Slashdot Mirror
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."
Now he's going to try to clone all of Microsoft's clones of other people's technology for the Mac.
Lets see how far that gets him.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
And never looked back. Linux maintains its place as my workhorse, while I rest in the comfort of whichever other OS I feel like using that day, typically OS X or iOS. SSH and SFTP fill the gaps.
you can run it on your PC; Apple doesn't like it but you can do it
...but sometimes you just have to Get. Shit. Done. Part of getting shit done is using tools that Just Work.
Yes. Freedom. Openness. Yadda. Yadda. All good things. I agree with them. I also need to ship code. That's the difference between my project and HURD. Sometimes, I just don't care if the tools I use were made from crushed unicorn horns and children's spleens.
So he is leaving the mess he caused?
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
I'm starting to think this guy just likes to read about himself in the news. I think his announcement is pretty funny - Linux Mint is a shining example of Linux as a functional desktop OS. It's still not as polished as OS X, but I do find myself using OS X less and less these days.
Maybe he's just butthurt that Gnome probably doesn't have much of a future. I mean, the older versions are great if, uh, your graphics card stops working or something. . .
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
he would infest Linux with Microsoft poison
I'm not keen on .NET either, but that's quite overdoing it.
As for "allowing" anything, Apple lets you sue whatever language you like to produce iOS binaries - MonoTouch is one of them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You trade one slavery for another. The Cult of Macheads will mod me down, but Apple owns you as much as Microsoft does. Icaza trades one set of commercial business ecosystems for another.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Not legally.
Been running Linux for 15 years now, and it's better than it ever has been. I guess this guy just lost whatever zeal he never really had in the first place for free software.....Read his blog post and it seems like he's just bored or lazy, or both. Oh well......
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.
bullshit, it's a very incomplete .NET 4.0 missing huge parts of the framework. and let's not forget Moonlight, now dead.
incomplete system like that is fit only for a trainwreck of a project, like say GNOME3
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
It doesn't matter his affiliation or if he likes or even works for MS or not. Judge the statement on it's own, and it's true.
It's something Linux geeks have trouble admitting, but it is the sole reason Linux usage has not skyrocketed in adoption. If the LSB worked anthing close to how it was envisioned, developers would flock to the platform and then so would users.
At the moment, people use the distro they like and defend, while non linux geeks use distros like Ubuntu or Mint, which are the only platforms commercial developers tend to target.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Apple's loss is Linux's gain.
I left Linux for the same reasons for the most part.
Of everything he mentions, the only one I've had problems with is the audio. My Wifi is rock solid, and I've had no performance problems on my thinkpad, and at work I'm using a 5 year old, cast-off desktop that was deemed too slow for Windows, but it runs quite well with Kubuntu including 3D desktop effects.
But audio is a bit of a problem, I've started to kill -9 the pulseaudio daemon before starting up my audio player, otherwise the player just hangs while waiting for the audio device. This happens on my desktop and laptop with different audio hardware so it's not just one buggy driver.
Pretty much all of the software I need is available as an Ubuntu package, so fragmentation/incompatibility hasn't really affected me.
It's ironic that he complains about fragmentation, since he's largely responsible. Gnome is pretty shitty, but numerous distributions waste effort either supporting it or for some reason using it primarily instead of KDE which is a lot better. If it weren't Gnome all Linux desktops would have long ago standardized on KDE and we'd be better off for it.
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.
founder buys a mac and doesnt look back
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.
Why surprised? He wants to do to Apple what he has done to the Linux world.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Its really simple. You can f around with linux endlessly or you can get tired of it and move on to something more interesting. Obviously, Miguel is getting older and just doesn't want to f around with linux anymore. The Mac (for now) just gets things done. Thats not to say that nobody should f around with linux, obviously we need those people to do that, and eventually they'll get it more and more solid. Bless their little hearts. But in the mean time, other people want to f around with other things and not have to constantly be f'ing with linux.
Its like cars (or motorcycles)...
When your younger, you don't mind the beater car that you have to repair all the time. You dream of the day when its perfectly restored, but you never get there. One day you just realize, you have other things you want to do, so you buy a new car that just works. If you're lucky you can now afford one because you stopped f'ing with linux and started f'ing with something else that you can make a good living at. And if you're really lucky, you pick up some pile of junk to work on solely as a hobby and without the stress of wondering if the f'ing thing is going to get you to work on time.
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
I found myself moving from Linux back to Windows 7. Turns out I didn't actually care what fanboys proclaimed Linux could do if the software I wanted to run didn't exist in Linux. Or that my USB3 ports were busted in Linux due to a regression in the kernel that no-one bothered to fix. Or that there aren't any GUI file managers that are as quick at displaying info (and enough details including bitrates and resolutions) that are capable in Explorer.
