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Free is too expensive (Economist)Free is too expensive (Economist)Posted Mar 30, 2012 21:52 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333)In reply to: Free is too expensive (Economist) by slashdot Parent article: Free is too expensive (Economist)
> I wonder whether the solution could be to adopt an extended version of Android as a desktop Linux platform?
What Desktop needs and what Android provides are two dramatically and entirely different things. This is why Google themselves didn't take the Android approach when making their desktop operating system.
There is a good reason why Google went with a essentially Java-based OS and abandoned any pretense of 'Unix tradition'.
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Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Mar 30, 2012 22:01 UTC (Fri) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
No, there was no good reason. Google acquired a system (Android wasn't designed from scratch by Google, and previous design decisions were made by other people). The fact that Android got its own graphical stack and not went the Wayland way is sad, but it started historically earlier, and as a proprietary system which didn't care about any communities. (Unlike Wayland which promotes collaboration in Linux graphic drivers development).
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Mar 30, 2012 22:41 UTC (Fri) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link]
Yes there was a good reason and it's the EXACT justification that Canonical and Microsoft are both ignoring with their development trends. Which is that Touchscreen hand-held computers (tablet, phone) and desktops have significantly different usage pattens, needs and expectations.
Trying to make the desktop interface operate like a tablet is frankly as stupid as making the hand-held interface require a keyboard and mouse. This is why most people hate Unity/Gnome3 and why Windows 8 is going to be a commercial disaster that makes Vista look like a raging success. These compute models are different animals and one size fits all is stupid, frankly given the trend I'm startled Google was smart enough to see this from the start, and they saw it years before both the current companies proved it doesn't work.
Don't get me wrong, there can be similarities and compatability (Canonical has been moving slowly this direction) but to throw out the usage paradigm of desktops and replace it with gestures and touchscreen paradigms is a recipe for being lynched by the users.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Mar 31, 2012 3:47 UTC (Sat) by maney (subscriber, #12630) [Link]
Shooting's too good for 'em? I'm afraid I don't think they're worth the cost of lynch - just walk away. I am. I've been installing Debian on the test boxes (Wheezy), and wish I'd noticed that Debian branch of Mint earlier. May not be too late yet, we'll see.
But seriously: thanks, Ubuntu, for all the good stuff you did before you went tablet-mad. You too, Gnome. Maybe some day again, but for now, no thanks.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Mar 31, 2012 11:53 UTC (Sat) by kklimonda (subscriber, #60089) [Link]
> Trying to make the desktop interface operate like a tablet is frankly as stupid as making the hand-held interface require a keyboard and mouse. This is why most people hate Unity/Gnome3 and why Windows 8 is going to be a commercial disaster that makes Vista look like a raging success
What exactly about Unity/GNOME 3 screams "tablet-oriented design"? When you use Windows 8 with its Metro UI its shortcomings on a traditional desktop are plainly visible, but what makes first two unsuitable for desktops?
I'd love to hear actual arguments, not another round of "unity is designed with full screen applications in mind" or "try running multiple applications in unity". Ok, there is a global menu but what else?
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 2, 2012 7:01 UTC (Mon) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link]
I've done this argument before.
1) The overview is _painful_ to use on larger screen. Application menus have a tighter pointer locality, and when done right (which no, GNOME 2's were not at all right, they were horrible) involved less contextual overhead and wrist strain. Keyboard accessibility is great, but it can be more inconvenient to switch between mouse and keyboard than to just use the mouse, especially when using primarily mouse-driven applications.
2) The workspace management removees the utility of workspaces. Workspaces were a killer feature of the Linux desktop. GNOME 3 makes them incosistent, hard to access on multi-monitor displays (fixed somewhat in newer versions, but still not as good as an always-visible switcher), and really just trained me stop noticing that Windows 7 lacks them entirely.
3) The hot-corner is obnoxious. It's also very obnoxious in Windows 7. However, Windows makes it both possible and super-easy to disable. Right-click the hot-corner, uncheck the menu item, done. People who use mice on unstable surfaces or who have slightly less than perfect motor control frequently hit those ****ing annoying hot-corners by accident on a frequent basis, completely disrupting their work flow. Clicks represent actions. Pointer movement means a change of possible targets, or it means your wrist brushed a track pad, or it means the table was bumped, or it means that the laptop surface shifted and the mouse slid. Mixing click-for-action and point-to-target is a good way to tell a lot of people "you can't use this OS, go away."
4) The new focus on full-screen everything by default. I don't even full-screen most apps on a 20" monitor. You can't imagine how little I want a full-screen window on a 30" monitor. Really. Full-screen makes sense on phones, tablets, and even netbooks. It does not make sense on a giant multi-monitor workstation.
5) No on-screen window/task management by default. Yes, the old GNOME 2 window list was lame. OS X did it a bit better. Windows 7 did it way better. GNOME 3 forgot that task management is something that workstation users need to do (including both quick launching of applications or monitoring running ones). The overview is nice sometimes, but not all the time.
