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Harsh Words From Google On Linux Development
jeevesbond writes "The alpha version of Google Chrome is now available for GNU/Linux. Google Chrome developer and former Firefox lead Ben Goodger has some problems with the platform though. His complaints range from the lack of a standardised UI toolkit, inconsistencies across applications, the lack of a unified and comprehensive HIG, to GTK not being a very compelling toolkit. With Adobe getting twitchy about the glibc fork and previously describing the various audio systems as welcome to the jungle, is it time to concentrate on consolidation and standardisation in GNU/Linux in general, and the desktop in particular?"
'...is it time to concentrate on consolidation and standardisation in GNU/Linux in general, and the desktop in particular?'
Good luck.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Choice, many times becomes really fast synonym of fragmentation and lack of standard. And this is just a bright example. The situation described is 100% conforming to reality, as far as UI kits and sound infrastructure.
GTK isn't as nice as everyone makes it out to be. Basically what everyone has been doing is talking red hat, and suse and making their product work on that. You can't "standardize" Linux because the 7 or so distro can't agree.
Let's face it, one of the things all Linux evangelists like to emphasise is the opportunity to use whatever you want and even build it yourself if you want to. But it's maddening for developers to create something that will work on every kind of linux desktop in existence. From political choices of free vs. non-free, to preferred distribution, version numbers, favourite window manager and a host of other choices, no two desktops will be the same. Linux isn't an operating system, it's an operating eco-system. Taking Google as an example, today I tried to install Google Earth on my Ubuntu 9.04 laptop to no avail, despite it having installed without a hitch on my Xubuntu 7.04 Pentium III plaything in my room back in my parent's house. The exact same version of the program with dramatic differences depending on where you try it, that quickly becomes a support nightmare.
Now for the dedicated GNOME/KDE/xfce/whatever volunteer this does not pose much of a problem because your target audience has broadly the same machine makeup as you do, but for a commercial developer looking for a good ROI it quickly becomes untenable. Windows and Mac OS provide a devoloper with a guaranteed stable platform development-wise, and as such are much safer bets.
I agree that the only way Linux can make itself more attractive to commercial desktop program developers is with a mighty amount of consolidation, but the problem is that I don't think it will happen. The great OS wars that went before the dominance of Windows had winners and losers because they were systems of a closed nature, and so if you held with a losing team they closed down because it wasn't economically viable and you had to move to something more mainstream, thus consolidating the market. With Linux a project will never close down as long as someone like it more than something else.
Follow the discussion, and you'll find it's not about complaints at all, at all, at all. Google is trying to figure out the best way to do Chrome for Linux, while making it something that Linux users will actually like, and that means more choices. That's all. No, it's not about needing to standardize, so could someone at Slashdot quit with that FUD? GNU/Linux is about choice, and it always will be.
Meh, everything is a trade-off. Qt is way easier than Gtk and has a huge API for doing all sorts of cross-platform stuff. Plus it's truly cross-platform whereas Gtk is pretty crappy on anything other that systems running X Windows.
The trade-off is that Qt is C++ and Gtk is C. This actually matters a lot when you need to interface to other C-only applications and libraries or whatever. C++-to-C is easy but using it the other way around is problematic and annoying. Then you have the issue of how clean the code is in each language (depends on your point of view as to which is better).
There also used to be the issue of Qt forcing the GPL down your throat but that is no longer an issue because both Gtk and Qt use LGPL.
Personally I have been using Qt for everything recently. Since the switch to LGPL it's the obvious choice even though I'm a C purist at heart. I hate the fact that it's so big though. Since it's LGPL you can't statically link only the stuff you use so your application installs tend to be larger than they really should be...
Trade-offs... Everything... So annoying, makes it hard to develop truly high quality software.
Meh, does Chrome even follow Microsoft HIG? The tabs being almost part of the title bar, and the lack of an actual window title in the title bar, as well as the random Google logo next to the buttons, all seem to be completely contrary to what I expect on Windows. As do the Vista style buttons even on XP, but then Microsoft did that too with Windows Media Player in some version.
All your base are belong to Wii.
My Mac currently has several apps in three different toolkits open; several apps written by Apple itself don't follow standard UI conventions. The Windows situation is even worse: there are several native toolkits there (Win32, MFC, .NET, ...), plus dozens of third party ones. And UI conventions are violated constantly.
The real problem Windows programmers have with Linux is... that it isn't Windows. They start writing some big, ugly, messy Windows application (hello, Firefox), and then they moan and groan when porting it to Linux and usually do a piss-poor job at it too.
If only the Linux Standard Base existed! Oh, wait, it does!
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/lsb
That is why Skype can build a distro-agnostic package with static linked libraries that just works on every distro, even though they also make distro-specific packages as well.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
That part in the summary amused me:
It was time ten years ago when Linux was first gaining real momentum in that area. I remember posting Slashdot comments about it and getting told Linux was about "choice" and that if I didn't like it, I should contribute code. Ten years later, even Google is bashing Linux for it. I bet nothing will change even now.
Linux is a server OS, only used on the desktop by enthusiasts. Accept it, because the kind of standardized APIs that are needed are not going to happen with the attitudes that this community has.
Does apt-get count as a relatively easy to use package manager? I've used it on both OS X and Windows machines.
The problem with having several GUI toolkits is that then you fragment the user experience. I use GIMP on OS X, and having X11 running makes it a very awkward, sometimes annoying experience - not only do I have to make sure I'm properly in GIMP rather than X11, but all the keys change command button to control button depending on which one you're in. It's really pretty awful, and I expect non-techy users to find it more confusing than I do.
