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With Android Oreo, Google is introducing Linux kernel requirements

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Re: With Android Oreo, Google is introducing Linux kernel requirements

#41

Post by technofiend »

rayiner wrote: post #12
MattSteelblade wrote: post #7

Describing Linux as "horrendously difficult to use" is disingenuous at best. There are so many different variations between distros and what people mean when they say "Linux" that to categorize them all in this tone is hardly professional. I'm not familiar with betanews.com, but it does claim to be a tech site.

That's part of the problem. You face a problem, look online for a solution, and find answers that pertain only to different distros than what you're using. It hasn't gotten much better as far as I can tell. I used Linux as my primary desktop for a few years around 2002-2005 (Red Hat, Fedora, and Ubuntu). Back then, configuration was mostly automatic, though you had to do stuff like install the NVIDIA kernel blob manu…

>I recently tried to set up Fedora running a VNC or RDP server, and after a couple of days of futzing I gave up. I guess Wayland has managed to regress on that from where X was a decade ago?

According the Wayland FAQ [1] they have specifically avoided defining a remote API.

[Q]: Is Wayland network transparent / does it support remote rendering?

[A]: No, that is outside the scope of Wayland. To support remote rendering you need to define a rendering API, which is something I've been very careful to avoid doing. The reason Wayland is so simple and feasible at all is that I'm sidestepping this big task and pushing it to the clients. It's an interesting challenge, a very big task and it's hard to get right, but essentially orthogonal to what Wayland tries to achieve.

Which leaves you using Spice, or older solutions like X+VNC. Check out Apache's incubator project Guacamole [2] if you'd like a solution that can stream a Linux or Windows desktop to a browser via HTML 5; it supports SSH, Telnet, RDP and VNC. And despite supporting those older protocols it integrates with LDAP or CAS [3] for external authentication along with DUO for two-factor authentication.

[1] https://wayland.freedesktop.org/faq.html#heading_toc_j_8

[2] https://guacamole.incubator.apache.org/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Authentication_Service

N.B.: I added the Q and A tags to the Wayland FAQ quotes for clarification which is why they're highlight differently from the copied text.

Re: With Android Oreo, Google is introducing Linux kernel requirements

#42

Post by majewsky »

kevingadd wrote: post #18
rayiner wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's part of the problem. You face a problem, look online for a solution, and find answers that pertain only to different distros than what you're using. It hasn't gotten much better as far as I can tell. I used Linux as my primary desktop for a few years around 2002-2005 (Red Hat, Fedora, and Ubuntu). Back then, configuration was mostly automatic, though you had to do stuff like install the NVIDIA kernel blob manu…

My experiences are similar. The more time passes the harder (???) it gets to work with Linux. I had to bump my Linode machines forward to avoid getting left behind by the Ubuntu upgrade train and the transition to systemd broke all my services and made everything harder to debug. Not pleasant. I used to operate under the assumption that I could sit down and use Linux if I needed to - and I started a job that required…

> made everything harder to debug

It's not harder, it's just different. As a counterpoint, I never figured out how sysvinit works and got by with guesswork and Stack Overflow answers. And I hated how logs were scattered all over the place. Nowadays you have systemctl(1) and journalctl(1) which are exceptionally well-documented in their manpages, and now services and logs work the same all the time across all distros.

(Not going to argue about journald's weird binary log format though. I don't get that. But at least it doesn't get in the way for me.)

Re: With Android Oreo, Google is introducing Linux kernel requirements

#43

Post by bitmapbrother »

sverige wrote: post #29

Some have speculated that Fuchsia will eventually replace Android. I remember back in May that some prototype UI was introduced by Google. Anyone know of any recent developments on this front?

I'm not sure if Fuchsia will replace Android, but I would bet that the Fuchsia microkernel, Magenta, will eventually replace Linux as the kernel used by Android.

As for Fuchsia, it seems to be coming along quite nicely. Here's a short demo of the GUI that was uploaded to YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpBbbd8y2kM

Re: With Android Oreo, Google is introducing Linux kernel requirements

#45

Post by cat199 »

orbifold wrote: post #36
MattSteelblade wrote: post #7

Describing Linux as "horrendously difficult to use" is disingenuous at best. There are so many different variations between distros and what people mean when they say "Linux" that to categorize them all in this tone is hardly professional. I'm not familiar with betanews.com, but it does claim to be a tech site.

Try getting any moderately complicated software to work on more than one distribution at once. There is a reason why people keep inventing variations of https://github.com/LLNL/spack , docker, virtual machines. Distribution packages are usually horribly outdated, broken or both (Arch Linux is one slightly better example). Professional software on Linux is usually tied to some old RedHat Enterprise Linux Distribution…

> Try getting any moderately complicated software to work on more than one distribution at once.

Anyone concerned with ease of use wouldn't be doing this in the first place - and at the same time, people can Ubuntu and get a full environment for internet, media, etc. pretty much out of the box, with most other 'incompatibility' issues having to do with poor vendor support and having nothing to do with the system itself being hard to use..

