"For the last 12 months, I have used Ubuntu 8.04, 8.10, and 9.04 as my primary OSes. I remain a very happy Linux convert, but I worry that Ubuntu is being unevenly developed. Certain areas have seen great improvements over the last 12 months, while other areas have languished or been largely ignored. The purpose of this article is not to whine or rant, but to bring some perspective to the evolution (or lack thereof) that Ubuntu has experienced between versions 8.04 and 9.04."
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2007-02-17
Well i don't think even Gnome 3 will change anything. The gnome-shell is a rather convoluted concept that makes very little sense to me and does very little to improve the actual look of Gnome.
Ever since I moved to OSX. Ubuntu and Linux in general is just not that interesting more, considering Ubuntu used to be my primary desktop, thats big. Every year we get promises of great features that will improve the desktop experience and every year only about a quarter of those features make it, with a note that it will make it in ubuntu +! . I just d;t understand why in the Linux community with such diverse programmers and users we haven't come across a real desktop oriented distro. One that drops bloated low moving projects like X and develop their own window server like Apple did. The papers and technology are out there, it can be done. How long was xegl supposed to come out and change the X windows landscape, instead we went with aiglx.
Instead we have distros regurgitating each others work with maybe a different theme or two and some differences in configuration. Its really frustrating to see Linux practically standing still due to their adherence to an aging architecture, that was not meant to be used on a desktop config in the first place, and see all of these work arounds that they have to implement to get it to behave and look like other OSes. Both Windows and OSX have state of the art windowing and display manager aimed primarily at the desktop, where these things actually matter. Why can't Linux do the same? Why can't we get rid if X or do like OSX and run it in a layer if need be for compatibility, and focus on a real solution for a desktop windowing, display server.
Member since:2006-12-22
I might argue with you that being "aging architecture" is a bit odd to say but technology inside in a lot of places is almost to much improved companies that give other products but costing you money.
I will compare OS X with GNOME (2, 3). OS X 10.0 till 10.6 uses a mix between two APIs: Carbon & Cocoa. First is plain C++, second is Objective C. On GNOME you have a C core which is arguably OOP oriented, non garbage collected language written in C, and a lot of other languages binded on top. JavaScript, C# (from Mono), are some of them.
Window Manager of OS X is great as it does not run for a lot of time OpenOffice as it was odd to port the codebase. As of today the problem is mostly fixed, but Compiz expose a similar capabilities even uses a layer with different technology that you may see it odd.
Quartz 2D API is equivalent with Cairo (first is PDF based, second is PostScript based). CoreAnimation is equivalent with Clutter (will be a part of GNOME 3). CoreVideo and QuickTime is equivalent with GStreamer.
Want an antialiased desktop, is there, from GNOME 2.16 if I remember well. Want a midleware support for events like power off, is there (DBUS). Want ZeroConf/Avahi/Bonjour is there. Want IPod, mostly will work.
The big revolution over evolution is that right now Linux is fairly mature and it's target is still to compete to try to replace expensive unixes and low end Windowses and the looks are not the most important thing. But also, is hugely hard to replace a codebase that compiles in 8-9 hours (on Gentoo regarding GNOME) and to try to hack a newer way to think things.
Pixel perfect graphics are for sure a part of OS X and OS X in particular is one of the desktops that drives GNOME forward as look and feel, but GNOME in it's own eventually with 3.0 will bring to masses a cleaner infrastructure, and hopefully a GNOME 3.2 or 3.4 will be in an usable state and will bring all beauties that we "desperately" need.
Member since:2008-12-26
It's not like the guys that tweak the color theme for distros are the same guys that could hack together a window server that would support existing software.
And, themes are important. The most revolutionary thing about WinXP was the theme and default background. Apart from that, it was just a slightly faster Win2k.
http://icps.u-strasbg.fr/~marchesin/nvdri/fosdem1.pdf
Because it would be a stupid and expensive move at this time. That's not even near to where the problems currently are.
The actual problems now are:
- Lazy OEM's not verifying their devices with Linux distros, or contributing required modifications/drivers.
- Duplicated effort b/w KDE & Gnome (though, we can live with that). General failure of "freedesktop" project...
- Bad video drivers
- Bugs
Overall, all of this will be solved in due time. Time is the enemy of Microsoft and friend of FOSS (and to lesser extent, Apple).
Member since:
2006-08-15
But then again, I represent a minority here where wallpapers are starting to be a new metric to evaluate operating systems. Over and out and sarcasm off.
[1] The editor and not the original author.
It's not only about the wallpaper, it's about how the entire thing looks and feels, it's about the entire DE.
For some people GNOME might be better and for some it might be KDE etc.