Consistency is important to a user experience. Learning how to complete tasks in an OS is very much like a language skill. When you force people to learn different sets of hot keys, different ways of achieving the same task, then you're burdening them with another language. The only good reason to break away from having a single HIG standard, as far as from the user's perspective, is if you're writing a really novel application where you're trying to provoke a different mindset; writing yet another average GUI toolkit doesn't come close to qualifying.
He did call for it to be built on top of Qt, not KDE. I know better, and honestly can't tell you why I typed KDE instead of Qt.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I've got no idea about him but I've written several white papers for various platforms in my job including .NET and I use Windows daily at work and even in a VM at home sometimes. I also use Ubuntu and OS X primarily for my personal stuff. It's not an either/or religion for all of us who don't have the last name Stallman. I very much value open source products but there are things they don't do or don't do well or because of other cultural reasons such as de facto standards just are positioned properly in the market to do.
If you want it to be either/or us versus them then you have to make a product that meets ALL of my needs and currently no one does so I use Ubuntu (and previously FreeBSD, Suse, Gentoo, Slackware, or Redhat) when I feel it meets my needs and OSX or Win when they do.
There's no "Linux community". There is a lot of communities of different sizes, many of which don't give a damn about each other, plus individual developers doing their own thing.
It's like asking, why does the "programming community" keep inventing new languages? Can't we just all settle on C?
There's a guy somewhere working on some project who got really fed up with say, artsd, and decided that writing a successful sound daemon would look good on his resume. And we end up with yet another sound system. And if you come to him complaining about the lack of unification he'll tell you he's doing it on his own time, has X very happy users and doesn't really care about what you think.
You know, I have to agree. I just never did get the zealotry either. While at home and work my main OS is Windows 2K/XP/XP64, when I am called out to fix a network that some bonehead had let God knows what loose on? You bet I'm bringing my laptop with the Xandros Business partition fired up. It lets me access the Ad and Exchange, while having enough of a familiar interface I can hand it over to an employee that has a deadline to get their work done on. Use the right tool for the job, I always say.
That said, why do you Linux guys seem to hate standards so much, hmmm? I'm not talking to you specifically fooslacker, but Linux in general. I mean y'all got, what? Three different sound systems now? Would it really be so hard for all the major players to sit down and choose a basic standard, one that will hopefully be rock solid stable with minimal changes and a focus on backwards compatibility, so that writing drivers and programs for the entire Linux ecosystem would be easy and thus attract more companies?
I mean if I am a hardware manufacturer it takes just three drivers if I want to support Windows past, present, and future with a binary driver. Four if I want to cover the niches. I just have my developers write a Win98/ME, A win2k/XP, and a Vista/Win7. I add a WinXP64/Vista64 and since Win7 can use Vista drivers I have everything from 1998-2014 completely covered with just four binary drivers and no more out of pocket. There just ain't a way to do that in Linux. Same with programs, there really isn't a way to...say make a game, and be assured that it will work on Debian, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Xandros, PCLOS,etc right now, much less have the same thing work out of the box five years from now so I can continue selling it without constant tweaks.
Look, nobody is asking you to become Windows or OSX. Nobody is asking you to give up the bazillion different distros out there. Just have a common, stable, and backwards compatible undercarriage that software developers and hardware manufacturers can target so that it doesn't matter if I use Xandros and you use CentOS and the guy down the street is running Gentoo, that any company can release a program or driver and know that for now and the long term across the board it will "just work", that's all. I bet if you had a stable and solid undercarriage that worked across the board that a lot more companies would seriously consider releasing their products and drivers for Linux. And that is good for everybody, right?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Consistency in any Windows applications is hard to come by. Running MS Office 2007 or Windows Live Messenger 2009 (and several earlier versions) in Windows XP will show you that. Yes, I realise they were made to look like Vista and 7 and fit in with Vista and 7's interfaces, but that in itself is a terrible crime of design! If they're made to look like Vista and 7, that means they probably aren't using the same code for their appearance. Big waste of resources if you add up every program that ignores the system theme and does it's own thing.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
I am a Chromium developer, and if you don't think Qt apps "speak with a foreign accent", especially on Mac, you don't pay close enough attention. It's not an immediate appearance difference, it's the way that subtle details are wrong. By contrast, Chromium appears _very_ different on Windows on the surface, but we go to great lengths to get small details right. Big differences can be accommodated. Small differences drive you crazy.
Also, most of us were Linux developers, not Windows developers, before writing Chromium, so again you are asserting things that are completely wrong.
I mean if I am a hardware manufacturer it takes just three drivers if I want to support Windows past, present, and future with a binary driver. Four if I want to cover the niches. I just have my developers write a Win98/ME, A win2k/XP, and a Vista/Win7. I add a WinXP64/Vista64 and since Win7 can use Vista drivers I have everything from 1998-2014 completely covered with just four binary drivers and no more out of pocket. There just ain't a way to do that in Linux.
There's a much easier way. Send a message to the kernel list saying, "I am a hardware manufacturer. Here are the docs for my hardware under NDA, and here's some samples." Ta-da! You get drivers written for free (or significantly reduced), and every subsequent distro release will support your hardware by default.
Pirate Party UK
Bullshit.
That freedom and diversity is why Microsoft can't simply attack and destroy a single competing vendor the way they have so many others.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Maybe Ballmer was right? It's all about developers, developers, developers, developers.
Every time a conversation about programming on Linux comes up, I try to follow it. But honestly, it's just easier programming on Windows machines. There are maybe 4 versions to worry about ME/2000/XP/Vista. And you can probably forget about ME/2000. Even if you don't, it's a few lines of difference (between them and XP, they're prerrt to identical to program for). And you can leave them in when you program for XP/Vista.
Meanwhile, if you use the best practices that MS recommended for XP back when they released it, there's no difference between XP/Vista programming (unless you're trying to extend windows explorer.)
It just works, and it's easy.
Your ad here. Ask me how!