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Gnome Founder Miguel de Icaza Moves To Mac
TrueSatan writes "Miguel de Icaza, via his blog, has explained his gradual move to the Apple Mac platform. 'While I missed the comprehensive Linux toolchain and userland, I did not miss having to chase the proper package for my current version of Linux, or beg someone to package something. Binaries just worked.' Here is one of his main reasons: 'To me, the fragmentation of Linux as a platform, the multiple incompatible distros, and the incompatibilities across versions of the same distro were my Three Mile Island/Chernobyl.' Reaction to his announcement includes a blog post from Jonathan Riddell of Blue Systems/Kubuntu. Given de Icaza's past association with Microsoft (CodePlex Foundation) and the Free Software Foundation's founder Richard Stallman's description of de Icaza as a 'traitor to the free software community,' this might be seen as more of a blow to Microsoft than to GNU/Linux."
As in, he's screwed it as much as he can. Now, it's time to screw up Apple.
Either that or he's just a complete plank who is self-aggrandising by stating he's going Mac.
I did the same about 10 years ago for the same reasons. Oddly enough it was the people at the local LUG with their iBooks & MacBooks that made me realize something was amiss.
I'm still not happy about his whole, "Qt isn't OSS so I'm writing GNOME to compete with KDE" move back in the late '90s. Though I appreciate Ximian, I fail to see why he's even relevant these days.
I was a HUGE Linux fanboi in the late '90s through about 2010. I agree with him, however, that Linux just doesn't work as a day-to-day end-user platform anymore. As it is, I'm mostly using my Nexus tablet and Galaxy phone for tasks, and then resort to Wintendo when I need.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
I liked to tinker with configs and settings and libraries, but now I like my home computer to just work. They cost more, but are worth it. I still have a unix command line and most of the open source tools but have access to commercial software as well.
Yummy KoolAid.
I really like Android, but it is something of the exception that proves the rule. Every phone is locked into a version of Android and doesn't have much life past that stream.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
Nope. In fact, I think it made it worse.
And they are still advertising Moonlight even though it is a dead project (and they admit it!). Can someone PLEASE turn off this site*! http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/
One of the biggest problem with Linux is people abandoning projects and not removing them from the net/distros. You were wrong, you've admited it, but you leave us the mess.
*In all seriousness, the few Silverlight websites redirect their Linux users to this page where it almost never works for them. This of course makes the Linux experience go from just "Unsupported" to building up the hopes of the users and then Unsupported.
The ends justifies the means. Uh. No.
Not that i disagree with you, with respect to using OSX or Windows when it makes sense to do so. But I don't think using either is particularly "evil".
But if I thought Apple killed children and unicorns then I wouldn't use OSX, even if it was the best tool for a job.
Can't speak for Icaza but for me personally, the trend towards making the Linux desktop "easier to use" has had me running away from the platform as a Desktop.... the problem is if you are going to make a GUI(and as a result make command line configuration more difficult), that GUI better damn well work. And at least with the desktop managers I have tried, it doesn't. So I find myself constantly trying to figure out what they changed from the previous version(that isn't working in the current version), and of course constantly changing where things are located etc. doesn't help.
If you are going to change the desktop experience in order to make it "easier to use", you damn well better get it right, or else not only do you fail to capture a new audience, you end up alienating the current user base. That seems to be what Gnome has done.
For me personally I develop on a mac, and run my test and prod on Linux(I've tried OS X as a server, and ironically it seems to suffer the same problems as a server as Linux does as a Desktop, they tried to make it "easier to use", but didn't get the abstraction right and the result is a mess).
I was recently put in the unfortunate position of having to develop a PHP app, and I tried doing everything on Fedora 18 with Gnome, and.... that was just plain frustrating. The installer tried to be "easy to use", but often failed, the system got stuck in reboot but I couldn't figure out what service was failing because I couldn't get it to not show that stupid startup animation and instead show me the boot log etc. Eventually I got the machine booted and then just ssh into it from my Mac, much less frustrating.
Bottom line: don't make Linux "easier to use" by breaking a bunch of shit.
Monstar L
I don't have any issues with Miguel, but I met him about 4 years ago and even then he was using a macbook with osx. Or maybe he was just a closet osx user and now coming out? Or he's just starting a fight?
To me, the fragmentation of Linux as a platform, the multiple incompatible distros
So he chooses to get his hardware and software from one vendor. Okay thats very neat and simple but he could get it from Canonical as well, or one of the BSD projects.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
As I sit here on my MacBook Air running Ubuntu, working on Ceph (ie getting stuff done!) while browsing slashdot. I've tried OSX many times, and I keep coming back to Linux because it's so much *more* productive, especially when working on code. The only thing I miss is netflix.
So whatever. I still have a soft spot for Apple hardware, but I'll stick with Linux thank-you-very-much.
I use serveral operating systems frequently due to work (and it used to be my hobby). I appreciate OS X's desktop interface a lot, but I don't realy understand Miguel's justification that Mac "just works" in terms of package availability and the quality of the base system.
