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Torvalds Takes Issue With De Icaza's Linux Desktop Claims
An anonymous reader writes "Linux creator Linus Torvalds has poured scorn on claims made by the co-founder of the GNOME Desktop project, Miguel de Icaza, that he (Torvalds) was in any way to blame for the lack of development in Linux desktop initiatives. De Icaza wrote in his personal blog: 'Linus, despite being a low-level kernel guy, set the tone for our community years ago when he dismissed binary compatibility for device drivers. The kernel people might have some valid reasons for it, and might have forced the industry to play by their rules, but the Desktop people did not have the power that the kernel people did. But we did keep the attitude.'"
Update: 09/02 18:39 GMT by U L : The original source of the comments (and an exciting flamewar between Free Software heavyweights).
The creator’s concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite’s concern is the conquest of men. The creator lives for his work. He needs no other men. His primary goal is within himself. The parasite lives second-hand. He needs others. Others become his prime motive.
Linux does just fine without GNOME. Does it work the other way?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I got linux on desktop.
It works perfectly.
Seriously, what's the problem? Just because ever-growing bloated software megapackages like KDE and GNOME aren't as successful as they were meant to, even on a platform that is meant not to favor such big packages, the linux on desktop is failing? Come on.
Linux does just fine without GNOME. Does it work the other way?
Yes
It sounds like De Icaza is blaming Linus for the GNOME team's bad attitude. I'm not seeing the connection. Isn't that like saying, "It is the magician's fault I sawed a woman in half. After all, it worked for him..."?
Gosh, I could sell tickets to this cat fight! ;)
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
I'm using Mint Cinnamon, and am very happy with it. The "classic" desktop works fine - why the need to reinvent it?
I had a Mac for several years, and didn't find OS X - much less the idiotic Dock - to be any more useful than plain old Windows XP. I ran Ubuntu until Unity, which simply didn't offer any real added utility, just more pointless doo-dads.
The reason why so many people stick with XP, or Vista, or even Windows 2000 is because it just works. They understand it. They don't need added gobbledy-gook flying all over the screen, or the OS "hiding" stuff on the assumption that they don't need it.
Three Squirrels
He's absolutely request. GNOME's compatibility breaking is all GNOME. It's not a cultural norm set by the kernel developers.
Of course, it's much harder to define a good, stable API for upper layer stuff. It's closer to things that need to change frequently. Though X has done a remarkably good job of that.
Maybe, if that's what GNOME wants, they should sit down and think really hard about how to do it. And ignore all the current 'hot' technologies and buzzwords. That's what led them to .NET and CORBA, and those were complete dead ends.
Windows has, more or less, done it. I suspect though that it costs them a great deal. The Windows API has always been an insane mess, and IMHO a great source of the reason it was originally so very unstable.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Failure of Gnome is only Gnome's fault and no one else's.
Seriously De Icaza sounds like a cry baby, no wants gnome, no one wants mono etc...
Wake up and smell the coffee man, if no one wants them anymore it's because they have become either crapstatic or have a lot of potential problems with windows/.net/patents etc...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKpnZ7cwWuY
The time is right to announce my kickstarter for "Linus Takes the World" series of Cage Matches. First up, Miguel, followed by a "rumble on the desktop" group fight between the kernel developers and everyone responsible for Gnome 3.
FOSS ain't totalitarianism. The point, IMO, of open source is do it the way you think is the best way. If enough people conclude you're right, your way is incorporated. If insufficient do, you reanalyze and improve (at least a couple of times) until your approach gains acceptance. All while keeping an eye out for parallel development efforts that look "smarter", "better", "more efficient", or what have you - and then incorporating those ideas if feasible or abandoning your effort if the general direction you're going becomes a dead end/obsolete before acceptance.
To summarize, when you have complete freedom failure is a decision you choose for yourself - it ain't somebody else's fault. It can be a community's "fault" if you feel you must attribute fault (we call those who attempt to lay blame and isolate all power to themselves "Republicans" in America, and must constantly duck their accusations that community involvement in any and all things is "mob rule"), but hey - that's democracy.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
No, FreeBSD does not support GNOME 3.X yet.
the 'failure' of the linux desktop is basically applications. libreoffice and linux gaming initiatives are the way to win that battle. making a prettier desktop is not.
Logic doesn't work that way.
ALSA worked out of the box for every sound chip I ever had. I would never ever need to tackle anything in sound plumbing - and I mean, no single conf file, not a line - if not for PulseAudio. It took me a long time to configure it to play nicely with other sound tools, and wiki instructions were only partially helpful. I still haven't done it properly - for some reason it completely ignores what I set as default device. But at least it plays sound now, when I redirect every stream.
And why did I even bothered? Oh, it's because GNOME 3 has a hard dependency on it ;) Seems to me that GNOME developers love to bring unneeded changes to Linux world and then complain over lack of compatibility...
Thank you, Linus.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I agree, at least partly, with De Icaza's assertion that ABI breakage (binary compatibility) in each kernel release is a problem for vendors, and likely helped push hardware vendors away from supporting Linux. While in the ideal world, every vendor will release their drivers as open-source, this is the real world. There are numerous reasons (legal and others) why companies cannot or will not release their drivers as open-source (ie. Nvidia). With each new kernel release breaking binary compatibility with prior releases, this forces the companies to release a new driver every time the kernel gets updated. This might not be a problem for a big company with resources such as Nvidia; however, for smaller companies, this is likely a big reason they do not support Linux in the first place.
Case in point, Dell paid PowerVR to develop a Poulsbo graphics driver for their Dell Mini netbooks (which at the time were on Ubuntu 10.04). PowerVR developed the driver. As Ubuntu released newer versions, the driver stopped working due to the ABI breakage. Users were entirely dependent upon Dell to pay PowerVR to constantly update the driver for new Kernel releases, which they did not.
This type of continual ABI breakage is not seen in both the Mac and Windows worlds
Logic doesn't work that way.
Err... Am I missing something?
Linux && ! Gnome = true / works
! Linux && Gnome = false / doesn't work
Maybe I'm just growing too old...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
You see, it's not enough to just link to a dictionary definition of something unless you can include how the FUCK IT APPLIES.
Not the point. GNOME can exist with out the existence of Linux.
Yeah... I am growing too old...
! Linux || Gnome even...
I've used GNOME on Solaris and FreeBSD...
BSD && Gnome = true
Solaris && Gnome = true
Darwin && Gnome = true
Therefore !Linux is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for Gnome to work.
Q.E.D Bitches
We don't need binary compatibility. It's just furthering the goals of proprietary software developers. The desktop is dependent on a vibrant community of free software developers. Without them Linux fails. We need to focus on developing a hardware ecosystem for GNU/Linux and removing proprietary components. Not binary compatibility.
And in reference to not needing the GNOME developer. We don't need Linus either. He undeservedly gets credit for a movement that he has shown hostility towards. There is enough momentum without him and he hasn't exactly furthered the desktop. This is not to say he shouldn't get any credit. It's just that associating him with the movement misses the point. The movement is about freedom. He doesn't care about freedom so long as it “works”. For him freedom is just convenient. The problem is the Linux desktop doesn't work without freedom. On the one hand he bashes the free software movement and on the other hand he bashes those who outright ignore the movement (nVidia- proprietary drivers). All in all Linus could be a better role model. If he was a bit less contradictory and more focused on keeping Linux free we would all be better off in the long run. As it is we are dependent on projects like Debian and linux-libre to remove and segregate proprietary software that we should never had let in in the first place. The benefits (more commercial gaming on GNU/Linux) are not worth the costs.
There are companies making money off free software. There are developers making money off free software. There is no risk to software developers from free software. There is on the other hand a lot of fear amongst software developers that free software will put them out of a job. Richard Stallman hasn't exactly calmed those fears. It is an ethical issue and the majority fail to understand the position. Just because we make compromises out of strong desires and self interest (raising kids) doesn't make those acts (writing proprietary software to feed ones children) justifiable. Writing proprietary software is not justifiable no matter how much you want to feed your children. If you accept that your acts are not justifiable we're ok. None of us are perfect. You should however try to avoid these acts. Fortunately this is not a real issue. Free software is not a threat to software developers. Adding children to the mix is a FUD tactic by those who fear freedom.
Your post does not make sense, which is not surprising when Ayn Rand is invoked. Is the GNOME community not creating anything? Did Linux kernel programmers create GNOME? Was the Linux kernel the work of one man?
He wants to bring proprietary crud onto GNU/Linux. No thanks, mister. We'll do just fine without.
And he obviously has no idea how evolution needs cannon fodder, it does not work in vacuum.
What a misguided poor person.
Its mmazing how fast it runs. I've installed it on one of my laptops some months ago just for nostalgia and man lxde/xfce have nothing on its speed.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Then why is Miguel crying about Linux "setting the tone" then? I'll bet that with enough work, Gnome can work on Windows so why the Linux hate? Personally, I like some elements of Gnome and was a huge fan of v.2.x but they flat jumped the shark with 3 and it damn sure isn't Linux's fault. They (the Gnome 3 devs) made the decision to hide buttons on the titlebar. They made the decision to go to the weird hidden menu. They made the decision to remove functionality from fundamental applications like Nautilus. So don't come trying to lay the blame on Linus because your little experiment isn't popular and your losing mindshare. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to use Gnome 3 and realize pretty quickly it stinks. Go back to the drawing board, fellas.
I'm gonna make some popcorn.
Linux does just fine without GNOME. Does it work the other way?
Theoretically, it could, assuming that GNOME was enthusiastic about supporting non-Linux OSs, such as BSD. But ever since v3, GNOME has been de-emphasizing their support for BSD, so if Linux were to hypothetically disappear, GNOME would go w/ it. And to be fully usable, it needs to support GPU accelaration, which is typically not liberated software. Hence, the Libre-Linux crowd and those who go that route use it only in fallback mode. The guys who are doing GNOME OS or GNOMEbuntu ought to instead work on Hurd, so that they can then say what they like about Linus.
Actually, it's very much a valid point. GNOME 2 supported the BSDs as well, but in GNOME 3, they were discussing making Systemd mandatory for GNOME3, which is not there in BSD. As a result, there is no BSD that supports GNOME 3 as yet - not even a GNOME specific distro like GhostBSD. Theoretically yes, GNOME can exist w/o Linux, but in reality, it sticks to Linux like a leech. If they are so capable, why don't they develop Hurd, which has been taking forever, and port GNOME3 to that? Or port GNOME 3 to Minix? There are 3 unixes that GNOME 3 doesn't seem interested in.
I really don't like when people are trying to spice up their articles or blog posts with sensacionalist claims (Slashdot mods, you are guilty as Miguel are).
First of all, Linux desktop isn't dead. Millions of people use it. Ok, we are smaller than Windows definitely (can't be sure about OS X). I personally don't see it as a problem, as long developers are keeping fire of competition alive.
What Miguel propably wanted to bring up is regular point of criticism instability of Linux/free desktop based API (window enviroment, sound, graphics). While there have been some little fallouts about this in open source world, in nutshell open source desktop guys *care* about back compatability. And lot of commercial apps which can be easily run on various enviroments and distributions (and most of them even provide compatible packages for mainstream formats like deb and rpm) indicate that it is not that hard.
As always yes, there are hardware driver bugs (Windows aren't also free from this, and it has official vendor support), there are some competition in desktop enviroment (but let's be honest, in general that's not big problem). Problems for small software vendors is that mostly they can't compete with free - we don't need five different file compression applications, we have usually one general for each enviroment. Problems for big vendors - well, market isn't simply big enough (for Adobe for example).
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
It is an ethical issue and the majority fail to understand the position. Just because we make compromises out of strong desires and self interest (raising kids) doesn't make those acts (writing proprietary software to feed ones children) justifiable. Writing proprietary software is not justifiable no matter how much you want to feed your children.
Writing proprietary software is perfectly okay. I don't have to give away my work for free, although sometimes I do.
Best Slashdot comment ever
modus ponens yo mama!
Binary compatibility doesn't 'further the goals of proprietary software developers'. All it does is ensure that a newer version of an OS can continue to use software that had been developed for a previous platform. It isn't necessarily a given that ISVs who've developed for a platform in the past will continue to develop new versions of the same software for the platform if it is failing, particularly if there is more effort involved. Changes in the ABI, API, other libraries and so on only serve to complicate the development, while on the user end, guaranteeing that something that was written for and worked w/ a previous version of a distro won't necessarily work w/ the successor. End result is that Linux on the desktop remains a pipedream.
Here is the actual discussion on G+ instead of an article that just quotes everything they say.
This is the STUPIDEST comment I've seen.
