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Linux Distributors Work Towards Desktop Standards
WebHostingGuy wrote to mention an MSNBC article discussing a move by several Linux distributors to standardize on a set of components for desktop versions of the operating system. From the article: "The standard created by the Free Standards Group should make it easier for developers to write applications that will work on Linux versions from different distributors. Linux has a firm foothold as an operating system for servers -- it's popular for hosting Web sites, for instance -- but has only a few percent of the desktop market."
After the talk there will be 2 Major Faction. While one may win. The Second one will go Screw you and make their own design in-spite of the the talks. That is the problem with Ego Driven Software vs. Profit driven. While they both have their advantages and disadvantage. Ego Driven Software while the Code my be better quality but have a much harder time agreeing with other people. But Profit driven Software tends to be more consistent but software quality tends to be a little lower.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
interesting that msn bills move as 'making the operating system compete better with windows' instead of 'making it easier for developers to write applications that work on different flavors.'
i would think the former is a result of the latter, instead of the other way around.
When you recognize love in another and realize how precious it is, everything else seems so insignificant.
I can run KDE applications under fvwm and Gnome, as long as the runtime libraries are there. I don't see why it is hard to have QT and GTK libraries on each system.
The only remaining issue is cut and paste with rich content but the article doesn't talk about that.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
This question is going to seem rude, and I apologize for this, but why didn't this happen years ago? I'm asking out of curiosity, not as a jab at the community. It seems to me that this sort of standard would have been quite valuable as soon as GUIs became prevalent with Linux.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Yes and consistency can only be achieve by standardizing. Unfortunately this doesn't only hold true for the desktop, it's equally or even more important for the applications. So far Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Free Standards Group, doesn't seem to realize this else the FSG would have already standardized on a single set of application guidelines as outlined in wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/). Since this isn't the case so far we still have to wait for the breakthrough of the Linux desktop.
h tml
If anybody is interested in a Linux desktop and don't want to wait much longer, he should persuade the FSG to come to terms and at least delve and evaluate wyoGuide.
See also http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/54009/index.
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
What Linux needs is standardization. Having 921034 options to choose from is sometimes a good thing, but sometimes you have the feeling: why don't they just work all on 1 fantastic piece of software?
My photo's.
I have tried using Linux on the desktop MANY MANY times and always found myself stymied by getting printers to work and so forth. I have always been adamanat about using it for servers where it's very much worth the time to figure out Linux to have the benefits of it as a server product (bulletproof security, etc).
As a desktop product though I wasn't about to spend all day dicking around with trying to get it to work. That's was then.... this is now...
I have been using Linux as a desktop for several months now and it has flawlessly detected all my perpherals, and I Have now been able to spend more time doing development which is what I get paid to do.
Linux is getting better in this area and Linux is going to start making inroads. Slowly but surely...
We've had standards bodies for a long time. LSB, Freedesktop, etc - none of will help increase market share. Sure, they make like easier for developers, ie a gnome icon theme will soon work on a kde desktop. But the single major problem on linux is dependancy hell. I have nightmares about this.
Repository based installation is NOT the way to go. Autopackage is just a pretty frontend around the same problem. Until we can install and remove applications as easily as OSX users can, we don't stand a chance.
If you were a new user to unix, what would you prefer:
A) open synaptic, search the thousands of packages, hope you find what you're after, install it.
B) download an app folder, drag it to your appliactions folder. go.
Without this ease of use, there's no chance. I still laugh at people who say linux is ready, whilst at the same time they can't install the latest firefox on their box because it depends on the latest gtk which depends on the latest glib, which depends on....
i wish i was but oh well
Unfortunately, those added software libraries differ among Linux distributors, making it hard to know if an application like a word processor will function on a particular Linux computer.
What a load of rubbish...
When I read a comment like this, I have to question a) the qualifications of the article author; and/or b) their motives. Any assertions made in the article need to be critically examined and their validity questioned after such false hoohah.
i understand that this will help to push linux into the streets blabla, but is this really what we all want ? or is this the beginning of the end of linux as we know it ?
No. There will always be distributions that do it their own way despite what any standards organisations say. You will always be free to use these distributions. No-one can force standards into Free software (if you try, people can fork), but you can make the standards so good that distributions (and their users) want them. If people don't want them, they won't be successful.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
A few percent desktop marketshare is what Macintosh has. Seems to me that the "fractured" Linux desktop is doing pretty well already.
Folks hear about downloading, and expect to download, and application developers find packaging a pain, a barrier to distribution, but once people look at it critically, it is really about what people are used to, not about what works better. Downloading random packages off the net is a bad idea on any OS. Getting supported packages from a repository that tracks your OS is the right idea. Vendors of proprietary software should (and the good news is that many are) simply provide repositories for distros that provide for this kind of automatic updating.
