If that's true then maybe Intel is making this move so they can sell more product: Power breakdowns to stand in as a replacement for technological obsolescence (which has been petering out in recent years).
And before anyone calls me cynical, I know for a fact that Intel is concerned about keeping the replacement cycle going. They have stated it at times when investors were getting jittery, and they even had a TV ad in plain view that admitted they wanted to entice people who "thought" they were perfectly happy with their existing PCs.
Check out the Lenovo forums regarding the "stop code" problem on the T430s model. They rectified the production problems in early September.
Incidentally, coming from Macbooks I have to say that press coverage of Windows/Linux systems and their performance issues is very scanty. It feels like no single model sells enough units to garner a critical mass of attention. With Apple stuff, every model has 3rd party teardown videos, other online guides and press attention just days after hitting the shelves. Maybe the difference is the typical Apple user cares more... I can't figure it out but wouldn't be surprised if the non-Apple segment was suffering from fragmentation.
Thinkpad quality is still some of the best in the business, and I think their low extended warranty prices are proof of that. But it does appear that the ideapad consumer focus has pulled them off track a bit; The 'Thinkpad' brand is being spun off into a separate division to address that problem.
Corporations are primarily a liability-limitation scheme for executives and shareholders, structured so that profit and growth must push aside other considerations. Corporate personhood or not, there's little reason to create one otherwise.
Indeed, it is libertarians all the way down in corporate thinking, and the corporate class are free to do what they want as long they have reached that stage of critical mass and minimal competition. We are supposed to ignore that the producers are free to affect the testing business through purchase of stock, etc. At least with government testing and standards, the regulatory capture should be readily apparent (Citizens United is an attempt to circumvent this, however).
This is priceless libertarian pro-corporate agita:D
How about saving people from the endless screaming via ads about having to use whatever new chemicals that will make us shiny, youthful and lovable? People are bombarded with advertising crap every day, sometimes all day non-stop. It is absolutely essential to push back on the worst of their getting rich through innovative chemistry schemes. Corporations do not have a right to propagandize (and even force) us into using their products in the absence of skepticism.
If you want a long-term antibiotic type effect in your mouth, eat foods or supplements that are rich in vitamin K2. It is chemically/structurally similar to vitamin K, but the 'small' difference makes it play an almost entirely different role in the body. K2 (especially the MK4 and MK7 variants, used with vitamin A/cod liver oil) has a moderating/managing effect on calcium uptake and tooth/bone health and somehow prevents plaque buildup (to the point where I wonder sometimes if I should bother brushing my teeth). More calcium ends up in your bones and less clinging to your arteries.
Some fermented bean products (like Japanese natto) have tons of K2, and this is where a lot of supplements get their source.
Watergate whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg: “Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, might take bittersweet satisfaction to know that he was not the last smart president to prolong unjustifiably a senseless, unwinnable war, at great cost in human life. (And his aide Henry Kissinger was not the last American official to win an undeserved Nobel Peace Prize.)
He would probably also feel vindicated (and envious) that ALL the crimes he committed against me–which forced his resignation facing impeachment–are now legal.
That includes burglarizing my former psychoanalyst’s office (for material to blackmail me into silence), warrantless wiretapping, using the CIA against an American citizen in the US, and authorizing a White House hit squad to “incapacitate me totally” (on the steps of the Capitol on May 3, 1971). All the above were to prevent me from exposing guilty secrets of his own administration that went beyond the Pentagon Papers. But under George W. Bush and Barack Obama,with the PATRIOT Act, the FISA Amendment Act, and (for the hit squad) President Obama’s executive orders. they have all become legal.
To have the possiblity of secure communications, I suggest buying a recently manufactured PC with VTx and VTd/IOMMU capabilities and get used to running a minimally exploitable OS on it.
For portable devices, I recommend something that can have all the firmware flashed to something like Android or Firefox OS, has a removable battery, and no cellular radio. Also, re-flash on a regular basis.
It's modded troll because Slashdot doesn't have a Stasi/KGB mod.
And finally Slashdot is getting past its kneejerk response on stories like this: 'Get over yourself... the government isn't interested in your boring life'.
Not only are they interested (in filling up prisons, at least) but their corporate masters still remember what dealing with a powerful citizenry was like and it gives them nightmares.
If that was the point you were trying to make why didn't you actually write it, instead of going on with a load of nonsense about users having to worry about which DE toolkit an application was built with?
