Your post boils down to the usual complaint that application XYZ isn't available on Linux.
I don't see why that anyone should be dismissive about this "usual complaint". People here on Slashdot often misunderstand the complaint and get defensive. The complaint isn't " application XYZ isn't available on Linux," but rather "there isn't an application on Linux that lets me do task ABC as quickly and easily as I can using application XYZ on Windows." If it's true, then it's a valid complaint.
But that's not what my post was about. I wouldn't even say my post was a complaint. I asserted my belief that what was preventing more widespread Linux adoption is no longer deficiencies in the OS or DE, but has more to do with the functionality and friendliness of actual applications. I then asked whether Ubuntu intended to do anything about it, and if so, what?
I really don't want to get into a fight or a flame war or even argue about a particular application. I will say, though, that when both amateurs and professionals are overwhelmingly choosing expensive proprietary options when free alternatives are readily available, it seems awfully counter-productive to stubbornly insist that it's all delusion and "simple UI entrenchment". It seems a bit like trying to win friends by claiming that anyone who doesn't like you is a retarded.
Well it's bad form to reply to yourself, but I just realized that I kept the original subject of "Is there a time to fork?" That was my original question, but I deleted it from my post because I couldn't think of a reasonable way to formulate the question. Since the question is out there, though, I'll give it another shot.
The success of FOSS software depends on cooperation, but there can still be conflicting interests. The goals that Ubuntu has for OpenOffice are probably not quite the same as the goals that Oracle has. Redhat's vision for the future of Gnome may be different from Ubuntu's. The strength of a diverse software ecosystem is offset somewhat by the weakness of lacking a coherent and unified vision.
I was wondering whether the people at Ubuntu (or other distributions) felt that strain, and whether they ever found themselves at odds with the developers of applications, such as wanting to see a change made that the original developer was resistant to. Was there ever a temptation to fork applications or part of the OS, hoping that enough of a community followed to make the fork viable.
Part of the reason I've wondered is because of cases like OSX and Android, where there has been some success with companies starting from an open source base and going their own way. Granted Apple and Google have quite a lot of resources to throw into these projects.
So I've been wondering: Is there ever a time to fork something and go your own way? How drastic does the situation need to be for that sort of option to be considered?
(Yes, I do understand that there are downsides to forking. Otherwise I wouldn't be asking.)
More importantly, we see GNOME falling further and further behind KDE.
I think it depends on your goals. I'm not surprised when a programmer says they like KDE because it's very flexible, but I think if I were setting up Linux for my mom, I'd use Gnome. It's simpler, and I think most people would find the UI conventions to be more clear. Maybe it's just me, but when I use KDE, I tend to feel like they're giving me 50 options that I don't care about and I can't find the 1 option I do care about. If I find it confusing *at all* then there'd be no hope for my parents.
That's not to say that I'm a huge fan of GNOME. It always seems a bit slow, and somehow it always feels like a lot of wasted space. Some of it can be fixed with better themes and configuring the panels, but distributions seem to always come with a panel at the top and bottom, using huge fonts everywhere. I tend to prefer Xfce, but on the other hand it doesn't seem as well-integrated as GNOME does. Maybe that's just because distributions are putting more effort into making sure GNOME is well-integrated?
Mostly I don't like GNOME or KDE or Xfce because they're all so... conventional. I'm really pretty interested in seeing someone bring some new UI approaches instead of copying Windows's "task bar + notification area + start menu" approach. People make fun of Apple's dock, but it works pretty well once you get used to it. I haven't used an OLPC's Sugar or Moblin so I can't say how well they work, but I admire that they're trying to develop new UI conventions. In fact, if there's anyone out there working on something like that and you want some feedback, I'd love to check it out. (Of course, keep in mind that the UIs that I think look neat are Sugar, Moblin, and OSX. If you show me something that's super-useful for arranging terminal windows, I might not be too excited.)
There's many, many people that need only basic software, but they're also the kind of user you can't require a degree in CS to administrate their box - those groups are almost mutually exclusive.
Ubuntu really isn't hard to set up or keep running. I would say that it's no harder to Install than Windows, and in many cases you have a greater likelihood that all of your hardware will be identified without need of additional drivers. At least that's been my experience, which is why I suggest that the problem now is less about the OS and more about the applications.
I've thought for some time that the biggest threat to Microsoft would be if Adobe released their own Linux distribution which their Creative Suite would fully support. They have enough money and influence to get good hardware support, they have both the technical expertise and the UI design knowhow to make something very usable. Maybe it's only because of the industries I've worked in (some of which have been technical), but it seems like a lot of people I've supported professionally and a lot of people I've known personally really only use their computers for web browsing, email, MS Office, and Adobe products. Given the shots that Microsoft has taken at Adobe (creating audio/video applications, XPS, and Silverlight) and Apple's recent pot-shots at Flash, I'm surprised Adobe hasn't at least gotten the ball rolling on this one. Or maybe they have, but it just isn't public yet.
