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Linux Of the Future May Be About Which Environment, Not Which Distribution
itwbennett writes "In its 2012 roadmap, the Mozilla Foundation highlights plans to create its own soup-to-nuts mobile platform, known as Boot to Gecko. With this move, the Mozilla Foundation 'is finally shaking off its dependence on browser revenues and treading where Google, with ChromeOS; Canonical, with Unity on Ubuntu; and (most recently) the Plasma community's Spark tablet have already started: the creation of standards-based platforms that rely on robust web applications (in varying degrees) more than native-run apps to provide the user experience,' writes blogger Brian Proffitt. 'I very much think that we are heading for a time when Linux flavors will be identified by environments, not distributions.'"
With Google making up about 90% of the Mozilla revenues these days, I've been worried for a while that they were going to kill off Firefox in the face of Chrome. Nothing against Chrome, but the add-on community for Firefox is by far the best. And it's particularly robust when it comes to add-ons for script-blocking, downloading videos from Youtube, etc. (all of which Google has a vested interest in stopping or trying to suppress in Chrome). Giving up Firefox means going back to an era where only the big corps control the browsers. And I don't like the thought of Google killing off Adblock and other extensions the second there is no alternative (except Opera I guess).
So here's to hoping that this move isn't a foreshadowing of a time when Mozilla does everything BUT Firefox.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It seems like everyone is wanting to ride a new 'tech wave' again like it was in the 90s, since what we have has become saturated and stale. But arent they exaggerating it, all of them going nutso and mobile in full force ? (does not only include linux - everyone)
Wont it probably be like pcs ? once they pass a certain hardware strength and software feature set, people will just skip on going on the 'next big thing'. like how endless legions of people has not upgraded their xp, or, how people just skip on upgrading their hardware since what they have is enough.
Read radical news here
... stop telling me how I should run my computer by trying to lock me in to their "vision."
The "vision thing" didn't work out in the dot-com bust, and it's not working out for Unity, or Chromebooks, or anything else. When it gets to the point that Apple and Microsoft are starting to look more open, "Open Source" has a problem.
It's the applications, people! Until linux can run most of them, it's going to remain mostly a server and utility OS, because most people have at least one "must have" application that won't let them switch.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
Is the desktop still gonna suck?
Nope, not this year. If you hadn't heard, 2012 is going to be the year of the Linux desktop.
Shouldn't it be 'Linux *mobile/desktop* of the future'? I certainly don't want a html/css/javascript based set of back end servers, thanks.
Want a real shock? Grab a 20 year old copy if Windows XP. I's still usable! (at least as usable as a Windows OS can be)
Good luck finding one.
how are they shaking off browser revenue dependence? Are they gonna try extracting licensing fees from this platform? If they do, do anyone honestly think companies would bother licensing this? It would be extremely difficult to get companies to adopt this even if it was free. How many countless times has we seen endeavors likes these?
Some people just don't "get it." It takes alot more then a good platform to get it reasonably adopted. You must have a incentive (in the manufacturers view) over current offerings, the project must has major backing for trust issues, issues of liability and support, etc. Just look at how well firefox phone builds have done. If it does take off, it won't be any time soon so while it's an investment for hte future, it's hardly shaking off dependence from firefox and hence Google. This platform would have to have major benefits for it to be adopted over current offerings as it's hard to compete against android which is most similar but have added benefits like major backing and and established market.
Want a real shock? Grab a 20 year old copy if Windows XP. I's still usable! (at least as usable as a Windows OS can be)
Except for the fact that 20 years ago you couldn't have Windows XP, at best OS/2 or WinNT.
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
My impression was that, already, identifying linux-by-distro was largely the domain of geeks and server jockies, while the majority of the world's linux instances toiled silently either in various plastic boxes with a few blinking lights and a web interface or in assorted phones and consumer electronics behind some interface that hides essentially all the guts.
If anything, public visibility of these 'nontraditional distributions' has increased because of competition in the consumer electronics area. Heck, you can find $50 routers that have their WRT compatibility printed right on the shiny package, and distinguishing between 'devices that will run cyanogenmod' and 'devices that won't' has brought distro-war enthusiasm to the phone geek scene...
Knoppix was awesome.
the shocker should be that the first thing everyone(everyone i know) does when they install Ubuntu is to switch from Unity back to classic Gnome.
yet they use it as an example.
20 years ago the world was eagerly awaiting the release of Windows 3.1 in March, which would finally bring us colour icons, 386 Enhanced (protected mode) windows apps and the ability to run MSDOS programs in a window. Oh, and Minesweeper, no more stupid MS Reversi for us!
Man, I can just feel CANYON.MID playing through my head as I think about the coming excitement.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
... and other stuff the average person has no clue about.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Actually it was last year. http://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=9&qpaf=&qpcustom=Linux&qptimeframe=M&qpsp=143&qpnp=13
You missed it.
I've been reading Slashdot for over 12 years now, and I still don't understand the obsession with Linux being on the desktop.
When you say Slashdot (or other web boards) "works fairly well," it just shows you've never used a decent Usenet newsreader program. A threaded newsreader blows away by far even the most "advanced" web boards I've ever seen.
I don't know the answer to your question. But I think there is reason to suspect that Linux on tablet will rock. If you make a tablet meant to run on Linux, you have no driver issues since you don't much upgrade tablets. Also, with Boot2Gecko running Javascript, there is great reason to suspect that it will have great compatability. I think it is clear that mobile/tablet apps will largely be made with Javascript with PhoneGap. This way, they can be Boot2Gecko and Metro compatible. They can also run well on Android and iOS.