It's no secret that OS X's base is lifted from FreeBSD. Is Linux too fragmented and chaotic for you? Do you long for a complete and and integrated system base in a single source tree, backed by unified development effort? FreeBSD has that. It also has very high package availability (better than most Linux distros).
On the Linux side, I use Fedora. I never have any trouble finding packages for Fedora. The quality that gets put into the base system of Fedora also leaves little to be desired.
I don't fault Miguel for his choice. OS X is nice--it gets the job done. I just don't think OS X is really giving him something special that he couldn't have gotten with Linux, BSD, or even Windows. If he misses the development toolchain of Linux, he should go back to Linux; that's totally understandable.
I moved to a MacBook for the sole virtue of it being a well-designed notebook, but I have strong feelings regarding Mac OS's functionality and "administrability" when compared to linux distros. It bothers me that there is NO package system to speak of, and you basically have to scour the internet like a fool to find basic tools that are one apt-get away in Ubuntu. I mean, yeah, I know there's stuff like homebrew, fink and macports, but so far all of those gave me nothing but headache, for the sole reason they are third-party hacks not supported (or even acknowledged) by the builders of the system (i.e. Apple).
To top it in terms of silliness, he speaks of "the binaries just works", but he neglects to mention that you still have to look for them in really random places over Google - something that apt-get like systems have been doing securely for the last what, 10 years? I indeed find it very odd that, although there's only one hardware platform for the Mac OS to run, all those third party packaging tools I mentioned actually require you to COMPILE everything again; then you go to the Ubuntu/Debian world, meant to run on several platforms and there's BINARIES for just about anything.
I really want to know what this guy is on. Gnome was a great thing, and he let it rot into that sad piece of bad usability called Unity; then he started dabbling in the very proprietary, advantage-free world of .NET, and he just bows down to Jobs walled garden legacy? I don't get it.
Anyway, freedom not to use is one of the 4 fundamental freedoms, according to RMS. Nothing of value is being (newly) lost, so big effing deal.
I don't understand this thought at all. I run a mixed environment at home, and it all works pretty well. I have a FreeBSD ZFS server in the basement happily running AFP and acting as a Time Machine target. I also have it running CrashPlan in Linux emulation as a target for my friends, family, and Windows PC. The Windows PC speaks happily to FreeBSD via Samba. Firefox works almost identically on all three platforms, syncing passwords and bookmarks. OpenOffice works on all three as well. CrashPlan client runs just fine on two Macs and the PC. Even Apple proprietary crap like iTunes and Airplay runs across platforms. As long as you try to steer clear of single-platform applications, everything works together pretty well. It would not be a big deal if I suddenly had to ditch Mac or Windows (and believe me, Windows 8 has made me consider the latter).
The truth is, there is no "ecosystem" if you are careful in your application and hardware purchases. That MacBook will happily run Linux or Windows if you get disgusted with MacOS. That Windows PC will happily run just about anything if you get disgusted at MS. Keep your data in an accessible format, and you are golden when you switch platforms.
Besides, as a geek your friends and family depend on you to be an expert at anything with electrons. :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
After developing with Mac OSX for a year using the command line interface (i.e., lots of terminals), I found I needed some sort of ports-like package management which has its own headaches. After jacking around with seemingly never-ending updates to Ubuntu and it's resource hungry UI, I found Debian quite refreshing. Not on the bleeding edge, but this is a GOOD THING! Never regretted it.
"Been running Linux for 15 years now, and it's better than it ever has been."
You're right, it is better than it ever has been. I cut my teeth on Slackware, back when a bad X11 .config actually fucked up your monitor. And I did just that. Through it all, there was never a better operating system that was as open or as flexible as Linux. I could run it on cobbled together parts from dead x86 boxes pulled from dumpster dives.
Now that I actually have some disposable income, I chose a Mac. Why? It let's me get shit done instead of fiddle-fucking with things that I don't honestly care about anymore. Back in college, I had all the time to compile and tweak libproffer0.2.3 from alpha to see if I could get it work. Now, I'd rather just pop in a DVD or download a binary blob and drag it to /Applications. My family time is limited and I'd rather be spending it with them. Does that mean the extra few hundred bucks was wasted? Maybe. I'd gladly trade that. My circumstances are my own experiences, but these are my opinions.
"Machine would suspend and resume without problem, WiFi just worked, audio did not stop working, I spend three weeks without having to recompile the kernel to adjust this or that, nor fighting the video drivers,"
Interesting, that is identical to the experience that I have with Debian. Even people on Arch don't need to "recompile the kernel to adjust this or that." But I hope he enjoys his Mac.
Penny - plain text accounting
I went the other way about two and a half years ago. I'm sure someone will tell me I was doing it wrong; I wouldn't be surprised if they're right. But I found the FOSS package managers for OS X incredibly painful to work with. I remember it taking at least a day of mucking around with compiling and pre-built binaries just to get the tools I needed for web development. It took me ten minutes to get the same thing working in Ubuntu.
