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Endless OS Now Ships With Steam And Slack FlatPak Applications (endlessos.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Steam and Slack are now both included as Flatpak applications on the Endless OS, a free Linux distribution built upon the decades of evolution of the Linux operating system and the contributions of thousands of volunteers on the GNOME project. The beauty of Flatpak is the ability to bridge app creators and Linux distributions using a universal framework, making it possible to bring this kind of software to operating systems that encourage open collaboration...

As an open-source deployment mechanism, Flatpak was developed by an independent cohort made up of volunteers and contributors from supporting organizations in the open-source community. Alexander Larsson, lead developer of Flatpak and principal engineer at Red Hat, provided comment saying, "We're particularly excited about the opportunity Endless affords to advance the benefits of open-source environments to entirely new audiences."

95 comments

  1. Linux desktop doesn't satisfy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Want to like Linux for a desktop OS. But I just can't and mainly its because stuff just doesn't work, or doesn't always work or works poorly on Linux and much better on Windows or a Mac. If I am going to dump Windows 10 I will obviously choose Mac OS over any sort of Linux flavor. Sounds so great to be free which is about all Linux desktop has going for it these days. Maybe Chrome OS is a option for some, I myself have tried it and its just too Googleish for me. Steam totally failed on its Linux systems and why its keeps trying to sell a cobbled together limited Linux gaming platform is beyond me? If your a gamer and using Steam your going to want Windows.

    1. Re:Linux desktop doesn't satisfy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have none of the problems you seem to have. I account this mainly to doing a modicum of hardware research prior to purchasing. It's not hard, but it must be done.

    2. Re:Linux desktop doesn't satisfy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Every hardcore free software and open source advocate has a Windows partition for playing games anyways. Moreover, every critic of Apple for making "locked down" sandboxed systems has a Nintendo device and a PS4 for playing their anime video games.

    3. Re:Linux desktop doesn't satisfy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Except s/he didn't say just WorksForMe(tm), s/he gave exactly the reason why it works - the hardware research. Or maybe a car analogy would be easier to understand:

      "Hey, I have a problem with this car (Ferrari), doesn't drive well or at all offroad!".
      "Freetard: Hey, it works for me" (but doesn't tell you he drives an SUV)
      "Anonymous coward from above: I don't have a problem driving off road because I want to drive offroad and so I do a modicum or car research and buy cars that are specifically designed for offroad terrain"
      "You: blah blah blah bawww freetard bawwww".

      Captcha: suited.

    4. Re:Linux desktop doesn't satisfy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I will never understand the purpose of comments like yours, which serve no other purpose than being inflammatory. Does this really make you feel better?

    5. Re:Linux desktop doesn't satisfy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have none of the problems you seem to have. I account this mainly to doing a modicum of hardware research prior to purchasing. It's not hard, but it must be done.

      You buy or replace hardware to suit an OS? Seriously?

    6. Re: Linux desktop doesn't satisfy by loufoque · · Score: 1

      You don't buy or replace hardware to suit your use case? Seriously?

    7. Re: Linux desktop doesn't satisfy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You don't buy or replace hardware to suit your use case? Seriously?

      I do buy hardware to suit my use case, which is to say I avoid buying anything with "special" requirements. Better to avoid problems in the first place than end up having to buy your way around them in the future.

    8. Re:Linux desktop doesn't satisfy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Stop trying to use Ubuntu (popular primarily because they loudly self-congratulate and make more noise than others) and use a mature and reliable Linux distro, and you will find that this issue of things not working will go away.

    9. Re:Linux desktop doesn't satisfy by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Seems simple enough to me. You want to do something on a computer. You figure out what the best applications are. You figure out what OS they run best on. You figure out what hardware is best for your OS and apps. If your use cases are common, you can find something off the shelf. If they're unusual, it may take more work. You may wind up with multiple different systems; the devices for my personal use run iOS, Android, W10, and Ubuntu, in addition to what (Android?) runs on an eInk Nook, and each of those devices is good for my purposes..

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    10. Re:Linux desktop doesn't satisfy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can get by just fine on Linux. I only buy DRM-free games, so that means gog.com only. More and more games keep coming to Linux.

    11. Re:Linux desktop doesn't satisfy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Corporate whores don't use Linux. Shocking.

  2. Advert by umafuckit · · Score: 4, Insightful

    OS nobody has heard of now ships with Steam and Slack... Great.

    1. Re:Advert by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      pay for codecs freely available?

    2. Re:Advert by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually I've heard of it.
      It seems it's shipped on a great number of ASUS ROG-type laptops as a free alternative to Windows.
      Example: http://www.ldlc.com/fiche/PB00223945.html

    3. Re:Advert by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I got a chuckle out of that too.

  3. Yet another reason AGAINST Linux... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have never even been able to make up my mind about the existing distributions, but they just keep adding more and more. It's absolute madness. Linux makes Windows look cohesive, and that says a lot...

    1. Re:Yet another reason AGAINST Linux... by Computershack · · Score: 2

      Linux makes Windows look cohesive, and that says a lot...

      That has always been the case. Linux's strength is also its greatest weakness to adoption.

      --
      I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
    2. Re:Yet another reason AGAINST Linux... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      I lean towards Linux Mint because it works fine on older PCs and Macs. My current Linux box has Red Hat Linux because I might take the Red Hat certification in the future.

