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Ubuntu, SUSE Linux, and Fedora Are All Coming to the Windows Store

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Re: Ubuntu, SUSE Linux, and Fedora Are All Coming to the Windows Store

#61

Post by lorenzhs »

mih wrote: post #54
hardwaresofton wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you expand on some ways that linux desktops are getting worse/less portable? I run Arch and I definitely run into a few things from time to time where I need to go on a google hunt to figure out what's wrong (if it's not already obvious), but the distro is pretty user friendly (despite the 'hard core' reputation it has which honestly drew me to it). Ubuntu just about works right out of the box 99% of the time t…

A fellow Arch user here. Although I would not classify it as a portability problem, I have mixed feelings about Desktop on Linux. I use KDE Plasma myself and there is not shortage of messages and bug reports on the headaches GTK poses due to theming. Ever so often, you run into a GTK app that simply turns out to be unusable because the UI elements aren't visible. Same thing with GUI apps written in Java , which look…

All the issues you named are KDE issues. I don't want to start a war here but Gnome 3 has really matured since its botched initial release and plays nice with KDE applications (but maybe that's due to Qt being great). I'm not trying to convince you to switch (KDE does have points in its favour, too!), but Gnome 3 is a sound recommendation for new users and causes very few issues.

Re: Ubuntu, SUSE Linux, and Fedora Are All Coming to the Windows Store

#62

Post by Spoom »

notalaser wrote: post #35
hardwaresofton wrote: post #4

While I can see this is an excellent strategy for the Windows platform, and will probably make developers on Windows more productive, I for one will never give up natively installed linux distributions for development. It may be childish, but I resent Windows for every anti-privacy, anti-competitive move they make, despite how much it is within their rights and fitting with their corporate goals. Trying to put linux…

> I recoil at the possibility that some developer 5 years from now might ask me "Why bother installing your own linux distribution? You can just get Windows Go 15 and run Arch/Ubuntu/SUSE from inside there. Don't forget to disable the ads and tracking that come standard". "I mean, the privacy is shit, but you can sort of deal with it. But at least you don't have to dance the Ritual Dance of PulseAudio if you need to…

Having used Linux desktop for roughly a decade, it's definitely gotten better. Almost every computer I install Linux on now has working drivers for everything, the vast majority working out of the box. Anecdata, of course, but that's been my experience.

Ease of use also depends on the distro you choose. Ubuntu or Mint will probably be the easiest; if you install Arch, you should know what you're in for. (Before you jump on me, I posted this from a system running Arch.)

Re: Ubuntu, SUSE Linux, and Fedora Are All Coming to the Windows Store

#63

Post by notalaser »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #47
notalaser wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I recoil at the possibility that some developer 5 years from now might ask me "Why bother installing your own linux distribution? You can just get Windows Go 15 and run Arch/Ubuntu/SUSE from inside there. Don't forget to disable the ads and tracking that come standard". "I mean, the privacy is shit, but you can sort of deal with it. But at least you don't have to dance the Ritual Dance of PulseAudio if you need to…

Could you expand on some ways that linux desktops are getting worse/less portable? I run Arch and I definitely run into a few things from time to time where I need to go on a google hunt to figure out what's wrong (if it's not already obvious), but the distro is pretty user friendly (despite the 'hard core' reputation it has which honestly drew me to it). Ubuntu just about works right out of the box 99% of the time t…

> Could you expand on some ways that linux desktops are getting worse/less portable?

Less portable: both major projects (Gnome and KDE) are increasingly depending on Linux-specific technologies (mainly through systemd dependencies, e.g. timedated, localed, hostnamed and logind, which are explicitly Linux-specific). They can be replaced by shims, fortunately, but these are difficult to write, because the components that they replace move quickly, often not very transparently, and without much documentation.

Worse: frankly, what I dislike most is the frequent rewrites of major components, which keeps everything in a perpetual almost-stable state. I can get my Plasma box to act up just by trying several window decorations one after another in System Settings.

But there are a lot of things that recent Linux converts don't realize about their major pain points. For instance, until a few years ago, getting uniform looks between GTK, KDE and Qt applications was largely a solved problem, thanks to e.g. projects like QtCurve (there were several other solutions, QtCurve was just the one I liked most). Good luck with that today (see e.g. https://github.com/QtCurve/qtcurve-gtk3)

Basically, except for Bluetooth and proprietary graphics driver, there's nothing that "almost works" today which didn't "almost work" ten years ago, either, except it probably got rewritten at least once.

