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Is SaaS Killing Native Linux App Development?
jfruhlinger writes "In a world where 'app' is the new buzzword, the development of native Linux apps is lagging. Some of this can be attributed to the usual community infighting (the latest version of which is argument about Ubuntu's Unity interface), but there may be something deeper at play: Linux advocates have for so long advocated browser-accessed software as a service as a way to break out of Microsoft's proprietary desktop. Now that this world has arrived, there's less incentive to work on native Linux apps. But of course, entrusting your functionality and data to a cloud provider like Google has its own set of concerns for free software fans."
The hardest most expensive portion of SaaS is hosting it. That's why native apps are lagging.
There is no argument about Unity. We all agree that it sucks. There is minor disagreement about the degree to which it sucks.
Does that really stop anyone from writing Linux applications?
Freshmeat is now called freecode.
Due to lack of good tools. With MS Visual studio / VB any old monkey can make GUI apps easily, with Linux its not that easy There are plenty of GUI creation kits out there for Linux apps that are
*Easy to use
*Widely supported
*Actively maintained
*Designed for use with a somewhat mainstream language
But it seems to be a case of "pick any 3", or sometimes only 2.
This triggers my rant reflex...
I started my career in native development, and only in the last say 5 years have I done almost exclusively Java based web development, mostly due to market demands and needing a paycheck. I miss the quick response times, quicker builds and simplicity where it was appropriate. I suspect the best hope for any native development now is maintaining legacy systems and mobile apps. People used to be in client/server development, but that's largely been replaced by the SaaS model due to comparative simplicity, but now we have a myriad of new technologies and frameworks globbed together. The industry's answer to any amount of complexity is yet another platform or framework and more indirection. It's hard to secure and know that it's done properly, and harder to know that someone else did it properly.
Go ahead and shoot me, but I miss the real native development days, regardless of the platform.
Google can, and does, shut down their services at will. It's DRM^2^2.
How, when Google offers Takeout to copy your data out?
I always go with local applications rather than webapps when possible. The issue is that with the google products I used, the critical aspect was how to get data to and from other people. Google reader takes away the only feature that made me use that instead of something else, but something else simply cannot realistically replace the 'sharing' capability without relying on some service that can be shut down at the whim of the provider.
Incidentally, why the hell did everyone start going with 'SaaS' instead of 'webapps'? The concept is nearly as old as the web itself.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Great stuff, As a vegetarian I always had a "yuck" factor when going to that site.
It's not SaaS Killing Native Linux App Development it's the FAIB (free as in beer) crowd doing it. Basically there is no money to be made in desktop Linux development out there since people simply are not paying for the software.
Most developers would use Java or QT and do all their work in Windows and then do a quick port and QA to Linux - if you're lucky.
Really this is not an argument about "in the cloud" or "webapp vs native app." One has to look at the reasons this is happening. The major reason is because most webapps are universally cross platform and usable anywhere. Other bonuses include that they are generally lightweight, don't require an install, and they sync your data between computers. Looking at that list of reasons, it is entirely possible to make native apps which do this, its just that most developers can't be bothered to do so (or aren't allowed to do so).
The architecture (thin v fat client) is tangential to whether you in-source or outsource system administration.
Most of the software we rely-on most is accessed via the browser:
Roundcube, Gallery, phpMyAdmin, LDAP Account Manager, Trac, and most importantly our own internal systems.
Once LibreOffice makes the switch my work will probably go days between firing up a GUI besides Firefox.
Meat is actually extremely healthy food. It's low on carbs, it has the good fat, and is high on protein. Bacon, eggs, whole-meat sausages and steaks are the same. You get a much healthier lifestyle if you avoid eating carbs. Yes, it means giving up on french fries, hamburgers and pizza, but that's easily solvable by making more bacon. I lost almost 30kg that way and still felt good while in low carb diet, after the first week anyway.
Despite being in free software for a bajillion years and using it as my desktop, I can't say that I've used any native Linux apps for anything really. For the past few years, it has just been a way to get a webbrowser running and to get online, and as a place to cache content. I also use Emacs and the dev environment to make my own (web) apps, and Apache to serve them.
The only native apps I use are games that need native audio/video control.
Linux is dying (or perhaps dead). At least it is on the desktop. It was stillborn and never really had a chance. Everyone (myself included) spent so much time worrying about Microsoft that we ignored what Apple was doing - and then *wham*, OS X comes out. A Unix-backed desktop OS with a gorgeous UI that non-techies can actually use.
Without a strong desktop presence, there is very little need for native apps. We sysadmins prefer our command line tools - and nobody can argue that there aren't a lot of those ... but general app development on Linux dropped off years ago and I don't see it improving anytime soon.
And you know, I really don't have a problem with that. I started with Linux in the early 90s, with one of the first releases of Slackware. Back then monitors were fixed-frequency and you had to calculate your video card's dot-clock & other timings in order to not blow up your monitor... I became a full-fledged sysadmin in 1995 and worked for a number of big Linux companies. I drank the kool-aid... all my machines at home ran Linux and it was good. In 2000 I switched gears and became a Linux developer - working on both embedded and desktop projects. Had some great experiences back then.
But somewhere around 2002 I started to feel betrayed. Here I was, nearly 10 years later and Linux still wasn't on the desktop - at least not in any kind of meaningful way. Sure I kept hearing how 1997...1998...1999...2000...2001 were all going to be the "Year of Linux on the Desktop" - but it never happened. The various Linux forums were the same old thing - people complaining about Microsoft (and now Apple) - all the while lifting as many UI ideas as they could from each OS, expecting that someone a floaty OS X dock-like thing would attract hundreds of thousands of new desktop users to the platform.
Here we are in 2011 and I'm seeing the same old shit. I'm just about ready to give up Slashdot because 90% of the Linux-related news stories just remind me that we haven't made any progress (and yes, as a developer I tried to help out in that area). Ubuntu's now saying that they're going to make a tablet UI. Yay ... only they haven't cracked the desktop (they made a lot of progress and undid it all with Unity).
