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."

Comments

Yea like they will ever agree with anything

[jellomizer]

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.

Re:Yea like they will ever agree with anything

[mugenjou]

and microsoft is a combination of both? they have the low quality of profit driven software as well as egoistic recreation/bastardization of standards just to be as incompatible as possible with the rest of the world.

Re:Yea like they will ever agree with anything

[asuffield]

You're half right. The bit you got wrong is that the profit motive does not inspire people to produce consistent software. Most commercial software is just inconsistent, with everything around it and sometimes even with itself. This happens because each piece of software has a different project leader, and nobody in management above them understands enough to impose a single vision on the whole system. Given a choice, an individual project team will usually attempt to differentiate their project from all the others, in the hope of getting more money and/or recognition.

So the conclusion is probably that different software created by different people is usually going to be different. That's probably a good thing and you should just get used to it. Nobody can invent a single way to do things that is right for every piece of software you might want to use in the future.

reasons why

[fl!ptop]

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.

I don't know what they are on about

[MichaelSmith]

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.

Re:I don't know what they are on about

[jellomizer]

It is an issue of consistency. If I am running Gnome I know when I am running a KDE app because it looks a feels slightly off. The same if I am using a straight X11 App. Linux for the desktop is not about Window Managers. It is about giving Developers tools to make their Apps Desktop Friendly, And ability to make sure Linux Apps look good no matter what WM you are using.

Re:I don't know what they are on about

[wysiwia]

Or say it with a single statement:

"It's the first top inhibitor of the Linux desktop adoption"

See http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov2005. pdf

and http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=183801&c id=15179906

O. Wyss

I have to ask...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

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.

Re:I have to ask...

[Pneuma ROCKS]

I think GUI, despite being prevalent for quite some time, have been very, very low in the priority list of Linux developers. The community has focused more on the low-level, kernel and architecture areas, and the rest has suffered from it. IMO, GUIs in Linux have always been an afterthought, and that's the reason they suck so much (again, IMO).

This sheds light in a key problem with open-source software: developers will work in what they want to work, not necessaily in what needs to be done.

Yeah, mod me down, see if I care.

Finally!

[yootje]

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?

Re:Finally!

[Coryoth]

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?

Because the worlds open source developers are not a giant slave pool designed to do your bidding.

Open source will always be chaotic and involve a great deal of duplication because that's that nature of the beast. The gain you get from that cost is much more open software that's developed rapidly and tends to work as a free market for ideas: the better ideas eventually win out (though that may take some time). If you want something different then you want Apple or Micrsoft with their rigid top down control structure which ensures that everyone is working toward a single unified goal (as much as is possible), and all the work is directed. The upside is consistency and a unified vision, but the downside is that the whole thing is more locked up, an often slower development cycle, and a tendency to get hit with the same stupid mistakes release after release after release just because it appeals to the guy at the top.

It's a choice and you can pick the software ecology that suits your needs. Just don't go expecting one to behave like the other on your whim - there are deep fundamental philosophical divisions about how to develop software (to let it evolve from the bottom up, or direct it from the top down) that are largely irreconcilable.

Jedidiah.

Re:Finally!

[JanneM]

why don't they just work all on 1 fantastic piece of software?

Because there is no one answer to what makes a piece of software fantastic.

When intelligent people can reasonably disagree on it, don't be surprised - or dismayed - when the end result is several divergent designs. That is truly a case where any one of the designs are good, and importantly, better than a compromise between them.

Re:Finally!

[TERdON]

why don't they just work all on 1 fantastic piece of software?

Because there couldn't be such a thing - it's an oxymoron.

Basically, the requirements of the piece of software would be heavily contradictory - dead-easy to use, but still incredibly powerful. Few such programs exist - because they are virtually impossible to make.

Example: file managers. On the one hand, you have explorer, finder, nautilus et al, which all are at least relatively easy to use even for a newbie. Many find them far to little powerful, especially on /., where the favourite probably is raw /bin/bash, which is far more powerful, but also really hard to learn.

The same principle holds for most other software. Either you make an easily usable, or a powerful version. The powerful version will, by definition, need a lot of learning on the part of the users, and thus can't be easily usable.

When you try to unite these two conflicting requirements, the most likely outcome is one of:

1) Cluttered interface, which intimidates the newcomer
2) Clean interface, but with all powerful features hidden away from sight so the advanced user has to look for them.
3) Millions of settings in an unmanagable settings dialog, toggling the different features on and off.

Conclusion: One software normally can't be the great software - not for every single user. The shifting requirements different individuals have will without doubt make them prefer different software - and that isn't really a bad thing. If everybody ran the same software, there wouldn't be as much incitement for developing new, powerful features!

On the desktop and haven't looked back...

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

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...

Standards wont make a difference

[gimpimp]

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....

