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"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it.""Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it."Posted Aug 29, 2012 10:18 UTC (Wed) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185)In reply to: "Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." by danieldk Parent article: Look and feel lawsuits, the second time around
I'm getting a bit -- no, make that thoroughly -- pissed off with people calling Linux on the desktop a failure. It's not a failure, it's a huge, huge success, especially if you look at the enormous obstacles that we had to overcome, and that we have overcome. And there's still plenty to do, and that work is being done.
Linux is used by millions of people every day, in many different situations for many different purposes. They, too, _just_ get work done. Whether they are working on GI Joe, coding a web application or writing a paper for school or university. Or they are facebooking, which means they don't get work done, but if that's what they want to waste their time on, fine. Get a linux laptop from a vendor like Hettes (http://hettes.nl/), boot it up and start work.
Every platform has its shitty corners, but at least on Linux, we're working all the time to fix them. Gimp might not work as a photoshop replacement for you, but there are plenty of artists who earn their money working on Linux with Gimp, MyPaint and Krita. Heck, these tools are apparently attractive enough that Windows users clamour for them and that OSX users are really pissed off with me for not providing them with a Krita build.
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"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 29, 2012 11:36 UTC (Wed) by danieldk (guest, #27876) [Link]
I respect your work. I don't deny that great work is being done and that Linux is currently useful to approximately 1% of desktop computer owners. For many years I used and advocated Linux, wrote an introductary book, and worked on two Linux distributions (paid on Libranet, as a volunteer on CentOS). I wanted Linux and free software to succeed.
But I have lost hope, because of the attitude that is also manifest in your reaction: the community in general does not want to hear what problems users have. This leads to things such as: completely replacing desktop paradigms from one version to another, offering no reasonable, widely software distribution mechanism outside the current repositories (as someone said: you buy a webcam, need a new kernel, which implies a new userland), replacing sound servers when the new version is not ready, and the list goes on.
Ingo Molnar summarizes many of these issues better than I could:
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 29, 2012 13:07 UTC (Wed) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link]
First off, your "1%" is wrong. It's impossible to be sure, but it's more that that. Way more. Especially if you look world-wide. And whether it's 1%, 3% or 5%, it is still _millions_ of users who don't have to dance to the puppet strings of a company that breaks features in its OS with every release.
Second off, you tell me that saying "We achieved more than anyone could have expected of us, but there's still plenty to do, and that work is being done." is an attitude that makes you lose hope, an attitude that tells you "the community in general does not want to hear what problems users have",
Well, that there is an attitude problem in this discussion, that's certain.
But it's _your_ attitude that's the problem, not mime. You seem to refuse to admit that people are working, all the time, on fixing problems users have. That developers are listening, all the time, to the needs and problems of users and working on that. Whether those developer are volunteers or are paid for it.
The attitude that sucks is the attitude that says "we've lost, we'd better give in, let's admit defeat, and by the way, it's not my fault that we lost, it's your fault". You've given up; well, I haven't.
I've used Linux for longer than you, and I've used Windows since 1.something, and I've used OSX on powerpc and on intel, and I know that no system is free of problems. And I know that all these systems can be used to just get work done. But for two of them you need to be pretty rich and pretty privileged to be allowed in. And there's only one system that can be improved by the people who are experiencing those problems. And that's the free system.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 29, 2012 13:28 UTC (Wed) by danieldk (guest, #27876) [Link]
So, where is the standardized infrastructure for installing applications, regardless of the distribution? Where is the stable API and ABI? When do distributions stop replacing a perfectly working desktop environment by one that is not yet ready? When do distributions stop shipping audio servers when they are not ready?
Again, I do respect all the work that is done. It's just that with a few tweaks that are technically simple (e.g. standalone software packages have been done over and over, as well as fat binaries, etc.) the Linux desktop could be such much better for a wider audience.
The problem is that it is hard to do socially. Without some outside force, entropy increases continuously. One can only hope that Canonical, Red Hat, or Google pursues that path, like Apple did before, but with free software.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 29, 2012 13:56 UTC (Wed) by njwhite (subscriber, #51848) [Link]
> When do distributions stop replacing a perfectly working desktop environment by one that is not yet ready? When do distributions stop shipping audio servers when they are not ready?
In fairness, not all distributions have been quick to pick up Gnome 3, Unity, or Pulseaudio (as I presume you're referring to). I believe Fedora and Ubuntu are the main players who have shipped some of these before many thought they were ready.
A large part of Fedora's purpose is shipping things slightly early to work out the kinks effectively. So that's fine. Use RHEL or a derivative if you want something Fedora-ish, without occasional breakage like that.
Ubuntu have a reputation of being a bit cavalier sometimes, but I think this is mainly because they're keen to push the desktop in new directions particularly excitedly. And their relative popularity as a distribution lends itself to the conclusion that they often do right by a number of users (plus of course have better marketting and a very welcoming community.) Again, if stability is more your goal, Debian fits well there.
I've probably left out heaps of counterexamples. Sorry about that ;)
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 29, 2012 17:16 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
Everything you say is 100% correct but unfortunately doesn't answer the quoted question.