    3. Re: Yet another reason AGAINST Linux... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What OS do you have installed on the black MacBook. We all are dying to know. Do you hate us? Why leave us in suspense Creimer. xD

    4. Re:Yet another reason AGAINST Linux... by Ramze · · Score: 2

      The number of distributions isn't the issue as they're all the same OS with minor tweaks or a different display environment and packaging system. Once you factor in the size of the community and the level of support for a distro, they all whittle down to basically debian/ubuntu - based, red-hat based, SUSE-based, or ARCH-based. Most will choose Ubuntu or Fedora/Red Hat. SUSE is still a close third, and Arch is more for those that like to fiddle with everything under the hood.

      I advise Ubuntu, though I prefer a Cinnamon desktop (which is the DE that ships with Linux Mint, a derivative of Ubuntu.)

      I've tried all the major flavors of Linux... Arch was somewhat lacking in repositories, SUSE was really nice as was Fedora.... but nothing beat Ubuntu in terms of community support -- not just from Canonical, but from linux users and programmers in general -- especially when it came to package management as Ubuntu is debian based, so download .deb files or add PPAs that are compatible. Linux Mint was nice, but it was (and still is) slower to release newer software for the sake of stability (and having fewer people to help maintain the package than Ubuntu has).

      Don't let the distros bother you. Everyone and their mother can create their own distro with a simple fork of the code and a repository. If a distro doesn't have great support and maintainers, it may as well not exist, though... and Ubuntu is imho, hands down the best... just pick your favorite interface and run with it. Many prefer Gnome, some like KDE or Mate -- I stick w/ Cinnamon. It's just the GUI interface, though... everything under the hood is pretty much the same.

    5. Re:Yet another reason AGAINST Linux... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's great. You personally are comfortable with distro fragmentation! Except:

      1). It's a barrier to new adopters. Whether you want to admit it or not it's just one more thing that causes non-technical users to shy away from Linux;

      2). Tons of these distros are irrelevant, or simply don't add enough value to justify their existence. I get it; Linux kind of invites the obsessed, the quirky, the eccentric. Yet those are personal ambitions and rarely suitable of even coming to the attention of most of us. The fact that they do in some sense compete for time and attention with the mainstream distros is a distraction;

      3). The amount of overlapping effort, duplication, and dead end development threads is staggering. Linux doesn't need one distro. It certainly doesn't need as many distros as it has though. Yet there's really no established mechanism for actively killing the losers. Everyone acts as though passive neglect is an adequate senescence mechanism but really, it isn't.

      Yeah, don't bother sending me the distro choosing links; I know all about them. Hey they help. Don't you ever wonder about the underlying need to even have them though? It's just one more Linux "thing" to have to deal with.

    6. Re:Yet another reason AGAINST Linux... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have never even been able to make up my mind about the existing distributions, but they just keep adding more and more. It's absolute madness. Linux makes Windows look cohesive, and that says a lot...

      Totally bogus point. There are only a handful of distros that actually matter in terms of market/mind share. Whether there are 100 or 101 'minority' distros is entirely irrelevant.

  4. Uh by jon3k · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "built upon the decades of evolution of the Linux operating system and the contributions of thousands of volunteers on the GNOME project. "

    That seemed kind of unnecessary. Are we going to start announcing all distro news in this way?

    1. Re:Uh by Herve5 · · Score: 1

      :-D
      and now, I'm thinking this sentence does convey information indeed : what it means, is that the authors of EndlessOS feel they are so much unknown, that they need to heavily insist on their noble Linux origins :-)
      A sentence like that to me is a repellent, I thank you for having raised my attention there.
      I'll come back when they feel secure enough to not need hitch hiking... (indeed let's leave this thread altogether)

      --
      Herve S.
    2. Re:Uh by kqs · · Score: 2
    3. Re:Uh by Immerman · · Score: 1

      Or alternately, that their marketing is trying to appeal to people that aren't already deeply familiar with Linux. Certainly their simplified "tablety" desktop is clearly not designed to appeal to the bulk of desktop-Linux enthusiasts, and the video and many sub-$250 (and sub $100) pre-installed systems they offer suggest that they're targetting education and wealthier developing-world markets.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    4. Re:Uh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      This is what IO call a "trap" distro. Codecs are a paid extra. Standard tools like apt don't work because they're too hard for the type of user they want to "help". Maybe people fleeing WannaCrypt-Windoze?

      Tony Robbins is one of their advisors if you dig around their FAQ and About pages. So the BS is laid on thick with this one.

      Rating: minus 2 stars.

      Recommendation: avoid.

      The Cure: just download Ubuntu MATE or Linux Mint.

  5. Where is MS Office's worthy competitor? by bogaboga · · Score: 2

    Folks, I am still looking for Linux's worthy office competitor. To me, this means an application that can be scripted, an application in which business logic can be programmed. I have developed many such applications using VBA.

    Once Linux gets something near equivalent to Office on Windows, I will bite.

    And yes, I am aware of LibreOffice and the like if one simply googles them. None of what I have seen cuts it, unfortunately.

    1. Re:Where is MS Office's worthy competitor? by ledow · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'd query why places think they need to run their business logic in a desktop OS via a word processor's macro language (effectively).

      All the office-integration I see looks like it should be no more than a temporary, or rarely used, system of operation.