I wrote a rant about this within the past couple days in one of the other articles: ABI COMPATIBILITY IS IMPORTANT EVEN IN OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE!
Why? So you don't end up in the goddamn fucking mess we're in right now, where your code requires a specific gcc version to build, thanks to differences in parsing capability, header availability, etc, due to the era when the code was written, and linking to libraries whose ABI changes based on the compiler used (silently I might add, with, in many cases, no easy way to verify what compiler/toolchain it was compiled against (I'm looking at you libstdc++ v4).
Binary compatibility is important because backwards compatibility is important, and thanks to an ever increasing lack of 'fixing old problems before creating new ones', the errata for open source compilers,toolchains, and apps is ever increasing. Try compiling any non-trivial C++ app. Especially, find one that's got a dependancy that won't compile on a later gcc version (just between 4.0 and 4.7, say at least 3 minor-numbers away), then compile the apps and see what the odds are of a random segfault with a blown stack. wxGTK and pcsx2, or OGRE and OpenMW are some good examples.
Shit comes crashing down.
And for those of you who don't remember, how about the libc5 -> glibc -> glibc 2.2.5 -> glibc 2.3.x fiascos. If you were someone compiling from source during any of those transitions, you no doubt remember the horrors of incomplete, untested, or just plain sloppy backwards compatibility. 2.2.5 btw was the last 386 supporting glibc version, and some early 2.3 version is the last sub 2.6 kernel version (later 2.3.x kernels only support newer 2.6 kernels, despite claiming to the contrary. Go try setting the minimum kernel version when compiling glibc 2.14 or 2.15 for example and see what the odds are it even works correctly.)
While I've got some gripes with Linus' handling of the kernel, the problem is FAR bigger than him, and definitely includes De Icaza's own stupidity as a large part of the pile (Anyone remember how much crap used to depend on EDS, despite it often offering you NOTHING other than wasting disk space and memory?) What about all the BS with mono? Hell, what about all the BS with gnome? Gnome1 gets punted as soon as it started feeling useful. Then like 5 years later when Gnome 2 finally starts maturing, same shit different color. De Icaza: Retire. Seriously we know how much you envied Fonzi, but that shark is gonna get you if you try and jump it again.
- vranash
I got linux on desktop. It works perfectly. Seriously, what's the problem?
Well it is annoying to have to rebuild things when the kernel is updated, vmware comes to mind.
These things add up and explain the many defections from desktop Linux to Mac OS X, as attested to by various long term Linux users in yesterday's article on the subject. The short story is that many Linux users merely wanted a *nix environment, they were not into the politics or crusade. That is desktop Linux's problem, its becoming a less interesting option for those who just want a *nix environment and don't want to join a social movement.
because he's paid by microsoft?
again, his comments are in the same category as Florian and should be summarized dismissed as such.
Is C. GNOME is still 98% built using C which is crazy in this day and age. And not modern, pretty nice c99, but ancient c89 because the latest GNOME has to compile on some 20 year old Solaris workstation otherwise Sun wont support the project. Now Sun is gone and Oracle doesn't give a shit. Novell has given up on using GNOME as a way to push Mono and only Redhat remains. Maybe stuff will change now because previously gnome has been incredibly resistant to change that is not initiated from within one of those three companies.
I want to see more changes in Gnome not less. And I want them to finally realize that they are spending 10x as much effort writing gui components in C as they would have in C#, Java or any other managed language.
Football Odds
... mess that computers, particular PCs, are in, blame the peripheral industry. Some of this blame also belongs to Microsoft when they made it easy in DOS and BIOS for peripheral makers to effectively add drivers. But this is a very small blame because the full scope of what we could have had not even been envisioned. Flexibility was needed for new kinds of devices and peripherals. But the peripheral industry abused this by making new devices of the same class operate differently in too many cases. Access to floppies and IDE hard drives escaped a lot of this just because those were boot devices, and adding BIOS drivers increased the price. The peripheral makers could not even establish compatibility standards within their own product lines. So many new models of a device simply failed to be compatible with the previous interface (and driver) even if all you wanted to do was do the same old things of the previous model. This was not just a case of manufacturers trying to protect some kind of intellectual property or lock people in to their own product.
What was needed was a generalized model of how a CPU based host would access peripherals. A message based model would still have provided plenty of flexibility to expand the capabilities of new devices, as well as the ability to move more device drivers into user space, outside of the kernel. Ideally, all that was needed was one message bus controller interface design, and one driver to operate it to send and receive messages and status reports. Beyond that a ring of trusted device driver processes could be used. Combined with some community and market pressure to maintain compatibility over short time frames (about 8 to 10 years), devices could easily be interchangeable with minimal driver changing.
Then every once in a while, a class of device would have its standard message interface/protocol upgraded to a new version, and it would be expected that all new devices would adopt that. And this could still be done with full compatibility with the previous version via a version code in the basic standard message header. The new version would include a standard way to access features that were generally available now and had been implemented via extensions in the previous message protocol version.
Linus is not to blame. He just gets blamed sometimes because his vision of making the Linux kernel more usable for everyone sometimes means others might have to do a little more work to keep up (any vision would, but his is the one we see).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Minus a point for even remembering KDE, which has the most configurable classic desktop in the arena, a strictly optional tablet/netbook interface with an actual tablet to boot from it (Vivaldi, of course), and still are the easy (often default) option in desktops.
Bye bye gnome, bye bye kde, awesome / xfce / ratpoison are the way to go.
Nooo! Put the bottle of ratpoison dow....oh...I see....and you say that's a window manager?
*shakes head*
All these young'ns with their confusing softamaware names. Next I'll see a wm called "; rm -rf /" and by golly I'll probably try to apt-get install that sucker.
coding is life
People like to pretend that Windows and OS X don't have their own unique problems... computing environments in general are still overly difficult to use and all have their own obnoxious quirks (given enough time and people think of them as features).
My Grandmother runs KDE on Debian testing... she couldn't fix Windows when it broke, and at least Debian breaks less often... and the solitare game is better I hear. And when my cousins visit her I don't get the "the kids broke the computer with their stupid websites" calls any more ;)
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
We don't need binary compatibility. It's just furthering the goals of proprietary software developers.
It goes even deeper than this. The stated goal of Linux way back in the original Usenet post by Linus was simply this:
Hello everybody out there using minix -
I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.
Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)
â"Linus Torvalds
I cut out the irrelevant bits but that's as simple as it is. There is nothing there about desktop domination or anything else and the man himself said that while he welcomed suggestions, he didn't promise to implement any of them. If Miguel or anybody else doesn't like what Linux is about or how it works then do what Google did with Android and fork it.
Gnome is still a very relevant and important project and because of this post, I was inspired to apt-get install it and give it another round. Like a lot of people around here I personally don't like Miguel as I think he swings a little too close to MS but I do value and appreciate his contributions. I think his opinion of why desktop Linux hasn't gone mainstream do have a kernel (get it?) of truth. However, blaming Linus for somehow setting the tone for the Gnome developers while it may even be technically true rings a little hollow as those developers didn't have to try to mimic Torvald's philosophy in their endeavors. Again, I point to Google and what is the most consumer successful version of "Linux" to date, Android. A big part of that success is the wherewithall to eschew convention and do whatever it takes. Maybe Linux is in Android is for mere convenience. I don't care. The community attaches way too much unnecessary emotionality to that fact. The point is, there is a way to bring Linux to the masses and excuses isn't one of them.
because [Miguel is] paid by microsoft
This is a likely possibility. Unfortunately, I almost think he does it all for free. The man has been sabotaging Gnome for a long time and advocating Mono which is pretty much worthless as the ISO certified spec of .Net is only up to version 2 while .Net itself is up to version 4 or 5. I have never gotten a .Net binary to run on Linux despite trying over and over. And that Moonlight shit? I have never seen it work in the wild on a typical website. Not even to show the menu on the deluded restaurant sites that fell for Silverlight. Despite what the naysayers say, even if Moonlight and Mono were 100 percent compatible on the day of a .Net release, if any OS started getting successful and integrated Mono technologies to do so, the lawyers would trip all over themselves in the race to "extract licensing fees". You'd have to be blind, stupid, born yesterday, or a shill to pretend otherwise.
Agree or disagree with Miguel, Linus, Cox, or whomever... The simple point remains that just over a decade ago hardly anyone ran a Unix desktop. Linux looked poised to change that. But today, the most prevalent desktop OS isn't Linux, it's OS X. All the posturing and blaming and theorizing is great and all, but lost in all the bickering is the simple fact that Linux has yet to come out on top in the consumer space (minus embedded), and at this point no longer looks poised to ever do so. That may be fine for some, but for many the dream of an open source consumer PC OS is slipping away. I commend Miguel for at least being willing to say why he thinks so, rather than going on pretending the failure isn't a huge letdown to many of us. He may not be right about the why, but at least he's willing to admit the 'what', which is light years further than many in the community *cough* Stallman *cough* have been able to do.
However, systemd, udev and some other things are distinctly unportable and unsportsmanlike...
Free software is very much a threat to software engineers. See, we get paid to write software for systems. It's a nice gig. Gives me income to pay the bills. I'd much rather do this than be a ditch digger who hacks at software in my free time.
And guess what, we even use some free software. It's great, saved us some time and money. Thanks for that. And no, any changes made to it were NOT returned to the community. Know why? Because it's all owned by corporate the moment it's taken in. Yes yes, there's license restrictions. Guess what, it's not important because there's not really anyone owning that license to hold you to it. Especially if it's not advertised it's in use.
Why is this a concern, at least to us evil proprietary engineers? The more free packages incorporated, the less work that needs done. Less work = less employees. And in this economic climate, less employees also means less talented employees.
Software engineers have earned good money for decades. All this free stuff undermines that.
Theoretically yes, GNOME can exist w/o Linux, but in reality, it sticks to Linux like a leech.
You wanna know why? Because nothing else is as credible a threat to MS on the mainstream desktop as Linux is. As long as MS can keep their hooks in Gnome via Miguel, they can "manage" it. You see what happened when Linux slid from under the Gnome/traditional desktop thumb with Android. In a short time half of the smartphones and a third of the tablets on the planet were running Linux at the core. MS fears this and so does their lackey Miguel.
For reals? Which version 'cause it sure isn't the latest one which as of now only runs on Linux due to a particular dependency that only Linux satisfies.
No, it isn't (to quote Monty Python). Remember: your software being free as in freedom has little to do with it being costless. Even GPL states that clearly.
Then why is Miguel crying about Linux "setting the tone" then?
Because "setting the tone" is something that happens on a social level, and has nothing at all to do with the technical capability of running on one operating system or another?
... is the year of the Linux desktop in opposite land? Seriously, the number of "news" regarding the supposedly utter failure of desktop Linux adoption has spiked recently. Why is exactly is that? Bored bloggers? Windows 8 coming out? NOTHING has changed. Get another pet-subject.
Many years ago, I foolishly attempted to install the "Red Carpet" Gnome on my RedHat system. The install went very well, but the desktop was now so different that I wanted to revert. How to revert? Well, it seems that Ximian did not consider that possibilty. I spent a frustrating few days removing many Ximian packages and then repacing with RedHat packages (without yum and access to up2date a much more difficult task than it would be now)
I am sorry, but if you want people to try your stuff, you need to provide the assurance of a way back to what they had before installing your stuff.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
gnome2 && BSD OR Solaris OR Darwin OR Linux == true
gnome3 && BSD OR Solaris OR Darwin == false
(gnome3 && Linux == Debatable)
new gnome does not work on other *nix
Gnome perposefuly broke gnome 2 compatability with gnome three which was forked to mate so, it is no longer gnome therefor;
mate && BSD OR Solaris OR Darwin OR Linux == true
gnome && BSD OR Solaris OR Darwin == false
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
The post does not make sense, not because Rand is invoked, but because of your's and the parent poster's failure to understand the topic. You reject what you cannot comprehend, and it gets you modded up on this idiotic excuse for a technical weblog.
Nobody cares if GNOME3 *EVER* can run on BSD. Last I heard they weren't "discussing" making systemd mandatory - they were dictating it.
Systemd and its dependencies add 2 million lines of code to the early boot process, which on the face of it is a pretty gratuitous burden and negatively affects reliability. It's about 200 times as many lines to support as simple init scripts.
Pretty much any other DE/WM can run on BSD, and many of them are far superior to GNOME3.
I had a Mac for several years, and didn't find OS X - much less the idiotic Dock - to be any more useful than plain old Windows XP
I had run XP for a number of years before I gave up and bought a Mac.
