Great, that's good, because that means the protocol can stay the same and other window servers can adopt it and hopefully be implemented in a better way. Of course, even if the protocol needed some new tweaks/features, it should be possible to maintain compatibility with programs using the older protocols. So I hope that developers working on X.org will continue tackling the issues and re-implementing sections that need to be redone. Otherwise, I hope new projects will succeed in it's place if they feel the need to re-implement the entire thing. Not a problem as long as the protocol/standards are followed so that users of the new windowing servers can continue to run their favorite programs, desktop environments, and windowing managers.
Oh and one last thing, it's sad that the Linux solution to solve the problem of program interoperability is to have things hard coded into separate "distros". That's part of the problem. The solution they are using in order to get programs communicating with one another is to pre-configure them, which means that by doing so a program package now suddenly has to be "wise" to that specific configuration on that specific distro, which also means that any changes one might make can then break everything, hence distros like Gentoo being extremely paranoid when it comes to configuration file changes. That is not the solution and not a good solution. You don't use brute force to get programs to play nicely with one another, you use intelligence, smart programming, APIs, systems that allow that communication to take place.
The keyboard is mightier than...the lock-in?
But seriously, it's stupid. The Free Desktop Foundation and others try to help make sure programs have this interoperability, and thanks to developers who give a shit about things like that and actually care about their users and care about seeing their programs actually adopted (even though sometimes it's more because they're the only solution around and not because the program is actually a good one or feature rich) I can run both Gnome and KDE apps at the same time, and I can load up any desktop environment, etc etc. So, you know, anyone saying that interoperability is impossible and you have to hard code a million apps into one giant non-modular stack of doom and call it a "distro" or whatnot needs to get out more and take a deep breath of real software freedom.
Ha, I didn't even notice, it's not labeled "troll" now, but I'm not surprised someone modded it that way. Big difference between trolling and constructive criticism, and as a Linux user and promoter, have no other intention than the latter.
I think a much better solution would be an internal packaging standard, then you wouldn't need so-called "third-party" packages, plus then they wouldn't have the problem of library overwriting, but for now that'd be better than nothing I guess. I'd really prefer it though if I could install both RPMs and DEBs for example on my distro. If both formats need an update so that's possible, great, do it. Coming up with a system to deal with name collisions and making it so multiple libraries can be installed side-by-side so there is no overwriting, etc etc, all that should have been done long ago. All Linux distros should be modular and intelligent enough to install any package provided it contains a minimum amount of information. Supplying this information would not be difficult, and package managers could still put the files where ever they preferred to provided there is a way for programs to get to the libraries and such that they need (i.e. using special paths, or whatever solution you want to for that).
What I'm trying to say is that it's completely possible, it's just software, and with software nothing is impossible, and a system which is designed to use intelligent APIs to allow for future improvements and as long as things are designed so that interoperability can take place, there's no problem. It's all very possible, and I wish the standards groups luck in coming up with systems to solve these problems and make things truly modular so that Linux/BSD/OpenSolaris/others open source software users will have true and total freedom that's also not limited by intelligence in command line and compilation know how, as long as you know how to use a mouse to click on something, and hell, in the future shouldn't even be limited by that.
You don't have to get a contract, you can buy phones outright without the subsidization from a contract, and, um, since they're selling the phones at a price they make money from, they'd make money. Then, since you'd choose a carrier for your service, that carrier would also make money. There should be hardware, software, and service providers, and that's it, and you should have a choice within each of those categories. That's the way both markets work, it's just that the U.S. market has be much slower to adopt such a competitive system and thus have milked consumers out of lots of money, while Europe was much faster to adopt openness and competition, possibly in part due to government standards and regulation, but I'm not certain.
Just Google Linux games, there are several sites. Currently there are a few semi-decent Linux games out there, but of course the best ones are still close source. It's slowly becoming more commonplace for companies to start supporting Wine more, so they can release a Mac version which is just their Windows version bundled inside Wine/Cider, and at the same time also support Linux users as well. I can install and play Spore easily in Linux for instance, just had to make sure Pulse Audio wasn't running otherwise I'd get crackles. So, currently it seems that since the Windows API is now a mostly cross-platform API, even though it's still a closed one and controlled by Microsoft, that it's the single API of choice for simplified game development. Of course I hope that changes in the future and it will eventually since it's silly loading lots of duplicate libraries that do the same thing on a system, but whatever works. Not like porting to Linux is all that difficult any way if you're already using OpenGL to begin with.