      What kind of things do you script in VBA that you can't do effectively with a dedicated system?

    2. Re:Where is MS Office's worthy competitor? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have you not looked at Google's APIs for sheets, docs, mail, etc? They're pretty good

    3. Re:Where is MS Office's worthy competitor? by Yosho · · Score: 1

      I have developed many such applications using VBA.

      I am so, so sorry. I hope your job hunt to find a place that doesn't force you to use VBA is successful.

      But more seriously, can you mention any specific things that you're trying to do that you haven't found an equivalent for? "Business logic" is pretty vague. Most of the time, people who say that are just talking about adding up cells in spreadsheets.

      --
      Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
    4. Re:Where is MS Office's worthy competitor? by Dog-Cow · · Score: 2

      People who run businesses are not programmers. They are not interested in architectural purity. They want to get their work done. Yesterday. They use the tools at hand. If you want them to do a better job (whatever that means to you), you have to give them better tools.

    5. Re:Where is MS Office's worthy competitor? by ledow · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Exactly - better tools, more suited to the task. And if you're programming in VBA (like the OP), chances are you don't have those better tools.

      What job do you need to perform in Word, Excel or Access that can't be done better using something else more suited to the task?

      The reason people use them is because they have them there. And then they carry on buying them because they are so accustomed to having them there. On Linux etc. you have OTHER things there. But you're not accustomed to them.

      But still, whenever I see an Excel spreadsheet used as anything other than a sheet to tinker in, or Word used as some automated letter-creator from a CSV, or an Access database that sits standalone instead of ODBC to a proper SQL server (of any kind), it makes me wonder why people have done that.

      And the reason is "because we already have it, and it can be bodged to do what we're doing today". You can't convert those kind of people to ANYTHING else, even another office suite, while that's true.

      It's nothing to do with architectural purity. It's to do with not running your business on the basis of there always being the one guy who understands the VBA code that does something virtually-the-same-but-with-a-tiny-business-rule as everyone else on the planet, coupled with the thing you bought to write letters or check your email.

      And, again, I'd question - what business task are you running that requires Office? How often? What does it save? What kind of investment in development? Because putting that investment into proper tools would return dividends, and cost less in the long run.

      VBA is job security in places that don't know that they shouldn't be hacking things together in Excel and Access. It's fine for running numbers and interfacing with a proper database, but it's at best an ad-hoc query/reporting/prototyping tool, not a thing for building business-critical processes.

    6. Re:Where is MS Office's worthy competitor? by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 2

      The world doesn't turn for you.

      According to a discussion I was part of in my Philosophy 101 class, indeed the world DOES turn for me.

      --
      If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
    7. Re:Where is MS Office's worthy competitor? by Immerman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      >whenever I see..., it makes me wonder why people have done that.

      Because they're not programmers. And they aren't interested in hiring competent programmers to write their mostly-still-trivial "programs", especially since the programmer will often have to expensively recreate a lot of functionality already included in Excel/Word/etc, starting with reading and writing data into extremely complex and poorly documented Office file formats for interoperability with everything else they do.

      They write complex monstrosities in Excel, not because it's the right tool for the job, but because it's the only tool they know that's even vaguely appropriate to the job, and they can learn new "tricks" incrementally from whatever place of developmental ignorance they start from. And VBA is an outgrowth of that - a "horrible" language that encourages you to do a whole lot of things in really bad ways, but easy to learn in tidbit-sized chunks when you just need to add *this* little bit of extra functionality beyond what you and your predecessors have already managed to do.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    8. Re:Where is MS Office's worthy competitor? by Immerman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "Business logic" seems to mostly be code for just that - really basic math (and often convoluted conditionals) that can be implemented (badly) in a spreadsheet (augmented by basic scripting), by people who aren't competent programmers, aren't interested in becoming so, and aren't interested in paying for someone who is to do the work for them.

      And lets be honest, that last one is actually a pretty reasonable position considering the difficulty in evaluating the competence and integrity of anyone claiming to be a competent programmer for short-duration contract work.

      And frankly the first two are as well - these are people hired as office workers - if they had the skill and desire to become programmers, they mostly wouldn't be there in the first place.

      Scripting and "business logic" is basically the badly programmed glue that holds together projects not worth hiring a dedicated programmer for. Or at least that's where it starts, though like any program feature creep feeds its cancer-like growth, potentially fueled by business growth until you've got something so large that it really should be done right, but now it will take years of expensive programmer time to re-implement properly without breaking anything.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    9. Re:Where is MS Office's worthy competitor? by BronsCon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As a programmer, when my wife needed a simple way to track sales for her print business, I gave her an Excel spreadsheet with a few macros.

      By taking that shortcut (and using the access management facilities which already exist in Office) I was able to avoid building an entire I/O interface complete with entry forms and reports, didn't have to worry about infrastructure or what the database should look like, and could skip right over authentication. For what amounts to a single user system, it actually makes perfect sense.

      This was done done during my workday, it took me about 2 hours; I could have spent a week, full-time, developing the database, implementing a secure authentication system, designing and implementing the forms, designing and implementing the reports, and tweaking all of that until it made sense to the end user, an it would have cost between $2600 and $6000 depending on which client(s) I was setting aside in order to get that done. In the end, I worked two hours extra the day I did it, so it didn't cost me anything; but there's no way I would have put in an extra 40 for that.

