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Linus Torvalds on new Chromebook Aura UI

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Re: Linus Torvalds on new Chromebook Aura UI

#141

Post by wavephorm »

Flenser wrote: post #105
wavephorm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browser cache is around 1GB and web developers are itching for vast landscapes of local storage systems. We're moving toward a computing world where hard drives don't even exist. Within 3 years we may see devices that have only persistent RAM. And for large files, I bet we'll see some nice competition between Dropbox, Google, Microsoft, and others which may eventually lead to making hard drives obsolete. Nah, don't t…

You're conflating two different things: Local Storage/caching, and the medium it is stored on, spinning disks. The data may live in the cloud, but it will be heavily cached locally. We'll still need several GB or TB of local storage, be it spinning disks, SSDs or permanent RAM. Grandparents won't want to be without the home video of their grandchildren just because their WiFi router stopped working or their ISP is ha…

  We'll still need several GB or TB of local storage, be 
  it spinning disks, SSDs or permanent RAM.
Yes I should have clarified -- I expect memristors to be on the market within a few years. Once they're ready I bet we'll see all laptops and mobile devices move over to them. Between memristor based local storage/cache, and large/cheap cloud storage, I don't see much reason for having hard disks, software, and data in our local computers for very long. Just keep all your data and apps on the cloud, and use web-based apps for accessing them. The foundation for this type of computing world is absolutely being built right now by thousands of companies. It's definitely coming.

Re: Linus Torvalds on new Chromebook Aura UI

#142

Post by ajross »

pjin wrote: post #74
JadeNB wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google's been indexing the web and Amazon executing bazillions of legally binding sales without a "major data loss event" for 13 years now. I don't think that's really likely. At that scale, backups aren't really a .serious problem, as you have to have redundancy in the system for reliability reasons anyway. How do you know that there hasn't been a major data loss event for Google? Would you be able to tell the dif…

It's happened before, at least once very early on: Google had taken ill. The problem was the index storing the contents of the web in Google's servers. For a couple of months in early 2000, it wasn't updating at all. Millions of documents created during that period weren't being being collected. As far as the Google search engine was concerned, they didn't exist. http://books.google.com/books?id=V1u1f8sv3k8C&pg=PA41&…

It's a nit, but this wasn't a "data loss" event. It was a bug that prevented the storing of the data in the first place. Backup strategies (either cloud-managed or "hanging on to your local hard drive" as lukeschlather posits) would not have helped.

Re: Linus Torvalds on new Chromebook Aura UI

#143

Post by mechazoidal »

snarfy wrote: post #36
wavephorm wrote: post #8

The "All-Web" paradigm is coming, folks. And it really doesn't matter how much you love your iPhone, or your Android, or Windows phone. Native apps are toast, in the long run. Your data is moving to the cloud -- your pictures, your music, your movies, and every document you write. It's all going up there, and local hard drives will be history within 3 years. And what that means is ALL software is heading there too. N…

I'm waiting for it to come full circle - the day when the browser VM is so advanced it's basically a VMWare shim and each web page is really an OS that boots up, then we can finally throw away all the development crap collectively known as web duct tape and use real tools for software development.

As jodrellblank says, it's been possible to do this for a long time:

Inferno IE4 plugin: http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/plugin/index.html

Lively Kernel: http://www.lively-kernel.org/

Re: Linus Torvalds on new Chromebook Aura UI

#144

Post by ori_b »

icebraining wrote: post #140
ori_b wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uh, Android does have sandboxing and isolation, and apps can only access your data if you specifically allow them to. Wrong; The filesystem is FAT32, and has no additional permissions beyond a "read only" bit. Any data that's there can be accessed by apps, as things stand.

No. Android uses Ext4 since Gingerbread, and before it used YAFFS: http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/12/ext4-filesys...

For internal storage. On SD cards or internal "external" storage, it's world-readable: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/data/data-storage....

Relevant text: "Every Android-compatible device supports a shared "external storage" that you can use to save files. This can be a removable storage media (such as an SD card) or an internal (non-removable) storage. Files saved to the external storage are world-readable and can be modified by the user when they enable USB mass storage to transfer files on a computer."

I forgot to specify that in my original post. My mistake.

Re: Linus Torvalds on new Chromebook Aura UI

#145

Post by nooneelse »

generateui wrote: post #116

I like the cloud, but I really hate giving out control of my data. It makes a lot of sense for public data (tweets, blogposts), which you want to share anyways. I see a lot of potential in a "drop": a personal cloud server installed at home, with the same user friendliness as e.g. google docs. Public data/services in the cloud, personal stuff at home. There still is enough opportunity to integrate mmoc? (massively mu…

I desire something along similar lines, TonidoPlug plus a rich app store. Owned by me. Plug in and log on simplicity. The option to mirror it up on a VPS rented by me if/when it needs a fatter pipe than my home connection. And mmoc (massively multiple online collaboration) instead of Facebook et alia sounds great to me. If someone wants to buy/use data about me, I would like them to have to come negotiate with the source.