Any way, so yeah gaming on Linux does exist, even for some of the commercially pushed big/common/popular/trendy/bleeding edge titles, but it still has a lot of catching up to do of course, and it's happening slowly. I'd just like certain things to be implemented to speed things up like a general further improvement of the desktop and desktop apps, and easy cross-distro app installation.
It's also what the open source community gets for not having at least one actual cross-distro packaging standard. With the push for ODF and other great standards that are available for use on Linux and other OSes, I'm very sick and tired of distro companies promoting that kind of lock-in. All package managers should be compatible with at least one packaging standard, but ideally all the standards/formats which exist, and any standards that exist which can't be easily adopted in all the most common package managers and be made cross-distro need to just die off until they are more friendly to the community which should be all about getting along and interoperability, especially within open source platforms.
Not that you can't have shitty close and open source software, but yes, it has more opportunity for success given the pool size of potential developers.
I just think it's so lame of Nvidia and AMD both to keep supporting their close source drivers. The only reason doing so helps them to sell hardware is because they can artificially limit and control their cards and specific game title performance via the easily-updateable driver. They just aren't willing to lose that source of income quite yet and compete more directly. Of course, even if they did, they can still artificially limit their cards on the hardware itself, and now that fully-programmable GPUs are coming out, drivers are going to lose most of their control over the cards any way I'd guess, but hopefully I'm wrong and the opposite will happen. Already though, for AMD cards, the drivers have shifted over to using the on-board software stack instead of accessing the frame buffers and such directly, which gives up that control.
Some of the programs you mentioned plan on being X.org-compatible from what I understand. If so, that'd basically be the same thing as making a "new" X.org. But, it would help adoption to keep the name.
If you buy a phone and a contract, and you know the terms and conditions, please don't think I'm interested in your 'it oughta be...' complaints. If you didn't read/grok the deal, sorry. This is why I do not consider Verizon when I look at carriers. And why I resist AT&T and Sprint. T-Mobile is the least offensive of the bunch IMHO.
U.S. users shouldn't complain about the lock-in that they face, yet you're facing the same challenges they are, you say your only option really is T-Mobile but even that isn't satisfactory for you? The fact is, users DO have a reason to complain, and you just proved it. Lack of choice. Monopolies are real, lack of competition is real, so please by all means, get out there and complain and support the devices which let you do what you want.
This market is anciently far behind all because of greedy monopolies. The U.S. could have had unlocked phones ages ago where you just pay for your connection time or amount of data and the hardware, and that's it. I blame all the typical causes of such, like patents and the government selling out to mama bell and refusing to help make teleco competition actually exist. Why is it that Japan often leads the world in IT advancements? I think it's because it doesn't follow the same fucked up system the U.S. does, at least not yet. If you think this is all more due to an attitude problem than an economic one, because you think U.S. consumers are stupider or expect less (which I'd also partially agree with), then all the more reason to promote complaining.
My next phone is going to be the most usable, most unlocked phone I can find that will let me do the things I absolutely have to have in a phone. By getting it I will be happily sending a message to the telecos of the kind of product I'm looking for, that I want the same freedom I get on my desktops and servers. Sure, OpenMoko may not be ready quite yet, but the next version may be and I'm certainly interested in it's feature list more than any other phone out there currently.
On one last note, I'd like the ability to easily install any of the open source GUIs for phones. Will be nicest if I can create an X session and select which one I want, just like choosing between Gnome, KDE, Enlightenment, etc. That way, no matter what hardware you're running, you can have the option between either lightweight or more intensive but possibly prettier interfaces. Total freedom.
The LSB really needs to change it's position as a pre-installed program enforcer to a normal standards body. Standards bodies should not try to make users have certain programs installed by default, they should promote and help out with the APIs for software that is common, has great potential, and popular, or otherwise where it's needed. They should be vying for program interoperability. Then, if I need a newer version of Java to be installed, or another simultaneous version to be installed, or whatever I want, I can do that using dependencies and and as long as I have the freedom to easily install any Java package I want to. Then, why bother making it's existence a standard? If it is good, and it's something users want, they will come.
The LSB should really take a chapter from the pages of the Free Desktop, W3C, or other standards bodies that actually function well and help provide that program interoperability.
What's that? I ran iotop but it's not installed, but I can run apt-get install iotop to get it? Gosh, that's difficult, I dunno if I can handle doing that with all those letters and commands and shit. If you want a certain program to come default in your installs, that's what rolling your own "distro" is for, not that there aren't a hundred other methods of software deployment you can use.