      Now, when someone's paying me they're gonna get the whole enchilada, because that's what they're paying me for... and because I can bill for it. But, even then there are times when they tell me it's for one person, or one event, or some other single-use reason, and they don't want to pay for it -- I point out how the work may be useful in the future and, when they can show me that it won't be, they get an Office "application" if that's what they're after.

      Sometimes the right tool for the job is the tool that can do the job quickly, cheaply, and without requiring a bunch of other tools.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    10. Re:Where is MS Office's worthy competitor? by BronsCon · · Score: 2

      It sounds to me like he did pay for it to be implemented. He bought Office.

      If open source wants to seriously compete with closed software, they need to do everything closed software does, better than closed source, and they need to be compatible with that same closed software while doing it.

      Case in point, Linux and BSD in server environments. Nobody seriously uses over Linux or BSD over Windows on their servers because it's free, we use them because they do the same things and they do them better. Where that falls apart (running as an AD DC for newer versions of Windows, as a singular example), we use Windows because we need it to work.

      Sure, you can tell me about all of your friends who run Linux on the desktop and, well, they're developers and fairly well paid ones at that. Sure, and I can point out they they're either employed by someone else or doing very small-time contract work where they don't necessarily have to interact with many proprietary systems. Kudos to them for being able to make their living that way, but if their choice of tools is based solely on freedom, sacrificing effectiveness and efficiency, they're not serious.

      TL;DR: If Windows suddenly became better at running servers than Linux or BSD distros, there would suddenly be a whole lot more Windows servers out there. Oh, and the guy you're bitching at did pay for the features he wanted.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    11. Re: Where is MS Office's worthy competitor? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For a one or two man company, then yea it makes perfect sense. For a business with the funds to do it right, it makes 0 sense to implement your system this way.

    12. Re:Where is MS Office's worthy competitor? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "None of what I have seen cuts it, unfortunately."

      Because? We need criteria otherwise any answer is a shot in the dark

    13. Re:Where is MS Office's worthy competitor? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "What job do you need to perform in Word, Excel or Access that can't be done better using something else more suited to the task?"
      When you graduate from high school and enter the business world you could probably answer this question for yourself but for now you need to know that that there are millions of Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint objects being used in enterprise level environments.

    14. Re:Where is MS Office's worthy competitor? by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 0

      It sounds to me like he did pay for it to be implemented. He bought Office.

      Then he has no need to drone on about it.

      If open source wants to seriously compete with closed software, they need to do everything closed software does, better than closed source, and they need to be compatible with that same closed software while doing it.

      An eternal game of catch up means you are always behind and have partially implemented systems that suck in comparison to the original. It's far better to innovate and make something that it better and let closed source software try to catch up with you.

      Nobody seriously uses over Linux or BSD over Windows on their servers because it's free

      Generalizations like this are easily proven false.

      we use them because they do the same things and they do them better.

      No, they do something similar but it's very different and everything that works great isn't compatible with Windows' proprietary shit. This proves my point, not yours.

      Where that falls apart (running as an AD DC for newer versions of Windows, as a singular example), we use Windows because we need it to work.

      Where it falls apart is where it's playing catch up with Windows. This proves my point yet again.

      TL;DR: If Windows suddenly became better at running servers than Linux or BSD distros, there would suddenly be a whole lot more Windows servers out there. Oh, and the guy you're bitching at did pay for the features he wanted.

      If Windows suddenly became better then it wouldn't be a Microsoft product, so I wouldn't hold your breath.

      Also, it's quite clear that you don't understand what makes open source successful.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    15. Re:Where is MS Office's worthy competitor? by ledow · · Score: 2

      20 years experience running the IT in million-dollar companies.

      Now tell me... what was your actual answer again?

      And who mentioned PowerPoint? Nobody scripts Powerpoint.

      We're not saying "Who uses Office?". Word processors and spreadsheets are necessary and vital tools for day-to-day operations.

      But we're saying "Who scripts their office suite and then runs their business on that script?". Because the answer is as I said: People in tiny companies, who are happy with bodges, who never put in a proper system.

      As soon as you step beyond mail-merge, you can afford a system to do what you're doing. Even if it's software designed especially for that one task, at least you have some accountability and support, rather than "Oh, the macro's broke - we'll have to get John back in to fix it to take account of the new dates".

    16. Re: Where is MS Office's worthy competitor? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For a business with the funds to do it right, it makes 0 sense to implement your system this way.

      So the data sits in Excel, the result set needs to be in Excel and all of the users in the Finance department know how to operate Excel. But you think it makes no sense to write that code in Excel.

      There are thousands of reasons to develop in VBA for office automation tasks and not just in Excel but across the whole Office suite. It's why Office has a full IDE. Your blunt, binary, my-way-or-nothing is a perfect example of why many coders are laughed at when they try to make business decisions.

    17. Re:Where is MS Office's worthy competitor? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      [...] not because it's the right tool for the job, but because it's the only tool they know that's even vaguely appropriate to the job, and they can learn new "tricks" incrementally from whatever place of developmental ignorance they start from.

      I've seen bad programmers do that in every programming language.

      And VBA is an outgrowth of that - a "horrible" language that encourages you to do a whole lot of things in really bad ways, but easy to learn in tidbit-sized chunks when you just need to add *this* little bit of extra functionality beyond what you and your predecessors have already managed to do.