Why do a preponderance of apps found within most repositories feel the need to describe themselves, first and foremost, in terms of which toolkit or DE they are based on? 'OMG! I found a Gnome3 checkbook manager!'
It isn't nonsense; Its a description of a social malady. FOSS desktop systems have no shortage of them. Unlike the moblile space, their primary movers are wedded to the greybeard hacker/sysadmin concept of what an OS should be: A server with a layer of foamy GUI fluff on top that can be disposed of or ignored or replaced at a moments notice.
I say, lets replace them; make them irrelevant. If Android completely mopped up all the (residual) Desktop Linux market share tomorrow (even from Ubuntu), I wouldn't shed a tear.
It's not even a very good one point - given the vast difference between Linux and Windows' *minimum* memory usage there's plenty of room for an Ubuntu box to load the toolkit from another DE without even using up the minimum memory usage for a Windows 7 or 8 box. Not to mention that different Windows applications use multiple different GUI toolkits, so your average Windows box in use will need even more memory to work.
If you want a real world example: I'm running 64-bit Kubuntu 12.04 with bells and whistles like desktop effects turned on. The computer's been up for nearly 2 days, in which time I've run applications using both KDE/QT, GNOME/GTK and Mono.NET GUI toolkits. I have Firefox running currently and memory usage is only 1GB, that's half the *minimum* requirement for 64-bit WIndows 7 or 8.
Mono, LOL.
OTOH, my 2012 model ThinkPad i5 running Ubuntu 13.04 uses 12% CPU to play a low-bandwidth voice MP3 while the notorious Gnome System Monitor shows up as 15%. Memory use is 2GB + 500MB swap for 20 very simple web pages in Firefox plus Rythmbox plus GSM plus CLI; I am using the defalt vanilla Ubuntu apps and preferences. Its on-par with OS X for RAM use, and very inefficient compared to the CPU usage on my Macbook despite the Macbook being a 2007 model that's less than half as fast in raw power.
That's not to mention all the hardware integrations it got wrong (of course, its mainly sound and visual-- but who really needs those when you got an ethernet port?!!).
So, how can german "Greens" content themselves with the garbage they do? Close nuclear plants to use something worse intead. I hate those hypocrite self-styled ecologists or environmentalists who have no clue and give lessons.
Thank god we have self-styled energy critics to set the record straight, then.
Those new German coal plants were scheduled to be built way before Fukushima happened, and they are replacing older coal plants that can't respond within minutes to variable supply. That's right... the new coal plants do peaking, allowing for more renewables to be added to the grid. "Base load" power is, in fact, going away. Germany will be able to scale renewables up to about 40% of total demand without adding any storage, although they are preparing large power storage infrastructure already and bringing out incentives for small-scale (e.g. home) storage (those evil batteries again, reappearing from Rush Limbaugh's own diatribes against electic cars).
Nuclear's only "best practice" for promoting its business these days is to keep older reactors running past their original operational lifespan. To build new reactors involves an intensity of planning and level of integrity that today's big-business is too corrupt to pull off in the West, though I suppose its possible to push through to completion if 10X cost overruns are accepted... the liability exemptions are no longer enough.
Project Portlant was a Linux Foundation effort to provide a standard interface for DE-level integration features like status bar icons, etc. It goes back to around 2007 and isn't new.
You said "users get inducted into a culture of always worrying about which DE and major version a prospective app uses", but this is a problem that doesn't even exist, hasn't for many years and certainly doesn't need some new project on the horizon to solve it.
Well then stop quoting unrealistically low memory figures for single-toolkit & DE usage scenarios.
I just tried out the "Linux Desktop's" premiere SIPphone app, Ekiga. It wants you to sign up for their ekiga.net service, but per their instructions I skipped that step to use my existing SIP service. Now there is no way to add a non-Ekiga service... none! zip! The Accounts dialog shows an empty list and every single button is greyed-out.
Oh yeah, on initial startup, it asked me to choose from a list of 6 audio devices 3 times (for audo ringing, input and output). When I type a number into it, the thing opens up a call status window that says "Call completed" instead of "please setup a SIP service first". Lovely.
The alternative that the Ubuntu repo lists is LinPhone, which got 2.5 stars to Ekiga's 3. It looks like an app from 1992 and not sure I want to try it.