Re:Standards wont make a difference

[IamTheRealMike]

Repository based installation is NOT the way to go. Autopackage is just a pretty frontend around the same problem.

Well, autopackage was designed to deal with many of the problems repository based distribution has, so, I would strongly disagree with the notion that it's just "a pretty frontend around the same problem". We've put many, many times more effort into things like reliable/easy installs than making it pretty (though there is still much to do).

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....

This problem affects any OS. You can't install Safari on MacOS X 10.1 either, if I remember correctly. It's true that Linux suffers this problem worst of all though, because there's no unified platform, and because there's no profit motive so little incentive for developers to go "the extra mile" to reduce system requirements. But it's a separate (though related) problem to how you install software.

Re:Standards wont make a difference

[Florian]

download an app folder, drag it to your appliactions folder. go.

Unfortunately not. OS X programs often spread their files all over the file system, with a mess of binary configuration files, possible netinfo entries (akin to the Windows registry...), etc. There is no standard method in OS X to cleanly remove them - just deleting the application won't do the trick in most cases. Even Windows is superior in that respect.

Besides, downloading binary code somewhere from the Internet and installing it in your system is a security nightmare and practice that should be abandoned ASAP. I find the Linux/BSD model of providing all software in distribution-provided repositories blessed by the distribution's maintainers vastly superior to OS X, with unmatched clean and safe installation, removal and upgrading of software. (How, for example, do you upgrade all your Mac OS X software with one command or click?) I use both Debian and Mac OS X and find Debian vastly superior in this respect.

Re:Standards wont make a difference

[i_should_be_working]

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.

You forgot the part in B) where you search through the internet for the home page of the application. Then you read the home page trying to find out how to download it. Once you see the "download" link you go through a couple of pages asking you what version you want and what mirror you want to use. Then after waiting for the download you finally start the actuall installation.

Whereas with A) it's more like: Open Synaptic, use the search field to find the app faster than you would on the net, install it.

I prefer option A. It's more convinient for me and the repository based system has other benefits I'd rather not do without. I can see where you are coming from, but different people prefer different things. I'm just glad the distros agree with me (or rather I agree with them).

And for the record, it's not the distribution or Linux devs who are stopping app folders from coming to GNU/Linux. They already exist. Nothing stops someone from bundling everything a program needs in a self-contained folder. That's how most of the proprietary apps I use are packaged. Open source devs could do this with their programs too, but it would be more effort without much benefit when the distros are going to package it anyway.

Re:Standards wont make a difference

[javanree]

This might have been an issue years ago, but these days there isn't any serious "dependancy hell" anymore. Tools like yum sort that out. As long as you pick a sane combination of repositories things will "just work"
For Fedora (only one I'm familiar with), there's freshrpms , Dag and a few others that work great. For the distro I use (CentOS) I maintain my own repository, so all other users just have to click to get what they need.

And if you want one-click install, have a look at Klik, which is now available for many distro's already. Although I personally prefer RPM's (since it's easier to clean/upgrade) it's a good idea for novice users.

Things like LSB and freedesktop ARE making a difference, although some of it might not (yet?) be visible on the surface.

Re:Standards wont make a difference

[cozziewozzie]

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.

We can do this already: Klik

The problem is that you end up with 200 versions of the same libraries, and the resulting memory and disk space overhead.

That's why this sort of installation is generally used for easy testing of things instead of a sane installation procedure.

Re:Standards wont make a difference

[asuffield]

Nothing stops someone from bundling everything a program needs in a self-contained folder. That's how most of the proprietary apps I use are packaged. Open source devs could do this with their programs too, but it would be more effort without much benefit when the distros are going to package it anyway.

Actually, it's not because it's more effort. It's because it is fundamentally a bad idea.

If you bundle everything you need into one blob for each application, then suddenly your system has installed several hundred copies of gtk, all at different versions. Obviously this is quite wasteful of space, but even that is not the real problem. This is:

A security advisory was just released for all copies of gtk before a given version.

What exactly do you do now? You don't know which of your hundreds of applications has got that code included in it. Even if you could figure it out, you now have to either rebuild all of those by hand (if you can), or go to each individual upstream developer and download an updated version from them. If you're a desktop user then you probably aren't going to get this done, so you'll be running with known security holes in some applications. If you're a sysadmin then you're probably going to find a new job.

I would say that the ability to install security updates in a reasonably painless and secure manner is one of the most fundamental tests of any distrbution method. Applications-as-self-contained-blobs fails it badly.

Why doth the rumours continue?

[Psychotria]

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.

Standard don't remove freedom

[MarkByers]

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.

ONLY a few percent?

[penguin-collective]

A few percent desktop marketshare is what Macintosh has. Seems to me that the "fractured" Linux desktop is doing pretty well already.

Cynicism is popular on /., but not always right

[swillden]

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.

Real news at the end of TFA

[standbypowerguy]

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 ;-)

UNIX wars redux

[Danathar]

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