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Linux Software

Deciding On The Future of Linux 359

Posted by Hemos from the where-oh-where-shall-the-future-go dept.
A reader writes: The Free Standards Group has posted a request for feedback, now that they have completed LSB 1.2 and li18nux is also finished. Where should they/we go next? "
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Deciding On The Future of Linux More

Deciding On The Future of Linux

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  • Should linux next try for a) a standardized and integeated windows like shell b) new functionality c) faster preformance(its starting to get fragmented) d) cowboy_neal based penguin logo
    • So...by "[need] faster performance (its starting to get fragmented", I assume you are unaware of the tremendous speed increases of the 2.5.x series? The VM layer and IDE subsystem have both been completely reworked, as well as a huge list of other performance tweaks in the next kernel point release, such as the new scheduler, etc. 2.6 should be fun.
      • actually, the IDE layer WAS completely reworked. And it didn't work...for a long time. It was scrapped and a slightly modified 2.4 IDE layer was front ported to get back to stable code.

        Other than that, I agree with you.

    • Re:Looks like we need a poll (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      For the GUI...
      Standards: yes
      Single Standard Implementation: no

      All the X GUIs these days seem so focused on the G that they're ignoring the U and the I. There should be some standardization on the I, and the variety of Gs(The WMs and DEs) would be implementations of the standard.

      freedesktop.org [freedesktop.org] has the right idea.
  • How about creating a standard for dealing with new hacks that have to be put in place to deal with propietary software that people think is necessary? For example, there should be a way to add to networking systems everytime some influential company decides to extend to their own "standard." It would be especially nice to be able to tell my users when and how something will be in place cuz once they get the bug up their butt they want answers now.

  • Drivers... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by }InFuZeD{ ( 52430 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @01:19PM (#4397460) Homepage
    It's all about drivers and compatibility with those gadgets...

    For example, the reason I'm running Windows now is because I can't get my darn Palm m515 to work in Linux, and I don't even know where to start looking for help with my Minidisc Player...

    So it's all about compatibility with those gadgets in my book :)

    • Re:Drivers... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Fergal ( 416111 )
      Hi,

      Lots of apps work with the M515!

      pilot-link, and jpilot and kpilot which work with these sync fine!

      Coldsync works fine as well, although can only be used to backup your palm.

      If you want to recompile some stuff then Evolution plus Gnome-pilot is awesome! Far more functionality then the Palm desktop!

      Cheers
      Ferg

    • Re:Drivers... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by cpeterso ( 19082 )

      I'm surprised someone hasn't created a driver abstraction layer that enables the same driver code to work on Windows, Linux 2.4, and older Linux kernels. New Linux drivers often get backported, but each driver developer must do the same type of backporting work. Why not consolidate all the backporting into a single, shared (and debugged) driver abstraction layer?

  • This is a corrigendum (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wackybrit ( 321117 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @01:19PM (#4397462) Homepage Journal
    Alan Cox is illusively quoted as saying, "The community is great for getting the work done, but when it comes to making decisions about where Linux is going, that responsibility should entirely rest on the shoulders of Linus. It's his operating system, and we shouldn't be able to take that away."

    I want to agree with that quote. The guys programming Linux and the kernel and so forth are all hard workers and decide to where it's going.

    I can't see why the FSF is trying to become the new Linux authority. First they've tried to claim that much of Linux was written by GNU, this is not true, I put to you, they tried changing Linux to GNU/Linux. Notice that GNU is placed before the word Linux, this implies a strong bias towards the former entity.

    Linux was named after Linus Torvalds and he is the monkey at the top of the pole, NOT the FSF. If anyone wants to ask where Linux should be headed, it should be him and not the FSF who are simply angling for bonus points in the petty argument.

    • Re:This is a corrigendum (Score:5, Insightful)

      by capt.Hij ( 318203 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @01:28PM (#4397517) Homepage Journal
      We want to know what interfaces and features future versions of the LSB and Li18nux should include. For that matter, we would like to know what interfaces and features Linux itself is missing.

      They don't want to be the authority for the kernel. They want to know what new features to add to the interface and the features. THere is a very large development community that does not do kernel programming that cares a lot about these issues, although many certainly don't care what the FSF's views on this are.

      By the way, GNU has had a huge impact on the useability of linux even if they don't have the impact they would have hoped on the kernel. I don't like some of the arrogance coming out of Stallman's office either, but the GNU folks to deserve a lot of credit.

    • Maybe I'm an idiot, but what does the FSF have to do with the Free Standards Group. It seem that most of the people from FSG are current or former industry people.

      How dare RedHat or SuSE or IBM try to tell Linus what to do!
    • You've got to be joking. The FSF wants to call it GNU/Linux because without the GNU toolset there'd be no Linux. Just about ever base system tool in any Linux distro was written by the GNU folks. Linux is just the kernel, everything else has been written by other people. If the GNU people suddenly decided that their software was no longer open source and changed their licensing Linux as an OS would be up a creek without a canoe. The Linux kernel would sit around idling while all the GNU stuff can be ported to run on [insert kernel here].

      With regards to the kernel itself Linus is the monkey at the top of the pole, everywhere else he's just a normal monkey with a Finnish accent. He has no control over the direction of any of the GNU tools and the FSF doesn't have control over the kernel. At the system level where the twain meet the FSF has as much say asanyone else. They are the ones maintaining the tools every other Linux developer is using.

      • Re:This is a corrigendum (Score:4, Insightful)

        by mindstrm ( 20013 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @01:57PM (#4397650)
        "If the GNU people suddenly decided that their software was no longer open source and changed their licensing"

        That's fine. It would have no effect on the current GPL'd toolsets we are using now. They can't revoke the license.

