Pretty much answers the question: should you move your personal computing into the cloud? Just how brain damaged would you need to be, to buy Google's (or any other megacorp's) koolaid pitch about the cloud, as opposed to just downloading Libreoffice for free, and using it securely in the safety of your own device? Which of course is running Linux to actually be safe... oh, I forgot, there is a lot of brain damage going down out there.
Word to the wise: use the cloud only for throwaway stuff you don't mind sharing with the world. Your private affairs? Don't be an idiot.
This advice applies to Gmail and its ilk too, though admittedly, few have the wherewithall to operate their own secure email server in their own domain. I do, sorry if you can't. But your ISP's email service (remember when everybody used that?) is a way better idea than the spy cloud.
A complete cop-out over systemd, we're hurting from the bugs and the architecture, not the change of itself. Unfortunate, I'd hoped for more than a standard systemd marketing blurb cut and paste.
I would go further and characterize every one of Jim's responses as completely and utterly devoid of inspiration. Worse actually, he gives me reason to worry about the deleterious effect that Red Hat has had and and will have on the community if he continues shitting in the nest. But that's what you get when you hire an MBA to run a technology company: a nest full of shit. Enough shit, and there will no longer be room for birds. I say, it is high time for a change of "White" hats.
Oh wait, I just realized this article needs a car analogy. We should bring bicycle, sedan and semitrailer form factors closer together! Chew on it, Mark.
Sorry Mark, I do not share your enthusiasm for bringing form factors together, instead I regard that idea as a blight that has made both large and small form factors worse, especially the large form factor where I spend the bulk of my actual productive time.
Well, here I am, back to Debian and it feels good. Silver lining: it appears that competition with Ubuntu made Debian stronger, thanks for that.
Hard to see this as anything other than a Republican hatchet job intended to distract from looming Russia indictments, and sundry horrors perpetrated upon long suffering decent citizens by this gang of self-serving kleptocrats.
Excuse me, correction: "Sentio apps" are actually part of the Sentio desktop framework, not user-facing apps, so slight inaccuracy there. The other points stand, and more: why should I be forced to put up with in-app ads or extra upfront cost, probable spyware, proprietary lockin etc, beyond what Android already has, just so I can have functionality that Google smart people in their infinite and patronizing wisdom deny me, and which would certainly available if Android had community governance, actually acting in the interest of users?
Well it sounds like you are already all set and don't need a "Desktop" version of your phone.
And then you immediately talk about Sentio Desktop, which tries to make Android look like a desktop, implying that I do need a desktop. Thanks for pointing out the existence of Sentio, which undermines your argument (that I have no idea why you are making) but I am more than a little skeptical that it is possible to deliver a seamless experience of the type that a typical desktop provides, when implemented as an app and not as part of the Android libraries proper.
Color me unconvinced that this problem is solved, and color me unconvinced that there is no substantial population of users who want it solved.
there are a bunch of reasons why Smartphones/Phablets will always remain VASTLY inferior with what you can put together in a desktop or rack system, and will LIKELY remain VERY inferior with even what you can do in a laptop.
Nonsense, the only substantive limitation of a phone is not being able to open it up and add expansion cards and disks, iow, purely mechanical. Laptops have much the same restrictions. But you can use external peripherals for this if you like. There is really only one serious reason why phones are not commonly used as desktop replacements today: the OS is intentionally broken for that, to force you into the cloud and media/ad consumption.
Yes, I carry the bluetooth mouse and keyboard in my backpack. No, I do not carry a monitor, the phone is perfectly fine as a monitor. I use it in landscape mode and prop it up. No dock in any of this. Works great, gets me my 90 WPS typing speed back.
Android contains Linux, but not GNU; thus, Android and GNU/Linux are mostly different." -- RMS
No they aren't, they are only mostly different if you try to pretend that the kernel is a simple little component. It isn't, it is in fact a gigantic pile of literally hundreds of essential APIs with tentacles reaching into essentially every library and application on the device, whether the device is running Android on top, or libc, or whatever. And BTW, Android bionic is a gnu libc clone with very few differences at the API leve. It's really disingenuous to say it has nothing to do with standard Linux.
What Android offers is a bunch of libraries primarily (and arguably stupidly) oriented to Java that implement some occasionally clever and elegant but just as often often crappy and arbitrary interaction between components, and all the rest of Android that makes it work really well as a web device is basically the Linux kernel and copyleft-avoiding clones of standard Linux libraries. Android is really basically a piece of shit a bunch of guys pulled out of their collective asses, lacking security, performance and elegance. its only real superpower being, it's a bit less shitty than the Apple competition.
As shitty as Android is (and it IS shitty!), it's STILL more-optimized for being a "phone appliance" than anything that would run under stock Desktop Linux.