Instead, XP and others are in higher demand, that's the main reason MS hasn't canned it. Most computers will skip Vista or head someplace else. XP is being sold as an upgrade in many places, which many times is a scam because the customer ends up buying both OSes.
The statistics for running Vista copies in the wild is abysmally tiny compared to what they wanted. I'm pretty sure they were fully expecting Vista use to be around 70% or so by now, but instead XP is 70% and Vista is somewhere lost in the 10-20% range. I, too, am shocked, because like you say, they always try hard to force it on everyone, but that just didn't work this time. Finally the mules have bucked back hard enough to make them listen.
Eventually of course they'll break under the pressure that Linux is building up, but as always it still has it's problems to be worked out. Cross-distro application handling, I'm looking at you, among other things.
You mean, they decided to release their close source driver as open source? "Binary" isn't a useful term, all programs are source code before they are made into binaries, and they must be turned into binaries to be run, it's just the current state of a file and that's not what matters. The file's license is what's important.
Yes, running binaries is soooooo insecure, because of course you go through every line of source code before you compile your programs to make sure there's nothing malicious in them. Sorry, but that isn't my idea of security even though that's one option. I can download and run binary packages if I want to, and there's nothing impossible about doing so. You can *already* do that, what I'm saying is they should be *packages* instead of binaries so you can easily remove and update them if you want to. There is nothing impossible about that, so stop living in the past and think about what new users want for a change.
I can install programs from the huge apt-get application universe
Huge, but still fragmented and not huge enough, your repo should be all of Sourceforge and everything else. You shouldn't have to live in the walled garden of your distro's repository. In Windows and OS X, packages are always installable for the most part. After Alien is integrated into the existing common package managers; or the managers are made compatible with RPMs, DEBs, and others; or the formats are upgraded so they can be more easily adopted by the existing managers; or at least one new format is created that is easy for the managers to adopt, this will continue to be a problem for Linux users, the ones who don't want to spend all day looking for dependencies and compiling software just to run a program. Compatibility with the existing Linux software ecosystem, while being mandatory, doesn't mean much to normal computer users when they can't click to install software from some developer's website because the developer gave up trying to support the thousands of distros who thought they were doing everyone a favor by requiring different packages for every version they put out.
Then, users will finally be able to update their system directly from the developers who put out those security updates instead of waiting for their distro to do it for them, because the devs will finally be able to support them directly because they're on GNU/Linux, and everyone will be much more free. The distro companies may not like that freedom very much, but tough for them, it's open source software so they will have to deal instead of trying to profit off that aspect of distro lock-in.
Sorry, by "Microsoft has copied a lot of stuff they don't own" I meant that they didn't make with the developers they have. But, lots of companies buy out other companies to get bigger, MS has just been really good at doing so...and kudos to their legal department for finding every way in the book (and not in the book) to be dicks.
How about everyone copies everyone eventually, especially with software. Yeah there's a lot of obvious examples of places where Microsoft bought this company or Novell bought that one, and they integrated the company's software into their own stuff. Obviously their statement wasn't "completely true", rarely anything can be so that's always an easy point of argument, Microsoft has copied a lot of stuff they don't own, and other companies do it too.
But, looking past all that, ultimately most "new ideas" were all around a very very long time ago and are now simply just put together in more complex ways to add a little more usability here or feature there. It's one argument among many against software patents. It's too bad the rule of "has to be non-obvious to someone in that field" rule has been completely disregarded by the patent office.
OSS going in radically new neat directions surely will help, though of course other companies will "steal" the idea and claim "patent rights" on it and then turn around and try to sue the original developers no doubt. I believe though that even if OSS did only duplicate commercial software and do nothing else, obviously it being the cheaper solution means it will get a piece of the action. Why do you think MS has over one million software patents?
...shall get beaten with a Microsoft Bob for Dummies book.
Most all the software "ideas" MS has programmed has either been copied/taken or bought out, and regardless of that because that's a stupid topic, it's all just software and math, and there is no "property" definitely not on what the software can do, because software should only have copyrights, if that, and software patents can go to hell.
So, stop perpetuating terminology from companies that want you to support software patents by using terms like "our technology" or "IP". It's just fucking software and it's nothing new any way. You're still drawing pictures with crayons. Wake me up when developers create programs by strapping on brain scanners.