      • "If the GNU people suddenly decided that their software was no longer open source and changed their licensing"

        So if the very people who invented the GPL decide to do the complete and utter opposite of what they're whole organisation is base on ?

        Then why on earth did they invent the GPL ? Why didn't RMS pursue what would have been an extremely lucrative career for someone of his skills ? Why did he spend many years of his life promoting the cause of free software ?

        And why does the GPL say "If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software
        Foundation."         (emphasis mine) ?

        And by the way, the FSF consider "Open Source" to be something slightly different to what they produce (for what it's worth).
    • Alan Cox is illusively [m-w.com] quoted as saying...

      Do you mean that Alan Cox didn't really say that or...?

      I had to look up corrigendum [m-w.com], too. Don't really see how it applies, though.

    • / in "GNU/Linux" as in "TCP/IP" (Score:4, Insightful)

      by BACbKA ( 534028 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @02:35PM (#4397843) Homepage Journal

      I always interpreted GNU/Linux as "GNU environment running over the Linux kernel". It seems that 90% of the users care for the front-end tools (such as their $EDITOR - vim or emacs or whatever, their shell - like bash, etc.) Most of this is GNU, so I think the FSF does have a point about the GNU/Linux name. I even say "GNU/Linux" myself in the context of discussions dealing with the end-user environment.

      OTOH, as far as I read into the FSF docs on the "GNU/Linux" issue [gnu.org], they're *so* nerdy in the worse sense of the word and so much repeating themselves along the lines, that I perfectly understand the frustration of people like you who don't have the patience of hearing the rational points behind all the major rant.

    • Re:This is a corrigendum (Score:4, Funny)

      by philovivero ( 321158 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @06:29PM (#4398905) Homepage Journal
      I can't see why the FSF is trying to become the new Linux authority. First they've tried to claim that much of Linux was written by GNU, this is not true, I put to you, they tried changing Linux to GNU/Linux. Notice that GNU is placed before the word Linux, this implies a strong bias towards the former entity.
      You are so right! Richard Stallman, in his blatent use of English (putting the adjective before the noun my ass. Ask the French and Spanish what they think of this abhorrent practice!) has shown his true colours.

      Linus has pronounced that from now on, in all comments, the adjective must follow the noun, like so:

      • Linux GNU
      • Car red
      • Child small
      • Parent poster silly
      Please immediately start following this method new of modifying nouns when speaking English. Don't let your megalomania be the demise of you. All programmers Source Open must like Yoda be.

  • Excuse me? (Score:5, Funny)

    by evocate ( 209951 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @01:20PM (#4397465)
    Did they just ask "where do you want to go today?"

    • Re:Excuse me? (Score:3, Funny)

      by fshalor ( 133678 )
      It's a valid quesiton.

      • With the descision waning on whether to go with 3.0 for a "big news" incriment or be lost with 2.6 (my vote)
      • With the evolution of Mac OS X into a very good alternate solution to Windows, and potentially portable to the x86...
      • With the pending evolution of current x86 architectures...


        I'd say asking is valid.


        At least we'll actually get a say. I hate M$'s rhetorical catch phrase. "Where do you want to go today?"

        1. That you wont get to without spending more money.
        2. That you will get compromised going to becasue the WU site isn't using FTP and isn't finishing downloads and won't resume partial downloads.
        3. That you could go yesturday, but we're sorry we can't boot today becasue the ntoskern's corrupt.
        4. (And the final quantifyer:) As long as it's where we tell you.


      -=fshalor

  • Universal Copy/Cut&Paste (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 06, 2002 @01:21PM (#4397472)
    What should they standardize next? Copy/Cut&Paste! It is one of the most important features of a modern desktop OS.
    • There already is good "cut and paste" support... its called "gpm". Works like a charm... highlight a piece of text, then go somewhere else and simply click the middle mouse button to paste. Its quicker than ctrl-c ctrl-v because no keystrokes are involved.

      If you're more inclined to use the ctrl-c ctrl-v methodoly, both gnome and kde have this functionality throughout their apps.
      • I don't think it's a question whether a solution works, since they usually does, but if it's standardized.
      • If you're more inclined to use the ctrl-c ctrl-v methodoly

        Yeah, but it's not consistant. Users should not need to know which GUI toolkit their app was coded in. There are also consistancy problems, some apps try to implement their own way of doing the clipboard, and it's entirely possible to have something on the "clipboard" (for lack of a better word) that is different depending on where you paste.

        And then there is the issue of doing on-the-fly text replacements. As far as I know, there is no way to copy some text, highlight other text, and paste, replacing the other text with the text you copied. This sounds like something that doesn't come up much, but it really does.

        Suppose I want to copy a URL and open it in a browser window that already has a URL in the Address box. In Windows, one would just double click the old URL to highlight it, then paste the new one which deletes the old one. Another way would be to double click the old URL to highlight it, then hit backspace to delete it, then paste the new one, but you can't do that, because that copies the old URL.

        So... I usually just resort to opening a fresh browser window, or clicking at the end of the old URL and holding down backspace. Maybe I am just an idiot, but this seems stupid.

        I'm not saying cut/copy/paste should act exactly like windows, but it should at least be consistant, which it really isn't. I've adjusted to using X and various apps now, so I don't notice it as much anymore, but when I first switched from Windows, it was one of the most frustrating things I had to deal with.
      • > There already is good "cut and paste" support... its called "gpm".

        That's if one if working from a console interface. I can't help but suspect that the original poster was thinking of the nonstandardization of cut-&-paste with GUI apps . . . which is an X issue.

