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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.
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!?
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.
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.
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 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.
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
Does he now? You sir have quite a bit to learn about what people claim to own vs what they actually in practice have direct control of. Which is what true ownership is, simply a measure of control is a situation. Not a measure of intention or registration or legal definition. He could be made irrelevant or complacent through any number of effective means, some of them technically legal, some not, but all effective. And thus it is only through the self restaibt if others can he continue to entertain the illusion of ownership.
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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.
Visual Cobol? (Sadly, that product actually already exists.)
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
All I can think of at Cosmic Cuttlefish is the Rudy Rucker novel. Postsingular.
>br geez, re-inventing the wheel....again.
And yet, they are king of Linux. They lead the blind and helpless, because all the other distros say "If you want X, write it yourself".
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
"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)
can you point me to at least one comment - maybe on slashdot that stated - "I want HTML based installer in linux"?
... 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.
I suspect a lot of web developers suddeny had a desire to develop on a desktop instead but didn't want to learn something new. Also there seems to be an attitude in a lot of comments that writing UI is tedious, but that's why you don't get just a single person on a project and use a team instead. We've been trying to get so-easy-to-develop-that-a-child-can-do-it frameworks since the 80s, and they've always turned out badly.
The end goal of writing software is to have someone use it. When the goal becomes just writing the software itself, then it doesn't make much sense. And what's the point of advertising what tools were used to write some end user tool? The end user doesn't care.
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.
It worked out great to inclusively let morons rewrite the text editor every time. Gedit was great until the last rewrite, but by then we had leafpad, pluma, xed, and a host of other inferior ones - if you can remember the name of the one on "this" distro....and don't get me started on calculators. I guess no one needs 1/x, a consistent square root, and so on, and has nothing better to do than relearn this crap every time...
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
I didn't know that the current installer was broken.
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.
Wrong. If it were based around an earlier version of HTML I might agree, but with HTML5 there's the opportunity for an entirely new selection of things going wrong. Like a video getting stuck in a playback loop.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I dunno... Delphi used to be pretty easy. Modern PyQt with Qt Designer is equally toddler-accessible. There did seem to be a bit of a dark age in between though.
Wahhhhhhhhhh!!!!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
99% of Ubuntu users couldn't care less what languages the installer is written in, as long as it works. If HTML is easier for them to develop in, I for one don't really care. It's just an installer, it's not like rewriting KDE in HTML.
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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.
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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