Harsh Words From Google On Linux Development 948
jeevesbond writes "The alpha version of Google Chrome is now available for GNU/Linux. Google Chrome developer and former Firefox lead Ben Goodger has some problems with the platform though. His complaints range from the lack of a standardised UI toolkit, inconsistencies across applications, the lack of a unified and comprehensive HIG, to GTK not being a very compelling toolkit. With Adobe getting twitchy about the glibc fork and previously describing the various audio systems as welcome to the jungle, is it time to concentrate on consolidation and standardisation in GNU/Linux in general, and the desktop in particular?"
Yes (Score:3, Interesting)
Without some sort of standards how would a helpdesk worker even know where the "start button" is on a caller's "Linux Desktop"? Or what it even looks like, or if it's even there?
Remember the helpdesk worker might not be working for the same company as the user. For example: if Mr XYZ goes to a hotel and has problems with "hotel internet", they might be calling the "hotel internet helpdesk". Same for other stuff e.g. bank and financial sites.
BTW Microsoft has created a similar problem for themselves by changing things immensely with Vista (and Office 2007). Lucky for them, they're in a different market position but even they are having problems with market adoption, so go figure.
There's nothing wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Use Qt.... (Score:5, Interesting)
True! And since it now comes with QGtkStyle, which uses GTK+ engines and widgets to render stuff, you can use it and have a nice looking app at the same time.
Re:Um.... (Score:3, Interesting)
and I don't understand what's wrong with that.
It's like saying "There are so many different operating systems for so many different types of hardware that the computer market is too fragmented - so we won't produce any software"
It's silly. If you want those users then you make the software, if you don't then you don't. simple.
BTW, I'm in the throws of switching to Vista after being an Ubuntu user for many years. They don't like my bugs but Microsoft actually seems to care.
Re:Um.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Meh, everything is a trade-off. Qt is way easier than Gtk and has a huge API for doing all sorts of cross-platform stuff. Plus it's truly cross-platform whereas Gtk is pretty crappy on anything other that systems running X Windows.
The trade-off is that Qt is C++ and Gtk is C. This actually matters a lot when you need to interface to other C-only applications and libraries or whatever. C++-to-C is easy but using it the other way around is problematic and annoying. Then you have the issue of how clean the code is in each language (depends on your point of view as to which is better).
There also used to be the issue of Qt forcing the GPL down your throat but that is no longer an issue because both Gtk and Qt use LGPL.
Personally I have been using Qt for everything recently. Since the switch to LGPL it's the obvious choice even though I'm a C purist at heart. I hate the fact that it's so big though. Since it's LGPL you can't statically link only the stuff you use so your application installs tend to be larger than they really should be...
Trade-offs... Everything... So annoying, makes it hard to develop truly high quality software.
Qt (Score:5, Interesting)
Chrome should have been built on top of Qt from day 1. You'd have tight integration with Webkit, a great toolkit, and cross-platform from day 1 on Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris.
Google opted for VERY Windows-centric design which made porting hard, and then the man tasked with porting to Linux choose a poor toolkit and then blamed the Linux platform for two bad decisions in a row made by Google.
I have zero sympathy.
Re:Um.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Um.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Riiiight, an Ubuntu user who's written many articles for the Windows-only .NET platform.
Silly Astroturfer.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Interesting)
Except GTK is so poor that you have Gnome devs calling for a major restructuring, and Mark Shuttleworth of Cannonical/Ubuntu fame calling for Gnome to be built on top of KDE. Ubuntu hitched their wagon to Gnome very early on, and ships broken KDE packages to this day, but I have to wonder if Shuttleworth regrets that decision today.
Re:Linux's greatest strength = greatest weakness (Score:4, Interesting)
Application developers shouldn't be targeting desktops. They should be working with the distribution system. So in other words helping: RedHat, Mandriva, Debian... bring out their version of Chrome and let them distribute the packages.