        Good feature request, wrong team to fix it: & the philosophy of the folks developing X is not to dictate one binding solution for all. I'd say the best solution woudl be for apps to be written so that they can submit to what the window manager dictates -- not the toolkit or widget set. (ISTR that the biggest differences in how cut and paste work lie in this area.)

        But systematically rewriting all of these applications -- Gnumeric, Mozilla, jpilot, etc. -- would require a lot of work.

        Geoff
      • This isn't meant as a slight on cr@ckwhore, but an 'Informative' mod? I don't know of any applications in X that don't adhere to left-click-highlite/middle-click-paste. It's as universal a behaviour as any in Linuxland and has been for years. It also works between X apps and windowed consoles.

      • There already is good "cut and paste" support... its called "gpm". Works like a charm... highlight a piece of text, then go somewhere else and simply click the middle mouse button to paste. Its quicker than ctrl-c ctrl-v because no keystrokes are involved.
        Oh you got to be kidding me. I use both Windows and Linux/KDE on a daily basis and I hate the cut and paste support in X. No, I don't want to paste at the mouse cursor; I want to paste at the text cursor. Even for console windows, I still get frustrated by the fact that the mouse has to be over the window.

        For KDE apps, the cut and paste functionality is very inconsistent. No, I don't want double-clicking a word to copy it to the clipboard; half the time I'm selecting the word so I can overwrite it with whatever was in the clipboard before. Luckily, some apps let me turn this 'feature' off. Also, I hate the fact that when I close the app, the data in the clipboard is lost.

        Take your blinders off. The OP was right. Cut and paste is the worst thing about Linux today.

        -a
    • Cut/paste is not really a problem, it is misunderstood. There are two paste buffers in X -- whatever you select with the mouse, and whatever you copy with the keyboard.

    • There already IS a universal Cut/Copy/Paste (Score:4, Informative)

      by FooBarWidget ( 556006 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @05:05PM (#4398533)
      Read this:
      http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/clipbo ards.tx t

      GTK+ supports it since 1.2. QT supports it properly since 3.0. Mozilla supports it properly for as long as I can remember.

  • Where should they go next? (Score:4, Funny)

    by XNormal ( 8617 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @01:22PM (#4397476) Homepage
    On vacation.

  • Linux Standard Base? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 06, 2002 @01:23PM (#4397484)
    If these folks were real coders instead of marketroids trying to jump into the Linux bandwagon, they'd know that the LSB acronym is already taken. Sorry folks but LSB will always mean "Least Significant Bit".


  • Click on the final link in the description and leave your feedback there or if you plan to leave it on /. too - please copy and paste the text into that text box on that page. They are asking for your time :). I left my feedback there :)

  • At least in the RPM dependent style of package installation this can be a real pain in the *ss. I kinda hate having to install 10 or so other programs just to get the intended one to work. Yah I could just build it myself, But if Winders can do it so easily, then why can't we?
    Plus these semi-redundant libraries can also eat up disk-space and download time.

    • Re:dependency-hell (Score:2, Informative)

      by Vann_v2 ( 213760 )
      Use Gentoo or Debian, I guess. They take care of dependencies for you.

    • Re:dependency-hell (Score:2, Insightful)

      by luuc ( 595203 )
      RPM is pretty crap how it dumps all your apps into /usr or /usr/bin without any thought. "Program Files" folder in Windows is what Linux needs, except we could call it "/apps" or something like that. Give each program it's own sub-folder and keep things organised (and organisable).
      • "Program Files" folder in Windows is what Linux needs, except we could call it "/apps" or something like that.

        Hmm... perhaps /opt ???

      • "RPM is pretty crap how it dumps all your apps into /usr or /usr/bin without any thought"

        And this gets modded as Insightful?

        Dear God, this is a disappointment.

        RPM dumps your apps wherever the person who made the RPM file told it to put them. Try running "rpm -ql ......" sometime. It's the policy of whoever builds the RPM files you're complaining about, not RPM itself. But you've probably just heard a few people say "RPM is crap" and decided to jump on the bandwagon.

        Secondly, why is it better to have all the apps in /apps ? How does that improve anything ? You can't just install or remove an app by creating or removing one sub-directory. That's part of the reason a tool like RPM was built in the first place.

        There may well be some merit towards splitting entries in /usr/bin into separate sub-directories (e.g. X (already done, though the X directory structure is a mess), GNOME, KDE, etc.). But how do you draw the distinction? What about IPTABLES, for instance? Is it part of the OS? Or part of a firewall application? What about KDE applications? Are they part of KDE, or separate applications? Similarly with GNOME.

        Maybe we want to break everything down into a series of individual packages. Hang on, that sounds a bit like RPM.....

        Learn about how to use RPM. Read up on the "-ql" and "-qf" options. Then if you want to complain about it, complain about some of the things it doesn't do well, or at all (many of which it wasn't really designed to do).
      • R[edhat]PM is pretty crap how it dumps all your apps into /usr or /usr/bin without any thought.

        Allow me to quote the Linux Standard Base Specification 1.2, Chapter 18, File System Hierarchy (The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, Version 2.2, Section 3.12.1) "/opt is reserved for the installation of add-on application software packages." [emphasis added]

        Also "No other package files may exist outside the /opt, /var/opt, and /etc/opt hierarchies except for those package files that must reside in specific locations within the filesystem tree in order to function properly. For example, device lock files must be placed in /var/lock and devices must be located in /dev."
    • It's not so much the dependency hell but the fact that there currently is no way to package and ship software in such a way that it will work across all distributions. As long as that is the case the market for desktop software on linux will remain fragmented with the bulk of software vendors delivering red hat rpms only.

      A standardized, distribution neutral package format combined with a huge, tested repository of free software would be a huge gain.