I know the current Canonical roadmap includes an App Store built into the package manager
Thanks for this bit of information. I use Ubuntu, but I'm largely ignorant about stuff like this.
This would mean either embracing WINE in a big way...
If they do that, they should be sure to develop WINE to the point of being transparent. If you lose features, experience bugs, have to figure out work-arounds, and have to hunt for files inside of foreign directory structures, then it's not going to be a good solution. Ideally, you even want applications to use native UI conventions. For cross-platform development done right, I think the best examples I'm aware of are Mozilla's applications. You can use Thunderbird and Firefox on Linux, OSX, and Windows and in each case they seem (pretty much) like they were built for that platform.
Don't make a Photoshop clone for Linux. Make a Photoshop clone for Linux, Windows, and OS X, that is better for some group of users than Photoshop is. Maybe this means more feature-ful, or maybe it just means much cheaper while still good.
I'd agree with that. Especially when you look at CS4, there are lots of Photoshop features that most people aren't going to use. I think you could focus on getting the most common features into a stripped-down lightweight editor and have lots of people prefer it to Photoshop. Years ago, I used to use Paint Shop Pro instead of Photoshop just because it loaded much faster. (I haven't used it in years, but my impression is that it has become weird and bloated since Corel to it over.)
Still, it's worth noting that you might have to come somewhat close to cloning Photoshop in order to provide enough functionality that you could sit a random graphic designer in front of it and trust that he'd have everything he needed.
Find partners - One of the reasons linux adoption is low is because Linux pre-installs are very rare. Hardware partners that need a free OS and some knowhow to customize it also have the money to pay for application development and other partners who might be willing to target that market.
One of the things that set me on this line of thinking was wondering about the implications if someone tried to do what Apple did, but without the closed-source layer. Apple took a bunch of FOSS, put a closed-source GUI on top of it, and sells that installed on all their hardware. So if you were to start a hardware company that rolled its own Linux distro as the default OS for all your computers, assuming you wanted to keep the whole thing under the GPL, what would be a smart way to go about that? Would you have to replace X.org, develop a new DE, come up with different kinds of configuration tools, etc.?
Thinking that through, I concluded that the big problem wouldn't be the OS itself, but would be the applications. Unfortunately, it seems to me (though I could be wrong) like hardware vendors who pre-install Linux are mostly just putting an existing distribution on their computers, and distributions are mostly including the applications from others without heavy modification. That means that the people with a financial interest in seeing Linux be feature-rich on the desktop aren't directly involved in application development.
Of late, I use it even less, since OS X has some nice, built in scripting that works well with Photoshop, Pixelmator, and GraphicConverter.
If I needed automation in my graphics workflow, I usually just turned to Imagemagick anyway. I use Photoshop when I want a friendly GUI. But ultimately, I'm not a graphic designer. I'm just a guy who's tried to talk graphic designers into trying the GIMP out.
This is an interesting question, but I don't think Ubuntu is there yet. A lot of low hanging fruit is available before the professional graphic design niche is worth targeting. Home users and Corporate Worksta
Sorry, I know my viewpoint is going to anger and annoy some people, but I've been thinking about the relative lack of success of Linux on the desktop lately. By "relative lack of success" I don't mean to bash the quality of Linux, but only that it doesn't seem to be very widely used in spite of being pretty good for a lot of purposes. So first, my obvious question would be, to what do you attribute the relative lack of success, and what plans do you have, if any, to do something about it.
To be a little more specific (and to answer my own question a little bit) it seems to me that a fair amount of the problem isn't the OS itself, but the associate applications. For example, lots of people have complained about GIMP for reasons ranging from lack of specific functionality to an unconventional UI, and even to the awkward connotations of the name "GIMP". Even having personally gotten some graphic designers to try the GIMP, I have yet to know any professional designers who find it adequate. I'd like to use Linux, but don't find I can come close replicating an equivalent workflow to what I have available using tools like Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, and Sound Forge. (those are the applications I'm personally stuck with, though I'm sure other people have other applications on their personal lists.)
Sorry if this is a vague or offensive question, but I'd really like to know, is there a plan to attack those kinds of issues at any point? I feel like Ubuntu (and other Linux distros) have done a pretty good job in polishing the installation procedures and the "look and feel" aspect of things, but does there come a time when you say, "We need a serious Adobe CS competitor for our OS to be competitive on the desktop, so let's make that happen"? If so, what happens then?
