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If I Had My Own Distro...
Gentu writes "Adam Scheinberg writes an interesting editorial explaining what he would do if he was a developer and he had a Linux distribution. His suggestions are pretty radical, and in places resembles of what Apple had done to MacOSX with the help of BSD as the underlying technology. But if this is what it takes to get Linux into the next level, it might worth the consideration."
Prediction: Linux From Stratch mentioned in first 50 posts.
This is probably linked to my own incompetence and not to the fact that it isn't feasible.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I would call it "AssHat" and make it look like Windows but covered in tinfoil.
me karma am bad
Wait a minute here, I am confused. How could you not have your own distro, I mean, it seems that everyone else does.
Join Tor today!
I did. I've never looked back on the desktop. Servers still run Linux.
(I've posted this before, but it is 100% relevant to this article and something I want people to think long and hard about.)
.RPM or .DEB, in which case it is already figured out for you (Mandrake-branded site will default to .RPM, etc).
Forget copying the Windows UI, that's absurd.
Someone is going to get on that machine, go to Start -> Programs looking for "Microsoft Excel" and feel like an idiot or be completely frustrated because they couldn't find it.
NO ONE has complained that people stay away from OS X "because it doesn't look like Windows." WHY are we trying to pretend that's the reason people don't try Linux?
If you want Windows people to use Linux, we need distributions to do a few things:
Ditch 3 of the 4 programs that do the same thing. Seriously. Why do I need 4 CD-R burning programs? Just give me the one that works the best, that's *all I care about* - and make sure it's labeled "CD Burner" so I don't have to decipher "gkdesbUISO." Contrary to what people here may think, we do NOT need to include every single Web Browser available. Don't put every alternative in the "Programs" menu - you hide the extra versions, and it only comes out when someone says they are an "advanced" user. Or perhaps a help option that says, "Software Doesn't Do What You Want? Try These:"
Distro installers should have a "I have never used Linux before, but I have been using Windows for 5 years" option. This will offer extra help in the form of, "If you are looking for this, you will now use this instead."
Make sure "regular" users *only* need the first CD. In the case of a 3 CD distro like Mandrake, make the additional CDs required only for developers and/or international users.
When you setup the desktop, be it either Gnome or KDE, you need to include a few "What do I do now?" icons on the desktop. I'm not talking about your "Welcome," because most of these people are illiterate or too lazy to read them, I'm talking about a few icons such as "Games," "Mozilla Web Browser," and "OpenOffice Applications." Do NOT just call the web icon "Mozilla," because these people have no idea what Mozilla even is.
I don't know if one exists yet, but we need yet-another new standard Linux portal. One that can be branded with Mandrake, RedHat, etc, but has software reviews, HOWTOs, special tips, best applications in each category, downloads, news, a forum, etc. And when you click to download a file, it is either a
Apple has the portal down to an art--take heed as it will go a long way to making them feel like they are both a part of something, and that they've just entered a Brave New World as opposed to being made to feel like an idiot because they can't find anything or get anything done.
The thing that most mainstream distros seem to be doing well, is that as soon as they are installed, 99% of the applications you will ever need are already installed and setup. With Windows, you're stuck with installing all of your software off of CD again, downloading everything again, etc, etc.
Prove me wrong now.
Jason Fisher
OKAY
it would have AVRIL LAVIGNE
AND ICE CREAM
AND A SODA PUMP WITH UNLIMITED REFILLS
And UT2K on a BIG SCREEN
Also I wouldn't have to write shit in perl just to make it do stuff it should already do out of the box.
It would also be nice if I didn't have to go that scary admin with a huge UC Berkely Beard for advice (he smells like chlorine and fish).
P.S. ICE CREAM
Who are y oo ?
Check it out
+5 insightful
Prediction: Reply to parent will state that parent is a self-fullfilling prophecy.
paintball
Instead of doing what this article describes, just get Mac OS X.
I don't understand why anyone wouldn't.
The goal of the MHS project is to define a Modern Hierarchy Standard for UNIX-like operating systems which will further enable them to evolve, innovate, grow, and compete with Windows and other modern OSes.
/bin => /System/Commands /sbin => /System/Commands /boot => /System/Boot /dev => /System/Devices /etc => /System/Config /lib => /System/Libraries /proc => /System/Process /mnt => /Mount /opt => /Apps /tmp => /Temp /home => /Users /usr/bin => /System/Executables /usr => mostly placed under /System /var => mostly placed under /System
/Apps directory rather than cramming everything into /usr.
Specifically, MHS technology will provide the following benefits:
100% Application Directory Oriented
Internationalization of Directory Names
More Intuitive Directory Names
Fewer Root Directories
Support for Case-Insensitive File Systems
Full Coexistence with Legacy FHS
Increased System Flexibility
A new hierarchy will be a big enough change to make distributions switch to application directories.
Set of environmental variables pointing the location of major system directories.
Applications would no longer need to hard code directory names.
System level directories grouped together under a common directory. (/System)
Currently, the directories are expected to be moved to the following locations:
All paths will be lower-case on a case-sensitive file system. As shown otherwise.
Application developers and distribution makers will need to use the
The autoconf family of tools will be patched to support the new hierarchy which will make most applications translate easily.
Although it can still be done, MHS will not support the same level of shareability (i.e. mounted over a network) as the legacy FHS standard.
FHS can be emulated via symlinks and MHS can be emulated on existing FHS systems. A kernel/file system hack of some kind may be done to have the legacy directories disappear in directory scans, to help improve user friendliness.
In addition to the standard, the project is developing a set of scripts that will setup the new hierarchy on existing FHS compatible systems.
The standard will not be finalized until a Linux distribution ships based upon it.
Let's see. He suggests some sugar-coating -- change /home into /users, /var into /log -- why is "users" a better name than "home"? He reinvents a few things, like default applications of various types (I know debian already does this; I imagine others do too.) And, of course, it's far too confusing to make the user choose a desktop environment upon installation -- we have to make sure that others aren't possible to use. He suggests drag-and-drop package installation ... I have a hard time that nobody's done that before (how hard could it possibly be?) but maybe he's right there.
... but they're not terribly interesting either, and they're certainly nothing that hasn't been rehashed during slashdot conversations every other week -- and the truth is, he probably could have implemented virtually all his suggestions in not much more time than it took to write his article. Why doesn't he do it, and then let us know how it turned out?
Most of the ideas aren't really bad
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
I'd read it, but I refuse to give any ad impressions or click-throughs to OSNews.com. That website just lets one person (Eugenia) have too much power and be way to rude to their forum posters.
heres why:
1: the stuff he says on the first page is basically a bunch of static linkx that can be done easily.
2: You cannot have a Gentoo style community unless you are a distro that caters to people who are willing to go to great lengths to learn more about their OS and computer hardware.
3: the one desktop environment is stupid. Thats one of the reasons I switched from windows, that their desktop environment is idiotic, especially in the same paragraph as talking about how linux offers choice.
4: installers are not necessary. try making a gui frontend to Gentoo's emerge/portage if you want a good install system. Not only does it download and update, but it also works. really well.
5: this asshat cannot spell bruce perens' last name. I am supposed to trust him with my OS? *cackles*
not to echo Linus or anything, he sounds like his objective os to combat microsoft on the desktop. I think personally that it is far better to exceed or be superior to Microsoft for technical reasons more than market share reasons. Besides...last time I checked the average non-poweruser on windows is just as lost as they would be in KDE, for example, if not more. And were said powerusers not almost all gamers, they'd likely find KDE superior if they gave it a chance (to compare similar DE's).
my $.02
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
...a complete list. Over 2,000,000 results.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
The idea of the perfect Linux distribution is certainly an interesting one.
In my estimation, the perfect distro will be written entirely in ix86 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE, rather than this highly intermediary jargon known as C and its associated inept compilers.
Only in assembly language can the software fit the machine like "hand in glove." This is the ultimate in performance and efficiency. This is undeniably perfection.
The Debian organization, through a collective effort of its members, should embark upon a recasting of the Linux kernel and the entire GNU project into pure assembly code.
Furthermore, a moratorium should be declared to halt all further development in any other language beside machine language.
An enormous potential exists just for the taking.
One of the things I love most about the Mac is its drag+drop installations. You won't have to worry about system dependancies (as much) if you just make the drag+drop installer include all the libraries that the application in question needs, in the application's folder. Mozilla can have its own private version of GTK. Rhythmbox can have its own version of gstreamer, etc.
--
Yes, I posted this on OSnews.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Nothing as revolutionary as what that guy is saying, but what does it take to create your own distro?
By distro, I mean mini-distro (or sub-distro) of course. How hard is it to take your favorite distro (or a base kernel) and throw out all the crap you don't want, then burn an ISO?
Are there any resources for this type of project? What about services that will let you pick and choose exactly what you want, and nothing you don't want. Then, they (it) send you your custom distro, solving all the dependency issues and stuff. Is there anything like this?
Some examples would be...
I would love a disk that just had enough to set up a minimal file server, or a web server. A filtering bridge would be cool as well. What about a My/PostgreSQL server?
Remember, convenience is great for noobs and wizards alike.
A verbose filesystem for the user (through symlinks or other masked methods).
One GUI to pour all your resources into.
One or two applications of the same type (to limit bloat, confusion for newbs, and the "too many CDs" problem).
I think he was pretty reasonable overall. The only really questionable item was how he wanted to deal with dependency problems. He wanted to put every known library known to man in the distro. apparently. Not a good solution IMHO.
exp(A*(t-tau)) = I + A*(t-tau)
My distro will also:
observe my web surfing habits, and automatically download buttloads of pr0n based upon my preferences
telecommute and perform all my tasks for me
make coffee for me in the morning
take care of 'morning wood' for me
b*tch out telemarketers who call
do my laundry
fix Wine so all Windows games work on it
and spam Microsoft when its idle
Hell if you're gonna fantasize, fantasize BIG!
I don't know why this type of thing isn't more popular with today's large distributions - it would be nice if there was a single site where you could go for install packages specific to your distribution that were guaranteed to work.
You mean, like RHN?
with out of the box read/write access on fat32, cd-rw, and floppy drives.
The hard disks would just be data drives.
Add a boot settings config file in hd0's root directory, and you have a fully bootable, configurable linux version without all of the installation hassles.
Windows is already going there with a push for run from CD-ROM without installation needed software.
The article illustrates one of the problems I see with the various distros out there. There's just SO much availible, I just don't know where to start. It's rather intimidating. Also, why should I have to learn the ins and outs of 2 or more DEs (KDE, Gnome and maybe others) to get all the functionality that should be availible in one. I think this is one of the reasons why people put up with Windows despite Microsofts draconian EULAs: there's a consistant look and feel there that just isn't availible on linux (yet).
/usr didn't mean USER but rather Unix System Resources. WTF?)
And on a similar note, I definitly agree with the authors idea of changing default directory names to be more user friendly (it wasn't up until 2 years ago that I found out that
But how come I never see you on Jesusgeeks? Or maybe I do. In any case, I suggest you get your large ASCII penis and junk characters filter evading skills over there and represent for the glory of God almighty.
Having worked on a few large projects I'm always amazed how you can start with a clear set of ideas like this guy and wind up with a monstrosity. I'm pretty sure a Linux distro meeting my needs could easily fit on one CD -source and all. Instead I wind up installing 3CDs because. It's just too hard to say "no".
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I was expecting to see something radical, like proper usability testing.
"Dropping legacy support and not being dependant on RPMs will open up the doorway for my engineers to revolutionize Linux software installation... ...The second part of this step is to set up an actively developed software repository on the internet. Users aren't stupid... blah blah blah"
1. Why does everyone think RPM is responsible for poorly packaged RPMs? I mean come on! Gentoo, actually, has an awesome system, but it's not entirely due to being RPMless.
2. How about rawhide and redhat contrib? Freshmeat for the daring... I guess the article does have a point, though. Pick a random graphical application on freshmeat and you have a 1 in 7 chance of it being compatible with your system. (gnome 1.4? 2.0? 2.2??? not to mention kde...) FreeBSD has made compat-libs an artform.
3. Users aren't stupid??? I stopped reading here.
Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God, how I love it. - Gen. George Patton
I was the only person to run it too. I first installed Linux back in 1993, and except for the basic kernel and compiler (which were SLS) I manually tracked down the sources to everything I needed and compiled it myself. I kept everything up to date by myself, and even went through some standard library changes, and the big move to the ELF executable format. I had networking, and X running twm very well on my 386SX. When I switched computers, I'd just make a boot disk, make a filesystem, move a big tarball from one machine to the other with floppies, untar it, and reconfigure everything by hand. I learned so much about how UNIX works in those years, but it eventually became too much work to keep it all running. I was spending most of my time tracking down sources, compiling, installing, and configuring my machine.
So, I installed Red Hat 4.0 and later moved to Debian. I'd recommend that everyone should have the opportunity to build a linux system from scratch, even if it's just a fairly simple single floppy boot disk distribution. Get the kernel and filesystem installed. Build init from sources on another machine. Download a prebuild gcc compiler from the net, and the sources to gcc, and build a stage two compiler and install it. Get the XFree86 sources and compile them. Same goes for xterm and the other utilities.
This is a much different experience than installing Red Hat, or Slackware, or Gentoo, and I promise you'll learn a lot and have fun at the same time.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Isn't that a Barenaked Ladies song?
"If I Had My Own Distro"
If I Had My Own Distro
If I Had My Own Distro
I would code my own FS
I would code my own FS
and, If I Had My Own Distro
If I Had My Own Distro
Design a sensible directory structure
Keep those symlinks all in order
If I Had My Own Distro
If I Had My Own Distro
Well, I'd select only ONE desktop
A nice reliant environment
.
.
.
Something like that.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Ok, so this guy has an article about how confusing it is that there's a zllion GNU/Linux distros, and he wants to add one more -- his own? His own distro which does everything backwards from other distros, so that users can't use any of the help-documents that apply to all GNU/Linux distros?
/boot -- the portion you boot from. /dev -- where devices (like your CDROM) are. /mnt -- where devices are mounted and accessible from. /root and /usr -- where most of the applicaitons are. Then there's /home -- where the user's stuff is. How exactly doesn't this make sense? My suggested improvements would be renaming /dev to /devices, /usr to /user, and /mnt to /mounted-devices.
His complaints abou the file-system hierarchy are noted. However, I believe he is wrong. There is
I think this guy's comments are certainly not taylored towards making a good GNU/Linux distributiion overall -- but only one that is good for people with 1+GHz systems. Only allowing people to choose what are clearly the most bloated applications? I don't think so. Obviously, this guy doesn't give a flying fuck about anyone who wants to use Linux for older computers.
Rather than eliminating choices, the distributions should give users the information to make better choices. Mark one e-mail client as the preferred "light" client, and several others as preferred "well-featured" clients for various environments. Also, for categories (in Gentoo) like net-mail, provide a spreadsheet of features and which e-mail clients have those features, as well as binary-sizes, RAM-sizes, and benchmarks of run-time performance, load-time; also, user ratings.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
as the subjunctive mood in my native tongue is relegated to the trash-heap of human expression.
The article blurb should be corrected thus:
"...explaining what he would do if he were a developer..."
If you do not understand the distinction, please examine this fine explanation from englishclub.com
Where can I get a CD that I put in my computer, click the appropriate "Yes/Ok" buttons a few times, and have Linux on my computer, with a web browser and a word processor, that all my hardware automatically works with, including my internet connection through my router to my cable modem, as well as my video and sound cards, that automagically downloads any updates I need, and works with anything I happen to plug into the USB port?
Where would I get something like that?
The very fact that I don't know whether something like that exists, much less where to get it, is exactly why people use windows.
paintball
I read the first page of this and it sounds like,
"If I had my own Linux distro I would make it something other than Linux."
In fact he almost says this explicitly on the third page, where he suggests that if he had the VC he would work from a BSD for licensing reasons.
Seriously I think a Linux has a lot of flaws, due largely to the fact that it has grown organically over the last ten years or so. But if you want to shake everything up, change standards etc. don't call it Linux call it "MyOS" or "MyBSD" or something.
I would love to do an operating system from scratch, if only I had 10 years and the support of thousands of developers around the world...
