11–20 of 25 posts
I found the comment from Jonathan Corbet of LWN ( https://lwn.net/Articles/489689/ ) particularly telling: 'The article is a little muddled, complaining about the "we know best" attitude while saying that Linux lacks the integration seen in iOS or Android, but it's worth a look.' That does seem like a common double standard that people hold Linux to: on the one hand people complain when it lacks coherent vision and w…
> Linux Mint requires users to do a complete re-installation, rather than a rolling incremental update Um, and the author's solution to this is installing Windows? I'm sorry, but at least when Linux Mint needs updates I am free to update when I want. Windows will pop up a nag screen and interrupt your work, even threatening to perform the update if you don't delay it. Anyone who has ever done work on a Windows machin…
I'm sorry, but your post is a little disingenuous. No, Windows doesn't do a rolling release--but, three things that mitigate this: 1) Windows releases are much slower. Most Linux distros have a new-shiny problem: I can't trivially (by which I mean, click a button and emphatically not muck with the command line or PPAs or equivalent user-hatefulness) get the newest OpenOffice or Firefox or Chrome or whatever on an old…
And of course with BTRFS, you can just make a snapshot right before the process and just roll back should anything go wrong. Of course there isn’t any UI for this yet, but hopefully we’ll get that as well, once Fedora adapts BTRFS as its default FS.
Furthermore, the default installation strategy for Fedora is to keep /home on a separate partition or LVM volume, so a complete reinstall is also possible.
As to the first point, it always takes some time, but Fedora 16 with latest updates is currently using Linux 3.3, KDE 4.8, Firefox 11 and Eclipse 3.7, so it’s not bad at all. Though Intellij IDEA CE is still on 9.0.
The window for Desktop Linux has closed. The age of the desktop is ending; smartphones and tablets satisfy the computing needs of many people, and more app markets and low-cost devices will only increase this.
>a proprietary iPad-like interface called Unity Unity is proprietary? Really?
Unity is developed by Canonical. Canonical "owns" Unity. It is a frustrating choice of word, considering "proprietary" has a generally more specific meaning within computing. (more closed, trademarked, protected, etc.)
Mind you, if you are looking for one-size-fits-all, Windows fits the bill perfectly. All the choices have been made. But if you value customization, Linux and BSDs are your only choices.
(I mean, for Pete's sake, you can boot a room full of machines from a KNOPPIX terminal server, running out of a virtual machine, and then migrate that running VM to a system you just booted FROM it... And shut down the original! We're not in Kansas anymore!)
Linux is certainly less appealing as a dogfood, despite concerted efforts, in part because people can't take the brands they paid money for, along with them. That's why "free is not cheap enough" for many people and efforts to make Linux "sexy" can only go so far without this.
Commercial games are the epitomy of this and Linux doesn't get big commercial games. (Maybe that's because Linux users are mostly zealots who haven't bought a game in over a decade, because they are against DRM, etc... But that's a tangent.)
I'm not sure winning the dogfood market is even a worthwhile goal.
There is actually a LOT of duplication of effort happening right now with so many distributions trying make the Linux desktop "sexier," simpler, and more like Windows. Maybe it's just me, but that feels like the wrong solution. When I need Windows for "legacy" reasons (to run that proprietary accounting software, because that's what my accountant accepts), I just fire up KVM or Wine.
I don't think the Linux (BSD, etc) camp needs to take competing with Windows so seriously. They've already won. There is simply nothing better, if you care about code. You don't have to know everything, but you have to -- ehem -- RTFM. Non-coders simply aren't the primary audience. I know there are some who would disagree.
If you run a shop that doesn't allow the user the option of installing Windows software, or can standardize on document formats, Linux distributions (etc) are an easy choice today. That's how dogfood works. People eat what's in front of them.
Trying to sell Linux on the desktop without also being a fascist in this way, will only cause people to compare things to Windows. It's a recipe for complaints, in which case you might as well just feed them what they're really asking for.
That said, I agree with the author's point about rolling upgrades. If, for example, I'm working within a single package management framework (like APT or RPM, etc) exclusively, I should be able to upgrade, down-grade, side-grade, and any other grade imaginable. Reinstalls could and should be rare.
Ubuntu is 70 to 80% Debian packages, so why can't I "upgrade" (or downgrade) from Debian to Ubuntu, or from Mint to Debian (or any other package system to any other)?
I very much wish distribution projects 1) held onto a stronger sense of individuality while also 2) cooperating more to allow this level of interoperability. Simultaneous specialization and integration are not mutually exclusive: it's what modular software design is all about.
I found the comment from Jonathan Corbet of LWN ( https://lwn.net/Articles/489689/ ) particularly telling: 'The article is a little muddled, complaining about the "we know best" attitude while saying that Linux lacks the integration seen in iOS or Android, but it's worth a look.' That does seem like a common double standard that people hold Linux to: on the one hand people complain when it lacks coherent vision and w…
I think "has a coherent vision and whole-system thinking" is not even close to a fair description of what the author characterizes as a "'we know best' attitude." Having a coherent design does not mean you can't accommodate a wide range of needs, and similarly, lack of flexibility does not indicate a coherent design.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think "has a coherent vision and whole-system thinking" is not even close to a fair description of what the author characterizes as a "'we know best' attitude." Having a coherent design does not mean you can't accommodate a wide range of needs, and similarly, lack of flexibility does not indicate a coherent design.
Having a coherent design requires making decisions, and sometimes those decisions require ignoring niche preferences. http://islinuxaboutchoice.com/
> Linux Mint requires users to do a complete re-installation, rather than a rolling incremental update Um, and the author's solution to this is installing Windows? I'm sorry, but at least when Linux Mint needs updates I am free to update when I want. Windows will pop up a nag screen and interrupt your work, even threatening to perform the update if you don't delay it. Anyone who has ever done work on a Windows machin…
I'm sorry, but your post is a little disingenuous. No, Windows doesn't do a rolling release--but, three things that mitigate this: 1) Windows releases are much slower. Most Linux distros have a new-shiny problem: I can't trivially (by which I mean, click a button and emphatically not muck with the command line or PPAs or equivalent user-hatefulness) get the newest OpenOffice or Firefox or Chrome or whatever on an old…
You must not have installed Linux Mint or Ubuntu lately, because they both do this.
> 1) Windows releases are much slower. Most Linux distros have a new-shiny problem: I can't trivially (by which I mean, click a button and emphatically not muck with the command line or PPAs or equivalent user-hatefulness) get the newest OpenOffice or Firefox or Chrome or whatever on an older version of Mint (or Ubuntu--and dist-upgrading Ubuntu is a dicey proposition if you like having a working computer).
Not sure why this is an issue, because "shiny-new" Linux distributions come out of the box with a quality web browser and LibreOffice, and the versions are always recent enough and updateable. That's more than I can say for Windows, which comes with Internet Explorer and no office software by default, unless you count wordpad, which is clearly not what we are talking about.
I understand in an enterprise setting those arguments might not make sense, but in a home-desktop setting, they certainly do.