      • Standardizing on a Linux package format and library versions/locations/whatever would only be half the deal - you still wouldn't be able to release one binary that magically works on Linux/i386, Linux/Alpha, Linux/Sparc, Solaris/Sparc, Irix/Mips, NetBSD/Wristwatch etc. Yet, if you know a bit about Unix programming, chances are that your source code would compile and run just fine there. Think lots of potential customers!

        What the world needs isn't something like a "standardized Linux package format", but something like autoconf that happens to be more of an actual solution and less of a problem on it's own. Portability rocks. Both for users and developers.

        (BTW: That's one point of Open Source/Free Software/Whatever that is too often overlooked: Getting your programs as source code, regardless of the license, is friggin convenient! Binaries are inflexible - it might seem easier at first, but you run into the limitations really, really fast.

    • Re:dependency-hell (Score:2, Informative)

      by messiertom ( 590151 )

      Psst... use Mandrake + urpmi. It's really easy:

      urpmi some-package-with-lots-of-deps-oh-no-Ill-have-to-i nstall-them-all-manually-woe-is-me!

      Oh, wait - it's figured out the deps for me, and automagically installed them in the right place. Just like apt-get - huh!

  • helper program calling (Score:4, Interesting)

    by blystovski ( 525004 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @01:29PM (#4397524) Homepage
    I currently use Windows for ease of use. With it, you can specify what programs you want to handle certain types of files, and the operating system remembers your choices. This greatly aides with the multi-media functions of my home computer. The last time I tried linux on my desktop, that was the one thing that annoyed me the most about the OS in general. There seems to be no standard way for users to specify what programs they want to use for certain file types, which would in my opinion greatly increase user productivity and decrease user frustration when using Linux on the dekstop.

    • Re:helper program calling (Score:2, Interesting)

      by hey ( 83763 )
      I agree...

      $ cd /etc
      $ ls -l mime*

      -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7559 Feb 27 2002 gnome-vfs-mime-magic
      -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 36823 Apr 15 17:47 mime-magic
      -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 99960 Apr 15 17:47 mime-magic.dat
      -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12758 Jul 21 20:10 mime.types

      and none of these files say what the helper apps is.
    • Which is the same comment I would apply to most of the things I see brought up here. I don't helper apps has anything to do with the OS itself.
    • Try Mandrake 9 for example, comes with nautilus which does this.
    • Someone else can answer for GNOME, since I'm not using it right now, but for KDE, start up Explorer, errr, Konqueror, right-click on a file, select the confusingly-named "Edit File Type..." option, then "Add..." an application to the "Application Preference" box.

  • Linux or RiscOS or OS/2 or... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Not to start a flamewar, but what efforts should we put on establishing Linux as the number one OS of the future? The more we follow in a single file, the easier we fall. There are some superb alternative systems around thesedays -- I particularly like RiscOS for ARM boxes. Very, very sweet and usable desktop, extremely fast (written in assembler), and has a decent range of hardware.

    As a Linux user since 1997, I've been impressed by the strides made in the user-friendly desktop arena, but it only takes one man to win the game before the cows come home. I think we should all consider this -- as they say in football, it's a game of two halves, and Linux isn't necessarily the OS of the future.

    Linux is in greater need though of uniformity between the multitude of administration tools. It hasn't made a great deal of progress in the last 5 years in this department, sadly. Fortunately, things are getting better in this area and we may soon be in the position to conquer corporate desktop deployment on a large scale.

    So let's not base our future on Linux as a whole, but on the wide range of free and Open Source software we can apply to our systems. Linux is the OS of the future, but we must maintain our dignity and versatility in accepting other systems.

    Just my thoughts. Mod accordingly!
    • Very, very sweet and usable desktop, extremely fast (written in assembler), and has a decent range of hardware.

      Written in assembly hunh? I'm sure that aids portability doesn't it? I was under the impression that compilers were pretty good nowadays.
  • Disneyland!

  • UTF-16 support (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The I8N team has only released specs for UTF-8. That is not the complete Unicode 3.1 spec. UTF-16 is needed.

    The obvious thing to do is get support for UTF-16.
    Both input and output.

    And yes, I realize that inputting UTF characters on an ASCII keyboard is not simple. Either virtual keyboards, or a complete list of the UTF-16 set, with the alt keys would be very useful.
    [ though typing alt0x0100 etc gets to be painfully slow.]

  • some suggestions.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anthony Boyd ( 242971 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @01:41PM (#4397581) Homepage

    Well, I had a bunch of ideas and then I read wackybrit's comments, and, uh, I agree with those comments. So now I'm stuck wondering if I should suggest anything at all. Since I'm already here....

    A common clipboard, for copy and paste, would be wonderful. If I copy text from Konq and want to paste it into Pan, that should work every time. I note SuSE appears to have done some work here -- sometimes I can copy & paste in SuSE just fine, while other distros are not so fine. Another thing that would be great: common menu system. In fact, it would be great if the menu system was actually just a directory on disk with some subdirectories in it, each populated with links to various apps. That way, if a Window Manager or desktop tool didn't want to offer a menu system, you might still be able to navigate it. If that were in common for all or even many of the WMs out there (KDE, xfce, Gnome, IceWM, and so on), that would make things far easier. Note that I'm not suggesting that Red Hat be copied and KDE apps be pulled out of the menus -- populate the menus with hundreds of apps if you wish. Just get it in a standard format. Finally, common desktop icons (again, not that there have to be specific apps that must be there, just that if I create a link to Galeon on my desktop, it'd be swell if it appeared in KDE and Gnome (and other) desktops.

    These may be in LSB 1.2 -- I've got the page up now & I'm surfing through it, but you guys are slashdotting it a little, so it's slow going....

