canonical for providing mp3 now...it would be better to figure out how to leverage a mutual beneficial business relationship between Canonical and 7digital to get 7digital to start experimenting with ogg/flac downloads as part of their services for U1MS customers.
-jef
Ubuntu's own-goals Posted Mar 18, 2010 17:28 UTC (Thu) by MattPerry (guest, #46341) [Link]
If Canonical completes enough sales via the Ubuntu music store, they might then be in a good position to ask 7digital to provide the music in other formats such as Vorbis.
Ubuntu's own-goals Posted Mar 19, 2010 18:23 UTC (Fri) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] When that happens, the drive to do so will be mostly gone...
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 23, 2010 8:31 UTC (Tue) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link]
> Someone always has final authority. It is my understanding that, as the maintainer, the responsibility ultimately lies with them for what goes into their package.
No; the responsibility ultimately lies with the community.
Unless you think that maintainers that do stupid things neither can nor will be replaced...
> I agree, but I don't feel that some text in a program suggesting that one can install another complementary package, proprietary or not, is a problem.
Okay. Feel free to see the original filing on the bug report for my explanation of why I disagree.
> Speak for yourself. Not everyone cares about that. Some people, including me, just want to complete their computing tasks. I choose a distribution based on a variety of factors from hardware support, ease of use, ease of maintenance, to how well it can help me accomplish my tasks.
Yes, *that's my point*. Unless your list of criteria includes "I personally know and like all the people who maintain the packages" -- and of course it doesn't, there probably are people who want that, but they're off using BSD or something -- then what you're saying is that you want a community whose shared values include the things you mention, so that you don't *have* to worry about vetting every new maintainer yourself, you can trust the community to do it for you.
And that's why this situation -- whatever you see in it -- reflects on Ubuntu as a whole, not just one maintainer.
Obviously you don't see a problem in this case. But I think there may be a number of people out there -- including, perhaps, especially people whose contributions and good-will Ubuntu depends on for its success -- who can support "ships NVidia drivers for computers that could not otherwise be supported, and attempts to educate users about their flaws via the Proprietary Drivers Manager", but who still find "patches GPL'ed software to include ads directing users to proprietary software without any notice that it is proprietary" a bit off-putting.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 15, 2010 20:50 UTC (Mon) by fuhchee (subscriber, #40059) [Link]
With Mr. Asay being a normal employee now, one can no longer ascribe impartiality to his writings, optimistic as that proposition might have been during his gig at cnet. So fill your salt-shakers and enjoy.
Attacking Apple? Posted Mar 15, 2010 21:06 UTC (Mon) by mosfet (guest, #45339) [Link]
This is a long shot. I left Linux as a desktop a few years ago, after using it for some 10 years (first Red Hat, later Fedora). Fedora/CentOS is still my preferred server OS. On the desktop OS X offers visual appeal out of the box with the (commandline) power of unix/bsd/linux behind it. Or in a picture:
http://atomized.org/2010/03/why-i%E2%80%99m-not-switching...
I can not imagine any linux distro competing with OS X anytime soon. But I was wrong other times, so please, for the sake of open source, prove me wrong. But I doubt I will trade my MacBook Pro in soon (can't live without Apple flavored track pad gestures any more, hate other track pads).
Attacking Apple? Posted Mar 15, 2010 22:15 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
To bad about the whole 'give huge amounts of cash to a massive supporter of software patents'
thing that happens when you purchase Apple products.
I always had a lingering resentment of Apple due to the infamous poor quality of workmanship
Sucks.
Attacking Apple? Posted Mar 16, 2010 6:53 UTC (Tue) by Los__D (subscriber, #15263) [Link]
You DO know that you are not supposed to press enter in the middle of sentences, just because it is the end of the textbox, right? This is not a non-wrapping email message.
You trying to do the work of the browser destroys the labor of both.
(Now this might not be a problem on large displays, where only your enters are presented, but on mobile devices, I can asure you that it is)
Attacking Apple? Posted Mar 16, 2010 7:12 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Learn to pay a bit more attention.There is a issue with webkit-based browsers and LWN's text entry box. I have had the issue with Chrome, Midori, and Epiphany (which is what I am currently using). My mistake is that I forgot to insert the br's. Unless you take extra effort and format it as HTML (which I forget about time to time) then for some reason it'll automatically inject newlines to whatever size the text box is on my screen. I say 'pay more attention' because it's a very common problem with a lot of comment in LWN since many of us have stopped using Firefox. You should of noticed similar formatting issues with hundreds of other comments from many different users for several months now.
Attacking Apple? Posted Mar 16, 2010 11:01 UTC (Tue) by Los__D (subscriber, #15263) [Link]
Ah, makes sense.
I've always put it down to bad habits from emails, but it hasn't annoyed me that much until I've started using a mobile for browsing.
Sorry.
Attacking Apple? Posted Mar 16, 2010 18:20 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Tis perfectly OK. Sorry for forgetting to format things correctly. :)
Reasons why I don't like Mac OS X Posted Mar 16, 2010 1:30 UTC (Tue) by rqosa (guest, #24136) [Link] I've found package management on Mac OS X to be so much worse than on most Linux distributions. Whenever I've tried to install something from Fink, it's usually been a more difficult experience than installing a Debian or Arch package or even building a PKGBUILD from the AUR. Also, look at the "aqua" category of MacPorts (this is the category of graphical programs that use Mac OS X's Cocoa API or Carbon API, and not X Window System, unless I'm mistaken). It currently shows only 110 packages available. And, in the absence of Fink / MacPorts / another system like those, Mac OS X lacks any form of system-wide dependency-resolution and automatic updating, doesn't it? So, for all non-command-line / non-X Window System programs on Mac OS X other than those 110 in MacPorts, they must be including private copies of their own dependencies, and must either include their own updater mechanism or no updater at all -- just like Windows programs do. (Does Fink provide any Carbon / Cocoa apps? It doesn't appear to have a category for them like MacPorts does.) And Fink / MacPorts/ etc. are not even part of Mac OS X itself, but are third-party addons; compare that to most Linux distros, which include a package manager and package repository as part of the OS itself. One more thing: does Mac OS X provide anything like "Kickoff Application Launcher" in KDE 4 (or the similar thing that newer versions of Windows have) where you can type a few characters of an application name and it will display a list of applications containing that substring in their names?
Reasons why I don't like Mac OS X Posted Mar 16, 2010 4:11 UTC (Tue) by mosfet (guest, #45339) [Link]
Package management is one thing I am missing. MacPorts or Fink are not a substitution. But there is another promising project:
http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew
Think of it as "Ports on steroids", it even builds and installs projects directly from svn, git, etc. without messing with your OS installation (no sudo).
For "Application Launcher" I use Spotlight. Just hit CMD-Space and start typing.
