Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop • Hacker News Board

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#101

Post by Aqueous » Sat, Mar 17, 2012, 3:25 PM UTC

drdaeman wrote: post #67

Aqueous wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 separ…

What makes package maintainers uniquely qualified to patch dependencies and upgrade them? Either we say Canonical or Red Hat hires the best possible people to watch over their package repositories or we say that a qualified application developer could do just as well. Either way we end up having to trust somebody.

Both package maintainers and developers have an interest make sure their programs don't introduce vulnerabilities into the system. Therefore if there's a serious problem with one of their dependencies vulnerability patching will happen either way.

The distribution maintainers should be in charge of maintaining a core set of low-level dependencies that are needed by many applications. Beyond that they should leave the dependency management to the application developers. Seriously. That would free up so many millions of man-hours of work for say, Canonical, that they could actually make the core system usable to the average user.

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#102

Post by snambi » Sat, Mar 17, 2012, 3:26 PM UTC

The author mostly talk about maintaining packages. Some people say that it is the missing games and other desktop applications. However, we all know that Linux is best OS for development. It has best set of libraries, languages and utilities. Yet, why there not many cool Desktop applications?

I believe the answer is, Linux doesn't have an IDE for Desktop development. Look at windows, they have .net Platform and IDE, Look at Mac, they have Xcode and Android uses eclipse for IDE.

Most of the application developers want and IDE, which is what is lacking in Linux. I hope someone makes an IDE for Linux desktop development.

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#103

Post by kfcm » Sat, Mar 17, 2012, 3:28 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #76

PaulHoule wrote: post #66

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 g…

What you say used to be true, but does not appear to be any longer. When was the last time we had useful improvements to the OS X user interface? 10.4 (2005) or 10.5 (2007), in my opinion. They've certainly improved under the hood, but the improvements to the UI have been mostly gimmicks like Expose. When was the last time we had useful improvements to the Windows UI? That would be Windows Vista, 2006/2007. (W7 was b…

There's just one problem with your post: you're thinking like a technologist, and not like an end-user.

End-users don't want to have to learn an entirely new UI (read, a different way of doing things; or, "Where's my Start button? Everything I know how to do is under that.") every couple of years. Not because they're (all) dumb, stupid, or lazy.

It's because end-users view a computer as a tool to do what they need/want to do--quickly and efficiently. Anything that distracts from that (like having to re-learn where everything is, and how to do the task they've done the same way for several years) is a negative and annoyance.

Unfortunately, the technology community has forgotten that.

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#104

Post by acabal » Sat, Mar 17, 2012, 3:40 PM UTC

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…

I've been saying this same thing for years. Package managers are a nice concept in theory, but Linux on the desktop will never, ever succeed until upgrading (for example) Firefox doesn't result in an install of Unity. The entire concept of a milestone-based monolithic distro is so broken for desktop use that I can't believe a better alternative hasn't been developed yet.

Even as a Linux nerd I'm constantly faced with problems caused by this. I'm stuck on Ubuntu Natty, for example, because it has the last stable version of Compiz that worked for me on the flgrx ATI drivers. If I wanted the latest version of Unity (I don't, I think Unity is terrible, but this is just an example) that means I'd have to upgrade Compiz and everything else and get stuck with all the horrible bugs new Compiz versions have with my drivers. It would also mean upgrading to Gnome 3 which still has many usability regressions (unrelated to Gnome Shell) and in my opinion isn't fully baked yet. I don't want all that shit just to get the latest version of a single package!

(You could perhaps pull it off with some PPA mumbo-jumbo, but you'd have to understand what a PPA is, luck out in finding a PPA in the first place, and messing with them can more than likely bork something up. Not something for the average-Joe audience Ubuntu is targeting.)

Shared libraries made sense in the days of limited space and resources. They still make sense from a few security perspectives. But from a practical perspective, Windows did it right by allowing programs to ship their own libraries and by doing backwards-compatibility right.

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#105

Post by bryanlarsen » Sat, Mar 17, 2012, 3:41 PM UTC

kfcm wrote: post #103

bryanlarsen wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you say used to be true, but does not appear to be any longer. When was the last time we had useful improvements to the OS X user interface? 10.4 (2005) or 10.5 (2007), in my opinion. They've certainly improved under the hood, but the improvements to the UI have been mostly gimmicks like Expose. When was the last time we had useful improvements to the Windows UI? That would be Windows Vista, 2006/2007. (W7 was b…

There's just one problem with your post: you're thinking like a technologist, and not like an end-user. End-users don't want to have to learn an entirely new UI (read, a different way of doing things; or, "Where's my Start button? Everything I know how to do is under that.") every couple of years. Not because they're (all) dumb, stupid, or lazy. It's because end-users view a computer as a tool to do what they need/wa…

Which is one reason why the 6 month model that the Linux community has adopted is so great. Every 6 months Unity or Gnome3 or KDE4 incorporate some improvements, but the differences are not major and are easy to learn or ignore. But over time these differences accumulate and become significant real improvements. We get to have our cake and eat it too.