That's the big problem, commercial app developers want to bypass the distributions without understanding that is the natural point of contact.
Re:World of goo anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
PulseAudio is just terrible in its current state. Phonon conversely is EXTREMELY easy to program for. There was a proof-of-concept media player app written for Phonon in 5 lines of code. It has multiple engines/backends to talk directly to the hardware, which do the heavy lifting. When writing an app, you don't have to debate between support for Gstreamer, or Xine, or whatever. Just write for Phonon and then don't sweat it.
Re:Um.... (Score:3, Interesting)
While i'm aware that a HIG should cover more than just the look and feel, it feels like google bends the rules when it comes to interface guidelines.
While the GUI for Chrome is different from many other browsers it is very similar to what Microsoft has done with the new office interface and is just a new direction in which GUIs are going.
Re:I don't see anything wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
Chrome is really about as simplistic as UIs get (apart from the web pages themselves). There aren't checkboxes or radio buttons on the main interface; you get tabs, a toolbar/address bar and that's it. To go further, the rendering in Chrome happens in a separate process (not even tied to the GUI) which is RPC'd back to the main process, which indicates that it's not really tied to the GUI toolkit either.
Is a standardized set of human interface guidelines really going to help them? Or are they just making an excuse for not servicing a small but vocal market? The truth is, if the Chrome developers wanted to worry about standardized interfaces, they would do the work to reproduce what they have on Windows. They didn't care about the standards on Windows (tabs on the title bar), so why would they care about them on Linux?
While I'm all for creating a common interface "language" for users to understand, I don't think a "linux" specific one is going to be helpful. Making it easy to move from using Chrome on Windows to using Chrome on Linux is much more helpful than saying "hey, look, you can use Chrome on Linux if you know how we do things around here". Making it so someone that uses Windows can understand the linux visual "language" is important, in the same way that we want people to understand what we say when we travel. Otherwise moving to Linux with it's own HIG is going to be like moving from England to China.
Re:Linux's greatest strength = greatest weakness (Score:3, Interesting)
So you want them to write 3 gui's for their browser. One for gtk+ and one for QT4 and one for motif(Lesstif) ??
Re:It's open source, google. Fork it. (Score:3, Interesting)
To all of these people who are bitching about the UI in Linux-- are you actually using Linux? Maybe I'm an old-timer, but Ubuntu 9.04 looks a lot nicer to me than my Windows box at work. The MacOS is pretty slick, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it is "consistent" or "intuitive". And the Expose pretty much blows compared to your bog-standard workspace switchers on Linux.
Re:It's been time for YEARS (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux is a server OS, only used on the desktop by enthusiasts.
I would hope that all desktop OS's are used by enthusiasts. People who run Ubuntu should do so because that's what they like. People who run Mac OS X should do so because that's what they like. People who run Windows should do so because that's what they like. If people are running an OS for some other reason, then we have problems...
Accept it, because the kind of standardized APIs that are needed are not going to happen with the attitudes that this community has.
Indeed. If we were to reject that attitude and simply standardize around a single way because it's best if everyone runs the same, we'd all run Windows. There's no logical argument that can be made for rejecting running Windows but advocating a standardized API for all Linux platforms. The argument for a standardized API is an argument against having multiple operating systems to begin with. Someone who thinks every Linux-based OS should have the same look, feel, toolkit, API (beyond the Linux kernel), etc. but accepts the notion that we shouldn't all just standardize around Windows is in a state of cognitive dissonance, holding logically imcompatible ideas to be simultaneously true. That's not so amazing as the fact that they've managed to maintain it for ten years...
Setting aside the logical contradictions of your point of view for the moment, and just out of curiosity, when you say "that are needed" -- needed for what? I'm unaware of any objective that an OS should have (keep my computer running, my multiple programs sharing resources effectively, my data safe, etc.) that would require other operating systems to run the same API as me. Why would it matter if my Debian desktop and your Fedora desktop are different? And why would it be more important and somehow more tragic that our two computers are different when it's not likewise tragic that my Debian desktop and my friend's Windows desktop are different? Why is one case of difference bad but the answer is not for all three of us to adopt the more popular standard, rather that for some reason two of us should and one should not?