Thanks, however the only once I know working on this is the Burgdorf Packaging API which is a low-level solution being sponsored by the LSB, and higher level solutions like Zero Install and Klik. Klik is very self-contained by using program "images" so it has sandboxing, and several other features. Zero Install uses "feeds" or URLs so it can get automatic program updates right from the source, and has various other features as well and will have sandboxing too eventually. Both systems are completely cross-distro and completely avoid dependency conflicts (something that should never ever happen if the package format was made well). Awww, you have two versions of libraryX you want to install but they dun wanna be both installed? It's called name one libraryX1.0 and one libraryX1.1 or something, sheesh. =P And tell the library maintainers to use a more stable API so that both aren't required! ^^
Any way, yeah, everyone, both developers and users alike, would radically benefit from having actually accessible Linux software, you could actually share the damn stuff for one thing with your friends no matter what "distro" they are running. One problem I think there is is that a distro would be more of a collection of software is all, and maybe a certain way the package manager was configured or the directory structure was configured or whatnot (something that should be easily changeable), but there would no longer be such segregation/proprietization of software. You like the network applet program Ubuntu uses and want it in Fedora? OK, well since it's all open source and it's all Linux, it should be easy to install it, if there were cross-distro binary packages, otherwise good luck compiling with all those dependencies, and if you're a "normal" user you're screwed and your choice is whether or not to switch to Ubuntu, and I think that's what Canonical and other companies want, and that shouldn't be the way things are, that problem should not exist when it's all open source software.
Linux use will increase much faster after this happens, and it will happen eventually.
No I'm not talking about that and I shouldn't have been so vague. Whether or not you have to compile modules or instead have binary compatibility so you can just plug them in has nothing to do with kernel space vs. user space and such. If you want stuff to stay in kernel space and make users put in their passwords to install stuff, so be it, but make stable APIs/ABIs so that good modularity exists and users can install drivers or configure their kernel without having to compile, something that should be done once by the developers unless other users/devs want to see their code and want to compile stuff themselves. Modularity means that devs can more easily target certain areas and divide and conquer work, and it means having more points that have stable APIs and ABIs for greater flexibility and just, an easier Linux experience. What if I don't want to compile a patch, what if I just want to throw it in there, and I don't want to have to rely and wait on a distro repository compiler to do it for me but instead get it directly from the source? I'd rather get my kernel updates from the source, as well as all my other software, instead of being walled in unless I go compile something myself.
Not to mention all the electricity it'd save from having only a few computers in the world doing the work to compile. And...um...they use trees for firewood, so, save a tree! Because all good movements should end up saving trees.;) But seriously, recompilation is really inefficient, so it shouldn't be required by an OS, you could do better things with your CPU like the @Home projects.:P
I was referring to two things here, not having to compile modules, actual real modularity on the binary level for true "modules", and also anything that's not a Linux module, meaning settings or whatnot that have to be compiled into the kernel, instead of being switches and modules that you can throw in and out of the kernel. I don't think it's *all* modular, is what I'm saying, so any increase in that helps by making the kernel easier to work on because you can have definite targets and functionality, as well as making it easier to swap stuff in and out.
In other words, actual driver modularity! So users can actually download and install drivers from off the intarwebz without having to compile them and Linux can actually, I dunno, be usable for 99% of users! Brilliant!
I was referring to two things here, not having to compile modules, actual real modularity on the binary level for true "modules", and also anything that's not a Linux module, meaning settings or whatnot that have to be compiled into the kernel, instead of being switches and modules that you can throw in and out of the kernel. I don't think it's *all* modular, is what I'm saying, so any increase in that helps by making the kernel easier to work on because you can have definite targets and functionality, as well as making it easier to swap stuff in and out.
In other words, actual driver modularity! So users can actually download and install drivers from off the intarwebz without having to compile them and Linux can actually, I dunno, be usable for 99% of users! Brilliant!
I was referring to two things here, not having to compile modules, actual real modularity on the binary level for true "modules", and also anything that's not a Linux module, meaning settings or whatnot that have to be compiled into the kernel, instead of being switches and modules that you can throw in and out of the kernel. I don't think it's *all* modular, is what I'm saying, so any increase in that helps by making the kernel easier to work on because you can have definite targets and functionality, as well as making it easier to swap stuff in and out.