Reasons why I don't like Mac OS X Posted Mar 16, 2010 7:41 UTC (Tue) by rqosa (guest, #24136) [Link] > http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew A packages / ports system isn't of much use to a user if it doesn't have a package for the software that the user needs. Looking here, Homebrew appears to currently have only 602 packages (or "formulas" as it calls them). Compare that to Debian Lenny's ≈23000 packages (and ≈12000 source packages), Arch Linux's 8403 packages and 20533 PKGBUILDs in "unsupported", and even Fink's 10643 packages. Some examples of software that appears to not have packages in Homebrew are: Firefox, VLC media player, OpenOffice (or NeoOffice), Chromium, ... Meanwhile, (unless I'm mistaken) most software for Mac OS X continues to be distributed in "Installer" packages (".pkg" files) which lack any kind of dependency system or update mechanism; or in some cases not even that, but only a ".app" bundle in a ".dmg" file. Fink has been around for 10 years, MacPorts for ≈7 years, and yet the Mac OS X developer culture still seems to mostly ignore sophisticated package management systems. How can Homebrew change that? > Think of it as "Ports on steroids" In what way is it "on steroids"? > it even builds and installs projects directly from svn, git, etc. Other "ports"-like systems can do that too (see here and here, for one example). > without messing with your OS installation (no sudo). If the packages are being installed system-wide (that is, for all users rather than for only the user who's installing them), then doesn't this require the user to have elevated privileges (in particular, the privilege to write to the system-wide location, such as /usr/local)? How is it preferable to permanently grant privileges to the user installing packages, rather than to use sudo to temporarily acquire those privileges? (One time I was trying to help someone with a portable Mac use ffmpeg to convert some video files. The build of ffmpeg included in "ffmpegX" was too old, so I decided to install the ffmpeg package from Fink. Should be easy, right? Well, it wasn't; I don't quite remember the details, but it seems like it was kind of difficult to get the package manager to recognize that the package "ffmpeg" was present in the repository, and once it did, it took such a long time to download (over WiFi), compile, and install all the dependencies and build-dependencies that I never did see whether it finished or not.)
Reasons why I don't like Mac OS X Posted Mar 16, 2010 13:58 UTC (Tue) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]
After a two month stint using a MacBook Pro instead of my normal Ubuntu laptop, I was
rather glad to get back to Ubuntu. Granted, as a system software developer with a Linux focus I am hardly your typical user, but I found OS X to be a lot less superior to Ubuntu than I had expected. In particular, the Dock is just painful, as the previous posters pointed out, its package management is also rather lacking (even compared to Windows), and to a Gnome user a lot of its window management is less than intuitive (like the fact that you can't minimise a window by clicking in the task bar, or that when you minimise or close a window its menus remain active at the top. Note that apart from that I liked the Mac menu bar.) Its main plus over Ubuntu to me was just the lack of rough edges and the additional polish. For many, I suspect that applications which do what they need may be more readily available on the Mac. Granted, there will be some free equivalent, but probably lacking some important features and those final touches.
On the whole though, I can actually see Linux replacing OS X at some not-too distant point.
Reasons why I don't like Mac OS X Posted Mar 16, 2010 15:11 UTC (Tue) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
In other words, you think that in a few years Apple will ditch OSX, with all its applications, good hardware support (no problems with suspend or power management) or good graphics architecture (which Xorg/Linux guys still didn't manage to copy quite right), and replace it with Linux, because Linux has better Dock and can track dependencies for packages (which is not required for native OSX applications).
Reasons why I don't like Mac OS X Posted Mar 16, 2010 16:28 UTC (Tue) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]
Not just because of those things. I just have the feeling that Linux is closing in in many
areas, including graphics archetecture and power management. At some point it won't make sense for Apple to invest in OS X, which they rewrite in a pretty major way at regular intervals. That point is not here yet, but I no longer think it is that distant either.
And please note that I compared OS X package management to Windows. On Windows, on
Reasons why I like Mac OS X Posted Mar 16, 2010 17:05 UTC (Tue) by mosfet (guest, #45339) [Link]
OS X is not a rewrite. It's NextStep + Mach + FreeBSD between the two. On top there is a huge ObjC framework. I doubt they will ever rewrite everything. Best example: The iPhone OS. Only thing that was needed was a bit of cherry picking from OS X below Cocoa and a new "Cocoa Touch" to comfort multi touch and very small display size.
Installation instructions for a native OS X Application: Move the Icon anywhere you want it. Maybe to "Programs", in that case you need super user rights.
Instructions for removing a native Application: Drop it onto the recycle bin.
If the native Application is well behaved, it contains all necessary binaries for x86-64 i386 and ppc and runs everywhere.
The other way works too: I use a home banking application that is still ppc only, but it just works with 10.6.2 x86-64, even the AppleScript bindings.
Reasons why I like Mac OS X Posted Mar 16, 2010 17:35 UTC (Tue) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]
> OS X is not a rewrite.
They do change masses of stuff between each release though. I know first hand that the effort of making a certain large close-to-the-system application work with successive versions of OS X is considerably greater than the work required to keep it working with successive versions of all the major GNU/Linux distributions. Think Carbon/Cocoa, or the changes in recent versions to migrate to 64bits. And saying that Xnu is just Mach + FreeBSD is rather simplifying matters as far as I know.
> Instructions for removing a native Application: Drop it onto the recycle bin.
Reasons why I don't like Mac OS X Posted Mar 16, 2010 19:13 UTC (Tue) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
To be honest, I don't see Linux closing to anything when it comes to desktop. Situation is still pretty much the same as it was ten years ago - many devices don't quite work (except then it was sound cards, and now it's suspend). Meanwhile, OSX:
1. Works.
2. Apple doesn't have to fight with people about development decisions, which, in Linux' case, often leads to reinventing the wheel every few years (e.g. devfs or HAL).
3. There is stable API and ABI for drivers.
Also, Apple would still have to invest in OSX, in the same way e.g. Google does it - they would have to maintain their own codebase, backporting things from Linus' kernel in order to keep it working and avoid regressions.
Notice, btw, that the trend to replace own systems with Linux seems to have stopped - IBM is again pushing AIX, and Sun^WOracle says it will work on Solaris even harder than before.
As for installing OSX applications - usually you just open a "folder" (actually, a filesystem image that mounts itself when you click it) and drag application over the "Applications" shortcut. To uninstall, you go to the Applications folder and remove the application icon. No instructions neccessary.
Reasons why I don't like Mac OS X Posted Mar 17, 2010 0:46 UTC (Wed) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link]
> Situation is still pretty much the same as it was ten years ago - many devices don't quite work (except then it was sound cards, and now it's suspend).
Obviously these things change over time, and hardware is diverse and any one story doesn't mean much.
But still, at some point last year I was shocked to discover that of everyone in my lab, I had the only laptop where both (1) suspend, and (2) redirecting my screen to external VGA, were working smoothly and trouble free. I'm the only one running Linux (with Intel parts, of course). (They together had something like 3 apples and 2 windows, IIRC).
I guess multi-touch is our next game of catch-up...
Reasons why I don't like Mac OS X Posted Mar 17, 2010 4:37 UTC (Wed) by AndreE (subscriber, #60148) [Link]
1) Not always, not for everyone
2) Well that's the nature of closed source development. Who says they don't
3) Are we going to start the stable API flamewar again?
