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Ubuntu Considering an HTML5-Based OS Installer (phoronix.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Ubuntu's Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator for Life, Mark Shuttleworth, is considering backing a new Ubuntu installer that would be using HTML5 via the Electron Framework. This theoretical installer would re-use the company's existing HTML5 code for managing MAAS installations, integrate with Electron, and also better support their Snap packaging format, according to his proposal. What could possibly go wrong with an HTML5/Electron operating system installer? Mark also announced that Ubuntu 18.10 is codenamed the Cosmic Cuttlefish.
I hope it has jQuery. It's the best!
i wish the live cd/usb booted slower its just not slow enough. thisllfixit.
I'm working on webapps everyday. but IMO this ubuntu release should be called Masturbating Monkey because of such brilliant engineering ideas.
For servers the text mode one is best GUI one is limited in choice now the redhat/centos and suse GUI ones are a lot better.
If only Linux distributions spent as much time on improving the operating system as they have with the installer over the years (how many times Fedora/Ubuntu/etc installer have been rewritten?), the year of Linux on desktop would have happened ages ago.
Electron is the bloated cancer which is killing the software industry.
An 80mb "runtime" with every simple 100 line application. WORST TIMELINE.
It seems like this is just another example of NIH syndrome made manifest. Who needs something to be functional when you can have original, fancy and slow?!
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
In theory, HTML5 based installer sounds awesome. The core system management would still be the same, just a few shell commands initiated from JavaScript within a minimalistic browser environment...
But then I looked into what this "Electron" framework actually is, and who's using it for what.
1) Skype - buggy as fuck
2) GitHub Desktop - clunky as fuck
3) Atom Editor - slow as fuck
4) WordPress - need I say more..?
5) Slack - too many issues to even name any
6) Discord - known for literally blue-screening computers
7) Visual Studio Code - classic VS was amazing, why fuck up a good thing?
I'm all for rapid development within HTML5 + JS + CSS, but PLEASE, for the fucking love of god, use tool sets that don't have such a horrendous reputation!?
Eventually html5's descendants will power the grey goo nanobots that will take over the planet mining cryptocurrency.
The same things that could go wrong with any other GUI installer.
I've got an idea and cause to do something like this (telling users to go to a localhost URL seems to be too difficult...) but I've heard lots against Electron. Custom UI's for Mac & Windows would be too time-consuming, especially with an existing HTML/JS gui. :/
What are good alternatives? I know sciter but it's not open source, and for reason I'd prefer it to be open source.
It's not enough for Electron to infect the carcasses of previously respectable apps (Skype, PgAdmin), or to "power" memory and resource hogs like Slack Desktop and Atom Shititor.
No, we need to use it to install the very OS's we depend on. Yes, more please, use more of this crap everywhere.
And jQuery too, sure, so we can query it for "What is the crappiest framework of them all".
At least we know the answer to "whatever happened to those people who were working on terrible cross-platform Java UI apps and frameworks" - they're keeping the dream alive with Electron. Super awesome.
He's talking about replacing Ubuntu's configuration/install engine with... a different configuration/install engine. It's fundamentally just a big script that gathers input from the user and punts the results to a bunch of other scripts and applications to do the actual install magic.
Other than the people maintaining it, who really gives a shit what language/framework it's built with?
Log in or piss off.
Ubuntu's Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator for Life, Mark Shuttleworth
Please grow up. He founded it, he pays it, he owns it.
If its newer and untested it must be better and more stable? Right? Right? Right!
I understand that Javascript is evil/slow/only for soyboys and "real" programmers use QT (or some other equivalent hell)... but remember thanks to Electron, writing Desktop UI is no longer shitty, most of the heavy lifting for cross-platform is taken care of, and most importantly, developers get more time to do shit that matters. Yes, it does mean memory hungry programs, but thats an evil I can live with especially when I am getting something for free. P.S: I am allowed to make soyboy comment bec I am vegan
Debian/Ubuntu's apt system has been good over the years, since it doesn't have the "rpm hell" RedHat based distributions have, especially if one has multiple repositories.
It would be nice if they had the ability to roll back a version update without having to reinstall. AIX had this functionality, where if an update caused major problems, rejecting the update and rolling back was easy.
i wish the live cd/usb booted slower its just not slow enough. thisllfixit.