Sorry, I know people are going to tell me that I should just use the GIMP and if it doesn't do what I need, I should rewrite it. Sorry, I don't have the programming skills and and I don't have the money to single-handedly fund development of all the applications that I'd need to switch to Linux. I'd be willing to buy them once they were developed, or even make modest contributions to a project that I thought would actually deliver on what I needed, but I'm not a software developer.
Really, honestly, I'm not trying to be offensive to FOSS developers. I'm just speaking as someone who, for both practical and ideological reasons, would love to switch away from using Windows, but I keep finding that I can't. I use Debian and Ubuntu when I can, and have even contributed money to FOSS projects. So ultimately my question is, does Ubuntu have as one of its goals to enable someone like me to finally make the switch to Linux? If so, what's the plan? What can I do to help?
Right, all Apple users are fanbois. I hate them SO MUCH! And people who use Microsoft products too! Windows fanbois are almost as bad as FOSS fanbois. When will all you fanbois realize that you should be using real computers, like my Commodore 64?!
Well really there have been a bunch of problems over the years. I thought it was always pretty silly to call it "My Documents". You're logged into your computer-- who else's documents are they going to be? I'm glad they eventually fixed that. Second, it always struck me as strange that you're sitting looking at your computer, and there's a little icon on the screen of your computer that says "My Computer". My computer is *in* my computer? Weirder yet it's on the Desktop which is a folder in the computer. Microsoft isn't the only ones guilty of that one.
Then there's the famous old one about making you hit a button that says "Start" in order to shut down. And personally, I could never understand how a professional company could put out the Windows XP Luna theme. There's the auto-hiding of menu choices in Office, and the way their server tools sometimes hide important information in the context menus. There's the relatively uselessness of the DOS command line.
Of course, we can't say that these were all Gates's choices, but Microsoft has had at least a couple UI blunders over the years.
The lack of voice over LTE is because it will use the same data channel for voice (i.e. VoIP). So it's not like any of the hardware has to be change. The reason it's not being deployed now is that there's no consensus over how voice should be done on LTE.
How about they just ditch normal voice service and allow users to choose their own VoIP provider? I'm sure companies like Vonage and Skype would be willing to work with Verizon on a project like this.
Oh, right, because they won't be satisfied unless they can charge $0.40 per minute and $0.20 per SMS. If it's all packets, then they can't justify why an SMS message would cost so much.
It can multitask theoretically. Apple confirmed years ago that they limited multitasking on the iPhone to avoid battery drain. Apparently part of the problem was that they weren't happy with any of the UI conventions that they could think of for showing you which applications were currently running, which opened the door for users to unknowingly have a ton of different applications running in the background all the time.
It was also justified with the idea that most people running most applications had no real use for multitasking on a phone. If you freeze an application's current state when you exit, you don't actually need your little puzzle game to be actively running in the background. You want certain things to constantly run, e.g. anything to do with receiving incoming phonecalls or email. You also want your music to be able to keep playing even when you're not in your music-running application, so Apple made sure that worked.
With the iPad, I don't know. I guess it depends on the 3rd party software that comes out for it. I think you probably don't need your calendar app or ebook-reading app to continue running in the background when you aren't using them.
In another way of looking at it, the iPhone had greater effective capabilities. You could theoretically do more with other phones, except that you wouldn't. Ok, maybe *you* would do more, but I worked in IT and supported people with various kinds of smart phones, and the only functionality that most people used was email, and those email applications weren't too friendly and often lacked html support.
So which phone is more capable, one with 500 features of which you'll actually only use 1, or a phone with 10 features of which you'll use 9?
One of the things I liked about it is that it didn't seem to be the same old "here's a icon, now click on it" sort of interface...
Sorry to reply to my own post, but I wanted to throw something else in. There were a couple of things I found disappointing about the iPad launch, but one of the immediate "first impression" disappointments was the home screen. All the applications they showcased seem to have fairly refined interfaces that would appear to give a lot of information and control, and then you have a home screen that looks like it's just a bunch of poorly spaced-out icons for you to punch. With all the possible GUI options, isn't there something else we could be doing besides constantly presenting the user with an array of icons?
How about a customizable notification area that can give you information like the subject and sender of any unread emails? How about an area that can show you newsfeeds and weather? How about a more refined menu interface that lets you put a greater number of choices of applications in a smaller space? Or maybe a method of allowing shortcuts directly to the books/media that you want?
I've played with a Zune recently, and was pleasantly surprised. The UI is similar, and it had a very smooth feel to it. I think there was something slightly confusing about it to me, but I wasn't used to it. I didn't know what to expect to happen if I swiped my finger this way or that way. It was pretty sleek.
One of the things I liked about it is that it didn't seem to be the same old "here's a icon, now click on it" sort of interface. I've been wondering lately if computers will start to move away from the object-oriented model of desktop metaphors and spacial browsers and such, and be able to present an interface that's optimal for whatever it is you're trying to do. I got the feeling when playing with the zune that Microsoft was asking the same question.