Shame. But I think I've rid myself of the fanboy stink and use whatever the fuck I want now.
Raenex is a dickhead
Please refrain from attacking de Icaza for these simple reasons.
Like Stallman, de Icaza has donated countless hours of organization and programming time to Linux. Neither got rich as a result. Politics aside, Linux is about superior engineering, even if only as a side effect. Because of the efforts of these two individuals, among many others, Linux is now the most popular operating system on the planet. By any stretch of the imagination, they were and are victorious. Android is closing in on a billion users, but regardless of what Google's marketing materials may tell you, Android is a Linux distribution, and GNU and GNOME have been perfecting Linux distributions for over two decades.
I understand that Android does not ship with much GNU or GNOME software, but GNU and GNOME are what built Linux. Without either, the foundations upon which Android runs would never have accreted enough functionality to even think about running a smartphone.
As mostly non-rich people, often not closely allied with specific companies, we don't have publicists or agents. We don't come off as polished. We don't have speech writers. Forgive us for seeming offensive, rude, obnoxious, conceited, full of ourselves, or some other adjective. We're people, and as engineers we're trained to traffic in the honest truth. Once you meet us you'll like us, for the most part. And even if you don't, enjoy using our software. Contribute if you like.
You trade one slavery for another. The Cult of Macheads will mod me down...
Choice of computing platform is not slavery. Liking things that work is not a cult.
On reading Miguel's blog post I found myself thinking about a character who showed up on Gilligan's Island who was perpetually lost in his biplane. His nickname was "Wrong Way."
Ever notice how Miguel always seems to get involved in chaotic situations and then flees them by taking the wrong train, ending up in the middle of nowhere? Why does anyone even listen to this guy?
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
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
Mono was a pointless waste of time and De Icaza is a quisling turn coat. Apple deserves that worthless pile of donkey shit.
Lets see:
Miguel's contributions to Linux:
1) Midnight Commander
2) Contributions to Wine
3) He worked with David S. Miller on the Linux SPARC port and wrote several of the video and network drivers in the port, as well as the libc ports to the platform.
4) They both later worked on extending Linux for MIPS to run on SGI's Indy computers and wrote the original X drivers for the system.
5) With Ingo Molnar he wrote the original software implementation of RAID-1 and RAID-5 drivers of the Linux kernel
6) De Icaza started the GNOME project with Federico Mena in August 1997 to create a completely free desktop environment and component model for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems.
7) He also created the GNOME spreadsheet program, Gnumeric.
Your contributions to Slashdot:
1) Silly karmawhoring hatefilled anti-Microsoft rants on Slashdot
Who has made better contributions to the progress of Open Source?
Who are you trying to scare off with that?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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.
You confuse choice with slavery. Some choices have masters. Some, like Linux and BSD, do not. They may have their own cults, drama queens, and idiots, but also leaders, contributors, and plentiful competition.
Some choices do not, and I equate *them* with slavery.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Because you equate it doesn't make it fact. Slavery has a very strict definition and you're twisting of it does good for no one.
"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
so what?
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.
Just because you disagree with me, doesn't make it not true.
Each of these platforms has enormous degrees of vortex, along with inducements and outright shock troops to keep you "in the herd".
Platform slavery is well known. I don't, in using it, diminish the horrible context of human slavery. Human slavery is a different subject for a different day. This is about Icaza going from Microsoft to Apple with a blush on his face. This isn't about Dr MLK, or Selma, or Chinese girls in Boston brothels.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Until Oracle decides to say fuck you.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Wait, so, the guy who basically pushed 90% of the bloat, incompatibility, and other such madness I've ever seen in Linux is leaving because of the bloat and incompatibility?
Dude, not cool. You made that bed, now lie in it.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Dude's got more legitimate cred than ESR ever had really. People just can't get their heads around the fact that a Linux guy can like elements of other software ecosystems.
seven cats and one dog. Four laptops running Mint 14, 1 netbook running Mint 11, HTPC running Mint 14 KDE and second htpc running Mint 14 KDE. AND guess what, they all just work after install. Weird how you can't get it to just work.
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.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
You are right. The dems have done their fair share of damage. It is just right now, I think about the damage with our deficits and the republicans blaming everybody but themselves. That is exactly what de icaza does.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Time to open up OSX and allow it to be installed on any computer.