A data point for illustration... A Windows friend told me about trying to install Ubuntu a year ago. He found out-of-date tutorials for different distros, sudoing stuff he didn't understand, and wedged himself in a few hours. This was just trying to get Flash, DVDs, and MP3 playback. He's a smart guy and very computer-savvy, but he just didn't have the experience to know what internet advice to follow and what's obsolete.
For whatever reason, and you listed a few, Linux appears to still be moving too fast for more people to hop on.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 0:06 UTC (Thu) by fjf33 (subscriber, #5768) [Link]
Sure and I have another friend whose computer got a virus and he bought a new one because he couldn't get windows working right from the DELL restore CD.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 9:46 UTC (Thu) by Tjebbe (subscriber, #34055) [Link]
Windows has always been hard to install; hardly any hardware support out of the box, a weird and VERY dangerous 'partitioning' tool, all software needs to be downloaded/installed from discs again. The reason people think it is easy is because most people never actually do it; you either get your smart neighbour's kid to do it, or you just buy a new machine.
I guess you'll need to compare to installing a fresh OS X these days, but since I've never done any, I wouldn't know.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 10:26 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
OSX in an Apple machine -> all goodness, simple to install, click click click.
OSX in an non-Apple machine -> forum posts search, EFI bootloader install, kext-download hell until you get it right, and then it's click click click please do not upgrade OSX to next release until you have heard it's 100% safe.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 19:36 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
> OSX in an non-Apple machine
not to mention illegal according to Apple
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 21:04 UTC (Thu) by Tjebbe (subscriber, #34055) [Link]
everything that is not directly sending money their way is illegal according to apple.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 22:56 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
remember that that they have already won a lawsuit against a company that was paying them for OSX and then installing it on non-apple hardware.
and to make it worse they had a lot of people cheering them on.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 29, 2012 20:58 UTC (Wed) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
> So, where is the standardized infrastructure for installing applications, regardless of the distribution?
Are you implying that Windows and OSX have those? Hint: they don't have "different distributions". Even if you count .msi/.pkg/.mpkg files as "using standard infrastructure to install programs", many programs are installed via .dmg/.exe without using that infrastructure.
> Where is the stable API and ABI?
Again, Mountain Lion makes lots of older OSX programs not work. Ditto for Vista and Win7. And don't get me started with device drivers.
> When do distributions stop replacing a perfectly working desktop environment by one that is not yet ready?
Don't use *those* distributions.
> When do distributions stop shipping audio servers when they are not ready?
Ditto.
I use Kubuntu for the last 4 years, and before that I used mostly Debian. Never had a sound problem, nor an incompatible desktop overwriting mine. One year ago I had to reconfigure network-manager for some reason after an update -- but the network config here at work is unconventional anyway.
I don't have to resort to "commandline hacking" for administrative tasks in my work system. It all just works, and it's all configurable in the lovely, if OSX-inspired, control panel.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 31, 2012 21:19 UTC (Fri) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link]
"So, where is the standardized infrastructure for installing applications, regardless of the distribution? Where is the stable API and ABI?"
Living happily with all the other red herrings.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 8:42 UTC (Thu) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]
> You seem to refuse to admit that people are working, all the time, on
> fixing problems users have. That developers are listening, all the time, > to the needs and problems of users and working on that.
That they are working all the time is true. That they focus on user problems is unfortunately false. They live in fantasy land with simulated users that happen to agree with their great plans unlike annoying real people (case in point: GNOME 3, supposed to target touch input no current user asks for, optimised in fact for the developer keyboard entry prefs, terrible for mouse entry, which is the primary interaction mode of most desktop users nowadays)
And just as LOCs is not a good indication of software quality, working all the time is not a good indication of effectiveness. The *nix desktop guys are all too prone to release half solutions and then dump them when they realise the missing part is hard, instead of working incrementally as all the successful commercial (windows, osx, android) environments are (and the most successful part of Linux is the kernel, and guess what Linux thinks about interface-breaking rewrites).
They mocked the quirks of historical *nix software, but this software still builds today, the associated documentation still applies today, and people have managed to write extensions and more complex software on top of it (witness the success of Linux server-side when it was marginal in 2000 – it only took of after the .com crash). In the meanwhile all the 'better' more 'modern' software written desktop-side has been continuously rebooted without significant feature of market wins.
The exceptions like LibreOffice bring incremental improvements that do not follow any great plan except fixing user-reported problems. And despite targeting 'legacy' needs and being butt-ugly LibreOffice is steadily increasing its market-share.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 8:57 UTC (Thu) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link]
I grant you that the gnome developers are out of touch with reality and would do better to concede the game and fold. But they don't represent the entirety of the people working on the Linux desktop.
So, since Gnome isn't the Linux desktop, my point still stands. While we've made mistakes, and will make more mistakes no doubt, the KDE community is working all the time to provide improvements to the plasma desktop and the KDE applications, as well as improving its way of interacting with users.
(Of course, we get enough shit these days for not being innovative all the time, but you can't please everyone all the time, and I, for one, am really happy with all the effort going on to make the transition from Qt4 to Qt5 pretty nearly painless for application developers.)
