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Dricot: A freasy future for GNOMEDricot: A freasy future for GNOMEPosted Aug 10, 2012 21:38 UTC (Fri) by thebluesgnr (guest, #37963)Parent article: Dricot: A freasy future for GNOME
"Xan López and Juan José Sánchez suggested to ship a tablet with GNOME in 2014. But isn't that too late? Is it really useful?"
By that line of thinking, GNOME wouldn't even exist. Wasn't it too late to create a free software desktop after Windows 98 had already "won"?
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Dricot: A freasy future for GNOME Posted Aug 10, 2012 22:19 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Well, it was late. GNOME has never achieved meaningful marketshare. Except that it could still occupy a small niche market of Unix desktops geared towards IT professionals and workstations.
I fail to see such niches in the tablet market. Another case in point - KDE4. They've gone crazy with all the Plasma stuff explicitly targeting tablets. They've even managed to produce one real hardware tablet. Now you can watch them fail.
Dricot: A freasy future for GNOME Posted Aug 11, 2012 0:08 UTC (Sat) by liam (subscriber, #84133) [Link]
Should Apple drop their desktop since they've not had significent marketshare since the 80s?
Dricot: A freasy future for GNOME Posted Aug 11, 2012 0:47 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Actually that might make sense (and they might be willing to do it). Though it's a good add-on for their main line of projects: iDevices.
You also might notice that MacDesktops are catering to a niche audience. They explicitly don't try to unseat Windows desktop where it's strong (in a corporate setting).
Meanwhile GNOME is losing their existing marketshare (small as it is) and they can't really offer a strong competitive product.
Dricot: A freasy future for GNOME Posted Aug 11, 2012 6:48 UTC (Sat) by liam (subscriber, #84133) [Link]
You might have missed the relatively recent news that the core Apple users (design-types) have been unhappy with some recent decisions with OSX (the FCP interface change, the lack of a new mac pro for last few years...there were some more but I happen to remember these because of the ars article about mac pro alternatives). So, you might be right about Apple dropping the desktop as a significent venture.
Lastly, you said that Gnome had a niche with UNIX IT people (not exactly wacom wielders but still a niche). Is there convincing evidence that that has disappeared?
Dricot: A freasy future for GNOME Posted Aug 11, 2012 7:29 UTC (Sat) by danieldk (guest, #27876) [Link]
> You might have missed the relatively recent news that the core Apple users (design-types) have been unhappy with some recent decisions with OSX (the FCP interface change, the lack of a new mac pro for last few years...there were some more but I happen to remember these because of the ars article about mac pro alternatives).
Apple used to serve that demographic, but is moving more and more to the low-end mass consumer market software-wise. I used Aperture (Apple's raw editing software) before, nowadays, it is mostly neglected, unstable, and slow. In the meanwhile, I moved to Lightroom, since Adobe seems to care for that market. Apple invests more in 'toy variants' of FCP and Aperture, namely iMovie and iPhoto. My wife uses both, and they are not really able to handle large amounts of material, and lack in many areas (e.g. geocoding in iPhoto, because low-end users alls use an iPhone as their photo camera).
The operating system is also slowly changing towards non-power users. E.g. they replaced the sane Exposé/Spaces by Mission Control in 10.7, which sucks, and full-screen apps (also introduced in 10.7) don't work with multiple monitors (one screen is just a grey canvas). Also, Mountain Lion (10.8), while still being very usable, slowly made the next step towards iOSification: by default it only runs signed applications or applications from the app store. I won't be surprised if the next version runs only app store applications by default.
Dricot: A freasy future for GNOME Posted Aug 11, 2012 12:57 UTC (Sat) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
> Also, Mountain Lion (10.8), while still being very usable, slowly made the next step towards iOSification: by default it only runs signed applications or applications from the app store.
oops, someone just fell into the FUD machine. This is definitively not true.