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
He covers a lot of overlooked stuff. A lot of the people working on having a desktop-ready linux seem to think that you can just throw on some clone of LinuxConf or YaST that you made yourself and call it a day.
Not true.
The math and CS departments at my school have started maintaining machines running Red Hat in any computer lab they can exercise any control over. Naturally, students who aren't familiar with linux try them out. Seeing as how I work the helpdesk and I'm the one everybody seems to come to for help with installing linux anyway, I end up helping them out a lot, and I've noticed a few things.
The author's comments on the filesystem are dead-on, but don't go far enough. I've helped users who are trying to save files on the desktop, and they expect the desktop to be an option in file pickers. I would like it to be there, too - having to go to "/home/uname/Desktop" is not intuitive, and it's a pain in the ass. This should be something that is global to all file handling dialogs. KDE does it in a half-assed way (I don't know about Gnome 2), and it doesn't really help much anyway since all applications seem to want to write their own dialogs from scratch, anyway.
KDE and Gnome need to come to an agreement on some common dialogs, work on a design for these dialogs and how they will work, and then implement them using a shared library that both will access. I don't care how it is implemented - the dialogs can be written in straight X11 so it looks the same on both, or the library can check for what environment is being used and pop up a dialog that is written using GTK+ or QT. As long as they look and work the same, I'm happy.
Another one is networking. We've tried finding a good way to help students who aren't good with Linux to access our campus network resources. LinNeighborhood is the best we've come up with so far, and that doesn't even get to the configuration issues that pop up for people trying to get their own linux boxen connected to the network. Come on, people. Most everyone using Samba is connecting to Windows networks. Windows networks usually have pretty much the same configuration. Why the heck can't we have distros that set up Samba by default, have Samba's default configuration be for a standard Windows network, and give users a decent system? On top of it, there is no good network browser. Apple gives me splat-K and pops shares up on my desktop. Windows gives me Network Neighborhood and acts as if all shares on a network are already in my filesystem. LinNeighborhood makes me mount everything, then forces me to go into the filesystem again and find where I mounted the share, and it asks me for my username and password every step of the way. In this case, I like the Apple model best. Give me a "connect to server" option in my start menu, and when I connect to a server, pop up an icon on my desktop.
While we're on the subject of things just popping up without any hassle, if your distro isn't using DevFS yet, get it switched the heck over. If the driver you're writing isn't DevFS compatible, get it working that way.
Anyway, I could go on and on, but the point is, there are a whole lot of details involved in a good desktop OS. Linux is a great desktop OS for me, but I am comfortable enough with Linux to handle the hassle, and I've made it over the 2-year learning curve. Anyone who thinks that drag'n'drop and a somewhat working office suite makes a complete desktop OS for the general public needs to get a clue.
This sounds like a poorly thought out plan by someone too lazy to try it.
More readable filesystem, yawn.
You don't really need to look at it anyway, users only see their home directory.
People who pay get better servers, excellent idea.
Games and contests to keep people interested, uh yeah because flash is always the best way to create real value.
And some good quotes
"The GPL provides little room for making money on software"
"We will be good open source citizens, but we will protect some of our investment."
"Even the minimal install will include every common system tool my develops can think of. We don't want anyone, anytime, to have dependancy problems."
I think this proposal is soo poorly thought out, it isn't even worth considering.
There's not a single thing he mentioned that Mac OS X doesn't have. Not one single thing. If he hadn't mentioned it once in his article I would guess that he had either never heard of it, or was making a thinly veiled jab at the OS community for not achieving anything that comes close to the usability of Mac OS X.
If I had my own distro
(If I had my own distro)
I'd buy you a red hat
(but not a real red hat thats cruel)
SCO to Hell
Note: there's a warning page for those not clicking from the main article page. Just click through.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
There are two areas that most need fixing. Filesystem structure, configurability of apps, and other things aren't what need fixing most.
We need fewer, better (how about, doesn't crash often, for starters) apps and tools. After using Linux for several years for servers, this weekend I actually tried to use it as a desktop OS. I had a big mess of files, source, and other docs (of my own making) that I had to try to get organized.
Gnome Nautilus crashed frequently. It paused for several seconds at a time periodically (top showed no activity, no load). It didn't redraw all the time as it should. It sometimes wouldn't allow an operation (such as deleting an empty folder), for no apparent reason.
KDE (konquerer) was moderately better, but it still crashed periodically.
There will forever be debates over KDE vs Gnome, but the fact is, we'd be better off with just one desktop that worked (dare I say, as good as Windows). Windows has its problems, but it is much more reliable as a desktop OS, in terms of application behavior.
And then we have desktop apps - word processors, spreadsheets, etc. How many email clients do we need? How many word processors? There needs to be some consolidation and some serious quality improvement. Then we can diverge into competing products. But right now, in general, we have a bunch of decent, but still-too-buggy apps.
Last, we need more complete, universally supported OS management tools. Whether it's linuxconf, webmin, etc., we need one or two solid tools for helping non-shell users manage their OS. Right now we have some nice individual tools, and some decent tool umbrellas, but it's still not clean and uniform.
I know you can't expect people working for free to do exactly what you want, but it would be nice if half of the creative energy spent was directed toward some of these goals, rather than yet-another-IM, or WM, or screensaver, etc. Let's get one to three of each type of app or tool, and one or two desktop managers, etc.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
All that Linux needs to get to the next level is one thing:
PERFECT MS Office importing and exporting.
That's it - the main obstacle to widespread success.
"We do not do these things because they are easy, we do them because they are hard."
This is the same mindset of the handful of *nix users. They like the fact that linux is hard and menacing to Joe Sixpack because that CLI can really foul things up. That fact also gives the user a feeling of superiority that only an elect few can use this esoteric and powerful operating system.
The minute that linux becomes usable by the masses and things "just work" then they will cry foul and say Linus sold out or RedHat/Mandrake/SUSE/etc sold out Linus or the dream of open source. Unfortunately these people are the same folks who can make linux ready for the desktop and considering the number of abandoned projects on Sourceforge or the number of projects that people start rather than simply picking up the ball on a project similar to their idea this will never happen in our lifetime.
I mourn for what linux could have been.
I think Linux could benefit from scrapping X and developing a new, fast GUI system like Windows or MacOS. X is too dependent on networking protocols and is just pretty goddamn slow all-around. It will take a lot of effort to make something like this happen, but if Apple could do it why can't the open source community do it too? Instead of developing Window Manager # 123480, people need to collaborate and make a common, consistent, and standard layout that all programs can use, without all the bloat of the gtk+ and QT toolkits.
"The GPL provides little room for making money on software."
Rent Revolution OS., nuggz You'll hear all the main Linux players discuss the GPL and making money. That's practically a quote from the guys who wrote the GPL . The fact that you think it's funny pretty much illustrates that you have no clue what you're talking about.
One thing that I didn't see him mention was a standardized GUI help facility with a search feature. It seems that most times I open a help file it is usually either a text file or html which only allows me to find keywords on the particular page I am looking at. xman doesn't count because it is not slick, is not showing text formatting correctly, is not hyperlinked, and man pages are being maintained less and less these days.
Shut up with these annoying wishes of linux being OSX!
OSX is funded by tons of money, linux is free. Quit being cheap little fucks and wanting something for nothing all of the time. STFU and go write some code if you care that much, then you'll actually be helping something instead of just being annoying. Geez.
And here is the obligatory statement about being modded down as a troll in hopes of not actually being modded down as a troll, etc etc. Teh intarweb is suck sometimes.
If I had a distro, I'd pay Microsoft to make it installable, make it usable, make it intuitive to install programs, etc...
Since I started using linux (and I've been very happy with it) I've been saying a few things around "what it needs" in order to be a full-on desktop computer. Apps aren't the problem (Openoffice is great, mozilla/galeon/konqueror are great, Evolution is great, sylpheed is great etc. etc. etc.). The problem is overall use.
First of all, it needs a good package system. RPMs almost do it. Apt is great, but hasn't yet been implemented in a decent distro with user-friendliness abound (Not to mention debian stable trees are in serious need of more consistent updating. Gnome 1.6 just doesn't do it for me.)
Basically, what's in dire need is a decent implementation of a software installer. Something similar to RPMs with a decent program-specific gui. I guess what I'm really hoping for is self-extracting shell scripts. But the main problem I have with this is running them from a graphical mode. These days, I use mandrake's software installer, though that does nothing to help configure the programs themselves for my personal use, something that InstallShield has a definate advantage of. The Software Installer has a great implementation of urpmi and handles dependencies rather well.
Package management is the main difference between distros and is the one thing that makes one distro better/worse than another, other than installers. Frankly, though, I think that Mandrake and Red Hat installers have gotten to the point where they're about as good as a Windows installer. They just need a "really dumb user mode" that holds your hand down the whole way.
I dislike what the author of the article says about removing legacy support. This is what really bugs me about Lindows and Xandros: They're more user friendly but they do so by eliminating a lot of the advantages of linux other than the very low-level "keep it from crashing" stuff. I think the important idea is to render all the low-level uber-user stuff obsolete but still keep it available. Removing Legacy support falls right underneath this category. One of the main issues people have had with MacOS releases and Windows is that they only work on top-of-the-line hardware and the like.
Yeah, sure, some stuff _should_ require top-of-the-line hardware. I don't expect that UT2003 should run on my old 486. But the OS that runs it should, imo. Cross-compatibility for legacy hardware is probably one of the main reasons linux came into being and is one of the main reasons for its stability. This is what open source is thoroughly about: Making something everybody can use.
The main thing that linux needs though if you ask me on a developer standpoint is a user-friendly and powerful software package manager. Rpms and debs just don't do it. However, the _really_ important thing in getting linux to the end user in a nice package is simply to promote its use. The more it gets used, the more support there will be for it, the more support the better drivers and the like there will be. One of the main problems I've seen with people using stuff like Drake or Redhat is problems getting their hardware to run perfectly (under X and the like, soundcards and so on). There need to be better auto-detection and driver support, as there always has been. Probably the main reason I'm still using Linux today as my primary OS is that the first time I used Mandrake, _everything_ got detected right off the bat. Of course, I had problems with the software in 8.2, but by the time I got to where I am now, in 9.1, the ONLY problem I have is with getting wine running (Bamboo doesn't have the wine with glibc support, and I'm getting a plethora of other problems with the Cooker build).
So yeah. I guess that's all I wanted to say about that. Distro's are getting very close to being a feasible alternative for the desktop to Windows. It just needs more exposure and fewer people writing Windows-only apps.
Karma: Non-Heinous
>1: the stuff he says on the first page is basically a bunch of static linkx that can be done easily.
The obvious question is: WHY they have not being done then if it is so "easy" to do them?
That alone shows that your comment is a flamebait to the author, not even bothering to understand the real issues he is discussing. Instead, we get your Linux elitism of "oh, yeah, that's easy to do, big deal". DO IT THEN.
I'd do away with packages & installers altogether in favor of directory-based applications a la RiscOS and MacOS. You can how this could work with the ROX project.
Drag 'n drop installation! Think of the possibilities! Of course if you have OS X anywhere you don't have to imagine it...
-- Cerebus
... no one would use it, everyone would have their own...
I mean that in a good way.
Instead of going and creating yet another Linux distribution, it would be more useful to create a very well-organized collection of inforamation on various programs that typically come with Linux distributions.
This would include basic setup instructions, troubleshooting, and everything related to that. In the applications section there would be data sheets for each application/group of applications, listing its data files and sizes, dependencies, suggested system requirements, and features in comparison to similar programs.
1: the stuff he says on the first page is basically a bunch of static linkx that can be done easily.
The static links can be done quite easily and should be, but are not. You haven't made a point here.
2: You cannot have a Gentoo style community unless you are a distro that caters to people who are willing to go to great lengths to learn more about their OS and computer hardware.
That explains why Redhat pretty much owns the commercial Linux market and thereby has the largest community, right? Because they make it a pain to use your computer by wasting all your time just trying to get everything compiled? Or was it, perhaps, that they made an attempt to make their product as unhostile to users as they knew how?
3: the one desktop environment is stupid. Thats one of the reasons I switched from windows, that their desktop environment is idiotic, especially in the same paragraph as talking about how linux offers choice.
If this distro were to only come with KDE, there is nothing keeping a user from installing GNOME or any other desktop environment, but it certainly avoids confusion for people that don't need or want the choice. There is such a thing as too many choices interfering with productivity, and believe it or not, most people have a computer to be productive -- not to proclaim their Gentoo l33tness on Slashdot.
4: installers are not necessary. try making a gui frontend to Gentoo's emerge/portage if you want a good install system. Not only does it download and update, but it also works. really well.
Really? I'm at a loss as to how you came to this conclusion after millions and possibly billions of dollars in marketing research from several major software manufacturers have determined otherwise. Most people don't like to waste all their time compiling. We have jobs, you know.
5: this asshat cannot spell bruce perens' last name. I am supposed to trust him with my OS? *cackles*
I was wondering how you were able to speak with such authority on Linux usability. Then I realized it was because you in all your glory were able to spell Bruce Perens' name.
not to echo Linus or anything, he sounds like his objective os to combat microsoft on the desktop. I think personally that it is far better to exceed or be superior to Microsoft for technical reasons more than market share reasons. Besides...last time I checked the average non-poweruser on windows is just as lost as they would be in KDE, for example, if not more. And were said powerusers not almost all gamers, they'd likely find KDE superior if they gave it a chance (to compare similar DE's).
That is barely coherent, but I'm going to try to respond to it anyway. Of course this make-believe distro has the objective of competing with Windows on the desktop, and of course it's better to exceed the standards set by Microsoft, but at this point Linux on the desktop needs to just reach the same level. You already trying to abolish simple installations, and you think your insight will enable Linux to gain any kind of marketshare over Windows?
my $.02
Absolutely worthless.
I have read the beginning of the article until :
/users, /apps, /system, /hardware, /downloads, /logs, /servers, /shared, and more. Then, using symlinks, we're going to recreate the current basic layout of the standard Linux/BSD filesystem to assist developers in porting applications. For example, our system would probably include the following the symlinks: /home -> /users /var -> /logs
/home /users" etc.
but if I'm going to run my own distribution, I'm going to make a sensible directory structure:
well that distribution exists, I have it. It's any distro where you type, as root : "ln -s
No need to make another distro for that. When people will understand that a linux distro is fully customizable we'll have no more need of yet another distro.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
It would have a bsd core And if I had my own distro... It would scale infinitly And if I had my own distro... It would have win gui Haven't you always wanted a win gui! And if I had my own distro... It would run all my games.........
It's called FUSI Linux.
You can make your own with the help of http://linuxfromscratch.org
A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it. -- Einstein
1: the stuff he says on the first page is basically a bunch of static linkx that can be done easily.
He said as much on the page (although he would use symlinks in a lot of the cases, which would be a better idea). The point is that even if it can be done easily, nobody buth Apple has done it yet.
2: You cannot have a Gentoo style community unless you are a distro that caters to people who are willing to go to great lengths to learn more about their OS and computer hardware.
You can have a Gentoo style community with people who are interested in computers. Anyone using linux already fits this criterion whether they're 1337 or not. Besides, who's to say that people who like to dig into the hardware wouldn't flock to a distro like this? I'm a gentoo junkie, too. The reason I went to Gentoo is because of portage - the install is a pain in the ass, but once I'm done I have the only linux distro I know of with a decent install/uninstall process. I like that. Just because I can deal with the system doesn't mean I want to every day. I'll gladly take some gloss that's implemented well (the way what little gloss Gentoo has is).
I'm not sure where this idea that hackers enjoy computers that are difficult to use came from, but I'm pretty sure it's either teenage boys or people who've come to linux because it's l33t.
3: the one desktop environment is stupid. Thats one of the reasons I switched from windows, that their desktop environment is idiotic, especially in the same paragraph as talking about how linux offers choice.
Fine. Then make your own distro that uses the dekstop environment you like. If you like no desktop environment, go for it. Nobody says there has to be just one linux distro.
4: installers are not necessary. try making a gui frontend to Gentoo's emerge/portage if you want a good install system. Not only does it download and update, but it also works. really well.
