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Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

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Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#41

Post by sandGorgon »

blub wrote: post #15
sandGorgon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

seriously? What do you think Android is - and its not just the kernel. I have a working userspace on my phone. In fact, when I have spotty connectivity, the first thing I do is fire up the terminal and do a ping/traceroute. Gnome != Linux.

Android is a Java userspace on top of a Linux kernel. It doesn't help that most people say "Linux" to actually mean "GNU/Linux", but Android is certainly not GNU/Linux and it can't be "Linux" either, because that's just the kernel.

nope. You have the NDK which allows you to use native code in C/C++. Python for Android is built using C/C++... not Java.

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#42

Post by ralfd »

btw: Are there any newer statistics on Linux usage available?

I played with the new google correlate tool today and every search metric for Linux stuff is merely "meh".

Linux is constantly falling:

http://correlate.googlelabs.com/search?e=linux&t=weekly

Gnome and KDE are also getting not more popular, but _less_ (at least in Google trends).

Ubuntu peaked in 2007 and is sliding sidewards:

http://correlate.googlelabs.com/search?e=ubuntu&t=weekly

Why is that? As I said I would like to see a few more representative numbers. (I remember in seeing in 2008 a statistic, that the then nascent iPhone overtook Linux desktops in internet traffic. That was an astonishing eye opener.)

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#43

Post by mkr-hn »

drdaeman wrote: post #23

All those innovation are in GUI area, and they have little to do with Linux (as a kernel). For example, One could easily run KDE on Windows. So the source should be "FOSS", not "Linux".

As far as I know Gnome and KDE were primarily developed on and for Linux.

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#44

Post by ralfd »

rbanffy wrote: post #32
tzs wrote: post #3

Here is the discussion from /r/linux on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/hhpku/linux_the_sourc... The top comment there pretty much nails it.

> And the menu appears on different screens Actually, it's an advantage. Have you tried to use the menu on monitor 1 when the app is on monitor 3 of your Mac?

I dislike this too. But there is "SecondBar" from Andreas Hegenberg:

http://blog.boastr.net/?page_id=79

But his other points that Unitys "wonky" auto-hiding of the menubar is misguided UI seem reasonable to me.

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#45

Post by rbanffy »

udp wrote: post #33
rbanffy wrote: post #31

I still think the greatest innovation in Linux distros is package management.

FreeBSD has the ports collection [1] and pkg_add [2] with --remote. The range of software I can get from those is wider than with many Linux distributions, and it's often much more up to date. And yes, they can automatically handle dependencies. [1] http://www.freebsd.org/ports/index.html [2] http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=pkg_add&sektion...

While ports started to offer package manager functionality in 1994, I don't recall dependency management to be part of its initial feature-set.

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#46

Post by jawee »

udp wrote: post #20

What's Linux got to do with anything? Gnome and KDE run pretty nicely here on FreeBSD, and I'm sure Unity could fairly easily if anyone actually wanted it.

Well, the portability between kernels is nice on Unixlike and Unix systems, but you would agree with me that nearly all of the developers and users for these larger desktop environments and GUIs are on Linux specifically. Technically, you can run them on Darwin even..

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#47

Post by rbanffy »

ralfd wrote: post #44
rbanffy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the menu appears on different screens Actually, it's an advantage. Have you tried to use the menu on monitor 1 when the app is on monitor 3 of your Mac?

I dislike this too. But there is "SecondBar" from Andreas Hegenberg: http://blog.boastr.net/?page_id=79 But his other points that Unitys "wonky" auto-hiding of the menubar is misguided UI seem reasonable to me.

It's a 1.0 release. I expect it to improve fast.

Do we still hear people complaining the window buttons moved to the right?

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#48

Post by [deleted] »

blub wrote: post #15
sandGorgon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

seriously? What do you think Android is - and its not just the kernel. I have a working userspace on my phone. In fact, when I have spotty connectivity, the first thing I do is fire up the terminal and do a ping/traceroute. Gnome != Linux.

Android is a Java userspace on top of a Linux kernel. It doesn't help that most people say "Linux" to actually mean "GNU/Linux", but Android is certainly not GNU/Linux and it can't be "Linux" either, because that's just the kernel.

[deleted]

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#49

Post by hasenj »

rbanffy wrote: post #36
ralfd wrote: post #30

"And these are some of the most radical and exciting new features MacOS X has had to offer since its initial release over 10 years ago." What a trollish statement.

Well... the maximize button continues every bit as useless as it was when introduced in System 5, IIRC. But MacOS had some very interesting ideas - they did right more-than-one-user thing (copied from Windows) and Exposé.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the "more than one user" thing is a Unix feature, OS X basically gets it for free. It's not copied from windows; if anything, windows tried to copy it from Unix, and it was horrible before WinXP

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#50

Post by hasenj »

Unity is very innovative, and so is Gnome 3, but that does not equal "all innovation". In fact, about 70% of Unity's innovations are features copied from the mac: indicators, launcher, panel.

Gnome shell, while innovative, I don't see it as aimed for the typical end user, instead it's aimed for the more technical users.

gtk2 is still present in Unity and it's still a major anti-innovative set back.

To be honest, I like Unity as a desktop better than OS X, but as applications, OS X is still ahead. (As a Unix I still like Ubuntu better, that's a different subject).

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