  • Go for 3D interfaces (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ektanoor ( 9949 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @01:41PM (#4397585) Journal
    Till now we have seen this on games. However I know lots of situations where I would prefer a 3D interface rather than this archaic 2D windowish (X, Windows, OS/2, Mac OS - no matter) world.

    One of the main situations would be on working with large multidimensional data. Think this is too far from you. Take /var/log and you may see a lot of interest moments where it would be easier to deal with this mastodon in a 3D space.

    We already have 3Dwm. But it looks like a little forgotten puppy in the middle of nowhere. Probably because no one created a standard in the same way X was created. How to fit legacy apps or even the command line in the new world? How people will create new apps for 3D if there is no largely accepted standard? Frankly these are issues I think one should think about. Maybe all this is still a bit futuristic, but the time has come for 3D to get more serious. In the place where we work we are already developing a 3D tool for some highly popular program because no one can hold the information that comes in flat relational tables. When one comes up to 2Gb of information a day, information just seem to blow up in front of your eyes.

    Besides, I dream to see a 3D penguin behind the flat surface of Windows...
    • Retard boy, hold on to that suggestion, for when they ask the "where do we want to go with X" article.

      Linux is not the windowing system, whether your choice is X or one of the alternatives to it.

  • What now? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Czernobog ( 588687 )
    I'm assuming that by Linux they mean the whole experience and not just the kernel.

    1. To this effect, I believe a coherent, stable and easy as far as development is concerned, Multimedia API has to be developed. To put it bluntly, no widely used/standardised API, no Linux Desktop.
    2. Fonts. You know what hits Windows users when they first look at a Linux desktop? Its ugliness. The fonts are excruciatingly ugly. Only half solutions exist (see RH Xfs), to my knowledge, exist so far.
    3. A registry. Yes I know you people hate it. I know a million things can go wrong. But without it you don't have an OS. And again, storing an .app_rc in ~/home or making the window manager keep track of associations is stupid.
    The next time you use some other window manager, you have different settings. Solution? Make a bloody registry, that understands security in a multiuser environment.
    4. Limit choice. We whine that closed source takes choice away. We have no say. Well guess what. Too much choice has exactly the same effect. If you don't see that, you are blind.
    Sure, flame me all you want, but unless there's 5 of everything (no, make that 3), Linux is going to stay exactly what it is today.
    A geek friendly OS that tries to be Joe Bloggs friendly. We wish our mothers could use the thing and say "Wow, that's nice and easy", but it's not going to happen as long as we have a million window managers/desktops, browsers, multimedia apps, etc. and at the same time we can't play a DVD as any other common user of another OS can. Same goes for CD burning.

    You might not think these issues are important. You might think that the GPL is the Holy Book. You might think that what's the most important thing is to write cool, clean, fast, phat code.
    Well, nobody really cares, at least to the extent you'd like them to do.

    • Re:What now? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by billatq ( 544019 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @02:05PM (#4397689)

      While this seems to be an uninformed troll, I'll bite anyway :)

      1. To this effect, I believe a coherent, stable and easy as far as development is concerned, Multimedia API has to be developed. To put it bluntly, no widely used/standardised API, no Linux Desktop.

      There is one--it's called SDL

      2. Fonts. You know what hits Windows users when they first look at a Linux desktop? Its ugliness. The fonts are excruciatingly ugly. Only half solutions exist (see RH Xfs), to my knowledge, exist so far.

      All you need to do is to install some pretty fonts and you're good to go. The reason for all the nasty looking fonts is that higher quality fonts are difficult to make and often have licensing fees. Xfs is not a "red hat" solution, but is built into X. As soon as more apps support freetype, we'll be seeing prettier antialiased apps.

      3. A registry. Yes I know you people hate it. I know a million things can go wrong. But without it you don't have an OS. And again, storing an .app_rc in ~/home or making the window manager keep track of associations is stupid. The next time you use some other window manager, you have different settings. Solution? Make a bloody registry, that understands security in a multiuser environment.

      What do you mean that you don't have the OS without the registry? Everything is stored in the user's directory for user settings and everything for the system is stored in one of the /etc directories. You can switch between fifty window managers and the apps will all remember the individual settings. The idea of making a central registry so that all the window managers can keep track of the individual apps is silly. There are many more things that can go wrong and you don't want to compromise your system by having a central registry.

      4. Limit choice. We whine that closed source takes choice away. We have no say. Well guess what. Too much choice has exactly the same effect. If you don't see that, you are blind. Sure, flame me all you want, but unless there's 5 of everything (no, make that 3), Linux is going to stay exactly what it is today.

      You miss the point. When there is choice, then you can pick which window manager you want to use and how you want to use it. The average windows -> linux user will likely choose a similar environment in which they have used before and will probably use KDE or GNOME. The more advanced user will probably pick something a bit more efficient.

      These aren't even issues at all--it seems to me that this is more an uninformed whine about how linux distos don't seem to be the same as windows.

    • /etc could be regarded as a registry - only the files in there are text files which can be edited by hand. The only real advantage of a registry is having all the main configuration files in one standard place and /etc does this arguably better than Windows (multiple files rather than one huge file vulnerable to corruption).

      GNOME also has GConf which is a registry for preferences for GNOME applications. This also avoids a lot of the problems with the Windows registry. It also adds some interesting features such as key change notification - in the comp sci labs here if you log in to two machines at once and change a preference (eg. the desktop background) the change automatically propagates via CORBA instantly to all the machines you're logged on to.

      People probably need to get over their hangups on registries. Yep, the Windows registry sucks, it doesnt mean we cant make something better. I'd love it if adoption of GConf became more widespread.
    • We don't need to limit choice.

      While I do agree w/what you are trying to get at, "limiting choice" is not the way to do it.