If I want to have some options about how a package is installed on my system, installers are necessary, even if having installers means making a system like portage a bit more interactive. Especially if we're talking about a distro that's designed for the desktop, having to fool with portage's USE variables is not a very good way to go about having customizing how things are installed. In a desktop distro, something like USE variables should be limited to setting system defaults.
not to echo Linus or anything, he sounds like his objective os to combat microsoft on the desktop. I think personally that it is far better to exceed or be superior to Microsoft for technical reasons more than market share reasons.
We're in the 21st century. I think it's fair to say that having a decent GUI can be considered a technical reason to use an OS. When most people get into arguments about desktop OSes, the arguments center around one of two things - GUI or application/hardware support. Why do most people complain about windows? Its sucky GUI comes up as often as anything else. How come it's sensible to complain about Windows's crappy gui but not to point out that Linux's gui is even crappier?
Besides...last time I checked the average non-poweruser on windows is just as lost as they would be in KDE, for example, if not more. And were said powerusers not almost all gamers, they'd likely find KDE superior if they gave it a chance (to compare similar DE's).
You haven't been spending much time helping non-powerusers work with KDE, have you? It's one of my job expectations. I can tell you with complete certainty that most people find KDE much, much harder to use than Windows. Yeah, sure, you can read all those nice anecdotes about someone who set up a linux box for mom and dad and how they find it easier to use. For every one of those anecdotes I've heard, I deal with several people per day who can't even figure out how to eject a CD using KDE. (Of course, the eject button on the drive won't work because the CD is mounted.)
Windows has ssomething like a 96% market share, and with each distribution, they up the hardware ante to provide new eye candy and features.
Learn it. Understand it.
Why are so many Linux geeks so reluctant to make changes that might make the system EASIER?
It would have a bsd core
And if I had my own distro...
It would scale infinitly
And if I had my own distro...
It would have win gui
Haven't you always wanted a win gui!
And if I had my own distro...
It would run all my games.........
...most of the problem isn't at the top level, it's farther down. I can say this, as someone learning all of this at the moment. I can figure out that systemwide config will probably be under /etc. *Where* under /etc is the problem. That sort of thing. I know I'm a little more savvy than a lot of people, but it really isn't any harder to pick up that scheme than 'C:\Program Files\', 'C:\Documents and Settings', etc. (And they're far quicker to type--I'm all for keeping the short versions!)
I also agree with not cutting out options, but his point about setting defaults certainly stands. I'd like to see it continue to come with a bunch of options, but make it easier--one config utility, for example--to set which mail/browser/whatever I want to use, and hide the other options from the menu. Or maybe even do that straight from install, and not even install the others, but give me an easy way to add them later if I want them.
Interesting article. Some thoughts.
All that aside, I think a Distro should emphasize the following, in order:
He says there are too many distros out there with only minor changes and then he spec's out his "ideal" distro, that is basically RedHat with a lot of stuff missing and the directory tree mangled to ensure POSIX non-compliance.
But that's what's great about Linux, if that's what he wants to do, nobody is stopping him. So I say, go for it, and maybe your distro will take off and become the Great American Distro.
Personally, I am not interested in turning my unix OS into a Mac OS or a win32 OS. If I wanted that, then I would use that. I LIKE POSIX, I LIKE up2date -u. Happily, Linux also means that I will never be forced to accept his ideas of what a good OS should be, I get to make my own too.
maybe because we own PC's, perchance?
You can't "just get Mac OS X". You have to get a Mac with it. Buying a whole new computer is a lot more expensive than changing distros.
Besides, a lot of us don't just use Linux because it's unix. Personally, I like to use Linux because I'm sick of getting dicked over by Microsoft. I've been watching Apple since OS X came out and thinking about the switch for a while, but the fact that Apple also likes to dick its customers over on a fairly regular basis makes me wary about going for it.
I ask again...
Where do I get the CD that I put in the drive?
paintball
Just a nitpick- Gentoo's portage system does not force you to compile everything. There is a switch to download binary versions of stuff, and you can also set it to download binaries by default.
Overall, I think portage has it right more than any other group. A GUI install would be nice, and I'd like to see some sort of gentoo take-off that is to Gentoo what Mandrake is to Red Hat.
Really, ALL WRONG! I keep seeing posts about the GUI. "It's not pretty enough" or "The install is not graphical" or "I want icons on my desktop". What the hell is up with all that?
I mean, if the install is done in ascii, great! It'll start faster, work on any monitor / graphics card, and instead of looking at some bubbly picture / GUI trying to figure out what the fuck to click on next, I'll have a question right in front of me IN PLAIN, EASY TO READ TEXT.
KDE / Gnome isn't bubbly/pretty enough? Damn, I feel sorry for you if you like to have bullshit on your screen that doesn't do anything and doesn't provide any information. Good for you, it looks pretty; it also takes up half your screen.
Gah, I could go on forever. Don't even get me started about dependency problems. I want an os that works. The main reason linux is unstable is all the graphics bullshit. I have NEVER had linux crash on me, X crashes every month or so, mozilla crashes weekly, and how about mozilla plugins? Twice as often. You see the trend here? To much laying, too much complexity. No, it's not good enough to write programs using the X11 API.... we need another layer! Yeah! That's it! Lets add another layer so things take up more memory, are slower, and have more bugs! Yay! Fuck all that.... grr... agrivated rant over...
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
When I install some new software on my linux box, /foo. Why? /foo.
/foo's subdirectories /etc/ld.so.conf and the rest.
/etc, /tmp, /var, /proc, /dev.
/.
/etc/exec.conf) to map #!-style interpreters /usr/bin/perl; I want it to reside in /perl/bin/perl or /fuckstar/bin/perl if I like.)
/usr &c. hierarchies are not modular;
say program Foo, I install it in
Because it's so easy to zap it: rm -r
Then, if necessary, I add
to appropriate path-variables and conf-files.
PATH, INCLUDE_PATH,
IMHO, only a minimum number of directories
should be standardized:
Most pieces of binary release should come
in tarballs to be unpacked in
In my investigations, very little issues have
appeared. One thing: exec() needs a conf-file
(say
to proper places, so as to eliminate the need for
symlinks. (I don't want the perl binary to reside
in
The
uninstalling under them demands some sort of
database, which is complex.
From the article. "Let's start by delving right into it: let's address some Unix-wide issues, that will make our development unique. The file system is a nightmare for a normal user. This has been covered in exhaustive detail by hundreds of articles, but if I'm going to run my own distribution, I'm going to make a sensible directory structure: /users, /apps, /system, /hardware, /downloads, /logs, /servers, /shared, and more."
Any article that is supposed to be addressing making Linux easer that starts out by talking about the directory structure has failed before it has even started.
Start with the superfluous cosmetic BS that makes a system look cool, highly useable/intuitive, and elegant, then program around those needs.
If you partitioned your system properly, then just edit your /etc/fstab to change stuff. Then, just edit your $PATH variables to point to the new directories. I just changed my /home to users as an experiment, and it works perfectly.
Knoppix is a Linux distro that pretty much does what you want - it tries hard to detect almost any hardware and seems to succeed pretty well. You can try it out just by burning or buying a CD, no need to install on your hard disk until you're happy it does what you want. It's also Debian-based so 'apt-get' will get you the latest packages and figure out dependencies. Not so easy to install on an HDD but overall I'm very impressed - the closest I've seen to a plug-and-play Linux CD. See http://www.knoppix.net/ for more information, but beware that the site is not as polished as the distro.
If you have DHCP on your network, it auto-configures everything, so within a few minutes (takes time to boot KDE from CD) you have a working Linux workstation even if the PC normally runs Windows.
You could take a girl on a date, and MAYBE even have sex!
paintball
designed specifically for creating beowulf clusters... Imagine that!
If I had a Linux distro (If I had a Linux distro)
I'd wanna support your mouse (I would really support your mouse)
If I had a Linux distro (If I had a Linux distro)
I'd load a GUI for your mouse (Maybe KDE 3 or Gnome)
And if I had a Linux distro (If I had a Linux distro)
Well, I'd autoprobe your hardware (Hey, that's a nice NVidia card!)
If I had a Linux distro I'd fill your drive...
If I had a Linux distro
I'd load every package under the sun
If I had Linux distro
C'mon, you know it'd be lots of fun
If I had Linux distro
Maybe we could put like a little tiny package manager in there
You know, we could just like, run the package manager
Like, look at all the names and stuff
There would already be a huge list and everything
Like little packaged apps and everthing
They have packaged apps but they don't have packaged distros
Well, can you blame 'em
Uh, yeah
If I had a Linux distro (If I had a Linux distro)
Well I'd compile everything from scratch (Except Mozilla, that's just cruel)
And if I had a Linux distro (If I had a Linux distro)
Well I'd include O'Reilly books (Yep, with the llamas and the emus)
And if I had a Linux distro (If I had a a Linux distro)
Well I'd install millions of games (Ooh, all them crazy Minesweeper clones!)
And If I had a Linux distro I'd fill your drive...
If I had a Linux distro
You'd have every GUI under the sun
If I had a Linux distro
Well you know you can't use just one
If I had a Linux distro
We wouldn't have to eat Kraft Dinner
But we would eat Kraft Dinner
Of course we would, we'd just eat less
'Cause we wouldn't be making a dime off this thing
That's right, we'd probably have to eat Ramen, actually
Mmmmmm, noodles
If I had a Linux distro (If I had a Linux distro)
Well I'd update it every night (Just 'cause bleeding edge is cool)
And if I had a Linux distro (If I had a Linux distro)
Well, I'd bloat the kernel to death (Video4Linux and throw in ALSA!)
If I had a Linux distro (If I had a Linux distro)
Well I'd include a monkey (Haven't you always wanted a monkey?)
If I had a Linux distro
I'd fill your driiiive...
If I had a Linux distro, If I had a Linux distro
If I had a Linux distro, If I had a Linux distro
If I had a Linux distro
I'd be killed.
--
Sorry, but as soon as I saw the title of this story this had to be written.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Where would I get something like that?
This is a trick question - it doesn't exist.
The very fact that I don't know whether something like that exists, much less where to get it, is exactly why people use windows.
Whoa whoa whoa. Are you claiming that Windows does all of the above? Hmm, let's see...
Where can I get a CD that I put in my computer, click the appropriate "Yes/Ok" buttons a few times, and have Linux on my computer,
Sorry, doesn't work like that with Windows. Now you may get lucky with an installation and have it work, but I have seen and been involved with my fair share of nightmare Windows installs. Most likely the average user will buy a system with Windows on it. That has nothing to do with the merits of the OS.
with a web browser
Windows - yep. Linux - yep, and most likely more than one
and a word processor
Windows - nope. You have to buy that separately. Whoops, I mean license that separately. Linux - yep (probably one or two different ones, depending on distro)
that all my hardware automatically works with,
How do you think hardware works with an OS? Automatically? Hardly. Vendors create drivers for Windows, not the other way around. Don't praise the OS for that, that is a result of years of holding the OS monopoly. But times are changing, and most Linux distros will work with most of your hardware. Of course, I am not sure what you mean my hardware either. If you are talking internal PC hardware, Linux has you covered.
including my internet connection through my router to my cable modem
Windows - check. Linux - check. These both assume that you have some kind of standard setup.
as well as my video and sound cards,
Notoriously bad on both systems. But Windows has the driver edge because of being the defacto standard. But I find it funny how when drivers don't work on Linux they blame Linux, but when they have problems on Windows, they blame the hardware.
that automagically downloads any updates I need
If you seriously want this, then you have bigger problems.
and works with anything I happen to plug into the USB port?
Again, you are probably talking about 3rd party software/drivers, not Windows stuff.
But if you want one CD that does all that, check out Knoppix. Sorry, there aren't any yes/no menus to click through, but it doesn't install on your system either. I am pretty sure it will have everything you want. You won't find anything like it in the Windows world, that is for sure.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Only BeOS was more sophisticated with the GUI glued into the kernel. It was the most beautiful OS I had ever seen (havent seen OSX yet) and it somehow didnt make it. Lycoris Xandros Lindows etc are trying to push for the desktop but underneath its all Linux. With that comes the painful lack of standards, not even installation or LSB standards, and all the mess. Each of these distros is an island in itself with its community, packages, interface etc. You cant put ones package and install it on another, or take a user of one of these distros, put her on another and expect her to feel at home, and we're talking about the same OS. Anyone who even dreamed of porting J2EE or websphere to slackware say, knows this.
All these new OS companies are falling apart because of the inherent lack of a few things in Linux. RedHat, SuSE and Linus could help here, SuSE did chip in with their LSB, but it was obviously a bad investment. If a company like RedHat can be confident of their success, and create good industry standards without fearing being overthrown, the Linux desktop can finally take off. People could choose one distro, click n run any app developed by some teenager in his basement and it will work just fine. This will move far more users from Windows to Linux.
The BSDs could have done this but they seperated much longer ago. FreeBSD remains the biggest and have quite a clean system on their hands, ready for any major changes or making inroads in the industry.. but the same resolve that gives them the energy to build the most robust OS doesnt let them risk changing the direction of BSD too fast, for BSD is now a culture, and not of being a desktop OS of the masses. Thats why the author here chose FreeBSD. Apple can simply port OSX to x86 and be over with it, dangling it out like darwin is just rubbing salt on the pains of the already desperate crowd.
All the while the geekdom is sick of dual booting and cleaning spyware from the crashing windows installation. Linux is very very big out there, its almost made it. But it has such a long way to go to really reach the stratosphere.. or rather on everyones computer. It was this hope that pushed the tens of thousands of developers to code for the Free OS from version 0.01 to 2.4.20.(and all its associated GNU tools). We're not there yet.
I wonder what I'm doing in my windows partition now. I could be writing this in Linux+opera....
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
"However, in the MODERN world, we have >100 gig disks for $200 usd, a gigabyte of RAM can be had for $150.. It doesn't really MATTER anymore."
Obviously a Microsoft Programmer. Hey it's not like it's your space to waste. Space in Ram and Hard Drives aren't the only reason. And no, "config" files ain't going to cut it. I recommend you read up on shared libraries first. Hey even better. Why don't you statically link all your programs, and do that for a year. You obviously got money to burn on Hard Drives and Memory.
Now we just have to figure out how to get that information to people who don't think of troll-baiting /. for the answer.
paintball
"...show the filesystem layout to your mother and ask her where an application might be located."
i love my best friend dearly, but she (an intelligent young woman in her twenties) didn't know what an APPLICATION was, let alone where she might find one.
this is Stephenson's "Metaphor Shear", methinks. we're too presumptuous about what a user wants, what a user needs, and (most importantly) what will SATISFY a user.
i, personally, think the only real computer interface that will be a success (apart from complete market saturation and the billions of dollars needed to enforce such a monopoly) is limitted, proprietary interfaces like you'd find at an ATM, or on a very basic cell-phone.
Adobe shouldn't be selling software for hundreds of dollars - they should be selling customized workstations for the same money! computers will only be the huge success this author and many like him describe when it is as intuitive as gaming consoles, regardless the OS/vendor/business. as a technician and "yes, i'll fix your computer" geek, i know that NO user likes Microsoft's product, on the whole. and when given the choice of Linux, the reason for staying with Microsoft has nothing to do with useability, it's just that they can go to Best Buy for software or repair.
when computers are *not* customizable, are intuitive, and never crash, the users will be happy. general computing is for hackers. focused computing is necessary for everyone else.
I did exactly that with Windows XP 2 days ago when my hard drive took a dump and I wanted something that wouldn't crash as often as 98SE.
Windows comes with a word processor - WordPad. Not the best or most feature-rich, but it gets the job done for what most people use word processors for.
All my hardware worked - granted, none of it was bleeding edge, but it worked. Same for any device I've had to plug into a USB port.
And yes, I want automagical update downloading. If I'm blindly installing the software to begin with, I don't mind blindly installing the updates to the software either.
XP does it all. End users don't care that it does some of it due to market dominence. They just want something that works.
paintball
The only idea he had that I, personally, like, is to have a global config for mime types.
I would really like to be able to set a config in one place that says to use 'konqueror' for web, 'evolution' for mail, 'mplayer' for all video and 'xmms' for all audio, etc, then have those settings used everywhere.