*sigh*
Well for that matter, I don't know really good desktop environnement outside Linux either. I mean, I'll choose Gnome or KDE over any windows env any day. Not sur about OSx though, cause I don't know it enough, but It doesn't seems ultimate to me. Sweet all right, but still...
Now the desktop env shouldn't really matter when writing app. In the end it's more or less a matter of windows decorator...
(\__/) This is Lapinator
(='.'=) copy it in your sig
(")_(") so it can take over the world
Linux (and any OS worth its salt) has plenty of [applications].
GNU/Linux has plenty of free applications but not a lot of well-known non-free applications. There are some kinds of applications for which nobody has figured out how to make a free software model work. Let me know when these applications get ported.
---
If by "app" you are talking a "user application", meaning one with a whole user interface (i.e. GUI), etc. - I'd say that is eroding. I wouldn't say that "SaaS" is what's eroding it however. I've been using Linux for almost twenty years, and only have written a single GUI-based (Glade) application for it. I see Linux as a "back-end" system, and have always used Windows, or a Mobile platform as the "front end". When I need to write, let's say a "management" interface for something, or something else that requires something prettier - like a GUI, I've always implemented this as a web service.
This is more of an effect of the fact that Linux has never really made it big into the desktop arena. Conversely however, Android is making it mainstream in the tablet and smartphone space (albiet, under Java for user-apps) - so as tablets and phones eclipse desktops in the user-oriented space - Linux, ironically, stands to become the dominant force in "user" systems, they just won't be "desktop" systems as we think about them today.
HTML5 is just another GUI front-end library. In no way does it require you to write cloud based apps. If you want a native Linux application write the GUI in HTML5 and run the server on the same machine as your GUI. Hmmm.... something kind of like the Xserver model, but brought 30 years into the future?
When people whine about the ending of location transparency with the Xserver, what is going away is the Xserver as the primary GUI library, not location transparency in general. The Xserver needs to die, it is pass its prime and we need to move onto newer GUI technologies.
So stop writing native Linux applications and instead start writing HTML5 applications that ship with a built-in server. The cool thing about apps in this model is that the GUI works on Linux, Mac and Windows plus you can run the server locally or in the cloud - your choice. If you want to help out convert some native Linux apps into the HTML5 model.
Wayland is a key transition technology. It allows apps like Chrome/Firefox to be written directly to EGL. Plus you can run a user space Xserver as a legacy tool.
Yup, they screwed it up big time!
Us geeks down here are happy with our favorite window managers (I like openbox personally).. but we've lost all the major desktop environments as champions for new users.
Could it be because the set of target environments is so large compared to Windows / OS X? You've got to support multiple distros (and versions of distros), multiple desktop environments, etc.
"Native Linux app development sucks because of a lack of standardization. Conflicting projects, changing APIs, and aggressive attitudes from the community have all contributed to the failure of native Linux development."
No not really. Statically compile your binaries and call it done with the stupid dependency hell and API change hell. That way you can release binaries that "just work"(tm) instead of the 6 hours to get this damned bullshit app to run that uses hyper alpha library Development version 6.32.01.2 and anything else will not work because the programmer is a fricking moron.
Honestly, why did linux embrace the "spread crap everywhere" windows software installation model, instead of the Apple software install model? IT's retarded to have to install files shotgun style all over the fricking FS.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
What application do you use to edit photos and make illustrations? Or do you consider that application part of "the dev environment"?
I think that the majority of problems that were in the native environment are solved.
Most of the desktop applications are mature and complete and a big part of the commandline never had problems that werent solvable to begin with.
The last 10 years just caused a lot of problems to be solved on the web platform, now that HTML et al. are getting in mature state as well we will see coming 5 years that most problems on that platform are getting solved too.
Even scalability problems are getting solved with virtual computing.
This means attention is shifting to new platforms like mobile and pad until something new comes round the corner.
The big problem I see is that the stuff you describe is part of what makes Linux great for geeks like me.
Standardization tends to run up against flexibility. Linux is a hackers platform.. screw with anything you want.. you have the code! Don't like how something works.. make your own version of it!
This of course, as you said, makes Linux a nightmare for commercial development. For open source software, people can make the little changes necessary to make it work on their particular distro.. with closed source software, you can't do this.
That is why everyone wants VLC to be ported from Linux to mobile devices to finally get a decent player out there. That is why mplayer despite having no interest in doing windows support has people working on turning it into a windows version to get an even better player out there?
What apps are we talking about exactly? Fart apps? Angry birds?
There is a ton of software available for free install. What more do you need?
Or maybe the author is talking about payed for apps? Maybe the genius that wrote synergy should start charging for it? Maybe pay a buck here and there and then it suddenly counts? Okay, my pc will also then cost me a few hundred bucks but hey, at least we got APPS instead of applications. And we can only search for them by the broadest terms and their are ranked by how much their owners spams them.
Seriously, where is the issue?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Linux (and any OS worth its salt) has plenty of [applications].
GNU/Linux has plenty of free applications but not a lot of well-known non-free applications. There are some kinds of applications for which nobody has figured out how to make a free software model work. Let me know when these applications get ported.
Oh not one of these again. Let me fix that for you.
Netflix Watch Instantly - Admittedly limited (VM or Duelboot, Use Hulu)
Adobe Photoshop, including those high-end features that distinguish it from GIMP mods such as GIMPshop - wine
Adobe Flash CS3 - wine
TurboTax - wine
Stone Edge Order Manager - wine
Sonic 3 & Knuckles - wine
Diablo II - wine
Starcraft - wine
Street Fighter IV - wine
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - wine
According to WineHQ these applications don't present a problem. Here's your precious photoshop
http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?appId=17
Gold/Silver consistently!