Re: Linus Torvalds on new Chromebook Aura UI

#146

Post by Arelius »

goodgracious wrote: post #82
Arelius wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a solution, you still need to get the downloads to a local system to use them for that vast majority of media.

True, but he's admitting he doesn't access ("use") the data in the same month he downloads it. So downloading from his VPS IP address to the VPS's secondary storage, outside Canada, won't count toward his monthly Canada ISP's cap. It's only when he decides to download data from the VPS's secondary storage to his "local system" he'll begin using his monthly allowance.

But that is a pretty atypical usage pattern. So, not the rule we should expect when we are talking about the general "future" of technology.

Re: Linus Torvalds on new Chromebook Aura UI

#147

Post by jahmed »

kristopolous wrote: post #73
jahmed wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But if what you say is right, the pendulum, at the consumer level, will soon swing back the other way the first time that someone can't access the "cloud" on a trip or forgets to pay their "cloud access bill" (phone/internet whatever) and then gets locked out of ... well, everything. One day the idea that you don't have internet access will be just as silly as saying you don't have electricity. Its in the very infan…

Well this is because the word "computer" needs to be dismantled a bit. Computers as a personal mainstream entertainment device will eventually work much like television. Data retention policies will be at the whim of the content distributor and consumers will select from sets of content dictated by different price packages. Computers as midrange workstations for engineers, artists, musicians, and scientists aren't go…

Agreed. Many people are starting to ask less for a general purpose computing machine and more for something that can go on the internet or watch netfix or use skype. They want a simple to use appliance like an iPad that simplifies the experience. Want Netflix? Push the Netflix button. Want facebook? Push the facebook button. Technical people will still want general machines that do what ever is demanded of them. I think this will lead to more divergence in the OS market with very simple OSs taking over the 'I just want it to work and I dont care how you do it' market and more technical OSs that let you destroy your computer for anyone else.

One worrying thing is that when things just work you lose some people that might have otherwise played around with things, possibly (probably) breaking things along the way, and learning important lessons. I learned to use Dreamweaver from downloading it illegally and playing around with it but it made it easy to write HTML and got me to learn ColdFusion and SQL. Poking around a DOS prompt and accidentally formatting your computer teaches people some important lessons.

To me the million dollar question is how to keep kids engaged in the transistors and languages of computers when we start to pretend they dont exist. What happens when the next would be Linus grows up in family with only iPads and iPhones?

Re: Linus Torvalds on new Chromebook Aura UI

#148

Post by slurgfest »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #125

I think a lot of people are missing the point of what Linus is saying somewhat. He's really just addressing the elephant in the room by saying that as of yet the whole open source desktop mess has failed to produce anything that looks like a compelling , easy to use desktop. If Google can produce a Linux based operating system that addresses the needs of casual users and power users/technophiles (like Linus) and get…

Like the shell, the hierarchical filesystem is valuable as a 'maintenance hatch' for power users and administrators. If it is too much underemphasized then it will suck to work with. Similarly it is very valuable for the functionality you get in a GUI to be exposed at a lower API level and for the GUI to use that API, rather than for APIs to be locked up in GUIs which are incredibly awkward to wrap or automate.

Re: Linus Torvalds on new Chromebook Aura UI

#149

Post by slurgfest »

dkarl wrote: post #136
jiggy2011 wrote: post #125

I think a lot of people are missing the point of what Linus is saying somewhat. He's really just addressing the elephant in the room by saying that as of yet the whole open source desktop mess has failed to produce anything that looks like a compelling , easy to use desktop. If Google can produce a Linux based operating system that addresses the needs of casual users and power users/technophiles (like Linus) and get…

He's really just addressing the elephant in the room by saying that as of yet the whole open source desktop mess has failed to produce anything that looks like a compelling , easy to use desktop. If Google can produce a Linux based operating system that addresses the needs of casual users... [they can] simply eat everyone elses lunch. He also addresses the elephant in the room that the major Linux UI pushes that cons…

For most of the 90s I remember hearing how Linux was so stupid because it was derivative and behind the times and never innovated.

Now whenever there is an innovation, it is reviled and everyone asks for the interface which looked roughly like Windows 95.

So I guess they listened to the wrong messages.

Re: Linus Torvalds on new Chromebook Aura UI

#150

Post by slurgfest »

yock wrote: post #120

The most interesting thing to me about each of these little episodes is how Linus, by creating the brilliant Linux kernel, is lauded as a sort-of-oracle when giving his opinion about very non-kernel things. I quite like the simple, opinionated approach to Gnome and Unity but my opinion (and others who may agree with me) matters somehow less because I didn't create this great thing that has nothing to do with UI desig…

I suspect that the people who approve what Linus says on this matter are the people who already agree with what he says on this matter. Already having this kind of opinion, it feels good for some smart high-profile to say it in an articulate way.

It's true that liking Gnome and/or Unity seems to have a kind of stigma these days.

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