Even older versions of OS X I found way more useful. Just the UNIX integration alone was SO much better, but even the straight-up OS things were so much nicer on OS X. Joining and managing networks was simpler (well, party because again the UNIX integration). Managing files was better because as bad as Finder is, Explorer was more frustrating still (and even there OS X was better partly because of UNIX, like the ability to have real symlinks).
Even over the years while I continued to use OS X at home I had to use XP at work, many hours a day. Over all that time, EVERY day I was wishing I was working and coding in OS X.
Just the fact that OS X starts with real UNIX at the core and no need to deal with Cygwyn zombie-unix bullshit automatically puts it miles ahead of XP, especially for anyone who used to run Linux (which I did for years before I bought the Mac).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Tired of this meme from angry zealots turning on one of their own
Whoah there, tiger. I see you like to use emotionally charged words to try to win people over to a vacuous argument but, a) it isn't a "meme", b) Miguel isn't one of anybody's "own". The man is just a developer that has took positions that are at odds with a significant contingent of the community over the years and when anybody makes extraordinary claims that fly in the face of common sense, they deserve to be taken to task.
someone who did more for Open Source and Linux than you or probably anyone here can ever dream of doing.
Nobody is saying Miguel isn't a talented and prolific developer of open source software but he spent a significant amount of time and energy trying to shove Mono down a collectively unwilling throat. And now he blames the so-called failure of desktop Linux on his pet project's developers misguided attempt at trying to mimic Torvald's development philosophy. Somehow that's supposed to be Linus's fault? How about a common sense intervention that should make it pretty obvious that kernel development and userland development are different with different goals and needs. That should be pretty obvious to somebody as smart as Miguel and trying to point the finger for so specious a reason deserves scorn.
Blaming him is an easy out
I realize that staying on topic might be difficult for you but the person you replied to said Miguel is being paid by Microsoft with little else added to that. He wasn't "blaming" him for anything in particular just stating his opinion and why Miguel shouldn't be listened to.
Blaming him is an easy out instead of facing and trying to fix the fact that the Bazaar model is not the end all and be all of ideal software development in the real world.
Wow, speaking of memes (and strawmen). Do you have evidence that the majority of the Linux community disagrees with this statement? Because as a person that has interacted with a lot of Linux people, my experience is that they tend to be very practical and have never said that the Bazaar model was one size fits all. Just look at the anticipation for Steam by so many Linux users. It's the minority that is saying they don't want Steam because the games aren't Free. The mainstream perspective is Bring it On! and personally I agree with that.
I've read many of your posts both on here and Hacker News over the years and if there's anything you are not it is an advocate of open source in any way so I have to ask you something:
When do you realize that the Cathedral model is not the end all and be all of ideal software development in the real world.
Or does it just soothe your soul to be a hypocrite?
Bravo vranash as AC. I started reading wishing I had a stick to beat you with, and ended up applauding. I love it when somebody uses logic relentlessly. I'm still not agreeing with every single point, but excellent post.
For example, in Win8, the preferred programming environment for GUI apps is whatever-they're-calling-Metro-now, which is based on XAML, but is not the same XAML as either WPF or Silverlight, which were the accepted orthodoxy in the previous release...etc.etc.
So to summarize, everyone should rush to support Metro flavored XAML now as you have only a five year window to get your work out before the next Big MS Thing replaces it!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And when Gnome3 was released Gnome2 completely disappeared of the face of the planet.
The point is that neither Gnome or Linux are irreplaceable.
windows linux mac bsd
"No, it isn't (to quote Monty Python)"
Yes, it is. And quoting an aquired taste comedy troupe doesn't exactly add gravitas to your argument.
"your software being free as in freedom has little to do with it being costless. Even GPL states that clearly."
I hate the break the news to you , but stallman and GNU do not have the last word on software ethics. Its their OPINION , not fact. And its not an opinion all of us share.
> as attested to by various long term Linux users in yesterday's article on the subject
Except that most of those "various" users were all called perpenso. Just because you've got a data point doesn't mean it applies to everybody.
Actually there were others making similar points and their posts and my post had various followups identifying long time Linux users who moved on as well. There was a common theme among many of these people. They were once desktop Linux users and now they just use Linux for the server sitting in a closet.
Because "setting the tone" is something that happens on a social level, and has nothing at all to do with the technical capability of running on one operating system or another?
But that's just it. Gnome should have set their own tone. Google did with Android and it has attained massive market share. Miguel is just mad because of the huge backlash Gnome is suffering from. How about instead of blaming Linus he takes a look at the complaints against his project and does something about them. I've tried Gnome 3 and it stinks. I've also tried Gnome 2 and while it was boring and didn't really meet the polish standards set by OS X and Windows, it was at least comfortable to use and didn't cause me to install something else in frustration like Gnome Shell has. Gnome jumped the shark and lashing out at everybody else isn't going to make anything better.
Starting with your decision in 1997 to abandon what was the GNU project's official GUI toolkit in favor of GTK.
If you'd stuck with GNUStep, the discipline of compatibility with a written spec (OpenStep) and the pressure for compatibility with a living rival implementation (OPENSTEP, then Mac OS X) would have avoided the "blow everything up and restart" problem. And you wouldn't have spent any time on CORBA if you already had PDO baked-in.
And it would have been actually following the kernel approach. Whatever the kernel might do with its internal structure, in its external interfaces it's been stable. Further, that external interface has been a re-implementation and extension of an existing good-enough interface (Unix/POSIX/SysV), rather than running off and implementing its own ideal of how an OS should work.
"Writing proprietary software is not justifiable no matter how much you want to feed your children"
When/if you eventualy have kids your rather silly ethical stance and software in general will take a backseat to raising them. You'd sell Stallman to MS if it meant they wouldn't go hungry. Trust me on this.
"Adding children to the mix is a FUD tactic by those who fear freedom."
Stop chucking the word "freedom" around like some verbal baseball bat, as if you have the first clue what it actually means. Stick to the silly debates you probably have in your student common room.
But, if it's propriatory software or Microsoft, it's failures are defined as working perfectly. See the constant while about OO.o making a mess of Word documents. That other versions don't do it either is ignored and what Windows does defined as the right one. Look at the MSOOXML tag "LikeWord95"...
But that's just it. Gnome should have set their own tone.
Which is exactly what Miguel said in his original post.
OpenBSD has GNOME 3 available as a package.
But today, the most prevalent desktop OS isn't Linux, it's OS X.
Well really it's Windows, but I think you meant UNIX desktop there...
the simple fact that Linux has yet to come out on top in the consumer space (minus embedded), and at this point no longer looks poised to ever do so. That may be fine for some, but for many the dream of an open source consumer PC OS is slipping away.
Are you kidding? It's closer than it ever has been!
The OS X kernel is open source. BSD that it's based on is open source. The browser that OS X ships with is based on an open source renderer, the tools that compile OS X and applications for it (previously GCC and now LLVM) are open source also.
Yes Apple has basically a proprietary window manager, but so what? Over time perhaps we'll see even that replaced with an open source solution. In the meantime at least the system is very open source friendly and not as closed off or unwilling to work with standards as Windows has been, and OS X is still gaining market share...
Meanwhile look at the next wave of computing, mobile devices and tablets. iOS is more locked down than the desktop OS but Android is more open. And even though I still think iOS will maintain a huge market share unless they choose to leave the market, Android will also still be around for a long time. Is that not the dream you were hoping to see realized, a real open source OS holding it's own against more proprietary offerings?
I don't want a world with one OS, proprietary or open. I want a world with a mix of OS's where people can choose what works best for them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Read this thread listening to Super Mario Bros. 2 - Overworld
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9s4fuOL3FM
Nobody cares if GNOME3 *EVER* can run on BSD. Last I heard they weren't "discussing" making systemd mandatory - they were dictating it.
I'm a Linux user but one of things I can appreciate about BSD in contrast to GNU and Linux is how the kernel and userland cli tools are in lockstep and developed together by the same group of people. Seems to me that this might be a good time to extend the scope of this and develop their own DE. It doesn't have to be anything fancy with a bunch of bespoke programs just something that's "theirs" and insulates them from the shenanigans and politics on the Linux side.
Who's John Torvalds anyway?
Around these here parts they're less acquired taste and more like required reading.
I never get used to these constant resurrections
Changes in the ABI, API, other libraries and so on only serve to complicate the development, while on the user end, guaranteeing that something that was written for and worked w/ a previous version of a distro won't necessarily work w/ the successor. End result is that Linux on the desktop remains a pipedream.
If the software is Free and reasonably popular, it'll be in the repositories. If the software is Free and unpopular or abandoned like XMMS, then you can always either just try to compile it yourself and if that fails, find what release of Linux it does work on, i.e., Redhat 7, and install that in a chroot then run the application from there. Set up right, you'll never tell the difference. If the software is non-Free then the developer can do what vmware, Google with Chrome, id with their games, and many other proprietary vendors do: static compile. I have no problem at all getting Doom 3 which was released something like a decade ago running on Ubuntu 12.04 and it shouldn't be a problem for any other vendor to get their software forward compatible either.
And what a wonderful and witty quote it is! Only Monty Python could have come up with that one. I don't think I've ever heard anybody else say "No, it isn't". Thank you.
You really didn't want to understand what that poster said, did you.
Stallmane and GNU ***DO*** have the last word on what the GPL says. What do you think the "G" stands for?
Which is exactly what Miguel said in his original post.
Miguel said a lot of shit in his original post. Some of which are obvious and well-tread gripes, but also a lot of which is highly debatable and depends on a very parochial interpretation of the past. Take this for example:
The efforts to standardize on a kernel and a set of core libraries were undermined by the Distro of the Day that held the position of power.
Um, what? The kernel in every distro was constantly updated primarily for security reasons. There was never a concerted effort to "standardize" on one kernel for any length of time. The closest thing to that was when Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora coincidentally shipped with 2.6.32 a while back and Shuttleworth made some noise about how cool that was. And if anything that directly contradicts what Miguel is saying as Ubuntu was the "Distro of the Day" at the time. But time marches on and now 2.6.32 is ancient so what should the leaders of Debian, Mint, Arch, Fedora, Ubuntu, and Suse do? Say to hell with supporting new hardware and kernel features by upgrading? Yeah, right.
Wrong way around. GNOME has no desktop market to lose... neither does KDE. Microsoft on the other hand has gone certifiably insane with Metro... umm... Modern.
He's dead right about the way the Gnome people keep breaking their compatiblity eveyr time not just with the apps but with the UI, with the config (which is still worse now than in Gnome 1.x !) and so on.
However it's not an Open Source disease its certain projects like Gnome disease - my 3.6rc kernel will still run a Rogue binary built in 1992. X is back compatible to apps far older than Linux.
I have always felt this was the way things should be. And once again, I am reminded of how GNOME used a library intended for a stand-alone app for its desktop services. I speak of GTK. Now, thanks to whatever they have done and without consideration for backward compatibility, I cannot use GiMP 2.8.x with my distro of choice. (CentOS 6.x in this case) Thanks guys. I really appreciate it. I hate Microsoft a lot less now and better understand the importance of backward compatibility. GNOME has shown me what happens when you don't stop to look back,
Because he wants to shift the blame away from himself.
In truth, it wasn't just Miguel's fault. When I used to maintain a sub-project on Gnome, he always seemed to be working on and promoting something else, first his email program, then Mono. Evolution was good, but quite unneeded (Thunderbird was better). Mono is a capable platform and works great for Unity3D amongst other things, but was never useful for Gnome and mainly just pissed people off the Anti-Microsoft nutters who made up a good chunk of the support base. De Icaza had the chance as project founder to lead the project from the core, like Torvalds does and set his own policies that are suitable for Gnome. He chose to work on other things instead.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
That's kind of like expecting everyone to treat Benedict Arnold as a national hero instead of a traitor. Miguel jumped the shark a long time ago. The fact that he was helpful at some point in the past doesn't mean that he's free from criticism in perpetuity.
Besides, being this "great heroic figure" means that he's someone that likely deserves the bulk of the blame here.
Trying to pass the buck to Linus is just sad.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Free software is very much a threat to software engineers. See, we get paid to write software for systems. It's a nice gig. Gives me income to pay the bills. I'd much rather do this than be a ditch digger who hacks at software in my free time.
Your work arrangement with your employer sucks. My boss pays me to create things that don't already exist because my company needs their output. A good chunk of the time, they then let me release it as Free Software so that 1) we're not the only people in the world maintaining it, and 2) the Free Software ecosystem (which we benefit greatly from) grows.
Software engineers have earned good money for decades. All this free stuff undermines that.
Only if you're not good at it. Lots of software engineers make good money writing Free Software.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
GNOME 3 runs on OpenBSD.