Re:RTFA, they did (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, what's even remotely consistent in windows' chrome in relation to windows' theme and interface rules? I think google is bullshitting with this one.
Re:I don't see anything wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I am not sure here whether I was misunderstood or just disagree. I wasn't talking about an interface "language", just an interface standard. I do think that it can be OS-specific, for a couple of simple reasons. The first couple of versions of Open Office for Mac (NeoOffice), was basically Windows Open Office ported to the Mac. As such, the NeoOffice version operated exactly the same as the Windows version. But someone using a Mac, used to the way Mac programs work, was completely lost. All the shortcut keys were different, etc.
Another example is Corel Draw. It uses program windows completely differently than every other Mac program on the market. It might be consistent with the Windows suite of Corel programs, but it just doesn't fit on the Mac. It's too weird.
I do not think that's a good thing. I do think that programs should conform to at least some minimal standard for a particular OS. Of course withing that framework I do believe that versions for different OSes should be as consistent as it is practical to make them.
Re:Use Qt.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Qt has better documentation [qtsoftware.com] than GTK+. [gtk.org]
As an example, you'd be hard pressed to find a widget in the QT documentation that is not documented. GTK+ has rough around the edges documentation for it's Canvas.
I know that RedHat is putting a lot of weight behind Java technology as one of the first and foremost distros for the OpenJDK. I can attest that the QT Java bindings [trolltech.com] are way better than the GNOME bindings. [sourceforge.net] It would make sense for RedHat to toss weight behind QT. Google already uses QT for Google Earth. [google.com] And KHTML is, sorta, WebKit which is Chrome. It all makes more sense to put our weight in QT.
I've got nothing but love for the GTK+ people. Also, don't kill QT just because of the KDE 4.0 issue. They've made good on their latest desktop, but don't knock a good Toolkit because of the DE.
My two cents.
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Interesting)
If you want to drop whole subsystems, ALSA would be a better choice than X. Modern Xorg (DRI2, KMS, UXA, evdev2, xcb, hal support/input hotplug and xrandr 1.2+/output hotplug) doesn't look much like Xfree86, and with this summer's release bringing xinput2 and the next Mesa release including Gallium3D for the first time, it will put X in a very good position.
Once all of the new technologies are in use across the board, and the fine tuning has begun, X will be very competitive with the Vista/7 GUI model and the OS X model.
Re:Linux's greatest strength = greatest weakness (Score:3, Interesting)
Company I worked for many moons ago had an IRIX application they ported to linux. Those were back in the days of Dependancy hell, libraries inconsistent across distros, so we settled on supporting Redhat 4 (might have been 5, i can't remember). Linux accounted for less than 5% of sales and something like 20% of support requests. Mostly it was people trying the trial version and the linux people emailing us with questions like, "What won't this run on my custom compiled slackware kernel with XYZ and..." Then we'd flamed when we answered we only supported the default install of Red Hat X. Now I do believe it also ran on SuSE without issues.
It was nightmare.
When OS X 10.1 was released, we ported to MacOSX and dropped linux support.
Honestly, it was that experience that drove me to BSD on the server side and OSX on the desktop more than anything else.
Re:Article by Slashdot completely distorts reality (Score:3, Interesting)
You're joking, I hope?
I don't see KDE or Gnome changing their toolkit just because Google goes and releases something. I also don't see Google expending the effort needed to build a fully featured toolkit as a part of writing a web browser. Do you really think that because Google releases a toolkit people will throw out millions of lines of code and go recode text editors and CD burning apps with it?
Google might have influence, but it doesn't have near enough to impose any sort of standarization. And they're not infallible by any measure, as some of their projects flopped.