You're hallucinating from a decade ago before USB 3 showed up, Take your meds, now.
I suppose that's great because it's really easy to tweak the UI and make incremental changes.
But really, who cares which tech is used for a UI that you're not using on a daily basis?
As long as it works for its intended purpose, they could write it in COBOL for all I care.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Ubuntu wrote a lot of Python. That was one of the things they were smart about. Not sure why their metal as a service uses Javascript. I sometimes get the feeling that someone who wants to sabotage the Linux desktop advises Shuttleworth. If Microsoft had been managing Ubuntu, it would be a lot more popular, and it wouldn't have done Bazaar, Launchpad, Unity, Mir, Snaps, and most of the other stuff he wasted time and money on.
Debian/Ubuntu's apt system has been good over the years, since it doesn't have the "deb hell" Debian based distributions have, especially if one has multiple repositories.
It would be nice if they had the ability to roll back a version update without having to reinstall. AIX had this functionality, where if an update caused major problems, rejecting the update and rolling back was easy.
Fixed that for ya.
I still have nightmares about getopt and glibc incompatiblities when doing updates in debian 2.0. Or maybe 2.1? What a cluster that was. apt-get update -> unbootable system.
Just write the damn thing in Python or whatever language is hot at the moment. Use framebuffer graphics and a simple mouse driver like FreeBSD uses. How high up the abstraction layer can we go just to copy files to a storage device?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
geez, stop your whining. It's only an installer.
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HTML5/javascript is this era's COBOL.
I just can't wait for the Masturbating Monkey release!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I agree that would be a wonderful addition!
I've been using a sort of kludge setup to gain at least some of that functionality, although it's not exactly what you are looking for.
Debian and APT do let you backup, restore, and act upon said restore, a full installed package listing with versioning numbers.
Within the same major version release, this does let you revert back to a state before an upgrade to the system, with the same limits as the upgrade (IE kernels need reboots, userland doesn't generally)
From one major release to another however it's much less helpful, so much so that I tend to not use it and go with the normal full system backup before upgrading in case I want to restore it. ;)
To use the package list backup to downgrade a major version, you would still need to boot and install a base OS at that major version, restore the package listing somehow, and go from there. So may as well just do it correctly from the start
I have a daily cronjob that backs up the package list into /root which afterwards is copied by my normal backup system with everything else.
To backup: /root/package-list.txt /etc/apt/sources.list* /root/package-sources/
dpkg --get-selections >
cp -R
To restore: /root/package-sources* /etc/apt/ /root/packages.txt
cp -R
dpkg --set-selections <
apt-get install
There are also "apt-key" command options to backup and restore the repo public keys I added in there later. Unfortunately I don't have the commands on hand, but they should be easily looked up. Just don't forget that step.
All I can think of at Cosmic Cuttlefish is the Rudy Rucker novel. Postsingular.
Ugh, please, NO
>br geez, re-inventing the wheel....again.
Debian/Ubuntu's apt system has been good over the years, since it doesn't have the "rpm hell" RedHat based distributions have, especially if one has multiple repositories.
It would be nice if they had the ability to roll back a version update without having to reinstall. AIX had this functionality, where if an update caused major problems, rejecting the update and rolling back was easy.
Good grief, why on earth are you relying on a proper rolllback after a failure? You're just asking for problems. You should always re-image the drive after such failures, you have no idea what has happened to your system. If this is not an easy process, then you're not doing it right.
Ubuntu will probably get it right in the long run.
My experiences with Unity and systemd suggest otherwise.
Why on Earth would you use a Hyper Text Markup Language to make an OS installer? Are people that inept they can't make something decent and functional anymore without HTML? Change for the sake of change is never good. Change that brings on baggage really isn't good.
No.
Just No.
"a ton of GREAT apps on Ubuntu are Electron apps" -- Mark Shuttleworth For sure, a new installer is the "top priority" issue of Ubuntu OS. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubu... returns ONLY 137332 open bugs (434 critical)
... like when a pre-SCO Caldera had Tetris in their installer. You'd start the installer, set up your disk, it would start copying essential files from the CD, you'd get asked a few config questions (network settings, select optional packages, etc.), then, when you were done, half of the screen would be Tetris and the other half would show the progress of the remaining files.
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/comput...