You don't even need a chroot. You can just figure out what your old application needs and pull things into other environments piecemeal. You can do this with orphans and you can do this with older versions of apps.
You run Doom 3? I run Civ CTP and Sim City 3000. They're all equally ancient.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Why is this a concern, at least to us evil proprietary engineers? The more free packages incorporated, the less work that needs done. Less work = less employees.
That's weird, I've had a great 15+ year in non-free software development, and free software has *always* plays a central role in:
* faster development of new features by leveraging existing solutions
* use of tools to streamline and rationalize release and operational processes
* standardization in areas like dependency injection, unit testing, configuration
* ability to "use the source" to solve a problem quickly and decisively
All of my work has been in technology solutions for businesses that need it -- web, server-side, message-driven stuff, etc. The requirements are always expanding. I don't know a single developer in this area that is out of work.
On the other hand, if you're selling something to the public and expecting free software to stay out of your playground, that's a different issue. My response to that is adapt or die -- the world does not exist to provide cozy niches for proprietary software.
Why is this a concern, at least to us evil proprietary engineers? The more free packages incorporated, the less work that needs done. Less work = less employees.
There are as many conflicting reports as there are agendas when it comes to job growth for programmers but the field appears to be growing by leaps and bounds especially with the renewed interest in the web and mobile apps. And this is despite both of the leading smartphone OS's who together enjoy over 80 percent market share worldwide, and the web itself being rooted in Free software. I have never worked or consulted with a medium or large company where writing software was a finite job. In my experience the only thing that the existence of open source tools provides for company's is a ready-made solution that they don't have to waste time reinventing. The same number of developers that would have been used doing that are instead used for working on what isn't already available and getting to market just that much faster. By your logic, the existence of the operating system means "less work" since you don't have to write a new one for every project. That's simply ludicrous.
Software engineers have earned good money for decades. All this free stuff undermines that.
If there were free software that just magically appeared that also met the needs of every project perfectly then you might have a point. But there isn't, so armys of programmers will continue to remain employed writing new software for as long as computers exist.
Software engineers have earned good money for decades. All this free stuff undermines that.
How cliche is that? You'd have made one hell of a buggy whip manufacturer around the turn of the last century.
Yeah, because re-inventing the wheel is so rewarding and advances the civilization so much. If you were able to use free software for the crap you're working on right now, you'd be working on some other new feature / components or making improvements because your business also has a Marketing department who uses those as selling points over the competing products.
Your statements are born from your own particular observation. My experience is in direct opposition. Who is "right"? No one. Trying to predict the future based on some personal belief is folly. Stats or GTFO.
I can appreciate about BSD in contrast to GNU and Linux is how the kernel and userland cli tools are in lockstep and developed together by the same group of people. Seems to me that this might be a good time to extend the scope of this and develop their own DE. It doesn't have to be anything fancy with a bunch of bespoke programs just something that's "theirs" and insulates them from the shenanigans and politics on the Linux side.
The trouble is user interfaces don't seem to be their "bag". There's PC-BSD which has made inroads with its AppCafe, portsjail, and pretty good installer (needs work, but it's "user friendly" when used simply). So, maybe PC-BSD would be the place to go for a custom, BSD-UI...but I frankly doubt it. I'm guessing GUIs are just a PITA to develop, all around. They'd need to duplicate the efforts of someone like GNOME within their own project...
Random idea...maybe they could pull a "borg". Make it so that there's a very natural interface between a Windows guest-os within the BSD userland. Say you boot up your box and its BSD running the show through boot. it sets up all the services (network, file systems, etc) and leaves the "user interface" to windows (i.e. most of the video card, the entire sound system). The value-add being the machine's state is always independent of the windows guest state. Yes, you can do this now, but I'm talking about making it simple/trivial to set up.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
Evolution was good, but quite unneeded (Thunderbird was better).
This is still something I have a problem wrapping my head around. Both Gnome and KDE have pet versions of highly successful and complicated types of software that seem to be out of the scope of a DE. I mean, why do they devote precious resources to Epiphany when everybody uses Firefox and Chromium? Why KOffice when everybody uses LibreOffice? Xfce sets a good example by only shipping the bare necessities like a file manager, text editor, etc. rather than trying to compete with the big boys in arenas where they're hopelessly out-manned.
What do the Peanuts have to do with this?
OS X has already surpassed Vista
But it's at only one third the market share of Windows XP. Also, how many computers would Apple produce, and at what price?
nothing else is as credible a threat to MS on the mainstream desktop as Linux is.
Read it again. I bolded the relevant bits. OS X is a beast in the high-end niche of laptops over a thousand dollars but unless Apple decides to make an inexpensive entry-level general purpose computer, that's where it'll stay. The iPad is very successful but it isn't the "desktop". I've had lots of people come to me with computer problems that I'd have loved to turn on to OS X but they just can't spend the money and I'm not about to make them my Hackintosh guinea pig so it doesn't happen. Since Linux will run on the 300-600 dollar mainstream computers the majority of the market buys it is more of a threat to Windows than OS X is. For different reasons, both OS X and Linux maintaining their respective status quo is what will probably happen in the near term so it's academic anyway.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Linus was not, and is not, against binary compatability-as long as it's binary _applications_.
"A kernel driver is not an application, and cannot have an application binary interface".
Linux can still run binaries from 1992, with the right settings and libraries; it's just that the binary drivers from 2 years ago won't work with today's kernels.
Now, that's a great list.
Between all the flamebaits, it is easy to forget that there are people out there interested in actual issues.
Rethinking email
AND usually trumps OR. You might want to group your expressions properly or risk introducing bugs. You are stating the Solaris == true, Darwin == true and Linux == true in your first statement but Solaris == false and Darwin == false in your second statement.
'Linus, despite being a low-level kernel guy, set the tone for our community years ago when he dismissed binary compatibility for device drivers'.
Even if that were even true, how can you have binary compatible device drivers when the devices are - ipso facto - on different hardware. Besides seeing as it's Open Source, won't the source code be available.
AccountKiller
The language GNOME is written in only matters to people like you, making discussions on forums about how such and such language is better than such and such other language because of some feature set requirement or special feature you like.
Newsflash: different projects, different requirements. GNOME's current requirements were code-once, run everywhere, bind to every language. C89 guarantees this where no other language, nor versions of the same language, can. You can code for GNOME in any language with bindings, which already exist for a whole host of languages, with a growing set of languages being supported by current code introspection work.
Take your language prejudice elsewhere Bjarne Stroustrup.
It turns out, an "exciting flamewar between Free Software heavyweights" is as stupid and boring as any other flamewar! Right down to the typos. (Alan Cox: "It's changee a lot").
Linus goes on about Miguel and Gnome, then Miguel says "My involvement with Gnome stopped about five years ago" and the whole thing is about as interesting as watching fourth-graders fight in a schoolyard. Yes, there's the occasional bit of interesting history or backstory there, but it's mostly just a bunch of smart people saying dumb things, blaming each other for everything, and putting words in each others' mouths. It's like a big circle-jerk but without the payoff.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
If you had actually read the article you would know that what you really don't understand is that you are completely wrong:
... and you would have seen Alan Cox write:
"One of the core kernel rules has always been that we never ever break any external interfaces. That rule has been there since day one, although it's gotten much more explicit only in the last few years. The fact that we break internal interfaces that are not visible to userland is totally irrelevant, and a total red herring."
""However it's not an Open Source disease its certain projects like Gnome disease - my 3.6rc kernel will still run a Rogue binary built in 1992. X is back compatible to apps far older than Linux."
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Ten years ago in an editorial in LinuxFormat I called Miguel de Icaza a "sell-out" and have yet to be proved wrong. His Quisling-esque career would be resigned to the /dev/null of Linux history except for all the damage he has done. Now he serves as a cautionary tale.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
If by "these parts," you mean "reddit."
DATABASE WOW WOW
There are plenty of people with businesses around GPLed software which manage to do fine. It is not impossible to support yourself if you are a GPLed software developer. Examples: Cygnus solutions or JBoss. JBoss was sold for $420 million.
Seems ok to me.
Linux for the desktop is not bad after the installation. I always have to install ubuntu with the nomodeset(ati card) on or my screen during the install the screen is garbled and hard to see anything, and after the installation finishes and reboots i have to go into terminal mode and install the fglrx. With kubuntu I have to install the realtek audio drivers(make & build) and than install the alsa to get rid of the popping and horrible bass feel to the sound which plugs my ears a little bit. There are some minor issues with linux but it does run beautifully after being configured. Linux is missing professional games, netflix, and a good alternative to windows 7 media center. xbmc and mythtv a pain to configure to make the tv tuner to work. Kaffeine slow and uses to much cpu in ubuntu but runs fast with low cpu usage in kubuntu.
My windows 7 on my phenom ii x6 had constant freezing every 2 minutes(with and without sp1) when doing some heavy tasking or just watching flash or silverlight videos but with linux distros on same machine no freaking issues. My hardware checked out okay even swapped parts out except for the motherboard and cpu, and windows 7 event viewer logs reported no issues. But after 4th installation of windows 7 i get maybe only 1-2(30-60 seconds) freezes every 1 - 2 hours. I think it's the windows 7 motherboard drivers even the asrock and amd south bridge drivers gave me same issue, but again ubuntu and kubuntu installed on the same machine no issue it just ran beautifully. Well, I actually changed in the bios from ide compatible to ahci which helps, hard disk and dvd rom both sata, duh duh. Gimp(with plugins) and blender run just as good as photoshop and maya. Netbeans, code::blocks, eclipse, bluefish, are not bad development tools to use or even learn to program.
Actually, if netflix was available for linux i would just dump windows altogether for good. I have a dual monitor setup and I usually like watching netflix on one screen while playing multiplayer games(cod 4, AA3) on my other screen.
Windows 8 which i also tested for the past 2 month's is not much better than windows 7 and I could not really see any gains in performance over windows 7. Metro is basically web on your desktop without a web browser, that's it.
will NEVER, EVER, EVER own the desktop
I think this attitude is pretty silly. We live in a time where things change drastically from decade to decade. Back when /. was a new thing, a popular belief was that Apple was soon to go out of business or, if they were lucky, get bought by Sun.
That example may be a tad extreme considering Apple's success since then was nothing short of miraculous, but to claim that a free technology will never be able to compete with high dollar alternatives is pretty silly to me. I do believe Linux will one day run the vast majority of desktops. I think the main reason that Jobs founded NeXt, and subsequently insisted on using it for OS X, was that he saw the writing on the wall. Some sort of open source *nix was going to come to rule the desktop space the same as the server space even if it's going to take a couple decades. Sell hardware and play nice with *nix. Hardware will never cost $0. Selling an operating system is kind of like schools selling textbooks: You need some kind of racket to force people to buy them, because everything they actually do is available elsewhere for free.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Vmware is a rare example of software that need to be rebuilt after a kernel upgrade. Neither Gnome nor Mono needs to be rebuilt, unless I'm mistaken or De Icaza is an incompetent software architect. I personally haven't rebuilt anything after a kernel upgrade for several years already. This thanks to Dell's DKMS, which automatically rebuilds out-of-tree modules like the notorious VirtualBox.
Vmware is a special problem because it's a low-level non-opensource program running on a monolithic kernel. Far more problematic for the GNU/Linux userland is a glibc upgrade, which does break a lot of things, especially programs written in C++. However, major architectural changes like the adoption of Kernel Mode Setting have sometimes strange effects on rather desktop programs, including programs as seemingly high-level as Firefox. Something which on closer inspection shouldn't be surprising given the push to turn the browser into the client side of the Cloud OS.
That's kind of like expecting everyone to treat Benedict Arnold as a national hero instead of a traitor.
I've actually read this exact urging at least twice this past summer. One time was on Slashdot, naturally.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Desktop development and what is going on within the kernel are two orthogonal things. Nothing is holding back anybody from developing any desktop they want on top of a Linux kernel. Secondly, De Icaza's vision of a desktop has generally been "What is Microsoft doing now? Let's do that" which is not what I want at all. When he was involved with Gnome, he pushed CORBA, and pushed Mono (neither is in Gnome any more.) I almost would say I may take it as a sign I'm doing things RIGHT if De Icaza complained about how I did things 8-)
I plugged in two external monitors to my laptop, told the system how they were positioned relative to each other and it worked fine.
Now if you suspend with dual monitors and wake up with both disconnected it can get a bit confused...
I beg to differ. Evolution was for me *the* killer app of Gnome.