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Great, that's good, because that means the protocol can stay the same and other window servers can adopt it and hopefully be implemented in a better way. Of course, even if the protocol needed some new tweaks/features, it should be possible to maintain compatibility with programs using the older protocols. So I hope that developers working on X.org will continue tackling the issues and re-implementing sections that need to be redone. Otherwise, I hope new projects will succeed in it's place if they feel the need to re-implement the entire thing. Not a problem as long as the protocol/standards are followed so that users of the new windowing servers can continue to run their favorite programs, desktop environments, and windowing managers.
Oh and one last thing, it's sad that the Linux solution to solve the problem of program interoperability is to have things hard coded into separate "distros". That's part of the problem. The solution they are using in order to get programs communicating with one another is to pre-configure them, which means that by doing so a program package now suddenly has to be "wise" to that specific configuration on that specific distro, which also means that any changes one might make can then break everything, hence distros like Gentoo being extremely paranoid when it comes to configuration file changes. That is not the solution and not a good solution. You don't use brute force to get programs to play nicely with one another, you use intelligence, smart programming, APIs, systems that allow that communication to take place.
The keyboard is mightier than...the lock-in?
But seriously, it's stupid. The Free Desktop Foundation and others try to help make sure programs have this interoperability, and thanks to developers who give a shit about things like that and actually care about their users and care about seeing their programs actually adopted (even though sometimes it's more because they're the only solution around and not because the program is actually a good one or feature rich) I can run both Gnome and KDE apps at the same time, and I can load up any desktop environment, etc etc. So, you know, anyone saying that interoperability is impossible and you have to hard code a million apps into one giant non-modular stack of doom and call it a "distro" or whatnot needs to get out more and take a deep breath of real software freedom.
Ha, I didn't even notice, it's not labeled "troll" now, but I'm not surprised someone modded it that way. Big difference between trolling and constructive criticism, and as a Linux user and promoter, have no other intention than the latter.
I think a much better solution would be an internal packaging standard, then you wouldn't need so-called "third-party" packages, plus then they wouldn't have the problem of library overwriting, but for now that'd be better than nothing I guess. I'd really prefer it though if I could install both RPMs and DEBs for example on my distro. If both formats need an update so that's possible, great, do it. Coming up with a system to deal with name collisions and making it so multiple libraries can be installed side-by-side so there is no overwriting, etc etc, all that should have been done long ago. All Linux distros should be modular and intelligent enough to install any package provided it contains a minimum amount of information. Supplying this information would not be difficult, and package managers could still put the files where ever they preferred to provided there is a way for programs to get to the libraries and such that they need (i.e. using special paths, or whatever solution you want to for that).
What I'm trying to say is that it's completely possible, it's just software, and with software nothing is impossible, and a system which is designed to use intelligent APIs to allow for future improvements and as long as things are designed so that interoperability can take place, there's no problem. It's all very possible, and I wish the standards groups luck in coming up with systems to solve these problems and make things truly modular so that Linux/BSD/OpenSolaris/others open source software users will have true and total freedom that's also not limited by intelligence in command line and compilation know how, as long as you know how to use a mouse to click on something, and hell, in the future shouldn't even be limited by that.
You don't have to get a contract, you can buy phones outright without the subsidization from a contract, and, um, since they're selling the phones at a price they make money from, they'd make money. Then, since you'd choose a carrier for your service, that carrier would also make money. There should be hardware, software, and service providers, and that's it, and you should have a choice within each of those categories. That's the way both markets work, it's just that the U.S. market has be much slower to adopt such a competitive system and thus have milked consumers out of lots of money, while Europe was much faster to adopt openness and competition, possibly in part due to government standards and regulation, but I'm not certain.
Just Google Linux games, there are several sites. Currently there are a few semi-decent Linux games out there, but of course the best ones are still close source. It's slowly becoming more commonplace for companies to start supporting Wine more, so they can release a Mac version which is just their Windows version bundled inside Wine/Cider, and at the same time also support Linux users as well. I can install and play Spore easily in Linux for instance, just had to make sure Pulse Audio wasn't running otherwise I'd get crackles. So, currently it seems that since the Windows API is now a mostly cross-platform API, even though it's still a closed one and controlled by Microsoft, that it's the single API of choice for simplified game development. Of course I hope that changes in the future and it will eventually since it's silly loading lots of duplicate libraries that do the same thing on a system, but whatever works. Not like porting to Linux is all that difficult any way if you're already using OpenGL to begin with.
Any way, so yeah gaming on Linux does exist, even for some of the commercially pushed big/common/popular/trendy/bleeding edge titles, but it still has a lot of catching up to do of course, and it's happening slowly. I'd just like certain things to be implemented to speed things up like a general further improvement of the desktop and desktop apps, and easy cross-distro app installation.