      RH is getting the right idea by coming up w/an enviornment that is the same across several platforms.

      I still want to be able to throw out GNOME/KDE and put on Enlightenment. I am comfortable with what I have been using for several years and I am not about to change just b/c Linux needs to move more onto the desktop.
    • I agree strongly with the first two, in part because these are solved problems. The only problem is they have been solved in several different ways. This is where standardization is important. For instance: Linux only needs one sound mixer. aRts, esound, I really don't care. ALSA and OSS need to be unified in some way -- either kill one, or make sure that there's a higher level interface that works with either. And that's just the sound interface.

      The registery, though, makes no sense. There is no registery, no one is writing a registery, and very few people want a registery. This is not the place for a standards body. Standards bodies codify and make explicit existing practice, they should not impose a new practice.

    • Further proof that moderators don't have a clue...

      Multimedia API has to be developed
      One API to rule them all..then what differentiates Linux from Windows? No, the solution here is to bring all the desktop parties together to pool their resources and create one desktop, infinitely extensible. Right now, the fractionization of the desktop community into KDE camps, GNOME camps, etc. prevents true innovation as each camp fights for their own "stand."

      A registry. Yes I know you people hate it. I know a million things can go wrong. But without it you don't have an OS.
      A non sequitur of the highest degree. *nix is about stability, robustness, and configurability. You advocate introducing a mechanism which, by your own admission, is failure-prone in many aspects.

      Limit choice. We whine that closed source takes choice away. We have no say. Well guess what. Too much choice has exactly the same effect.
      No, it will not. You want to know where Microsoft went wrong? It wasn't their attempt to standardize the UI, the so-called "one-size-fits-all" approach. No, they went wrong by trying to force the one-size approach upon the world, whether or not they wanted it. Catering to the lowest common denominator is a wise marketing move, but extremely insulting to those who don't consider themselves in the LCD. Limiting choice would be a nail (no, several nails) in the Linux coffin.

      In fact, now that I think of it, I think the author of the parent post forgot a markup tag on his post:

      <sarcasm>

      In which case, I've been hooked, along with every other moderator who voted this post up as anything other than "Funny."

      • Re:What now? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by ttfkam ( 37064 )
        I'm afraid that I somewhat disagree. While Gnome and KDE should agree on a standard, that standard should not exist at the GUI level. It should be an operating system interface. Why does sound processing and mixing require a GUI? It doesn't. So the library shouldn't rely on a GUI environment. Gnome and KDE should agree upon a low-level sound interface that neither developed. The 2.5 kernel work with ALSA is encouraging.

        -------

        I totally agree with you about configuration. The Windows registry is not a worthwhile construct to emulate. That said, a lot more consistency in config file formats would be nice. (Oops! This one is tab-delimited. Oops! This one is key/value pairs separated by an equals sign but spaces are only data-significant on the right side of the pair. Oops! This one uses spaces for the key/value pair delimiter. Oops! This one uses parentheses for hierarchy. etc.)

        -------

        As far as Microsoft is concerned, I have to disagree as well. Note that I'm writing this post on RedHat 7.3 on a laptop with Mozilla 1.2a. There are no end of applications that don't use MFC or some other Microsoft GUI toolkit. Most Windows applications use the MS APIs because they're easier, faster, or more powerful a lot of the time for whatever reason. People reuse the IE browser rendering component in their apps because it's easier and faster than writing their own renderer.

        Don't get me wrong. I'm no great fan of Microsoft and many of their APIs, implementations, or business practices. But by having a standard implementation, for better or for worse, a lot of people gave up on reinventing the wheel and simply got their program done. This has shown up in security problems on Windows. It has also manifested itself as a robust and very efficient XML parser and browser component that many people used for years before libxml, libxslt, xerces, xalan, Mozilla, Opera, and Konquerer started getting embedded.

        Criticize Microsoft all you want. I'll join you. But don't ignore their occasional good ideas or you'll be throwing the baby out with the bathwater for the sake of blind hatred.
    • 1. Kernel interface work in this area is already in 2.5

      2. Yes, fonts generally suck, but there are solutions out there. This is a distribution issue though. Font choice and text display are already handled by the OS and supporting libraries. How those fonts are displayed should not have anything to do with the front-end application. Otherwise you have twenty thousand implementations for font rendering. There's no interface that needs defining here; there's only implementation. LSB doesn't apply.

      3. A registry is simply one implementation of the concept. The Windows registry is already obsolete (by ActiveDirectory...err...LDAP...). NDS would be better than the Windows registry. Standardizing on LDAP would be better for uniform local and network resource configuration and user authentication. However, keeping configuration files as text in /etc does not remove the possibility of LDAP interface export. Making the configuration files more uniform in format would be 90% of the battle.

      As for configuration in ~/.app_rc, same story as above. It doesn't make LDAP export an impossibility and 90% of the problems would go away with some configuration file consistency.

      4. Choice is configuration format is a lost cause. If all of your creative energies are focused on making a new configuration file format, there are worse problems in store for Linux in the future than ease of use. Configuration files should be consistent. Period. People shoud find some other way to demonstrate their individuality. It's like bridgemakers making driving lanes in whatever width they like, car makers making cars of whatever width they like, and no one is talking to each other. Sure you've got individuality, but your car can only travel on some of the bridges.

      I want cool, clean, fast code (I don't know about making it Pretty, Hot, and Tempting -- I prefer a girlfriend for that). The coolest configuration file format is the one I don't have to invent for the thousandth time. The cleanest config file format is the one that everyone else uses. The fastest config file format is the one where the parser's already written and heavily optimized by people who really care about file parsing. The problem isn't that people care too much. Currently not enough people do care enough about the config file format, and some of the ones who do care are so hung up on 1337 code that they miss the forest for the trees.

