"For years now, Linux has been a black sheep standing in the shadow of Apple and Microsoft. Despite having a fervent and enthusiastic following, the operating system hasn't been able to grab a sizable share of the computing market and has instead been content to subsist on the customers that come away dissatisfied with the mainstream competition. But that may be about to change. With the release of Microsoft Windows 8 on the horizon, some are saying Linux may have a great opportunity to steal a significant share of the market away from Microsoft, allowing it to finally take the helm as a major operating system service provider." This has to stop, and the only reason I'm linking to this nonsense is to make this very clear: Linux will not magically conquer the desktop or even make any significant gains because of Windows 8. People who don't like Windows 8 (Vista) will continue to use Windows 7 (Windows XP). This is getting so tiring. And does it even matter? Linux is winning big time in the mobile space, server space, and countless other spaces. The desktop is and always has been irrelevant to Linux.
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Member since:2006-01-24
Ingo Molnar's complaints (the RH kernel dev) all revolve around software distribution and he proposes features he wants in a future software distribution technology. I'm guessing this is a prelude to something coming out of Red Hat which they hope will be picked up as a standard method of software distribution across all distros.
problem is politics and religious dogma have frankly crippled it
how has 'politics and religious dogma' crippled Linux, really?
An abi change doesn't mean there's any changes to the actual functionality of the hardware drivers. I'd like to see any statistics on how many driver bug fixes are related to abi changes, I seriously doubt that is an issue.
And the devs do take responsibilty for keeping in-tree drivers up running against changes in the ABI, also there are lots of testers out there with a wide range of hardware reporting problems during the development cycles.
It's proprietary drivers which obviously needs to be maintained by third-party outside of the kernel, thankfully there are only very few of those these days as Linux supports an astounding amount of hardware right out of the box.
Member since:2007-11-11
Dude its simple math, and if anybody takes even 5 seconds to think about it you'll see the whole idea simply doesn't work.
Let me lay it out, at your average distro you have MAYBE 50 guys truly qualified to do low level driver work, and I'm giving them a BIG benefit of the doubt with that number. Frankly I'd be amazed if you had even 10 guys at anyplace not the size of Red hat. Now how many drivers do you have? I'd say 100,000 would be a fair number, with new hardware coming out every day, but again lets give them extra leeway and say 10,000.
So you have 50 guys, dealing with everything from the kernel on up being constantly futzed with, and you have 10,000 drivers and a release every 6 months to a year...see the problem? If you had them pumped up on magic marching powder and working 24/7/365 they'd never even be able to keep up with what is on their plate, much less deal with the myriad of new hardware!
But this is why a hardware ABI is good and "letting the devs handle it" is bad, the math simply doesn't work. I can take an RTM WinXP from 12 years ago, install the drivers, and then upgrade to current and tada! the drivers STILL WORK. I have an XP from 2004 in the shop, its had every single patch placed on since 2004, we're talking thousands of fixes and patches and the drivers? STILL WORK.
That is why I tell everyone that thinks Linux is ready to step up and take the Pepsi challenge. We'll take any distro (no LTS because we've already seen with Ubuntu LTS means "We won't fix" as rarely does anything get backported) that was released in 2009, the same year as Windows 7, place it and Win 7 RTM on identical machines. We'll then upgrade both to current and see what happens.
But I can already tell you what happens, because I've done so with about a half a dozen distros now, everything from current darlings Ubuntu to more offbeat suggestions like PCLOS and Fedora, and the results are always the same...a broken system. Sound is toast, wireless gone, the system will be a mess. meanwhile the Win 7 system? Keeps right on humming along.
When you can give me a Linux version that gets 10 years, or even 7 years worth of updates without having to "google for fixes" then we'll talk, until then like it or not its a mess and not ready for John Q Public.
Member since:2005-07-06
how has 'politics and religious dogma' crippled Linux, really?
In the context here, of desktop Linux, one can certainly point to the KDE/Gnome split - and ponder what could have been if the resources, energy, focus were more united.
'politics and religious dogma' sums up the background of this split fairly accurately.
Yet they seem to be more or less the rule in what are probably the most prominent, by far, end-user-oriented Linux devices - Android phones...