Unless I am missing something and this can already be done, in which case I would love it someone told me how/where.
We all know that KDE, GNOME, and enlignment suck. I know I open myself to be flamed by the zealots of those listed above but it's true. Linux makes a great server but I would never consider running it as my primary desktop because out of all the myriad of choices I have for desktop none of the provide what me, and I would say the masses, are looking for.
If I was in this theoretical position and had funding to make a working Linux desktop the first thing I would do would be dump XWindows completely. I'll point to a success story on that front that I am sure this post will be riddled with and that is Mac OS X. Mac OS X is successfully because it has BSD under the hood? No, it is successfully because of it's GUI. If OS X had KDE or GNOME, etc it would have bankrupted Apple by now.
Apple has proven that you can run a accepted desktop system on top of a Unix based system. Yes, I know they run on top of BSD but in all honesty BSD is so similar to Linux or any other Unix that that point is mute. It has a different license, a more commercial friendly license. Lets face facts some commercial involvement is required to make a desktop OS get off the ground. Until I can go to Comp USA and purchase the latest version of War Craft and similar products it won't be viable. Yes, some people will use it, those that can compile their own code, etc.. but that is not the masses.
Now, back to why XWindows sucks. To make this point I will make an comparison to a similar situation with a commercial OS. Microsoft Windows; The biggest barrier for innovation is that fact that it has to be backward compatible. You have to be able to run that DOS program from when you were in college. All these desktop packages are just another layer... OS (Linux), GUI (Xwindows), Desktop (KDE, etc). It's crap because I can never program something on the Desktop layer that fixes something on the Xwindows layer. I have never seen a user friendly desktop based upon XWindows. Solaris sucks, HP UNIX, IRIX, Linux, BSD, etc... Until I do I will hold with the fact that it is a failed attempt at a user interface and should be scraped.
That's my take... for what it's worth.
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Few possible solutions, none perfect:
Warn user during delete if any symlinks are pointing there. Requires kernel filesystem rewrite.
Default "ls" should be modified to warn user that the file is a symlink. This may break many shell scripts.
Shells should have "ls" built-in. In interactive mode, it should warn users. Requires users to use one of these shells.
Second problem with symlink is that you can't move up and down in the hierarchy in intuitive way. If you do "cd x/y" followed by "cd ..". You should in directory "x", right? Not necessarily, if you are using symlinks. Since "cd" command is a shell built-in, the shells should be able to keep track of directory navigation and should be able to keep track of this, so that user would in directory "x" even if there are symlinks. This may break some unknown things.
In short, I believe that for home user, symlinks should not be requirement (no executible or scripts should use) and user must get visible signs that they are dealing with symlinks whenever they encounter one.
1) There's no way I'm giving you su access, you might screw things up and blame the distro. /dev or /proc or /usr or anything else like that? Forget it, if it scares you, you'll blame the distro.
2) The package management system is gonna be secret and encrypted, because there's no way I'll let you install anything someone else made, in case it screws the system and you blame the distro.
3) There's no way I'll let you see the filesystem, you might get scared, instead the graphical file browser will only show you a sanitised view of the system, think you're gonna see
4) 2 DE's? no way, choice = panic = blaming the distro
5) Terminal = Nope.. it scares people... see above about what panic equals
6) Linux in a linux distro?? No way... what's the point.. might as well use FreeBSD
7) Open source everything? Nah..
8) Community support that answers every single question promptly.. sure... that'll be easy.. right??
9) Profit!!!
test
Indians are the superior! You white bitchez can't write the code! America is the great Satan, H-1Bs will prevail!
+5 Informative
It's something I always wish Linux does. Give a meaningful names to things, and also dedicate places for different things (like Programs for application folders, Settings for application settings and configureation).
I have a suggestion to add: add a Link/folder/button to the desktop and point it to the root file system. Dont' call that root. Call it somethings like My Computer, or File System.
...a CD that is. If they have problems they call me, whether they have Windows or some Linux.
My conversion rate is slow, one person a year, but I'm satisfied with the results. People are asking me how to do new cool things instead of how to make their computer stop doing stupid things they didn't ask it to.
Please do. Parent and its child comments are very interesting and do contain a lot of info on what and what i not Linux, or MacOSX, or other things which might be considered hybrids, are all about, and, more importantly, what they are and what they are not.
my
X is not slow at all.
Otherwise i wouldn't be playing NWN on Mandrake 9.1 at DOUBLE the framerate that it plays in windows! on the same hardware.
So you think that X is slow? it is not, different WM's like KDE can be slow but that has nothing to do with X.
Why don't you recompile your system for you cpu, NWN played only a bit faster than it did in windows untill i rebuilt my kernel and sdl librarys.
I have seen that behavior in KDE (K Desktop Environment), but not anywhere else.
Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all....
--Thomas J. Kopp
this sounds like a great idea to me.. it really doesn't matter about symlinks and stuff - just the concept he has here is what I've been saying about Linux for years. You could really help the Linux community with this. Just because I really like this idea, I'll provide webspace (on a fast server), forums, basic orginazation, etc. I'll even help develop/test/do whatever - but we need developers and other staff. If you're interested, email me at tytanic11@comcast.net
I think the artical speaks for itself... if he made that distro available I would not touch it and I doubt many others would either.
1) I am quite happy with the present directory structure. I do not want a bunch of symlinks - they are confusing and utterly unnecessary.
2) His idea of what apps to include probably will not coincide with mine. For instance - is he planning on including emacs? How about gcc and g77?
I'm sure he thought about gcc but I'll bet he forgot about g77.
3) He never mentioned the most important aspect of a distro - that is its upgradeability. This is the reason I switched to Debian... Debian can be painlessly upgraded.
I have an old machine with RedHat 6.1 in it. I bought a copy of Mandrake 8.0 Mandrake is NOT installed (does anybody want it?). The reason is the question of doing an upgrade. I _KNOW_ that the moment I try to upgrade that redhat box that it will break all over the place. If I wipe the drive I lose 3 years of work. In fact - if I were to take it out from behind the firewall - it would be hacked within the hour!
For me it was cheaper to go buy ANOTHER computer and leave the old one as it was.
4) He made no mention of security.
5) He has missed the most important areas where Linux needs work. I'd like to offer My Humbol Opinion. The work needs to be in the area of the functionality of a loopback mount. We need to be able to stuff a directory tree into a single file and have the OS mount it automatically - similar to the loopback but with the following difference.
When you do a loopback mount - the whole file system sees it. I want a mount where ONLY a single process tree sees it. This allows one to EASILY create a chroot jail for a user.
Several years ago I tried with Kurt Seifried to create a true chroot jail in linux - we failed.
This automatic mount to a single application could be say bash mounting into a given file or it could be a daemon mounting into a file or it could be an application mounting into a given file. This would make it possible to stuff a complete app into a single file which can be unzipped and pointed too. By doing this, different versions of an app could be simultaneously present in the machine and a user could switch back and forth with a simple pointer change. The pointer could be a symlink.
We are already partway there with the loopback and chroot. Where the problem is stems from the apps that are NOT chrooted. As an admin when I install say something like wxWindows - I would prefer to see only one file. As a user I prefer to see all the files in the package.
This is one step away from a true Virtual Machine for Linux - which we also need. Probably it can be done using User Mode Linux. But I think it should be supported right in the distro.
IMHO - the present filesystem was designed to be lightweight. When disks were 40MB it probably made sense. Now that disks are past 40GB I don't think it makes sense. When they pass the TB mark in a couple years - well - IMHO they are almost unmanagable now.
The underlying reason that this author cannot un-install the apps is because the apps are allowed to spew files all over the system. Most sysadmins don't even know where the files go and they simply trust the developers came up with a reasonable organization. If we go to a filesystem that allows us to force an app to live within a single file - then we can easily remove any old app - we simply delete the file it lives in. People can easily deal with a single file - where the problems come from is when we have 1000's of files and the make clean doesn't work right.
IBM had this concept fully developed years ago under VM/TSO. It was called a Partition DataSet back then.
If we had this concept in linux then for instance X-Windows might live in a file called XFree86_4.1.0.1.PDS and we might use something like ln -s XFree86_4.1.0.1.PDS startx
If so - then when startx is run - the PDS is mounted and the
Point one:
...without all the bloat of the gtk+ and QT toolkits.
X is too dependent on networking protocols and is just pretty goddamn slow all-around.
X is hardly dependent on networking protocols. Local client access to the server happens over Unix Sockets, a very low-latency, architecture-independent solution. Nor is X that slow. X ran jes' fine on my old 386 with 8 MB of RAM and 256K CL graphics card. Let's see the "fast GUI system like Windows or MacOS X" do that.
I think this is the core problem, not X.
Point 2:
Instead of developing Window Manager # 123480, people need to collaborate and make a common, consistent, and standard layout that all programs can use...
If Linux were a business, I'd agree with you. However, Linux is not a business; it's essentially a hobby. Linux' success is based not on the application of business practices, but by a bunch of people having fun writing software.
Sure, there's a lot of businesses interested in Linux, and contributing to Linux for their own needs. But this is after-the-fact; businesses have already accepted Linux. Now they are customising it to fit their own needs, or supporting it out of the understanding that what is good for Linux is good for business.
Anyway, this is all a lot of armchair quarterbacking. Linux is Linux is Linux. Telling a bunch of volunteer developers what they *should* be working on (instead of providing positive and useful feedback on they projects they *are* working on) shows both ingratitude and lack of understanding of the entire Free/Open Source culture.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
1) A manual.
... I'LL GO INSANE.
No more man pages. Ever. I am as sick to death of plowing through all that crap as I know all of you are. If I have to deal with one more half-written, closely-worded, semi-irrelevant man page that doesn't even talk about the stuff I think I know I want to do but I have to read it because I think the command I think I want MIGHT have something to do with what I think I want to do
2) A good GUI.
Good means fast. Good means internally consistent. Good means programmatically consistent. Good means the programs actually USE the GUI. One thing I really like about Windows? Add/Remove Programs. It's right there. Talking about package this and package that makes everyone's eyes glaze over.
3) A good set of apps.
As the other guy said, let's quit jamming every stupid little command line piece of shit into every distro. Most of us never bother with them, and that's half the reason RedHat is 94 DVDs and can only fit on a shelf that's got concrete reinforcements. OK, I'm exaggerating, but seriously -- if the "competition" fits on ONE CD, how "bloated" is that?!
4) A good use of the Linux kernel and the Linux philosophy (such as there is one).
Do we really need to see 50,000,000,000,000,000 lines of kernel messages whenever we boot? Do we really need to have every messy, nasty part of the kernel hanging out and exposed? I'm sorry, but the more I work with Linux, the less I appreciate its design -- it's ten thousand times as crufty as anything else out there. I'm sick of getting library errors 'pon unpacking a distro straight from the CD, sick of not being able to figure out how to do X on this particular distro (which package manager is it again?... where do I find that?... uhhh...), sick of the fact that we have a GUI which most programs don't bother to fully exploit (no consistent mechanism for adding and removing an icon, for Christ's sake!)
5) A good level of internal consistency.
Linux needs to PICK ONE THING AND STICK WITH IT.
Sometimes a little internal consistency is not a bad thing. I don't need 300 shells and 129 different ways to boot. I need something that works, and I need to know that if something goes wrong with it, I can get better answers than "oh, here's the source code, you figure it out." I'm amazed more people are not as shocked by the essential contempt that such an attitude shows for the end user (i.e., the people who want to, you know, USE the computer instead of have to learn 30 programming languages to do every lousy thing).
There. Flame away.
I'd like to create a universal wrapper that will emulate the bajillions of graphics libraries out there while only actually using the one you specify. Being able to wrap the entire desktop enviroments would be even cooler, but probably impossible.
After reading the article and after years of work in groups trying to make Linux more palatable to the end user, I pretty much agree with the author.
My 2 main differences are:
1) I think source should be online and downloadable. NOT in CD form is just fine, but if I do need to compile something new or recompile part of DistroX with a new option, I need to be able to get access faster than postal mail. I work for Sun, we use similar methods (postal mail or pre-paid downloads) and for my customers these methods just don't work. Put your source tree online, but don't put it in a CD format and label it clearly as for developers and you'll find almost no one downloads it except those who need it.
2) I disagree with moving to FreeBSD from the point of view of losing a LOT of development and it will very much hurt marketing. Apple didn't get bit hard by the *BSD thing, but that was because they were only concerned with selling to an existing desktop install base. If you are starting from scratch, being based on something (Linux) that the market has at least heard of with regularity is going to be a big boost.
I can see where there are big commercial advantages for not using Linux as your base, but I don't see them outweighing the benefits. I could be wrong, but that's the way I see it. By keeping your main system tools that do things like creating all the aliases, etc you are going to make it just as hard for a competitor to copy everything as you would if you based yourself off of FreeBSD.
NOTE: No matter what you do or how you do it, expect someone to try and clone DistroX. Therefore, spend a full R&D cycle (2-3 years) privately getting it POLISHED before you release it. If you start out significantly ahead of the game, it will be that much harder to catch up with you. When releasing, let it known that technically it is Linux, but don't HYPE the Linux. Hype the usability and compatibility. I know, sounds contradictory to what I said before about marketing, but Linux tends to market itself where people want that, you don't need to worry about it.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
the whole notion of a file system is kinda outdated. it was a great model, sure... but honestly: users don't CARE where things are, as long as they can access them. on unix there is a path for running programs, but you still have to have a place to save stuff. windows tried to have stuff like "my documents" etc, but still didn't organize the data by type, or anything.
although we might not be there quite yet, the notion of a file system should be hidden from a user. do you a have a filesystem in real life? no... you have places you put stuff. sure, it might go in some specific place, but there is no need for the user to know the details of where things go
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
But I keep getting flamed that X is good enough.. its certainly not, for a desktop system. Its overly bloated, although switching to version 4 improved things and building more hooks that can use video drivers' speedups.. Beside removing the networking code, and optimising it for my duron, theres also the window manager layer there. I'm now strongly against it..
Should we have an option of incorporating the window manager at compile time, that should improve things too. And then the internationalization is a mess and thats improved too. This is true of Linux in general as well where people still see VT100 and have to remap their keys for functionality. Thats legacy bloatware X could do without.
Now if you move the video driver into the Linux kernel, replacing say the experimental framebuffer drivers, we would (1) have a great platform for console games with really good driver support, (2)make the X leaner and more general. This also removes the need for starting lots of code in userspace, imagine different X servers in different virtual consoles switching as fast as virtual consoles.
I would personally go with the QT interface with motif and gtk wrappers on TOP of it for porting older apps. By now X should no longer be called X since its so different. I would go with an optimised architecture rather than the legacy one incorporating the fonts and video card accelerators into it (many of these are too fragmented and in modules for X4)
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
b) we're going to share some of our code. As much as we will borrow from other coders, we will share some of our improvements with the community. As we all know, companies that are reluctant to share source code are frequently shunned by the knowing community.
The only thing that forces a company to play nice is another company, and what happens if this company manages to put itself in a Microsoft-like position and has no real competetion? When this guy cashes in his share of the company and is sipping on a margarita on some beach in Jamacia, who's going to make sure this company operates in the community's best interests?
When the time comes where it is more profitable to close the software and release binary-only, a company will do it. I mean, it has to because we must assume that a company will do whatever makes the most money for it's shareholders. And when this happens, the majority of the world will continue using this new, proprietary software, while the rest of the world has to pick up the pieces of the movement to convince people to use Open, free software..
Why do I keep typing pythong?
This article has some (really) good ideas, but there's some pretty bad ones that would cause problems right from the word go. For example:
My developers are going to meet and agree on ONE desktop environment. Yes, we'll include the libs for the other major one we leave out.
Already you've fallen into the trap of pandering to the existing Linux crowd. Why ? Most of the other things you're doing are already going to drive away these people. Pick (or create) a GUI. Stick to it, customise it, tweak it "just so". Don't waste any developmental effort on another - let others do that if they _really_ want to. Every minute spent on including or developing stuff for the "other GUI" is time you could have spent making yours better.
[...] graphical, heavy on eye candy, with few visible options but lots of "Advanced" buttons.