Was that hard?
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
Honestly, why did linux embrace the "spread crap everywhere" windows software installation model, instead of the Apple software install model?
Because we don't want to waste vast amounts of memory loading the same libraries in different applications and don't want the security nightmare of every application having its own copy of DLLs with ancient security holes that will never be updated?
As a developer and a Linux user, I'm not sure why I'd write a native app for any OS unless there was a good reason why it couldn't run in a browser. Easy discovery, no installation headaches, no local machine capabilities/libraries/etc. headaches, write once run anywhere (old versions of IE can suck it), easily extensible/mashable via API's, ad nauseam. How many "native" iOS and Android apps are thin wrappers around webkit to get around device API access limitations?
I don't see that as a problem for Linux. Just the opposite. The less you make the OS a central part of the equation, the easier it is for not-Windows OS's to prosper. Who needs to shell out money for Windows if all you need from the OS is to fire up a web browser? With the latest GTK apps you can do HTML5 rendering.
Of course, we're a long way from eliminating the need for native apps, but even in this area Linux is leading. With GTK 3.2 you can render GTK applications in decent (HTML5) browsers. I've seen demos of fairly intensive apps like GIMP running in Firefox.
So in other words, it appears you're telling me it doesn't matter one bit whether or not developers make and publish Linux-native applications when they can just make a Windows-native application and foist all the compatibility work on the Wine team.
GNU/Linux has plenty of free applications but not a lot of well-known non-free applications.
Probably because the commodity applications (word processing, basic image editing, etc) are already 'good enough' and there's not enough of a market for more specialised apps. I almost exclusively use the native Linux apps, but I have Wine installed to run Windows apps for screenplay and novel writing, for example; though the novel writing app is supposed to be coming out native for Linux sometime soon.
Actually, there's even a Linux version of my video compositing app but I've never sat down and figured out what I'd need to do to get the DRM working. If Avid supported Linux too I could probably get rid of Windows.
Lets see, I am typing this in Linux, on my desktop at work.
I first saw the story on my android phone, running Linux.
There was a WiFi router that was running linux that sent it to my android phone.
Nope, not the year of the desktop.
Is _____ (Suggestions: Apple, Microsoft) KILLING Linux/Google/Bitcoin _____ ?
For example:
Is MICROSOFT BING KILLING Google SEARCH?
Is APPLE SANDBOXING KILLING Bitcoin MINING?
I think I have the formula fogured out, these articles are actually heuristically generated from statistically high word count topics, and kdawson and Soulskill are actually AIs.
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
You get a much healthier lifestyle if you avoid over eating or over doing any of the three main nutritional groups.
There, fixed that for you.
Carbs ain't bad for you. Shit loads of carbs is. To little carbs is also bad for you.
Btw, there's more stuff in meat then just protein, carbohydrates, and fat. A lot of it is carcinogenic, even more in cooked meat. To much meat ain't good for you either. A balanced diet of everything is the best.
I'm a vegetarian my self, and restrain my self from eating meat out of political reasons (i'm an anti-consumerist). I can get all the nutrients I get from meat, from veggies. It just requires you to do some reason your self.
The problem I see (and experienced*) with a special lower-then-normal-carb diet, is that as soon as you hit your desired weight. You will go back to your old habits.
This is cuz' a diet ain't permanent, only temporary, to solve a temporary problem you have with your weight.
What I'm trying to say is that it's a typical scenario of "Don't medicate the symptom, medicate the cause". Special weight loss diets are medication for your symptoms of overweight, not your problematic lifestyle. Think about it, your not going to WANT to eat Weight Watchers crackers for the rest of your life.
* I went from 130kg to 80kg with a low-carb diet in just under a year. Then jumped back to 120kg within 2 years. Now I'm at 75kg, cuz' of a proper lifestyle, free from over sweetened food, additives, and cheap meat (If you want to eat healthy meat, it will cost you. It will cost you a lot, cuz' proper meat ain't cheep).
If GNU/Linux doesn't work out of the box with a random sample of ten different users' respective favorite applications, then it isn't likely to work out of the box with other users' favorite applications either. If people have to buy a copy of Windows (retail) to run their needed applications in virtualization, which costs more than getting Windows (OEM) for nearly free with a new PC, then what's the advantage of running GNU/Linux on a home or small business desktop over sticking with Windows?
That is bullshit. ;D )
Eating to much meat may make you loss weight, but is in no way healthy. Meat is actually extremely healthy food No, it is not. Especially not the meat you get in our days in the super market.
To be healthy you need a balanced nutrition. To get an idea I would suggest to read an actual nutrition science book instead of a magazin diet. However as long as you eat enough / the right vegetables to your steaks you get enough carbs anyway (without you noticing
Stop drinking super sweet cokes and othere bullshit, and especialy don't eat diet shit with no fat an no sugar but full with artificial sweeteners.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Adobe Flash CS3 - wine
One of the toolbars doesn't show up according to the AppDB.
TurboTax - wine
Recent annual editions are rated Garbage.
Stone Edge Order Manager - wine
There is no specific entry in the AppDB for this product, but it runs on top of Access 2007. And according to the AppDB, forms in Access 2007 don't work without "an override for oleaut32.dll".
Sonic 3 & Knuckles - wine
Rated Silver for playable in a window. But it crashes in the full screen according to the AppDB because unlike Windows, Wine doesn't support upscaling LDTV resolutions such as 320x240 to SDTV.
Starcraft - wine
The Battle Chest version (bundle with Brood War) is rated Garbage because it can't find disc 2, and the downloadable version is also Garbage because clicking on a unit causes the game to crash.
Street Fighter IV - wine
Rated Garbage.
At least 75% of the distro's it is going to remain a non RAD platform.