I'm in agreement with the parent here - just because being a F1 car mechanic is difficult doesn't mean changing the oil in a Honda requires an expert and is difficult.. different actual tasks being performed...

Re: With Android Oreo, Google is introducing Linux kernel requirements

#46

Post by cat199 »

hungerstrike wrote: post #39
unethical_ban wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, I disagree flatly that Linux is hard to use and troubleshoot. Google "blah ubuntu" or "blah fedora" and you get an answer. This isn't 2002. Second, systemd troubleshooting and RDP servers are not common uses for Grandma, so even if valid points were made, most users aren't affected.

We had Google in 2002 and the answer would probably have been easier to find at that time since there wouldn't be hundreds of different Ubuntu versions and sub-distros to clutter up the results. I can't count the number of times I've found an answer that applies to "Ubuntu" where the alleged solution didn't apply to the version that I'm running. Also, systemd can cause anyone problems - I'm not sure it can distinguis…

And this situation doesn't apply to windows or macos how, exactly?

Re: With Android Oreo, Google is introducing Linux kernel requirements

#47

Post by cat199 »

n4r9 wrote: post #37
MattSteelblade wrote: post #7

Describing Linux as "horrendously difficult to use" is disingenuous at best. There are so many different variations between distros and what people mean when they say "Linux" that to categorize them all in this tone is hardly professional. I'm not familiar with betanews.com, but it does claim to be a tech site.

Technically the quote was "regarded as horrendously difficult to use." The question is really whether it's true in popular thought.

conversely, windows is 'regarded as X' and macos is 'regarded as Y' - some of the critique here also falls on choosing to include such a statement, rather than the specifics of whether that statement is actually the author's opinion or not..

Re: With Android Oreo, Google is introducing Linux kernel requirements

#48

Post by microtonal »

unethical_ban wrote: post #30
rayiner wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's part of the problem. You face a problem, look online for a solution, and find answers that pertain only to different distros than what you're using. It hasn't gotten much better as far as I can tell. I used Linux as my primary desktop for a few years around 2002-2005 (Red Hat, Fedora, and Ubuntu). Back then, configuration was mostly automatic, though you had to do stuff like install the NVIDIA kernel blob manu…

First of all, I disagree flatly that Linux is hard to use and troubleshoot. Google "blah ubuntu" or "blah fedora" and you get an answer. This isn't 2002. Second, systemd troubleshooting and RDP servers are not common uses for Grandma, so even if valid points were made, most users aren't affected.

The last time I wanted to use my HiDPI screen on Wayland/GNOME, I had to change the Mutter source and recompile, because my Dell HiDPI screen does not fulfil the GNOME definition of HiDPI.

A random non-expert user would simply not be able to enable scaling properly (and stare at miniature windows).

Yes, I know KDE is better and GNOME is working on this. The fact is that hardware that has been around for years does not work out of the box or even with a 'blah fedora'.

Re: With Android Oreo, Google is introducing Linux kernel requirements

#49

Post by microtonal »

cat199 wrote: post #46
hungerstrike wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had Google in 2002 and the answer would probably have been easier to find at that time since there wouldn't be hundreds of different Ubuntu versions and sub-distros to clutter up the results. I can't count the number of times I've found an answer that applies to "Ubuntu" where the alleged solution didn't apply to the version that I'm running. Also, systemd can cause anyone problems - I'm not sure it can distinguis…

And this situation doesn't apply to windows or macos how, exactly?

since there wouldn't be hundreds of different Ubuntu versions and sub-distros

There are no macOS or Windows subdistros. So, the only difference may be between different versions. Adding to that, Apple generally does not have the tendency to replace/rewrite macOS subsystems every few years, so it is much more likely that thing still work after a couple of years.

Re: With Android Oreo, Google is introducing Linux kernel requirements

#50

Post by khedoros1 »

hungerstrike wrote: post #39
unethical_ban wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, I disagree flatly that Linux is hard to use and troubleshoot. Google "blah ubuntu" or "blah fedora" and you get an answer. This isn't 2002. Second, systemd troubleshooting and RDP servers are not common uses for Grandma, so even if valid points were made, most users aren't affected.

We had Google in 2002 and the answer would probably have been easier to find at that time since there wouldn't be hundreds of different Ubuntu versions and sub-distros to clutter up the results. I can't count the number of times I've found an answer that applies to "Ubuntu" where the alleged solution didn't apply to the version that I'm running. Also, systemd can cause anyone problems - I'm not sure it can distinguis…

There were Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, Debian, Slackware, and dozens of others then too. Software still switched its method of configuration between versions, and distros still had their own incompatible ways of doing things. Linux was farther from mainstream, StackExchange didn't exist, Google wasn't as good, and Linux in general was less polished (and required more manual intervention to get things going).
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