Bad idea. "Advanced" buttons just allow for more mistakes to be made by newbies. If you *really* want to give the option for users to perform an "advanced" install (in which case you should really sit down and ask yourself *WHY*), then make it a well documeted *boot-time* option that can't be stumbled on accidentally. SImilarly with things like filesystems - pick on and stick to it.
I'm already stripping out a number of apps, so what I'm not going to worry about are libraries and system files. Even the minimal install will include every common system tool my develops can think of.
This is another bad idea. It's this sort of reasoning that *causes* library versioning problems. Include _only_ the libs necessary to support your included software and development on your "default" platform. Again, if other people really want to get app XYZ that requires libs ABC and HIJ to get working, they will. The only time this might be an issue for you is when your users are asking for a service your existing software doesn't provide.
On the whole, the ideas here are pretty good. It's obvious your objective (dream ?) is to create an OS X equivalent on x86, which is an admirable (and achievable IMHO) goal. However, you're also trying to pander to existing userbase by including options for this, options for that, etc. Don't - it's one of the biggest reasons Linux distros are difficult to approach for people who don't have the knowledge to make the necessary decisions between all those options. If you _really_ want to make "something new" then you have to make choices and stick by them. Certainly don't go out of your way to hinder people trying to port/develop for the new platform, but by the same token don't waste any of your development time and money re-implementing features (note: *features*, not specific bits of software) that already exist on your platform, just because a handful of users prefer a slightly different version.
The whole concept of distribution installation is getting a little frayed around the edges. Installing a distribution made sense when everybody had CD drives and few people broadband connections. It is making less sense now. It will make even less sense 5 years from now. Why not do something new for a change? How about a distribution that is only available on the net? How about using a P2P caching file system?
Think in terms of something that is a cross between NFS (20 years old) and BitTorrent. For example, when I access:
it goes off and downloads and locally caches the binary. If it needs any librarys, it downloads and caches them as well. The bottom line is that the user only downloads those files that they actually use and they do not have to decide beforehand what they want. Just use it! If it isn't cached on your disk, the system fetches it. If you want to upgrade, just change your path from: to:No install program needed, just start using the new bits. When a cached file hasn't been used in a year or so, it just gets deleted by the underlying system.
Please note, the Open Source community does not have to figure out how to charge for files downloaded, unlike some big commercial software companies out there. Thus, the Open Source community can make it easier to install and upgrade than the commercial counterparts.
Yes, I'm glossing over a bunch of very important issues (security, multiple platforms, configuration files, load distribution, etc.), but it is time for people to start thinking about doing things in new ways rather than the way we were doing them for the past 10-30 years. I'm suggesting that we actually innovate for a change.
-WayneX is too dependent on networking protocols and is just pretty goddamn slow all-around
IMO, X is NOT what is slow! It is KDE/Gnome/[insert slow desktop/window manager here]. If you want to see the speed of X all by itself, try typing 'X' at the command line. The X server pops up damn near instantaneously (minus anything useful though) on my P4 1.7Ghz, and it is still quite fast on my K6-2 450 (yeah I still have one of those). Also, I have noticed that recent versions of Gnome have improved startup times. Faster than KDE on the same machine in my personal experience. (I still use KDE though.)
All I have to so is switch to a lighter destkop (i.e. twm) and the startup time from 'startx' to "ready for use" is dramatically reduced. I see plenty of "X sucks" lately, but I don't see it as being X.
Just my 2
--that's exactly what I want, too. I'd love to be able to go to a website, use a checkbox form, check the apps I want, they burn it, ship it to me for a normal small fee like the clone distro companies charge. One disk, that's it. And the choices menu need to be written in english, with ENTIRE PARAGRAPHS devoted to explaining what the heck this app does, and why, what it's for, etc. The point in the article about acronym HELL is well put, from a noobs perspective. Forget getting to the point of library hell trying to install something, or version compiler hell, you can't get to that point. Everything is written in acronyms! Even when you choose "custom install" on a mainstream distro, there's still not enough info written there, you wind up installing crap you don't want and leaving out stuff you should have kept. Like libraries, they never tell you "dude, later on if you want to upgrade or app this class of apps you might want this stuff". and etc. give me SOMETHING TO READ. What, are they charging for words now? Is it really that hard for app makers to write some better docs that aren't acronym hell? Here's a thought- NO ACRONYMS in docs! What a concept, entire words! If you want to indicate an acronym in common usage, use a point for the A.P.P. N.A.M.E.; but still use the whole word.
I'd do it if I had the loot and the knowledge to set it up. Sorta hard to do when you don't have either!, heh. I don't even own a cd burner yet!
Another thing,an app I REALLY want, GUI versus CLI, it's rough learning it. --> insert rodney dangerfield voice "Rough, I tell ya, rough!" It would be GREAT if I could mash one button, and whatever was happening right there on the desktop in GUI land automagically showed up in a console, all the commands, etc, an exact mirror in real time. Then I could SEE what did what without worrying about messing up my install.
And package management- YEP! that's a good thing, wish there was a grand unified unixy conference to decide ONCE AND FOR ALL which one is *the* manager and format. That's a huge whopper biggee, I am spoiled, mac classic for years, download, double click install. Done. Something wrong with that idea??? I don't get it...
ya ya I know, distro A zealot sez "type this type that it will do it for you" ya right, it's not compatable with the other guys version of whatever nix, that's what's wrong with that concept. It sucketh the large one. So, that means they are ALL WRONG so far for this "the masses" guy. Great for the various distro zealots, bad for business and normal users..Bad, very, very bad.
GUI is here to stay, 99% of the people using computers want to use it, they could care less about the command line. It can be there,swell, but ignoring GUI and relegating it to the background is ignoring that market. Fighting over use this one, no use that one, again, bad for business. joe user DON'T CARE which desktop he's using, just pick ONE and make it extremely functional. Any other hobbiest or other guy can do what they want, joe user wants a "computer" he doesn't need to be asked which freaking desktop to use,that's just beyond nuts, he wants to use the desktop that shows up on his screen when it boots up! Again, such a simple concept.
It's at the point now, is linux a business,does someone REALLY want to make a go of this stuff as a business, or a hobby and geeks only and servers only? For the hobbiests, they already have everything they need,carry on and stuff,have fun, we all love ya, good for you, for a business and for the 99% of the rest of the people, it will have to be_a business_, that means GUI, GUI that works, and not 15 GUIs/desktop managers. I'm not saying outlaw them, just any company that is smart will release a "just works" distro that isn't "dumbed down" it's "smarted up" so that what is there works, is easy to use, be much cheaper and better than the competition, and it doesn't have to have every version and every desktop in the known universe. Just what there has to WORK. They make an executive decsion they wil
It's funny that this is presented as a fix for Linux, but in reality it is a sales pitch for a MacOS X clone. He gets you all wound up, and then at the last minute he says, in passing "Oh, that GPL is just too restrictive... We need something more like the BSD license so we can, um, make a few cents, while still giving back to the community."
Right.
It is a huge directory and you can never tell what libraries go with what programs.
/apps/*/libs/;/shared/*/libs/;/system/*/libs/
/usr/lib.
Would it be possible to have linux search something like search the following:
LD_LIBRARY_PATH =
I would hate having an LD_LIBRARY_PATH 50 miles long even more than the rats nest of libraries in
I'm pretty sure you can't use wildcards, and libtool is just a huge verbose listing, and is black magic compared to a wildcard.
---- Smokin' another sig.
It's juvenile, poorly researched, and just plain wrong in so many places it doesn't deserving posting on high-schooler's blog. A mere sampling:
" The second part of this step is to set up an actively developed software repository on the internet."
Debian has had this forever. Gentoo does this and every other distro has either added this or is working on it.
"My developers are going to meet and agree on ONE desktop environment."
Right after they all agree on one text editor.
"On my distro this will never happen, because our install files will include everything."
Dumb way to solve a problem that is already solved another way. See the first in this list.
"On that note, my source code CDs are not available for public download either. "
Um, yeah. Not only might this be construed as a GPL violation, but you'll annoy a lot of people. You know, customers.
"first off, we should probably base our distribution on the FreeBSD system. FreeBSD has many drivers, boots much quicker than Linux, is very clean code, and most importantly, has a much more liberal license. The GPL provides little room for making money on software, only support (see many comments by RMS, Bruce Perrins, and Eric Raymond, as well as the history of Cygnus for more on this)."
Ah, I see. He's going to make a MacOSX clone for x86, call it "linux" and try to sell it to people who already get their OS "free" with their computer. Brilliant plan. He wants to be the next OS/2 or BeOS.
"Now, let me be the first to say that much of what I propose here may not be technically, or more likely, financially, feasible."
WTF is all this prattle about business, finance and VCs? You don't need any of that to run a distro. Debian, Knoppix, Gentoo, and myriad others have done just fine as community developed projects. If he wants to prove me wrong, shut up and do it.
"I'm of the belief that someone is going to have to do something drastic to see real change."
MS licensing 6 is a good start.
He sarted out good by saying the filesystem-layout had to be changed, and why, and then he went straight to chaos. Here's my list of what needs to be done:
/etc and .dotfiles. They all use diffeent syntaxes from hell. Use LDAP as user _and_ configuratuion dattabase. This includes, but is not limited to, as a gconf-back-end. This is prolly the most radical change. Off course I would include some good graphical front-end to edit the database, and a good doc on the different entries, their type and usage (this can be put in the schema-files).
* Ditch
* Add some type of signle-sign-in authentication system, like kerberos, but kerberos is too complicated to manage, and uses symetric-crypto, which is unpractical. A ssh-agent as a pam-module would do the job quite well.
* Make programs dealing with graphics able to exchange graphics over the clipboard (there's nothing in X that stops this, just lazy app hackers), in some standard format, say xpm and xfig (for raster- and vector- graphics respectively).
* Make _all_ progams use UTF-8. Everywhere.
* Patch in some better access-contol system than UFS-permissions, POSIX ACLs or omething. This is not for home-users, but for ordinary office usage!
* Install some system-global VFS-layer (for tar-file access, ssh-fs etc.), and don't use the ones of different desktops - accessing the files differently from different apps is a hell.
He's damn right when he says the users don't need more than one editor, or more than one ftp-client.
Some software that attract specialists, like musicians, are rarely in normal distros, but don't waste tha much space, including a decent MIDI editor, modular synth and tracker would be no problem. Same goes for film-gimp and so on.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
BSD's Popularity is due to its simple nature. Too many people talk of bigger and better things with it but its purpose it already acheived.
"Wonder what OSS they have..."
Look FFS some idiot is porting that festering pile of sh*t vi to the Mac!
I don't know about copying windows, how about not copying Unix circa 1975 ?
Can't we ditch vi, mail and all the rest of these crusty old smelly apps?
Let me feel your sweet potato , if it were my own distro , it would smell like a sweet potato. mmm I loooove potato chips
"A verbose filesystem for the user (through symlinks or other masked methods)."
Every single story has a comment about the filesystem, but NO ONE even answers the question. "Why is the user even looking at the filesystem? Why are they even dealing with the filesystem? "Out of sight, out of mind" seems to be the only philosophy that modern "newbies" can deal with.
"One GUI to pour all your resources into."
One ring to...
Try the above philosophy. Why is the newbie even exposed to the resource info? You don't need an interface for what you can't see.
"One or two applications of the same type (to limit bloat, confusion for newbs, and the "too many CDs" problem)."
DVDs anyone?
"I think he was pretty reasonable overall. The only really questionable item was how he wanted to deal with dependency problems. He wanted to put every known library known to man in the distro. apparently. Not a good solution IMHO."
Solving problems that one doesn't fully understand, usually has that effect.
What would be cool is if there were a standard default distro which only published one categorical app at a time in the GUI (as you said)- BUT STILL INCLUDED the other 3/4 as alternate or mod apps that could be switched to becoming the default app for that category using a little menu button in the top middle of the app's window-frame. Let's call it "the third-i button". {There, now nobody can patent it ;^}
--TRR
Drag-and-drop installation is the reason why I finally just erased OS X from my Macintosh and installed Debian: it is a bloody nuisance trying to keep software up-to-date and consistent, and I just didn't have that much time to waste on a Macintosh. Even InstallShield works better than that. And, of course, Apple isn't using drag-and-drop installation for its own software--Apple is sending you automatic updates.
In any case, there are lots of different distros for lots of different needs. Sure, there is room for more. Maybe there should be a Linux distro for people who grew up on Macintosh, to work just like they are used to. Hey, it's a free country and free software. I doubt anything other than a real Macintosh will ever satisfy Macintosh users, no matter how good the alternative may be technically, but if you have time on your hands, by all means, try and put one together.
Yeah, I'm being a bit sarcastic. But to be fair, Apple is a hardware company, and a large part of what makes OS X pretty good is that it is tied to the hardware, therefore it's much easier to support. Ie. there's no driver "issues", broken hardware(eg. AGP ports not supplying enough voltage), etc.
OT -- your sig: Why do the peaceniks never ask Hussein to step down and free the country?
That's a good question, and I'm sure there are a number of answers, all pretty lame. I suppose some may secretly like the man. Maybe they're affraid of getting shot? Maybe the ignorant fucks are just being partison -- a logical assumption, as 90% of them didn't complain when Clinton bombed Iraq, less descriminately to boot - really hypocritical considering Bush's campaign was the most targeted military campaign of such a size in history probably, with fewer civs being killed than in a single year by Saddam's regime itself.
Give peace a chance? Friggin bullshit, letting a dictator murder thousands of people for years and years is all they are supporting.
Disclaimer: I'm not a Republican nor did I vote for Bush, but I know an evil dictatorship when I see one... The world is simply a better place with Saddam out of the picture.
End rant. Guess I'm just feeling a bit beliggerent today :)
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
"I'm going to remove a lot of choice from the user, because, to many, it's more a gamble than a choice."
I agree whole-heartedly with that. When your basic desktop user is switching from Microsoft to Windows, all of those choices are guaranteed to blow his mind. Postfix? Sendmail? Qmail? Procmail, mailx, mailutils, maildrop, mailbase, getmail, fetchmail, mutt, elm, squirrelmail, kmail, sylpheed, evolution!? I don't know, I just want to check my mail! Why are there so many choices in the "mail" section!?
What ALL distros lack is sufficient documentation on what all of these packages are and why you would need them. Gentoo's description of fluxbox: "Window manager based on Blackbox -- has tabs." Yeah, that about sums it up. Now I know exactly what it is... uh huh. To anybody who needs a description of fluxbox, that's not enough. Imagine the user coming from Windows and reading that description. What's a window manager? What's blackbox? What are tabs? Do I need this?
The way to fix this isn't to just force the user to take a certain window manager. It's to give real documentation. A page, or two, or three. Better yet: screenshots. A picture is worth a thousand words, right? Each window manager could have 5 or 6 screenshots viewable from the installer, or maybe a little automated tour.. a slideshow or video that demonstrates its features. Every program should be well documented. Those that can't be described completely yet simply should include some sort of a graphical demonstration. Documentation should include who it's targeted at, what it does, and why you would need it. This could include a list of common tasks it is used for.
Similarly, a well-documented installer should have an index where users can search for specific actions like "reading mail" or "web browsing". Under each topic should be a list of available programs to do that task. Current installers allow you to choose pre-defined setups like "workstation" or "server". There should be more than just a few pre-defined choices, and they should explain in great detail what they install and why. Obviously, there are some people who just want to click "install" and have everything setup for them. But those who are really trying to get into Linux won't just want to have a box pre-configured for them. It's MUCH more valuable to have each choice explained. "This is fluxbox. Fluxbox is a window manager. A window manager is... Fluxbox was chosen because you selected the 'fast and lightweight' setup. Fluxbox's competition is:... Fluxbox was chosen instead of its competition because..." Sure, it would take forever. I know I would have preferred to have taken a long time but known exactly what was going on rather than installing in 10 minutes and taking two years to learn what all of my software is for.
Maybe a distro intended solely for introducing linux is in order. Not like Lindows and Lycoris which "introduce" you to linux by isolating you from it, but something that is more of an interactive tutorial.
Scratched Emulsion
Is make a self booting CD with Linux and WINE starting automatically and call it 'Gates'
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
Distros OWN you!!