      VBA is also an excellent language for a professional coder to turn those chucks into something readable, maintainable and efficient. It's much easier to fix a rats nest of VBA written by a bunch of business users than a rats nest of C++/Java/C# written by a bunch of recent CS graduates.

    18. Re:Where is MS Office's worthy competitor? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      20 years experience running the IT in million-dollar companies.

      And I've been developing software for FTSE100s for 25 years. SFW?

      Now tell me... what was your actual answer again? [...] And who mentioned PowerPoint? Nobody scripts Powerpoint.

      We've got users on a multi-billion construction project using VBA in PowerPoint. Why? Because the code was developed by our in-house team and saves the users days of manual work.

      We're not saying "Who uses Office?". Word processors and spreadsheets are necessary and vital tools for day-to-day operations. [...] But we're saying "Who scripts their office suite and then runs their business on that script?". Because the answer is as I said: People in tiny companies, who are happy with bodges, who never put in a proper system. [...] As soon as you step beyond mail-merge, you can afford a system to do what you're doing.

      Nobody runs a large business on Office but every user has it. Which means that occasionally, it's the perfect platform. We've got over 100 line-of-business applications (SAP, etc.) and something like 1000 cots applications. But if someone can find a way to do something boring and repetitive using VBA and it saves 20 users a couple of hours a week each, that makes the users happy, management happy and reduces errors.

      Even if it's software designed especially for that one task, at least you have some accountability and support, rather than "Oh, the macro's broke - we'll have to get John back in to fix it to take account of the new dates".

      The same can be said of any custom application. If a bug is found in any of our line-of-business apps, it costs us a fortune. OTOH, if we got a bug in a VBA app and it broke forever, it's disposable; we'd either write it off or write another.

    19. Re:Where is MS Office's worthy competitor? by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      Then he has no need to drone on about it.

      So, when a free software zealot tells him he should use Libre Office instead of Microsoft Office, he's supposed to just smile and keep his mouth shut? Yes, I know that's not what happened in this case, but it is what happens often enough to warrant heading it off before it does, which is what happened here.

      An eternal game of catch up means you are always behind and have partially implemented systems that suck in comparison to the original.

      You needn't implement every feature, but you absolutely must implement the features your intended userbase needs. If you lack those features, then you must not pester people who need them when they choose a different product.

      It's far better to innovate and make something that it better and let closed source software try to catch up with you.

      Once you have the features your intended userbase needs, yes, I agree, it is better to differentiate yourself by coming up with our own unique feature set on top of those required features, rather than piecemeal copying the competition. What's missing, here, is those required features. In the form of a car analogy, it is useless to make a car that can accelerate from 0 to 60 in a tenth of a second, but not implement the all-importante feature we call braking; nobody would buy such a car -- in fact, you couldn't even legally sell it -- and nobody would wonder why. Why is that so hard to understand when applied to free software? I emphasized free because the closed software community seems to understand that people will only use your shit if it does what they need, while many open projects miss this point entirely.

      Generalizations like this are easily proven false.

      I used a qualifier: seriously. Nobody serious puts the ability to view the source code over the actual functionality of the software; if it can't do what is needed and can't trivially be made to do what is needed, it is useless. If it is open and does what is needed, all the better, but openness does not trump functionality. If you can do without interoperability with the larger business world, you are, by definition, not a serious user.

      No, they do something similar but it's very different and everything that works great isn't compatible with Windows' proprietary shit. This proves my point, not yours.

      By your account, Apache must not work that well, as it is compatible with proprietary Windows technologies; it can serve ActiveX controls and .Net code with no issues whatsoever. Apache does the very same thing IIS does; many other open source projects mimic their closed source counterparts and a large number of those projects do so more reliable and securely than the closed source "originals". You think you've proved your own point here, but the reality is that you've simply missed mine.

      Where it falls apart is where it's playing catch up with Windows. This proves my point yet again.

      What is the open-source replacement for Active Directory that can work across all popular platforms? That's not playing catch up with Windows, that providing functionality that is absolutely necessary to any large computer installation with a dynamic userbase. I'm still not sure what your point is, but you're far from proving it.

      If Windows suddenly became better then it wouldn't be a Microsoft product, so I wouldn't hold your breath.

      I'm not even sure how to classify that argument, but it appears to contain more snark than substance and, again, completely misses the point. Like most free software zealots, you're good at that but not very good at getting actual work done. Mind you, I'm not saying that free software can't be used to get a

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    20. Re:Where is MS Office's worthy competitor? by Immerman · · Score: 1

      Fair enough. A good programmer can do good work in any language they know well.

      An average programmer though... To say nothing of the "cut-n-paste" crowd.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    21. Re:Where is MS Office's worthy competitor? by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      If open source wants to seriously compete with closed software, they need to do everything closed software does, better than closed source, and they need to be compatible with that same closed software while doing it.

      It doesn't have to do everything proprietary software does, just the stuff people want to do. Different office software exists on different platforms, and people seem to get along with it. We have Google Docs, the iOS office suite, and LibreOffice, to name three, that compete more or less successfully with Microsoft Office. They aren't going to replace MS Office, since there's a network effect, a lot of legacy MS Office stuff, and the fact that MS Office does do some things better than the competition.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    22. Re: Where is MS Office's worthy competitor? by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      It doesn't have to do everything proprietary software does, just the stuff people want to do.