People who say that repositories are not uptodate are not reasonable. Most people want software that has undergone some testing, want software to update itself automatically once it is installed, want the correct version for their system to be chosen automatically (i.e. asking people to be able to answer the question "on glibc 2.1 based distributions..." is too much.) The the software provider cannot find the time to perform proper packaging, and will not arrange for updates to be easy to do when there are security issues or improvements available, then you should not install the software unless you are prepared to do that sort of support on your own. That is a choice that most people do not think about.
Making repositories easier to deal with is the thing to concentrate on. For example, A missing piece right now would be to have an XML ''download selector'' which would contain a list of repositories for various distros, that frontends for apt/yum/whatever could just download and automatically select the appropriate repository for a given distribution. ISV's would just create the XML file (and the requisite repositories behind them.) And the whole manual download/install process would disappear. That would be a big end user improvement with only a small change existing tools.
After the talk there will be 2 Major Faction. While one may win. The Second one will go Screw you and make their own design in-spite of the the talks.
History disagrees. While the Linux Standards Base and Freedesktop.org projects haven't solved all of the problems -- and probably aren't fully adhered to by any distribution -- they have already made a huge difference in the compatibility of Linux distributions, and I think efforts like this are exactly what we need to continue pushing interoperability forward.
I say this, by the way, as a developer who just finished developing a cross-platform, commercial, binary-only application for Linux. The app I was working on definitely pushed the limits of the interoperability, since it was an authentication system that replaced key system components, and in spite of that it went very smoothly. The differences between the half-dozen Linux distros I had to tweak the package for were very small. Actually, the more difficult issue was making things work in spite of customizations the admin may have made -- I just had to punt on that one, making the installer intentionally brittle in the face of unanticipated modifications to, for example, the X startup scripts, and then providing the admin with the ability to customize the installer to adapt to local changes.
After my experience of the last year, I wouldn't have any hesitation about developing more "normal" applications to run on multiple Linux platforms, and I expect initiatives like this one (which is from the same consortium that brought us LSB) will continue to reduce the platform differences that cause problems. I think we may even be able to get to the point where app developers may actually be able to target LSB (or whatever its successor is called) rather than having to tweak for individual distributions.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
You mean like in the commercial world, the Apple faction said "screw you" to the Microsoft/IBM faction and did everything their own way? Or like the MS Office group said "screw you" to both the MFC and Vista groups and keeps violating GUI guidelines on Windows? Or like Mac developers can't agree on a consistent toolkit (there are half a dozen different ones in common use), consistent look, or consistent installer?
It's good that the Linux desktop is being unified further, but it certainly has to fear no comparison with other platforms. You can start complaining again once Apple and Microsoft sit down together and decide on a consistent place for the menu bar. (KDE at least gives you a choice.)
At the end of TFA I found the following quote: "Installation by the user is easy..." Imagine that! An acknowledgement that linux installation is easy published in a major media outlet. Hopefully, this will encourage some folks to try linux. Installation of any OS may be beyond the "joe sixpack" crowd, but IMHO, most linux distros' installation routines now rival or exceed Windows' simplicity, and you don't have to type in a long, cryptic CD key ;-)
This isn't the sig you're looking for... Move along.
Hang on, hang on... cut & paste? I know ctrl-v doesn't always work, but I haven't found one app in which good old middle mouse button doesn't work. Maybe I've just been lucky and not tried to use it when it doesn't work, but hell middle-mouse even works from firefox to vi. And at least for me, I prefer middle-mouse button anyway... ctrl-v also requires ctrl-c in addition to selecting the text. And as far as it being preferable due to it being a keyboard shortcut, well cut & paste is largely a GUI thing anyway (vi has it's own built-in cut & paste thing of course) so you're likely to be using the mouse and you got to use it to select text anyway.
Please correct me if middle-mouse is not universal.
The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife Are Some Jive Ass Slippers
Because unpopular software on Windows like Winamp religiously follows the Windows design guidelines . How the hell did this blatant turfing for his own, really tangental site, get modded up? People will deal with new and non-standard apps quite well for the most part. This isn't about the interface presented to the user, it's about the parts that are common to all desktops like menus and hooks to the WM.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I love LINUX...use it...endorce it...but...
The fact of the matter is, NOT having standardized methods for things like graphical installation of software (like MS installer) is a BIG drag on desktop adoption.
Having so many linux distros is good for competition between distros and innovation, but horrible for commercial software vendors wanting to create products that will be bought by many people.
Graphical installers that pull software from repositories are still (generally) too complicated. I have to hand-hack X11 config files to get multi-monitor configurations to work. Stuff still just does not work "out of the box" as well as windoze in many important respects.
Get ready...if Apple ever decides to use the LINUX kernel (unlikely) it should put a WHOLE lot of pressure on LINUX distros to clean up their acts.
you can flame me now...I have my asbestos fire suit on