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Sep 10, 2012 11:09 UTC (Mon) by rdale (guest, #70788) [Link] I grant you that the gnome developers are out of touch with reality and would do better to concede the game and fold. But they don't represent the entirety of the people working on the Linux desktop.
I agree with all Boudewijn has been saying on this thread up to this point, but I feel this sentence about the Gnome project is uncalled for. If Gnome folds it won't make XFCE or KDE more successful; instead it we make us all weaker. Those Gnome developers who have nothing to do after Gnome folds, won't suddenly join the KDE project. KDE won't suddenly have more users and contributors because Gnome has folded. I would say the Gnome project has a higher proportion of 'design guys' than KDE, although KDE's Nuno and others do a great job. I wish we could share design innovations together for desktop and touch devices without be banned from doing so by big company bullies like Apple.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Sep 10, 2012 14:26 UTC (Mon) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
> If Gnome folds it won't make XFCE or KDE more successful; instead it we make us all weaker. Those Gnome developers who have nothing to do after Gnome folds, won't suddenly join the KDE project. KDE won't suddenly have more users and contributors because Gnome has folded.
I couldn't agree more. Diversity is one of our strengths, and keeps a subset of FLOSS always in the ecosystem.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Sep 10, 2012 16:11 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] If Gnome folds it won't make XFCE or KDE more successful […] KDE won't suddenly have more users and contributors because Gnome has folded. I don't think that makes actual sense. If GNOME goes away and Linux users are looking to use (or contribute to) a desktop environment, what else are they going to pick? OS X?
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Sep 10, 2012 17:51 UTC (Mon) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
> If GNOME goes away and Linux users are looking to use (or contribute to) a desktop environment, what else are they going to pick? OS X?
Yes. Many will migrate to OSX. Many will migrate to W7. Many will migrate to W8. It's not as if their desktop will suddently stop working; but eventually they will upgrade, and without an upgrade, a migration can consider equally OSX, W7, and W8 as alternatives to KDE, LXDE, &c.
ESPECIALLY because the perception of GNOME as an evolutionary dead-end will taint the other Linux DEs, while OSX and W7/8 won't have that taint.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Sep 10, 2012 19:11 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] I'd guess many people are using GNOME because they want to use Linux, not using Linux because they want to use GNOME – so it would make more sense to move to another Linux-based environment rather than a completely different one. After all, many programs run just as well on a KDE or LXDE desktop as they will on a GNOME desktop. It's not as if the other platforms didn't have their evolutionary dead ends, as users of PowerPC Macs – or, arguably, the classic Windows desktop once Windows 9 comes around – will be able to attest. If GNOME does go away, with KDE at least you get to keep most of the rest of your system.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Sep 10, 2012 22:17 UTC (Mon) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
> I'd guess many people are using GNOME because they want to use Linux, not using Linux because they want to use GNOME
This is not true since the dawn of Ubuntu. It's a real, viable platform with its perks and quirks in the eyes of end users everywhere.
> so it would make more sense to move to another Linux-based environment rather than a completely different one. After all, many programs run just as well on a KDE or LXDE desktop as they will on a GNOME desktop.
(this is technically true, but Qt/KDE programs often look displaced in a GNOME/LXDE desktop and vice-versa)
> It's not as if the other platforms didn't have their evolutionary dead ends, as users of PowerPC Macs – or, arguably, the classic Windows desktop once Windows 9 comes around – will be able to attest.
Windows 9? PowerPC Macs had their platforms continued thru the judicious (and well-done) use of emulation in form of Rosetta.
> If GNOME does go away, with KDE at least you get to keep most of the rest of your system.
LibreOffice runs on Windows and Macs too. So do Firefox, Chrome and VLC. Actually, many GNOME/GTK (and KDE/Qt) programs run on Windows and Macs. Lots of files are in the cloud. There is little incentive to stay in one single platform these days but "The Platform Just Works, Exactly The Way The User Likes, It And Keeps Working Better And Better Each Upgrade." That is why I am personally stuck to KDE up to this day.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 29, 2012 13:23 UTC (Wed) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] If and when I can conveniently buy a Linux laptop at retail in London or Birmingham, I might consider doing so. Mail-order is a non-starter because I wouldn't buy a monitor or a keyboard without having experienced them first, so why would I buy a not-usefully-separable monitor-and-keyboard without experiencing the combination first? (And even if I would, buying a laptop entails dealing with courier firms.)
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 3:36 UTC (Thu) by gfa (subscriber, #53331) [Link]
> Every platform has its shitty corners, but at least on Linux, we're
> working all the time to fix them.
when i get frustrated with something, linux related,
i don't see a justification to carry a computer with a non-free OS on a linux/foss conference. i recall an anecdote from Andrew Tridgell who was banned from an apple conference (he was invited to give an speech or something) for using suse on his laptop.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Sep 2, 2012 14:29 UTC (Sun) by thoeme (subscriber, #2871) [Link]
Seconded. I am using Linux desktop (KDE, Xfce) on my home and - when allowed by company policy - on my work computers. Bad things can be said about any DE (including Windows and OSX!), but I can live quite happily with Linux-on-the-desktop.
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