For instance, I don't use any google products besides the search engine, and don't really care about what they release. It's again exactly the same problem, Google can release whatever they want, but I'm perfectly fine with my KDE and most likely won't switch even if Google makes something better. It works for me and that's enough. Nobody can force me to switch. Nobody can stop me from contributing to KDE. This is the problem.
Re:Um.... (Score:5, Interesting)
As they explained multiple times, they choose GTK because that's what the team doing the Linux "port" is familiar with. However their architecture allows to easily use different toolkits and they are willing to accept patches to support Qt or whatever else. They just don't have the resources necessary to support more than one toolkit.
For laughing out loud. Just like SWT supports any toolkit, I presume. What they did was to shove an abstract API mirroring the one of the windows toolkits. Of course, you can make that work on any toolkit, but it is not always going to be easy, nor a perfect match. And who needs another browser? Chrome offers very little new, being essentially Yet Another Konqueror Fork. (Maybe we can just label them all YAKF :o) )
But I merely replied because of the stupidness spouted about C++ re Qt.
Re:Um.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux has had two leading sound systems. It used to be OSS (many years ago) and has been ALSA for quite some time. If you require anything else, you are probably going to have trouble in some distributions. Now, ALSA may be considered a crappy API, but then again, so was WinMM and it didn't stop people from using it.
Re:Choice (Score:3, Interesting)
No, it's not. Linux has strengths in some areas, while others lack horribly behind. And it's strengths are not the same ones as the weaknesses. Like, why the hell are there so many audio systems? Why? Why the hell is the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture is not advanced? I mean, Linux kernel can load drivers without a glitch at runtime, but the "advanced" thing cannot? Try loading bluetooth audio driver. And so on, and so forth..
Re:It's been time for YEARS (Score:4, Interesting)
I suppose this is feeding the trolls, but I'll bite...
The reason they called your on-board raid fake-raid, is because it is. It's just average, everyday run-of-the-mill software raid with a bios-based setup program and special Windows-only drivers. That's your real problem right there. The drivers are windows-only. Now, of course, Linux will use your on-board mirrored Windows partitions just fine (and, with a bit of coaxing, you might even get the mirroring part to work.). And Linux has it's own software raid that's just as good as your on-board "raid" (because it's practically the same thing). It comes with every modern distribution and works on every modern kernel.
If you really want dual-boot raid with Windows, bust out a higher-end version of Windows that can do actual Windows software raid, with the dynamic disks and all. Linux supports dynamic disks without any real fuss, mirroring, striping, raid-5 and everything else. Windows versions include Vista Ultimate, and any version with 2k in it.
Re:Qt (Score:3, Interesting)
>> am a Chromium developer, and if you don't think Qt apps "speak with a foreign accent", especially on Mac
Mac is a bit of a special case. The new Qt is built on cocoa which should fix most of these issues.
Anyway Mac is not even an issue here. Right now you get ZERO support for Mac with the current approach to Chrome development. On windows is looks foreign (not bad, but definitely not like any other app). On Linux, the browser is alpha at best, and because of GTK won't integrate properly into anything but Gnome. With Qt you could have built the Windows version and the Linux, and Mac versions almost at the same time. You could still concentrate on Windows and make it perfect, but at least the Linux and Mac versions would exist. There might be little niggles, especially on the Mac, but that is way better than complete failure to deliver anything.
>> Small differences drive you crazy.
BS. I've been writing Qt software (Windows end users mostly) and have never received a single complaint about look and feel. Qt fits in just great. Maybe the complaints were true at one point, but not for years.
Look at the arora browser. A full webkit browser for all three platforms in less than 10KLOC. Its not perfect everywhere, but it shows what can be done with Qt. If you need something platform specific you can add it for each platform separately. That's still way less work than doing the whole GUI separately three times.