I'm not a Microsoft fanboy-- far from it-- but I'd be interested in checking out this phone. Of course, the next question is going to be, what do the 3rd party apps look like?
Others have mentioned how they're talking about smart phones, and the iPhone is fast-growing in that market and gets most of the attention.
I'd also like to point out that the iPhone has been extremely influential in the smart phone market. Look at smart phones before the iPhone came out and compare them to what's coming out now. Everyone is the copying design concepts, UI conventions, and capabilities of the iPhone. Carriers are losing control of the devices being put out these days, and it started with Apple's refusal to allow the carriers to touch their designs. The iPhone is winning in spirit, even if not in sales numbers.
Well I think it's the protestors who are taking on the mantle of "Anonymous", not the press who are attributing it to them. The press largely doesn't understand what the deal is with "Anonymous", but then a lot of the press is never really digs into these things.
Also, it's true that "the people" don't do anything as a whole. You get some subset working on something, and even if they're very poorly organized, it helps you have a term for them so you can reference them easily.
I thought part of the reason people liked claiming to be part of "Anonymous" was that the press didn't understand what the hell was going on. Basically anyone can validly claim to be "Anonymous" so long as they're... you know... anonymous... and the press will suddenly act like that person is the head of a powerful hacker terrorist crime syndicate.
Are Apple's disk images really so mysterious and horrible as to be called "snake oil"? Reportedly they use AES encryption, and I thought open source projects had even reverse engeered the formats.
Windows 7 though, that's a bit different. It appears that MS has really given us a reason to move on from XP, with better graphics support and better security, without the bugs of nags of Vista.
Meh. Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with Windows 7, but I don't think it's that compelling. Security? We've all had Windows security more or less figured out for years. Put it behind a firewall, install some anti-malware software, and don't allow normal users admin rights. Throw in some user education, and you're there.
Graphics support? Windows XP does a fine job displaying email and and spreadsheets. That's all most business users need.
I like Windows 7 well enough. It's prettier than XP. If it were free, I'd probably be using it. I might even consider buying it if it didn't require activation. I'm just not going to spend lots of money to get a kill switch installed on my computer without significant benefits.
Over the total lifetime of the division, what is the net profit of the "Entertainment and Devices" department? How much has Online cost, total? And what has it positioned them to do in the long run?
Well sometimes there is a sort of "halo effect". The XBox may be helping keep both developers and gamers on Windows, which would justify even substantial losses. Online service might not be making money in itself, but it might be worth it to them just to keep people away from Google.
On the other hand, I've also had a lot of times where I wonder what the hell Microsoft is doing. They often seem content to dump money into R&D while refusing to turn any of it into decent products. Meanwhile they seem intent on maintaining their userbase through lock-in rather than customer satisfaction. Honestly, there are times when I think Microsoft executives are sitting in a room somewhere saying, "Who gives a crap if anyone likes this product?! We'll just make sure they have to buy it whether they like it or not."
When Alaren said it hadn't "changed meaningfully", I don't think he meant that it hadn't changed at all. It's been standard operating procedure with Microsoft to reskin Windows and Office with each release, shuffle around all of the buttons and controls, etc. It's always the case that some people like the changes and some people don't. Some people really like the Office 2007 UI.
I think the idea was that they haven't significantly added much to Office's functionality or drastically changed the way we work on Office files. To be fair, that's a tall order. It's hard to make drastic changes to something that works well and that people are relying on. On the other hand, they had billions of dollars and 12 years to work on it.
It does seem like maybe they're starting to make some real efforts now, which seems like a good change. The fact that Exchange 2010 has webmail support for browsers other than IE; it seems like a good sign.
IANAL either, but I don't believe a stockholder can simply sue a company for not being profitable enough. I know you hear all about how a CEO's only responsibility is to make short-term profit for shareholders, but I'm under the impression that it's quite a bit overblown. I believe it's more like, if you can show some kind of unethical behavior where they're purposefully sacrificing profits for personal gain, then you have some kind of case.
The way you hear it around here, you'd think a CEO can be thrown in prison for failing to screw an old lady out of her last dime because he has an enormous legal responsibility to maximize this quarter's profits. I have a hard time believing that.
Well I think it's still a little unclear, since there are not a finite set of data points for a 3D model. Therefore you can't have an *exact* model, and the creation of any model might include some particular choices about which data points to include.
I'm not a lawyer, so I really don't know how that plays out.
Slashdot Mirror
Your post boils down to the usual complaint that application XYZ isn't available on Linux.