As for installing applications:
- not all applications are this easy. Try apps that package shared libraries
Reasons why I don't like Mac OS X Posted Mar 17, 2010 8:46 UTC (Wed) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]
Regarding OS X's stable APIs/ABIs, I have never programmed OS X directly (just through
compatibility layers), but I hear from colleagues who work with OS X that making software work with new releases is always a major development effort. Can anyone else comment?
Reasons why I don't like Mac OS X Posted Mar 16, 2010 22:19 UTC (Tue) by rqosa (guest, #24136) [Link] > can track dependencies for packages (which is not required for native OSX applications) It's not "required" for Linux applications either. (Compile libraries in statically, or put libraries in a directory in /opt and set RUNPATH / RPATH.) However, it's better to have a package manager, regardless of the operating system, because:
Attacking Apple? Posted Mar 16, 2010 17:55 UTC (Tue) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
Uh wow, that's horrible.
NB: This isn't how Nautilus is supposed to look as far as I know. It's nice
Don't judge Linux by Ubuntu (or any other single distro - that said, I'm
Attacking Apple? Posted Mar 16, 2010 18:22 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] It's not that bad. The left-side button order never made it past the developer's initial screenshots. The theme that actually will get sent out ot end users will have the right side order by default. (about 80% certain)
Attacking Apple? Posted Mar 16, 2010 18:40 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Uhm.... considering that Shuttleworth has alluded to existing plans for 10.10 to use the right side space for something undisclosed and "innovative"... are you really confident in that 80% estimate?
"Moving everything to the left opens up the space on the right nicely,
reference:
So Shuttleworth has plans for that space...but he isn't saying what they are...oh he's such the international man of mystery. Yippie for transparent Ubuntu community centric processes. Don't you just love closed-door design...and teasing comments about what's coming next. If only he'd actually...communicate...what his motivations are for screwing around with the menu bars maybe people who are upset by it would see the reasoning. As it stands its just another "trust me, I know what's best" moment.
What really gets me is..if he has plans for "innovative" use of the menu bar space...is he talking with the Metacity and Gnome Shell developers about those plans to see if they can be integrated as part of Gnome 3 design? Didn't they just have a design hackfest about Gnome 3.0? Wasn't he there? And did he perhaps volunteer what he was thinking about "innovative" design openly with the non-Canonical employeed designers who are going to help shape Gnome 3.x? Where's the transparent discussion about what he has planned?
-jef
Attacking Apple? Posted Mar 18, 2010 3:14 UTC (Thu) by maro (subscriber, #34315) [Link] So Shuttleworth has plans for that space...but he isn't saying what they are...The InnoBar will help the community find related products based on the content of your inbox. In 11.04 the user experience is planned to be further improved with the innovative NoClick activation system as Canonical is pushing the limits of technology.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 15, 2010 22:47 UTC (Mon) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
It's rather funny to talk about "Linux beating Apple" when the opposite, in fact, happened - several years ago Apple killed desktop Linux by providing power users with Unix that was actually useful as a desktop. Now, the only real reason to use Linux on a desktop is its price - and Microsoft can always lower its prices for Windows, making sure Linux never exceeds its 1% market share on desktops.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 15, 2010 23:18 UTC (Mon) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Microsoft can't lower its prices forever and lose money on the engineering put into the operating system. Neither can Canonical.
No operating system vendor can live in the red forever. I believe the the pricewar Canonical touched off for OEM attention in the netbook space is unsustainable in the long term. The only question is who's business model going to to survive by forcing someone else out of the market reducing the competition and allowing prices to float up. The only question of merit right now is which netbook operating system company can sustain servicing netbooks at a loss for the longest period of time.
Apple's 'success' is that its avoided the trap to the race to the bottom of commodity pricing. Apple has found a niche group of users who are willing to pay for technology and services. Apple has turned computing technology into a statement of personal style and there are enough people willing to pay for that to keep Apple profitable.
-jef
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 15, 2010 23:23 UTC (Mon) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] But to see the future that Apple is bringing us, look no further than the App Store. No apps on the iPad or iPhone except via the App Store. Apple approves every app and takes a 30% cut. Developers have to sign a one-sided "agreement" that they are forbidden to discuss, or they are cut off.Any software developer, whether producing open source or proprietary software, who isn't at least somewhat worried by this model isn't paying attention.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 12:25 UTC (Tue) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
Very good example, but you missed a few critical facts.
No malware on AppStore. No viruses. No software behaving against the rules. No problems with finding the installation file, figuring out the proper version for your device. No interfering with other software you may have installed. Just a few clicks and it works. Completely different from e.g. Symbian or Windows Mobile.
From a developer point of view, its even better - Apple not only gives you free development kit, tools and documentation - it gives you a way to distribute and sell your stuff, so you don't have to figure all this yourself. All you have to do is to write software and then submit it. Marketing, putting it out somewhere for people to download, handling payments - it's Apple problem, not yours. All this for your one day earnings. Compare it to the situation with J2ME or Symbian, where you have gonna spend several times more on certificates, and then you get pretty much nothing for this money.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 13:12 UTC (Tue) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]
Sign an NDA, write software, submit it, and (apparently) accept that Apple reserve the right to kill distribution of your application for any reason at any time with no comeback.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 14:27 UTC (Tue) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]
Even with that, if your goal is to make a buck and not to advance man kind, it's much better this way. It makes sense for games, for instance.
Maybe Canonical should consider doing something similar.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 15:05 UTC (Tue) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
It makes sense for pretty much everything - and that's the reason why iPhone not only has several times more applications than any other mobile platform, but also why it gains applications faster than any other mobile platform.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 10:28 UTC (Wed) by rqosa (guest, #24136) [Link] So you're arguing in favor of a central package repository for smartphones, but elsewhere ("you just open a "folder" [...] and drag application over the "Applications" shortcut") you're arguing that a central package repository isn't necessary for desktop OSes? How does that make sense? Central package repositories are a good idea, for the reason's you said (no malware, etc). One of the major benefits of Linux distributions is that they have such central package repositories, unlike Windows and Mac OS X. However, the fact that a central package repository exists should not mean that the user is locked in to that repository. That is what people are objecting to about the iPhone: the lock-in. Worse, it's a lock-in that may even be enforced by law in the US (by the DMCA).
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 13:17 UTC (Wed) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
I never said central package repository isn't neccessary for desktop systems. Actually, I think it is a very good idea.
However, I'm not sure whether the dependencies, as used in Linux distributions, are a good idea. These are two orthogonal things.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 16:25 UTC (Wed) by rqosa (guest, #24136) [Link] > I never said central package repository isn't neccessary for desktop systems. But you said this: > As for installing OSX applications - usually you just open a "folder" (actually, a filesystem image that mounts itself when you click it) and drag application over the "Applications" shortcut. To uninstall, you go to the Applications folder and remove the application icon. No instructions neccessary. In that usage scenario you described, there's no central package repository, is there?