And hopefully these environments have learned their lessons now and haven't incurred the large technical and design debt that necessitate large breaking changes. KDE is up to 4.8 now but nobody is talking about a massive rewrite for KDE5 -- it's just another incremental update. OS X appears to be moving towards this sort of model too, with fairly regular yearly updates. Windows is the only one bucking this trend with its major upcoming breaking change in "Metro". And they're getting pummelled for it.

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#106

Post by harshreality » Sat, Mar 17, 2012, 3:41 PM UTC

mgkimsal wrote: post #56

lubutu wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, being able to install software so easily with package management is a huge benefit of distributions. Perhaps the solution is to create a new package management system for a desktop distribution. A system which ensures that when upgrading an application only its personal namespace (libraries etc) changes, while other applications remain untouched. Libraries are second-class citizens, almost. That wa…

Couple other ideas: Optionally bundling specific versions of libs (or compiling in statically), and placing in user's home directory, setting path to look there first (maybe that's what you're saying exactly?) Stop using the same tool for updating userland apps and system core specific stuff. Same app for updating "/bin/ls" and for "audacity" is, imo, at the core of the brokenness. These are different types of apps w…

They need to be lumped together into one update process. The package manager for each needs to be aware of the other so it can resolve incompatibilities and not overwrite files it shouldn't. Joe User is not going to run two different package managers to keep up with security updates. What you consider to be userland apps may be core system stuff to someone else. Package dependency graphs are not simple. Sometimes there are even loops, depending on what parameters you pass to ./configure

You can use one tool and still separate different sorts of packages into different areas of responsibility. A few distros do that, or at least are capable of it. Arch has AUR. Gentoo has a bunch of 3rd party overlays.

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#107

Post by fl3tch » Sat, Mar 17, 2012, 3:45 PM UTC

morsch wrote: post #88

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…

Eh. First of all, you're not limited to the packages your distribution supplies. Lots and lots of software is distributed in Launchpad PPAs. Other stuff can be installed without the package manager, some games are statically compiled, etc. And I don't see what's wrong with requiring users to have an up-to-date system. Security fixes alone make regular updates almost mandatory on all operating systems. Windows install…

Quite right. Aside from backports, you can get things like the latest Firefox and LibreOffice on Ubuntu 10.04 thanks to PPAs. To those complaining that the 6 month update cycle is a turn off to "normal" users: put an Ubuntu LTS on their computer with a few PPAs to keep specific packages up to date.

One advantage of the distro model over the Windows model: you've never had a toolbar installed in your browser or your homepage changed because of a package you installed from a repo, have you? I find the Windows software ecosystem (at least the freeware portion of it) far more annoying than anything package managers do. Talk about unwanted changes to the user's computer.

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#108

Post by DrCatbox » Sat, Mar 17, 2012, 3:51 PM UTC

zalew wrote: post #54

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…

it's just Ubuntu, not all Linux. unless there are other distros with Unity and 6-month cycles I don't know of.

ArchLinux suffers from the same problem.

I left my cousin with ArchLinux, he liked it alot, so much that he still used it 6 months later. At that time he wanted to install a new program, well, from then on he stopped using arch. Because he had to call me to help him fix his system, issuing the pacman -S programname failed, so he did pacman -Sy followed by pacman -S programname again, and this time his entire system was about to be updated, he answered yes on all questions... and suddenly his entire desktop was differnt from what it was before. All the programs get updated! He didnt want that!

This is people who think that a computer is broken if the taskbar on the desktop is accidently moved to another position by children. Of course they think they broke thier computer, and it did since their settings and gadgets on the plasma desktop stopped functioning, and some just changed. Without asking the user, just changed! That is a pure and simple WTF. Thats when I realized linux will never ever succeed on the desktop if it doesnt change fundamentally.

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#109

Post by dubya » Sat, Mar 17, 2012, 3:53 PM UTC

drdaeman wrote: post #67

Aqueous wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 separ…

"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." Not all library bugs affect all programs though. If you change a library and break things, then the user usually has to wait for the maintainers to fix it, even if the programs would not have exposed the vulnerability. I am thinking of something like a program that uses libPNG to load included images that might break because libPNG has been changed because malicious images could cause a buffer overflow.

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#110

Post by Tangaroa » Sat, Mar 17, 2012, 3:55 PM UTC

lubutu wrote: post #77

muuh-gnu wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But distros only add ways to get software. Without distros, the way to get software is unbearable for Windows converts, where it is just "click, click, done." > what better way is there to avoid dependency hell? All distros agreeing to ship one specific version of a lib, so that app devs can target that "standard" version instead of daily changing upstream versions. The dependency chaos is a consequence of no distr…

> Without distros, the way to get software is unbearable for Windows converts, where it is just "click, click, done." Sorry, what? On Windows machines, due to the lack of package management, installing software is not a matter of "click, click, done." You have to google the program, navigate to the website's download area, find the right link, download it, execute it. It asks if you're sure it isn't a Trojan or somet…

And on Linux, you navigate to the website's download area and find out they don't offer a Linux version.

There is an open source alternative which is not in your distro's repository, so you have to navigate to the website's download area, find the right link, download it, get accepted to university, take a year of 100-level CS courses, learn the command line on your own because you didn't get it at school, run configure and make, and it does not build on your distro. Not that it matters since the latest version 0.0.3 would not do what you needed if you had gotten it to run.