As for Firefox, the Linux version is in rough shape. The way it handles UI element focus is wacked-out (sorry, it is not just "different" than OS X and Windows). I don't appreciate having links clicked-on when I click on a window in the tiled window manager listing. I don't like having it 'remember' HALF of the windows in my session. I don't like file dialogs that are blank window frames if an IFRAME containing a video happens to be showing at the moment.
The "Linux Desktop" ecosystem is broken and never worked. It insists on stamping the server-room mindset onto the desktop. So what you get is a situation where even server admins prefer Windows and OS X for their desktop tasks. In a nutshell this is why "Linux Desktop" failed and Android succeeded.
Users don't need to worry about which DE a program uses, programs which use another DE's toolkit work seamlessly
I'm aware of Project Portland and its successors and whatnot. Yes the apps seem to work, except when they don't, and in doing so they negate the resource advantage you clamined.
This is overstating the advantage of text files. They are *immature* in Unix/Linux in the sense that there are many different formats; The way Windows used.ini files was better.
Case in point: X11 for many years had no standard interface for changing and saving its own config settings. Instead, whatever trampy settings dialog that 'distro-Z' slapped together had to interpret and re-write Xfree/xorg's config file. Problem was the format was fairly complex and it was obvious that few coders were confident in its interpretation. This led not only to frequent Oopses and being dumped to a CLI or worse, but also to a stark dearth of options in the config UIs... any number of different utilities could be mucking around with the config file so the uncertainty led to an ultraconservative paucity of options for users. (This led to many power users and techies to changing Xorg.conf by hand to get certain features to work, and this would often make the control panel app go spastic.)
Having a registry makes *some* of the above problems go away to some extent. The Windows registry is a database with a very regular interface and virtually no guessing about formatting.
OTOH, Mac OS X is close to having the best of both worlds with its plist files. You can treat them in a Unix-y way, yet the formatting and even the possible types of relationships between elements is very predictable because it uses an XML-based format. Only a relatively small amount of config stuff is still using dispararte formats in/etc. The upshot is that I can change areas of OS X that I don't feel expert in with greater confidence than in Linux, because at least I'm on solid footing with the file format and so there is substantially less worrying in the back of my mind about the possilbility that I misunderstood or botched something.
Unfortunately, what uses less space often runs slower (not faster). The performance of Firefox and LibreOffice comes to mind, as they tend to be slower on Linux. And who wants to seriously use a decade-old desktop PC.... egads! I think I'll just find some way to hook up a monitor to my phone instead.
The Linux Desktop 'efficiency' also breaks down on another level: The one where users get inducted into a culture of always worrying about which DE and major version a prospective app uses. Real PC users would not worry about it and would probably carry on with libraries from 2 or 3 DEs loaded (I know this from experience, and no... I do not harrange them into devoting themselves and their app choices to one set of UI libraries). People are understandably turned-off by that kind of circus.
Wow... spectacularly bad example! Do you know how many apps on OS X and Windows use Qt?
Almost vanishingly few.
That is because app developers for those platforms can count on a well-honed and tested GUI toolkit to be already built into each OS.
OTOH, if Qt's authors want to address this issue I'm sure there are ways to do it. This might involve some linking tricks or marketing Qt to users like Oracle does with Java (which is usually installed as a separate package by some app that needs it). Believe it or not, this is way more elegant *and* responsible to the users than expecting them to learn about DE's and toolkits so they don't end up with Gnone2 + Gnome3 + KDE3 + KDE4 (and now KDE5) libraries loaded in RAM.
Shift-Command-Option-Delete immediately empties Trash, if that helps. Not that having to use Trash gets in the way. Its really easy to use in combination with Command-Delete.
Um, yes it does make sense... because if the system architects are doing a decent job, then N is bound to be a low, manageable quantity. Don't burden the OS distrubutor with trying to manage its relationships and compatibility within a repository because it is 3rd party and doesn't belong under their supervision.
This is pure crap, only driven by the commercial interest of having an app store where people make money.
I understand your skepticism, but this makes it far easier for both app store managers AND developers who want to do an end-run around Canonical by offering direct downloads. Its the independant developers and users who win... and if the app developers want to make a buck who are Canonical to stop them?
But they *do* standardize on library versions most of the time... when they are using system-supplied libraries. A desktop OS should be rich enough that even the most involved applications should only need a smattering of third-party libraries.
IMO, this sort of thing is not a significant source of bloat.