ALSA often exclusively locked. (Score:4, Interesting)
It {...} has been ALSA for quite some time. If you require anything else, you are probably going to have trouble in some distributions.
Well, the problem is ALSA is only direct access to the sound hardware (in most common installation. Of course, one could build custom ALSA configurations to pipe the sound through a software mixer). That means that, unless there's hardware support mixing in the sound card (most Soundblasters have it), one application can greedily keep all sound output for itself (happens a lot of time with flash).
Unless doing full screen games or something other that usually requires exclusive access to the sound card, it would be best if sound enabled applications used API of sound-mixing deamons/abstractions such as ESD & Artd (on old Gnome and KDE) or PulseAudio and Phonon (on more recent Gnome and KDE installations).
Specially because there are lots of libraries offering plug-ins for several systems and for ALSA (in case no server or abstraction library is there). Such libraries include SDL, GStreamer, lib-AO, etc... and are available on most distros.
Re:Um.... (Score:2, Interesting)
You're doing it wrong if the typical user encounters cause to realize the name of the OS they're using.
Re:ALSA often exclusively locked. (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless doing full screen games or something other that usually requires exclusive access to the sound card
Why does a full-screen game require exclusive access to the sound card? That seems pretty antisocial. I can't game with my own soundtrack? I can't game while teleconferencing with my opponent? ...or even hear the VOIP phone ring??
it would be best if sound enabled applications used API of sound-mixing deamons/abstractions such as ESD & Artd (on old Gnome and KDE) or PulseAudio and Phonon (on more recent Gnome and KDE installations).
That's four already, and there are plenty more. By the way, why the hell should my OS's sound interface be tied to some glorified applet suite? If I were a software developer I too would concentrate on an OS that had industrial-grade (ie. standard, maintainable, guaranteed) interfaces. Too much of Linux is still written by people who have too much fun playing alone and being able to point to something and say "mine!", and too little interest in compromise for the greater good.
At least ALSA usually plays nicely on my ThinkPad. Phew :)
hey Google (Score:4, Interesting)
Steal an idea from elsewhere (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe Ballmer was right? It's all about developers, developers, developers, developers.
Every time a conversation about programming on Linux comes up, I try to follow it. But honestly, it's just easier programming on Windows machines. There are maybe 4 versions to worry about ME/2000/XP/Vista. And you can probably forget about ME/2000. Even if you don't, it's a few lines of difference (between them and XP, they're prerrt to identical to program for). And you can leave them in when you program for XP/Vista.
Meanwhile, if you use the best practices that MS recommended for XP back when they released it, there's no difference between XP/Vista programming (unless you're trying to extend windows explorer.)
It just works, and it's easy.
Re:It's been time for YEARS (Score:3, Interesting)
Using the word 'magic' means you are assuming I know little about computers. I worked on Unix systems as a programmer for around 10 years. Big systems that supported literally hundreds of thousands of accounts. Programming in C using shared objects, IPC, muliple processes, daemons, pro*c, the gammit. Also a lot of Java and PL/SQL (was considered to be one of the most advanced at PL/SQL in our company's offices in Saint Louis where we had at the time a couple of thousand programmers). Was a technical team lead and project lead. Now I am an analyst and architect, and get very good references. Been doing that for several years now, and get well paid for it. I know about software and hardware systems.
Just because you don't like the truth when someone speaks it, doesn't mean the person has no idea what he is talking about. I see I've been modded +4. It's a good indication the silent majority agrees with me. That must stick in your craw too.
Re:It's been time for YEARS (Score:3, Interesting)
No, that is the wrong assumption. Where in one OS the installer tells it what to do in the other there is nothing to tell it what to do. It's a trap for new players in whatever niche (eg. software RAID) even if they know other bits of the system. It wasn't aimed at you but really at how most of us see the machines and how we get caught out by different systems. I can see from your final comment that you took it very personally and wish to send an insult my way. I know that things should be simpler but for a variety of reasons they aren't so people cannot get away with just sticking things in and hoping. It sucks a great deal that marketers are started selling software RAID as real RAID a few years ago (which usually confuses everyone that hits it the first time they see it). Real RAID doesn't care what OS is going to be looking at it and just pretends that each array is a disk.
