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."

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[umafuckit]

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

UmmmmWHUT?

[macraig]

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".

This distro is a whole lot of nope!

[Halo5]

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!

It's a gift!

[thegarbz]

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

Re:Where is MS Office's worthy competitor?

[ledow]

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.

Re:Where is MS Office's worthy competitor?

[BronsCon]

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.