Debian has had this forever. Gentoo does this and every other distro has either added this or is working on it.
.0000001% market? That's some dent they're making.
Yeah, right. And they have what,
Right after they all agree on one text editor.
Users don't need more than one. Developers can download one. What's so freaking complicated about choosing a basic text editor?
Um, yeah. Not only might this be construed as a GPL violation, but you'll annoy a lot of people. You know, customers.
1. You obviously haven't read the GPL.
2. The target doesn't include people like you or other obnoxious, loudmouthed, know-it-all elitists. It's normal users.
Ah, I see. He's going to make a MacOSX clone for x86
Yeah, so what?
WTF is all this prattle about business, finance and VCs? You don't need any of that to run a distro. Debian, Knoppix, Gentoo, and myriad others have done just fine as community developed projects. If he wants to prove me wrong, shut up and do it.
You're the reason Linux is what it is. Those projects are nothing. They're small potatoes. Linux based OSes will only REALLY advance when they can attract commercial app developers, and they'll come when the investment is worth it. People who refuse to pay for software keep them away and they get subpar products because of it. If you're happy with Linux as is, fine. You don't have to use this OS. In fact, please don't.
Anonymous Coward? Figures.
Linux is saturating the market of users willing (and/or able) to install their own OS. To get to the next level it must come preinstalled on new hardware. Why can't you go to your local 'big box' store and get a Linux PC or Laptop?
Linux does more with less hardware, so why aren't there more Linux laptops/mini-laptops/PDAs/etc?
Linux + powerful handhelds + Wi-Fi = useful
Is the Linux crowd missing the boat here?
i'd distro in the morning ... all over the 'net
i'd distro in the evening
i'd distro out freedom
i'd distro out justice...
...Distro owns you!
Seriously, aren't there too many distros as it is? The more we fragment Linux, the more our efforts are divided and the more work gets duplicated. In the name of what? Vanity?
I think we should pull together more, honestly, and quell the confusion so maybe Linux can finally grow up.
Chris
For Apps this is not a problem, but for any suite it is. You can install stuff easily using the installer app, but you can't get it out easily.
For example: try uninstalling the devloper tools, or the extra unix dev stuff.
well just from my point of view, and im not trying to be a troll, i love linux, is that linux isnt an os, and linux needs to be an os. most home users and windo-aholics are user to kernel+gui+few needed shell apps=os. linux is the kernel, gnu is a huge set of open source software for the linux kernel, so some smart guy said lets put the two togeather, this was good, to an extent. Some one, hopefully linus himself will realize the need for an accual "linux" gui and shell. As in a gui that interacts better and intigrates better with the kernel, because it was coded by the same guy/group! a shell that is powerful, and a breaze to use, that can do everything the gui can do because it was coded by the same guy/group. I know this is alot to expect one person to do, but instead of adding milloions of new features to the kernel, which has more than enough for most users *currently* why not get a stable kernel, and start working on the REST of the os? then in a few years when more hardware comes out, and new features NEED to be implimented, they work on the kernel some more. this is what sets desktops apart from servers. Desktops need to be standardizied, servers need to be stable and 100% compatable with all the new goodies on the market. thats just my $.02, and i dont mean to offend anyone, cuz i do love linux, this is just what i see it needs in order to become a desktop OS. options arnt the issue. look at windows, i could use the windows cd burner, nero, roxio easy coaster creater, blindwrite wuite, etc..., but all these arnt bundles with the os... and i can still use litestep, blackbox, cloud9, openbox, etc on windows, but it defauls to One choice. thats the problem that confuses n00bs, more choices at install time=more confusion. Set a defauls, install bash etc, option:kde/gnome... option:mozilla/netscape/someotherl337browser... option: windowmaker/litestep/enlightenment/etc (with explination and screenshots)... let users decide some stuff, but dont include a cd-burner on the install cd's, or a cool game, just because you can, if you would like to provide these features, leave a txt document explaining the place on your servers where these apps can be found, and instructions on how to install, or if you really must include an "extras" cd, that should NEVER be asked for at install time, with a nice GUI for locating and installing software on the disc. say a nice freshmeat.net looking gui which queries the disc (and possibly your servers) looking for the queried topic, lists them to the user with a simple discription, and pretty screen shots, etc. and allows the user to install them right from there... and one last thing, a standardizied menu, i still am more than confused when i install a great new app from freshmeat, and look in all the menu's, of course its not there, so i goto
</rant>
Noone writes jokes in base 13!
If someone actually takes his first sugestion and uses it I will no longer be able to show women how to find their drives in exchange for (insert something your dirty mind thinks of here).
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
Yeah, right. And they have what, .0000001% market? That's some dent they're making.
The point is that it is a solved problem. Pretending that this is some amazing insight is stupid. If it hasn't lead to world domination for every Linux distro on the planet, it won't do it for his either.
Users don't need more than one. Developers can download one. What's so freaking complicated about choosing a basic text editor?
Exactly my point! If ten developers can't settle on one text editor, how are they going to settle on something as complicated as a DE?
The target doesn't include people like you or other obnoxious, loudmouthed, know-it-all elitists. It's normal users.
'Normal' users aren't likely to be interested. So that leaves loudmouthed elitists. The people Caldera thought they could ignore and Red Hat knew they couldn't. Who still has a business model based on something other than lawsuits?
Yeah, so what?
You're ignoring my reasoning on why this is a bad idea and just saying "so what?" A MacOSX clone on x86 is as dead as every other closed or semi-closed commercial OS going head-to-head with MS. Linux' chief virtue to consumers is its cost. After all, they already think they get their OS for free. Why should they pay for another one?
"Linux based OSes will only REALLY advance when they can attract commercial app developers, and they'll come when the investment is worth it."
Which has happened on the server side. Consumer shrink wrapped software sales is an unsustainable business model except for niche applications. The software industry is headed to specialized business applications that can't build a critical mass of free software developers, support and services. Any successful desktop Linux effort will =necessarily= hasten the demise of shrink wrapped consumer software sales.
Anonymous Coward? Figures.
Slashdot hasn't earned the hard drive space for a cookie and I don't memorize any more passwords than I have to.
your reply is ignorant. I couldn't care less whether his demands are being met. If he wants it, he can do it. I like /etc, /home, /var, and their ilk exactly where they are.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
But after using it, I think it's mostly time wasted. The system's filesystem doesn't need to look pretty -- rather, the user shouldn't see it at all. When you go up directories as far as you can, you should not reach some overriding root directory in which everything is stored.
There's two very different things that a filesystem is used for -- user files, and application/system files. There's no reason for these to use the same metaphors or to be accessible through the same mechanisms.
Application files are usually useless out of context. They belong to the application, are updated at its discretion, and all operations on them are done by the application (perhaps at the user's request). We keep them in a hierarchical filesystem, keyed by strings separated with slashes, because that works well enough and it's quite fast (compared to an RDBMS, which would be silly, since its features would be wasted). "Applications" should be read to include the essential system software as well as end-user applications.
User files are something else entirely. They have nothing to do with application files, except that they are traditionally implemented the same way. User files aren't updated or controlled by the system, they aren't sorted by the system, they don't belong to the system or to an application (though they are manipulated through applications). They warrant the overhead of arbitrary metadata, versioning, and regular backups. RDBMS concepts could be usefully applied to these files.
Object oriented concept should also be applied, as opposed to the everything-is-a-stream-of-bytes metaphor that the traditional filesystem uses. This provides a basis upon which more complex data can be presented through the filesystem metaphor -- turning an mbox file into a folder, presenting pieces of hardware as files. There's no reason to bother actually presenting these as traditional files (like /hardware), because they are only usable with intermediary programs. Let those programs present these as files in this higher-level user filesystem.
The conclusion I gain from this is that this work doesn't need to be done on the filesystem level. Let package management systems deal with that -- they do so effectively. Instead the applications that a user interacts with need to present this totally new filesystem, which incidentally stores its information on the old filesystem (though every user file may actually be implemented as a directory, for instance). Gnome VFS is along these lines, and I believe KDE offers a similar abstraction, though neither is as ambitious as what I described... but maybe they'll continue to move in that direction. Nautilus had some of these ambitions as well, though I always felt it fell far short, even as it was bogged down by the features it did have.
Anyway, the New OS should happen in the desktop application arena. Traditional Unix (like Linux as implemented by Debian or Redhat) works well and is a good foundation. People just need the ambition to build new metaphors ontop of that foundation, not try to port the foundation to the new metaphor itself.
How many of these fucking song lyrics are people going to post in this article?
Sorry, but each time I see another one like this, I'm closer and closer to pulling the goddamned trigger.
"Sufferin' succotash."
i wouldnt bother trying to install knoppix if i still have to start with a command prompt to get the installer running. i stick my xp disc in, go clickety-click and fill in only a few things (like my user name, isp phone number, and the activation code) and its off, everything works and i didnt neet a root console or a shell prompt (even if nostalgia for DOS is setting in, which it wont be) evar.
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
I can decide adequately ONLY after getting experienced with ALL available options AND having general (mental) skills for such decisions. Until/unless that - please make sure you guide me by asking me appropriate questions and giving me adequate (!) advises. Otherwise, please label your system: Only for experienced AND smart users. Or you can compbine the novice guide with availability of advanced options and/or with the direct shell root access.
Personally I am developing and integrating with Gentoo Linux. But I work also with many Windows/Java programmers for whom even RH is still complicated. So, I know what I am talking about.
Less is more !
The directory aliasing, is rather trivial. I do something like this as part of my default installs by hand in a few minutes (example /root to /home/root, /tmp to /var/tmp, /var/www to /home/apache, etc...).
As for a repository of rpms that are distribution specific most distributions do do this. So your question about why they don't is moot. The issue with software occur when people try to install rpms from other distributions.
As far as libraries, certainly to a limited extent you could simply install all libraries but then frankly if you are going to do that go whole hog and just the apps as well and have only one software configuration you need to support. In general though you may not resolve all the issues of dependencies. Often apps need libraries compliled with particular settings. So if you are really going in this direction you are not only assuming quite a bit of harddrive space but also 2-3x as much ram. For a newbie distribution that isn't neccesarily that horrible but it should be understood.
Take a simple example. What languages are you going to compile into your interfaces for messages? English only (very limiting). Or maybe English and Spanish (now you have just added a lot because you now have to support some non ascii fonts)? But then are you going to have right to left support so that people can use Arabic and Hebrew? What about cyrillic support for eastern europenas. How about Unicode and if so will all Asian fonts have to use something like UTF8 (i.e. Asian text will be 50% larger than using a 16 bit font)? Most unix code will allow you to complile versions for various font sets, very few support arbitrary font systems and those that do are very complicated (see Oracle's excellent documentation on national language standards for a very good discussion).
Finally on the issue of apps you are showing ignorance here. Either you install one of each major type of app or you give people wildely different experience and install/offer lots of different apps. People always say "why do I need 12 different text editors" but what they forget is:
Emacs -- virtual lisp environment editor
note two choices which are incompatable if you want X support: GNU with X extensions or XEmacs
Also Emacs21 introduced library incompatabilities so you often want to offer 20 and 21 versions.
VI/VIM/Elvis/Viper -- vi environment. BTW often people who use one of these are quite picky
pico -- very simple editor
joe -- full features wordstarish editor
if we are going to offer joe what about jed?
beav -- good hex editor, also useful for people who need EBCDIC
yudit -- better for unicode users
etc... Mainstream Linux distributions on the whole handle this situation quite well:
a) Very nice default choices
b) Wide range of packages for people with specialized needs
c) The ability to install the thousands of other packages which are even more specialized.
The fact that you couldn't even make simple choices:
-- gnome only
-- open office only (though why pick gnome since OO isn't gnome specific)
etc... means you wouldn't be able to go the unified route.
Ok...so my distro came out 6 months ago. In that time, there is a spanking new ATI card, a severe bug in sshd and other changes that have happened.
What I would do is make sure that the iso and whatever install stuff is constantly up to date. This way if you just pulled down 3 650MB ISO's, installed a system, you now don't need to go and pull down another 200MB of updates.
Debian hits on this a little bit with checking security.debian.org as a final install step, but you still have to pull down more.
I have always wanted this with NT/2k/XP - it's a pain to reinstall, then have to put infinite number of SP's and patches on.
Woo yay. You may as well compile every app statically and users can just get used to every *&*&%^$ app doing things differently. One point of sharing components is that they can then also share behaviours.
And think about trying to fix stuff like the zlib overflow when the &*^*&^*&^ library might (or might not) be duplicated in any app installed on your system (potentially compiled using any number of secure or insecure versions of zlib for that matter).
I found the whole article could have done with a lot of review before it was published.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Microsoft is junking the normal file system for their upcoming OS and have a database that loads files based on each application because of this. Personally I think this is a good idea for their users; but it's one that we don't need to copy...
.doc). OTOH users use data that is applications specific, and piping is not key to them. I don't have a huge problem with a database filesystem. Look at zOS and VMS for filesystems that don't assume everyone is an idiot and use a database filesystem. There are real advantages (like versioning built in).
The key idea of Unix is everything is a stream of ascii text. That's why Unixes have traditionally not had complex binary file formats that are universal (i.e. nothing like
I agree that the (perceived) lack of demand means 'big box' companies are not likely to introduce Linux desktop or laptop machines, but what about smaller PDA style devices? Most of them have very simple OS's, but the hardware is moving into useful levels of performance. The simple OS's (PalmOS, RIM's proprietary OS, Windows CE, etc) aren't well suited to take advantage of this better hardware, but Linux sure could.
You making fun of my mobo calling it a clone? Heh, just kidding man...
Hmmm... Pie...
So, the "third-i" (or perhaps "app-switcher" would be a better name) button could trigger a dialog asking the user her skill level (easy or detailed), querying which optional features she is looking for, maybe providing some tutorial content - or displaying developer/vendor supplied summaries of what a particular app's strengths and distringuishing features are compared with its peers, etc... finally presenting her with a list of alternate applications to choose from for the task she has in mind. Sounds reasonable.
Summary example: user brings up Photoshop. She wonders what else on the system is availale to edit her digital photographs/jpeg images. Clicks the app-switcher button in top middle portion of frame. Dialog appears asking if she prefers Easy or Detailed (maybe this is part of her user-profile and doesn't always need to happen). She identifies her self as 'detailed' and is presented with a list containing {GIMP, Photoshop} for instance (had she selected 'easy' there would have been additional, tutorial steps :^). She selects GIMP and Photoshop is halted, GIMP is brought up for each file that had been open, and so on. When she quits, a closing dialog asks if she would like to continue using the GIMP as her default Photograph/Image Editor app in future sessions. She clicks "yes".
I follower your advice and I got this major bad error message trying to install OSX on my computer. I talked to Apple and they said I have to buy a computer from them in order to get OSX to work at all. I paid for the software and they have this illegal product bundling that prevents me from using it. Maybe next time, before you run your goddamn mouth off, you'll be more specific about HOW to follow your instructions- it turns out I can't just GET MAC OS X. I have to buy this 2500 dollar computer that is SLOWER than the Athlon I paid only 500 bucks for. No thanks.
isn't the idea of longhorn, befs, apple's current work... to remove the file structures imposed upon something inherently different. i mean, what are folders? abstractions. so, perhaps the solution is to create a different abstraction which keeps the current structure. this abstraction can be a database, a browser... but, the interface has never been linux's strong point. the humane interface, by raskin is a great place to start though.
I've used wintel since DOS days, and use Win2K at work, but my current home computer is a PowerBook G4 (the hardware looked cool, plus I was getting irritated at MS). While it took a while to get fully comfortable with OS-X, I have the feeling that people with Windows and *NIX experience may actually like OS-X better than do long-time Mac users...
Anyways, I like OSX in many ways, but like all OS's it has strengths and weaknesses. On the plus side, the whole package (hardware and software) is very visually pleasing, and it's clear they take interface design seriously. Basically, it feels like it was designed by designers instead of engineers, with both the advantages and disadvantages you might expect of that. Most of their apps sacrifice a large feature set for a tight and clean app that does everything you want 99% of the time. The NeXT-derived method of packaging applications into a single icon that you can drag anywhere, use, and then drag off with no installation is really the right way of doing things. The iApps are really nice. Being able to bring up a unix shell window with gcc and emacs and all that is very nice, as well.
