Are there, perhaps, Five Stages of FUD?
First we have Noyes contradicting her own FUD and claiming that Pain Is Good, and now we have Robert Strohmeyer (feed from .Net Jerkface: Anonymous@10/18/2010 07:47:00 AM) admitting that all that bad stuff we keep pointing out about desktop Linux is, er, true.
Despite [Linux FUD]—Linux simply isn’t catching on with desktop users.
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Linux desktop market share remains stagnant at around 1 percent.
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Though I personally wish that the opposite were true, the year of the Linux desktop will never come.
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Although Asus managed to spark a massive trend with cheap, simple netbook PCs, it opted to ship systems preinstalled with a Xandros distribution that left a lot to be desired. Other vendors moved just as clumsily with a host of bad options that gave Microsoft room to sweep the market by extending the life of Windows XP.
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On the contrary, the best-known distribution—Ubuntu—has received high marks for usability from every major player in the technology press, and it features a menu layout nearly identical to that of Mac OS X. Oh well, that’s the tech press for you. Apparently they don’t represent 99% of users. And as for the OSX ripoff … maybe these idiots will get around to reading Piestar some time. Layout does not usability make.
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Ultimately, Linux is doomed on the desktop because of a critical lack of content.
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...it’s no longer acceptable for any PC to fail at basic media viewing.
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Whatcott points out that even if the open-source community were willing to go along, the DRM arena is dominated by “deep, deep patent pools,” making a free, open-source alternative unlikely anyway. (Translation: you can’t even buy it if you’re willing to pay money for it.)
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Meanwhile, even common streaming technologies such as Flash—which Whatcott helped bring to Linux in his previous role as a Macromedia (and later Adobe) product manager—deliver poor results on Linux.
... and so on and so on. But, we’re still in denial! There are three more stages to go through! My titling here is borrowed from the second page of this magisterial summary:
It’s teh Cloudz!
Comments
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At last, one Linux zealot publicly admits that all this fragmentation on Linux is causing a mess.
Several different APIs, different package formats, a dozen of window managers etc… With a situation like this, how can a independent software developer even hope to ship software for “GNU/Linux”? He can’t In fact, if you think of it, there is no real “GNU/Linux”. Just a million of different “GNU/Linux” distributions of which you can only support a subset of them (never all).
As the writer mentions, even basic stuff like Adobe Flash that Solaris and MacOS X had for years becomes a task of gargantuan proportions when it’s about Linux.
No wonder Stallman hates all these “works with windows”, “games for windows” or “made for mac” stickers. Because, even if he wanted so, he couldn’t make a “Works with GNU/Linux” sticker. Imagine a Hardware vendor been told “you must maintain compatibility with a million different distros”. It just wouldn’t work!
Or, you can simply hand over the source, and expose all your secrets to competitors, like Sun did with UltraSPARC T2. That worked well (Fujitsu blatantly copied and became rich, while sun tanked)
Unless of couse forcing developers to hand over the source, if they want to support linux was Stallman’s secret plan from day one.
I am starting to think that all this fragmentation and constant changes in the API/ABI is done on purpose to “protect” linux from proprietary software.
Anyway it doesn’t matter. IMO the desktop is a solved problem. Win7 and Macos X have are already reached the target linux is still chashing. Linux had it’s chance in the win xp and vista ages, but now it doesn’t. Windows overcame it’s flaws and is now too damn good
I don’t know about day one, but here’s Greg KH on why instability is good for you: http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/stable_api_nonsense.html
Well, I beliveve Grek KH may be correct on this one (surprise!).
The kernel ABI, on which the drivers are written, is impossible to stay stable, unless you halted kernel development tomorrow.
It’s reasonable to expect that every time you make a major upgrade to the OS (hence, you get a new kernel), you need new drivers.
A similar thing happens in windows, where everytime you make a major kernel upgrade (such as the move from winxp to winvista) you need new drivers.
That’s why you must select responsible companies like Pinnacle who make new driver versions of their products, and not sleazy companies like Avermedia who don’t.
The problem with Linux is with the API, on which the applications are written. The Linux API itself is pretty stable (great if you like text-only apps), it’s the other crap like PulseAudio, X.org etc that breaks the API every freaking time a new version appears. This is horrible, and the reason I personally loathe Linux with all my existence. You can’t expect a company like Electronic Arts to make new versions of Need For Speed Carbon everytime a new version of X.org or Pusle breaks the API. It’s impossible. The only way to get you software running on a GNU/Linux distro is handle the source over to the package managers, like Stallman wanted from day one.
Instead, Windows does NOT do that (unless the programmer is stupid and used undocumented API features). Ordinary non-system utility programs from Windows XP run in Vista with no problems. A similar thing happens between MacOS X versions. This is what called a stable programming environment.
Instead on Linux, you are expected to roll out patches for games you made 5 years ago every 6 months. Horrible.
And this summarizes the whole Linux situation: Nice and stable kernel (made by IBM), horrible graphical and sound subsystem (made by the freetards using LongPHPCodes)
Yes and no. First of all, there’s a reason why Microsoft and Apple don’t go releasing a new version of the kernel, with new ABIs, every other month. Secondly, although your driver disk comes with (say) Win95, Win98, W2000, XP and Vista drivers, that’s the lot for fifteen years of kernel development. I have yet to see a “Windows XP Home Edition SP2” driver.
Basically, Greg KH and the rest don’t want to put any effort into stability. They just want to putz around in a sandpit.
But maybe I’m being unfair. The absolute, cannot avoid reason why ABI stability for drivers in Linux will never happen is that there are fifty seven distributions with silly tweaked kernel revisions on each one. Greg mentions architecture support, but this is a red herring.
The basic problem is that nobody in the kernel team is interested in doing it right. The so-called “solution” (put teh codez in the repozitory) is nothing of the sort. Besides, can you imagine what would happen if NVidia did this and the driver broke anyway? They get enough grief as it is.
Totally agree with you about the API instability. I genuinely cannot see an argument for this.
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