That's a broad claim. One thing a stock Linux system can do is, run thousands or millions of user-installed programs. For example, when you run Kodi, it makes your Linux desktop look and act exactly like a DVR, because, ahem, Kodi is exactly the same software the DVRs run (on top of basically stock Linux, for that matter).
In case it isn't clear, what I just said is: run Android as an application, if you must.
If my phone ran Linux I could simply dump my work laptop/desktop and keep/do everything on my phone
If your Linux also includes support for all the phone functionality you currently get with Android. That's a pretty big if. Not rocket science, but practical obstacles are in the way, mostly put there by vested interests.
GUI design is hard. GUI design for a touch is even harder. Adapting an existing GUI to a completely different form factor universally results in the train-wre[c]k...
What is so hard about adding optional, familiar window decorations to existing Android full-screen windows? Just do it like QT, those sunk research costs are so done years ago, there isn't a lot it doesn't already do in a perfectly elegant way. For one thing, let's have our fucking sensible keyboard shortcuts back, it's not like that essential functionality has to be reinvented or anything.
After all, it is totally ridiculous to carry around powerful universal computers and restrict them to be used as a phone and phone-type app only.
Actually, media consumption device, and most importantly, advertising media consumption device. Ridiculous to you, certainly, but not to the billionaires at Google.
He means they don't make you the product. And no, they don't. They just commit daylight robbery with their prices. And contribute happily to the liberal censorship in Silicon Valley.
Oh hey, no they do. They do that too. Apple is busy selling you as a product just like Google does, they just aren't as good at it.
Slashdot Mirror
Not just grammatically incorrect, but monumentally stupid.
It's fine. Any news aggregator that filters Fox and Breitbart by default is ok by me.
Pretty much answers the question: should you move your personal computing into the cloud? Just how brain damaged would you need to be, to buy Google's (or any other megacorp's) koolaid pitch about the cloud, as opposed to just downloading Libreoffice for free, and using it securely in the safety of your own device? Which of course is running Linux to actually be safe... oh, I forgot, there is a lot of brain damage going down out there.
Word to the wise: use the cloud only for throwaway stuff you don't mind sharing with the world. Your private affairs? Don't be an idiot.
This advice applies to Gmail and its ilk too, though admittedly, few have the wherewithall to operate their own secure email server in their own domain. I do, sorry if you can't. But your ISP's email service (remember when everybody used that?) is a way better idea than the spy cloud.
Expect /etc to be morphed into a single binary database next. Just you wait...
Expect Gnome 4 to build and run as a kernel module.
A complete cop-out over systemd, we're hurting from the bugs and the architecture, not the change of itself. Unfortunate, I'd hoped for more than a standard systemd marketing blurb cut and paste.
I would go further and characterize every one of Jim's responses as completely and utterly devoid of inspiration. Worse actually, he gives me reason to worry about the deleterious effect that Red Hat has had and and will have on the community if he continues shitting in the nest. But that's what you get when you hire an MBA to run a technology company: a nest full of shit. Enough shit, and there will no longer be room for birds. I say, it is high time for a change of "White" hats.
the filesystem can just write to a different spot on the device, but if a specific spot on the physical device goes bad it's bad.
That's not true at all. Modern HDDs can remap sectors, to other tracks if necessary.
Oh wait, I just realized this article needs a car analogy. We should bring bicycle, sedan and semitrailer form factors closer together! Chew on it, Mark.
Sorry Mark, I do not share your enthusiasm for bringing form factors together, instead I regard that idea as a blight that has made both large and small form factors worse, especially the large form factor where I spend the bulk of my actual productive time.
Well, here I am, back to Debian and it feels good. Silver lining: it appears that competition with Ubuntu made Debian stronger, thanks for that.
Hard to see this as anything other than a Republican hatchet job intended to distract from looming Russia indictments, and sundry horrors perpetrated upon long suffering decent citizens by this gang of self-serving kleptocrats.
Ahem, I think you forgot just how ugly and limited everything was on 8 bit computers (you're drivelling a bit when you say microcontroller).
Oh no I'm not.
Yes you are: "they decided to start with something simpler: a single-chip microcontroller. But the engineers soon realized that the microcontroller market was crowded with very good chips. Even if theirs was better than the others, they’d see only slim profits. Zilog had to aim higher on the food chain, and the Z80 microprocessor project was born". By the time it becomes a CPU a home computer, it's not called a mcrocontroller, it's called a microprocessor. By convention. Go ahead, define your own terminology, but don't be surprised if people look at you like you're wearing nose glasses on a dinner date.