I don't see why that anyone should be dismissive about this "usual complaint". People here on Slashdot often misunderstand the complaint and get defensive. The complaint isn't " application XYZ isn't available on Linux," but rather "there isn't an application on Linux that lets me do task ABC as quickly and easily as I can using application XYZ on Windows." If it's true, then it's a valid complaint.
But that's not what my post was about. I wouldn't even say my post was a complaint. I asserted my belief that what was preventing more widespread Linux adoption is no longer deficiencies in the OS or DE, but has more to do with the functionality and friendliness of actual applications. I then asked whether Ubuntu intended to do anything about it, and if so, what?
I really don't want to get into a fight or a flame war or even argue about a particular application. I will say, though, that when both amateurs and professionals are overwhelmingly choosing expensive proprietary options when free alternatives are readily available, it seems awfully counter-productive to stubbornly insist that it's all delusion and "simple UI entrenchment". It seems a bit like trying to win friends by claiming that anyone who doesn't like you is a retarded.
Well it's bad form to reply to yourself, but I just realized that I kept the original subject of "Is there a time to fork?" That was my original question, but I deleted it from my post because I couldn't think of a reasonable way to formulate the question. Since the question is out there, though, I'll give it another shot.
The success of FOSS software depends on cooperation, but there can still be conflicting interests. The goals that Ubuntu has for OpenOffice are probably not quite the same as the goals that Oracle has. Redhat's vision for the future of Gnome may be different from Ubuntu's. The strength of a diverse software ecosystem is offset somewhat by the weakness of lacking a coherent and unified vision.
I was wondering whether the people at Ubuntu (or other distributions) felt that strain, and whether they ever found themselves at odds with the developers of applications, such as wanting to see a change made that the original developer was resistant to. Was there ever a temptation to fork applications or part of the OS, hoping that enough of a community followed to make the fork viable.
Part of the reason I've wondered is because of cases like OSX and Android, where there has been some success with companies starting from an open source base and going their own way. Granted Apple and Google have quite a lot of resources to throw into these projects.
So I've been wondering: Is there ever a time to fork something and go your own way? How drastic does the situation need to be for that sort of option to be considered?
(Yes, I do understand that there are downsides to forking. Otherwise I wouldn't be asking.)
More importantly, we see GNOME falling further and further behind KDE.
I think it depends on your goals. I'm not surprised when a programmer says they like KDE because it's very flexible, but I think if I were setting up Linux for my mom, I'd use Gnome. It's simpler, and I think most people would find the UI conventions to be more clear. Maybe it's just me, but when I use KDE, I tend to feel like they're giving me 50 options that I don't care about and I can't find the 1 option I do care about. If I find it confusing *at all* then there'd be no hope for my parents.
That's not to say that I'm a huge fan of GNOME. It always seems a bit slow, and somehow it always feels like a lot of wasted space. Some of it can be fixed with better themes and configuring the panels, but distributions seem to always come with a panel at the top and bottom, using huge fonts everywhere. I tend to prefer Xfce, but on the other hand it doesn't seem as well-integrated as GNOME does. Maybe that's just because distributions are putting more effort into making sure GNOME is well-integrated?
Mostly I don't like GNOME or KDE or Xfce because they're all so... conventional. I'm really pretty interested in seeing someone bring some new UI approaches instead of copying Windows's "task bar + notification area + start menu" approach. People make fun of Apple's dock, but it works pretty well once you get used to it. I haven't used an OLPC's Sugar or Moblin so I can't say how well they work, but I admire that they're trying to develop new UI conventions. In fact, if there's anyone out there working on something like that and you want some feedback, I'd love to check it out. (Of course, keep in mind that the UIs that I think look neat are Sugar, Moblin, and OSX. If you show me something that's super-useful for arranging terminal windows, I might not be too excited.)
There's many, many people that need only basic software, but they're also the kind of user you can't require a degree in CS to administrate their box - those groups are almost mutually exclusive.
Ubuntu really isn't hard to set up or keep running. I would say that it's no harder to Install than Windows, and in many cases you have a greater likelihood that all of your hardware will be identified without need of additional drivers. At least that's been my experience, which is why I suggest that the problem now is less about the OS and more about the applications.
I've thought for some time that the biggest threat to Microsoft would be if Adobe released their own Linux distribution which their Creative Suite would fully support. They have enough money and influence to get good hardware support, they have both the technical expertise and the UI design knowhow to make something very usable. Maybe it's only because of the industries I've worked in (some of which have been technical), but it seems like a lot of people I've supported professionally and a lot of people I've known personally really only use their computers for web browsing, email, MS Office, and Adobe products. Given the shots that Microsoft has taken at Adobe (creating audio/video applications, XPS, and Silverlight) and Apple's recent pot-shots at Flash, I'm surprised Adobe hasn't at least gotten the ball rolling on this one. Or maybe they have, but it just isn't public yet.