The ONLY project that comes close is Lazarus. They have it pretty well worked out. Yes is is Delphi and I know everyone just LOVES to hate Pascal but guess what people as a language it does 99% of what needs to be done and the other 1% is just esoteric stuff that can be done without.
If you want it to do C++ then get onto the project and write the C++ for it.
It is drag and drop GUI interface, right click of the component or double click on the component and write your logic.
It is free software and it works but until the Linux community gels around a single GUI nothing will change and the chances of that happening are about the same of a snowballs chance in hell.
Linux could rule the desktop but because there are so very many variants with all the cooks screaming "Mine is better" it never fucking will.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
Well, I was a OSX 10.3 heavy user for almost a year, and I can say that it was, at that time, the most beautiful and coherent UI I ever used.
But it was not perfect. There were a few common tasks where I missed Windows XP (some file manager operations were easier on XP, I swear!).
For the sake of comparison, I still prefer Windows XP UI over the Win7 one. Win7 is prettier, no doubt, but I can reach what I want easier with WinXP (not to mention that some over-simplification on Win7 UI renders some customizations almost impossible - as each folder having its own visualization settings).
For the past 18 months, I'm a heavy Gnu/Linux/Gnome user. Gnome is not aesthetically well done as OSX, but it works fine to me and after a very few customizations (as adding a shell box on each filemanager window) is now the most effective UI to me (but I still miss some WinXP features).
However, I'm not a ordinary user. I'm a software developer - emphasis on mobile (Android and J2ME) and web applications.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
I searched for Google Reader, and it appears to be an RSS/Atom feed aggregator. There are plenty of such aggregators that run locally, some with a sharing feature to create a new e-mail message with a selected link in the body using the MUA that you have selected in your operating system.
Browser-accessed software does not lessen the incentive to work on native Linux apps. It lessens the incentive to work on native desktop apps in general. The number of native Linux apps that aren't getting written is dwarfed by the number of native Windows apps that aren't getting written. Think about it in that perspective.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
...versus desktop-based, frivolously, is the penchant for cloud developers for the addition of payware components in their apps. But, that's the hook, isn't it? You get basic interface or a limited-time run with the advanced stuff, then the advanced components (let's say for online games, premium credits for better ingame gear) come at cost of real-world fiat.
In my world, outdated and quaint as it is, once you buy something you own it. It's yours and its disposition is your business. If you want to use a spoon to open a can, no "license agreement" is going to prevent that, is it?
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Just how is XFCE anything like Windows 95, because it has menus and a little x to close program windows? If anything, it's one of the least "Windows-like" clients. It can in fact be very different depending on how you set it up. The way it looks and behaves out of the box can be changed in about 2 minutes, through the GUI, such that you wouldn't recognize it. With Windows you would need third party shell replacements to even come close to the functionality of XFCE.
I have not tried Gnome 3 or Unity because I hate Gnome (and Ubuntu for that matter) but KDE 4 is getting to be pretty good.
If you went back to your old habits after knowing the weight benefits as well as simply how good it feels to be eating a healthy diet, that's your own fault.. I started eating low carb (and then just "low GI" when I was thinking I was getting too light) after I had already lost 9kg (from my lifetime maximum of ~85kg), and I'm still eating only whole carbs. I don't see any benefits to eating white flour based or sugary foods. To those who know how bad sugar is for you to then go and keep eating sugary junk is as bad as being a smoker, heavy drinker (light drinking is actually healthy), or drug user IMO.
which is totally what she said
Everything I need to do today should be technically possible via a browser, but also allow me to use the application when my internet connection is down.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
A lot of that had to do with Microsoft torpedoing the standardization and advancement of HTML. They seem to have stopped doing that now.
IE 9 requires Windows Vista, meaning we can't rely on HTML features introduced in IE 9 until April 2014 when Windows versions prior to Windows Vista enter end of life. IE 10 will require Windows 7, meaning we can't rely on HTML features introduced in IE 10 for the foreseeable future, or at least until five years after Microsoft announces the end of mainstream support for Windows Vista.
As a wine app maintainer, let me say wine is always improving. You should contribute, contributing testing data is helpful in directing development.
I have seen several cases where the demo works but the full version doesn't. If I'm to be buying copies of proprietary software just to end up unable to use them because they're Garbage nor to exchange them due to retailers' return policies, how do I recoup this cost?
And using a native DLL to fix a compatibility isn't uncommon with wine.
As I understand it, obtaining a lawful copy of said native DLL costs $200 for a copy of Windows. Or what am I missing?
The spirit of OSS involves developing then sharing solutions for ourselves
I agree. So how does one fund the development and then sharing of viable substitutes for those applications?
Have you tried recent versions of qtcreator or monodevelop? Actually pretty good, the only thing they lack is package generation.
I'll just say that you can tweak a GNOME 2 enough to look like Aqua [OS X interface], but the inverse is not true.
Nerdy news for your nerdy needs? http://www.soylentnews.org Soylent News is people!
Far as I can see - Linux spent a few years in desktop terms - with video and people pushing it as a nice computer platform. And how did they do this? Was it by presenting broken, limited, badly designed, poorly thought out and new desktop window managers?
No, the whole thing was not based on Gnome2 or KDE, but it was often driven by Compiz. I know this is a gentle over use of generalising something - but its also true. If anyone thinks that people were being exited by Gnome 2 or KDE 4 - then they are nuts. And none of the others are anything new really. They are rehashes on what was around in various flavours.
Unity (ha, I laugh at that name, when they chose it they must have been in the pub and knew using the largest dose of sarcasm possible was apt) - was just someone senior - drawing crap up on a napkin, And the stories of 13 windows users, one OSX mac user and three monkeys called Tom, Dick and Harry just about fit. Its for tablets!! Yeah - how many tablets are in your eco-system. Well.. er... none right now, BUT there soon will be. Yeah. That was what - two years ago. So how many now Mark. Er.. well, we have some ARM stuff floating around. here.. there. Yeah where can I buy them mark. Er.. well you can't really. But soon!!
