Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence • Hacker News Board

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#311

Post by MrTonyD » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 1:03 AM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #249

CaptSpify wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of good things in systemd, and service-files are definitely one of them. But we could have a system that works like service-files without all the downsides of systemd.

Looking at the 20 years before systemd, we apparently couldn't. There were a lot of init systems that were better than sysvinit, but only systemd played the politics part of init system adoption correctly.

Well, I agree if by "played the politics" you mean "were willing to force it on users". The other alternatives to the init system were rejected because, in general, init was good enough. Not perfect - but not worth the turmoil, fragmentation, and re-learning required to change it. Basically, those who control popular distributions are able to ignore the masses who use those distributions. Open source has gotten lost.

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#312

Post by stinkytaco » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 1:10 AM UTC

ploxiln wrote: post #307

stinkytaco wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The UI/UX experts at Gnome/systemd say "linux is NOT about choice", but that's why I chose linux over a decade ago, for choice. If some part sucks for me, I can replace just that part. I don't recall them saying this at all. In fact, I would argue that Gnome's pursuit of a novel interface is very much about choice. It's not like they firebombed the xfce and KDE projects and ran away with the fortune. They said, "th…

http://www.islinuxaboutchoice.com/ https://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2009/09/23/linux-is-about-ch... https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-Janua...

I think you are taking that out of context. He's rejecting the strawman set up in the previous email. The camera breaking due to a new module has nothing to do with "choice", it had to do with a bug. You can perhaps argue that the module was pushed too soon (as he says in the last paragraph), but throw "choice" out there every time something changes is not productive.

In this case, you can't have it both ways. You can't live on the cutting edge, as Fedora does, and then complain that the cutting edge is too different than the old way. Run CentOS if that's your concern. Otherwise you only succeed in dividing the project's focus. But that's really orthogonal to the Gnome project or to the issue being discussed in that thread.

Gnome3 made a decision. If you don't like it saying "linux is about choice" is meaningless. If you believed that, use something else or fork the project. That's what linux is about.

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#313

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 1:11 AM UTC

jhasse wrote: post #114

apexalpha wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snaps have very real advantages for both users and developers. I'm in favour of them!

Can you name these advantages over Flatpak?

Flatpak is designed for desktop and relies on that environment, snap is designed for both server and desktop use.

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#314

Post by brendaningram » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 1:13 AM UTC

Disclaimer: I don't use Gnome or Unity, I'm an i3 guy.

I understand that choice in the Linux world is very important, but I also think that choice (taken to extremes) can be crippling. My opinion is that we have too many desktop environments, and too many distros.

If we imagine a hypothetical scenario where in June 2010 Ubuntu committed to Gnome as the DE, imagine how much progress would have been made with Gnome in the last 7 years, not just from a coding perspective, but from a community and social perspective.

I consider it supremely important that we educate as many computer users as possible about the negative side of proprietary software (lock in subscriptions, proprietary file formats, closed source privacy concerns etc).

What Ubuntu did back in 2010 (I think) did major damage toward that vision.

I applaud Mark Shuttleworth for making the decision, even if he only got there because of commercial reasons. I really hope that Canonical and Red Hat can work together to make Gnome not just a technological success, but a social one too.

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#315

Post by swiley » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 1:19 AM UTC

badloginagain wrote: post #228

AtticusTheGreat wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who applauds this pivot, I never saw much value in the whole convergence idea. Why would I want my laptop and phone to be the same device? This seems to follow the misguided idea in software that if two ideas are similar, just make a single generic idea that solves both problems. But then you get into leaky abstractions and have to make lots of sacrifices to get it working well for both use cases.

I was always under the impression that convergence for the end user meant having the same 'computer' spread across many devices. That your phone has access to the same files as your laptop as your tablet. That identity and rights management was shared and unified across all devices. That your devices natively formed a network, a sandboxed cloud. I never understood it all looking the same, having a shared UI. The scre…

I totally disagree actually. With relative position pointing (except for the onscreen keyboard) desktop UIs actually are significantly more usable (not to mention, often more responsive) on my android than the phone centric android GUIs.

The only problem with this is that SDL X11 eats the battery.

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#316

Post by pksadiq » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 1:25 AM UTC

int_19h wrote: post #304

signa11 wrote: post #295

any specific reason why desktop linux seems to be converging on gtk instead of qt ?

I think it's a combination of largely unrelated historical trends (dating to way back, when Qt was GPL-only, and even before that, when it had its own incompatible license). That said, it's interesting that most commercial desktop software for Linux these days seems to be written in Qt, not Gtk. Also, while this is anecdotal, most new projects (as in, started recently, as opposed to old software having new releases)…

> I think it's a combination of largely unrelated historical trends ...

Some of the facts are still true. Say for example, Qt is now licensed under LGPLv3, which several corporate hate. GTK+ is licensed under LGPLv2.1+.

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#317

Post by noobermin » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 1:25 AM UTC

dal wrote: post #95

noobermin wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sad too, in fact, a scan over the comments suggests we aren't so much in the minority. I think too that his conviction was right, it is merely possible that his strategy of going out on his own on Mir wasn't the right one. I'm not sure if going with Wayland will hamper the eventual convergence, but I doubt at this point we will see an open source convergence before we see one in proprietary form.

It's here already called the Samsung Dex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEPegrUMXaA https://news.samsung.com/global/hands-on-8-galaxy-s8-feature...

Literally a week ago. Could this be related to Shuttleworth backing down?

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#318

Post by noobermin » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 1:29 AM UTC

brendaningram wrote: post #314

Disclaimer: I don't use Gnome or Unity, I'm an i3 guy. I understand that choice in the Linux world is very important, but I also think that choice (taken to extremes) can be crippling. My opinion is that we have too many desktop environments, and too many distros. If we imagine a hypothetical scenario where in June 2010 Ubuntu committed to Gnome as the DE, imagine how much progress would have been made with Gnome in…

I'm not entirely convinced this is right. Many people worked on Gnome, I'd bet even more did so than did for Unity and Mir. It's not that having more than one project completely divided the FOSS community's resources up.

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#319

Post by Shorel » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 1:39 AM UTC

flukus wrote: post #293

avodonosov wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While interfaces should not be the same across devices, being able to dock you phone and continue using its applications on normal monitor of your desktop, with keyboard and mouse would be convenient. I mean when you walk it's a phone, when you at the desk, the same device is connected to monitor, keyboard and mouse.

But then each application is essentially 2 applications in one.

Just like any responsive website is.

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#320

Post by GutenYe » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 1:40 AM UTC

brendaningram wrote: post #314

Disclaimer: I don't use Gnome or Unity, I'm an i3 guy. I understand that choice in the Linux world is very important, but I also think that choice (taken to extremes) can be crippling. My opinion is that we have too many desktop environments, and too many distros. If we imagine a hypothetical scenario where in June 2010 Ubuntu committed to Gnome as the DE, imagine how much progress would have been made with Gnome in…

Switched to GNOME means GNOME will have more developers working on it, and developer matters. Compare to tons of full-paid developers in MacOS, Android and Windows.

At the moment, linux still needs more and more High-Quality Desktop Applications.