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 18, 2010 8:56 UTC (Thu) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
Yes, but it's still orthogonal. Take a look at PC-BSD, for example - there is a central repository, but there is no need for dependencies, because packages contain their dependencies, like in OSX.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 21, 2010 1:59 UTC (Sun) by rqosa (guest, #24136) [Link] > Yes, but it's still orthogonal. Not entirely; having a central repository is a prerequisite for automatic dependency resolution. However, that's beside the point I was trying to make, which was this: you were apparently claiming that Mac OS X does not need a central package repository (because it's good enough to just download "a filesystem image that mounts itself when you click it" from the app developer's website and then "drag application over the "Applications" shortcut.") while at the same time claiming that the iPhone does need its central repository, the App Store (and also claiming that it's a good thing that users are locked in to the App Store).
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 26, 2010 9:44 UTC (Fri) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
It's a good thing to have a central package repository, for both phones (e.g. iPhone) and "normal" computers (e.g. Linux, FreeBSD or Solaris). Being restricted from using software from other sources has advantages (no malware, no piracy etc) and disadvantages. Works pretty well for iPhone, might or might not work for "normal" computers. Would be great if Apple provided a central repository for OSX applications, but without forcing everyone to use it. Still, the way of installing OSX applications is less burdensome than using dependencies-based package system, which, as demonstrated below, might force you to e.g. upgrade all the software you have when you need just a newer version of one application.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 16:36 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Yes! We don't need a dependency tracking system because, uh, because Apple doesn't have one.
This is *definitely* argumentum ad pomum.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 18, 2010 8:59 UTC (Thu) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
You know, I used a dependency-based systems for a couple of years. They suck, for reasons described below (in most cases to upgrade anything you have to upgrade everything). Apple way of dealing with it is just much less hassle for the user.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 18, 2010 11:52 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
That's a gross overstatement. You have to upgrade lots of things only if a major version of something has changed, or a critical bug's been fixed, *and* every other package has also shifted to the new major version of the package.
If you have every package keeping its libraries separate, then fixing a bug in one of those libraries means you really do have to go and upgrade the lot *by hand*.
We were doing this right in the flipping *60s*. Has everyone forgotten the lessons of Multics?
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 14:54 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Regarding Apple, Tim Bray said it best: The iPhone vision of the mobile InternetÂ’s future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. ItÂ’s a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlordÂ’s pleasure and fear his anger.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 15:00 UTC (Tue) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
Says the guy who gave the world something like ASN.1, except slower and with lots of new ways to break it. ROTFL.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 15:13 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Hm, that's not an ad hominem, exactly. Argumentum non sequitur?
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 15:26 UTC (Tue) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
Do you see any arguments in "The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet’s future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It’s a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord’s pleasure and fear his anger."? I don't. What I see here is just a plain old FUD.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 17:18 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
No, you don't get it. I'm pointing out that disparaging Tim Bray's earlier work says *nothing* about the validity or otherwise of his statements about Apple: they're in a different field entirely.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 19:41 UTC (Tue) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
Yeah, that's just because I personally think XML was a mistake almost as awful as Java. Sorry about that.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 1:15 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
I use it every day and must agree. Even when converted to sexps, the
underlying ugliness of XML and its family of misbegotten standards still shines through. Some of the works it has 'inspired' are quite remarkable, e.g. XExpr, because everyone wants to write scripts by building a parse tree in XML.
(A lot of this blame must be laid at the door of SGML, though.)
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 17:23 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet's future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. That's an absolutely factual statement. Take a look at the EFF's expose of the iPhone developer's agreement. Apple's agreement definitely includes strict limits on what you can say. You can't even make any "public statements" about the agreement itself! What I see here is just a plain old FUD. Then you are closing your eyes to reality.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 19:40 UTC (Tue) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
Please go to the URL you posted (EFF's expose of the iPhone developer's agreement). Search for words "controversy", "sex", and "freedom". Notice that even EFF doesn't claim that the agreement says anything about that.
Also, notice that the agreement doesn't include any limits on what one can say, except for the usual NDA stuff, which is pretty common practice.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 6:35 UTC (Wed) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link]
>Please go to the URL you posted (EFF's expose of the iPhone developer's agreement). Search for words "controversy", "sex", and "freedom". Notice that even EFF doesn't claim that the agreement says anything about that.
What, seriously? You're trying to refute the argument by scanning for specific words, rather than reading for meaning?
There needs to be a new fallacy name for this thing: argumentum ad regexum, perhaps.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 8:31 UTC (Wed) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
Ok. Show me where it says anything that is even remotely related to controversy, sex or freedom.
Right. Was is peace, Freedom is slavery and Ignorance is strength Posted Mar 17, 2010 8:55 UTC (Wed) by khim (guest, #9252) [Link] Ok. Show me where it says anything that is even remotely related to controversy, sex or freedom. It's kinda pointless to discuss anything with you. 1. Ignorance is strength: if something is not written directly in EULA it does not exist. Acts of Big Brother^W^W Steve Jobs^W^W Party ^W^W Apple are irrelevant. 2. War is peace: when Big Browser^W^W Steve Jobs says it's bad idea to allow Flash or Opera on the device it's not a war, it's peaceful coexistence of Oceania and Eurasia. 3. Freedom is slavery. When you get approval and later your program is removed because it contains sex it's freedom. Steve Jobs^W^W Big Brother imposes antisexualism so of course such programs must be removed. Actually they were never admitted - check archives of Minitrue if in doubt! It's scary to talk with citizen of Oceania like you - they can always accept any fact and fit in their worldview where Steve Jobs ^W^W Big Brother is always right and Party ^W Apple can do no wrong. P.S. Oh and I like the infamous clip too. They did one thing wrong, of course: David Graham played Big Brother, not Steve Jobs. But I must admit that David Graham looks much better in this role on TV... Steve Jobs plays it much better in real life.
Right. Was is peace, Freedom is slavery and Ignorance is strength Posted Mar 17, 2010 13:21 UTC (Wed) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
That's because you're not paying attention. I was replying to a comment by dskoll, who said that the EFF FUD was not, in fact, a FUD, and that I should go read the developers agreement. I replied that the agreement doesn't say anything that would back the claims.
I's hard to argue with Party member, but I'll try... Posted Mar 17, 2010 14:22 UTC (Wed) by khim (guest, #9252) [Link] I replied that the agreement doesn't say anything that would back the claims. Ignorance is strength, right? Agreements says quite straight: "You understand and agree that Apple may cease distribution of Your Licensed Application(s) and/or Licensed Application Information or revoke the digital certificate of any of Your Applications at any time". Apple is Judge, Jury & Executioner, but obviously it's not a shot against freedom because freedom is slavery, after all. And as for sex, yes, it's not written in agreement - it does not need to be: Apple can do anything it wants and developer is absolutely powerless so why write dirty words in the agreement?