On the minus side, the machine is not a speed demon no matter what the apologists say. While sure, not many apps are optimized for altivec, but then again how many apps are optimized for MMX and SSE(n)? For most of my modest home needs, however, it has more than enough power. However, the OS doesn't feel as "real time" as it should--often clicking on something will bring up the "spinning wheel" cursor for several seconds or occasionally much more before a menu pops up. Probably adding more RAM (I have 256 currently) would address this, but it feels like something in their windowing system is blocking that shouldn't be. Also some lack of polish such as the cursor sometimes showing the wrong thing (e.g., I-beam when over a button), Finder windows occasionally defaulting to messed-up column widths, etc, that have been there through several updates is a little sketchy given that they control the entire hardware platform... another issue is that a lot of open-source stuff seems to be hard to get to build under OSX/Darwin, although this will probably improve over time. You can definitely feel that they have a lot fewer programmers than MS, but this seems to cut both ways.
I sort of resented having to pay to upgrade to 10.2 to get decent audio support, and there are still apps that haven't been ported to OS-X natively (and running classic mode feels much less seamless than running DOS and Win16 apps did under Win95) Microsoft at least made their fast-changing multimedia layer (including DirectX) seperate and freely upgradable independent of the OS, so you could run a lot of new stuff on '95 for quite a few years--with Mac it seems like you have to commit to upgrading every year or so to be able to run most programs. Also, the nice built-in apps make (brainwash?) you want everything else on your system to work/look the same (I didn't have the same problem with Office for Windows for some strange reason... ;)
I don't feel like I'm getting the absolute most "bang for my buck", but I've gotten more and more sick of fscking around with malfunctioning computers, especially in precious free time, that I'm willing to pay a premium for a pretty and reliable system. However, I still like my Win2K box at work just fine as well. I think switching between OS's every so often is a good idea for anybody just to keep from getting to attached to one paradigm...
Having a single place, shared library allows you to know exactly what library you have, and how vulnerable you are, in a single location. And if a vulnerability is found, you fix the problem in one shot.
unfinished: (adj.)
I found this thread hilarious. Some parts of the proposal are very iffy, but some parts of the criticisms are even iffier.
...
:-)
.... very much like the horrendous MS registry, although admittedly Unix retains some degree of sanity by keeping those centralized files separate and plain. :-)
Just to highlight a totally nonsensical (but very funny) comment of yours
In particular, spreading configuration files all around with their owners is a great mistake.
Hahahaha. Those files started out all in one place, together with their owner package, and it's you that says that the right thing to do is to spread them out all over the system.
Just to tease you a little more on this, the traditional Unix approach is centralized
There are pros and cons to both approaches, and I think that any reasonable person would have to admit that. Unfortunately, we're not seeing much in the way of a reasoned meeting of minds at all on this topic.
There is a danger here. While Windoze is still primitive compared to even a 15-year old Unix except in surface aesthetics, it will mature eventually, and if attempts to make even small and fairly reasonable improvements to Unix continue to be thwarted by barely-substantiated resistance to change then the future will not be rosey.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
He would build a Linux distribution using BSD... Too funny. This whole article is such an obvious troll.
First of all, X is fast... Many games get higher frame rates under Linux and X than they do on Windows. So X is not the problem.
Secondly, using BSD at the core of your product is no better than using Linux. Sure you can change it all you want and keep all the changes secret. This doesn't help you a bit, unless you want the expense of supporting your very own version of UNIX. Which is neither fun, nor cheap.
Thirdly, he talks about needing standards, but then wants to move away from the Linux standards base, the X windows system and nearly all other established open standards. At the end he is talking about forking BSD to keep all his changes secret. Niiiiiiiice! So it is obvious that this person is no fan of open source at all.
I have a system that is aging now... It's going on 3 years old. It is a dual celeron overclocked to 522MHz, 512MB of RAM and 4 twenty GB hard drives. And it literally flies. I click and * BOOM *, the window pops up, almost before I can move the mouse after the click. So I really have no clue about why these people are complaining about how slow linux and X is all the time.
In fact, my normal system that I use most of the time for web browsing and chatting on the internet is an ancient laptop that is just a pentium 266, with 192MB of RAM and a 4GB drive. And I run Mozilla under KDE just fine.
And if you are going to complain that my systems have too much RAM let me tell you that Linux is _not_ CPU intensive for normal operations and that you are much better off putting 1 GB of RAM in a trailing edge system than you are with 128MB of RAM and the fastest P4 on the market.
Now, back to the topic at hand. My biggest issues with computers is the fact that they make me work too hard to use them... I want to have everything just work without me having to do much to get it that way.
For instance... I use the computer to communicate with people from all over the world. But my email client, each different chat client and address book and all that crap just don't communicate with each other... I want to create a new folder in my computer and call it George to represent my friend George... then I want to assign all things relating to George to this folder, so that I can tie him to multiple email accounts, to multiple instant messengers, to multiple addresses and multiple phones and anything else that his system supports. Every email that he sent to me or I sent to him should be tied to this folder. Every IM conversation should be here. My phone should record every conversation I have, compress it as an mp3 and copy them to this folder as well. I should be able to log every contact that I have made with him, be it email or phone or whatever and write notes about it, tied back to the event that triggered me wanting to write a note in the first place. If I want to phone him, I should just have to click a button, and the phone should dial him, if I want to mail something to him, just click a button and a mailing lable is printed. If I tell it to the program should tell me when he is having a birthday and I should be able to link other people to him so that it will tell me when his anniversary is, or when his wife or kids are having a birthday too. If he is a devout religious friend I should be able to tell my system that and be told about my friends holy days as they come up. If my friend is on vacation, I should be able to mark that so that if I start to try to contact him, it will remind me. And all this information should be indexed so that if I want to know everytime I said the word "accounts receivable" to my friend in any email, attached note, instant message conversation, or file downloaded or uploaded from him it would be right there, instantly retrieved and in a list sorted by date.
And I am tired of having programs needing to have support for each individual graphics and video and audio format. Programs s
I'd like a Linux distro that installs even easier than Windows and auto configs my hardware. If it can't auto config my hardware, don't give me a million popups or error messages, just let it go, give me a GUI, and let me start configuring my system from a friendly interface.
I'd like a Linux distro that doesn't require its users to be geeks.
I want to never see the console, I want the gui to be friendly.
Trivialities between KDE and Gnome desktops, Windows vs. Mac, etc are just that: trivial.
The OS that gets used the most is the one thats portable and easy to install.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
A "filename" is a stream of bytes. For obscure reasons the byte with the value 0 and the byte with the same value as the ASCII character '/' are not allowed, but there are no other rules. (the slash rule could probably be eliminated but it would require changing the system call for naming a file).
This will remove a good deal of "GUI" from the implementation of file systems.
It is recommended that programs presenting file names show the bytes as UTF-8 encodied Unicode, and display illegal UTF-8 sequences (including any code encoded with more bytes than needed) as the individual bytes turned into ISO-8859-1. Programs must never assigne any meaning other than "character" to any byte with the high bit set, to avoid security problems when characters are spoofed with mangled UTF-8.
The few programs that accept filenames typed in by the user should try to be user-friendly. One minor way is to do case-insensitive matching to the existing files. Far more imporatant is to do filename completion and spelling correction, which for some reason nobody ever suggests that these should be part of the file system.
I would keep the upper-case names like "System" just like you described them. However anybody who thinks "case insensitive file systems" are a good idea needs to do a lot more analysis of the problem.
Does it matter? Who cares? It's all linux, now get hacking noob! Except for redhat, redhat makes your dumb.
My two cents, get smart, then start using gentoo.
-makoffee
>> Debian has had this forever. Gentoo does this and .0000001% market?
>> every other distro has either added this or is
>> working on it.
>
> Yeah, right. And they have what,
> That's some dent they're making.
I've never heard of debian... maybe I should refrain from posting..... naaaah. I'll just flame anyway.
What if the install file had everything packed up, complete, but only actually copied the files to the hard disk when the libraries were needed?
This solution could be the best of both worlds... Minimal installs, no dependency problems, at the cost of larger install files.
Putz looking for network administration position can't roll his own distro and likes to write stupid
shit revealing nothing more compelling than his
opinionated idiocy and general ineptitude with all
things *nix.
Must be a friend of Taco's.
I haven't actually used the graphical Linux desktops much at all. This is because I found them unuseably laggish even on my (now puny) 800mhz/256. I mean... What is it?
/etc and might even know what to do with them. I never likes Linux' config utilities because they were shit too like X.
;P)
Windows XP looks great, feels great and acts quickly to my actions.
I assume the graphical teams should concentrate on the speed _I_ see. You know. Delay the actual operations where possible for after I seem to be doing nothing. Smooth out the backward compatibility shit from engines and so on.
Also, the X programs were mostly also crap and ugly. Yes! Certainly they did their tasks, but to be honest, they crashed more than my average WinApp on W2K. They were mostly also butt-ugly.
The configurability of the desktops was astounding thou. This is probably also one of the reasons for slowness. I mean, if every widget has to decide on every draw what it's supposed to look like, there has to be some unnecessary overhead.
I have tried both Gnome and KDE. I can't remember exact applications I am whining about.
Oh yes. One more thing. I want every app to draw their fonts antialiased by default, without me hacking n^7 config files by hand and compiling stuff. No! I just want to use my computer. I have another for weird experiments.
(Just a bit of background, trying to prove i'm not complete newbie.)
I started toying with Linux at -97. It was redhat distro. Can't remember what number thou. 5.x I think. I have configured tens of boxes (yes, just tens) for business use in companies. None of them has been rooted AFAIK. These serve for multiple purposes. From NAT's to SMB shares. Personally I now have one headless old pentium 166 box for when I want the power of Bash.
I believe I can identify most of the weird files in
And now after ranting, raving and ego boosting, I ask you. (Honest, I really wan't to know)
How do I configure X to perform decently on 800mhz/256M/Geforce2 MX. I don't want to recompile XFree86 because it's a pain in the ass and takes veeeeeery long. Which desktop you recommand and why? What is a light-weight window manager that still has basic features? (So not twm please
Or maybe... *gasp* someone could make a distro which has good X out-of-the-box and knows how to configure itself properly. *fondly remembers the frustation with first attempts with X's config files*
I hope I don't get modded troll because stating my opinions and raising honest questions.
Bot Assisted Blogging
I have used linux for over five years now. Certainly not as long as many of you, but long enough to have my say. Linux has been disappearing from my home computers at an alarming rate lately. From a near monopoly of 6 out of 7 systems, to an all time low of two out of seven. One of those is a firewall / gateway box, and if Windows ICS was worth a crap it would be gone too. The other is a neglected Debian box. It is neglected because I hate the politics of Debian, and the new RH releases turn my stomache. I suppose I only keep it around for nmap and nessus, and usable ssh and sftp. There are other distros I could install I suppose, but why bother? Nothing gives me a more usable environment than Windows 2000 does. Win2K is stable, it works better than Linux for what I do on it, and I already have the license. Linux is not only losing on the desktop, it is losing mindshare among former advocates. The hype is over, now is the time to prove you are better or just relegate Linux to the web server arena and be finished with it.
In a perfect world I would run photoshop and Visual Studio.NET on a BeOS box with good hardware support and multi-user capability. Until then, Linux has lost me. I believed in it for years, and now I do not even blink as the former Linux systems become Windows dev boxes, servers, and game boxes. Flame if you wish, I do not care.
I think a clearer, more intuitive directory structure would make this a non-issue. I won't offer a concrete list of changes I'd make, but there should be one directory for libraries, one directory for executables, one directory for configuration files, one directory for documentation/help/man pages, one directory for users, one directory for devices/hardware, one directory for logs, one directory for temporary files, one directory for boot related scripts, etc.
I can manage with the current layout, but I give the author of the article credit for challenging the community, and I think he has a good point about the filesystem. I'd rather there be a single directory with six thousand files rather than a wicked tree of subdirectories.
does anyone else find it ironic that he wants a linux distro that is based on bsd?
so, he really wants his own bsd distro right? a linux distribution with a bsd kernel isn't really linux anymore is it?
I've scrolled halfway through the posts and haven't seen anyone say it, so I will: He's describing Debian.
/system/commands "idea" is a clunkly thought out version of /etc/alternatives. His "One bog site where you can download packages that are guaranteed to work with your distro" describes the official apt repository nicely. His description of dependancy hell sounds like the experience of a RPM user--I wont say that Debian never has pckage problems, but I will say that I've only ever seen them in Unstable--on my Debian system dependancies are never an issue.
/bin and /usr/bin and /usr/local/bin (and on Debian at least their uses are clearly defined) but one bin directory for users and one for root should be enough. (The argument is (of course) partitioning. Mount /usr ro! /bin is on / so that the system always boots and everything else can be remote! I don't have an answer; maybe the HURD and its fancy merging directory thing will be the solution.) Debian can dictate such a change, if it could be agreed upon.
Okay, not now Debian, but a friendly Debian. His
I don't mean to sound like a Debian-loving zealot (though I probably am...) but 50% of what he wants Debian already does. Of the rest:
The revamped directory structure is a must. I've looked at it every way I can, but as far as I can see the old unix layout (while close to my heart) is not going to make desktop users happy. I've heard all tha counter arguments (and made most of them myself) so don't bother. I dissagree with his names, and I don't like the way MacOSX does it either, but something has to be done. Even if it isn't renaming (people can learn any names, after all) it should be depreciating certain practices and/or not allowing them. I know there are good reasons for
Limiting choice. This is a Very Bad Idea. limited choice is never, ever good--this is my firm conviction. But that doesn't mean there can't be sensible defaults. Make everything work automatically and TOGETHER automatically, and have all of the choices there for those who go looking. Maybe limiting packages on the install CD is worthwhile... but the choice should always be there. Debian limits nothing, and its default setup does not work perfectly... but it has potential. I can see it pulling itself up by its bootstraps and becoming a system that works together with itself.
Graphical installers. I'll say it one more time, I've said it before: screen one of the installer should be DOS/curses style and say "Easy install or Advanced install?" This is not to say everything he said about having the graphical install have advanced buttons isn't true; that's necessary as well. What this means is that the idiots can pick "Easy" while I pick "Advanced" and I get my sure-to-work-on-this-VGA-piece-of-shit installer complete with cfdisk partitioning and all of the gory details. There should never be a total reliance on a fully GUI install. Debian's installer is awful and could use some kind of option like this.
Liscense. BSD-style is nice, but GPL is Free. Non-GPL is not an option.
Kernel. This is another point in favor of Debian. It's (at least potentially) kernel agnostic. Linux today, NetBSD tomorrow, the HURD on Friday. A truly Complete Debian would allow you to pick any (supported) kernel you wanted at install time... be it Linux, or *BSD, or whatever. Doesn't matter.
As far as source goes... the debian way seems good. apt-get source. You can't do it by mistake, and it's not like archive material so few would get it "because it's free". Bandwidth problem largely solved (or at least not seriously aggravated) and you don't piss off zealots like me.
I will close by saying it again: Don't reinvent what Debian already does. Build a debian-based distro (a script could repackage many applications to use any new dir layout you choose). What this guy wants is a Friendly Debian and a little bit of proprietary code.
I want my Cowboyneal
How difficult would it be, exactly, to devise an environment that looked sufficiently like Windows for Windows device drivers to be able to run under it? At that low level Windows is still (relatively) un-bloated so it might not be such an epic task.
For the price of one (admittedly intricate) project, we'd get free drivers for all future devices for all Linux systems, forever. [Of course performance might be reduced and so Linux-specific drivers could still come in useful, but the main thing is everything will work in some fashion at least].
You will never get any normal human being to understand a computer system in which MyLetter, Myletter, and myletter are three different completely unrelated filenames. Make the filesystem case-blind and then we can start talking.
(although admittedly this will make it difficult to have consistent file naming in Turkish).
> Instead of doing what this article describes, just get Mac OS X.
The reason why many don't just get MacOS is that we want a computer that has decent hardware that performs. We want powerful 3D hardware acceleration. PC's even run Photoshop better than Mac these days too. Why anyone still buys a jellybean-like computer these days is beyond me.