As someone who worked on a helpdesk supporting commercial linux software in a 100% FOSS environment I needed a powerful mail client to replace mutt (and all the associated power user features) when the CEO mandated we send all our email in HTML. The only mail client at the time that came even close was Evolution, and it had great features for managing a mailbox where I received 100+ emails a day.
http://www.zombieapocalypse.tv/
None of that has anything to do with what was being discussed here.
nothing else is as credible a threat to MS on the mainstream desktop as Linux is.
Read it again. I bolded the relevant bits. OS X is a beast in the high-end niche of laptops over a thousand dollars but unless Apple decides to make an inexpensive entry-level general purpose computer, that's where it'll stay. The iPad is very successful but it isn't the "desktop". I've had lots of people come to me with computer problems that I'd have loved to turn on to OS X but they just can't spend the money and I'm not about to make them my Hackintosh guinea pig so it doesn't happen. Since Linux will run on the 300-600 dollar mainstream computers the majority of the market buys it is more of a threat to Windows than OS X is. For different reasons, both OS X and Linux maintaining their respective status quo is what will probably happen in the near term so it's academic anyway.
Most of "Mainstream" corporate America does not buy or build shitbox 300-600 dollar computers; so the fact that Linux runs on them is a straw man. As many have pointed out time and again, most corporate desktops are populated with Dells or HPs that are much closer to a Mac mini or even iMac in price, than to an e-Systems or Newegg Frankenputer.
If you recall Jobs' Keynote when he introduced the iPad, Apple never intended it to be a "keyboardless laptop". It is a brand-new product niche, somewhat overlapping laptop use-cases; but certainly NOT a full-on "replacement" for same. (Yes, I know, tablets, including Mac-based ones, have existed for years, blah blah; but everyone reading this knows what I mean) In fact, Apple even stopped selling its own keyboard-dock.
Finger-based tablets are spectacular for such things as a "clipboard replacement" and point-of-sale terminals in many "mainstream" business and professional settings, and for providing pretty much the ultimate programmable front-panel for other musical and media-producing applications; but unless there is no other alternative available, make fairly poor substitutes for a desktop or laptop computer. I know. I own all of the available paradigms, and enjoy each for its particular and unique strengths. Only a stupid (or desperate) person recommends using a crescent wrench to hammer a nail. I love my iPad, and have been asked by many if I would recommend purchasing one instead of their next laptop; but in every case, I have recommended that they borrow mine or another one to see if they would really feel comfortable with that has their ONLY computer. Fact is, I personally would not. But neither would I trade my iPad for anything but a better iPad.
And no, I don't use it to "consume content" (unless you count surfing "consuming content"). But I recognize that it simply isn't a general-purpose computer, no more than my iPhone is, even though I have many apps on both devices (including such things as "office applications", ftp servers and webservers, Telnet, multitrack audio recording, nonlinear video editing, etc.) that would argue against that. Have I used my iPhone's internal mic (which is surprisingly good, btw) with the DAW app to record an impromptu jam session? Sure, and I was glad to be able to have something in my pocket that could do that! But I wouldn't have used that method if I'd had a real recording setup (running on a Desktop of Laptop) with me at the time.
BTW, good for you for not counseling your friends to break the law by building a Hackintosh.
To which I simply reiterate:
NEVER, EVER, EVER.
And Apple could care less about making money offa OS X. That's why it is $20. They obviously don't wan't to LOSE money, either; but it is NOT considered anything more than a way to sell Macs.
And boy, is it doing that , now at around 12% marketshare, even though "PC" sales in general are down in this shitty economy. And, more relevant to this discussion, increasingly so to (former) Windows users.
these "adults" all seem to act like children..
They didn't learn from their mistakes. The reason enlightenment split from gnome after a brief adoption as the gnome window manager is becuase of the insistance on adopting linux only features that would have completely broken enlightenment on all other platforms. No compromise was allowed, gnome said "my way or the highway" so that was it - leave or throw away cross platform support. That was probably back before slashdot started. Later some sanity prevailed and gnome was built to go crossplatform, but now that idiocy is back.
It has never failed to be true, but nice try!
Show me someone else on Microsoft's payroll who doesn't have an anti anything that Microsoft doesnt' like bais.
difficulty: maureen o'gara, florian, miguel all are on the payroll. The fact is you should not trust anything from someone who works with an ethically questionable company that has never changed their strategy in over 20 years.
But that's kind of my point. They don't care to make money on an operating system because they know it's a losing game - the market will continue to drive the cost of an operating system to zero and Apple wants no part in trying to fight an inevitable trend.
If Surface is any indication, someone at Microsoft finally explained this concept to Balmer in a way he could understand. General purpose software is a short term market. There will always be hobbyists and grad students and open source companies to churn out free alternatives.
People don't use desktop Linux for two reasons: 1) Gnome and KDE suck and the alternatives that don't suck are the niche desktops/lack the razzle-dazzle of OS X/Win 7. 2) Microsoft Office.
#2 is nicely being taken care of by LibreOffice and Wine. It can be scratched off the list here in a couple years. #1 is the roadblock (and, getting back to the topic of the original story, a reason De Icaza probably shouldn't be pointing fingers).
People don't have a problem with Linux. If people had a problem with Linux then Android wouldn't be the huge success it is. People just wants something that suits their needs. Desktop Linux will eventually get to that point even if progress has been rather stymied as of late. It'll probably take a long time, but a long time isn't NEVER EVER EVER.
I also don't understand your emphasis on Apple stuff. I agree that they have the right strategy - their strategy strengthens my argument: software isn't a reliable source of income as the price is always driven to zero, so they sell hardware and use software to compliment it. Desktop Linux probably won't affect Apple too much -- it's going to bone MS (their hardware partners would abandon them in a second if they could).
Also, when considering desktop Linux, I think it's important to consider places outside the first-world. I'm willing to bet, in a couple decades, if traditional operating systems are still used, Linux will run on the most computers in the world. Maybe some Unix system, something like Hurd that actually works, but whatever it is it'll be free and based on expired patents.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
I could see Google forking Android over this, at some point.
After all, it seems pretty clear to me that the really big Linux Desktop is going to be some Android variant, and probably in the fairly near future.
expandfairuse.org
Now if we could only get the freetard fags from trying to proclaim every year as the year of Linux on the desktop.
I also agree w/ Miguel (OMG!) to some extent here, esp. since he is taking responsibility for a good chunk of the failure.
From my perspective, it wasn't just the major Gnome upgrades (I didn't sorta-like Gnome until KDE 4 made a mess of things) it was the KDE upgrade to V4, and to begin with Gnome's existence and their mission to get KDE out of the way for the sake of license purists. Their vision was somewhat negative and it reflected in their decisions: mainly the feature-cauterization (the opposite of feature-bloat) and the boring-at-best technology they based the project on.
Then D'Icaza declares that a whole pile of new-ish Microsoft-patented technology is the great must have thing for Gnome.
I'm no license purist, but that last one kept me away for sure. At that point with Gnome/Mono and KDE4 to choose from, I beat a path straight to OS X for my desktop needs and I stopped doing Linux-based desktop installs even for people who were pining to get away from the Windows Pain.
Torvalds (Firefox spellcheck recognizes his name) shares the blame for desktop failure in the way D'Icaza says, and then some. One of the aggravating factors in switching away from Linux was that it not only had the worst desktop multitasking at the time, but couldn't even multitask as well as my old Amiga performing the same tasks (copying lots of files should not cripple mouse responsiveness or the playing of a network audio stream). That debacle was down to the cliquishness and recalcitrance of the Linux kernel devs.
It took a scandal over the task scheduler performance (which I'm sure was great for servers, but they wouldn't accept any attitude other than Servers > Desktops) to see some degree of change. A good server kernel did not, it turns out, supply desktops with everything they need from a kernel. And I suspect things didn't really get much better until a many-multi-billion-dollar corporation in the form of Google forked the kernel for its other consumer-oriented focus, mobile... and AFAIK some of that temporary split was about vertical integrations that the kernel devs didn't want.
Miguel hasn't done an original project, period; his initial project Midnight Commander was a Norton Commander rip off. Then he got excited and took GTK, Gimp Tool Kit to build a desktop because he found the original non-GPL QT license that KDE used offensive, so Gnome is a KDE work-a-like (well tries to be a work-a-like); after that he did a .net rip-off called mono. After that he went over to the darkside and actually worked for Microsoft.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I don't see why 'works for me' is worthless. Only see rudeness in that. Sorry if any dispect. I use KDE on archlinux on a delay basis. It is never broken. Every day I start my computers and click the app icon to start my software. Sometimes I have to use windows. To me, the whole system drives me crazy. The window just was just frozen. And endless times of failure in upgrading.
Nothing is perfect, linux desktop is getting better and better. How can it be "broken"?
You get used to some set of operations and you hate any change. The developers are developing them. That's their artwork they devote to us. They are free to change them.
Writing proprietary software is perfectly okay. I don't have to give away my work for free, although sometimes I do.
Incorrect. Proprietary software is not synonymous with being paid for it, and Free Software (in the GNU/FSF sense) is not synonymous with not being paid for it. Some proprietary software gets provided without financial compensation, some with. Some Free Software is written without financial compensation, some with. And in the long run, Free Software is better for society as a whole than proprietary software is. Unlike Stallman, I do accept that there are exceptions to be made, mostly where networked games are concerned, but hardware drivers should absolutely be Free Software.
There is more to it, too. The mentality in most of the device industry is "fire and forget". We have seen some of the drivers they would like to push to consumers, and you really cannot believe how bad they are. And that's after they were polished. A few long-standing device families have much better drivers, but most of them are just the kind of thing you'd never want to see a quality report on attached to your resumé.
The rate of change in the *internal* Linux APIs protect us from a lot of that on the more important devices.
As for the BSDs, they change their internal APIs a lot less. But they also don't have drivers worth a damn, for many devices they're so simple, they're bare-bones, and for a huge number of devices, they're simply inexistent.
In my role as Unix SA, I have a WinXX laptop, and a fedora desktop. The Fedora desktop can change substantially from version to version.... it can be a drag. The desktop wars have not helped the predictability of the product. The Grome desktop in particular was no fun.. .Gnome 3 was beta... but then again... fedora is a development environment.
Lets face it though, business wants predictability.
Linux (the kernel) can provide this, but can the desktop environment?
Getting a better working relationship with NVidia wouldn't hurt either. Its usually one of the challenges, especially sinc the GFx driver is now part of the boot process.
Linux already owns the desktop, or at least most everyones world while on it.
google
facebook
facebook games
google apps
reddit
nearly every major website
ebay
Nearly every major application that people depend on when they start their machine and open that browser are powered by linux. For the majority of the world windows is nothing more than a host for a browser, just as it should be.
Got Code?
Apple markets to, and want to own consumers, and let that fact drive any business they do with the corporate world. It so far, is a successful strategy.
In the world of your "shitbox" systems is a huge sweetspot that Microsoft screwed up. Microsoft figured out the apps needed to do "right", including basic office function replacement apps, basic database, and enough systems security to cover their butts, which were up to a few years ago, dangling in the breeze of bad code.
Tablets aren't a strong data entry device, and lots of people do data entry. They don't store much. They're dependent on "cloud" resources, meaning someplace else. They don't replace desktops and notebooks for these reasons. Microsoft is doing a cross-platform drive to make stuff work together, mindless a task as that might be. Windows 8/Server 2012/Windows Phone 8, RT, are all designed to be a painful transition to the look and feel of their biggest threats: MacOS/iOS and Linux/Android.
Why did Canonical choose to back Unity? Was it because everyone would immediately love it? No. It's because they want the same business ecosystems enjoyed by their competition, hence Ubuntu One, drives to port Unity to tablets and even phones, and so forth. They're not clueless, and their model drives business to Canonical. Look at the other distros, ranging from SUSE, RedHat, even Mandriva-- all trying to keep alive by going corporate and largely avoiding the desktop (save Mandriva, which seems to be running on fumes).
If you want to look to a success, Canonical on the desktop is the most profound, internationally. What did they do? Avoided lots of problems and went their own way atop Debian. LinuxMint adds some flexibility. Both aren't ready for most enterprise uses, but are fine for civilians. Another thread made a point about long term support, and commitment to providing long term code, and this is where Gnome is also perceived to have fallen down badly-- they should have reinvented it all to have made it as seemingly branched as things are turning out. Stick a fork in it? I'm not surprised at the accusations of Microsoft skullduggery.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
A personal computer is a general purpose tool that is supposed to be easy to use with third-party (that means independently written and distributed) software and hardware. It is a creative medium for techies and non-techies alike. It needs tight vertical integration and feature-stability.
