A (non-technical) friend and I were sitting around talking about cell phones. He was transferring numbers from his old phone to his new one. I was complaining about how frustrating that was, and wishing it could just be transferred automatically.
He says: "Yeah, hopefully someday they'll have the technology to do that..."
It actually rendered me speechless. The technology?
It's also why Windows is dying slowly. Attempting to be backwards-compatible with years of unmodifiable binary cruft, sucks.
In the short run, the no-binary-drivers rule sucks. It means you can't use Linux and play your games. It also means that Linux won't win the desktop war overnight (though I would argue that allowing binary drivers would have killed Linux before it could win). In the long run, it's a huge win.
There's practical reasons for the rule. Most of the kernel programmers are very--even notoriously--pragmatic. If they allow binary drivers...people will start making binary drivers. In theory, kernel developers wouldn't get blamed or harassed for problems with those drivers. In theory.
In fact, though, most of the major problems with Linux (wireless and graphics) occur in the two areas where binary drivers are common. You think that doesn't affect the kernel developers? They don't want to deal with that bullshit, and good for them. I'm willing to wait until the better model wins.
Well, if you write dates in a sane way (i.e. nicely sortable, i.e. 20080716, or 2008.07.16), then it's kind of irrelevant how you read it--major and minor numbers, or version numbers, it works out the same.
You have a point re: knowing the number of releases between, though.
If you are a customer, you're not interested in 'buying' the newest version of the kernel, anyway. You're more interested in the newest version of your distro, and they'll have the newest kernel (and brag about all the neato features it has, relative to the last one they packaged).
Kernel development is developer-oriented. This is as it should be.
These kind of tests are useful for figuring out how to help people make the transition to Ubuntu, but suggesting that Skype is a model Linux app is scary. I hate Skype, especially on Linux.
The problem with using these kinds of tests to tweak your UI is that, well, you cater to the lowest common denominator. If you went and tried to 'fix' all the problems this girl had, and make things more in line with what she expected, you'd end up with...well, Windows. Of course. Since that's what she expected.
There's a bit of a balancing act here, I think. Yes, we should make it relatively easy to make the transition. We should make the distro as usable as possible--without sacrificing functionality. A lot of the stuff that she had trouble with (apt-get!) are some of the strongest features of Ubuntu/Linux. You just have to get used to them.
I think it's fair to expect users to meet you half way, rather than turning your distro into a Windows clone, or making it so brain dead it actually becomes slower/less comfortable for experienced users.
As an example of how far wrong this can go, whenever I see a Linux distro with a 'Start' button, I immediately dismiss it as doomed from the start. So far, I haven't been wrong.
Oh, one last note--I'm an experienced computer user, for years and years, and I've used Windows far more than I ever wanted. Yesterday, I was trying to a) find a bunch of files on my uncle's computer, b) burn them to a disk, c) put some MP3s on a player, and d) explain to my uncle and niece how to accomplish this.
I finally got through (a) (c:\Whatever and Settings\User-126y125071\Application Data\...?), and (b) (Ahead Nero, and all the steps that entails...), never got (c) working (drivers missing/not working)...and (d) was a joke.
I think there's still innovation in Linux, just not in the broad strokes.
Also, Linux is a fantastic platform for innovation to take place. For example, Web 2.0 is powered by LAMP (to use a few of the favorite buzz words--there is some legitimate innovation there). It's relatively easy for individuals or small groups to create innovative new software in Linux.
Re: his Canadian relatives, they didn't say they were afraid to go to the U.S. because their health-care system was so bad, they said they'd be afraid to go to the U.S. without insurance, because the U.S. system is so expensive.
That's actually not an uncommon sentiment up here. Everybody has heard stories about Canadians in the U.S. forced to decide between going to an American hospital and paying a fortune, or making a dash for the border and free health care.
I think it's great that he can say what's on his mind without running it past lawyers and PR men.
I'd say there's more meat to his comment than Schwartz's. He's got some good points. Schwartz sorta addresses them, with a bunch of cooing about how they're going to do this and that. Great. But don't hold your breath. Which is all Linus really said.
Yeah! Free speech is better in America than it is in some other country, where it's really bad! Get it? So you shouldn't complain at all about losing yours bit by bit! Do you understand? You look like an idiot!
- Thank you, Star Wars, for inspiring a generation of crappy Sci-Fi space operas - Thank you, Seinfeld, for causing another cycle of lousy sitcoms, just when the idea seemed to have run it's course - Thank you, Doom, for all the dozens of shitty FPS that flooded the game industry in the mid-90's
All dated examples, but they've already run their course, so they're good examples. LotR will be responsible for lousy new fantasy, you can be sure; and Spiderman is to blame for all the lousy new superhero movies in theatres these days. Any classic will be imitated, badly; that doesn't mean you should stop making classics. IMHO, Neon Genesis is a really, really weird sorta classic. It's weirdness is classic, and oh-so-refreshing. I agree with theJML here; Anime is Japanese TV, nothing more or less; but when you're sick as hell of sitcoms, reality TV, home renovation shows, and music videos, discovering Anime is like reaching the New World and discovering chocolate and potatoes. It's still just food, but it's a welcome change from old salt pork and pickled cabbage.