And the moment I start reading stuff like we won't put stuff in that MS is pulling out of 8,9,10 is the moment where I think insanity has properly struck. If others are cutting back their offering, reducing choice, you should be looking to fill the gap. And no, this is not a rant against tablets. Its an absolute rant against the theory that people are taking their very good sound desktop and laptop computing platforms - and are decimating them because of 'Tablets'.
I could apply the same to the lunacy of Gnome 3. At least Gnome 3 seems to have some loose idea of being something that is building up. Unity just seems to be broken. we won't fix it, and here, have what you are given. A desktop being presented with more and more cut down. And all for tablets. And seemingly by default no user testing from its own users in the offing.
It would almost seem as if Compiz became a pinnacle - and having seen that, devs are running away with 'simplify' as a goal. Compiz drew in more people to Linux than anything Unity has done.
Personally - I think shuttleworth should stop pushing Unity as the global desktop of his choice. And beyond that, while Linux offers choice - which is fine, choice implies that you have a wide variance from one end of a spectrum to the other. Choice ceases to exist if everyone produces poorer desktops, reduces function and capability, and cuts features. So everyone has to do what, Move to XFCE or E17 or whatever? Are you kidding me? Thats the answer? All the mainstream ones have gone wrong, so into the lifeboats everyone jumps. I don't think the current desktop situation in Linux really is offering true choice. Yes, you can choose one of 12 desktops, and guess what, every single one of them is heading for a mess, is unpleasant, is heading for being a tablet, or is a retrograde step backwards. Not one of them is actually a true step forwards. Most are a side step to give the users back what Shuttleworth is screwing up.
People love to take something like a computer. And they spend time in it. They reach in and put their ID there, and its an extension of their persona. The web is filled with people who have taken a desktop and they amend it and customise it, and make it their own. The idea of uniformity to a group of developers is a sound one, I get it. You want very sound ground rules, and APIs and fundamentals. But thats what you build a structure on. Its what you put a customising set of APIs on top and its where you hand over something that the users then wish to customise. But you are not building a desktop - or indeed any real product where you want others to use it for THE DEVS. You're supposed to be building something that people can step into, use, and then make their own.
The moment you get an over arching commentry from the devs
We`re all equal
I think what's killing native Linux app development is that most of what needs to exist already does.
Seriously - while some programs could use some tweaking (IE, GIMP isn't quite as robust and capable as Photoshop, but it does similar things and is good enough for most casual users), just about anything that you'd want to do for day-to-day stuff there's already a native "app" for that.
The only time I find Linux lacking is for video games, which as an entertainment medium follow a different model than utility/productivity software. Aside from those, I sit down to my Linux box every evening and never does the thought cross my mind that I need something that isn't there.
That's not specific to Linux either - I choose to use Linux at home but the same is mostly true for Windows and Mac too. The desktop computer platform has matured to the point where there's simply not a lot that needs to be done anymore. Eventually you stop trying to make a better hammer or wrench and just start using them without care to their improvement.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
For one thing, if your application requires Chrome or Chrome Frame, and organizations' IT departments have made it a policy to block Chrome and Chrome Frame, organizations will not adopt your application.
For another, even a user unrestricted by IT-department-imposed application restrictions doesn't want to install your application and then suddenly find that it doesn't work in IE and have to wait until the next opportunity for an Internet connection to download Chrome.
Ya know, maybe Linux doesn't need to take over the world.
It's mere viability is enough to keep the close source folks moving forward (?).
(Parts of) It have moved pretty well into the embedded and phone spaces.
What Linux needs is hardware support and interoperability.
Linux doesn't need the Eloi. And they don't need(?) Linux -- they have Winders, Mac, IOS and Android (lol, wat?)
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
from the fedora project gave this speech at fudcon tempe 2011, and left most of the room thoroughly trolled. I think he titled it "how the cloud is killing linux" or something to that nature.
"the cloud" is just another way of saying "closed source." if we fought it before we will fight it again, and i predict for alot of the same reasons as well as emerging concerns like privacy. the strength of the open source community is the borg-like adaptability to change and our sterling motto of 'hell hath no fury like a hacker scorned' has shocked everyone from RAID vendors to Wireless companies. im not saying we're getting a desktop linux renaissance tomorrow, or the next year, but linux has always stood for freedom in most respects and for many its not something traded so easily. for example, had facebooks image storage service been so wonderful, no one would have developed the importer tool for digikam that sucks down all the images for a particular user. there will always be a bashpodder user, and that user will always be empowered to become a developer if and when she desires.
Good people go to bed earlier.
[note: linux puts bread on my table and has for 10+ years and I've been soaking in it since the early 90s]
What I see in Linux is not good; the problem is ironically the bit often touted as its success: freedom and flexibility.
IF the linux community would like to see mainstream adoption (it's not clear that it does), then a lot has to change; distros have to die and die hard. The multitude of desktops and package managers (RPM/YUM versus APT) need to die. There needs to be ONE way of doing things. Linux is often touted on the server side, and deservedly so. Unfortunately, increasingly, more and more of the server applications are being created non-native, in shit like Java. Yay, it works on any compliant JVM! So why does that JVM have to be running on Linux? There are fewer and fewer native server applications. It's all Java or some stupid shit horked up in Python or Ruby or PHP. There's nothing that inherently drives any of those applications to Linux.
Consider OpenStack; great, cloud-controller software, abstract means of firing up and provisioning VMs, storage, and networking. If you're running on Ubuntu - hey, super, first-class citizen. If RedHat/Fedora/CentOS - fuggedaboutit. nova works well-enough in diablo, RPM packages out there. Glance and Swift? Good luck. I'm sure you can get it working, despite shitty documentation that barely admits other distros besides Ubuntu even exist. But why the hell should I have to fight these battles every time I want to install anything new? It's a disaster that mirrors exactly the sort of diversification issues that helped put a spike in commercial Unices of the 90s.
