Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 15th Jan 2010 23:06 UTC
"The Ubuntu development community announced today the availability of Ubuntu 10.04 alpha 2, a new prerelease of the next major version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. This alpha is the first Ubuntu release to completely omit HAL, a Linux hardware abstraction layer that is being deprecated in favor of DeviceKit."
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RE: Linux vs Windows dev platform
by nt_jerkface on Mon 18th Jan 2010 05:43
in reply to "Linux vs Windows dev platform"
Member since:2009-08-26
Ed W. Cogburn mostly nailed it when he said that it is mostly about the market share.
Companies will endure a lot of API annoyances and subcomponent churn if the market is worth it.
Companies will endure a lot of API annoyances and subcomponent churn if the market is worth it.
So how do you build your market with an unstable platform?
Several remarks about Linux component changes seem to imply that Windows is not having it's own comparable changes. That is silly.
I've lost count of the number of database interfaces MS published
Cue talk about Windows breaking interfaces between decades while trying to ignore the fact that Linux does it annually.
Going by history you can build a sound app in Windows and expect it to work for the life of the OS.
With Ubuntu you can't even expect it to work for a year.
They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing while expecting different results and that seems to describe the state of the Linux desktop. People 10 years ago were saying that broken APIs were no big deal and that Linux would gain share anyways. It didn't gain share, it's still at 1%.
Features
Linked by David Adams on 05/16/13 4:23 UTC
OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/11/13 21:41 UTC
"Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/08/13 14:22 UTC
This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/02/13 15:28 UTC
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/29/13 21:06 UTC
Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/24/13 22:24 UTC
They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/18/13 11:21 UTC
Nokia has posted its quarterly results for the first quarter of 2013, and just like the quarters that came before, there's not a whole lot of good news in there. The rise in Lumia sales still can't even dream of making up for the sales drop in Symbian phones, and when broken down in versions, the sales figures for Windows Phone 8 Lumias in particular are very disappointing. In North America, Nokia is getting slaughtered.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/16/13 9:29 UTC
The day has finally come: Google has started shipping Google Glass to the lucky few early adopters. Now that it's shipping, Google has also unveiled a lot more about the API and the specifications of the device itself. While the company had already given out substantial details at earlier occasions, there are still a few surprises here.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/15/13 22:44 UTC
Almost exactly three years ago, I wrote about why OSNews was no longer OSNews: the alternative operating system scene had died, and OSNews, too, had to go with the times and move towards reporting on a new wave of operating systems - mobile, and all the repercussions that the explosion of smartphones and tablets have caused. Still, I was wondering something today: why aren't we seeing alternative operating systems on mobile?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/14/13 18:22 UTC, submitted by MOS6510
You can say what you will about Windows Phone and Windows 8's Metro interface (I refuse to drop that name) - it's inefficient, unpopular, cumbersome, beautiful, ugly, organised, clean, limiting - but there's one thing we can all agree on: it's unique and distinctive. CNet has published a profile of Microsoft's Albert Shum, the man behind Metro, and he highlights what I think is at the very core of Microsoft's problems in mobile right now.More Features »
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Ed W. Cogburn mostly nailed it when he said that it is mostly about the market share.
Companies will endure a lot of API annoyances and subcomponent churn if the market is worth it.
Several remarks about Linux component changes seem to imply that Windows is not having it's own comparable changes. That is silly.
I've lost count of the number of database interfaces MS published. Sound system, video, messaging - they all changed over the last decade - sometimes several times.
Sure - old APIs tend to stay around - but there's plenty of *2 or *Ex versions. And that's just win32. Of course now it's often .Net (and don't think you can get rid of 1.1 just because 3.x is out). In between it was first DDE and then COM.
Technology advances. Demands change. People learn what they should have done differently. The platform adapts. It happens to both Windows and Linux. It would be crazy to keep HAL if a better replacement can be done.
If there is a viable market - companies will deal with the hurdles of targeting the platform.
And a typical program doesn't have to worry about OS internals about what hardware is un/mounted and when - that's what the OS is for. The program opens a file - it doesn't usually care about the details of that file being available there. Stuff like mouse movement, button clicks and other such hardware are dealt with by DE platform libs. Most of which don't change all the time. And the change that happens, happens on all platforms.