6) Various little details. The lack of Power Off in the system menu is a common one. Yes, yes, tablets and phones are never powered off because they are not PC hardware. The giant $2,500 PC in my bedroom with the glowing LEDs and fans that could power a small plane really REALLY needs to be turned off at night so we can sleep, and (if one cares about electric bills) anytime it's not about to be used. Sleeping/hibernating is not reliable on Linux still (in fact, does not work on this PC on Linux without major issues).
7) Applications. Linux has none worth noting that Windows does not have. Windows has boat loads that Linux lacks. iOS has boat loads that Linux lacks. The only thing that GNOME is good for to an average consumer is browsing the Web, e.g. light casual computing. Only, there are far better options than GNOME for that use case.
The most annoying part is, of course, that GNOME 3 is also just a horrifically bad tablet interface. GNOME 3's interface is a GREAT fit for netbooks, as its paradigms are a good fit for ~11"-13" screens, touchpads, and light computing. Too bad netbooks are already dying off in popularity thanks to iPads and Ultrabooks, and the market that remains is already filled by Chromebooks.
Also, yes, a lot of similar complaints can be made about Windows 8 and OS X's direction. The regressions are less severe in those cases IMO (e.g., Windows 8 loses the awesome Start Menu, but not the entire rest of the PC desktop paradigm). Maybe Windows 8 will be the next Windows Vista. Maybe not. In either case, GNOME isn't going anywhere new in the market that it hasn't already failed to go in the last 15 years.
Start menus Posted Apr 2, 2012 10:00 UTC (Mon) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link] Application menus have a tighter pointer locality, and when done right (which no, GNOME 2's were not at all right, they were horrible) involved less contextual overhead and wrist strain. Are you describing the "start" menu here? I checked out the version of GNOME that Debian Squeeze provides, along with KDE 4, and the tendency to throw everything into the start menu so that you not only have simple menus but also a bunch of dynamic stuff haphazardly arranged - you could probably have a weather applet in there as well - which seems to also be a feature of recent Windows releases, resulting in a kind of mini-desktop within the desktop, is just horrible. KDE 4 seemed to elevate this to the level of high art by having iPod-like menus squeezed into the tiny porthole in question. What's wrong with using the 80% of the screen the menu doesn't make any use of? With such a mess, I can understand people wanting to make more use of the screen to show menus, but I guess that full-screen menus don't really scale nicely to 30" monitors.
Start menus Posted Apr 2, 2012 11:10 UTC (Mon) by Seegras (subscriber, #20463) [Link]
He's referring to the MacOS-style global menubar.
Which is, by the way, unusable with sloppy-focus and other things old unix-geeks take for granted ;)
Start menus Posted Apr 3, 2012 13:29 UTC (Tue) by RCL (guest, #63264) [Link]
> What's wrong with using the 80% of the screen the menu doesn't make any use of?
Because I don't want the rest of my screen obscured when I'm looking for recently used documents in Start menu?
Start menus Posted Apr 3, 2012 22:25 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
Couldn't you allow it to have just some of the 80%, though? Pretending that there's an iPod in the bottom left corner while the rest of the screen goes unused (apart from perhaps showing applets that only distract from the task at hand) seems to be a misallocation of resources.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Mar 30, 2012 22:46 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
There was no Wayland when Android was being developed. There were beginnings of KMS and DRI2 support, but nothing close to production. So it's not like Android guys had much choice.
Oh, of course they could have used X-server. LOL.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 3:28 UTC (Sun) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
True, but you can see that Wayland went quite a different way, because they cared about the existing community.
From their FAQ: http://wayland.freedesktop.org/faq.html#heading_toc_j_2
> Wayland is not really duplicating much work. Where possible,
Since Wayland was designed as an open project, they considered needs of others as well. Android was designed for its own sake only, so you see the result - totally incompatible graphical stack, which doesn't share any success and effort with the rest of Linux.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 6:20 UTC (Sun) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Where was no KMS and only beginnings of TTM (not GEM) when Android was being developed.
And it has taken about 4 years to kick the Linux graphics stack into shape.