I've spent hours struggling to get working 3D drivers on all my various Linux boxes, and it's a pain in the ass; I can only imagine how sweet it would be to have it work almost by default, like most of the other hardware in my system.
But there is a cost to that convenience, and no, it's not just ideological. Once you've let NVidia and ATI into the kernel, you'd have to let other graphics card manufacturers in. Currently open-sourced drivers would be closed, and any hardware company which was considering opening their driver source code would seriously reconsider. You'd end up with dozens or hundreds of proprietary drivers.
Then your fancy Linux kernel has become a mess of spaghetti code attaching wierd, non-standard, buggy, proprietary drivers together. All the bugs in the ATI and NVidia drivers (and their numbers are legion!) are now built in to every kernel--along with all the other proprietary drivers you'd have to allow. And the kernel developers would be helpless to fix them.
It would get messy.
The kernel developers know this. It's why suggestions that such-and-such a proprietary driver be put in the kernel (I mean come on, guys, you're just being pig-headed about this, it's bug-free, I'll keep it up to date, I promise) are shot down where they stand. Check out such suggestions on the LKML; they get pretty short shrift. And it's not like they're all fanatics; Linus himself has no problem with proprietary software (or had no problem; see the whole BitKeeper fiasco). It's almost entirely a practical decision.
The convenience just ain't worth it. As Linux continues to grow in popularity--and it will, built-in video drivers or not--either NVidia or ATI will buckle and release OSS drivers, or somebody else (opengraphics.org) will fill the niche. It'll happen. Eventually.
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Funny, and somewhat related story:
A (non-technical) friend and I were sitting around talking about cell phones. He was transferring numbers from his old phone to his new one. I was complaining about how frustrating that was, and wishing it could just be transferred automatically.
He says: "Yeah, hopefully someday they'll have the technology to do that..."
It actually rendered me speechless. The technology?
Well, yes, but what he (Linus) is really talking about is the development model. Do they need a debug tree, or not?
It's a bit silly for us care so much, though.
It's also why Windows is dying slowly. Attempting to be backwards-compatible with years of unmodifiable binary cruft, sucks.
In the short run, the no-binary-drivers rule sucks. It means you can't use Linux and play your games. It also means that Linux won't win the desktop war overnight (though I would argue that allowing binary drivers would have killed Linux before it could win). In the long run, it's a huge win.
There's practical reasons for the rule. Most of the kernel programmers are very--even notoriously--pragmatic. If they allow binary drivers...people will start making binary drivers. In theory, kernel developers wouldn't get blamed or harassed for problems with those drivers. In theory.
In fact, though, most of the major problems with Linux (wireless and graphics) occur in the two areas where binary drivers are common. You think that doesn't affect the kernel developers? They don't want to deal with that bullshit, and good for them. I'm willing to wait until the better model wins.
Well, if you write dates in a sane way (i.e. nicely sortable, i.e. 20080716, or 2008.07.16), then it's kind of irrelevant how you read it--major and minor numbers, or version numbers, it works out the same.
You have a point re: knowing the number of releases between, though.
But Linux doesn't rely on "customers".
If you are a customer, you're not interested in 'buying' the newest version of the kernel, anyway. You're more interested in the newest version of your distro, and they'll have the newest kernel (and brag about all the neato features it has, relative to the last one they packaged).
Kernel development is developer-oriented. This is as it should be.
*Bang!* /me kills tjstork. /me moves into tjstork's house.
"What, you wanna start bringing up the PAST? Don't be silly. This house is mine NOW."
BSD has been checked over by 'quality' eyes--when it was used as the basis of NeXT/OSX, for example. They missed it too.
If the code wasn't open (i.e. if there weren't many eyes), this bug would have remained forever, or at least until the code was dumped.
Hehehe, it's pretty sad when your 31337 t3ch kn0wl3dg3 consists of: "Open 'Add/Remove Programs', check the programs you want, hit 'Apply'."
Woah, woah, woah..
These kind of tests are useful for figuring out how to help people make the transition to Ubuntu, but suggesting that Skype is a model Linux app is scary. I hate Skype, especially on Linux.
The problem with using these kinds of tests to tweak your UI is that, well, you cater to the lowest common denominator. If you went and tried to 'fix' all the problems this girl had, and make things more in line with what she expected, you'd end up with...well, Windows. Of course. Since that's what she expected.