Re:Um.... (Score:3, Interesting)
So by your reasoning, if you put KDE on Windows, it becomes Linux? Have fun trying to find a usable terminal.. or any stability.
Yes, because the NT kernel is functionally identical to the Linux kernel. If anything, it's more advanced in some areas. For instance, the kernel used in Vista can relaunch video drivers on-the-fly.
For all practical purposes, KDE on Windows is indistinguishable from KDE on Linux. Notice that word: "practical".
You can make snide remarks about NT not being stable all you want, but people who have actually used NT know that you're full of crap. (Or perhaps delusional.)
Re:It's been time for YEARS (Score:2, Interesting)
At office there is an exception: CAD. If it was not for that, I would switch all the desktops to Linux. With Windows it is a PITA to manage them. I have to keep a separate file for each computer (about 20 of them) with the OS disk and license, multiple CDs with Windows drivers. I have to keep the invoices, cause BSA does not accept the licenses or the genuine CDs - I have to show BSA the actual invoices (and don't tell me that this is illegal; its the way things are in Greece).
Then I have to keep the boxes of AutoCAD with the disks and licenses into separate files (we only have 6 of them) and of course the invoices too. And I almost can't deinstall AutoCAD from 1 computer and install it in another one; it's too fragile a procedure and usually something goes wrong and I have to phone our supplier to take different serial number, and they are suspicious. Once I invited them to do the job by themselves, and they never showed up. And then beg them to give me the license keys, for software that the company had paid a lot of money to buy.
I do the same for the few MS-Office we have. Thank GOD, they are only for compatibility, and we rarely use them now. And there are few other programs (Visual Basic, PhotoShop and so on) which cause similar trouble.
Additionally, every month or so I have to reinstall Windows. This takes time. Almost all the computers we have are different and need different drivers. And of course I have to install the software which needs a zillion reboots. (and yes, it is Windows XP). It took me more than 1 day (8 hours) to install everything, as there was always something more urgent to be done at office. (now I install dual boot Linux, and take an image of the Windows partition, so that I can deploy it very quickly). Contrast this with the installation of Linux (SuSE), which takes about half an hour, unattended, complete with the software. And, you know, full 64bit since 2005 and SuSE Linux 9.3.
10 years ago, we had Novel 3.11 network with 10 users. This, I found out, included printer servers, and the company wouldn't spend money to upgrade to 25 users. I had to figure out, whom to kick off the network so that the others could work. When the company made up their minds, we had to upgrade to newer version, which cost more money. About that time I discovered free SAMBA, and all the problems just vanished. Unlimited users. Unlimited users for free. Unlimited users with no bureaucracy.
There is one last thing. Each program we bought, didn't always do what it ought to be doing, or it didn't do what we wanted it to do. So there was considerable effort to turn our in-house software to cooperate with autocad, to invent ways to represent various structures in the photogrammetric station (and even more to extract the information), to circumvent problems in the static-analysis software, to overcome limitations of the then Microsoft Fortran Compiler. And then train the other (civil) engineers. Our effort was added value, but it was added value to the programs we bought, because without them we had nothing (this was actually what I was told by an AutoCAD salesperson).
Suddenly, it occurred to me, about the same effort was needed for free GPLed programs, and the added value would be ours, because the free programs are - free. Since then I program in Linux and make sure that the programs run in windows too. I never found out any deficiency of Linux (in programming), quite the opposite, but then again I am used to Linux for 10 years now (GOD I am old). I don't do web-programming, just technical (civil engineering) and vector graphics.