Excuse me, correction: "Sentio apps" are actually part of the Sentio desktop framework, not user-facing apps, so slight inaccuracy there. The other points stand, and more: why should I be forced to put up with in-app ads or extra upfront cost, probable spyware, proprietary lockin etc, beyond what Android already has, just so I can have functionality that Google smart people in their infinite and patronizing wisdom deny me, and which would certainly available if Android had community governance, actually acting in the interest of users?
Well it sounds like you are already all set and don't need a "Desktop" version of your phone.
And then you immediately talk about Sentio Desktop, which tries to make Android look like a desktop, implying that I do need a desktop. Thanks for pointing out the existence of Sentio, which undermines your argument (that I have no idea why you are making) but I am more than a little skeptical that it is possible to deliver a seamless experience of the type that a typical desktop provides, when implemented as an app and not as part of the Android libraries proper.
Color me unconvinced that this problem is solved, and color me unconvinced that there is no substantial population of users who want it solved.
Ahem, I think you forgot just how ugly and limited everything was on 8 bit computers (you're drivelling a bit when you say microcontroller).
Huh? I use window decorations now, don't you? I would use them, if they were available, on my tablet(s), just like I use them on a regular PC.
there are a bunch of reasons why Smartphones/Phablets will always remain VASTLY inferior with what you can put together in a desktop or rack system, and will LIKELY remain VERY inferior with even what you can do in a laptop.
Nonsense, the only substantive limitation of a phone is not being able to open it up and add expansion cards and disks, iow, purely mechanical. Laptops have much the same restrictions. But you can use external peripherals for this if you like. There is really only one serious reason why phones are not commonly used as desktop replacements today: the OS is intentionally broken for that, to force you into the cloud and media/ad consumption.
Yes, I carry the bluetooth mouse and keyboard in my backpack. No, I do not carry a monitor, the phone is perfectly fine as a monitor. I use it in landscape mode and prop it up. No dock in any of this. Works great, gets me my 90 WPS typing speed back.
Android contains Linux, but not GNU; thus, Android and GNU/Linux are mostly different." -- RMS
No they aren't, they are only mostly different if you try to pretend that the kernel is a simple little component. It isn't, it is in fact a gigantic pile of literally hundreds of essential APIs with tentacles reaching into essentially every library and application on the device, whether the device is running Android on top, or libc, or whatever. And BTW, Android bionic is a gnu libc clone with very few differences at the API leve. It's really disingenuous to say it has nothing to do with standard Linux.
What Android offers is a bunch of libraries primarily (and arguably stupidly) oriented to Java that implement some occasionally clever and elegant but just as often often crappy and arbitrary interaction between components, and all the rest of Android that makes it work really well as a web device is basically the Linux kernel and copyleft-avoiding clones of standard Linux libraries. Android is really basically a piece of shit a bunch of guys pulled out of their collective asses, lacking security, performance and elegance. its only real superpower being, it's a bit less shitty than the Apple competition.
Serious, obviously. It just made up my mind to pick up an S8... I've been waffling about which way to go for my next phone for a while now.
As shitty as Android is (and it IS shitty!), it's STILL more-optimized for being a "phone appliance" than anything that would run under stock Desktop Linux.
That's a broad claim. One thing a stock Linux system can do is, run thousands or millions of user-installed programs. For example, when you run Kodi, it makes your Linux desktop look and act exactly like a DVR, because, ahem, Kodi is exactly the same software the DVRs run (on top of basically stock Linux, for that matter).
In case it isn't clear, what I just said is: run Android as an application, if you must.
If my phone ran Linux I could simply dump my work laptop/desktop and keep/do everything on my phone
If your Linux also includes support for all the phone functionality you currently get with Android. That's a pretty big if. Not rocket science, but practical obstacles are in the way, mostly put there by vested interests.
GUI design is hard. GUI design for a touch is even harder. Adapting an existing GUI to a completely different form factor universally results in the train-wre[c]k...
What is so hard about adding optional, familiar window decorations to existing Android full-screen windows? Just do it like QT, those sunk research costs are so done years ago, there isn't a lot it doesn't already do in a perfectly elegant way. For one thing, let's have our fucking sensible keyboard shortcuts back, it's not like that essential functionality has to be reinvented or anything.
After all, it is totally ridiculous to carry around powerful universal computers and restrict them to be used as a phone and phone-type app only.
Actually, media consumption device, and most importantly, advertising media consumption device. Ridiculous to you, certainly, but not to the billionaires at Google.
Why can't my phone be my PC?
Because it's a PHONE, dammit!!!
Earth to you: no it isn't! Phones stopped being primarily phones years ago, and are now general purpose computers.
Good luck putting that desktop in your backpack.
He means they don't make you the product. And no, they don't. They just commit daylight robbery with their prices. And contribute happily to the liberal censorship in Silicon Valley.
Oh hey, no they do. They do that too. Apple is busy selling you as a product just like Google does, they just aren't as good at it.