I know the current Canonical roadmap includes an App Store built into the package manager
Thanks for this bit of information. I use Ubuntu, but I'm largely ignorant about stuff like this.
This would mean either embracing WINE in a big way...
If they do that, they should be sure to develop WINE to the point of being transparent. If you lose features, experience bugs, have to figure out work-arounds, and have to hunt for files inside of foreign directory structures, then it's not going to be a good solution. Ideally, you even want applications to use native UI conventions. For cross-platform development done right, I think the best examples I'm aware of are Mozilla's applications. You can use Thunderbird and Firefox on Linux, OSX, and Windows and in each case they seem (pretty much) like they were built for that platform.
Don't make a Photoshop clone for Linux. Make a Photoshop clone for Linux, Windows, and OS X, that is better for some group of users than Photoshop is. Maybe this means more feature-ful, or maybe it just means much cheaper while still good.
I'd agree with that. Especially when you look at CS4, there are lots of Photoshop features that most people aren't going to use. I think you could focus on getting the most common features into a stripped-down lightweight editor and have lots of people prefer it to Photoshop. Years ago, I used to use Paint Shop Pro instead of Photoshop just because it loaded much faster. (I haven't used it in years, but my impression is that it has become weird and bloated since Corel to it over.)
Still, it's worth noting that you might have to come somewhat close to cloning Photoshop in order to provide enough functionality that you could sit a random graphic designer in front of it and trust that he'd have everything he needed.
Find partners - One of the reasons linux adoption is low is because Linux pre-installs are very rare. Hardware partners that need a free OS and some knowhow to customize it also have the money to pay for application development and other partners who might be willing to target that market.
One of the things that set me on this line of thinking was wondering about the implications if someone tried to do what Apple did, but without the closed-source layer. Apple took a bunch of FOSS, put a closed-source GUI on top of it, and sells that installed on all their hardware. So if you were to start a hardware company that rolled its own Linux distro as the default OS for all your computers, assuming you wanted to keep the whole thing under the GPL, what would be a smart way to go about that? Would you have to replace X.org, develop a new DE, come up with different kinds of configuration tools, etc.?
Thinking that through, I concluded that the big problem wouldn't be the OS itself, but would be the applications. Unfortunately, it seems to me (though I could be wrong) like hardware vendors who pre-install Linux are mostly just putting an existing distribution on their computers, and distributions are mostly including the applications from others without heavy modification. That means that the people with a financial interest in seeing Linux be feature-rich on the desktop aren't directly involved in application development.
Of late, I use it even less, since OS X has some nice, built in scripting that works well with Photoshop, Pixelmator, and GraphicConverter.
If I needed automation in my graphics workflow, I usually just turned to Imagemagick anyway. I use Photoshop when I want a friendly GUI. But ultimately, I'm not a graphic designer. I'm just a guy who's tried to talk graphic designers into trying the GIMP out.
This is an interesting question, but I don't think Ubuntu is there yet. A lot of low hanging fruit is available before the professional graphic design niche is worth targeting. Home users and Corporate Worksta
Sorry, I know my viewpoint is going to anger and annoy some people, but I've been thinking about the relative lack of success of Linux on the desktop lately. By "relative lack of success" I don't mean to bash the quality of Linux, but only that it doesn't seem to be very widely used in spite of being pretty good for a lot of purposes. So first, my obvious question would be, to what do you attribute the relative lack of success, and what plans do you have, if any, to do something about it.
To be a little more specific (and to answer my own question a little bit) it seems to me that a fair amount of the problem isn't the OS itself, but the associate applications. For example, lots of people have complained about GIMP for reasons ranging from lack of specific functionality to an unconventional UI, and even to the awkward connotations of the name "GIMP". Even having personally gotten some graphic designers to try the GIMP, I have yet to know any professional designers who find it adequate. I'd like to use Linux, but don't find I can come close replicating an equivalent workflow to what I have available using tools like Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, and Sound Forge. (those are the applications I'm personally stuck with, though I'm sure other people have other applications on their personal lists.)
Sorry if this is a vague or offensive question, but I'd really like to know, is there a plan to attack those kinds of issues at any point? I feel like Ubuntu (and other Linux distros) have done a pretty good job in polishing the installation procedures and the "look and feel" aspect of things, but does there come a time when you say, "We need a serious Adobe CS competitor for our OS to be competitive on the desktop, so let's make that happen"? If so, what happens then?
Sorry, I know people are going to tell me that I should just use the GIMP and if it doesn't do what I need, I should rewrite it. Sorry, I don't have the programming skills and and I don't have the money to single-handedly fund development of all the applications that I'd need to switch to Linux. I'd be willing to buy them once they were developed, or even make modest contributions to a project that I thought would actually deliver on what I needed, but I'm not a software developer.