If the BSD (a UNIX variant much like Linux in many ways) guys just packed up and went home, then Apple would have no OS X.
> I don't understand why anyone wouldn't.
Of course you don't, you are a Mac user. MacOS is really made for the non-expert user (to put it nicely) - although some still use it for Photoshop and the likes. Apple has dumbed down the UI and restricted users to a single mouse button so that users can't get into trouble.
Here's why.
- Libraries exist in different versions. Every application has at least one version with which it works (assuming that the developer ran the application at least once, when developing it).
- Using an older version may mean that the application won't work because there are missing features or old bugs.
- Using a newer version may mean that the application won't work because there are new bugs.
- Versions aren't always well-ordered anyway - it's possible to have !(A<B) && !(A==B) && !(A>B).
- Even if you could guarantee that each new version would always work with all programs created for earlier versions (including programs that worked round the bugs that the earlier versions contained), you are still vulnerable every time you install a new program, because the installer (installers are always written by a moron in a hurry) may decide that its version of the library is better than what's already there and will bugger up the entire system.
In general, disk space is getting abundant and cheap and so sharing libraries to save space is less necessary than it was. But there are still legitimate concerns with (eg) the virtual memory used up by 50 different copies of the same library in different applications. So here's a Modest Proposal.- When installing a library file with a new application, calculate the MD5 hash of the library file, and store the file under a name derived from that hash,
/usr/hashes/199203-10200ab-adeff01-... or whatever (the theologians will know). This will never damage anything, since if there is a library file already there it will, by definition, be identical. - Then put a symlink from the library filename your application expects to that hashed name.
- If at some later stage you decide to upgrade all shared libraries to a newer version (note that this is now an explicit decision under your conscious control), run a utility that manipulates the symlinks accordingly.
Result: safe installation (safe for both the installed applications and the ones that are already there), no need to trust what the maintainers of the library thought WAS or WAS NOT a significant change, no need to force-upgrade an application when it's running happily with an existing library thank you very much, and no bloat.This person obviously doesn't know what he's talking about if he thinks any linux distro will change it's STANDARNIZED UNIX FILESYSTEM HIERARCHY.
m.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
If you were such a power user, you'd make symlinks to make everything work the way you want it to, while enjoying the out-of-box benefits of such a system.
Duh? Isn't this the POINT of open systems?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
So do it. (Although I don't like a lot of the ideas in the article much)
coldcity
code, life, art
It needs something new, something fresh, something that really rocks the Linux community's world.
The file system is a nightmare for a normal user. This has been covered in exhaustive detail by hundreds of articles, but if I'm going to run my own distribution, I'm going to make a sensible directory structure: /users, /apps, /system, /hardware, /downloads, /logs, /servers, /shared, and more. Then, using symlinks, we're going to recreate the current basic layout of the standard Linux/BSD filesystem to assist developers in porting applications.
If he wants to do something truly revolutionary, this is what he should do: throw away the notion "file system" and introduce the "information store". Let me explain: Although what he proposes (a file system hierarchy that makes sense) is probably the next step, it is widely known that the most important problem for computers today is that there is no uniform way to manage digital information.
Most applications have lots of code in them to save/load information to/from the filesystem. Most code is similar, and I have some experience on this, since in the company I work most apps share some code, but most importantly they share the logic to save/load data.
But the today's filesystems are really dumb. It's up to the applications to manipulate them. As a result, there is no way I can find any special information I like using a search utility. For example, if I wanted to find all the pictures that contain a picture of my child, there is no way to do that using Windows Explorer. And there is no way to formulate complex queries on the file manager level in any O/S of today.
So, in order to do away with all the problems and really innovate, the filesystem must be turned into a database. But a simple RDBMS system may be not enough. Why not turn it into an object-oriented database ?
Most applications have an object model in them. By "object model", I mean about a tree of instances of classes that represent digital information. Most popular apps like Word or Excel reveal their object model to the users through scripting engines (VBA for example) so the app can be extended in run-time without the need to re-compile the application.
If the problem is studied close enough, you will definitely see a pattern: "object model", "tree", "information". So why not code this at the operating system level ? Instead of having files, each file could be an object. And this object could contain other objects, making possible the organization of the information in a tree. Trees is most natural way to represent information, that's why almost every app has a tree (and that's why a tree control is one of the most important controls in gui libraries).
In order to extend this system further, the operating system should define a 'component object model', that is a binary interface to interacting with objects. Each object would be represented by a class, and the class's code could be kept by the file system and invoked when needed. Of course, this means throwing away the concept of "app", since the focus is now on the component.
Each object would manage its storage the way it likes, using the operating system primitives. Each object could contain other objects. Since the whole mechanism is strongly typed and the O/S would keep meta-information about the objects, the most basic problem of the computer is solved in an elegant way. A computer is about information I/O, search and computations on the stored information. This is a part which concerns most applications and it could be assisted by the operating system.
The object-oriented information system paradigm fits nicely with modern object-oriented languages. A programmer could make components using Java, C++, C#, VB, or any other language that supports effectively OO.
Let's see an example: the mail system.
.. runs all my existing software...
You have been SO trolled.
Everybody knows the parent post is a joke. Only a complete fool would post a point-by-point rebuttal.
I tend to convert some of my friends to linux from time to time. I do so by handing a copy of Slackware to them and the Slackware Linux Essentials Book.
o lution
I have to admit these people arent total PC newbies, they actually like PCs and are willing to learn. But these people seem to be quite comfi with their new OS. The biggest plus for them is to get rid of all "Purchase this now" Buttons or Spam Messages on ICQ. Its that simple. What else do I do to help my fellow newbies on the block? I tell them wich apps work best for them (as seen from a Windows perspective).
Usually they are set with these:
-OpenOffice
-XMMS
-gaim
-gFTP
-Mozilla
-Ev
-k3b
-The Gimp
-MPlayer
-Some kind of pron-collection Viewer
I dont think we should stretch too far to resemble WIndows. First of all Windows isnt coherent in any way and users dont mind. Compare Win95 with WinXP or even Win2k. There are huge differences GUI-wise. But people adapt to it just by USING it. If you can convince someone to actually use their installed Linux rather than rebooting and getting the task done using windows they learn quickly. Gnome and KDE are good enough for daily business and its a nice challenge for the newbie to fiddle with a console. Everyone else can freely stick with Windows.
Bottomline: We shouldnt target PC Newbies, but PC Users who have fun using computers. Thats what Linux is about in my perceiption. From my daily experience the first two pluses Windows-Switchers realize are:
"Hey, I can configure my Desktop even more the way I want it too. This looks cool, and that...wohoo!"
"I need program X, where do I get it...wait a minute...its already installed...!"
Just my 20cents.
cu,
Lispy
>> I think that OS X looks amazing, and is in all respects the perfect OS, but I refuse to pay £2000 for less power than I have now on a machine that cost half that.
You are talking nonsense! Please take a quick look at the Apple UK store http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/ukstore/ and report back to me.
For £680, you can get a G3 iBook or a G4 eMac that are more than capable of running OS X and almost anything I can imagine and comes with tons of free best-of-class software and programming tools.
My 4 years old iMac is only 400 MHz and runs faster than my 800 MHz PC for literally anything I do. The best thing about the Mac OS X, it doesn't crash like Windows 2000 or XP, nor does it get slower and slower over time so that you have to reformat the hard disk or mess with the Registry every now and then. And of course, there is virtually no virus or weekly or daily MS security patches.
If you play Quake all day long, maybe you should keep your ugly hot and noisy dual Athlon. But for real work, you need a real OS, and there is nothing better than OS X. I do programming and graphics on a cheap 700 MHz iBook which is almost perfect (fast, stable, quiet, beautiful, 4+ hours battery life, instant sleep and wake up) - except that it's not a 17" PowerBook.
This post states that postmodern, metawriting is hard to read. This sentence referes the reader to "This is the title of the story, which is also found several times in the story itself."
It's GNU/Linux, you insensitive clod.
Something like.. Fresco.
18:18 30/4/2546
... : (
...
...
...
hi!
topic: OS's of the next level...
symlinks, think about it
DRAG-and-DROP. Best invention since electricity!
NOW: wouldn't it be nice (only on a really open OS) to right click an excecutible (in a GUI), NOT a symlink, and get some menues like:
>show source(*).
>execute.
>translate > c
> c++
> c#
>
>post source.
drop one program.v.01 on program.v.02 shows differences
i believe, really, the GUIs are the future. what can't you do with a GUI that you could do with a SHELL?
maybe the brain switches modes with complexety information from the eyes?
(*) why can't they make a "standard" and give every LIB (?) a nice icon?
instead of "hui-hui-ui-wutsch" ("all that is your name, huh? anything short you know...").
there should be a grammar, syntax, etc. for icons (example: +color: red=alpha, orange=beta, green="stable"...)
yeah it melts down to: the compiler should be thighter in the OS-SAY-GUI. etc.
oh, i can't program in japanese or chinese can i? problem : (
but i do know where the toilet is, when i go to a japanese or chinese airport
but you left out many features.
Try it, benchmark it to Gentoo for normal use (for scientific clustering etc you would want to rebuild key libraries, with rpm).
You won't find a better free distro for your requirements.
Your post was, how should we say, amusing. If we reduce all ideas down to the dumbest people who employ them, I think we can find lunacy in everything.
It would be like saying ALL car owners are stupid because they get stuck in traffic. Or all religious people are assholes because they are shoving their beliefs down my throat. Or all amusement park goers slow down the line to the rollar coaster because their big fat ass couldn't fit in the harness and the attendent had to spend 10 minutes muscleing them in.
Every cheap shot you made at Gentoo users could have easily been made against any other user of any other distribution.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
readable from the command line because supposedly with your great linux distribution they wont be using one!
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
My experience with Debian has been that "sudo apt-get install " will reliably install just about all of the programs I've tried
So will 'sudo urpmi'
RPM is a nice idea, but you have to actually find RPMs, which is a pain.
You're confusing the package format and the tool used by Redhat to manage RPMs.
Don't diss the RPM package format until you've tried a real packaging frontend (urpmi/yum/apt-rpm).
And don't make the mistake all Debian users make in comparing rpm to apt, you should be comparing rpm to dpkg.
When an application wants a web browser, it should run "web-browser [url]"
What about using $BROWSER, which has been in use for over 5 years?
One KDE:
$ echo $BROWSER
kfmclient openProfile webbrowsing
$
My distro would be built around Tcl/Tk and a Mysql backend. A special Daemon called "Yggdrasil" would store a master scheme that encompasses all of the settings in the machine. A set of scripts would transform data from yggdrasil into the config files needed by individual programs.
Where possible, I would configure/tweak/patch programs to pull information directly from the yggdrasil.
The interface for the system will be 2 parts:
- Click and drool
- Script and rule
Any non-admin function will have either a Tk script or an html form. Bundled into the system would be a local web browser for that purpose. I would also have a Tk-based web browser available for use internally.Admin functions would be script only, though repetive tasks could be made into a Tk script (ie the make xconfig function for the Kernal, which incidentally IS a tk script.) I would design the whole system to use one and only one scripting language: TCL, with the object oriented Incremental TCL extension.
While that would involve converting over a lot of useful perl and bash scripts that are in common use, it would also get rid of a lot of duplication between them. Over time the distribution would develop a massive library of UI/Admin functions. This library would be maintained like GLIBC or the kernel by a central bunch of busybodies like myself.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Sound and video smoothness sucks, soundcard support sucks, input device support sucks, extended capabilities of sound or video equipment is almost always unsupported.
Linux is far from an ideal platform for games. It is even stretching a bit to say it is an adequate platform.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
If I had my own Linux distro, I would make sure to point out to all my users that Linux is just a kernel, and not a fucking operating system. The confusion in places like Slashdot caused by people like RedHat is overwhelming. When will you fucking morons get a clue? I know most of you guys have never hacked around a kernel or made your own, but maybe you should give it a try sometime.... Maybe you should take some Operating System classes at a local university. I know you guys will probably mod me as a flamer, but that's because you are just in denial of the truth.... for some odd reason.. "No way dude, RedHat wouldn't lie to us...." I don't really care. This whole thing is pointless when most of the users are dumbass conservitives that only want to preach to their own choir and don't want to take the time to research something and possible admit that they were wrong. Hopefully someday you all will be enlighted.
You can move between systems with no difficulties. That is why OS X is better than [insert window manager here]. My grandma can use OS X on any system she sits down at (same goes for Windows). Try to explain the merits of KDE over Gnome or Mandrake over Slackware. She doesn't give a rats ass. Apple runs Apple to her. When grandma can sit down at a purchased preinstalled linux box and it makes any kind of sense, I'll be the first to recommend it. Until then Linux is still the mixing pot of every stupid program out there. There is no reason I should need disk 3 of the redhat set to install xvim! 3 f'in disks. If bloatware Windows can still fit on 1 disk and OS X can fit on 2 disks what the hell is the problem with redhat?
Oh well I guess that's why I prefer slackware.
The best thing about OS X is the UNIX underbelly is hidden from the GUI. To get to it you must be in a terminal. 99% of OS X users probably don't even know it's there or what to do with it anyway.
Dumbass this was taken care of years ago. Right click does the same thing as CTRL-Left Click. The scroll wheel works and everything.
Guess I'll see you at the Apple store (doubtful).
I've got a 900MHz G3 iBook and a G4 733 QS Tower and they are very fast. 10.1 was unbearable but 10.2 is screaming. I'm getting a new Powerbook when the 1.25's come out at 15.4".
As far as over priced it may be but when you can run Photoshop, Flash MX, Office v.X, and it comes with free developer tools. It beats Linux, Windows and Solaris hands down.
The parent post should have been modded funny...
/System and \Program files to /Apps.
The author suggests using the Windows filesystem layout, only changing \Windows to
We have LOTS of the Linux distros to meet the MANY diverse needs of this community. But ...
... the Gnome package, the KDE package, the Mail server package, the Apache package, the SAMBA package ... Just choose!
If I was going to have my own distro, it would focus on making that distro EXCEL on a specific set of hardware, and then sell that hardware.
I would tweak and tune and develop hardware relationships where there would be MANY win-win (no pun intended, no "R" required) situations. And I would NOT EVER worry about making my distro work on some bizarre hardware, but WOULD make all of the advances of my CHOSEN hardware available to everyone.
I'd make the software choices for them in the form of a package
Kinda sounds like Apple, but it would not BE Apple.
Lou
I'm a very happy Slackware user, but it's attitudes like yours that prevent Linux from competing effectively on the desktop. Your amazing arrogance and ignorance really shines through and demonstrates that nothing matters to you but your ability to say, "I'm a l33t linux hacker wannabe". Apparently, you care nothing about the very philosophy that brought Linux to the forefront, which is freedom for the users -- not the developers. I don't even think it's necessary for me to explain the enormous benefits of a widespread userbase for Linux, but if you're unable to comprehend such a concept, this discussion is pointless, anyway. On another note, I am currently involved in a project, soon to be announced, which proposes to make people such as you irrelevant by not only talking about what ails Linux (instead of ignoring issues like you), but also producing a distro that doesn't suck.
For certain values of fun. Like fun=masochism.
Thanks for that link to ROX! Drag and drop saving of files is a neat idea. Also, the application directories idea is pretty interesting. Good for the not-so-computer-inclined folk. (Like my mom & dad).
:)
Would be interesting to see ROX get a little more attention in the world of window managers / desktop environments.
does nothing in the article seem at all radical? Most of it's already been done. At least one each by Debian and Gentoo, and several by Mac OS X (with the lion's share of his suggestions covered, but hey they're the ones who HAVE the capital). And honestly, replacing the basic directory names with other basic directory names isn't exactly a brave new paradigm of computing. When they said switching the UNIX directory tree, I thought they meant something really new, like replacing the hierarchical model with a web-shaped model, or something. And providing a large online repository of software known to work just seems like common sense to me, as does reducing redundant apps and concentrating on a primary GUI environment. None of this has not been suggested many, many times before. This guy's distro, despite efforts to the contrary, sounds like just another clone clogging the market.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009