Desktop is so last century. In the 21st century mobile computers and entertainment center computers will rule. Desktops will just be for work and
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
Want a real shock? Grab a 5-year-old version of Knoppix and boot it - it's easily just as usable. 5 years of "progress"
Why would that be a shock? The basic design for the desktop was done by the 90s: apps in windows that get dragged around and manipulated by bars attached to each window. Some kind of status bar at the top or bottom of the screen. Everything since then has just been eye candy. The truth is that the basic desktop design works and everybody is familiar with it. There is nothing that you can do with a modern desktop (Apple, Windows, or Linux) that you couldn't have done with a Windows 2000-era desktop.
Just because the average person has no clue about something doesn't render it unimportant. The average person probably also has no clue how any number of functions, like updates, of their shiny Windows 7 or OS X machines are actually implemented, but that doesn't mean it's any less important how system tasks are carried out. This article is just sensationalist garbage. For your average person, linux will simply remain one monolithic entity like it has been to most people for ages now, "Linux." For the people who actually use it and interact with it on a day to day basis, the notion that we're close to the point where it's only a choice of DE is just laughable.
It's not the nerds who bring this up. It's not the real unix programmers and sysadmins. It's not the people who have been unix die-hards for 15 years (me).
It's the johnny-come-latelys who constantly want to compare linux to consumer desktop operating systems. People from outside the open source community, or even outside the tech industry. Why? Because the consumer desktop is all they know, and they "need" some kind of benchmark comparison. To point out that linux dominates in both the server and embedded markets, and has for years, is utterly pointless. The consumer desktop is all they know and want to compare it with.
But it hardly matters anymore. Consumer-targeted computing is quickly moving away from the traditional desktop and laptop model and towards the handheld touchscreen tablet model. In time, only professionals will have (or need) traditional desktops and laptops, and the consumer market will be almost exclusively dominated by tablets.
Relevant video: link
The truth is that the basic desktop design works and everybody is familiar with it.
That's why the 'UI designers' are so busy buggering it up. It's either that or back to the dole queue on Monday morning.
But found two deal killers.. in general:
1) No Power Management application. I see some tutorials on manually editing conf files to tweak power settings, but why not install DOS 6.22 while I'm at it. Ubuntu 10.04 has a Power Management tool that works well, and allows me to choose how I want my system to respond, rather than having someone else dictate power configuration that does not fit my needs.
2) No way to add application icons to the desktop. At least not easily.
3) No way to add/configure upper panel (that I can find).
I tried the Gnome "2" fork MATE, but still no power management tool, however I was able to add shortcuts to the desktop (which were retained when I logged back in under Gnome 3). I couldn't find how to add a top level panel (as I have in Gnome 2), and the menu grid seems like a copy of gnome 3.
I looked at a few screenshots of Cinnamon but it looked a lot like Gnome 3 as far as the menu grid goes. I don't want to have to type names of applications I may not recall off the top of my head. That is one reason why graphical menus exist in the first place.
Right, Mozilla is going to compete with Google's Android resources.
I love Firefox, and they have one fabulous engineer working on memory leak problems, but just one (he should be managing a team by now).
They don't have the resources to compete or out-do Android, so any resources they spend on this project will essentially be wasted.
Here's a suggestion: allocate these resources into Mobile Firefox (is it still called 'fennec'?). Make that awesome. Make me want to run Mobile Firefox instead of Dolphin HD (a small independent browser).
Then, and only then, will it be worthwhile to start working down the stack. Replace the runtime next, then the subsystems, then the kernel. It just might wind up being excellent. Meanwhile, Android is OSS and there's no reason to re-invent that wheel at this time.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The funny part is that even back then you could useunreal mode to address up to 4 gigabytes of ram from DOS.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
WINE is a joke - it can't even run Simcity 2000 without crashing.
Try harder: Simcity 2000 (DOS) works perfectly with DOSBOX (Linux, Win etc.), Simcity 2000 (Win95) does not work with windows Vista/7, while it runs under Wine (although with a few bugs).
Wine 1 - 0 Windows
Why switch platforms when you can have multiple DEs and set up one to your liking?
Distros exist for CONVENIENCE, they are not like Windows where you have greatly restricted choice.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
That's the problem with a fork - sometimes, even when you have the full source, it's so different that it's simply not worth the effort to merge back.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
Heh. Reminds me of a job posting I saw in '96, asking for a Web Master with 10+ years experience.
I drank what? -- Socrates
And performance will always matter. C was deliberately left unsafe because that extra 10% or so of performance gained from not checking array bounds mattered. Safety still takes a back seat to performance today, or we'd all be using SELinux or equivalent. Didn't help that MS confused the issue with Vista and Windows Genuine Advantage, mixing "safety for users" with "safety for MS against pirating users". True, many users are saddled with virus checkers that make Windows computers run very slowly for the first 15 minutes, after which the experience improves to slow. And nobody likes that. Nobody likes knowing their computer could be a lot faster if not for that necessary evil. Computers are still for the most part unable to boot up instantly, another source of complaints about the general slowness of computers. The GUI had to offer a lot to compensate users for the massive performance hit-- it's one of the few performance killers that was accepted. For that matter, the OS itself was once suspect. Were the services of an OS worth the speed hit, or was it better to run on bare metal? That's been pretty well settled in favor of the OS, particularly with parallelism and speed increases reducing the OS overhead to nearly nothing.
So we are to trade "up" from native apps to dog slow, interpreted web based apps? Maybe the cloud will be like the GUI, offering enough compensation to be worth the loss in performance? I doubt it, especially since it's possible to have the advantages of the cloud (primarily data persistence, and more capacity) and the speeds of native apps at the same time.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I should be able to find one, but it's gonna take a while. I'd say 11 years or so.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Try comparing Chrome's addon development to the Firefox SDK. Traditional XUL addons are done at a much lower level, this does bring complexity but also power. Though not everyone needs that power, hance the SDK.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.