Right. Was is peace, Freedom is slavery and Ignorance is strength Posted Mar 17, 2010 15:01 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
Such a feeble refutation of that comment, indeed. Even if one decides to take the original opinion ("Apple's vision") as a black-and-white guide to the here-and-now, it doesn't take much effort to find sections in the Apple agreement to back that up.
For example, 3.3.14 talks about "content or materials... that in Apple's reasonable judgment may be... considered pornographic, or defamatory" - that's talking about "sex" and "controversy", by the way.
Now, as a lot of the apologists for Apple might say (and have done in comments on the referenced article), this just applies to Apple's own store, which sounds like you can take your ball away and play elsewhere. Except that to do so requires you to jailbreak your phone and encourage others to do so, something which Apple regards as a DMCA violation. That, including a section (3.2e) in the developer agreement, pointed out in what you all too readily regard as "FUD" (a feeble debating tool when used as often as you have done) from the EFF, is a direct influence on "freedom".
Who isn't paying attention again?
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 15:19 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] From the iPhone developer's agreement: 3.3.14 Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content... Note that Apple in its sole discretion gets to decide what is "obscene", "pornographic" or "offensive". See also Sec. 7.3 of the Agreement, which forbids you from distributing your apps except via Apple. And see Sec. 8(l) which allows Apple to revoke your application if it feels like it.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 15:56 UTC (Tue) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link]
Argumentum ad pomum
"If it's pro-apple, anything goes."
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 1:16 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
I must endorse this rhetorical term and shall use it whenever possible :)
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 15, 2010 23:51 UTC (Mon) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link]
> Now, the only real reason to use Linux on a desktop is its price
One of many of the real reasons to use GNU/Linux on the desktop is that it is (in some forms) one of the most free operating systems available for ordinary desktop hardware.
If what you claim is true it only underlines that if we try and grow our community artificially by stressing the technical merits of Free Software over proprietary competitors, then a single swoop of marketing and lifestyle advertising that will lure those users into believing that a system is technically better or socially more hip and acceptable will render the effort moot.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 1:48 UTC (Tue) by rqosa (guest, #24136) [Link] > If what you claim is true It isn't. if we try and grow our community artificially by stressing the technical merits of Free Software over proprietary competitors, then a single swoop of marketing and lifestyle advertising that will lure those users into believing that a system is technically better or socially more hip and acceptable will render the effort moot. It's not a bad thing to stress the technical merits of Free Software over proprietary competitors in the case that it's actually true that the software in question has greater technical merits. And it often is true, because of the fact that free software doesn't have an artificial barrier preventing developers from contributing to it.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 12:13 UTC (Tue) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
@rqosa: On the other hand, Free Software has economical barriers. So, while it's true that Free Software produced the best Lisp-based text editor out there, killing its closed source competitors, it doesn't mean that it will be able to make better operating system.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 13:35 UTC (Tue) by rqosa (guest, #24136) [Link] Well, as far as I'm concerned, Debian Linux and Arch Linux are already "better" then Mac OS X (for what I want to use them for). As for "economical barriers", there are lots of paid developers working on the "operating system" (including the "desktop") now.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 12:11 UTC (Tue) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
Except that to most people, "freedom" in the context of an operating system is no different from "freedom" for pistons or carrots. It's just weird.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 18:33 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] It's just weird. You are right. It is weird that people fail to appreciate the clear and present danger that Apple, the DMCA, ACTA, etc. pose to their freedom. RMS may be derided by some as extreme or crazy, but he sure was prescient.
Also speaking at ELC on embedded Linux fragmentation Posted Mar 16, 2010 1:55 UTC (Tue) by tbird20d (subscriber, #1901) [Link] Matt is also speaking next month at the Embedded Linux Conference (the same week as the Collaboration summit mentioned in the article) about the topic of embedded Linux fragmentation. He touches a bit on the embedded market in the interview, but it will be interesting, IMHO, to see him expand on this theme.Full disclosure: I'm one of the main organizers of ELC
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 7:44 UTC (Tue) by realnc (guest, #60393) [Link]
"How Linux is beating Apple" means absolutely nothing if it comes from someone who is involved with producing a Linux distro. These statements only have weight if they come from uninvolved parties. Now it's just advertisement.
What Cannonical Does Right Posted Mar 16, 2010 12:42 UTC (Tue) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]
I give credit to Ubuntu for doing what KDE did in another way years earlier: First, to prove that there really is a missing piece. Second, to demonstrate that it can be provided. Ubuntu's *initial* focus on practical usability issues made it a breath of fresh air compared to the numerous identical distributions it competed with. Little things, sometimes, make a big difference. No longer was the answer "Well yes you can configure it to do something like that if you want to," the answer became "It works."
Where Ubuntu has failed is where it didn't continue this trend. It has become, slowly, like any other distribution: slap together as much software as possible, make sure it all compiles, and then ship ship ship! At each release, yes, they do seem to focus on some new area of integration or usability, but invariably at the expense of whatever they worked on the last time. I expect it's partly a manpower issue and partly the fact that they seem disinterested in making a good OS and more interested in grabbing gee-whiz headlines. "A netbook version, of course! Ubuntu is so trendy." My evidence is mostly little things: stuff that worked before stops working in new releases, fiddly little annoyances don't go away, unnecessary crap (a new notification system!!!!11eleven, boy that sure fixes tons of reported bugs) gets added instead. What once appeared to be a focus on usability, integration and polishing the Linux desktop experience has now obviously become what it always was: a cyclical attempt to grab headlines.
I still believe desktop Linux is going places, but I don't believe Ubuntu is taking us there. Their usefulness has come and gone! The distribution is now little better than an attention-seeking parasite. Thanks for upstart, though.
What Cannonical Does Right Posted Mar 16, 2010 16:58 UTC (Tue) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]
> My evidence is mostly little things: stuff that worked before stops working in new releases,
>fiddly little annoyances don't go away In my opinion, Ubuntu make the big NIH mistake - they don't play the upstream game. Instead, they want to do everything themselves (although I do wonder whether they are finally learning, see Usplash vs Plymouth) and end up biting off more than they can chew.
I'm wondering when a distribution will come along that also focuses on usability like Ubuntu
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 13:07 UTC (Tue) by trochej (guest, #35052) [Link]
AppStore has one problem that quite a few developers out there faced: their acceptance rules are quite confisung and the acceptance process is often subject to unclear reasoning. And sometimes clear, like removing app that mention it's port for other platforms.