A tired response to a tired post. Apple is a hardware maker not an OS maker. They only make OSs to support their hardware. This explains the price difference between Mac upgrades and Windows upgrades. They make their profits off the hardware. They could potentially offer a version of the OS at a higher price that could be installed on PCs but people like you would complain about the price difference. They can't win this argument so why play the game? You want open there's Linux. You want Mac OS then there's Macs. You want everything your way, life sucks and get used to it! Christ when I was in my teens computers ran off Cassette drives! Be happy. 20 years ago Macs cost the same as a car. Cars got more expensive and Macs got cheaper and you're still complaining! Your average smart phone has a 100X the power of my first computer. My iPad would have probably been a super computer when I was a kid. If you were thrown back in time to the 70s or 80s you'd think you were in hell. Just imagine the 60s, as in pre calculator days when computers ran off punch cards. You're living in a time of miracles and you're whining about running OSX on hardware it was never designed to run on! My expartner bought a Mac clone off some one that claimed it worked faster than a Mac Pro. The damned thing was slower than a Mac Mini and crashed constantly. I made him take it back to the idiot that sold it to him. Is that what you want? A slower than hell OSX that crashes constantly? I'm sure you'd just blame Apple for not supporting PC hardware better!
netatalk is in ports. It's an AFP implementation. It worked well with Classic and old versions of OS X, but I've had better luck with Samba mounts in the last few releases. However, you still need it for TimeMachine.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
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.
No, you're just devaluing the word slavery by using it in that ridiculous way, because there's already a term for what you're trying to describe: vendor lock-in.
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".
It's a blow to microsoft because for years he has been microsofts top man inside linux. They just lost their most famous saboteur. Not a huge loss, of course, since saboteurs work best when they arent known as such. Miguel's name will live in infamy as the man that killed MC, and I am pretty sure that no half-baked linux project would let him in the front door at this stage, so I doubt it's a real loss, but still somewhat symbolic.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Just because you believe it really really strongly doesn't make it true, either.
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.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Jump to Microsoft. Tell me how well Microsoft plays with Apple.
Again, this hasn't been a problem for me. Apple ships with a built-in Samba so it offers itself up to Windows quite nicely. It can also mount Windows shares. iTunes runs on Windows, so all of your iOS toys still work. Stay away from the iWork and iLife stuff, and you are good in a move to MS.
Jump to Google; they're trying desparately to wean you from either, and into their cloud clutches.
I'm a heavy Google user. Gmail supports IMAP and works well with just about any email program on any platform, Calendar supports ICAL and works well with iPhone and Android (duh!), Google Drive works well with Windows and Mac (and even some basic functionality exists in Linux)... what service is causing you grief?
Most of my geek support today goes towards making stuff talk and solving the mysteries of platform incompatibilities.
Well, amen to that!
Actually, if I had to pick one thing that I think has consumed most of my geek time, it's hard drive failure... so now I just install CrashPlan on people's machines and point it at my basement server. Sooooo worth the couple hundred gig, and no more drives in the freezer. A close second is people who move iTunes to a new PC wrong and "lose their library"... ugh.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
You forgot to tell him to get off your lawn.
Yup. Representatives from my technology company of choice just knocked on my door. They are coming to chain me and send me to the cotton fields.
When asked why, the answer is almost always: "It's 2014".
Mac is just a stop along the way.
The guy who launched GNOME as a counter to KDE is complaining about "the fragmentation of Linux as a platform"? Tthe guy who made the decision replace GNUstep (which was the GNU project's official toolkit/framework in 1996) in favor of GTK â" he's fled to the Mac? He's got the chutzpah to say, "Linux just never managed to cross the desktop chasm"â"without admitting that his decisions are a major cause of that failure?
Good damn riddance.
Linux could have dominated the Desktop in 2006 or perhaps even sooner but he was pushing Mono and talking about how Microsoft was just better. He kept trying to morph Linux into another version of Windows. Then when it had all the problems associated with Windows thats when he goes over to OSX?
At least he's not involved with Android.
"I disagree" is not necessarily "shill". I think you'll find a trend amongst older users (in their 30s or older) that are $ rich and time poor. As opposed to teens and early 20s who are time rich and $ poor.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
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.
Every time I try to use it, I find the function keys are fucked up in my terminal emulator.
Otherwise I'd use it constantly. I adore the Norton Commander-style interface. I've never found a better file management interface.
DMCA only applies in the US to the best of my knowledge.
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.
The Gnome project was a disaster from beginning to end. It accomplished exactly one useful thing: Trolltech was forced to GPL QT. At that point, Gnome should have been promptly shut down, having accomplished its purpose, and Linux on the desktop would be much further advanced than it is. But instead we have this crippled zombie thing that shambles on and on. Somebody put a stake in its heart or something please.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I just read at least a dozen "but OSX just WORKS!!" threads, "I don't have to do anything to make it WORK!#@!".