The Desktop Linux subculture has repository managers with a lot of power over how popular your program can get (because most users can't bear the hassle of installing something from outside the repo), and they get into your code (reconfigure and tweak it). This falls short of independent app development and it gives budding app developers the heebie geebies. Identifying a core, 'always there' set of rich functionality is very difficult, and the expected result is to use one of GTK|Gnome|QT|KDE but many users will shun your app because you made a choice. Also, horizontal integration seems to dominate in place of the vertical kind, and features remain in flux because you can't keep your cadre of hacker-developers unless they are continually encouraged to tinker with the system.
This subculture can't bring creative app developers and users together. It's not the only thing that matters, but nothing matters more.
Outside of projects like Firefox and OpenOffice, the FOSS developer community do not seem to understand personal computing and insist that everything good for the server and hacker environments must also be good for 'Grandma' -- an almost strawman-like demographic that Desktop Linux advocates latched onto, but who are unlikely to ever challenge bad habits within typical FOSS enclaves anyway. 'Grandma' seems happy with a thick client marketed as a personal computer.
The car is still a much better analogy: It does many different things (here computing == moving) and most people who drive cars can even drive small-med trucks with little or no extra coaching.
He got it 100% right, driver standards and more standards in general are very much needed. It's completely possible to make a powerful kernel and have support for a standardized and evolving and improving ABI/API that retains backwards compatibility. There is no proof that constantly breaking drivers is something which is needed in order to advance kernel code. Simply put, modularity on every level is needed for freedom, ease-of-use, and to avoid reinventing the wheel constantly (to make pieces of the stack re-usable without having to throw the entire stack away).
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
Completely agree. Some micro-kernels tried to do this in the past, at least partially (I'm thinking OS-9 here specifically) by providing a small number of trusted 'file manager' modules that exposed a rigidly-defined set of external operations -- like UNIX ioctls() but more rigidly classified into device API types... there was SCF, the Serial File Manager, which handled any character-stream type device; RBF, the Random Block File Manager, for random-access disk-type devices; NFM, the Network File Manager, for any network-type devices; SBF, the Serial Block Manager, for tape-type devices. Now vendors were expected to implement their own device drivers that talked to the file manager modules, but since most work was done in the file managers, the drivers tended to be very small -- so small in fact that one could easily disassemble them if the vendors were trying to be all proprietary-like.
It would have been nice if one of the OS vendors way back when had just told manufacturers "Make your device talk exactly THIS way or it ain't talking to our OS, -period-". They would have all had to make their devices interchangeable, and would have had to compete on speed/reliablity only (or perhaps the ease-of-use of their add-on software).
Writing software of whatever sort is perfectly okay. Whether it's okay to give someone the software without allowing them to modify the source code (i.e., to keep it proprietary) ... that's a whole other debate.
Linux had failed on the desktop was because all of the desktop versions of Linux were utter shit, monstrous, bloated abortions that make even Microsoft Vista look good. KDE isn't too terrible but it sucks compared to Windows, it's user interface is inconsistent, features may or may not work depending upon what kind of hardware you have and even cut and paste doesn't work properly all the time. Then there's GNOME. Jesus Christ GNOME is a fucking load of shit, it is, if anything even more intrusive than Windows is. You can't install just GNOME and use it as a desktop. No, you have to install all of the shit that comes with GNOME such as the shitty browser / file manager, the shitty picture management software, the shitty video software, etc, etc, etc. In the end what you end up with is a system that is every bit as bloated, stupid and annoying as any Windows box is. More so, installing GNOME on a pristine Linux system is painting a beautiful picture, and then taking a big, wet, runny shit all over it. GNOME is shit. I've got news for all of the desktop Linux developers out there, especially the fucks at Canonical, the war is over and the bums lost. Do you hear me, the bums lost! Seriously, if I want a desktop I use a Macintosh or a Windows box. It has a browser and productivity apps (Oh, by the way, Open Office is every bit as much of a bloated piece of shit as Microsoft Office is, and it's ugly, I'll take Office any day of the week) and I can open up lots and lots of terminal windows and run ssh to connect to my Linux system where I do development and in general things just work. I wouldn't want to run mission critical apps on a Windows system or a Macintosh because they're not good for that sort of thing and I don't want to run a desktop on Linux because Linux desktops suck and the more heavily oriented a Linux distro is to desktop usage (Ubuntu) the more likely it is to suck as well. The GNOME developers are some of the most worthless motherfuckers alive, seriously. I work with Linux every day and it's damned impressive. Take XEN and KVM as examples. KVM isn't to the point where it's serious competition for VMware yet, but it's damned good and constantly getting better. XEN is impressive as well, Amazon runs EC2 on a modified version of XEN. The DataDomain DDR series of disk de-duplication appliances use a Linux back end with a shell developed by DataDomain and they're great. There's all sorts of incredible software out there that has been written for Linux that let you do incredible and crazy things with it, and then there's GNOME, which turns your Linux system into a piss-poor imitation of a Windows Vista box. Fuck GNOME. My life is better because Linus Torvalds wrote the Linux kernel, it's not any better because Miguel de Icaza created GNOME.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
Those are old versions of software.
Also, unlike what you're saying, those libraries do have systems to prevent you from linking against an incompatible version.
There was a reasonably sophisticated standard desktop for all X windows systems. It was called CDE. It was actually open sourced around three weeks ago oddly enough, but my point is that it showed nearly two decades back that hardly anyone on *nix really wanted a stardard desktop if they didn't get to set the standard themselves.
Conversely having at least one popular desktop environment that doesn't change much is a good thing IMHO - for instance gnome2 with nothing but bugfixes. However, I'm already in that space since I've been running enlightenment with the same theme on it since 1997. That's e16 - still getting bugfixes and added compatibility with gnome and kde over the years and still works with the most recent linux distros. At home I run e17, but my work desktop is the same environment I was using 15 years ago.
Some people have been highly critical of him, but he is only "Protesting about things that are NOT quite right" All he wants is for things to be fair and he does read comments on /.
I feel it is slightly unjust that when he makes a point about Gnome but some do not like it. He has a valid and sane point of view. Linus has given an awful lot to the open source community and he deserves respect. He is not just a programmer, but an engineer and he has empathy.
All cows eat grass!
Yep. Openbox. I am happy. No need for gnome.
It is astounding (ha! not really, this is Slashdot after all) how any article containing the words "de Icaza" seems to attract ridiculous FUD about the Mono platform.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedict_Arnold
Benedict Arnold (January 14, 1741 [O.S. January 3, 1740] â" June 14, 1801) was a general during the American Revolutionary War who originally fought for the American Continental Army but defected to the British Army. While a general on the American side, he obtained command of the fort at West Point, New York, and plotted to surrender it to the British forces. After the plot was exposed in September 1780, he was commissioned into the British Army as a brigadier general.
Because of the way he changed sides, his name quickly became a byword in the United States for treason or betrayal. His conflicting legacy is recalled in the ambiguous nature of some of the memorials that have been placed in his honor.
I know it is a bit off topic, but I can't be the only non-American who said who? Excellent choice he would have been viewed as an American hero if he hadn't defected to the other-side after becoming disillusioned with the American cause and had to flee before he caused any major damage.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
I've sat in front of a Linux desktop ever since a Linux desktop became possible. As a UNIX desktop it matured long ago, but it hasn't moved very far since. The separation of kernel and desktop has always been the elephant in the room. The desktop developers are fiddling around the edges, creating a desktop for UNIX without considering that they could also create a UNIX for the desktop. Why is it that user file history and the trashcan are not implemented in the operating system so that command-line and desktop-functionality are unified? Why is it that user level file sharing is not implemented in the file system instead of being implemented in the desktop file managers? Why is it that user level desktop applications can bring the system to its knees without any chance for a user to intervene?
I guess I'm part of the problem, because like many Linux users, I'm a command line user, the shortcomings of the desktop are simply not irritating enough to make me want to do much about them (although I have tried - e.g. collectfs).
So you're saying it's OK to be a self absorbed self centred misanthrope? Or that whatever someone works on doesn't need to work with anything else. Then what is its point. It is pointless to everyone and everything else. I'm trying to understand what your sophomoric bullshit is really saying. Here is another overused line: No Man Is An Island. woot! Whatever.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Breaking the law by building a Hackintosh? Who cares?
If I have bought a copy of OSX I can do pretty much as I please with it isn't that the principle of first sale?
If I haven't bought it I am just as guilty as that fella over there with his pirate copies of Office & Photoshop.
The problem with building a Hackingtosh is it is a fragile system, as soon as you want to use a piece of software that requires a later version of any part Osx you are liable to break it. It is also a roll of the dice as to the existence of working drivers for the hardware it's applied to.
It is easier to load a version of Linux and not have your values called into question.
Isn't OSX built on top of open sourced code anyway? It looks like Darwin is still struggling to survive.
http://www.puredarwin.org/welcome/about#TOC-Frequently-asked-questions
I don't agree with you. The success of the PC industry has been because of this high flexibility.
The problem I have with the Linux kernel, is that as a programmer, the abstraction isn't of a high enough level, so a lot of stuff needs to be done by the desktop environment. Maybe there should be a layer between the kernel and the desktop environment, or the level of abstraction should be much higher within the kernel itself.
My knowledge is somewhat dated, as I left Linux land about 5 years ago, but my problem was that often the abstraction stopped at the level of character/block device, while I wanted to talk to "scanner"/"modem"/"TVtuner"/"camera".
Without good abstraction at that level, there is no way for a device manufacturer to write a proper driver, and then I'm not even touching the binary/source debate.
There is no way to expand the interfaces, as the capabilities of a type of devices expand, if the kernel doesn't even have an abstraction at that level.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
Their leaders tried to shove complex architectures into the projects, with the result that new coders are no longer attracted to them, because they'd rather start a new pet project instead of trying to get the picture of one that has become so complex, and is so underdocumented, that solving differential equations would be more fun.
They also tried to remove any feature which had a geeky appeal, under the mantra that "geeks don't understand what ordinary people want". Even if that was true, it's also true that only geeks code for free, not "ordinary people". Scare geeks away, and you're killing the future of your open source project.
Even though Linux is no longer the simple OS of some decade ago, it's still relatively easy to study, it's well documented, its principles are still the same, and its developers never break things for the sake of "improvement". And they never leave anybody behind (there's still Amiga fast file system support in the kernel, and the latest kernel will still build and run on a '386). So don't say that Linus is to blame if people no longer care about KDE or GNOME. If anything, he's the only one that is doing everything that needs to be done in order for Linux to succeed, on the desktop or elsewhere.
You can't force free software developers (being mostly unpaid volunteers) to work on whatever you want, and I'm pretty sure some KOffice (now Calligra Office) developers wouldn't be working in other KDE parts if KOffice/Calligra didn't exist.
Besides that, you can't predict what will come from someone's work. As an example, the Webkit browser engine originated as KHTML (the engine KDE guys did for they browser) and you can bet Google, Apple and others (It's the engine used in all their browser, including: Chrome, Android browser, Safari/iOS browser) are very happy someone started that beautiful piece of work
I also think Calligra it's important since it's very good to have several implementations of open standards (the Open Document file formats) and competition for OpenOffice/LibreOffice it's actually very positive.
You can't blame the peripheral industry because some have embraced open standards and even open source. Some have given away fully open and Free drivers, some have given away full specifications, some are just based on hardware with fully open specifications and documentation which can be coincidence or it can be a deliberate choice. You can blame individual players, though.
You can't blame anyone who made interoperability easier, especially if they made it easier for multiple operating systems. For example on the Amiga autoconfiguration was solved partly at the bus level but partly by including the driver in ROM on the card. The driver ran in user space so you had some back compatibility, although this did cause problems with some hardware especially when upgrading system ROM (and OS) from 1.x to 2.x. But this approach notably does nothing whatsoever for anyone trying to run any other operating system; it makes life easier for the user but it actually stifles competition. At the time, it was commonplace to have hardware designed to run only one operating system.
Linus has a developer-centric view of Linux. Shock, amazement. This keeps Linux moving forward! It continues to evolve sufficiently to gain new features in a timely fashion in spite of external pressures. If this is not a feature to someone, then Linux is perhaps not for them. It seems to be working for Android, though.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Do you really want to know the real reason?
Mostly bad talking from the FLOSS community. Regularly I hear, that the FLOSS community itself doesn't see the system ready for the desktop. This is the show stopper.
FLOSS is doing fine all around the world, on many desktops. Yes, Windows and Apple might have a bigger share. So what?
cb
Yes, it is. And quoting an aquired taste comedy troupe doesn't exactly add gravitas to your argument.
Then it's fortunate I wasn't going for gravitas and absolute assertions, as Mad Marlin was by stating
Writing proprietary software is perfectly okay.