As for the malware, I have yet to hit malware in Debian repositories, after more then ten years of using it. As for command line in OS X - people say that Solaris is different than Linux and ditch it, because ifconfig won't work, but OS X has completely reworked filesystem hierarchy. It has so 20th Century methods of installing software. Really. Also, the so promoted visual side of OS X was what kept me unsatisfied with it for 2 years of using. It is cool to give out to someone that reads mail, browses web and creates presentations. As soon as you want to use a most popular Polish keyboard mapping (one with z and y in its' proper places), you start to gnaw on rain forest with your teeth. Visually, OS X has only one feature I like and all the disturbances I dislike. Nothing groundbreaking, really. There is also ideaological side of things - latest efforts to lock out users of their own hardware - successfull efforts, as it seems - I'm not going to buy into this OS X "revolution". If you don't mind some corporations taking your liberties from you, one at a time, just go to some deep dictatorship country and let us have a choice. It is now taken away from you, what you can install, what you can read (Kindle anyone?), what you can watch and listen to (DVD regions, DRM), what you can say (DMCA). And they say Catholics are bad. I use Ubuntu on my and my wife's notebook for years now, and I have yet to see it crash. It just works and has simple graphical interface, not breaking my habits (like KDE4 did or MS Office 2007 did). I really have better things to do that to wait two weeks for my desktop to work as I want it. Out of the box magic.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 15:20 UTC (Tue) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] As for the malware, I have yet to hit malware in Debian repositories, after more then ten years of using it.Probably (because just like Apple) they don't let just anyone upload stuff there? Although I remember a case (covered here a couple of years ago) when a maintainer managed to upload a software that worked only on his computer, because upstream put in a little "Easter egg" due to some disagreement.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 18:08 UTC (Tue) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
Can you imagine a software package that is maintained by e.g. someone from Apple or Microsoft (or even worse: Novell) being rejected from Debian because "it helps the competitors"? Or similar reasons?
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 19:33 UTC (Tue) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
Debian is known for rejecting software for licensing reasons. Pretty much the same thing, from the user or developer point of view.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 21:18 UTC (Tue) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
Licensing reasons can be technical reasons. If a software's license prevents me from doing something important, I should just avoid including it in the first place. An obvious example is a software that may only be distributed for non-commercial purposes. This prevents its inclusion in a Debian CD sold even for the cost of distribution. Or as a part of a Debian system installed to a client.
So please give an example which is "pretty much the same thing" as Apple removing a software from the AppStore as it competes with one of their existing money-makers.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 8:44 UTC (Wed) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
From the user or developer point of view, Debian removing cdparanoia because they don't like something about it isn't really different from Apple removing <some piece of software> because they don't like something about it. It's just that something was there and worked, and now its gone, because the distributor decided they don't like it anymore.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 8:45 UTC (Wed) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
s/cdparanoia/cdrtools/
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 12:54 UTC (Wed) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
So removing something because it is probably (and widely believed to be) illegal to distribute is the same in your eyes as removing something because it competes with something else you sell?
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 13:11 UTC (Wed) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link]
From a naive user's perspective it's the same: the software is used to be there, but now it's not there. It's the same with regressions: audio used to work, now with pulseaudio it doesn't work, it's a bug and I really don't care if the bug was already in the alsa driver - pulseaudio broke my system.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 13:57 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
So when that guy at the market who sold bootlegs was raided by the police, your observation is that there's now merely less choice at the market?
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 10:37 UTC (Wed) by rqosa (guest, #24136) [Link] If Debian removes something, the user can just get it from elsewhere (unofficial repository, compile from source, download a "generic" build, etc.) If Apple removes something from the App Store, it's illegal to get it from elsewhere (or at least Apple wants it to be illegal). That's the difference.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 12:52 UTC (Wed) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
(as per your fix below: you meant cdrtools)
This falls in the Illegal department. Debian users simply can't legally use cdrtools. Despite what its author claims.
(The package existed in Debian for quite a long time with a README saying how bad is Linux in general and Debian specifically. This did not cause Debian to remove it or patch it away. Legal issues are a different matter).
I'm still waiting for a valid example.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 13:28 UTC (Wed) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
No. Debian folks _claim_ that it's illegal. Last time I checked, rest of the world - e.g. Fedora, FreeBSD or OpenSolaris - continues to distribute cdrtools.
From my point of view this is just rubbish - somewhat similar to breaking network adapters support by removing firmware. It's not law or legal stuff, it's just someone's paranoia.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 13:30 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]
I can't speak for the rest, but Fedora (and RHEL) most definitely does not ship cdrtools, for the same reason that Debian does -- though they came to that conclusion independently, via their in-house legal folks who, yes, really are lawyers.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 20:28 UTC (Wed) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] Just for the record, there is no cdrtools package in Fedora rawhide.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 16:00 UTC (Wed) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]
And many people distributed Pine for years and years in clear violation of the license. Debian is right on this matter, there's not a lot of of gray area.
And you are so very very close to trolling.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 23:51 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
Uh? PINE was perfectly legal to redistribute - it just wasn't free software
(you couldn't redistribute a patched PINE, end-users had to do that themselves if something bothered them).
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 21, 2010 5:06 UTC (Sun) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]
Sorry, my memory was hazy, you are right.
However, most distributions distributed patched versions, and thus were outside legality.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 21, 2010 5:09 UTC (Sun) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]
Err.. no. the pine license allowed noncommercial distribution.
So SuSE selling CDs with pine on them, patched or no....
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 21, 2010 5:26 UTC (Sun) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link] the pine license allowed noncommercial distribution. So SuSE selling CDs with pine on them, patched or no....Clause (c) of the Pine license allows distribution as part of a for-fee package so long as the contents of the package are non-proprietary. https://www.washington.edu/pine/overview/legal.html
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 21, 2010 6:58 UTC (Sun) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]
But portions of the package *were* proprietary.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 15:51 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Debian is known for rejecting software for licensing reasons. Pretty much the same thing, from the user or developer point of view. Rubbish. If Debian decides to stop distributing a piece of software, you just get it from another source. Problem solved. If Apple decides to stop distibuting an app, you are out of luck. According to the iPhone developer agreement, the app developer is not allowed to distribute his or her app outside of the Apple store. Therefore, if Apple decides to kill an app, it's dead, dead, dead. If Debian stops packaging something, *shrug* you get it from a third-party. This is known as freedom, a concept vital to Western democracies, yet frowned upon by Apple.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 15:24 UTC (Tue) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
As for malware - there is malware for Windows Mobile and Android in the wild. Recently Vodafone distributed malware-infected Android phones (http://research.pandasecurity.com/vodafone-distributes-ma...).
As for command line in OSX - this "reworked" filesystem is something you don't really see. I'm using command line most of the time (old habits - screen, irssi, vim and the whole programming environment), and I don't care if there is some /Applications or ~/Library - I don't see it when I don't need to mess with it. And I don't need, because things just work.
As for installing software - I'm not sure what is worse, having to manually move the icon from one place to another, or having to cope with the dependencies hell which is inherent for package-based Linux distributions.
And the DRM - somehow you missed the fact that using operating system that supports DRM, you can do everything you could do using a system without DRM support, and, in addition, view some of the content you couldn't. DRM in the system will never prevent you from viewing unauthorized copies of anything, or listening to music, regardless of the source. It's just that DRM in the system will give you possibility of viewing stuff that is DRM-protected, and operating system without it - won't.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 18:10 UTC (Tue) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]
First, that's not "Android" or "WinMo" malware; said malware doesn't run on the phone, but on a Windows system. In this case the "phone" is no different than a run-of-the-mill USB stick.