Besides, UI library is only a small part of Android.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 7:16 UTC (Sun) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
It might be small, but it's one of the key reasons which sets it totally apart. I.e. hardware manufacturers produce GPU drivers for Android, and that's it. Since it's not compatible - it's useless for regular ("conventional") Linux and prevents ports from using this hardware, until drivers appear (may be never). I.e. in practice it causes distraction for HW manufactures, and excuse not to produce X (or Wayland) drivers, since they are already too busy with Android.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 8:09 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Android was designed for its own sake only, so you see the result - totally incompatible graphical stack Correction: Android was developed for app developers, not for “it's own sake only”. They used Linux as HAL and explicitly excluded all the userspace components (except few which they used to save development cost). And there is real danger that the story will repeat itself on desktop if people leave it to Google.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 8:30 UTC (Sun) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
What I mean by "for its sake only" that it didn't consider the broad community, only its own interests. And this resulted in a totally isolated, self contained system, which barely shares any success with the rest of the Linux world. It's in total contradiction with the values of the open source.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 9:41 UTC (Sun) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
I've started to think that if linux is ever going to gain traction in the desktop, it is going to happen through somebody like Google, because it requires a bunch of things that the community is not capable of delivering. I'll list a few things that I think are important:
- retailers that sell your devices (laptops?) with software preinstalled. Every hardware thing you ship and officially support must work without a hitch.
- credible application market. You are never going to get off the ground unless you allow for proprietary software, which takes in form of independent software vendors writing code on the platform. Proprietary software is critical for the symbiosis of end-user and developer interest on the platform.
- commitment to a stable ABI that works (= never break applications that worked on any previous version). The nice thing about a laptop/PC using x86 is that there's usually a whole lot of system resources and techniques that can be spent on this, so backwards compatibility could actually be fairly easy. The key to success is this principle: new version can not be deployed if it breaks old code.
As far as I can tell, the community has tremendous trouble with all of the above. First requires capital and credible story for a linux device as product, including a way to earn revenue from the thing eventually; second requires giving up on software freedom ideals for the sake of capturing user and (proprietary) developer interest; and third requires developer professionalism that tends to come only with a paycheck, because it's frustrating and thankless soul-sucking work.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 17:23 UTC (Sun) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
No, it's going to result in money driven system. And you should know where it leads.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 18:00 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] To a world where normal people have usable system and geeks have their toys? Oh, you mean that it killed bunch of losers? Nope, I don't mourn them. They had their chance and squandered it. All in all it'll be good outcome although I'm not sure Google will be able to pull it on desktop.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 18:07 UTC (Sun) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
No, to a world where direction is defined by money, and interests of a small group which controls it, rather than by the interest of people who use it.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 20:36 UTC (Sun) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
In that case we are facing an unwinnable education problem. It seems fairly evident to me that something far above 90 % of people just don't care about software in this sort of way. They are just dumb users, they have been educated to want shiny things and they want their games and social networking shits and cool applications people are buzzing about. Their own attitudes make them just a resource to be harvested, but they also have money and they are willing to spend it if you just give them something they want for a price they are willing to pay.
Think about it: with money, you can hire developers, while at the same time you grow your own market share, which makes hardware vendors pay attention to you. At some point they are starting to do work for your behalf, because you are important enough to matter. Imagine this: a new GPU chip arrives and instead of spending a few years of pestering the vendor for specifications to write a driver with, the vendor contributes a driver on the same day the thing hits market. Everything becomes easier with market share, but without it, there's a risk of being squeezed out of the game entirely.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 21:46 UTC (Sun) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
True, there is a need to interest common users as well as manufacturers. That's undeniable. I believe that KDE is doing something of that sort with Plasma Active efforts and the upcoming Vivaldi tablet. But again, KDE is a non profit, and directions are defined by the community. Making such things "for profit" right away introduces a potential risk.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 2, 2012 8:32 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] But again, KDE is a non profit, and directions are defined by the community. I think you don't understand what “non profit” means. It looks like you perceive “non profit” as “someone altruistic who's fighting for the better future” and who's, obviously, “is not driven by money”. Nothing can be further from truth! Here is an example of non-profit organisation. It precedes KDE, GNOME and Mozilla and deals with commercial interests all the time. Nonprofit just means that participants are not planning to ever withdraw profits. They are supposed to be used to further pursue the goal of given non-profit. In a lot of cases these goals are better served when non-profit cooperates with some other for-profit entities - and when you do that you must think about market, about 90% of people just don't care about software in this sort of way, etc.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 2, 2012 16:33 UTC (Mon) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
By "non profit" in this case I don't mean the formal definition, but the fact that the direction of the project is not dictated by interests to gain money (which will inevitably result in conflict with public interest), but by community interests. If it sounds more altruistic than most commercial companies - then it is. Mozilla and KDE are good examples of this. Of course these project need to sustain themselves, and need income. I was talking about what defines the direction of their development.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 5, 2012 13:34 UTC (Thu) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
It's lovely to not care solely about money, but it's awful to be antagonist about money. Even if it were true that money will corrupt even the best intentions eventually, until that happens you fight the good fight. It could take quite long time.
To use an analogy: Bioware used to make great games for over a decade, founded by people who were evidently very passionate about gaming, until EA bought them and apparently destroyed the company and its values from inside. No matter: I think that the world is still better for Bioware's existence, even if it never again made another good game.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 5, 2012 9:51 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
Regarding ABI: On my Android phone a lot of applications actually had to provide updates to work with ICS.
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