Still, there were plenty of headaches: sleep mode, hybrid graphics and synaptics. Even though I had been avoiding dependence on proprietary software since activation chased me away from Windows, I had to give up really useful Mac tools like Scrivener, Tinderbox and Screen Flow (I still boot the Mac when I need to do a screencast). I used to be a programmer. Now I'm a social scientist. These days I do mostly reading and writing, not programming; the loss of Scrivener was a hard blow. I smoothed the way by writing my own tool.
OS X was significantly better for all but the most ordinary end-user applications. My area of research is the online commons - copyright, FOSS, creative commons - stuff like that. I could make my peace with Apple when they were only a pipsqueak tyrant. When they released the iPad and it was locked down, I simply couldn't stomach it anymore: and I was tying myself to an ecosystem that could be progressively enclosed by Apple. A friend of mine - a social scientist, not a programmer - switched to Mint, proving it was finally doable. Also, XMonad is pretty cool, and my search for a decent editor finally led me to take vim seriously.
Linux isn't perfect, but it's come a long way since I first used it for development in 1993. It really is usable - and sometimes excellent - for everyday work. Using a platform is supporting that platform. I wouldn't tell anyone else what to do, but I'm content to use this one.
It's a common trend at Google. Freshly hired students come in using Linux on the desktop and after a few months they switch to OS X because they don't want to waste time fucking around with retarded desktop problems when there are far more interesting things for them to do.
Same here. Hardcore Linux at home since the mid 90s. I work in Linux 24/7 on servers today, but everything at home is a Mac, as is my work laptop. Been that way for 5 years, haven't regretted anything. I don't have time to mess with kernels and tweak my window manager.
And here I thought that I was getting desktop-ready *NIX environment with a UI layer that wasn't a crufty piece of shit pretending to be something it's not. That I can still run native X11 apps on. Next to native MS office, indesign and photoshop. Without vitualization. And VMWare Fusion for situations where that's not enough or for when I want to stage a VM-based server before I deploy it.
I'll pay a couple bucks extra for that at work. And build a Hackintosh at home.
I love BSD, Linux to a degree and even X11. They are great tools. For a desktop workstation, OSX spanks Linux.... it just costs money.
I hear what you're saying about Getting Shit Done. I have that fantasy, too, and occasionally let it play out. Although I've been a mostly-Linux guy since the 90s, I've been jones-ing for some sequencing software that would "Just Work" that I could run on a platform that would "Just Work". Bought Ableton Live and a Mac Mini to run it on. (That's well over $1000, by the way.) If there's anything that should "Just Work", it should be this.
But I almost immediately tripped over the same old minor glitches I've seen on every other platform I've ever used. In this case, the problem is that Ableton perversely installs itself in such as way that only one user can run it (though the license is for the whole box). So, I dutifully tracked down the arcane procedure for making it available system-wide (just as you get with Linux apps by default, I might add), and a couple hours later it's doing what it should have done in the first place. Yes, it works, but it doesn't "Just Work".
Miguel did not write Midnight Commander. He took over as maintainer of an already written and widely used file manager, loaded it down with crud to the point no one else could understand it and it was barely usable, then quit supporting it. The man deserves no credit for MC whatsoever, unless you mean for killing MC.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Mac hardware sucks compared to the PC. A PC running OSX on a virtual machine is better than a Mac and cheaper.
Once you don't compare "cheapest PC" vs. "cheapest Mac", but "the Mac I want" vs. "a PC with the same specs, bought from a reputable company", the Mac hardware will beat most PCs of the same price.
A PC running MacOS X on a virtual machine is running unlicensed software. First, it is running a modified VM that you probably had no right to modify, second it runs an unlicensed copy of MacOS X that has just enough copy prevention built in to make it a DMCA violation.
Technically, Mono is great. Unfortunately, Miguel completely failed to establish it as a Linux standard by antagonizing much of the Linux community and failing to assuage licensing and patent concerns. Frankly, as an early Mono adopter and supporter, I feel let down by him. Let him be happy with his Mac; I won't miss him.
Mono was also a *massive* strategic blunder: it would have been far more sensible if Miguel had built an open source clone of the JVM instead for his Linux GUI efforts:
My observation at the time was that Miguel seemed to be over-excited by the (nice but superficial) language features he saw in C#, and completely forgot that the real value is in the *platform*.
I find this funny. I have been a Slackware user both personally for about 15 years and professionally for about 10 years.
I was recently given a Mac at work to test our stuff out on Mac OS. I have made a real effort to move all my daily work flow to the machine for the sake of really giving Mac OS a serious eval and trying to overcome the difference in familiarity.
First off I have had anything but a just works experience. I have had to find and delete cache files to unbreak the app store. Re-install various packages because something went wrong the first time, xcode, office, and java.
All in all my take away has been Slackware ever since version 13.0 or so has offered a better out of box experience than Mac OS X. XFCE 4.10 is much much better it terms of UI, features, and even eye candy. Having spent a month or so using a Mac 8 hours a day now; I can honestly say I'd never recommend one to anybody; not novice, nor expert. Truthfully the Aunt Tilly's out there and the I must have some proprietary closed application crowd are still better off on Windows and GNU/Linux/X.org/XFCE is better for everyone else. I would put Mac Os at the bottom of heap all around.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html