      The GPL isn't a holy book. It's not even a holy license. It's a license that tries to assert certain rules in order to maintain a particular code of conduct among the licensees -- just like every other license and EULA out there. If you don't like it, don't use it. If you aren't a programmer, it really isn't your problem.

    • Multimedia interface (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Salsaman ( 141471 )
      You mean something like this [linuxbase.org] . It's a good start, but there should be a standard for audio as well.

  • We have organizations to do this already (Score:3, Insightful)

    by io333 ( 574963 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @01:51PM (#4397625)
    There are already organizations that are determining the direction of Linux. Some are for profit, some are volunteer efforts only (at the moment).

    Those organizations are commonly called the distributions.

    For example:

    Mandrake
    RedHat
    Gentoo
    etc
    etc
    etc

    The distro rollers can do anything they darn please and often do. This gives us variety -- and when a certain distro is liked well enough, de facto standards as well.

    Think about it: Say the FSF was in charge of the "future direction." What would happen? A whole lot of folks would be POed about whatever that direction was, splinter off, and then we'd be in exactly the same situation we are right now and NO ONE could do anything to change it because of the nature of the GNU license.

    Sure, sometimes Microsoft style control gets things done more quickly and efficiently -- and often result in the emergence of features and instantaneous standards that might not otherwise appear. But at what cost?

    Dictatorships are the most efficient forms of governance known. Most folks would probably prefer not to live under them though.

    Freedom is sloppy.

    • I think you misunderstand the role of the LSB (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Salsaman ( 141471 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @02:47PM (#4397902) Homepage
      The LSB does not dictate anything to any package distributors. All the LSB does is to provide minimal standards to ensure that what works in one distro will also work in others. For example, they might specify that libc should always be in a certain directory, or that init scripts should live in /etc/rc.d/init.d.

      This is solely designed to make things easier for third party app developers, since they know what they need to target. No distro is forced to follow the LSB, but if they want the maximum number of third party apps to run, then they will follow it, and get LSB certified.

      Apart from this minimal framework, distro's are still free to do what they like. And since the FSG is not tied to any particular distro, they're not likely to favour one distribution over another.

      To call that dictatorship is ridiculous, you might as well accuse the w3c of dictating all content on the internet, since they set the html standards.

  • Get someone to use it. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ByTor-2112 ( 313205 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @02:00PM (#4397664)
    I know this will be modded as a troll... But how about getting all the Linux distributions to actually use it before considering the standard "finished".
  • They sound like they should be taking notes from beunited.org [beunited.org]

    The BeOSJournal [beosjournal.org] recently spent over 2 hours in the second part [beosjournal.org] of an ongoing interview [beosjournal.org] that outlined the future direction of the non-profit organization.

    BeOS may be dead, but openBeOS is alive and well, and with the help of beunited.org [beunited.org], will start to achieve many great things.

    It would be great if both groups started a relationship that would surely benefit everyone involved. It's through open communication and a willingness to sit down at the table that anything positive is going to be done.

    I'm not trying to bash the Linux Community at all, please understand, but I feel it's in our best interest to help each other, when the giants that we all love to hate (such as M$, IBM, and others) won't sit idly by while their market erodes in front of them.

    That's all I'm saying. Take a good hard look at what beunited.org is up to, and see if that will help you any. Thank you.
  • I think a good move for Linux would be to keep heading for the Single UNIX Specification from the Open Group.
    It would make it much easier to port all of the existing UNIX applications over to Linux. Also, being UNIX compliant would give Linux creditability in the minds of corporations who are looking for alternatives to Windows but do not want to pay or cannot afford a commercial UNIX environment.

  • I just put in my big 2... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by trims ( 10010 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @02:32PM (#4397823) Homepage

    which are:

    Unified System Documentation I want all docs in a single, standard format that all programs must write their basic documentation in. No more man, info, html, pdf, ps or whatnot. I'd prefer a fixed SGML DTD (docbook is OK, but I'd prefer a designed-from scratch one specifically to address the system documentation target). That way, we can can get good viewer independence with modern features (hyperlinks, fonts, in-line graphics). All of the current formats are lacking in at least two areas, and we don't have agreement on which to use. This is a big place for them to step up.

    Standard Config Files No, this is not a request for a Registry (the merits thereof are for another discussion). What we want here is to get rid of the 80 billion different ways to write a config file. I'm sorry, but they all should be a nicely tagged XML (or similar) file nowdays. It sucks to have to figure out the idiosyncrasies of the various config files. This issue isn't simple, but is definitely a place where a good discussion is needed.

    -Erik

    • But system documentation is fundamentally different from technical documentation (DocBook)? If a new schema is made, I would hope that it's at least a subset of DocBook (like already existing Simplified DocBook).

      Other than that, you took the words right out of my mouth. An LDAP interface to general configuration info would be nice too: network aware and accessible configuration and authentication info as a standard feature (but network access to it turned off by default of course for security reasons).

    • Re:I just put in my big 2... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by elandal ( 9242 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @06:10PM (#4398807) Homepage
      Unified System Documentation

      For as long as man-pages stay, OK. I use man-pages, and where an application doesn't have a man-page, I'm first inclined to throw it out, but most often stay cool and start seaching for documentation. At least please package a man-page that points to the documentation with all software.
      Documentation shouldn't be X-dependant, but should be readable in text-only 80x25 screen.

      Standard Config Files

      Different programs have different needs from their config files. Trying to fit one model to all isn't really a good solution, as that model would have to cater for the extremely complex configuration some software might need, while still be very simple for the programs that just need five key-value pairs.
      Config files have to be human-readable and hand editable. I'm not going to use the various whiz-bang graphical configurators when I still have vi. At least regarding system config - configuring various all-graphical applications is another story, but that's not system-config.