> Also what is IVI? this: https://www.ni.com/ivi/what.htm ?

Nope, it's short for In-Vehicle Infotainment systems. It's one of the very lucrative markets for Linux solutions, because the competing solutions are either tied to a specific big player's interest (Android) or super expensive (QNX). Video entertainment in general (IVI, smart TVs etc.) is the main force that drives graphics and UI-related development in Linux.

It's not a bad thing (quite the opposite, I certainly don't miss using VESA drivers...). But it does mean that, for the people doing work on major components of the graphics infrastructure, desktops aren't a priority. It needs real community effort in order to be turned into a viable desktop option, and that's pretty hard considering the rate at which developers are being driven away.

Re: Ubuntu, SUSE Linux, and Fedora Are All Coming to the Windows Store

#64

Post by notalaser »

Spoom wrote: post #62
notalaser wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I recoil at the possibility that some developer 5 years from now might ask me "Why bother installing your own linux distribution? You can just get Windows Go 15 and run Arch/Ubuntu/SUSE from inside there. Don't forget to disable the ads and tracking that come standard". "I mean, the privacy is shit, but you can sort of deal with it. But at least you don't have to dance the Ritual Dance of PulseAudio if you need to…

Having used Linux desktop for roughly a decade, it's definitely gotten better. Almost every computer I install Linux on now has working drivers for everything, the vast majority working out of the box. Anecdata, of course, but that's been my experience. Ease of use also depends on the distro you choose. Ubuntu or Mint will probably be the easiest; if you install Arch, you should know what you're in for. (Before you j…

I've used Linux since back when there was no "Enterprise" in Red Hat Linux :-).

The driver situation has massively improved, absolutely. The second time I installed Linux (on a brand new computer) was scariest -- S-ATA was super cool and new and my S-ATA controller wasn't supported, so I had to build a patched kernel on my old machine and boot with it...

But higher-up, I don't think we've progressed significantly past where we were in 2010. Sound still breaks (and ironically enough, it had just started breaking, with Alsa finally getting proper soft mixing and hotplug support via udev), KDE and GTK applications can no longer get uniform themes, display managers still get laughable bugs...

Re: Ubuntu, SUSE Linux, and Fedora Are All Coming to the Windows Store

#65

Post by scriptproof »

arglwarg wrote: post #51
hardwaresofton wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tl/dr: Simply put, the cross platform distribution problem is solved (in way more ways than one), but I think the combination electron/nw.js + cross-platform-from-the-get-go languages will win, instead of other options like QT. I think it might be a waste of time to target a distribution and hope it gets ported reasonably to Windows, clouding your codebase in the process. While possibly a highly unpopular opinion, th…

> While possibly a highly unpopular opinion, this is where I think solutions like Electron/Node Webkit fit perfectly. Well ...: https://twitter.com/jacobrossi/status/851992646151278592

"I have taken these numbers from a paper I can not publish". (Scroll in comments). That is a good source.

Re: Ubuntu, SUSE Linux, and Fedora Are All Coming to the Windows Store

#66

Post by [deleted] »

arglwarg wrote: post #51
hardwaresofton wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tl/dr: Simply put, the cross platform distribution problem is solved (in way more ways than one), but I think the combination electron/nw.js + cross-platform-from-the-get-go languages will win, instead of other options like QT. I think it might be a waste of time to target a distribution and hope it gets ported reasonably to Windows, clouding your codebase in the process. While possibly a highly unpopular opinion, th…

> While possibly a highly unpopular opinion, this is where I think solutions like Electron/Node Webkit fit perfectly. Well ...: https://twitter.com/jacobrossi/status/851992646151278592

[deleted]

Re: Ubuntu, SUSE Linux, and Fedora Are All Coming to the Windows Store

#67

Post by mih »

lorenzhs wrote: post #61
mih wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fellow Arch user here. Although I would not classify it as a portability problem, I have mixed feelings about Desktop on Linux. I use KDE Plasma myself and there is not shortage of messages and bug reports on the headaches GTK poses due to theming. Ever so often, you run into a GTK app that simply turns out to be unusable because the UI elements aren't visible. Same thing with GUI apps written in Java , which look…

All the issues you named are KDE issues. I don't want to start a war here but Gnome 3 has really matured since its botched initial release and plays nice with KDE applications (but maybe that's due to Qt being great). I'm not trying to convince you to switch (KDE does have points in its favour, too!), but Gnome 3 is a sound recommendation for new users and causes very few issues.