Well, guess what. What you spend your money on is *REAL* *VOTING*; more than any election.
When you *VOTE* for shitty, evil Apple Business Practices (that would be ALL OF THEM), you're supporting and proliferating Evil (tm). They're worse than Microsoft, just without as many of your Billions. Keep feeding the beast and see what happens.
And, intriguingly, the install disk comes with a free set of "Apple labels" that can be applied to any computer.
After having recently purchased a Mac Mini i have had a number of problems with things not working as i would expect.
Simple things like .
Using a non Apple keyboard - unlike the keyboard selection widget in Ubuntu which "Just Works(tm)" (press a couple keys and voila). Even a Mac guru friend could not get OSX to use the correct keyboard layout. Even with various 3rd party tools and hacks still certain keys on the keyboard are in the wrong places. such as backslash and tilda.
The responses i get are "your not doing it right" - considering the Mac Mini was originally punted in such a way that you can use your own keyboard and mouse - it should "Just Work(tm)" - it doesnt.
File system support - certain filesystems on external USB drives cannot be written to by default - I've had to use third party - buggy drivers to enable this again - this is an area where I would expect OSX to "Just Work(tm)" it doesnt very well in this case.
iTunes - first time i plugged my iPod into the new mac into a virgin iTunes - it wiped all my tunes when it was supposed to be sync'ing up. No explanation why.
In the mac Terminal app the page up / page down / home keys were next to pointless - i had to hack a fix in place for this.
Using the mac ports system sort of feels dirty but i really miss "apt-get install packagename" - many software packages are not compatible with Mountain Lion which has led to frustration when trying to get things to work.
Lastly hardware support is really crap - eg: i have a USB midi interface that "Just Works(tm)" on ubuntu. I understand you need to install drivers on OSX (this was a surprise to me given that i was led to believe OSX "Just Works(TM)" of course the driver is not compatible with Mountain Lion.
So Macs are shiny and all - but if you want to go outside of the box "Just Works" does not apply - not for me anyhows!
N.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
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 don't think it's very fair to say the Gnome project was a disaster. Sure, in the context of present-day desktop environments, GNOME 1.x looks pretty damn horrible now. But back then, comparing it to KDE (which, to be fair, was in some respects the more reliably functional interface) it was not bad. At that time, I really hated KDE, since it was so kfucking kluttered and kfugly.
I stuck with GNOME from 1997 until the end of the 2.x versions, since it did what I needed it to do reasonably well. Meanwhile, the early KDE 4.x releases were unusable. Sadly, GNOME 3.x has followed suit (and appears set to stay that way), while KDE has re-evolved itself in recent versions as a really nice, feature-rich environment.
My understanding is that Mr. de Icaza is, always has been, and generally has conceded himself to be, a pragmatist. He values software freedom for the practical benefits that it brings. I can respect that to a point. However, like Mr. Stallman, I am an idealist. I believe that freedom is valuable primarily for its own sake, that suppressing it is a bad thing even if it is alleged to bring "practical" benefits, and that encouraging it is a good thing even if it comes at the price of some (usually temporary) inconvenience. Pragmatism, unfortunately, often leads to compromise, and to the abandonment of ideals that prove difficult or inconvenient. Idealism on the other hand motivates people like RMS to continue to try to address the problems with, e.g., free software on the desktop, not by abandoning freedom, but by trying to fix them.
Nonaggression works!
If you buy the software online, you violate the CFAA in the same way Aaron Swartz did - you performed a financial transaction (in his case, he didn't even perform a financial transaction, but he did download public domain papers that came with a financial per-page charge to non-students) online and violated the terms of service agreement and are committing a felony by attempting to install it on a non-Apple branded computer.
Yes, that law was written for ATMs, but it is so poorly written and over-broad that it could be applied to just about anything, including visiting pretty much any web site without prior authorized permission.
What's worse is that this "crippled zombie thing" actually seems to have a lot more users than KDE, even though people incessantly bitch about how bad Gnome3 is and KDE would be much, much easier for former Windows users to use (and is endlessly configurable for those who want something a little different).
Apple is a hardware maker not an OS maker. They only make OSs to support their hardware.
For an non-OS maker, they made a damn good OS. OS X is what Linux should have been IMO. *nix kernel, runs all the standard *nix/GNU software, great _standard_ gui, API, applications, etc. They got the OS X desktop right from the start. Linux community and companies on the other hand, apparently still can't decide what their GUI should be like.