Second, that "dependency hell" means that you don't have three bazillion copies (of varying versions) of various libraries on the system -- and it only pops up if the software you're trying to install wasn't packaged properly -- it's not the distribution's fault that a third-party dropped the ball.
And finally:
"DRM in the system will never prevent you from viewing unauthorized copies of anything, or listening to music, regardless of the source."
Taken at face value, this makes DRM completely worthless. I agree with that worthlessness, but I'm not sure if you intended it that way, as the very point of DRM is to prevent unauthorized persons/computers from being able to access said content except under very specific ways.
And DRM or no, the content would still be available, assuming that the content's "creators" actually wanted to make any money at all.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 19:28 UTC (Tue) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
In that specific case, yes. However, malware running on the phones itself does exist too.
As for the copies - that's true. That's why I'm not sure which solution I dislike more.
As for DRM - this is a fundamental assumption of DRM. It's also one of the things anti-DRM campainers managed to lie about the best, unfortunately. In short: DRM, as found in various media files, is supposed to selectively grant you access to stuff, in order to delay releasing unauthorized copies. It never touches stuff that is not marked as protected, because it wouldn't make any sense from technical point of view. Think of it as an encryption, with someone granting you keys only in certain circumstances. Like with encryption, it doesn't do anything with unencrypted content, which means it doesn't interfere with unauthorized copies - because unauthorized copies (e.g. downloaded from torrents) are not DRM-protected anymore.
Fundamental assumption? Bah! More like temporary setback. Posted Mar 17, 2010 9:19 UTC (Wed) by khim (guest, #9252) [Link] If you'll take a look on original vision of DRM you'll see that the idea was to make it impossible to play "authorized copies (e.g. downloaded from torrents)". It was scaled back for now, but it was never "a fundamental assumption of DRM". On the contrary: fundamental assumption always was that we only tolerate weak DRM (which does not affect unprotected content) for now to saturate market. The idea always was (and is) to eventually make impossible to play non-DRMed content. This is not something "anti-DRM campainers" invented - this is what is embedded in "DRM campaigners" roadmap - and quite explicitly at that. So far just one company succeeded and in one product only (I mean SONY with PS3), but that's first step, obviously, not the destination.
Fundamental assumption? Bah! More like temporary setback. Posted Mar 17, 2010 13:33 UTC (Wed) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
Making it impossible to play unrestricted content would require making it impossible to run unauthorized software - as long as you can write a code that can read from a file and display stuff on the screen, you can write a player.
I don't have time to read all that stuff. Could you paste an excerpt that shows that this was indeed the plan?
Fundamental assumption? Bah! More like temporary setback. Posted Mar 17, 2010 13:49 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]
Um, the iPhone already does this. And in the USA (and a growing number of other countries) it's a felony to install unauthorized software.
..well, not the unauthorized software per se, but rather modifying it so that you can install unauthorized software.
Fundamental assumption? Bah! More like temporary setback. Posted Mar 26, 2010 9:35 UTC (Fri) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
Are you aware that Apple is giving away the whole programming environment for iPhone for free, and you don't need any special kind of phone to use it with?
Fundamental assumption? Bah! More like temporary setback. Posted Mar 26, 2010 14:14 UTC (Fri) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]
Are you aware that to actually use it with your own iPhone you need to pay Apple $99 per year? The
dev-environment is free only if you're content to use it with an iPhone simulator on your mac.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 18:11 UTC (Tue) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
Having to re-install half the system due to a simple bug in zlib (or rather: re-install 10% of it, with 40% of it keeps using the buggy copy) is worse, IMHO.
Don't be surprised you have a higher chances of being hit by security holes, then.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 18:26 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link] As for installing software - I'm not sure what is worse, having to manually move the icon from one place to another, or having to cope with the dependencies hell which is inherent for package-based Linux distributions. What dependencies hell? Is this 1996 all over again? As for application directories/bundles, which is presumably what you're referring to when you mention moving icons, there are various pitfalls in using those, especially when a bunch of libraries are statically linked in to the binary. Next you'll be claiming that there aren't any bugs in those libraries and that they never need upgrading. And the DRM - somehow you missed the fact that using operating system that supports DRM, you can do everything you could do using a system without DRM support, and, in addition, view some of the content you couldn't. That may be true now, but if Apple decides that you should only ever use their QuickTime stuff, possibly already a restriction on their mobile devices, then you won't be able to view certain kinds of open content. At that point, arguing for DRM is like saying that Disney can meet all your entertainment and information needs.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 18:44 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] DRM in the system will never prevent you from viewing unauthorized copies of anything, or listening to music, regardless of the source. ORLY? Then explain to LWN readers how you can get your iPhone to play OGG files without jailbreaking it.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 19:20 UTC (Tue) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
Lack of support for OGG - or for e.g. AIFF - has nothing to do with DRM. It's just that Apple doesn't support it, because it's not popular enough. Notice that you can play MP3 files of any kind, even if you obtained them by killing Mother Teresa instead of simply downloading from TPB.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 21:22 UTC (Tue) by DOT (subscriber, #58786) [Link]
Lack of support for Ogg is not just because it didn't win the popularity contest. (FLAC is actually a popular format for lossless audio.) Apple will try very hard to ignore the Ogg family of media formats, because it has a stake in MPEG patent licensing. It's all just a power play.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 15:22 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Lack of support for OGG - or for e.g. AIFF - has nothing to do with DRM. It's just that Apple doesn't support it, because it's not popular enough. Aha. So if I have an iPhone, and I want to do anything that Apple chooses not to support, I'm out of luck? Unless I jailbreak the phone, which has all kinds of other negative consequences. Even Microsoft isn't this controlling. They may not support OGG, but they sure as hell don't prevent you from running an OGG player on Windows.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 18:47 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] ...cope with the dependencies hell which is inherent for package-based Linux distributions. I don't mean to be rude, but WTF are you talking about? I run Debian Lenny and apt-get or aptitude manage dependencies beautifully. I don't know what this "dependencies hell" of which you speak is... could you enlighten us?
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 19:31 UTC (Tue) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
Great. Take a Debian installation, say, three years old, and install new Amarok. Without upgrading the whole system, of course - it works and right now you don't have time for migration. You just want new Amarok. In OSX or Windows, this is not a problem - just download it and either click 'next' five times, or move the icon to the 'Applications' folder.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 21:11 UTC (Tue) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
If someone maintains a backport? sure.
Note that what you'd want to do is that Amarok 2 of KDE4 would try to run on a system without such supporting libraries. Hence the Amarok package would have to include kdemultimedia, kdelibs, QT4, and probably tons of other things.
Now consider what happens when you want to bump a version of Amarok. You have to download <amarok-new+kdemultimedia+kdelibs+qt4+tonsof>.
And when you want to install juk? You download <juk+kdemultimedia+kdelibs+qt4+tonsof> . And when you want to upgrade juk, you download <juk-new+kdemultimedia+kdelibs+qt4+tonsof>.
Now, what happens if you want to upgrade KDE?