Dricot: A freasy future for GNOME Posted Aug 11, 2012 13:34 UTC (Sat) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
It does not want ordinary users to disable this protection though. For instance, when libreoffice 3.6 was released, I installed it and it would not run because the code was not signed...
So I go to disable this protection and a dialog pops up that says something along the lines of this: "You can actually ctrl-click if you just want to run some application while this protection is enabled. Do you still want to disable it?"
I did not disable the protection, and it made some kind of entry in its database that says LO is allowed to run forever on this computer, and everything kept on working.
Dricot: A freasy future for GNOME Posted Aug 11, 2012 17:18 UTC (Sat) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
everything I download from the internet runs just fine...
Dricot: A freasy future for GNOME Posted Aug 11, 2012 18:09 UTC (Sat) by danieldk (guest, #27876) [Link]
Check your security settings. Either 'Allow applications downloaded from' is set to 'Anywhere', or you are only downloading signed applications ;).
Dricot: A freasy future for GNOME Posted Aug 11, 2012 18:07 UTC (Sat) by danieldk (guest, #27876) [Link]
I didn't fall for any FUD.
I used Mountain Lion since the earliest beta's, and it is true. By default it only runs signed applications (and applications from the app store are, by requirement signed). Running an unsigned application will give an error. However, you *can* disable this in the security settings, so that it will run every application.
Dricot: A freasy future for GNOME Posted Aug 11, 2012 20:05 UTC (Sat) by Kit (guest, #55925) [Link]
That's not really accurate, though.
It only prevents applications downloaded from the Internet that are /completely/ unsigned (and only if the program that did the downloading marked them as such). Self signed apps will receive a scary warning, but can still be opened, while apps signed with an Apple-provided certificate will work fine (doesn't matter if they're distributed via the App Store).
This means that already-run apps will work just fine, as would apps that are acquired via physical media (such as CD/DVD/flash sticks).
The reporting has done a fairly poor job of explaining exactly what it restricts and how it functions, unfortunately.
Dricot: A freasy future for GNOME Posted Aug 11, 2012 7:53 UTC (Sat) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link]
It has not disappeared, nobody is claiming that (not even the guy you're replying to, if you read again what he wrote). But it has shrunk considerably. "Convincing evidence"? It depends on how high you put the bar, i.e. if you'll be convinced by a thorough survey of all (ex) Gnome users that won't happen any time soon.
My personal anecdotal evidence (= every Linux user I know has moved to something else, like XFCE, after Gnome 3 was out) plus all the comments (thousands of them, some quite ... energetic :) by people disapproving of the new "philosophy", plus a surge in alternatives (Unity, MATE, Cinnamon, and see the current Nautilus-forking fest) is enough to convince me that Gnome is indeed losing its existing user and developer base, that the Linux desktop is now much more fragmented than it was just a few months ago and that it will stay that way for quite some time. Unfortunately.
Rehdon
Dricot: A freasy future for GNOME Posted Aug 11, 2012 15:18 UTC (Sat) by krake (subscriber, #55996) [Link]
"with all the Plasma stuff explicitly targeting tablets"
Plasma is not targetting any specific form factor or device in particular.
The sole fact that work on Plasma started way earlier than any tablet appearing on the consumer scene should make it obvious that is cannot be "explicitly targeting tablets"
Dricot: A freasy future for GNOME Posted Aug 13, 2012 12:31 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
He's not saying that Plasma targets tablets; he's just talking about the Plasma stuff that does, ie. Plasma Active which has had a fair bit of press recently.
Think about the sentence if it were "with software explicitly targeting tablets" - that's not saying that all software targets tablets.
Dricot: A freasy future for GNOME Posted Aug 13, 2012 15:08 UTC (Mon) by krake (subscriber, #55996) [Link]
Ah, I see.
"gone crazy" and "all the Plasma stuff" threw me off then.