Really, honestly, I'm not trying to be offensive to FOSS developers. I'm just speaking as someone who, for both practical and ideological reasons, would love to switch away from using Windows, but I keep finding that I can't. I use Debian and Ubuntu when I can, and have even contributed money to FOSS projects. So ultimately my question is, does Ubuntu have as one of its goals to enable someone like me to finally make the switch to Linux? If so, what's the plan? What can I do to help?
Right, all Apple users are fanbois. I hate them SO MUCH! And people who use Microsoft products too! Windows fanbois are almost as bad as FOSS fanbois. When will all you fanbois realize that you should be using real computers, like my Commodore 64?!
Well really there have been a bunch of problems over the years. I thought it was always pretty silly to call it "My Documents". You're logged into your computer-- who else's documents are they going to be? I'm glad they eventually fixed that. Second, it always struck me as strange that you're sitting looking at your computer, and there's a little icon on the screen of your computer that says "My Computer". My computer is *in* my computer? Weirder yet it's on the Desktop which is a folder in the computer. Microsoft isn't the only ones guilty of that one.
Then there's the famous old one about making you hit a button that says "Start" in order to shut down. And personally, I could never understand how a professional company could put out the Windows XP Luna theme. There's the auto-hiding of menu choices in Office, and the way their server tools sometimes hide important information in the context menus. There's the relatively uselessness of the DOS command line.
Of course, we can't say that these were all Gates's choices, but Microsoft has had at least a couple UI blunders over the years.
The lack of voice over LTE is because it will use the same data channel for voice (i.e. VoIP). So it's not like any of the hardware has to be change. The reason it's not being deployed now is that there's no consensus over how voice should be done on LTE.
How about they just ditch normal voice service and allow users to choose their own VoIP provider? I'm sure companies like Vonage and Skype would be willing to work with Verizon on a project like this.
Oh, right, because they won't be satisfied unless they can charge $0.40 per minute and $0.20 per SMS. If it's all packets, then they can't justify why an SMS message would cost so much.
Provide a pleasant experience?
It can multitask theoretically. Apple confirmed years ago that they limited multitasking on the iPhone to avoid battery drain. Apparently part of the problem was that they weren't happy with any of the UI conventions that they could think of for showing you which applications were currently running, which opened the door for users to unknowingly have a ton of different applications running in the background all the time.
It was also justified with the idea that most people running most applications had no real use for multitasking on a phone. If you freeze an application's current state when you exit, you don't actually need your little puzzle game to be actively running in the background. You want certain things to constantly run, e.g. anything to do with receiving incoming phonecalls or email. You also want your music to be able to keep playing even when you're not in your music-running application, so Apple made sure that worked.
With the iPad, I don't know. I guess it depends on the 3rd party software that comes out for it. I think you probably don't need your calendar app or ebook-reading app to continue running in the background when you aren't using them.
In another way of looking at it, the iPhone had greater effective capabilities. You could theoretically do more with other phones, except that you wouldn't. Ok, maybe *you* would do more, but I worked in IT and supported people with various kinds of smart phones, and the only functionality that most people used was email, and those email applications weren't too friendly and often lacked html support.
So which phone is more capable, one with 500 features of which you'll actually only use 1, or a phone with 10 features of which you'll use 9?
One of the things I liked about it is that it didn't seem to be the same old "here's a icon, now click on it" sort of interface...
Sorry to reply to my own post, but I wanted to throw something else in. There were a couple of things I found disappointing about the iPad launch, but one of the immediate "first impression" disappointments was the home screen. All the applications they showcased seem to have fairly refined interfaces that would appear to give a lot of information and control, and then you have a home screen that looks like it's just a bunch of poorly spaced-out icons for you to punch. With all the possible GUI options, isn't there something else we could be doing besides constantly presenting the user with an array of icons?
How about a customizable notification area that can give you information like the subject and sender of any unread emails? How about an area that can show you newsfeeds and weather? How about a more refined menu interface that lets you put a greater number of choices of applications in a smaller space? Or maybe a method of allowing shortcuts directly to the books/media that you want?
I've played with a Zune recently, and was pleasantly surprised. The UI is similar, and it had a very smooth feel to it. I think there was something slightly confusing about it to me, but I wasn't used to it. I didn't know what to expect to happen if I swiped my finger this way or that way. It was pretty sleek.
One of the things I liked about it is that it didn't seem to be the same old "here's a icon, now click on it" sort of interface. I've been wondering lately if computers will start to move away from the object-oriented model of desktop metaphors and spacial browsers and such, and be able to present an interface that's optimal for whatever it is you're trying to do. I got the feeling when playing with the zune that Microsoft was asking the same question.