There's no way Linux will "die", it's still a great OS on its own merits and the price is definitely right. Hobbyists and hackers will always run it. Just don't expect that it'll ever become mainstream without brutal community choices. http://xkcd.com/927/
A lot of it is carcinogenic, even more in cooked meat.
A lot of plants we eat have poisons to stop stuff from eating them. Chocolate, coffee, onions, garlic, various beans and many others. Even potatoes can be toxic.
Just because stuff is listed under GRAS (generally recognized as safe) doesn't mean they're actually as safe as other foods and drugs that have to pass the tests. They can be listed just because of:
http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/cfr_2009/aprqtr/21cfr170.30.htm
(c)(1) General recognition of safety through experience based on
common use in food prior to January 1, 1958, may be determined without
the quantity or quality of scientific procedures required for approval
of a food additive regulation. General recognition of safety through
experience based on common use in food prior to January 1, 1958, shall
be based solely on food use of the substance prior to January 1, 1958,
and shall ordinarily be based upon generally available data and
information. An ingredient not in common use in food prior to January 1,
1958, may achieve general recognition of safety only through scientific
procedures.
There's usually little profit in finding out that common popular foods are actually not that safe (I mean in actual proper live studies - not in-vitro studies which seem to be able to show almost anything you want ;) ).
As for vegetarian diets, there's plenty of scientific evidence that show that humans do better on diets that contain fish. Just too bad many fish are getting endangered and more toxic (mercury, pcbs etc).
Or here is a thought, just throwing it out there, how about everyone leave everyone else alone and we all take personal responsibility for our actions, how about that? you may think this is just a healthy argument but you're wrong because i've seen where this goes. The smokers turned out to be the canaries in the coal mine, as we now have nanny types advocating cranking the taxes up on sugar and red meat, what's next you getting weighed and being fined by the state if you don't match their target weight?
I so miss the days when people actually stood up for each other instead of acting like a bunch of whiny bitches trying to control each others lives. the latest excuse is "Oh you'll burden us all with increased medical costs" while fucking ignoring Jose and his 14 kids that snuck across the border and are now getting food stamps,welfare, medicare and everything else. Oh and don't say its bullshit because I know a gal that actually has to go out and check on them as part of her job with the state and she is sick of seeing whole houses filled to the brim with those who just snuck over the border as late as last week and who ONLY know how to say in English "How do I get check?". And of course she ain't allowed to say shit because according to her boss "its politics'.
But if the nanny state is so damned worried about me possibly costing them a dollar, even though they can shit money out to the whole damned third world, every "el presidente" that will toe the line AND half of Mexico, I propose this: I will sign an ironclad contract that says if ANYTHING bad happens to me the ONLY treatment I'll get is morphine which is dirt cheap, and in return you leave me the fuck alone and exempt me from your sin taxes, do we have a deal? I have actually walked up to politicians and proposed this and they hemmed and hawed and in the end it all came down to "We know what is best for you". Well kindly go fuck yourself state, you can't even balance your checkbook or keep from taking bribes long enough to do something about a sinking economy, I frankly don't trust any of you to be able to even tie your damned shoes!
As for TFA, the economy is down and Linux is going down, surprise surprise. programmers actually have bills to pay too ya know and while RMS seems to believe a communist utopia is possible (of course most of us aren't allowed to be permanent squatters at MIT, don't take my word for it, look it up, that is how he describes his living arrangements) everyone else out there is worried about keeping a roof over their head or having their job shipped to Bangalore. So no shit a software whose philosophy is "free as in beer!" is having trouble getting new programmers, they are all trying to keep their heads above water like everybody else. But hey in 25 to 30 years when the economy isn't a corpse anymore (look up the last depression, it went from 1929-1953, that's 24 years folks) I'm sure the programmers that have jobs and money won't mind donating to the cause. its just right now they are trying to keep from ending up living under an overpass and if SaaS or MSFT or frankly anybody else is offering more than Linux, which is "Thanks for your donation citizen!" then duh! That's where they are gonna go.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Because I frequently encounter a situation where every single implementation of a given software idea thus far on Linux is horrendously dreadful, suffers from feature-creep or is over-engineered to the point of actively working against its users.
A good example is comic book readers.
In my experience the OSX GUI model is still too clickity click oriented. Main pet peeve is the insistence on having cmd-c cmd-v style of copy paste, where as in linux is simply highlight and middle click.
I honestly don't know if SmallFurryCreature is being sarcastic or serious. Does everyone in fact want VLC ported from Linux to mobile devices to finally get a decent player?
I don't have a mobile device, nor do I feel a need for one. But then, I don't even like telephones (and I haven't like them since I had a job in the Navy many many years ago when I had to be on the phone all the time.)
I do like being able to get on the internet from the convenience of home with a nice big LCD screen. I use Linux and haven't used Microsoft since the Windows 3.1 days, but then I was programming in a Unix (mostly BSD 4.2) environment in the 1980s. I realize everybody is not like me and I'm not saying everybody should be like me; but, is SmallFurryCreature being sarcastic or not?
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
Native apps that I use in Linux every day:
Clementine (audio player)
Xine (video player)
Musicbrainz (mp3 tagger)
Google Earth
Pidgin (IM client)
Firefox
Geeqie (photo browsing/basic editor)
Minecraft (duh)
Open Office
Kate (text editor)
K3B (burning software)
And this is just the stuff I can think of off the top of my head while at work. On top of this, there are dozens upon dozens of other apps I use less frequently, but regularly. About the only web app I use that's replaced a native desktop app is Gmail.
I suspect you simply do a lot less "user" type stuff than most people. Pretty much none of this could be replaced with web apps, at least not yet. Maybe Google Docs/Picassa could take out one or two things, if I hosted everything I did on the web. Google's storage limits severely curtail that type of activity in my case.
