Linux Of the Future May Be About Which Environment, Not Which Distribution 214
itwbennett writes "In its 2012 roadmap, the Mozilla Foundation highlights plans to create its own soup-to-nuts mobile platform, known as Boot to Gecko. With this move, the Mozilla Foundation 'is finally shaking off its dependence on browser revenues and treading where Google, with ChromeOS; Canonical, with Unity on Ubuntu; and (most recently) the Plasma community's Spark tablet have already started: the creation of standards-based platforms that rely on robust web applications (in varying degrees) more than native-run apps to provide the user experience,' writes blogger Brian Proffitt. 'I very much think that we are heading for a time when Linux flavors will be identified by environments, not distributions.'"
Just hope they don't abandon Firefox (Score:5, Insightful)
With Google making up about 90% of the Mozilla revenues these days, I've been worried for a while that they were going to kill off Firefox in the face of Chrome. Nothing against Chrome, but the add-on community for Firefox is by far the best. And it's particularly robust when it comes to add-ons for script-blocking, downloading videos from Youtube, etc. (all of which Google has a vested interest in stopping or trying to suppress in Chrome). Giving up Firefox means going back to an era where only the big corps control the browsers. And I don't like the thought of Google killing off Adblock and other extensions the second there is no alternative (except Opera I guess).
So here's to hoping that this move isn't a foreshadowing of a time when Mozilla does everything BUT Firefox.
Arent you exaggerating 'mobile' too much ? (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems like everyone is wanting to ride a new 'tech wave' again like it was in the 90s, since what we have has become saturated and stale. But arent they exaggerating it, all of them going nutso and mobile in full force ? (does not only include linux - everyone)
Wont it probably be like pcs ? once they pass a certain hardware strength and software feature set, people will just skip on going on the 'next big thing'. like how endless legions of people has not upgraded their xp, or, how people just skip on upgrading their hardware since what they have is enough.
I wish they would all do one thing ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... stop telling me how I should run my computer by trying to lock me in to their "vision."
The "vision thing" didn't work out in the dot-com bust, and it's not working out for Unity, or Chromebooks, or anything else. When it gets to the point that Apple and Microsoft are starting to look more open, "Open Source" has a problem.
Re:Is the desktop still gonna suck? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the applications, people! Until linux can run most of them, it's going to remain mostly a server and utility OS, because most people have at least one "must have" application that won't let them switch.
Re:Just hope they don't abandon Firefox (Score:5, Insightful)
I just hope they don't abandon good programming languages for the brokenness that is HTML and JavaScript.
Sorry, but I refuse to believe that the crapload that is and has always been HTML will one day be the only choice.
ummm....what? (Score:3, Insightful)
how are they shaking off browser revenue dependence? Are they gonna try extracting licensing fees from this platform? If they do, do anyone honestly think companies would bother licensing this? It would be extremely difficult to get companies to adopt this even if it was free. How many countless times has we seen endeavors likes these?
Some people just don't "get it." It takes alot more then a good platform to get it reasonably adopted. You must have a incentive (in the manufacturers view) over current offerings, the project must has major backing for trust issues, issues of liability and support, etc. Just look at how well firefox phone builds have done. If it does take off, it won't be any time soon so while it's an investment for hte future, it's hardly shaking off dependence from firefox and hence Google. This platform would have to have major benefits for it to be adopted over current offerings as it's hard to compete against android which is most similar but have added benefits like major backing and and established market.
Re:Just hope they don't abandon Firefox (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember when Steve Jobs came out on stage and told everybody the iPhone was going to have these great web apps you could write and download? And everyone said web apps suck and clamored for a real native API? And they were right?
That was Steve Jobs trying to snow people. The API wasn't ready, so he told everybody it wasn't necessary. That was purely a stalling tactic. He did the same thing over and over throughout his career and people actually bought it.
The Reality Distortion Field can have a powerful effect on the weak minded.
newsreaders vs. web boards (Re:Just hope th...) (Score:5, Insightful)
When you say Slashdot (or other web boards) "works fairly well," it just shows you've never used a decent Usenet newsreader program. A threaded newsreader blows away by far even the most "advanced" web boards I've ever seen.
Re:Is the desktop still gonna suck? (Score:5, Insightful)
Want a real shock? Grab a 5-year-old version of Knoppix and boot it - it's easily just as usable. 5 years of "progress"
Why would that be a shock? The basic design for the desktop was done by the 90s: apps in windows that get dragged around and manipulated by bars attached to each window. Some kind of status bar at the top or bottom of the screen. Everything since then has just been eye candy. The truth is that the basic desktop design works and everybody is familiar with it. There is nothing that you can do with a modern desktop (Apple, Windows, or Linux) that you couldn't have done with a Windows 2000-era desktop.
Not the nerds (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not the nerds who bring this up. It's not the real unix programmers and sysadmins. It's not the people who have been unix die-hards for 15 years (me).
It's the johnny-come-latelys who constantly want to compare linux to consumer desktop operating systems. People from outside the open source community, or even outside the tech industry. Why? Because the consumer desktop is all they know, and they "need" some kind of benchmark comparison. To point out that linux dominates in both the server and embedded markets, and has for years, is utterly pointless. The consumer desktop is all they know and want to compare it with.
But it hardly matters anymore. Consumer-targeted computing is quickly moving away from the traditional desktop and laptop model and towards the handheld touchscreen tablet model. In time, only professionals will have (or need) traditional desktops and laptops, and the consumer market will be almost exclusively dominated by tablets.
Re:I wish they would all do one thing ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Is the desktop still gonna suck? (Score:4, Insightful)
I should be able to find one, but it's gonna take a while. I'd say 11 years or so.