Canonical have realized that an OS needs its own packaging system if it is to thrive. App authors need a break from specifying in detail what each piece of system funtionality should look like, and also from fielding inquiries from umpteen different distro maintainers (when you were only interested in having the app work on one or two distros in the first place). Simple-to-moderately complex apps should be able to work just fine by specifying nothing more than the OS version as a dependency.
Bonus problem: Now each app provider is responsible for addressing a hypothetical libcrytpo vulnerability rather than the distro patching it in one place.
When you commit to really learning and writing well for a desktop OS, you don't go looking looking for third-party crypto packages first. The OS should have great crypto tools built-in. OTOH, if your app needs a ton of unusual functionality then chances are its either going to be run in an unusual environment with hardware specs to match... or it will be very prized with boutique-level appeal and people won't mind an extra 50-100MB of used space.
These conversations (which cycle endlessly on FOSS fan sites like this without any seeming ability to learn from history) are a reason why I totally gave up on desktop Linux around 2008. The assumptions that hackers kept insisting on making in their promotion of the category were mostly inappropriate/delusional... as if typical users *wanted* to learn about different libraries and toolkits as the most visible feature in an app's description... as if a company could practically undertake a tech support effort where most of the users were *likely* to describe an interface that was not readily familiar to trained staff... as if people (in school or otherwise) who start wading into app programming want to discover that the program they wrote only has a 1-in-50 chance of running unmodified on their colleages' Linux systems (Oops! looks like they don't work like they are the same OS)....And they really *aren't* the same OS. Not according to groundrules and user expectations that were hammered out for the personal computer market by Apple and Microsoft.
So at first glance it seems like Ubuntu is going in the right direction with this. As much as I hate the Unity interface, this packaging scheme and other developments restore some hope. Ubuntu is outgrowing the "Linux distro" genre and growing up. Even if the package format is technically just a slight variation of dpkg/apt, the expectations that go along with it can make a world of difference.
Slashdot Mirror
If that's true then maybe Intel is making this move so they can sell more product: Power breakdowns to stand in as a replacement for technological obsolescence (which has been petering out in recent years).
And before anyone calls me cynical, I know for a fact that Intel is concerned about keeping the replacement cycle going. They have stated it at times when investors were getting jittery, and they even had a TV ad in plain view that admitted they wanted to entice people who "thought" they were perfectly happy with their existing PCs.
Check out the Lenovo forums regarding the "stop code" problem on the T430s model. They rectified the production problems in early September.
Incidentally, coming from Macbooks I have to say that press coverage of Windows/Linux systems and their performance issues is very scanty. It feels like no single model sells enough units to garner a critical mass of attention. With Apple stuff, every model has 3rd party teardown videos, other online guides and press attention just days after hitting the shelves. Maybe the difference is the typical Apple user cares more... I can't figure it out but wouldn't be surprised if the non-Apple segment was suffering from fragmentation.
Thinkpad quality is still some of the best in the business, and I think their low extended warranty prices are proof of that. But it does appear that the ideapad consumer focus has pulled them off track a bit; The 'Thinkpad' brand is being spun off into a separate division to address that problem.
Early last year some Lenovo Thinkpads had issues with lockups due to a voltage regulator being off spec.
Not terribly on-topic, but it was either that or scream: "I just bought an Ivy Brigde laptop dammit, Dammit, DAAAMMMIT!!!"
Corporations are primarily a liability-limitation scheme for executives and shareholders, structured so that profit and growth must push aside other considerations. Corporate personhood or not, there's little reason to create one otherwise.
Indeed, it is libertarians all the way down in corporate thinking, and the corporate class are free to do what they want as long they have reached that stage of critical mass and minimal competition. We are supposed to ignore that the producers are free to affect the testing business through purchase of stock, etc. At least with government testing and standards, the regulatory capture should be readily apparent (Citizens United is an attempt to circumvent this, however).
This is priceless libertarian pro-corporate agita :D
How about saving people from the endless screaming via ads about having to use whatever new chemicals that will make us shiny, youthful and lovable? People are bombarded with advertising crap every day, sometimes all day non-stop. It is absolutely essential to push back on the worst of their getting rich through innovative chemistry schemes. Corporations do not have a right to propagandize (and even force) us into using their products in the absence of skepticism.