      Like, oh my God, that's like, totally the point I was like trying to make and junk. Like, totally!</valleygirl>

      But, seriously, I've made that point twice in this thread, in as many posts.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
  6. Flatpak isolates, doesn't it? by allo · · Score: 1

    Seems like a nice idea to put software like steam into a flatpak, which isolates it against the system. The only question is, how much isolation against system properties will steam and other tolerate before they say "hey, our drm is not working, when we cannot read your primary MAC address and processor type!".

  7. linux version of windows 10 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    comes with phone home software just like windows 10.
    You also have to pay to play html5, avi, mp4 and other video formats.
    And the nastiness of systemd.
    No thinks endless os.
    We don't want the equivalent of windows 10.

  8. call me a freetard too... by Herve5 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I for one am shifting, in full agreement with S. O., from various macintoshes (used for 30 years on) to obviously Linux.
    Obviously there is time spent selecting the right replacements to OSX usual apps, specially as I cannot accept things resembling Win crap.
    But even for the most arcane ones (a paper library manager that both autocompletes entries from internet sources and exports to open formats and to android, a raw image converter that properly deal with luminance curves and one-year-old serious cameras, an RSS reader that is something else than a puddle of intrusive messages...) the only difficulty lise in choosing.
    This, definitely costs time. But compared to the 30 years I had on OSX, it's just nothing.
    And now I'm not owned anymore by google, apple or microsoft app-walled-gardens.
    Leaving you Wannacry ;-)
    H.

    --
    Herve S.
    1. Re:call me a freetard too... by Horatio_Hellpop · · Score: 2

      Have at it. My time is worth more to me. Windows 10 fully patched, WannaWhat? Also, my company is smart enough not to run an unsupported OS using an ancient hackable protocol which the manufacturer warned about four years ago. But sure, blame the maker. Nice thing about linux, when it breaks after apt-get update or dnf upgrade you can't really blame anyone, because it's "not my lib." that caused the issue. Been there done that. Done with it. Servers? Completely different story. LInux on the desktop is worthless for the vast majority of users. But feel free to think it isn't.

      --
      Frammin' on the jim-jam, frippin' at the krotz!
    2. Re: call me a freetard too... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey we understand; you love giving all your info to Microsoft and hackers. Have at it. If time is money as you say, then what better choice than M$. Right? They only have keyloggers and hidden spyware, installed without your consent, but that's a small price to pay for freedom..amirite? Who cares if M$ logs everything you type and is constantly sending stuff back to M$. Better them than the hackers...amirite? Wait we talking about hackers or M$, I forgot.

    3. Re: call me a freetard too... by Horatio_Hellpop · · Score: 1

      Please detail the known keyloggers and spyware installed by default on Windows 10, after shutting down all privacy settings and disabling Cortana. The tinfoil is strong with this one.

      --
      Frammin' on the jim-jam, frippin' at the krotz!
    4. Re:call me a freetard too... by Herve5 · · Score: 2

      moving from OSX to windows would demand me exactly the same time investment for the same app shift, with the additional nicetie of being owned by microsoft -which was the very reason I chose apple, dozens of years ago when there was no 'app market'...

      --
      Herve S.
  9. So, I am not hardcore by Herve5 · · Score: 1

    since for the rest I am on Linux and never will have a win partition (nor a virtual machine), and don't even know Nintendo or PS4 (I'll have to ask my sons, but they seem to be old enough to have forgotten ;-)
    So I am not hardcore, or maybe you may think twice before claiming "Everrry..."

    --
    Herve S.
    1. Re: So, I am not hardcore by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      PS4 has some BSD code in there. Not sure about nintendo.

  10. A revolution in, umm, uhh... by wjcofkc · · Score: 1

    Finally, at long last, someone has built a new Linux distro based on Ubuntu LTS. Not only that, they are an early adopter of Flatpak, which you cannot otherwise download install yourself. http://flatpak.org/getting.htm... And it runs Gnome! Seriously though, Endless is yet another Ubuntu derivative in an endless sea of Ubuntu derivatives.

    --
    Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
  11. UmmmmWHUT? by macraig · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What is this frigging doublespeak that to me seems to say nothing special at all? This especially irks me: "the ability to bridge app creators and Linux distributions using a universal framework, making it possible to bring this kind of software to operating systems that encourage open collaboration".

    1. Re:UmmmmWHUT? by Neuronwelder · · Score: 1

      Worse than that. It leaves itself open to attacks. I have read (but cannot prove) that Steam is not all that secure.. For the same reason, I don't use Empathy or any other video communication.

    2. Re:UmmmmWHUT? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ++ this is obviously created by a very primitive AI marketing bot that would rather be playing go.

  12. already working with Firejail... by Herve5 · · Score: 1

    I'm not really into this, but I installed Firejail here (basic Ubuntu Mate), and among the examples given one specifically explained how to not only 'jail Steam engine', but also firejail the Steam installer itself (that contains closed source).
    And as I found this explained somewhere in my non-english language, I presume the thing must be extremely well known elsewhere ;-)
    Ah, I found an english-speaking url : http://jorisvr.nl/article/stea...

    --
    Herve S.
  13. This distro is a whole lot of nope! by Halo5 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Looking at the website, here is some of the included software (pulled directly from the website):

    Metrics Kit
    Metrics API — Lightweight API for recording user metrics from apps and system services.

