Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

plus.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 200 posts

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#61

Post by justincormack »

barrkel wrote: post #48
_delirium wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The semi-standard commercial solution for widget toolkits, excluding old software tied to something legacy, is typically to use Qt, which has both LGPL and (reasonably priced) commercial license options. Audio isn't really a problem for statically linked apps not doing anything particularly strange; it works fine in anything I've tried. Even ancient audio APIs in ancient binaries are transparently emulated through so…

I use Linux every day; I haven't used desktop Linux much since a fairly unpleasant experience with the original Eee PC (701, in 2007). But package management (I live with Debian apt-get and friends) is a bane of my life. Generally, the binaries that come when I install a package are too old, or don't have the right compile-time options configured, or there is some dependency missing that I don't have installed and is…

The Eee PC Linux install was terrible. I installed Ubuntu almost immediately.

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#63

Post by sandGorgon »

DrCatbox wrote: post #31
muuh-gnu wrote: post #17

The reason I stopped recommending Linux to "normal users" is _because_ of the concept of distributions. Coupling the updates of single apps with the updates of the whole desktop or framework and libs, is just plain wrong. Having to upgrade the whole distro (including all the other installed apps you dont want to upgrade) just to install a new version of one single app you _want_ to update is a nightmare. Total bullsh…

But what is the alternative to a non-distributions based gnu linux operating system? How do you manage the 1000 packages and their libraries and dependencies? Many of them have separate runtimes which may or may not depend on the other packages runtime. How would you design an application sandbox to cover them all? What you're saying basically is that linux is failed. At least for me, since I cant see another way to…

0-install (http://0install.net/) or even better - Nix packaging system (http://nixos.org/nix/ - they claim to be a purely functional package manager)

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#65

Post by barrkel »

justincormack wrote: post #61
barrkel wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Linux every day; I haven't used desktop Linux much since a fairly unpleasant experience with the original Eee PC (701, in 2007). But package management (I live with Debian apt-get and friends) is a bane of my life. Generally, the binaries that come when I install a package are too old, or don't have the right compile-time options configured, or there is some dependency missing that I don't have installed and is…

The Eee PC Linux install was terrible. I installed Ubuntu almost immediately.

Yes; first I reenabled the underlying UI so that I had access to a console; soon after I installed Eeebuntu when it was put together by the community. I never used the original limited UI for more than perhaps 60 minutes total.

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#66

Post by PaulHoule »

I've been using Linux since 1993, and back then, the Linux OS and desktop were far superior to Windows 3.1.

Then Win 95 came out and that had a decent desktop. I remember when the KDE people started talking about a desktop for Unix and people didn't get it, but when we saw the beta it was like... Wow!

Then Red Hat Linux didn't like the license of KDE, so they had to create Gnome. As a result, rather than having one good Desktop, the average Linux has two half-baked desktops. This fork has wasted people's energy and been a distraction away from an excellent experience.

Another example of this is sound. I don't know how many incompatible sound APIs exist for Linux now, I know it's more than the fingers on one hand. The consequence of it all is that often sound doesn't work and unless you're a crazy enthusiast you might never get it to work.

I was a Linux zealot until 2003 or so when I had a job that had me using a Windows machine a lot, and by that point there was Win XP which was a huge improvement over Win 95.

I still use Linux on servers, but desktop Linux has largely disappeared from my life. Every so often I try to install it here or there, but I typically find the experience disappointing. I was a Fedora fan for a long time, but Fedora became increasingly finicky about where it would install. I switched to Ubuntu, but every installation ends up having some serious problem.

For instance, Ubuntu installed just fine on my PPC Mac Mini with the exception that the fan runs full speed all the time and the machine sounds like a vacuum cleaner.

Windows and Mac OS have been on a general trajectory of improvement -- sometimes there are changes you don't like, but the overall direction is good. Linux did, after years of struggle, get a stable multiprocessor kernel (2.6) but other than that I get the feeling Linux has been going backwards not forwards.