It's also what the open source community gets for not having at least one actual cross-distro packaging standard. With the push for ODF and other great standards that are available for use on Linux and other OSes, I'm very sick and tired of distro companies promoting that kind of lock-in. All package managers should be compatible with at least one packaging standard, but ideally all the standards/formats which exist, and any standards that exist which can't be easily adopted in all the most common package managers and be made cross-distro need to just die off until they are more friendly to the community which should be all about getting along and interoperability, especially within open source platforms.
Not that you can't have shitty close and open source software, but yes, it has more opportunity for success given the pool size of potential developers.
I just think it's so lame of Nvidia and AMD both to keep supporting their close source drivers. The only reason doing so helps them to sell hardware is because they can artificially limit and control their cards and specific game title performance via the easily-updateable driver. They just aren't willing to lose that source of income quite yet and compete more directly. Of course, even if they did, they can still artificially limit their cards on the hardware itself, and now that fully-programmable GPUs are coming out, drivers are going to lose most of their control over the cards any way I'd guess, but hopefully I'm wrong and the opposite will happen. Already though, for AMD cards, the drivers have shifted over to using the on-board software stack instead of accessing the frame buffers and such directly, which gives up that control.
Some of the programs you mentioned plan on being X.org-compatible from what I understand. If so, that'd basically be the same thing as making a "new" X.org. But, it would help adoption to keep the name.
If you buy a phone and a contract, and you know the terms and conditions, please don't think I'm interested in your 'it oughta be...' complaints. If you didn't read/grok the deal, sorry. This is why I do not consider Verizon when I look at carriers. And why I resist AT&T and Sprint. T-Mobile is the least offensive of the bunch IMHO.
U.S. users shouldn't complain about the lock-in that they face, yet you're facing the same challenges they are, you say your only option really is T-Mobile but even that isn't satisfactory for you? The fact is, users DO have a reason to complain, and you just proved it. Lack of choice. Monopolies are real, lack of competition is real, so please by all means, get out there and complain and support the devices which let you do what you want.
This market is anciently far behind all because of greedy monopolies. The U.S. could have had unlocked phones ages ago where you just pay for your connection time or amount of data and the hardware, and that's it. I blame all the typical causes of such, like patents and the government selling out to mama bell and refusing to help make teleco competition actually exist. Why is it that Japan often leads the world in IT advancements? I think it's because it doesn't follow the same fucked up system the U.S. does, at least not yet. If you think this is all more due to an attitude problem than an economic one, because you think U.S. consumers are stupider or expect less (which I'd also partially agree with), then all the more reason to promote complaining.
My next phone is going to be the most usable, most unlocked phone I can find that will let me do the things I absolutely have to have in a phone. By getting it I will be happily sending a message to the telecos of the kind of product I'm looking for, that I want the same freedom I get on my desktops and servers. Sure, OpenMoko may not be ready quite yet, but the next version may be and I'm certainly interested in it's feature list more than any other phone out there currently.
On one last note, I'd like the ability to easily install any of the open source GUIs for phones. Will be nicest if I can create an X session and select which one I want, just like choosing between Gnome, KDE, Enlightenment, etc. That way, no matter what hardware you're running, you can have the option between either lightweight or more intensive but possibly prettier interfaces. Total freedom.
The LSB really needs to change it's position as a pre-installed program enforcer to a normal standards body. Standards bodies should not try to make users have certain programs installed by default, they should promote and help out with the APIs for software that is common, has great potential, and popular, or otherwise where it's needed. They should be vying for program interoperability. Then, if I need a newer version of Java to be installed, or another simultaneous version to be installed, or whatever I want, I can do that using dependencies and and as long as I have the freedom to easily install any Java package I want to. Then, why bother making it's existence a standard? If it is good, and it's something users want, they will come.
The LSB should really take a chapter from the pages of the Free Desktop, W3C, or other standards bodies that actually function well and help provide that program interoperability.
What's that? I ran iotop but it's not installed, but I can run apt-get install iotop to get it? Gosh, that's difficult, I dunno if I can handle doing that with all those letters and commands and shit. If you want a certain program to come default in your installs, that's what rolling your own "distro" is for, not that there aren't a hundred other methods of software deployment you can use.
Well, they will try to make all that go away with Vista 2 (aka Win7). =P
Maybe if they add more sparklies it'll finally be awesome........nah.