If you want a long-term antibiotic type effect in your mouth, eat foods or supplements that are rich in vitamin K2. It is chemically/structurally similar to vitamin K, but the 'small' difference makes it play an almost entirely different role in the body. K2 (especially the MK4 and MK7 variants, used with vitamin A/cod liver oil) has a moderating/managing effect on calcium uptake and tooth/bone health and somehow prevents plaque buildup (to the point where I wonder sometimes if I should bother brushing my teeth). More calcium ends up in your bones and less clinging to your arteries.
Some fermented bean products (like Japanese natto) have tons of K2, and this is where a lot of supplements get their source.
But the Brookstone one costs 4X as much, true to form...
Watergate whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg:
“Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, might take bittersweet satisfaction to know that he was not the last smart president to prolong unjustifiably a senseless, unwinnable war, at great cost in human life. (And his aide Henry Kissinger was not the last American official to win an undeserved Nobel Peace Prize.)
He would probably also feel vindicated (and envious) that ALL the crimes he committed against me–which forced his resignation facing impeachment–are now legal.
That includes burglarizing my former psychoanalyst’s office (for material to blackmail me into silence), warrantless wiretapping, using the CIA against an American citizen in the US, and authorizing a White House hit squad to “incapacitate me totally” (on the steps of the Capitol on May 3, 1971). All the above were to prevent me from exposing guilty secrets of his own administration that went beyond the Pentagon Papers. But under George W. Bush and Barack Obama,with the PATRIOT Act, the FISA Amendment Act, and (for the hit squad) President Obama’s executive orders. they have all become legal.
http://www.juancole.com/2011/06/ellsberg-all-nixons-crimes-against-me-now-legal.html
To have the possiblity of secure communications, I suggest buying a recently manufactured PC with VTx and VTd/IOMMU capabilities and get used to running a minimally exploitable OS on it.
For portable devices, I recommend something that can have all the firmware flashed to something like Android or Firefox OS, has a removable battery, and no cellular radio. Also, re-flash on a regular basis.
It's modded troll because Slashdot doesn't have a Stasi/KGB mod.
And finally Slashdot is getting past its kneejerk response on stories like this: 'Get over yourself... the government isn't interested in your boring life'.
Not only are they interested (in filling up prisons, at least) but their corporate masters still remember what dealing with a powerful citizenry was like and it gives them nightmares.
Do you think millions of people who signed up for the service last decade read the changes in the EULA that show communications are centralized?
They seem to be trampling on peoples' expectations here.
At some point Skype was changed to allow a MITM situation.
If that was the point you were trying to make why didn't you actually write it, instead of going on with a load of nonsense about users having to worry about which DE toolkit an application was built with?
Why do a preponderance of apps found within most repositories feel the need to describe themselves, first and foremost, in terms of which toolkit or DE they are based on? 'OMG! I found a Gnome3 checkbook manager!'
It isn't nonsense; Its a description of a social malady. FOSS desktop systems have no shortage of them. Unlike the moblile space, their primary movers are wedded to the greybeard hacker/sysadmin concept of what an OS should be: A server with a layer of foamy GUI fluff on top that can be disposed of or ignored or replaced at a moments notice.
I say, lets replace them; make them irrelevant. If Android completely mopped up all the (residual) Desktop Linux market share tomorrow (even from Ubuntu), I wouldn't shed a tear.
It's not even a very good one point - given the vast difference between Linux and Windows' *minimum* memory usage there's plenty of room for an Ubuntu box to load the toolkit from another DE without even using up the minimum memory usage for a Windows 7 or 8 box. Not to mention that different Windows applications use multiple different GUI toolkits, so your average Windows box in use will need even more memory to work.
If you want a real world example: I'm running 64-bit Kubuntu 12.04 with bells and whistles like desktop effects turned on. The computer's been up for nearly 2 days, in which time I've run applications using both KDE/QT, GNOME/GTK and Mono .NET GUI toolkits. I have Firefox running currently and memory usage is only 1GB, that's half the *minimum* requirement for 64-bit WIndows 7 or 8.
Mono, LOL.
OTOH, my 2012 model ThinkPad i5 running Ubuntu 13.04 uses 12% CPU to play a low-bandwidth voice MP3 while the notorious Gnome System Monitor shows up as 15%. Memory use is 2GB + 500MB swap for 20 very simple web pages in Firefox plus Rythmbox plus GSM plus CLI; I am using the defalt vanilla Ubuntu apps and preferences. Its on-par with OS X for RAM use, and very inefficient compared to the CPU usage on my Macbook despite the Macbook being a 2007 model that's less than half as fast in raw power.