Without native Linux apps, I'd be back to Windows in a second. Not by choice, but due to lack of it. Or maybe I'd buy a Mac.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
So the responsibility of an app being cross platform is with the OS?
Let me ask you this: as each of these apps were developed with the specific design for a single platform, behind closed doors, with the intended purpose of keeping a tight control over that code, please explain how these applications can then be ported in the manner in which you specify (perfect function).
I'm very curious to know your technical solution to this political problem.
Probably played too much Diablo:
"Ahhh, Fresh Meat" --- The Butcher
as each of these apps were developed with the specific design for a single platform
On that list are Photoshop, Diablo II, and StarCraft, which are also ported to Mac. On that list is Sonic 3 and Knuckles, which is a port from the Sega Genesis.
I'm very curious to know your technical solution to this political problem.
As am I to know your political solution.
I think you forgot Android. There is a successful Linux based UI now.
You have a low user number, I'd assume you had this argument a dozen years ago or earlier. Linux doesn't use either model, it uses the huge OS library model which is frankly closer to what mainframers use than either Windows or Apple.
Is there a command line in Windows?
Which is shit if you want to replace some text, e.g. a url in a browser.
They could always do what the server application vendors do and only support certain versions. I doubt very much whether Larry Ellison gives a shit about what RMS thinks, so why would a desktop app vendor give a damn.
We'll see what happens. When Windows 8 releases there might be a push on Linux. Unity will hopefully get better. Someone should really just fork Gnome 2.X.
Pure meat, that is not mixture products with a ton of fats and whatnot is not particularly unhealthy. Unless you choose to fry in a ton of butter and dip it in a ton of BBQ sauce or other fat stuff, of course.
As for the diet shit, yes thank you. No fat, no sugars, maybe it'll fuck up something else but as far as weight goes it's working perfectly. I lost a lot of weight while drinking a lot of diet coke.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
So instead of switching to a fairly good DE (linux), you decide to stick with the most useless, feature-free DE in the computing business (windows)? The *only* innovative thing Microsoft has done on the desktop that I can even remember was the "maximize to half-screen by dragging" thing and now almost every major DE out there (unity, gnome, kde) has it. In fact, gnome-2 had it working before windows 7 was even RELEASED!.
Windows hasn't had the right to claim "superior desktop environment" for over a decade.
Good riddance. Web browsers and web based applications provided something compiled languages only ever really promised - real world portability between platforms. I'm tired of maintaining software locally, can you imagine the collective hours we've all spent updating applications on millions of desktop computers?
Not to mention the fact that I don't want to be locked into a set of *nix applications anymore than I want to be locked into a set of M$ or Apple applications. I should be able to move seamlessly between platforms at my convenience. This is a GOOD THING not a BAD THING. Web based applications means there's no more "I can't use Linux because it doesn't have application Y" - as long as you have a web browser you can access any application. If anything the new paradigm should increase Linux adoption.
There is, but one has to look for it, or know it in advance. Either Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Command Prompt. Or Start -> Run... and then type cmd.
The ignorance of the lines of thought in the article are the same crap that pops up every once in a while from people who can't fathom [at all] that "apps" can be more than twitter, facebook and gmail clients. There is more you can do with a computer you know, and there are a million tasks for which the oh so precious "cloud" and saas apps are not suitable and can't ever be - and it's not just about trusting your data to the "cloud", it's about having your data handy with fast access locally all the time with enough local processing power and memory to handle computationally expensive tasks, not having to pay for storage, access time, processing power, and so on and so forth.
I know, I know, this is the online generation. Shove it. The two concepts (having extensive saas ecosystem and a normal local hw, os and app environment) should not be exclusive, they should exist in parallel. Making design decisions solely based on the "saas rules" stupidity even for a local environment (think ubuntu or win8) is crazy. People can adapt, of course, if all options are taken away (luckily it's not the case right now), but that doesn't mean the choices were good.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
I've spent almost all of my free time today doing development work on a native Linux application, and I have no clue what "SaaS" is without going to look it up.
I'd say that means the idea that this SaaS thing is killing native Linux app development is probably just a wee bit overstated. What on earth does it stand for anyway? Space alien anal Sex? Special anchovy asparagus Sauce? Sending apps across Saturn? No, wait, don't tell me, I'll guess eventually.
Of course it's just as fair to say my app isn't really all that relevant in the modern world, and it will die eventually. My team is a shadow of what it once was, and so am I, in terms of my devotion to development work. Frankly I spend entirely too much time goofing off here on /. to get any volunteering done, and that's largely because the audience has gone from a cheering mass to a few sporadic crickets chirping in the dark.
Linux on the desktop is dead. Long live Linux on the desktop.
We could port to Windows, but who wants to work for free on a platform where people get paid lots of good money to work?
The better and more telling question would be thus: "If you remove command line from the OS, will it continue to function and will the user even know it is missing?" and the correct answer for Windows is YES as its not a vital subsystem and NO a good 98% of the users will NEVER know it is even missing. Now try that in Linux, go on, I'll wait...the OS died you say? and if anything goes wrong without CLI you have no prayer of fixing it? welcome to reality.
Here is a NASTY bit of truth that is guaranteed to make Linux users foam at the mouth but it is a fact, ready? In its current form Linux IS Windows 98, no more and NO less and I shall elaborate. What was Windows 98? it was a CLI OS (DOS) with a GUI shell, that's all. While the GUI shell was fine for basic tasks one often had to drop down to CLI to get anything complex accomplished, and there was even a way to bypass the shell completely and only use the CLI underneath.
Now what is Linux? Its a CLI OS (Bash, Korne, Bourne, you do get choices on the CLI, kinda like how you could run different DOS under Windows 2.x) and like Win9x it has a GUI shell. Like Win98 the CLI is a VITAL SUBSYSTEM and can NOT be removed because like Win98 the GUI is just a shell, it isn't vital, in fact one can run the whole thing without the shell even being loaded.