I'm not a Microsoft fanboy-- far from it-- but I'd be interested in checking out this phone. Of course, the next question is going to be, what do the 3rd party apps look like?
Others have mentioned how they're talking about smart phones, and the iPhone is fast-growing in that market and gets most of the attention.
I'd also like to point out that the iPhone has been extremely influential in the smart phone market. Look at smart phones before the iPhone came out and compare them to what's coming out now. Everyone is the copying design concepts, UI conventions, and capabilities of the iPhone. Carriers are losing control of the devices being put out these days, and it started with Apple's refusal to allow the carriers to touch their designs. The iPhone is winning in spirit, even if not in sales numbers.
But if there's one thing Bill Gates knows about, it's how to build an effective, consistent, and beautiful UI that people will love.
Well I think it's the protestors who are taking on the mantle of "Anonymous", not the press who are attributing it to them. The press largely doesn't understand what the deal is with "Anonymous", but then a lot of the press is never really digs into these things.
Also, it's true that "the people" don't do anything as a whole. You get some subset working on something, and even if they're very poorly organized, it helps you have a term for them so you can reference them easily.
I thought part of the reason people liked claiming to be part of "Anonymous" was that the press didn't understand what the hell was going on. Basically anyone can validly claim to be "Anonymous" so long as they're... you know... anonymous... and the press will suddenly act like that person is the head of a powerful hacker terrorist crime syndicate.
Really guys, naming your protest after female anatomy does nothing to help the cause
In fairness, wasn't the protest about censorship of the female anatomy?
I don't think we'll see a universal filesystem encryption scheme until we at least see a universally supported filesystem.
Are Apple's disk images really so mysterious and horrible as to be called "snake oil"? Reportedly they use AES encryption, and I thought open source projects had even reverse engeered the formats.
Windows 7 though, that's a bit different. It appears that MS has really given us a reason to move on from XP, with better graphics support and better security, without the bugs of nags of Vista.
Meh. Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with Windows 7, but I don't think it's that compelling. Security? We've all had Windows security more or less figured out for years. Put it behind a firewall, install some anti-malware software, and don't allow normal users admin rights. Throw in some user education, and you're there.
Graphics support? Windows XP does a fine job displaying email and and spreadsheets. That's all most business users need.
I like Windows 7 well enough. It's prettier than XP. If it were free, I'd probably be using it. I might even consider buying it if it didn't require activation. I'm just not going to spend lots of money to get a kill switch installed on my computer without significant benefits.
Over the total lifetime of the division, what is the net profit of the "Entertainment and Devices" department? How much has Online cost, total? And what has it positioned them to do in the long run?
Well sometimes there is a sort of "halo effect". The XBox may be helping keep both developers and gamers on Windows, which would justify even substantial losses. Online service might not be making money in itself, but it might be worth it to them just to keep people away from Google.
On the other hand, I've also had a lot of times where I wonder what the hell Microsoft is doing. They often seem content to dump money into R&D while refusing to turn any of it into decent products. Meanwhile they seem intent on maintaining their userbase through lock-in rather than customer satisfaction. Honestly, there are times when I think Microsoft executives are sitting in a room somewhere saying, "Who gives a crap if anyone likes this product?! We'll just make sure they have to buy it whether they like it or not."
When Alaren said it hadn't "changed meaningfully", I don't think he meant that it hadn't changed at all. It's been standard operating procedure with Microsoft to reskin Windows and Office with each release, shuffle around all of the buttons and controls, etc. It's always the case that some people like the changes and some people don't. Some people really like the Office 2007 UI.
I think the idea was that they haven't significantly added much to Office's functionality or drastically changed the way we work on Office files. To be fair, that's a tall order. It's hard to make drastic changes to something that works well and that people are relying on. On the other hand, they had billions of dollars and 12 years to work on it.
It does seem like maybe they're starting to make some real efforts now, which seems like a good change. The fact that Exchange 2010 has webmail support for browsers other than IE; it seems like a good sign.
IANAL either, but I don't believe a stockholder can simply sue a company for not being profitable enough. I know you hear all about how a CEO's only responsibility is to make short-term profit for shareholders, but I'm under the impression that it's quite a bit overblown. I believe it's more like, if you can show some kind of unethical behavior where they're purposefully sacrificing profits for personal gain, then you have some kind of case.
The way you hear it around here, you'd think a CEO can be thrown in prison for failing to screw an old lady out of her last dime because he has an enormous legal responsibility to maximize this quarter's profits. I have a hard time believing that.
Well I think it's still a little unclear, since there are not a finite set of data points for a 3D model. Therefore you can't have an *exact* model, and the creation of any model might include some particular choices about which data points to include.
I'm not a lawyer, so I really don't know how that plays out.