      However, requiring text-only configuration files and version control of the whole configuration hierarchy would be good. I have seen some ways to use eg. RCS for all of /etc, just haven't tried it yet myself.
      Of course this also means that there would have to be a hierarchy for configuration-only files, and any non-configuration files in /etc should have to find a new home. eg. RH73 /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts has both configuration files (ifcfg-*) and programs (ifup*, ifdown*). Whether eg. init's rc-files are configuration or programs is of course questionable..

      Perhaps configuration file hierarchy should be such where each package would use it's own directory, and where necessary, use symlinks.
    • Amazing! An educated, informed, reasonable comment! I congratulate you, sir! And I echo your calls for standardization of config files and documentation (GNU info is an abomination and should be taken out and shot).

      KDE has something that makes man pages a little more palatable. If you type a url of the form man:/command into a Konqueror window, you get a rendering of the man page for that command in HTML. Then you get colors, hyperlinks, nice formatting, the ability to dynamically resize the page, a nice search function, a back button, a scroll bar, mousewheel support, and all the other niceties of a modern browser. If the documentation was in a better format to begin with, one that had more ability to specify hyperlinks and graphics, this would be the perfect documentation browser.

    • I know this will sound troll-like but I've got strong feelings on this one...

      Unified System Documentation

      I'm sorry but most documentation does not benefit from SGML, and considering that getting free software authors to write docs AT ALL is a chore, there should be as few obstacles as possible. Maybe we need to unify the _access_ to the docs. I can basically type "man command" for any command on my system and get help, but maybe I should also be able to do "docs command|package" and get an automatically generated list of options for related man pages, html files, web sites, etc.

      Standard Config Files

      I've said it before and I'll say it again, XML is not a storage or configuration format, it is a transport format to serve as an intermediary between two disparate systems. It is horrible to have to edit or parse XML for human or computer. Using XML for config would be much easier for beginners and annoying for experts. That aside, instead of 80 billion ways to write a config file you'd get 80 billion DTD's. If you think you can unify all the config files on one DTD, good luck to you.

      In short - XML is NOT a silver bullet. It's a different breed of the same dog.

  • Is there anything big still missing? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @02:49PM (#4397914) Journal
    Most of the comments seem to be along the line of "Who the hell do they think they are". These comments are crap as the posters obviously have not read the post. They do not claim nor have ever claimed to own a particulair piece of software. They are just intrested in creating some sort of standard. If you like youre linux to not conform to that standard then that is just fine. Just as ANSI is not a law neither is neither is the LSB. For the rest of us it makes it easier to exchange between the different flavors of linux if all the files are in roughly the same place.

    Others seem to want to turn linux into windows. If only (mime support/windows like shell/c:\Program Files like dir structure) was finally included I would start using it. Yeah right like anyone cares. I think that with the burst of the internet bubble the idea that linux should go to the masses has been left behind. If you saw the interview with Linus himself on the BBC you will have heard that he does noet even wish to compete with windows. MS has its market and linux has its own. That is real freedom of choice people. Those people that want linux to become like windows just want a gratis (not free) version of windows.

    The FSG is a standards group, I presume therefore that their question is on what if anything needs standarization next. Standarization is not the enemy of freedom when standarizing on it does not put a brake on innovation. A standard desktop for instance would limit innovation and therefore choice. A standard directory layout does not unless I missed some special signifigance in keeping youre logs in /.[sic]

    So what needs standarizing next? I have no idea. Software creators now are reasonably sure where to install the bits of their software and how they can achieve multi language support. Printing is also ridicously easy (could be because I only have access to HP printers). Is anything more needed, almost certainly, let the creators figure this out and not disturb them with a dozen wish lists by windows users who will never switch over because it will always be hard to switch to something wich is different. If it wasn't different then what would be the point of switching at all.

    Use linux not because someone tells you to. Use linux not because you want to stick it to Gates. Use linux not because you want to be l33t.

    Use linux because you like it strenghts and can forgive its weaknesses.

  • Huh? (Score:2)

    by obi ( 118631 )
    Why is everyone referring to the FSF?

    This is the Free Standards Group (FSG), not the Free Software Foundation (FSF).

    This is about standardizing things across distributions, and setting up a set of useful guidelines that have been well thought through.

    Some things I think need researching:

    - A bunch of wrappers aimed at making it easy to write GUIs for services (activation, status, description), hardware/network/... configuration, etc etc. A bit like standardizing the backends of the ex-Ximian Setup Tools.
    - A decent set of guidelines to handle virtual hosts on servers + wrappers for their configuration/administration.
    - moving beyond the fhs: new filesystems and kernel changes introduced will allow a whole bunch of new functionality. I'd like to see some discussion starting about how we can leverage the advantages of union mounts ( "/" vs "/usr": really still needed?), extended attributes and ACL's, LVM etc.

    I'd also very much like a comparison with completely different filesystem layouts like MacOSX. I realize that the FHS came to be for very good reasons, but I'm hoping that since we'll have all these features available to us we'll be able to simplify the structure alot without giving up any of the advantages. It's not always nice to be stuck in a lowest common deminator legacy world.

  • Office Documents Format (Score:5, Insightful)

    by InodoroPereyra ( 514794 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @06:41PM (#4398943)
    This is something we need ... yesterday. An XML (or whatever SGML they choose) office format standard. I know there is work in progress from the Open Office Project [openoffice.org], but I would rather have this work merged in a standard dictated by the Free Standards group. That alone would represent a HUGE step forward. Let's hope.

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