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 8:39 UTC (Wed) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
In other words, your answer is "No, you can't do this under Debian without upgrading the whole system". And, let me remind you, this problem doesn't exist under OSX or Windows - you just download a single package and voila, it works.
And yes, I am perfectly aware of real problems (such as upgrading multiple copies of a library with a security hole) and unimportant ones (amount of disk space required for multiple copies of the libraries).
And let me remind you that you are stacking the facts Posted Mar 17, 2010 9:42 UTC (Wed) by khim (guest, #9252) [Link] And, let me remind you, this problem doesn't exist under OSX or Windows - you just download a single package and voila, it works. Actually this problem does exist with OSX and Windows. There are plenty of packages which don't work on older versions of MacOS and Windows. Some are not even working with Vista SP1 (think IE9) - and such systems can be less then two years old! Now let's compare real tasks. I want to install KDE 4 on older version on Debian (Woody, for example), you want to install PhotoPresenter 4 on MacOS X 10.4 (or if you prefer - Adobe Photoshop CS4 on MacOS 10.3). All without upgrade of the underlaying OS, of course (this was your requirement, not mine). Who's finish faster? Wanna make a bet?
And let me remind you that you are stacking the facts Posted Mar 17, 2010 13:12 UTC (Wed) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
Ok. How do you install current version of Firefox on old Debian without upgrading everything?
And let me remind you that you are stacking the facts Posted Mar 17, 2010 13:46 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]
Let me get this straight...
....You want to install new software, with new features that require new system components, without installing new software?
It's trivial... Posted Mar 17, 2010 14:29 UTC (Wed) by khim (guest, #9252) [Link] Ok. How do you install current version of Firefox on old Debian without upgrading everything? You grab the source and compile it. If it requires some packages you grab and recompile them too. It's not a rocket science. I did this before (even if admittedly not with version 3.7).
It's trivial... Posted Mar 17, 2010 15:10 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
Or you use one of the one-off packaging tools like Autopackage, Zero Install, klik or RUNZ, or perhaps do a debootstrap and run stuff in a chroot.
It's trivial... Posted Mar 18, 2010 9:00 UTC (Thu) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
Well... Thanks for proving my point. :-)
It's trivial... Posted Mar 18, 2010 12:20 UTC (Thu) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
Well, your point is what? You can't do it on Debian? You can in a number of ways - point not proven. Application directories are "better"? Debatable, since you're now relying on some random vendor to fix security issues (although given Apple's track record, perhaps not such a bad thing on OS X) - point not proven.
If your point is that you can argue the toss with random people on the Internet, I think we can all go along with that.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 11:44 UTC (Wed) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]
This definitely does happen with MacOS - Firefox has recently had to de-support some older versions of MacOS 10.x for example.
Windows is better at upward compatibility, but that's mostly an artefact of XP being released in 2001 and nobody wanting to go Vista. Microsoft is moving to more of a rapid release model which will replicate the same issues seen on both Linux and MacOS X.
People have innumerable problems with Windows systems (e.g. drivers not working properly, app versions that crash on one box but not another, and applications stepping on each other's toes), it's just that they are different from the sorts of problems you get in Linux.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 16, 2010 23:43 UTC (Tue) by khc (subscriber, #45209) [Link]
Unless you want to install the future firefox 3.7 on OS X 10.4 I suppose...
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 8:35 UTC (Wed) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
Note that I said "three years old", not five. In this case, it would be about requiring Snow Leopard, refusing to work on Leopard, which is three years old.
Cool - new physics law Posted Mar 17, 2010 9:49 UTC (Wed) by khim (guest, #9252) [Link] Do you want to imply that all computers spontaneously combust and blow up after three years of work? What's the difference between five years and three years? Why have you chosen three years? I can see one explanation only: to make MacOS and Windows look good and Linux look bad. In other words: to spread FUD. And you've even admitted that! Poor troll, not sophisticated enough.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 15:25 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Take a Debian installation, say, three years old, and install new Amarok Why would I run a three-year-old installation of anything? That's the way to get rooted. Debian makes continuous upgrades easy and reliable, so I just use the system as it was designed. Anyway, assuming I wanted to do what you said, I'd either look for a backport or compile from source, which would be pretty annoying. But are you saying Mac OS X doesn't suffer from the same problem? Or is it just that Mac OS X developers throw everything plus the kitchen sink into their software distributions so each app has full copies of its dependencies? (ugh)....
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 16:46 UTC (Wed) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
>Why would I run a three-year-old installation of anything? That's the way to get rooted
Nonsense. Responsible publishers (like, say, Microsoft) keep their software maintained for *far* longer than three years. Desktop distributions hit their usability peak for my purposes around the 2005 era. Back then I wouldn't have dreamed of using Windows, as it was clearly inferior in a number of ways, and the handful of areas in which it managed to beat Linux weren't enough to make it worth the pain.
If I could still run maybe Debian from that era without having to worry about masses of unpatched security holes, then I'd still be using Linux on the desktop. As it is, I now use Windows exclusively. This is not because Windows got any better.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 18:30 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Nonsense. Responsible publishers (like, say, Microsoft) keep their software maintained for *far* longer than three years. Yes, some Linux distros (eg, Red Hat) do that too. Debian's philosophy is to upgrade to "stable" to stay current, and Debian does a superb job of making that easy and reliable. If you disagree with Debian's methodology, then run Red Hat Enterprise Linux which (AFAIK) is supported for seven years. Microsoft has to keep their software maintained longer than three years or their customers would revolt, because doing an equivalent of apt-get dist-upgrade on Windows costs a bucketful of money. Debian is beautiful because upgrading to the latest stable version is free.
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 18, 2010 0:22 UTC (Thu) by oblio (guest, #33465) [Link]
"Debian is beautiful because upgrading to the latest stable version is free. "
Of course, we all know that upgrading a whole OS is free. It costs no time and effort to go through all the little changes and through all the regressions and still have a working system at the end of the day.
Let's just face it, on Linux it's just hard to use a major new application on an old distribution. Since everything is and wants to be separated, you need to compile the stuff, including getting all the dev stuff needed to compile it (which is not always easy or funny to do).
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 18, 2010 12:43 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
>Debian is beautiful because upgrading to the latest stable version is free
It is only free if you assign no cost to the progressive march of regressions in usability and functionality, and the endless work necessary to keep rapidly changing systems maintained and correctly configured. To me that problem has a very high cost indeed - I am reluctantly willing to give up almost all of my software freedom to avoid it.
(At some point if I find myself with copious free time, I do intend to look into CentOS, which should provide support for KDE3 for another 4 years IIUC)
QA with Matt Asay: How Linux is Beating Apple and Much More (Linux.com) Posted Mar 17, 2010 15:02 UTC (Wed) by chaneau (guest, #6674) [Link]
I'm the only one getting tired of all those Apple's fanboys, unfortunately I
don't have the linguistic skills that would allow me to express with any kind of accuracy how fed-up I feel of hearing about all the greatness of Apple and Co.
Ironically of course all those guys come here as guests, to want to give
Lucky them, we value their freedom but frankly this is getting ridiculous.
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