    Event Recorder Daemon — Saves recorded user metrics and transmits them in small batches when there’s an internet connection.

    Metrics Instrumentation Daemon — Records information about the system, such as performance info.

    Phone Home — Anonymous user counter.

    A Linux distro that phones home. Well, now I think I've seen it all!

    --
    665: The mark on the forehead of Satan's slightly less evil brother, Stan.
    1. Re:This distro is a whole lot of nope! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Come on Ubuntu wasn't that bad...

      And the irony of 'open source open source open source open source open source open source!!!' then 'include steam. Which is a closed source DRM system for closed source programs.

    2. Re:This distro is a whole lot of nope! by Waccoon · · Score: 1

      Nothing new... just becoming more common.

      With all this freemium stuff showing up in the commercial world and people asking for decades how to make money on FOSS, is anyone really surprised Linux distros are jumping on the bandwagon?

    3. Re:This distro is a whole lot of nope! by sgnn7 · · Score: 0

      Looking at the website, here is some of the included software (pulled directly from the website):

      Metrics Kit Metrics API — Lightweight API for recording user metrics from apps and system services.

      Event Recorder Daemon — Saves recorded user metrics and transmits them in small batches when there’s an internet connection.

      Metrics Instrumentation Daemon — Records information about the system, such as performance info.

      Phone Home — Anonymous user counter.

      A Linux distro that phones home. Well, now I think I've seen it all!

      I work for Endless and work/worked on some of these metric subsystems and this is pretty much FUD. The metrics (excluding phone home) can be turned off from the installation screens. Phone home sends a single ping to us per day that's not user identifiable and the only thing we keep there is the country, make, model, and a few other things (you can see all of them here: https://github.com/endlessm/eo...) to know what devices are out there that we should try to support and to see our OS adoption trends.

  14. It's a gift! by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Funny

    To be able to write 133 words without actually saying anything at all is a real gift.

    1. Re:It's a gift! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, no, the *true* gift is being able to write 133 words, and linking to another site in the process without saying anything at all.

  15. "Redistribution Policy" by Halo5 · · Score: 2

    Also, IANAL, but I don't think I like this clause from their "Redistribution Policy":

    "Physical Redistribution:You may redistribute pristine, unmodified copies of Endless OS on physical media such as CD/DVD, USB disk or SD/MMC card."

    Since it's based on the Linux kernel, I'm pretty sure we can modify and redistribute it pretty much however the f#ck we want! They can restrict logos, graphics, any commercial components, etc., but that's about it. Of course, just because a company puts something in their license agreement doesn't automatically make it legal, but this is VERY misleading. REF:

    https://support.endlessm.com/hc/en-us/articles/210527203-Am-I-allowed-to-redistribute-Endless-OS-

    They make it sound like, just because they have included a bit of non-open-source software with their distro, this gives them complete control over redistribution policies. Again, IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that's not how the GPL works...

    --
    665: The mark on the forehead of Satan's slightly less evil brother, Stan.
    1. Re:"Redistribution Policy" by WorBlux · · Score: 1

      Not really, keep reading on the link, and you see the point is to preserve trademarks. The flat-pack modules may or may not constitution a modified work when distributed with the core system. You would have to carefully study the license of each to know if you were allowed to redistribute that part of the work.

    2. Re:"Redistribution Policy" by Immerman · · Score: 1

      There's various ways you can further restrict redistribution - for example I believe trademark is the original basis on which you're not allowed to redistribute Red Hat Linux. Remove all the trademarks and bundled non-open software and you can do what you like (subject to the normal GPL, etc.). You just can't call it Red Hat (or Endless OS as this case). Which is kind of the entire reason for the existence of Cent OS.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    3. Re:"Redistribution Policy" by Halo5 · · Score: 1

      Yes, I did point out about the trademarks that they have and I understand that. What I don't understand is what they're saying here: "Physical Redistribution:You may redistribute pristine, unmodified copies of Endless OS on physical media."

      From the sound if this, they're implicitly saying that you CAN'T distribute modified versions of the OS. It sounds to me like what they're saying is that forking the distro (they can call it "Whatever OS" if they want to but, if it's using the Linux kernel as its core, it's a Linux distro!) a la CentOS or one of the unofficial Ubuntu derivatives such as Bodhi Linux. I'm pretty sure you can't take GPL code, build upon it, then say "you can ONLY distribute unmodified copies of it." This was the point that I was trying to make...

      --
      665: The mark on the forehead of Satan's slightly less evil brother, Stan.
    4. Re:"Redistribution Policy" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And they charge for codecs to add media format support.

    5. Re:"Redistribution Policy" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cain had a mark on his forehead. Satan isn't associated with the Number of the Beast. Various different entities stand in for the Ultimate Evil through those books, of course, but talking about the 'mark of the forehead of something described as having however many heads is just gauche.

      Also, like the other guy pointed out, they can control their trademarks. They can also license their proprietary stuff on whatever terms they like, just like e.g. the Google product suite and AOSP. If they have linked their code to GPL libraries they may be in violation of the GPL unless they distribute copies of the source code with the software or make the same available, BUT a civil lawsuit by or on the behalf of the copyright holder would have to be brought against the infringing parties. So in other words, whether it's infringing or not is only of interest to the people who wrote the code to begin with.