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
It's a good solution for server installation!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
At my previous company, we used a Mozilla based installer front end. We used a cut down mozilla browser, without address bars or anything like that, which allowed easy UI creation for a wizard, embedded HTML online release notes, built in JS engine for customization at the product/package level, easily extended to interface with back end installers using XPCom. All in all, it was a great piece of work and very stable, this was 2004/2005.
Then we were acquired by an unnamed big blue bohemouth, who didn't like the MPL, and moved us to one of their in-house installers (which was awful beyond words.) And just like that, it was gone.
Compile C with C. Install Ubuntu with Ubuntu. Install the HTML5 renderer with HTML5.
I recently installed the 18.04 xubuntu server on a vm. The GUI installer does not support LVM, raid, or encrypted filesystems. I was very surprised by that... I thought LVM was in use by default on most modern Linux distros, and that the encrypted home directory option was generally in the GUI installers and not in the text based ones, but that's not the case for 18.04. The text based installer worked fine though.
Given that, my fear for the HTML5 based installer is that it will provide them another clear cut opportunity to "simplify" the installer (ie. remove even more features/options).
I didn't know that the current installer was broken.
I think the blood rush from grabbing his ankles for Microsoft for too long is making him batshit crazy. Ubuntu, for people who actually know a thing or two about Linux, has been pure garbage since 11.04 and that jackass has been making even worse decisions without even bothering to ask its "Neighborhood of Make Believe," aka the "Ubuntu community," since Canonical partnered with M$. Good god I'm sooooo glad we Linux users have better options. I think the plan is to have free labor for as long as possible to change the platform to their liking before convincing Mark Shit Worth to IPO and then they buy Ubuntu, followed by suing everyone that uses systemd, pulseaudio., and whatever proprietary mess they can sneak into Ubuntu-based platforms. Do you really think that Ubuntu's "trying to make things easier for developers" with snaps is a coincidence? Hell no. It's all about making it easier for M$ developers and starting a multitude of service based crap. They want the package manager to go away.
Does anyone have to pause halfway through typing in their password into the HTML based login screen on Linux Mint, while it brings my octo core 1000 cuda core computer to it's knees while it cycles through background images?
This is what happens when you get inexperienced web developers feeling the need to replace perfectly operational interfaces with horrendous shit they feel comfortable with. How does this shit get green lighted?
Correct. Cows, not puppies.
I have my our main dev setup scripted with Puppet, and I can create a new clean system in about 30 minutes that's about 98% done for what I need to be productive. I even have Puppet for Windows working well enough that it gets you about 90% of the way there. The two biggest issues we have with Windows are installers we can't automate and VisualStudio's craptastic licensing.
Please!
The OS is totally broken with this piece of malware jammed, sideways and up-side-down into the system.
Snapshot before upgrade. Expecting the package manager to fix what the package manager broke misses the point that if it could do that reliably it wouldn't have broken in the first place.
Major regression with Unity dropped and GNOME 3 instead, and now to get a "one-time use" application reimplemented, the installer? REALLY?
How, Mr. Shuttleworth, did you ever make money with this kind of priority thinking?
If Canonical tried that nowadays, The Tetris Company would sue Canonical and win. See article "US District Court: Game Elements In Tetris Clone Infringe Tetris Co.'s Copyright" from June 2012 about Tetris v. Xio.
I installed the latest version of ubuntu recently and I was stunned at how slow the GUI is. Clearly their road map is to be as bloated and slow as windows.
Sad.
You just burn it and write "System ABC, release XYZ" - done.
Serious question : How often do you need go back to a specific version of a certain GNU/Linux distro ?
In most of the use cases I've been through, I generally need "whatever is the most up-to-date and patched release of distro 'Xyz' or LTS version of distro 'Abc' ",
so generally, fetching an up to date installation iso (usually the minimalist Net install that will then pull the uptodate installer and package from the net) and writing it to a bootable USB key is the way to go.
I've rarely needed to keep archives of older installation media.
So I was wondering what your uses cases are.
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As opposed to Windows world, where you need to have the specific major version (10, 7, or even older stuff like XP) for which said machine has a valid license, and full service pack release only happen every now an then, so it makes sense to carry around a collection of the latest service pack for each recent major Windows version.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It had LVM when I installed an RC.
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