Instead, XP and others are in higher demand, that's the main reason MS hasn't canned it. Most computers will skip Vista or head someplace else. XP is being sold as an upgrade in many places, which many times is a scam because the customer ends up buying both OSes.
The statistics for running Vista copies in the wild is abysmally tiny compared to what they wanted. I'm pretty sure they were fully expecting Vista use to be around 70% or so by now, but instead XP is 70% and Vista is somewhere lost in the 10-20% range. I, too, am shocked, because like you say, they always try hard to force it on everyone, but that just didn't work this time. Finally the mules have bucked back hard enough to make them listen.
Eventually of course they'll break under the pressure that Linux is building up, but as always it still has it's problems to be worked out. Cross-distro application handling, I'm looking at you, among other things.
Erm, no that wasn't a trolling comment, that's actually my honest opinion. I believe in total software freedom for Linux users, so sue me.
You mean, they decided to release their close source driver as open source? "Binary" isn't a useful term, all programs are source code before they are made into binaries, and they must be turned into binaries to be run, it's just the current state of a file and that's not what matters. The file's license is what's important.
So stop using that term like that, betch!
Yes, running binaries is soooooo insecure, because of course you go through every line of source code before you compile your programs to make sure there's nothing malicious in them. Sorry, but that isn't my idea of security even though that's one option. I can download and run binary packages if I want to, and there's nothing impossible about doing so. You can *already* do that, what I'm saying is they should be *packages* instead of binaries so you can easily remove and update them if you want to. There is nothing impossible about that, so stop living in the past and think about what new users want for a change.
I can install programs from the huge apt-get application universe
Huge, but still fragmented and not huge enough, your repo should be all of Sourceforge and everything else. You shouldn't have to live in the walled garden of your distro's repository. In Windows and OS X, packages are always installable for the most part. After Alien is integrated into the existing common package managers; or the managers are made compatible with RPMs, DEBs, and others; or the formats are upgraded so they can be more easily adopted by the existing managers; or at least one new format is created that is easy for the managers to adopt, this will continue to be a problem for Linux users, the ones who don't want to spend all day looking for dependencies and compiling software just to run a program. Compatibility with the existing Linux software ecosystem, while being mandatory, doesn't mean much to normal computer users when they can't click to install software from some developer's website because the developer gave up trying to support the thousands of distros who thought they were doing everyone a favor by requiring different packages for every version they put out.
Then, users will finally be able to update their system directly from the developers who put out those security updates instead of waiting for their distro to do it for them, because the devs will finally be able to support them directly because they're on GNU/Linux, and everyone will be much more free. The distro companies may not like that freedom very much, but tough for them, it's open source software so they will have to deal instead of trying to profit off that aspect of distro lock-in.
Sorry, by "Microsoft has copied a lot of stuff they don't own" I meant that they didn't make with the developers they have. But, lots of companies buy out other companies to get bigger, MS has just been really good at doing so...and kudos to their legal department for finding every way in the book (and not in the book) to be dicks.
How about everyone copies everyone eventually, especially with software. Yeah there's a lot of obvious examples of places where Microsoft bought this company or Novell bought that one, and they integrated the company's software into their own stuff. Obviously their statement wasn't "completely true", rarely anything can be so that's always an easy point of argument, Microsoft has copied a lot of stuff they don't own, and other companies do it too.
But, looking past all that, ultimately most "new ideas" were all around a very very long time ago and are now simply just put together in more complex ways to add a little more usability here or feature there. It's one argument among many against software patents. It's too bad the rule of "has to be non-obvious to someone in that field" rule has been completely disregarded by the patent office.
OSS going in radically new neat directions surely will help, though of course other companies will "steal" the idea and claim "patent rights" on it and then turn around and try to sue the original developers no doubt. I believe though that even if OSS did only duplicate commercial software and do nothing else, obviously it being the cheaper solution means it will get a piece of the action. Why do you think MS has over one million software patents?
...shall get beaten with a Microsoft Bob for Dummies book.
Most all the software "ideas" MS has programmed has either been copied/taken or bought out, and regardless of that because that's a stupid topic, it's all just software and math, and there is no "property" definitely not on what the software can do, because software should only have copyrights, if that, and software patents can go to hell.
So, stop perpetuating terminology from companies that want you to support software patents by using terms like "our technology" or "IP". It's just fucking software and it's nothing new any way. You're still drawing pictures with crayons. Wake me up when developers create programs by strapping on brain scanners.