  16. Flatpak - no gym required. by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 2

    Much easier to maintain than a "six-pack".

    On the other hand, the lead developer is from Red Hat, and works on Gnome, and some of their other developers have caused a lot of heartburn ... (not naming any names, of course)

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    1. Re:Flatpak - no gym required. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You couldn't possibly be thinking of LP and systemd from the same RH outfit, could you? If it's those guys, Satan is involved somehow.

  17. Endless OS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Endless OS has as bright a future as OS/2
    Warp!!!!!

  18. Isolate the Linux-on-the-Desktop Contagion by Etcetera · · Score: 1

    Did Poettering go over there? If not, can we send him there? And try to undo some of completely broken scheisse that has infected our Linux distributions in the last 4-6 years or so? All you GNOME developers trying to re-create a commercial desktop OS can keep your toys over there, while those of us who need deterministic, predictable server OS's can fix this mess ourselves. Thanks.

  19. YESSSS.... by SuperDre · · Score: 1

    yet ANOTHER linux distribution nobody every heard of until this post..

  20. Am I The Only One To Instantly Vomit by bankman · · Score: 1

    ... a free Linux distribution built upon the decades of evolution of the Linux operating system and the contributions of thousands of volunteers on the GNOME project. The beauty of Flatpak is the ability to bridge app creators and Linux distributions using a universal framework, making it possible to bring this kind of software to operating systems that encourage open collaboration...

    This is so full of bile, it's amazing, it's like making Slashdot great again. The buzz makes the head spin:
    * "thousands of volunteers on the GNOME project" (Gnome? Really?)
    * "bridge app creators and Linux distributions" Please stop using the word apps! Whatever happened to programmers? When did they become creators?
    * "a universal framework, making it possible to bring this kind of software to operating systems that encourage open collaboration" Please stop smoking this stuff, it's already killing your ability to think clearly!

    Honestly, you're promoting something called "Flatpak" and never bother to mention what it actually is or does in any meaningful way. Congratulations, Slashdot is now officially unusable. *sigh*

    --
    I feel so sig.
  21. Slow news day by RuffMasterD · · Score: 1

    This distro was code named 'Blowhard Linux' before the marketing department changed it.

    --
    Human Rights, Article 12: Freedom from Interference with Privacy, Family, Home and Correspondence
  22. Use Cases by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    <flamebait>Linux is the only OS for programmers, and if you don't program then you don't really use a computer so what does it matter what you buy?</flamebait>

    No but seriously you're just defining your use case such that buying something off the shelf is an option. There isn't a particularly good way to assign value judgements to use cases so you don't get to say your way is "better".

    For most people it doesn't matter what OS or hardware they use. For some people it does, and for a very few people it matters that the OS is Linux. None of these people are doing anything wrong.

    1. Re:Use Cases by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      <flamebait>Linux is the only OS for programmers, and if you don't program then you don't really use a computer so what does it matter what you buy?</flamebait>

      No but seriously you're just defining your use case such that buying something off the shelf is an option. There isn't a particularly good way to assign value judgements to use cases so you don't get to say your way is "better".

      For most people it doesn't matter what OS or hardware they use. For some people it does, and for a very few people it matters that the OS is Linux. None of these people are doing anything wrong.

      Thank you for that ball of imponderables. I'll say: Money, meet preference! Go with that.

  23. Fragmentation *is* Linux by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

    If there is a standard Linux right now, it is probably Ubuntu, and specifically whatever their latest LTS happens to be. Which is to say that if you as J. Random Developer are going to pick a Linux to dev against, it will probably be that.

    Linux is not just the thing you use when you get tired of what Microsoft does. It is its own separate ecosystem with distinct principles of operation, tradition, and even philosophy. People have been trying to make Unix into a desktop operating system for decades, and as it happens there has been an extremely successful OS vendor selling a polished Unix desktop experience -- you may have heard of this company called Apple.

    No one is pulling a bait-and-switch on you here, you simply missed the point. Linux is the product of an entirely different system of software development, and when you choose F/OSS software that's exactly what you get. If it were not open source, there would not be fragmentation. However, the world at large has a great (business-driven) need for some sort of free open source Unix, so we have collectively put a lot of work into creating and maintaining that. Other people have needed other tools and libraries and created those, and still others package up those libraries and distribute them. Creating a distro is really just creating a public repository and maybe slapping some artwork in it. You can't take away the ability to do that without taking away access to the source code, which is the whole point of having this ecosystem in the first place.

    Linux does not have a fragmentation problem, because Linux cannot be a problem with Linux. You may want Linux to be different. Most people do, which is why we have so many distros. You don't get to take the Linux out of it though. And beyond that, there is also no fragmentation problem in Linux: pretty much all the same software gets packaged for all distros, and for OSX too for that matter.

    Use whichever Linux you would like. The differences are mostly superficial. If you can't deal with the number of choices out there, feel free to choose another OS. The rest of us will be using Linux because of that freedom of choice.

    --
    Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
    1. Re:Fragmentation *is* Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All I hear is "I have redefined the problem so that it isn't a problem."

    2. Re:Fragmentation *is* Linux by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

      The problem is the expectation that Linux is like Mac or Windows. The entire point of open source is to be able to make your own changes to the software and redistribute that. If that is not what you want, use a commercial OS.

      --
      Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.