this is sad [LWN.net]

this is sad

Posted Jun 19, 2016 13:13 UTC (Sun) by rqosa (subscriber, #24136)
In reply to: this is sad by khim
Parent article: Klumpp: A few words about the future of the Limba project

> about making [GNU/Linux distros] actually relevant for “Joe Average”… will it happen or not?

But are any of the current GNU/Linux distros actually aimed at "Joe Average desktop user"? There's Fedora Workstation, there's Ubuntu… and of course ChromeOS is a Linux distribution too. These are probably the only ones actually competing for this market segment in the first place.

> it's a race: will Red Hat and/or Canonical's desktop Linux distros be able to provide at least some incentive for ISVs before ~~they will all be rendered irrelevant~~ Google's desktop Linux distro (whether it be Android, ChromeOS, or some fusion of the two) wins out in that market segment instead?

That's really all that's at stake in this competition. Meanwhile, other disctributions (RHEL/CentOS/enterprise distributions in general, Arch/Gentoo/hobbyist distributions in general, etc.) will continue to address the needs of their current user bases.

Incidentally, the fact that ChromeOS now can run Android apps just proves what I was saying in my posts in the previous thread that you linked to here: soon, "the only remaining difference between "Android" and "a Linux distribution" will be that "Android" has the proprietary Google stuff preinstalled", and consequently there will cease to be any significant difference between community-developed "traditional" Linux distributions (Arch, Debian, etc.) and community-developed Android derivatives (CyanogenMod, Replicant, etc.).

And finally: bundling/sandboxing tools such as Flatpak are a good thing to have available for certain purposes. For example, it's been said here before that "For any software that [users] do care about (whether that's a browser, email sever, PCB designer, compiler, etc) where they want the latest and greatest function, they want that (and only that) to change" (emphasis mine). So, once Flatpak et al. have matured, I expect that it will be common for Linux desktop users to have the majority of software on their computer be from native distribution packages, and then add a few standalone "application bundles" (e.g. for a bleeding-edge version of some specific program, for proprietary games, etc.) on top of the base system.

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this is sad

Posted Jun 19, 2016 22:01 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (6 responses)

But are any of the current GNU/Linux distros actually aimed at "Joe Average desktop user"?

At least Ubuntu is aimed at “Joe Average”—but even then it took many years till they've gotten support for things like Steam (and even then there are still compatibility issues even with supported games).

There's Fedora Workstation, there's Ubuntu… and of course ChromeOS is a Linux distribution too. These are probably the only ones actually competing for this market segment in the first place.

And these are the only ones which provide a way to develop software for them, too. Of course ChromeOS was always crazily limited by what it could do and Fedora/Ubuntu had no stable SDK, but now situation is changing: ChromeOS have finally gotten support for a decent development platform, Fedora/Ubuntu are creating Flatpak and Snap.

It's just funny: Google was incredibly slow, but Canonical and RedHat wasted so much time that these solutions become usable at about the same time…

Meanwhile, other disctributions (RHEL/CentOS/enterprise distributions in general, Arch/Gentoo/hobbyist distributions in general, etc.) will continue to address the needs of their current user bases.

But for how long? If Android will render Fedora and/or Ubuntu irrelevant then what will make it impossible to move it to server? And if server payments will dry up then how long RHEL/CentOS/enterprise distributions in general will be around? And if they will go away then who would fund for the development of software which is then packaged by Arch/Gentoo/hobbyist distributions in general?

This may all sound really far-fetched today, but the whole thing really looks like a repeat of UNIX wars and eventual replacement of “UNIX world” with “GNU/Linux world”… only this time around GNU/Linux world would be replaced with Android…

Sure, GNU/Linux will survive… somewhere on the outskirts… but in what capacity?

this is sad

Posted Jun 20, 2016 1:28 UTC (Mon) by rqosa (subscriber, #24136) [Link] (5 responses)

> If Android will render Fedora and/or Ubuntu irrelevant then what will make it impossible to move it to server?

If some variety of Android does eventually get used on servers, then it will just be used to run the same kinds of server software (RDBMSes, web-application servers, etc.) that Linux runs today.