Gnome does indeed look better out of the box, but I am not in favour of installing extensions for customization. This is something that KDE shines at, with loads of options to tweak appearance and behaviour. XFCE and other tiling managers, I've tried briefly but I always find myself reverting back to Plasma desktop. Without a unifying force behind Linux desktop (Freedesktop helped to some degree), I have come to accept that things will always be shaky in desktopland - the price of freedom of choice.

Re: Ubuntu, SUSE Linux, and Fedora Are All Coming to the Windows Store

#68

Post by sevensor »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #47
notalaser wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I recoil at the possibility that some developer 5 years from now might ask me "Why bother installing your own linux distribution? You can just get Windows Go 15 and run Arch/Ubuntu/SUSE from inside there. Don't forget to disable the ads and tracking that come standard". "I mean, the privacy is shit, but you can sort of deal with it. But at least you don't have to dance the Ritual Dance of PulseAudio if you need to…

Could you expand on some ways that linux desktops are getting worse/less portable? I run Arch and I definitely run into a few things from time to time where I need to go on a google hunt to figure out what's wrong (if it's not already obvious), but the distro is pretty user friendly (despite the 'hard core' reputation it has which honestly drew me to it). Ubuntu just about works right out of the box 99% of the time t…

Yeah, this idea that the Linux desktop experience isn't working out just doesn't make sense to me. I have Arch on almost all of my machines, including the one at work where I do most of my development, as well as several laptops. Across all of these computers, I've had one driver issue (integrated Broadcom NIC) and one case where an update broke an application, in the four years I've been using Arch. It's amazingly easy to use and completely gets out of my way. Furthermore, at work I'm developing a cross-platform GUI application using Qt, which is great to work with. We have developers using Windows, Linux, and OS X.

Now, for all that I like Qt, I've never gotten into KDE because I can't run it without it crashing all the time. And Gnome is a great UI for my pre-literate children, but it's not for me. But the fact that mainstream desktop environments are a bad fit for me doesn't mean I'm having a bad time running Linux on my desktop! My window manager does exactly the things I want it to, and not one thing more. Linux crashes for me less often than Windows, and unlike Windows I can almost always ssh in and put things in order before I reboot. (In the course of developing a GUI application, there are lots of ways to create system instability!) I can't imagine, as a developer, preferring a watered-down Linux running on the Windows kernel to the real thing. It's like saying that Wine is Windows. (Not that Wine is a bad project, just that it's not a great way to have the Windows desktop experience.)

Re: Ubuntu, SUSE Linux, and Fedora Are All Coming to the Windows Store

#69

Post by yunoe »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #4

While I can see this is an excellent strategy for the Windows platform, and will probably make developers on Windows more productive, I for one will never give up natively installed linux distributions for development. It may be childish, but I resent Windows for every anti-privacy, anti-competitive move they make, despite how much it is within their rights and fitting with their corporate goals. Trying to put linux…

I get what you're saying. I don't like part of the direction Microsoft is taking either. Yet, I don't agree with your perspective.

What's happening here is that Microsoft, after a number of years of troubles keeping up, are following the market. WSL is presumably not meant to compete with Linux or FOSS as a desktop OS, but with Mac OS and Linux as developer platforms.

Companies like Google and Apple figured out that if you just give people their pony e.g. base your things on FOSS, they won't notice when you centralize everything, track everyone and generally behave badly. In many ways Microsoft is doing better here. Their projects aim to be cross platform and are being developed together with the community. Instead of usual the code dump and silent mailing list we've become accustomed to from some companies.

Linux have had the chance to do better for awhile now (and in some ways it has). Microsoft have been critized constantly for Windows 8 and now Windows 10. Apple left a huge hole in the "professional" market for years, including after the new Mac Pro and the new MacBook Pro. If some developers move to Windows because of this I think that's fair.

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