Thanasis
Re:It's been time for YEARS (Score:3, Interesting)
For the love of god, please let the developers use a different visual experience! A fast new browser is great, but if the developers are going to make it look and behave in a non-standard way then I don't want it. Running Safari on Windows looks out of place. Running Safari on most editions of OS X looks out of place. Running Chrome on just about anything looks out of place!
Re:Um.... (Score:3, Interesting)
That said, why do you Linux guys seem to hate standards so much, hmmm? I'm not talking to you specifically fooslacker, but Linux in general. I mean y'all got, what? Three different sound systems now? Would it really be so hard for all the major players to sit down and choose a basic standard, one that will hopefully be rock solid stable with minimal changes and a focus on backwards compatibility, so that writing drivers and programs for the entire Linux ecosystem would be easy and thus attract more companies?
Its comments exactly like that one that make Zealots. The stupidity of such a comment is hard to quantify and universally obvious to anyone who understands what a standard is and what microsoft have done to them. First of all to mix linux, gnome (or any X desktop) and distributions up into one comment that states lack of standards is ridiculous.
But lets look at what MS have done. Starting with TCP/IP, microsoft's answer? "we dont like tcp, here's netbuei and netbios" (they weren't the only ones doing it, but thankfully it failed). Then (closed) smb came next (despite several already open standards for network file systems), and thus everyone else is forced to reverse engineer it (not once, but several times because MS just change it at a whim due to lack of standards). Next Java, do I really have to explain how MS tried to screw java by breaking the one thing it was supposed to be (i.e. cross platform?). Then document formats - finally sun come out with an open standard for a document format, and do MS do, they produce OOXML (and on top of that, their own office product doesnt support it properly). Then to make sure everyones screwed, they produce an ODF plugin for 2007 that breaks everyones implementation. Then theres .NET - supposedly a competitor to java yet lacks the one thing it needs, cross-platform support. Sure, they opened the c# spec, but thats useless without the API being open.
Thats only a couple of examples, HTML, HTTP, MAPI. Kerberos, Active directory, the list of standards MS has polluted (and tried to break) is endless
Who gets screwed in all this? The linux desktop and server OS's out there struggling to build on REAL standards that already exist, and they get angry (anyone who understands the fights would think rightly so) because people say things like "well linux doesn't follow a standard because this thing over here works on windows and doesn't on linux". Well the truth is that linux has fought very very hard to follow the standards, then it has to fight again to reverse engineer broken implementations of the standard that mainly come from MS themselves.
Ultimately "linux" as you put it wears the blame and still it doesn't give up, it continues to reverse engineer and make its products compatible.
Of course when i say linux here it means people like Sun who wrote java and open office (and are forced to reverse engineer the MS document format and code OO to the same lack of standard)
Now lets talk about the desktop, so which desktop standard are you referring to here? The Microsoft standard? Exactly what standard is that? As far as I know the only "Desktop" standards that actually exist (i.e. documented ones) are X + gnome or KDE/Qt - these are documented standards. As for audio, well there is none (unless you mean the undocumented and randomly changed direct sound API from MS). That has been a bad problem on linux in reality since it was born and part of that is inability to produce drivers, then 2 interfaces were born. Now we also have pulse audio (which isnt a linux interface by the way).
So we now have a "culture" of linux desktop environments (lets just look at fedora, redhat and ubuntu), in one corner you have redhat (RHEL) which uses older and more stable/developed interfaces which they stick to between major versions. 5.x has kernel 2.6.18 (and always will) along with a specific version of everything else (gnome, kde, qt, etc), they are all static in version 5.x of RHEL. Fedora is the exact
Logic / UI Separation (Score:3, Interesting)
I have to agree with this violently.
Hey, I can think of only one reason why it would take more than a year to port Chrome to any other platform besides Windows. They only thing I can think of is logic intertwined with UI code.
Without nice logic and UI separation they can b*tch about Linux all they want, but any programmer worth his/her money wouldn't take a year to slap a UI on something as simple as a fscking web browser.