Dricot: A freasy future for GNOME Posted Aug 10, 2012 22:59 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] By that line of thinking, GNOME wouldn't even exist. Wasn't it too late to create a free software desktop after Windows 98 had already "won"? No, because it was not created for the desktop which Windows 98 won. That desktop was (and still is) untouchable for the likes of GNOME! Instead GNOME (and KDE) filled the void left by demise of the commercial UNIX. FreeBSD and Linux filled the void on "classic, text-based server" since GNU tools were already in wide use when said demise happened, but OPEN LOOK (later OpenWindows), CDE and others were not available - they were proprietary and their creators only freed them years later, when GNOME far surpassed them. Thus GNOME had small yet quite desperate group of potential users who adopted and supported it. From the beginning to now this group is the same. But it's shrinking now because people have a nice alternative: MacOS. Sure, they are not the target group, but if you want "Unix with nice GUI" then MacOS is quite usable replacement novadays. This is where Lionel loses the track: some people care about freedom, but most people don't. At least they don't care enough to drop convenience of Android and/or iOS. Think about it: most Linux users use it not because it's free but because it's cheap (I'm talking about server and emdebbed here, obviously, not about desktop: on desktop, indeed, most users prefer Linux because it's free… and we all know how many of these are out there — one or two users out of hundred care about freedom, tops). If you want to attract users to GNOME-based tablet then you either need to offer something for cheap (but Android has this base covered) or you need something unique (and no, freedom is not a good selling point as shown above). Easiness of install??? Pushlease: no matter how easy you'll make it it'll be harder then pre-install anyway. We are comparing zero efforts here with non-zero efforts! Thus yes, easiness of installation is cool, but this only lowers the entry bar, you still need some attraction to get users. Because without users eventually your platform will lose developers, too, then it'll become a zombie.
Dricot: A freasy future for GNOME Posted Aug 12, 2012 2:22 UTC (Sun) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link]
> Think about it: most Linux users use it not because it's free but because it's cheap (I'm talking about server and emdebbed here, obviously, not about desktop: on desktop, indeed, most users prefer Linux because it's free
I'd argue that most Linux desktops users are those looking to tinker and play around. Look at the install base of proprietary drivers, the excitement over Steam, and the constant demand for more ISVs to support Linux. I don't see Freedom being the most valued attribute of Linux on the desktop.
Personally, the vast majority of folks I get asking me about Linux outside of the server are programmery types looking for cool toys to tinker with. Freedom is not a concept that they have yet grasped, most of them care just as little as anyone else, and cheapness is hardly an issue for them. Obviously my anecdotal evidence here is biased, since I'm surrounded by programmery types in an industry that is very proprietary in nature, so take that as you will.
The plural of anecdote Posted Aug 12, 2012 17:12 UTC (Sun) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
IS data.
Okay, anecdotes are often a biased sample, but as another poster said - "everyone I know" ...
When you get stuff like that, you *need* to find the explanation if you want to understand. I suspect that people who object to anecdotes are actually indulging in the very UNscientific pursuit of collecting only the evidence that confirms their prejudice, not the scientific pursuit of evidence whether or not it supports them. Indeed, true science is the pursuit of evidence that does NOT support you.
If you can't find any, then you can conclude you are probably right :-)
Cheers,
Dricot: A freasy future for GNOME Posted Aug 13, 2012 8:44 UTC (Mon) by Pawlerson (guest, #74136) [Link] I'd argue that most Linux desktops users are those looking to tinker and play around. Look at the install base of proprietary drivers, the excitement over Steam, and the constant demand for more ISVs to support Linux. I don't see Freedom being the most valued attribute of Linux on the desktop.From my observations freedom doesn't matter much for most of the Linux users, but it's the most important to Linux itself. What most users want is software. That's why Windows is so popular. Its users don't care if their toy OS has vulnerabilities that come from DOS or that GUI operates in the kernel space. Bring software to Linux and Windows will loose an only advantage.
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