The third and final WWDC product I want to talk about is - of course - OS X 10.9 Mavericks. While iOS 7 was clearly the focus of this year's WWDC, its venerable desktop counterpart certainly wasn't left behind. Apple announced OS X 10.9 Mavericks, the first OS X release not to carry the name of a big cat.
We already talked about iOS 7 yesterday (after a night of sleep, it's only looking worse and worse - look at this, for Fiona's sake!), so now it's time to talk about the downright stunning and belly flutters-inducing new Mac Pro. As former owner and huge, huge, huge fan of the PowerMac G4 Cube - I haven't been this excited about an Apple product since, well, I would say the iMac G4. This is the Apple I used to love.
Apple held its big keynote event thing at WWDC earlier this evening, but since I was away with friends I've had to read up on it later in the evening. The company announced iOS 7, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and they gave a preview of the new Mac Pro. Especially the Mac Pro impressed me, and while iOS 7's new Holo/Metro-inspired theme looks messy and garish to me, I do commend Apple for finally breaking the mold. This news item will focus on iOS 7 - I'll dive into the Mac Pro and OS X 10.9 tomorrow (it's late here now).
And yes, the PRISM scandal is far, far from over. More and more information keeps leaking out, and the more gets out, the worse it gets. The companies involved have sent out official statements - often by mouth of their CEOs - and what's interesting is that not only are these official statements eerily similar to each other, using the same terms clearly designed by lawyers, they also directly contradict new reports from The New York Times. So, who is lying?This story is getting bigger and bigger. Even though most Americans probably already knew, it is now official: the United States government, through its National Security Agency, is collecting the communications and data of all American citizens, and of non-Americans using American services, through a wide collaboration with the large companies in technology, like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on. Interestingly enough, the NSA itself, as well as the US government, have repeatedly and firmly denied this massive spying on Americans and non-Americans took place at all.Ah, patents - the never-ending scourge of the technology industry. Whether wielded by companies who don't actually make any products, or large corporations who abuse them because they can't compete in the market place or because they're simply jerks, they do the industry a huge disservice and are simply plain dangerous. According to The Wall Street Journal (circumvention link), president Obama is about to take several executive actions to address patent trolls - which may seem like a good idea, but I am very worried that all this will do is strengthen the positions of notorious patent system abusers such as Apple and Microsoft.
With version 13.05, the developers of the Genode OS Framework take measures to ensure that Genode continues to scale well with a growing number of users and the steadily broadening platform coverage. Further highlights are the improved SoC support for Exynos 5, OMAP4, Raspberry Pi, i.MX, and new components for realizing headless systems.At the D11 conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook once again took the stage to be interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. While most of the interview can be replicated by picking and reading 10 random Apple fanblog stories - there were still a number of very interesting things that warrant some closer scrutiny.
So, the Xbox One disaster continues. Microsoft's policy for dealing with the used games market has reportedly leaked - and it's a clear and direct attack to destroy the used games market. Prices for used games will be set at the retail value of a new game, and retailers have to hook into Microsoft's computer systems and comply with Microsoft's terms and conditions.At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!
Member since:
2007-11-11
While I have to admit I haven't seen many X crashes of late the last round of distros I loaded (6 months ago to be fair) had serious driver update issues. Sound going to crap (Pulseaudio still stinks) and wireless is like a bad joke. For everyone who thinks this is "trolling" I urge you to read the two links I'm gonna give you, one from one of the devs of RH that says the Linux desktop is "suckage" and lists many fundamental structural problems with the design, and the second is a list (with links) to around 200 major problems with Linux..
https://plus.google.com/109922199462633401279/posts/HgdeFDfRzNe
http://linuxfonts.narod.ru/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.c...
As a small shop owner that builds and sells PCs believe me I WANT Linux to get better, problem is politics and religious dogma have frankly crippled it and it isn't likely to get better in the near future. Too many critical subsystems from the kernel on up are constantly getting futzed with with ZERO thought to QA or QC or backwards compatibility, no hardware ABI means that you are at the mercy of the devs who may or may not have the time, manpower, or even access to the hardware that is screwed up to accurately diagnose and fix serious driver issues, and you can't just hand grandma a system which will have the wireless and sound crap out if she ever updates the thing.