Re:It's been time for YEARS (Score:1, Interesting)
Confirmed. I'm actually working on a large proprietary app (yes we do often submit improvements to projects we make use of ;), and a binary-only, pre-built single-distribution release to run on several moderately similarly-dated x86 distributions can be implemented relatively easily. That's not to say that it's a snap, but it can be done with moderate trouble, even with a very "special" (one could say weird) application.
Of course it's very debatable whether it is a good idea to distribute one single binary built on one distribution for installation on all others (I believe it's much better to do your build and packaging on/for each specific distro), but due to issues this currently isn't the case here, and it still works.
Re:It's been time for YEARS (Score:2, Interesting)
Why all this handwringing? Do any of us Linux users need Chrome? Hell, NO!!! If the Firefox developers can make a cross platform can build a browers that works VERY WELL why the hell can't the Google devs? Please calm down everyone. This is just some chicken little a$$hole whining and stirring up s#it.
Re:Steal an idea from elsewhere (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you know what is most interesting about why it is so complex to program fro windows. It is not by accident or by incompetence, it is doe on purpose so that you will buy M$'s proprietary tools, you will pay M$ to check your program across versions and you will also pay M$ for licence fees for access to various DLLs to reduce your programming load and to be able to properly access hidden and proprietary interfaces. So windows complex and obfuscated by design and with intent to promote higher profitability.
As for the complexity of Linux versions to choose from, developers simply pick what they feel is the most popular version and focus their development efforts on that version. So release that one first and if demand warrants it, release other versions latter or simply provide sufficient access for your program so that it can be adapted for other versions by those people that support other versions.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Um.... (Score:3, Interesting)
But if you are going to stick by that decision then you need to face reality and stop spreading BS.
First of all, there's no need for that. We can be civil here. Yes, I used some derogatory phrases in my post too, but none of them were directed at you.
I call this the "hairyfeet challenge".
This is an interesting idea. I didn't actually do it, but I found the premise intriguing (although I found your choice of peripherals to be slanted at best, I don't know anybody with a TV tuner in their machine and I do this for a living too).
But to cover the bases... USB wireless sticks: Five years ago you would have been right. There were no devices with open drivers, and even getting binary blobs (or god help you, ndiswrapper) was hit or miss in the extreme. It's not like that at all anymore. I mean, come on, even Broadcom is opening up. This fight's all but over. And what won it was sticking to our guns. If companies want our money, they have to play ball. Turns out they wanted our money.
Printers: I've never once had a problem. Not once in nearly a decade. Hardly even heard of it. Frankly I don't know what you're talking about.
But ultimately it's irrelevant, and I'll tell you why. Because when you buy something that doesn't work, you go get your money back and buy a different brand. You can try to paint this as a "Linux is broken" debate, but it's really "this wireless card is broken." Isn't that what you would do if it didn't work on Windows? (This ties back in to "if the manufacturer wants our money..." This is how we win.)
I repeat-You have had 15 years.
Which ain't that long, all things considered. And really, it's only been any kind of serious force to be reckoned with for maybe half that long. I think we've been kicking ass and taking names, myself.
pretty much all the major corps that are gonna release their items as open specs would have done so by now.
This is totally false. See the wireless driver situation. It's improving every day, steadily for years. You lose a lot of credibility with me if you can't see that. And again, how did it happen? It wasn't by accepting table scraps. We stuck to our guns and won. Again and again.
But until I can hand a Kubuntu PC to my customer and have at least an 80% chance that whatever he picks up in Walmart will work
If 80% is your line (and I think that's reasonable) I'd say we're there. Okay, not with Kubuntu, but Kubuntu's a mess. But yes, go buy a printer or a monitor or a video card or a USB powered cup warmer. It works with no bullshit at least 80% of the time. I think 80% is probably low.
As I said, I don't make reality, I just support my customers.
Me too. And for me that means Linux.