Thanks, however the only once I know working on this is the Burgdorf Packaging API which is a low-level solution being sponsored by the LSB, and higher level solutions like Zero Install and Klik. Klik is very self-contained by using program "images" so it has sandboxing, and several other features. Zero Install uses "feeds" or URLs so it can get automatic program updates right from the source, and has various other features as well and will have sandboxing too eventually. Both systems are completely cross-distro and completely avoid dependency conflicts (something that should never ever happen if the package format was made well). Awww, you have two versions of libraryX you want to install but they dun wanna be both installed? It's called name one libraryX1.0 and one libraryX1.1 or something, sheesh. =P And tell the library maintainers to use a more stable API so that both aren't required! ^^
Any way, yeah, everyone, both developers and users alike, would radically benefit from having actually accessible Linux software, you could actually share the damn stuff for one thing with your friends no matter what "distro" they are running. One problem I think there is is that a distro would be more of a collection of software is all, and maybe a certain way the package manager was configured or the directory structure was configured or whatnot (something that should be easily changeable), but there would no longer be such segregation/proprietization of software. You like the network applet program Ubuntu uses and want it in Fedora? OK, well since it's all open source and it's all Linux, it should be easy to install it, if there were cross-distro binary packages, otherwise good luck compiling with all those dependencies, and if you're a "normal" user you're screwed and your choice is whether or not to switch to Ubuntu, and I think that's what Canonical and other companies want, and that shouldn't be the way things are, that problem should not exist when it's all open source software.
Linux use will increase much faster after this happens, and it will happen eventually.
No I'm not talking about that and I shouldn't have been so vague. Whether or not you have to compile modules or instead have binary compatibility so you can just plug them in has nothing to do with kernel space vs. user space and such. If you want stuff to stay in kernel space and make users put in their passwords to install stuff, so be it, but make stable APIs/ABIs so that good modularity exists and users can install drivers or configure their kernel without having to compile, something that should be done once by the developers unless other users/devs want to see their code and want to compile stuff themselves. Modularity means that devs can more easily target certain areas and divide and conquer work, and it means having more points that have stable APIs and ABIs for greater flexibility and just, an easier Linux experience. What if I don't want to compile a patch, what if I just want to throw it in there, and I don't want to have to rely and wait on a distro repository compiler to do it for me but instead get it directly from the source? I'd rather get my kernel updates from the source, as well as all my other software, instead of being walled in unless I go compile something myself.
;) But seriously, recompilation is really inefficient, so it shouldn't be required by an OS, you could do better things with your CPU like the @Home projects. :P
Not to mention all the electricity it'd save from having only a few computers in the world doing the work to compile. And...um...they use trees for firewood, so, save a tree! Because all good movements should end up saving trees.
Yes, because not having to require normal users (99% of users) to compile is outrageous! Then Linux might actually get adopted by the masses!
:P
Wouldn't want that, especially if you're just using Linux to "be different".
I was referring to two things here, not having to compile modules, actual real modularity on the binary level for true "modules", and also anything that's not a Linux module, meaning settings or whatnot that have to be compiled into the kernel, instead of being switches and modules that you can throw in and out of the kernel. I don't think it's *all* modular, is what I'm saying, so any increase in that helps by making the kernel easier to work on because you can have definite targets and functionality, as well as making it easier to swap stuff in and out.
In other words, actual driver modularity! So users can actually download and install drivers from off the intarwebz without having to compile them and Linux can actually, I dunno, be usable for 99% of users! Brilliant!
I was referring to two things here, not having to compile modules, actual real modularity on the binary level for true "modules", and also anything that's not a Linux module, meaning settings or whatnot that have to be compiled into the kernel, instead of being switches and modules that you can throw in and out of the kernel. I don't think it's *all* modular, is what I'm saying, so any increase in that helps by making the kernel easier to work on because you can have definite targets and functionality, as well as making it easier to swap stuff in and out.
In other words, actual driver modularity! So users can actually download and install drivers from off the intarwebz without having to compile them and Linux can actually, I dunno, be usable for 99% of users! Brilliant!
I was referring to two things here, not having to compile modules, actual real modularity on the binary level for true "modules", and also anything that's not a Linux module, meaning settings or whatnot that have to be compiled into the kernel, instead of being switches and modules that you can throw in and out of the kernel. I don't think it's *all* modular, is what I'm saying, so any increase in that helps by making the kernel easier to work on because you can have definite targets and functionality, as well as making it easier to swap stuff in and out.