That's not to mention all the hardware integrations it got wrong (of course, its mainly sound and visual-- but who really needs those when you got an ethernet port?!!).
I can't even find a SIP phone app in the Ubuntu 13.04 repository that works!
So, how can german "Greens" content themselves with the garbage they do? Close nuclear plants to use something worse intead. I hate those hypocrite self-styled ecologists or environmentalists who have no clue and give lessons.
Thank god we have self-styled energy critics to set the record straight, then.
Those new German coal plants were scheduled to be built way before Fukushima happened, and they are replacing older coal plants that can't respond within minutes to variable supply. That's right... the new coal plants do peaking, allowing for more renewables to be added to the grid. "Base load" power is, in fact, going away. Germany will be able to scale renewables up to about 40% of total demand without adding any storage, although they are preparing large power storage infrastructure already and bringing out incentives for small-scale (e.g. home) storage (those evil batteries again, reappearing from Rush Limbaugh's own diatribes against electic cars).
Nuclear's only "best practice" for promoting its business these days is to keep older reactors running past their original operational lifespan. To build new reactors involves an intensity of planning and level of integrity that today's big-business is too corrupt to pull off in the West, though I suppose its possible to push through to completion if 10X cost overruns are accepted... the liability exemptions are no longer enough.
Project Portlant was a Linux Foundation effort to provide a standard interface for DE-level integration features like status bar icons, etc. It goes back to around 2007 and isn't new.
You said "users get inducted into a culture of always worrying about which DE and major version a prospective app uses", but this is a problem that doesn't even exist, hasn't for many years and certainly doesn't need some new project on the horizon to solve it.
Well then stop quoting unrealistically low memory figures for single-toolkit & DE usage scenarios.
I just tried out the "Linux Desktop's" premiere SIPphone app, Ekiga. It wants you to sign up for their ekiga.net service, but per their instructions I skipped that step to use my existing SIP service. Now there is no way to add a non-Ekiga service... none! zip! The Accounts dialog shows an empty list and every single button is greyed-out.
Oh yeah, on initial startup, it asked me to choose from a list of 6 audio devices 3 times (for audo ringing, input and output). When I type a number into it, the thing opens up a call status window that says "Call completed" instead of "please setup a SIP service first". Lovely.
The alternative that the Ubuntu repo lists is LinPhone, which got 2.5 stars to Ekiga's 3. It looks like an app from 1992 and not sure I want to try it.
As for Firefox, the Linux version is in rough shape. The way it handles UI element focus is wacked-out (sorry, it is not just "different" than OS X and Windows). I don't appreciate having links clicked-on when I click on a window in the tiled window manager listing. I don't like having it 'remember' HALF of the windows in my session. I don't like file dialogs that are blank window frames if an IFRAME containing a video happens to be showing at the moment.
The "Linux Desktop" ecosystem is broken and never worked. It insists on stamping the server-room mindset onto the desktop. So what you get is a situation where even server admins prefer Windows and OS X for their desktop tasks. In a nutshell this is why "Linux Desktop" failed and Android succeeded.
Users don't need to worry about which DE a program uses, programs which use another DE's toolkit work seamlessly
I'm aware of Project Portland and its successors and whatnot. Yes the apps seem to work, except when they don't, and in doing so they negate the resource advantage you clamined.
This is overstating the advantage of text files. They are *immature* in Unix/Linux in the sense that there are many different formats; The way Windows used .ini files was better.
Case in point: X11 for many years had no standard interface for changing and saving its own config settings. Instead, whatever trampy settings dialog that 'distro-Z' slapped together had to interpret and re-write Xfree/xorg's config file. Problem was the format was fairly complex and it was obvious that few coders were confident in its interpretation. This led not only to frequent Oopses and being dumped to a CLI or worse, but also to a stark dearth of options in the config UIs... any number of different utilities could be mucking around with the config file so the uncertainty led to an ultraconservative paucity of options for users. (This led to many power users and techies to changing Xorg.conf by hand to get certain features to work, and this would often make the control panel app go spastic.)
Having a registry makes *some* of the above problems go away to some extent. The Windows registry is a database with a very regular interface and virtually no guessing about formatting.
OTOH, Mac OS X is close to having the best of both worlds with its plist files. You can treat them in a Unix-y way, yet the formatting and even the possible types of relationships between elements is very predictable because it uses an XML-based format. Only a relatively small amount of config stuff is still using dispararte formats in /etc. The upshot is that I can change areas of OS X that I don't feel expert in with greater confidence than in Linux, because at least I'm on solid footing with the file format and so there is substantially less worrying in the back of my mind about the possilbility that I misunderstood or botched something.