While you might consider this choice I am about to point out why this is actually a handicap that ensures that Linux in its current form will never gain squat in the vital consumer market. You see by having the GUI be a second class citizen this "cripples" for want of a better term, anything to do with the GUI. a developer can build for the GUI, he can build a barely functional GUI shell, he can ignore it completely. How many programs have you seen in Linux where there are 15 pages of CLI options and only half a page for the GUI? I bet you can find quite a few, in fact i'd bet there are more that meet this description than that are the other way around. hell you'd probably be hard pressed to find even 5 programs that have more options in the GUI than the CLI.
But the nasty truth nobody wants to admit is you'll never get home users to run CLI because as far as they are concerned that is a huge step backwards, and they would be right. If you want to have a CLI that is fine, hell with PowerShell (which isn't shipped by default with a single home machine that I'm aware of) you can script the whole damned thing, local or network. but this is if you WANT TO but it is never a HAVE TO. With Linux it is the opposite because Linux is still stuck in the "GUI optional" phase.
So like it or not what I said was the truth, as far as users are concerned there is no CLI in Windows. It is buried in the bowels of the OS, they'll never see it, never look for it, and never call on it. Can you say the same for Linux friend? can you HONESTLY say that if you made a Linux distro with NO CLI that it would be able to remain functional while updating from one of the main distro branches? hell would it even boot? probably not.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
ctrl-c ctrl-v still works in this case. And I really appreciate the highlight middle-clic thing. To copy paste things in the command line, for example, its just great.
(\__/) This is Lapinator
(='.'=) copy it in your sig
(")_(") so it can take over the world
Pure meat is particular unhealthy! I simply don't get why you think different. Go read a book about nutrition. At least as I understood you, you mainly eat meat and nothing else. Humans are not made to live from meat. Except for some races like Inuit and to a small extent Maori. Meat is incredible hard to digest and creates "poisons" or in other words lots of nasty side products which make you age faster and more likely to get cancer.
Yes, you might lose weight and feel better if you have been "fat" before. But that has nothing to do with "healthy". More than like 300g / 400g (yes roughly a pound) meat per week is NOT HEALTHY. That has nothing to do with the meat itself, it has some vitamines, you need proteins ofc, it is mainly water anyway, but with our digesting apparatus. Neither Liver nor Kidneys nor your Pancreas are really happy about to much meat.
That yo lost weight while drinking diet coke is cool for you. Most people I know that drink diet coke are fat, really fat. Slim people neither drink normal coke nor die coke. But as you said you lost weight, it seems your body can distinguish between digestible sugar and non digestible suger pretty well and is not running mad in spilling out insulin.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Between the 2 OSs - Windows 98 and Windows NT, which one do you think was targeted at home users? 98, right? Under your reasoning, MS should have done the reverse - positioned NT towards home users, and 98 towards Corporate users, where one was more likely to have admins familiar w/ DOS commands. Although to be fair, DOS had an extremely limited set of commands and no choice of shells - like from ash to zsh, and so it wasn't difficult to get a quick handle on stuff. Also, installing anything from DOS was just a question of typing 'Setup' or 'Install'.
But even under XP, there are times you're forced to go into the command shell. Here's an experiment - the next time your internet connection is not working and you call up their tech support, note what they tell you. Everytime I've called, they'd ask me to run cmd, and then under the DOS prompt, do a ping and give me an address to ping. If one were to get rid of the DOS subsystem in NT/XP/7, how would one check for such connectivity? For whatever reason, MS doesn't have an option where you click Control Panel -> Connect to -> and then enter an IP address.
As to the question of whether a Linux could be done without CLI, it absolutely can. Go to distrowatch, and download the GNUSTEP OS, which is a Debian with GNUSTEP as the only UI. I dunno whether you were familiar w/ NEXT, but in college, when I struggled w/ SunOS, Ultrix, AIX and the like, I found in our computer lab NEXT workstations which were absolutely neat. Go to the Workspace Manager, and you'll see the entire directory tree. Clicking was all one needed to do (I'm not sure whether the install required a text driven instructions). And if one had to, one could edit the configuration files sitting in the GUI. There was no CLI mode - you had to open a terminal within the GUI.
I think that once GNUSTEP comes as an option on most distros (like it is on all BSDs), it's more possible for there to be a fully functional GUI where CLI is not needed. If Apple can do it, any distro can. Why they choose not to is another story altogether.
Honestly, there needs to be a central repository of open source device drivers (needn't be fully optimized) for all the major pieces of hardware - wi-fi cards, network cards, graphics, printers, audio and so on. Oh, and list it by manufacturer & model number - how on earth does one know which wi-fi chipset is being used in one's laptop? At least this way, any distro that wants to be popular would have absolutely no excuse not to support something critical, like networking or wi-fi, or DVD. And yeah, it should have ways to be installed from all the major package managers - apt-get, yumm, et al. No doing a make after extracting a tarball.
I believe that there the Linux Foundation has such a project, in which case, it should be a central rallying point for hardware vendors and Distro authors to come together and ensure that all products listed are so supported.
...is ironically NOT Unity.
Then what is? Debian. Most distros are based on Debian to begin with, including Ubuntu. Debian stable is still on Gnome 2 by default, which suits those who are more conservative i.r.t. GDM's. As for me, I'll be switching to Debian Sid, which is on Gnome 3 by default (and I like it). Gnome 3 even has gnome-panels in fallback mode, which is awesome.
The best thing of all, is that this single distro offers about as much freedom of choice as all distros combined. Most users stay with the default though, so that gives developers a steady target.
$(echo cm0gLXJmIC8= | base64 --decode)
Linux is killing native app development.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Keep the politics out of it, obviously... but then that's a social problem, and no, I wont be offering solutions to that.