Please excuse me for not getting on my high horse and rain hell and brimstone over Mad Marlin's statement. I will get to buying a horse some time in the future ;)
I hate the break the news to you , but stallman and GNU do not have the last word on software ethics. Its their OPINION , not fact. And its not an opinion all of us share.
That doesn't have anything to do with my statement. I repeat:
your software being free as in freedom has little to do with it being costless.
Let me explain: there is costless software without access to the code (usually called freeware), there is costly software without access to the code, there is costless software with access to the code (e.g., software in the public domain) and there is costly software with access to the code. Since it is possible to find all combinations of cost and source code access, stating
I don't have to give away my work for free, although sometimes I do.
is wrong. And the last part of your comment seems to be about
Even GPL states that clearly.
This is just an example. I could have talked about the BSD licenses, but the GPL is often considered to force you to give everything away: software, house, family, even the dog (getting back on this comment, do you have a free horse handy, while we are at it?). But it is nothing more than an example. You may substitute it with BSD, Artistic License or any other license that basically tells you to do what you want with the code and doesn't require you to do it for free (I guess the NC versions of the Creative Commons licenses wouldn't apply).
As a Gentoo user who likes to cut out bloat, I HATE systemd, and now udev. udev now has networkmanager, systemd, and udev all as part of the same project, now. This huge bloat now makes it so that you can't even boot without an initramdisk (something I don't use) if you mount /usr on a different partition (which I do, because my /usr lives on an ssd). Not to mention, networkmanager uses a binary format for config. It's especially bad for embedded systems. I really don't want anything remotely like a Registry in linux. udev just keeps growing. Things like hotplug were perfectly fine as separate services. There's no reason to make everything monolithic, and is very contrary to Unix design philosophy.
/net. Have a command/syscall mkopengl, which would create /dev/opengl/{context,control,input,monitor,fb,data/}. context and control would have things like the window location and size. Updating those would just mean writing to those files. OpenGL instructions would be written to input. Reading from monitor would stream OpenGL commands written to that context. Reading from fb would grab the fully rendered frames (just cat into a file/encode from to record). Finally, data could have file descriptors to textures in video memory. Not only would a setup like this be powerful in terms of being able to chain programs together, but network transparency would simply be a matter of union mounting the remote /dev/opengl on top of the local /dev/opengl (the way NAT, etc works on plan9), or cat-ing from monitor into a local input "file".
If anything, I'd like to see things moving the direction of plan9. For example: wayland. A great way to make it very unix-y would be to make a virtual filesystem to handle creating windows in the style of plan9's
You mean Android, Inc? A bunch of arrogant assholes who, for years, refused to play along with the rest of the Linux community. Yes, Google bought them and no, they have nothing to do with the rest of the company; completely different attitude and culture.
De Icaza is just an MS shill, not sure why we waste time reading his useless rants.
--
I'm a professional asshole!
Writing propietary software is not justifiable no matter how much you want to feed your children.
Laughable. Writing free software might be desirable, but it's very childish to think that anything other than your preferences is "unjustifiable". For all the bashing of religion people like Stallman do, it's funny how religious they get with their own desires and philosophies.
The fact that free software and open source are good things is shown in the results, the amount of people being served by such software every day. It would be just the same if we didn't have zealots telling people that any other choice is morally wrong, save for the lack of earbleed.
Free software is a convenient way of developing solutions for people. It's convenient for society, the economy, etc... I don't know if it fits all the cases. But convenient doesn't mean "The only morally acceptable way or else you are some kind of criminal".
Breaking the law by building a Hackintosh? Who cares?
If I have bought a copy of OSX I can do pretty much as I please with it isn't that the principle of first sale? If I haven't bought it I am just as guilty as that fella over there with his pirate copies of Office & Photoshop.
My point exactly. But I bet you don't get that.
The problem with building a Hackingtosh is it is a fragile system, as soon as you want to use a piece of software that requires a later version of any part Osx you are liable to break it. It is also a roll of the dice as to the existence of working drivers for the hardware it's applied to.
Sounds like you're talking about Linux.
Oh, and that's another reason why building a "hack" isn't a good idea: Surprise! The company which didn't support your hardware is going to CONTINUE not supporting your hardware. [Rollseyes]
It is easier to load a version of Linux and not have your values called into question. Isn't OSX built on top of open sourced code anyway? It looks like Darwin is still struggling to survive. http://www.puredarwin.org/welcome/about#TOC-Frequently-asked-questions
There is a FORK of Darwin that remains Open Source; but ever since 10.5 (Leopard), IIRC, Apple has not released the source for Darwin. I submit that, for whatever reason, the actual turning point was when Apple decided to do the Intel switch.
Clearly you didn't look at the moderation on any of the Apple v Samsung threads then...
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Maybe Gandi (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mohandas_Karamchand_Gandhi#Disputed).
We're on the verge of the "you win" stage. Large companies and governments are adopting GNU/Linux and FOSS applications as their defaults. FOSS companies have been successful for years. Red Hat, Inc. was founded 19 years ago. IBM has fully embraced GNU/Linux, contributing code to projects and lawyers to the defense in the SCO case.
The Microsoft Halloween Documents started in August of 1998. Microsoft felt threatened at least 14 years ago. Back then it was just GNU/Linux, but now it's Android, LibreOffice, Chrome/Firefox, Postgres, Eclipse, ... You better believe they're going to do whatever they think they can get away with to fight to keep their business alive. The only weapons Microsoft uses are acquisition, litigation and marketing.
TL;DR - apply extra critical reading skills when reading and responding to comments on threads like these.
Maureen was working for Linux Business News or something, were there allegations or any proof that she was paid by MS? Also, Miguel used to work with Novell which had licensing deals with MS and now has his own business selling developer tools for a pretty buck. Again, anything concrete beyond your imagination?
>The fact is you should not trust anything from someone who works with an ethically questionable company that has never changed their strategy in over 20 years.
Agreed that you should take things with a pinch of salt, but in cases like this story where Miguel has a really unique view by the tribute of being heavily involved in the Open Source community, one should *listen* to him, because he's more likely to know the reason for Linux desktop not taking off. By the same metric, perhaps we can ignore you and your fellow commenters' postings on Microsoft and Apple related stories. All have you to offer is snark and hate with no insight since you already are a big MS hater?
This space for rent.
Also can't run Max Payne. Refuses to install and running an install image from XP drops the sound on Vista.
My dad can't get Starry Night working on his Win7 laptop, nor can he get Quicktime or his Astronomy Webcam progam working there (celestron NexImage, known problem, no workaround).
He always has been, he always will be. I've never understood why Slashdot supported this phony "heavyweight" (hint: never was, never will be) in the early days. Some of us saw right through him right from the start. In fact, if you were savvy to dig, you'd find that Miguel was causing shit on the NetBSD lists long before he came to Linux and started creating bullshit controversy and stirring up ill will.
I'm happy that most people now seem to realize that Miguel is full of shit. Too bad YOU, slashdot, supported this dweeb so strongly in the early days.
Miguel, kindly fuck off back to your happy microsoft land. And don't come back.
You're forgetting the politics of early gnome releases. See, KDE was way too popular for RedHat. When RedHat got involved with GNOME, that's when everything changed. The GNOME libraries were only at version 0.33 and overnight they "magically" became 0.99 because RedHat and Miguel hoped bullshit was enough to make people think the unstable pile of rat feces that was GNOME 0.99 was somehow a stable desktop. This also coincided with the releace of the truly rancid Redhat 5.1 with it's mixed GCC/EGCS crap (speaking of ABI incompatibility).
GNOME and miguel were only about POLITICS, not about delivering a good desktop experience.
I won't forgive the FSF for jumping on the GNOME bandwagon the way they did. Once upon a time GNUstep was their officially blessed desktop. When Miguel-come-lately came along, they took that crown (and support) and gave it to GNOME. Imagine if work had continued on GNUstep instead of languishing the way it did..we could have had instant cross-compatibility with OSX.
A couple of years back I would have disagreed with you. However, since Unity and Gnome 3, have come along, there is no doubt that the Ubuntu desktop isn't as good as it was. It's got to the point where I'm seriously looking a KDE desktop. Given that I've been using a Linux desktop for over a decade now, this will be as big a change as it was when I moved off windows. The shame is that Gnome 2 was really good. The extra bells and whistles that came through with the likes of Compiz where welcome even though they weren't necessary. Both Gnome 3 and Unity have seemingly thrown that all away. Were there no redeeming qualities of Gnome 2 that someone thought to keep?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedict_Arnold
Benedict Arnold [SNIP].
I know it is a bit off topic, but I can't be the only non-American who said who? Excellent choice he would have been viewed as an American hero if he hadn't defected to the other-side after becoming disillusioned with the American cause and had to flee before he caused any major damage.
The European equivalent would be Major Vidkun Quisling (1887-1945), Norwegian collaborator with the Nazis who was so notorious his name has become a synonym for 'traitor' and 'collaborator'. Also see Marshal Philippe Pétain, Chief of State of Vichy France, among other infamous historical trators and collaborators.
His problem was with being repeatedly passed over for promotion and pay increases. He was a good general, and a sad story.
People don't use desktop Linux for two reasons: 1) Gnome and KDE suck and the alternatives that don't suck are the niche desktops/lack the razzle-dazzle of OS X/Win 7. 2) Microsoft Office.
#2 is nicely being taken care of by LibreOffice and Wine. It can be scratched off the list here in a couple years. #1 is the roadblock (and, getting back to the topic of the original story, a reason De Icaza probably shouldn't be pointing fingers).
I think you've got the second part backwards. Have you ever actually tried to convince a non-techie management level to drop Microsoft Office? MS Office is the de-facto standard in business environments, whether we like it or not. And if you do manage get an organisation to try an alternative, you will be blamed for any and every tiniest little problem that might arise. It doesn't matter if LibreOffice works well, or even if it works better than MS Office. The only thing I have seen that has been able to put a dent in this, is the transition to tablets and smart-phones -- a ship Microsoft decidedly missed (although they are still trying to jump on to it). But this development is also backed by two very reputable companies, Apple and Google.
The problem with the Linux desktop has never been Gnome or KDE; people have learnt to use and been using stranger environments allover. One big problem, however, has been the lack of business users, which for a very long time have been skillfully tied in to Microsoft products.
>> software isn't a reliable source of income as the price is always driven to zero, so they sell hardware and use software to compliment it.
I speak here totally from fantastic opinion, but though I understand and agree with your evidence for the case you make, I cannot help but feel that you are still wrong. Microsoft, to me, says, "We could make excellent money with software, if only our software was any good." Which sadly, it *almost* is...
Social Credit would solve everything...
Part of the reason he changed sides is that after a large number of stunning victories and advances for the American side were shat upon by his superiors he realized that his superiors were likely to bone things up.
In short he was _driven_ to the other side and then demonized.
History is never as cut and dried as the books would lead you to believe on casual reading.
--signed, some american who knows history.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
I'd agree with parent, adding or changing some emphasis:
FOSS is generally written by people who want "usable" software in a field. Closed source software is usually written by people who want "salable" software in a field.
In example, most people working on FOSS office apps are doing so because they need a word processor (et. al.) that does things that the current version does not. Word for Windows was written by people who knew that their product had to sell itself in the first ten minutes. That means that the WfW (a.k.a. MSW) had to be wide, shallow and pretty in its shallowness. Star Office (now Open Office, or Libre Office etc) had to be good at processing words at depth but wasn't always pretty.
Now the problem here is that in virtually all cases the Shallow but Pretty commercial offering is plenty fine for the shallow users, and horrific for the deep users. Doubt me? Try putting two separate outlines in one Word document.
The second-part problem is that a lot of people come along and try to "pretty up" the FOSS by aping the closed source. Try putting two outlines into one LibreOffice document some time.
The bets options usually get lost on the cutting room floor. There is a reason that the entire legal field still uses WordPerfect. It's easy to have multiple outlines in one document there etc.
So virtually every open source project that attracts "enough people" begins to try to pretty itself up by aping the worst, prettiest bits of the currently popular shallow-ware market leader.
Linus has kept Linux from falling into that trap. It is still generally written by people who want and need a system kernel to work in depth. So to most of the GNU suites of software. Each designed to do one thing well. There is a reason that the GCC folks never tried to go all IDE on our collective asses, and that is the reason that it is _still_ the top of the line in portable compilers for the core languages (C/C++/Fortran/ADA) (and it's trying to get java in there too but getting too close to Sun/Oracle is not so smart).