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#67

Post by drdaeman »

Aqueous wrote: post #18
drdaeman wrote: post #5

I'm just an ordinary user, but I'd put my 2¢. Nowadays, any developer can create a packages for his application (and any of its dependencies) and publish it in self-hosted repositories. Users can easily add such repository to their system's sources list and bureaucracy problem's over. Well, some developers are doing this already - the only thing that keeps the rest of them is either ignorance or complexity of the pac…

What you think is easy is actually not easy. Any time you've added one, two, three more steps to a problem after clicking the link in the browser you've already lost. Adding repositories? Already too late. Touching the command line? Sorry, as much as we love it, for most users it's already too late. Going into Aptitude or Synaptic and pasting in the repository URL? Yep. Too late. This is all compounded by the fact th…

> Adding repositories? Already too late. Touching the command line?

Nope. As simple as clicking a link with special URL scheme, like `apt+hXXp://archive.canonical.com?package=acroread?dist=feisty?section=commercial`

> This is all compounded by the fact that there is no app bundle.

I'm all for the bundles (which single-app repositories, actually, are!), but I want them to be non-monolithic (i.e. contain multiple separate packages).

I don't care about disk space — if I'm that constrainted with disk space that's probably another story that'll probably never happen to most ordinary users, having terabytes of storage. But I certainly care about bugs, and if libXYZ 1.2 has a critical one, I want my system to be free of that version ASAP.

And I don't care that you've never tested your awesome app with 1.3 — it's better to be possibly unstable than certainly unstable or, far worse, vulnerable.

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#68

Post by sp332 »

muuh-gnu wrote: post #58
sp332 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coupling the updates of single apps with the updates of the whole desktop or framework and libs, is just plain wrong. You don't have to do all that to upgrade a single app. In fact you're thinking of it backwards. Distros mean that when you upgrade the OS or libs, you get new versions of the apps for free. You can still configure && make && make install, or grab a statically-linked binary, or any other method of gett…

> You can still configure && make && make install You aren't serious, are you? > statically-linked binary Nobody builds them. > any other method of getting Linux apps to run. There are no other methods. > Distros mean that when you upgrade the OS or libs, you get new versions of the apps for free. That in turn means that if I dont want to upgrade the OS and the libs, I cant get new app versions. The collective refusa…

You said you stopped pointing people toward Linux because of the distros. But distros only add ways to get software. You don't have to use their package management at all. If you want to install a new version of an app, with or without the help of the distro, what better way is there to avoid dependency hell?

Edit: Central-repository installation methods I've used: python easy_install, perl CPAN, Ubuntu PPAs (which are a way to add 3rd-party apps to your package manager).

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#69

Post by icebraining »

mgkimsal wrote: post #59
zmmz wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a linux equivalent of PC-BSD[1]?: _Programs under PC-BSD are completely self-contained and self-installing, in a graphical format. A PBI file also ships with all the files and libraries necessary for the installed program to function, eliminating much of the hardship of dealing with broken dependencies and system incompatibilities. _ [1]: http://www.pcbsd.org/index.php?option=com_zoo&view=item&...

but but but.... "you'd have duplication of files!" or "you'd have to update multiple libraries when there's a security patch!" I didn't know about pcbsd, but I've espoused similar ideas to my linux friends years ago, and was generally met with the one of the two objections listed above. I think they're both bad arguments, but it's what I encountered the most.

The problem isn't that you have to update multiple libraries - it's that you have to rely on each application developer to release an update when there's a patch for one of its libraries. That simply won't happen in many cases.

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#70

Post by zackmorris »

Part 2, where he discusses his solutions, is more enlightening I think.

He's dead-on about the impassable problem of package updates affecting other packages. Having everything sandboxed with a general permissions system for directories instead of per-file is also better (this is how MacOS wanted to work before OS X). A free and open mesh network with reputation-based security is also the future.

But hey, linux is wide open, if these are the changes that are needed, we will see them.

Post reply on HN