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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."
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 People used to be in client/server development, but that's largely been replaced by the SaaS model due to comparative simplicity, but now we have a myriad of new technologies and frameworks globbed together.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?
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.
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*
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.
Incidentally, why the hell did everyone start going with 'SaaS' instead of 'webapps'? The concept is nearly as old as the web itself.
Because SaaS is on the cloud, whereas webapps are on the internet.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
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.
What application do you use to edit photos and make illustrations? Or do you consider that application part of "the dev environment"?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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Have you tried recent versions of qtcreator or monodevelop? Actually pretty good, the only thing they lack is package generation.
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.