> And if server payments will dry up then how long RHEL/CentOS/enterprise distributions in general will be around?

There's nothing stopping Red Hat / Oracle / other enterprise-Linux-distro maker from offering an "enterprise / server-oriented Android distribution" if there ever gets to be customer demand for anything like that. (Having access to the Google Play app store is totally irrelevant for the server market.)

> And if they will go away then who would fund for the development of software which is then packaged by Arch/Gentoo/hobbyist distributions in general?

Apart from core system infrastructure (the kernel, glibc, GCC, etc.) and actual enterprise-server software, most of the current hobbyist-oriented desktop-Unix software ecosystem (e.g. desktop apps for GNOME/KDE/etc.) isn't funded by enterprise-Linux-distribution companies anyway.

> only this time around GNU/Linux world would be replaced with Android…

Not everyone wants to use a stock Android system, hence the existence of CyanogenMod et al. And once Android moves to the desktop, there's nothing stopping Arch/Debian/Gentoo/etc. from becoming "third-party Android distributions" like CyanogenMod is. At that point, there's no technical impediment to running Android software on GNU/Linux — the only remaining impediment is getting access to the Google Play app store, and they can work around that in the same way that CyanogenMod does (i.e. back up the preinstalled stuff from stock Android during the installation process).

(Plus, who knows, maybe Google will eventually make the Android app store accessible in a way similar to how the Chrome app store is available on Chrome-for-Linux today. And if desktop-Android actually gets a majority of the desktop market-share without Google having opened up the app store that way, then it's time for an antitrust lawsuit.)

It's inherent in the nature of FLOSS that, once it's (legally) possible to develop a hobbyist-oriented OS distribution, someone will. That's why projects like CyanogenMod and Arch Linux exist today and will continue to exist, without needing to have a large portion of the general public using them.

this is sad

Posted Jun 20, 2016 7:46 UTC (Mon) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (4 responses)

> If some variety of Android does eventually get used on servers, then it will just be used to run the same kinds of server software (RDBMSes, web-application servers, etc.) that Linux runs today.

This is probably true. The key thing for me is the cost and reliability of the hardware. I think that at first, a server like this wouldn't probably be running in a rack in server room somewhere, but it would be more like some RPi-sized box installed in the customer premises that happens to run Android instead of some traditional Linux distribution. These small and cheap devices are becoming powerful enough to suffice to run operations and act as localized hubs that can even control hardware via the GPIO things. And they have very attractive price tags.

this is sad

Posted Jun 20, 2016 8:54 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (3 responses)

> This is probably true. The key thing for me is the cost and reliability of the hardware.
Nobody really cares about hardware reliability for commodity servers. As long as it doesn't die every day, you just migrate to another hardware in case of problems.

> I think that at first, a server like this wouldn't probably be running in a rack in server room somewhere, but it would be more like some RPi-sized box installed in the customer premises that happens to run Android instead of some traditional Linux distribution.
Why? The current direction is away from customers' premises to consolidated server farms. And it makes little difference for AWS or Google Compute what OS you're running inside a VM.

this is sad

Posted Jun 21, 2016 23:44 UTC (Tue) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (2 responses)

I think we just have very different kind of deployments in mind. Cloud-style crap is only possible if your networking is reliable. If it isn't, you want locally deployed servers again.

this is sad

Posted Jun 22, 2016 1:02 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

At this point in time, it's usually cheaper and easier to upgrade your network connection. Sure, lots of places on Earth still don't have reliable Internet connectivity, but would you place your office there?

this is sad

Posted Jun 23, 2016 0:25 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> Sure, lots of places on Earth still don't have reliable Internet connectivity, but would you place your office there?

You mean, like London?

I wish my internet connection was reliable (things like CG-NAT and bufferbloat don't help ...)

For a "necessary utility", the availability of reliable internet is extremely patchy. Fortunately, the government has decided that "broadband for all" is a necessity - until a couple of months ago the phone companies' push for "superfast broadband" quite explicitly ignored the 10% of UK households that don't have broadband at all, it was initially intended as a pure upgrade of existing broadband, not rolling broadband out to the "have nots".

Cheers,
Wol