Unfortunately, what uses less space often runs slower (not faster). The performance of Firefox and LibreOffice comes to mind, as they tend to be slower on Linux. And who wants to seriously use a decade-old desktop PC.... egads! I think I'll just find some way to hook up a monitor to my phone instead.
The Linux Desktop 'efficiency' also breaks down on another level: The one where users get inducted into a culture of always worrying about which DE and major version a prospective app uses. Real PC users would not worry about it and would probably carry on with libraries from 2 or 3 DEs loaded (I know this from experience, and no... I do not harrange them into devoting themselves and their app choices to one set of UI libraries). People are understandably turned-off by that kind of circus.
Wow... spectacularly bad example! Do you know how many apps on OS X and Windows use Qt?
Almost vanishingly few.
That is because app developers for those platforms can count on a well-honed and tested GUI toolkit to be already built into each OS.
OTOH, if Qt's authors want to address this issue I'm sure there are ways to do it. This might involve some linking tricks or marketing Qt to users like Oracle does with Java (which is usually installed as a separate package by some app that needs it). Believe it or not, this is way more elegant *and* responsible to the users than expecting them to learn about DE's and toolkits so they don't end up with Gnone2 + Gnome3 + KDE3 + KDE4 (and now KDE5) libraries loaded in RAM.
You could make an Automator script that deletes .Trashes when some event occurs (mount).
Shift-Command-Option-Delete immediately empties Trash, if that helps. Not that having to use Trash gets in the way. Its really easy to use in combination with Command-Delete.
Um, yes it does make sense... because if the system architects are doing a decent job, then N is bound to be a low, manageable quantity. Don't burden the OS distrubutor with trying to manage its relationships and compatibility within a repository because it is 3rd party and doesn't belong under their supervision.
This is pure crap, only driven by the commercial interest of having an app store where people make money.
I understand your skepticism, but this makes it far easier for both app store managers AND developers who want to do an end-run around Canonical by offering direct downloads. Its the independant developers and users who win... and if the app developers want to make a buck who are Canonical to stop them?
But they *do* standardize on library versions most of the time... when they are using system-supplied libraries. A desktop OS should be rich enough that even the most involved applications should only need a smattering of third-party libraries.
IMO, this sort of thing is not a significant source of bloat.
Canonical have realized that an OS needs its own packaging system if it is to thrive. App authors need a break from specifying in detail what each piece of system funtionality should look like, and also from fielding inquiries from umpteen different distro maintainers (when you were only interested in having the app work on one or two distros in the first place). Simple-to-moderately complex apps should be able to work just fine by specifying nothing more than the OS version as a dependency.
Bonus problem: Now each app provider is responsible for addressing a hypothetical libcrytpo vulnerability rather than the distro patching it in one place.
When you commit to really learning and writing well for a desktop OS, you don't go looking looking for third-party crypto packages first. The OS should have great crypto tools built-in. OTOH, if your app needs a ton of unusual functionality then chances are its either going to be run in an unusual environment with hardware specs to match... or it will be very prized with boutique-level appeal and people won't mind an extra 50-100MB of used space.
These conversations (which cycle endlessly on FOSS fan sites like this without any seeming ability to learn from history) are a reason why I totally gave up on desktop Linux around 2008. The assumptions that hackers kept insisting on making in their promotion of the category were mostly inappropriate/delusional... as if typical users *wanted* to learn about different libraries and toolkits as the most visible feature in an app's description... as if a company could practically undertake a tech support effort where most of the users were *likely* to describe an interface that was not readily familiar to trained staff... as if people (in school or otherwise) who start wading into app programming want to discover that the program they wrote only has a 1-in-50 chance of running unmodified on their colleages' Linux systems (Oops! looks like they don't work like they are the same OS). ...And they really *aren't* the same OS. Not according to groundrules and user expectations that were hammered out for the personal computer market by Apple and Microsoft.
So at first glance it seems like Ubuntu is going in the right direction with this. As much as I hate the Unity interface, this packaging scheme and other developments restore some hope. Ubuntu is outgrowing the "Linux distro" genre and growing up. Even if the package format is technically just a slight variation of dpkg/apt, the expectations that go along with it can make a world of difference.
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