So yes, when Linus said to the "let's be like Microsoft" guy, "eh, how a-bout 'no'" the smart money must applaud.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
I have yet to have a GCC/C++ issue with version advancement that isn't solvable by using the appropriate version comparability flags. Sure, when I stumble upon something that I have to say "sure, use the depricated gcc-only feature instead of the new language standard, it can get tricky. But that's the cost of using "this tool only" features for ALL definitions of "this tool".
For instance, the gcc "typeof" was on the cutting block for many many revisions before it went away. It was never standard, and there is a new "language standard" feature of similar functionality. But it's poor practice to blame the compiler guys for implementing new standards and phasing out non-portable dross. Poorer still if you are the guy who was supposed to keep the code up to date but instead acts all surprised about something you had about ten years warning of. Or didn't you ever look?
It's a poor craftsman who blames his tools.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
A bunch of zealots went way overboard calling Trolltech the antichrist when they did everything they could to bend over backwards for the OSS community. Considering how long it took for Gnome to become useable I am confident to this day that Linux on the Desktop would be light years ahead of where it is now if we had all just stuck with KDE from the get go. Of course that was when I actually cared about Linux on the Desktop. Linux has a bright future, just not on the desktop regardless of who is to blame.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Gimp Tool Kit to build a desktop because he found the original non-GPL QT license that KDE used offensive, so Gnome is a KDE work-a-like (well tries to be a work-a-like);
Oh well i suppose we can lambast Open/Libre Office for just being a lame attempt at a Word Perfect work-a-like too.
after that he did a .net rip-off called mono.
Are you fucking retarded? Mono is not a 'rip-off' of .Net, it's an implementation of the .Net CLR, you might as well call implementations of any standard a 'rip-off'.
De Icaza - just another whinger with nothing important to say.
The difference is that the former proposes software as a service (hourly wage) while the latter proposes software as a product (paid by x units sold). That is because the first promotes code for everyone while the latter promotes IP (or code as creative work).
The original argument holds that IP is wrong despite the think about the children clause.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
Bloated packages like KDE and GNOME? Christ people, take your eyes off the system monitor for a second and take it in. KDE and GNOME are simply providing functionality that OS X and Windows have been for ages-- indexing and search services. They use the similar resources on all systems, and they can be turned off as well. I can understand trying to build your own desktop environment, that appeals to me also. But telling people to use tiling WMs? My gosh, those haven been relevant for fifteen years or more now. Not since the advent of smart placement at least.
This is an example, but not the one you were trying to make. The Gnome and XFCE folks both gave a big FU to the FreeBSD project by dropping support for it in several areas including configuration and file managers.
Linux folks don't want to keep compatibility with themselves let alone come up with cross platform APIs and stick to them. Look at the hundred sound systems we get with Linux or the HAL -> UDEV nightmare. Only one BSD is actively trying to get UDEV support so far that I know of (DragonFly) and the rest are just waiting for the next replacement to UDEV. Already, the implementation DragonFly did is out of date.
Linux folks have a huge case of not invented here syndrome, but it's not just at project scope, but the maintainer de jour. It makes Linux adaptive but also a pain in the butt to target for development. Next time you see an article complaining about video drivers for Linux, remember this article. Intel, AMD and NVIDIA are all big, slow companies who can't react to 20 ABI changes between point releases. It's got to stop.
That is, until I remove "pulseaudio"
It creeps back in with the next release, of course, but then I just have to kill it again.
Only loss is the volume widget in gnome and the ability to send to multiple outputs.
However, WINE and many others work a lot better afterwards with just plain ALSA (and at some point, mixing multiple inputs started to work just fine as well).
But that's kind of my point. They don't care to make money on an operating system because they know it's a losing game - the market will continue to drive the cost of an operating system to zero and Apple wants no part in trying to fight an inevitable trend.
Sorry, but I don't follow this line of argument. The only things that really differentiate Apple computers from PCs are the design of the case and the OS. Of the two, only the OS is actually relevant to the functionality of the machine. There's certainly nothing stopping other manufacturers from taking the exact same hardware and slapping it into a similar case. As far as I can tell, Apple really is an OS company, they're just doing a fantastic job of hiding it.
Also, when considering desktop Linux, I think it's important to consider places outside the first-world. I'm willing to bet, in a couple decades, if traditional operating systems are still used, Linux will run on the most computers in the world. Maybe some Unix system, something like Hurd that actually works, but whatever it is it'll be free and based on expired patents.
What makes you think the rest of the world gives even a single shit about software patents? Most of the world doesn't recognize them as being valid, and a significant portion of the world doesn't even recognize copyrights as being "a thing". In China, Windows is just as free as Linux in the monetary sense.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Miguel De Icaza is too cheap to buy a copy of Windows and too much of a liability to be employed by Microsoft. Somehow, that's the fault of the FOSS community.
Linus ,
He is wrong Linus. You are right.I was there when you invented linux on an Amiga 3000 its still the best distro. I gave you Ideas . I dont care. you used them. Its best for the community. Keep it up . Still got that 1986 version for the a2000. GOD Speed.
Yes. But I think de Icaza philosophically agrees with Microsoft, besides being simply payed by them. To him, and to both the KDE and Gnome crowds, "Linux on the Desktop" is synonymous to "Windows experience on Linux." That's their mistake. The Linux kernel never stopped plowing ahead, innovating, incorporating things before Microsoft even realized they were good ideas, while the desktop has been lagging behind, trying to be Windows. I say throw the whole mass down the drain and start over. Apple has showed us that a Unix system can support a highly functional, highly polished GUI, and not be Windows. Get to work, guys.
Yes, there were allegations/proof she was paid by MS. Go check the comes documents where they suggest she trolls and she says she would be happy to do so.
Miguel has never HELPED the open source community. People just dont' recognize the difference between an open source program that benefits people vs an open source program that creates legal risk.
My reasons for "hating" MS are based on fact, not opinion - that's why people actually do care and read what I say. I don't need to spin things or mislead if the truth and facts that exist do a better job of hurting their own campaigns.
I think there are bigger issues than the desktop to address. Doesn't anyone find it curious that suddenly the microsoft/intel/oracle cabal has suddenly gone silent on Linux, seemingly just letting it go wtih oracles linux version/vision/vatever. Come on people, Steve Ballmer didn't just suddenly become a nice, generous guy. I think the interoperability mechanisms and the UEFI are considerably more important, especially as it is such a specialized area and can be approached from many multi-discipline views, ie kernel, drivers, assembly, audio-binary, tunneling/triggering/remote protocols, etc. The proliferation of transmission protocols alone, is approaching the absurd! If the UEFI doesn't bring the word "backdoor" to mind, you need to bone up on low-level tech more. The IETF, the so-called freedesktop.org, and other BigBoyz have tons of standards committees. Try reading the meetings's minutes/notes sometime. I don't think the FCC has a clue as to what's going on, let alone the industry in general! It seems most people just write the code without a clue as to the big picture. But then, I'm just old fart looking in, who happens to hate IP-Overkill, to like Linux and love open (so-called,as many seem dictated) standards.
In Canada, (and presumably the rest of the British Commonwealth) Benedict Arnold IS a national hero. (He's a traitor only in the US).
So those people should regard Miguel as a hero?
(Gotta internationalize those metaphors)
it's this kind of bickering that killed the linux desktop. stillborn.
>Miguel has never HELPED the open source community. People just dont' recognize the difference between an open source program that benefits people vs an open source program that creates legal risk
You think Mono is Miguel's only accomplishment or even his signature creation? Go find out about what else he built. I didn't know you were this ignorant about Linux's history.
>My reasons for "hating" MS are based on fact, not opinion
Of course, everyone feels the same way about their own opinions. That means nothing.
This space for rent.
>Go check the comes documents where they suggest she trolls and she says she would be happy to do so.
Who suggests what? Link?
>My reasons for "hating" MS are based on fact, not opinion
You mean facts like this?
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1768806&cid=33396072
You're a FUD peddling ignorant zealot and nothing more. Just because you have an audience on the Slashdot echo chamber doesn't really mean anything in real.
This space for rent.
Gnome has injured Fedora and all distributions that were obliged to follow with a Gnome3 implementation.
Gnome3 development did damage by removing functionality that previously existed. It has very very substantially fallen behind Ubuntu's Unity. If you doubt my opinion, compare the Unity 12.10 beta with any version 3 of Gnome, including betas.
I now do more with XFCE, Unity and KDE than I do with Gnome 3.x because the tools that accompany the former are richer in function.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
The reason that people don't want Linux on the desktop is because they don't want to try and get support from snarky little snivelers. The Linux community is full of immature little babies that whine like a broken supercharger.
Maybe the rest of the world is just weary of listening to it.
Who listens to de Icaza? He is a Microsoft worshipper and has done more harm to Linux then anyone else.
kernel. Linux could be running by default on every Mac sold over the last decade.
Neither has it being proprietary - you can say that it's not ethical or whatever, but you can't force people to give their source to anyone, and if they make the source available you still can't force them to license it as FOSS (example: minix, freely available, with source, but not free).
Personally I try to steer away from proprietary software when possible and won't cause too much discomfort, I release any pieces of software I make under GPL or some other F/OSS license, etc. but take away my freedom to choose to release my software under FOSS license and I'd be mad.
There is no way you could ethically ban proprietary software... in fact I had, on my server, a PHP app other people could and did use to place content on their webpages (or some other way, I wasn't monitoring how exactly it was used) and you are basically saying that it was not OK for me to provide that online application. I never wrote any mention of license in it, just a copyright notice (though nobody saw that either) so it was indeed proprietary.
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
Writing proprietary software is perfectly okay. I don't have to give away my work for free, although sometimes I do.
Incorrect. Proprietary software is not synonymous with being paid for it, and Free Software (in the GNU/FSF sense) is not synonymous with not being paid for it. Some proprietary software gets provided without financial compensation, some with. Some Free Software is written without financial compensation, some with. And in the long run, Free Software is better for society as a whole than proprietary software is. Unlike Stallman, I do accept that there are exceptions to be made, mostly where networked games are concerned, but hardware drivers should absolutely be Free Software.
Nevertheless, nobody has to give their software away as free. The fact that I do think that especially hardware drivers should be free, I have no right to deny anyone releasing them as proprietary.
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
XMMS runs fine on my Debian Squeeze, and it ran fine on my last Fedora (not sure but I think it was 11), no need to go back using some early 2000's distro with 2.4.x kernel :p I also remember there was a post couple years ago on blog I follow mentioning that ancient binary released Mosaic browser still worked on modern Linux and a link for downloading it ;p
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
One of the aggravating factors in switching away from Linux was that it not only had the worst desktop multitasking at the time, but couldn't even multitask as well as my old Amiga performing the same tasks (copying lots of files should not cripple mouse responsiveness or the playing of a network audio stream). That debacle was down to the cliquishness and recalcitrance of the Linux kernel devs.
What? May I ask what kind of CPU/Memory/GPU setup did you have, and what kind of multitasking were you doing exactly? Because I've used Linux from 2002, and most of the time I've ran it on below average computer - I've have actually ran VMWare session with WinXP inside running FruityLoops (without any issues with mouse, FL's UI or sound performance) and had kernel compilation running background on my Linux desktop (back then I still ran GNOME - later I moved to lighter solutions) - and I've had apache httpd + mysqld + PHP set up running in background since one or two years from when I moved to linux in '02.
I have always praised how Linux performs on machine that ProprietaryOSMostLike would choke if trying to run exactly same software, or equivalents when not available... and back when MS tried to prove their OS is better on server and had Linux+Samba put them in shame running shares on file server using Microsoft proprietary variation of SMB protocol - that didn't happen with OS that has issues with multitasking.
Unless you had really low level hardware (in relation to needs of what you were running) I don't see how your description could be true unless you had somehow the OS set up in some god awful mess :O
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
You're right, nobody has to. Nonetheless, I don't think any reasonable case could be made for why hardware drivers must be proprietary.
you can say that it's not ethical or whatever
And I say so, with the same degree of certainty the post I answered to say it is perfectly OK to write proprietary software.
but you can't force people to give their source to anyone
I can't, that's a given. But I can certainly consider it unethical and criticize them accordingly.
but take away my freedom to choose to release my software under FOSS license and I'd be mad.
As I said, I can't make you do anything about your software licensing. At most I can do what I have done: tell you it is unethical and that it is wrong.
There is no way you could ethically ban proprietary software
Of course there is: copyright is a state-given monopoly and can thus be revoked. Actually, this already happens after a (very long) time: it is called public domain.
you are basically saying that it was not OK for me to provide that online application
Exactly. You may not like it, but you can do as much about it as I can do to make you provide it. Your application is yours, my opinion is mine :)