There's a bit of a balancing act here, I think. Yes, we should make it relatively easy to make the transition. We should make the distro as usable as possible--without sacrificing functionality. A lot of the stuff that she had trouble with (apt-get!) are some of the strongest features of Ubuntu/Linux. You just have to get used to them.
I think it's fair to expect users to meet you half way, rather than turning your distro into a Windows clone, or making it so brain dead it actually becomes slower/less comfortable for experienced users.
As an example of how far wrong this can go, whenever I see a Linux distro with a 'Start' button, I immediately dismiss it as doomed from the start. So far, I haven't been wrong.
Oh, one last note--I'm an experienced computer user, for years and years, and I've used Windows far more than I ever wanted. Yesterday, I was trying to a) find a bunch of files on my uncle's computer, b) burn them to a disk, c) put some MP3s on a player, and d) explain to my uncle and niece how to accomplish this.
I finally got through (a) (c:\Whatever and Settings\User-126y125071\Application Data\...?), and (b) (Ahead Nero, and all the steps that entails...), never got (c) working (drivers missing/not working)...and (d) was a joke.
THIS IS NOT BEHAVIOR TO EMULATE!
I think there's still innovation in Linux, just not in the broad strokes.
Also, Linux is a fantastic platform for innovation to take place. For example, Web 2.0 is powered by LAMP (to use a few of the favorite buzz words--there is some legitimate innovation there). It's relatively easy for individuals or small groups to create innovative new software in Linux.
Re: his Canadian relatives, they didn't say they were afraid to go to the U.S. because their health-care system was so bad, they said they'd be afraid to go to the U.S. without insurance, because the U.S. system is so expensive.
That's actually not an uncommon sentiment up here. Everybody has heard stories about Canadians in the U.S. forced to decide between going to an American hospital and paying a fortune, or making a dash for the border and free health care.
I think it's great that he can say what's on his mind without running it past lawyers and PR men.
I'd say there's more meat to his comment than Schwartz's. He's got some good points. Schwartz sorta addresses them, with a bunch of cooing about how they're going to do this and that. Great. But don't hold your breath. Which is all Linus really said.
Yeah! Free speech is better in America than it is in some other country, where it's really bad! Get it? So you shouldn't complain at all about losing yours bit by bit! Do you understand? You look like an idiot!
C'mon, now, be fair:
- Thank you, Star Wars, for inspiring a generation of crappy Sci-Fi space operas
- Thank you, Seinfeld, for causing another cycle of lousy sitcoms, just when the idea seemed to have run it's course
- Thank you, Doom, for all the dozens of shitty FPS that flooded the game industry in the mid-90's
All dated examples, but they've already run their course, so they're good examples. LotR will be responsible for lousy new fantasy, you can be sure; and Spiderman is to blame for all the lousy new superhero movies in theatres these days. Any classic will be imitated, badly; that doesn't mean you should stop making classics. IMHO, Neon Genesis is a really, really weird sorta classic. It's weirdness is classic, and oh-so-refreshing. I agree with theJML here; Anime is Japanese TV, nothing more or less; but when you're sick as hell of sitcoms, reality TV, home renovation shows, and music videos, discovering Anime is like reaching the New World and discovering chocolate and potatoes. It's still just food, but it's a welcome change from old salt pork and pickled cabbage.
But there is a cost to that convenience, and no, it's not just ideological. Once you've let NVidia and ATI into the kernel, you'd have to let other graphics card manufacturers in. Currently open-sourced drivers would be closed, and any hardware company which was considering opening their driver source code would seriously reconsider. You'd end up with dozens or hundreds of proprietary drivers.
Then your fancy Linux kernel has become a mess of spaghetti code attaching wierd, non-standard, buggy, proprietary drivers together. All the bugs in the ATI and NVidia drivers (and their numbers are legion!) are now built in to every kernel--along with all the other proprietary drivers you'd have to allow. And the kernel developers would be helpless to fix them.
It would get messy.
The kernel developers know this. It's why suggestions that such-and-such a proprietary driver be put in the kernel (I mean come on, guys, you're just being pig-headed about this, it's bug-free, I'll keep it up to date, I promise) are shot down where they stand. Check out such suggestions on the LKML; they get pretty short shrift. And it's not like they're all fanatics; Linus himself has no problem with proprietary software (or had no problem; see the whole BitKeeper fiasco). It's almost entirely a practical decision.
The convenience just ain't worth it. As Linux continues to grow in popularity--and it will, built-in video drivers or not--either NVidia or ATI will buckle and release OSS drivers, or somebody else (opengraphics.org) will fill the niche. It'll happen. Eventually.
He wants to 'keep it away' from the UN? I'm not sure he knows how the internet works.