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Linux Software

Big Names Back Possible Linux Standards 239

Posted by Zonk from the keeping-things-straight dept.
Sean Feryl writes "Adobe Systems, IBM, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Novell, RealNetworks and Red Hat are all backing the new Linux standards effort led by the Free Standards Group to form standards for key components of Linux desktop software, including libraries, application runtime and install time. The goal is to encourage the development of more applications for the Linux platform. 'With this complex and costly development and support environment, independent software vendors may choose not to target the Linux desktop, leading to reduced choice for end users and an inability to compete with proprietary operating systems', the group said." Also covered on FoxNews.
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Big Names Back Possible Linux Standards More

Big Names Back Possible Linux Standards

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  • Photoshop? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Geeky ( 90998 ) on Friday October 21, 2005 @09:25AM (#13843819)
    Adobe? Does this mean Photoshop could be on the cards?

    (and yes, I've used the Gimp, and no, it doesn't do what Photoshop can do)

    • Re:Photoshop? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cronot ( 530669 )
      If Linux catches on, Adobe and many others will jump in sooner or later. I think you should rather ask if it's going to be sooner, for Adobe at least.

      Somehow, I just don't think so...
      • But for many people Linux can only catch on if adobe and many others jump in. Shure for many, many people who use their computer for internet and word, linux is already good enouth. But there are many other kinds of users, designers (want PS, indesign and maybe other), gamers (want the latest windows only non-opengl games), and so it goes. Sure there are many opensource tools that are adequate, but many lack the professional bits (gimp can't handle CMYK or duo-tone images).

        Linux is getting there, if there i

    • Re:Photoshop? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jferris ( 908786 ) on Friday October 21, 2005 @09:37AM (#13843888) Homepage
      I am sure that Adobe sees Linux is gaining acceptance in the CGI industry, and are smart enough to know that there is a good amount of money to be thrown around in there. The one thing that is certain is that one or more people in a position of power at Adobe believe in Linux enough to say that it requires standardization. Who knows? It might be this lack of standardization that is the reason we haven't seen Photoshop on Linux yet, as opposed to them deciding to bring it on when standards are agreed upon and adhered to. Possibly, Adobe has been the ones patiently waiting.

      • Re:Photoshop? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by aichpvee ( 631243 )
        Lack of "standardization" hasn't stopped a lot of high end (much higher end than Adobe) app developers from porting to Linux or developing natively on it. I think it's much more likely that they don't have the balls to take a "risk" on porting it. The slightly less likely reason is that they don't have the skills, though one would think they could afford to bring people in who do if that were the problem.

        Either way, I don't see why anyone should give a fuck about a "standardized" Linux that has anything

        • Re:Photoshop? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by LocoMan ( 744414 )
          IMHO standars make more sense when it comes to low to middle end apps (including photoshop) than with higher end apps.

          The general idea (from a quick reading of TFA) is that developers have a good idea of what will they find on a standard install of linux, so that there are less problems tracking down dependencies and the like, so that it's easier to create/port a program that will install and run right away for almost any distro (or so I've heard, I admit not being a linux user myself). This works best for

    • Re:Photoshop? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Friday October 21, 2005 @09:47AM (#13843950) Homepage Journal
      Adobe? Does this mean Photoshop could be on the cards?

      No, big companies visit these kinds of initiatives the way great powers send warships on port calls arond the word -- to show the flag and to ratify that they are a great power. It doesn't mean they have any intention of taking part in any local disputes unless they have some interests at stake.

      • Re:Photoshop? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Geeky ( 90998 ) on Friday October 21, 2005 @09:57AM (#13844010)
        Maybe. Adobe might be under some pressure for a fully native Photoshop from the likes of Disney, who have put work into WINE in order to get PS under Linux. I'm sure they'd prefer a native release. OTOH, perhaps the success of PS under WINE makes a full Linux release less necessary.

        By taking part in this initiative, Adobe may well end up with the ammunition to turn around and say there's no way they can even contemplate a Linux PS until proper standards exist. Even more ammo if the initiative descends into petty wrangling or is poorly supported.

        Either way, a big problem for PS under Linux is going to be around things like colour management. Serious photographers won't touch it unless their hardware calibration tools work.
        • Does anyone know how Dizzney solved the color calibration problem with PS/Wine?

        • Re:Photoshop? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Fred_A ( 10934 )
          Adobe had a weird version of Photoshop on SGI Irix for a while which seemed to be some kind of semi emulated Mac thing. So they might pull the same kind of stunt on Linux (except that the outcome would probably be cleaner thanks to Wine).
    • Adobe's position in this does strike me as interesting as well. All of the other companies involved have major products for Linux(or have an interest in pushing Linux to sell servers/chips). Adobe has a free reader, that's it. Granted, I think there was an article on /. maybe a year or so ago about Adobe hiring a Linux marketing manager or something. And nothings happened, yet. At the least, I think this is Adobe trying to be "friends" with the Linux community so if/when Linux becomes big on the deskto

    • Re:Photoshop? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by VdG ( 633317 )

      I suspect that Adobe are more interested in it for Flash, now that they look set to buy Macromedia. In particular, for mobile computing. There was a piece in The Register about them buying Mobile Innovation, a mobile phone design company.
      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/20/macromedi a _mobile_innnovation/ [theregister.co.uk]
      Mobile Innovation seem to be a Symbian operation, primarily, but also do Linux work and there's quite a lot of opportunity for Linux in high-end mobile devices.

    • Giving up your software freedom for some features is unwise. The free software community would not be where it is if the people who wrote and distribute free software behaved as you're advocating now. Proprietors would love to tell us how we can do the jobs they will allow us to do with computers. I understand why you would be attracted to features you miss—you've never been taught to value software freedom for its own sake hence you see nothing wrong with trading it away—but it is better to
      • On this list, redhat is the only company with linux as the #1 revenue stream and #1 priority daily. They can make all the decisions they want on GNOME/KDE. But their decisions mean squat when the next kid in the basement come up with something better.

        Adobe Systems
        IBM
        Intel
        Hewlett-Packard
        Novell
        RealNetworks
        Red Hat

  • Any chance (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21, 2005 @09:28AM (#13843829)
    they can all decide to put similar files in similar places?

    Not /etc/X11/

    I LVOE IT!

    • Re:Any chance (Score:3, Informative)

      by slavemowgli ( 585321 )
      What's wrong with /etc/X11? That's exactly doing what you're talking about — putting similar files in similar places. Configuration files go to /etc/; X11 configuration files in particular go to /etc/X11.

      So, what's wrong with that?

      • Re:Any chance (Score:2, Insightful)

        by sa666_666 ( 924613 )

        And that's why initiatives like this are doomed to fail. One person has a suggestion for the 'proper' place to put things, and another says that it belongs somewhere else. Repeat the argument ad-naseum.

        What some people fail to understand is that the 'proper' place is the one that (a) someone just makes a decision on and is done with it, and (b) everyone else can depend on.

        Who cares if it should have been /etc/X11 or /var/lib. Can someone just make a damn decision already? (yes, I develop software, and

      • Well, it does make it a biatch. To uninstall programs. You have to search /usr/bin for the executable, then /etc for the config file, then /etc/init.d for the startup script. Get all the symlinks out of the runlevels. Delete anything it might have put under /usr/share. It goes on an on.

        Now, some distros have nice uninstall routines, but that only works so long as you stick to their package management system. Most make files also have an install target built in, but that requires keeping around (and ke
        • Or just use the package manager that comes with your Linux distribution and knows where all of that stuff is already. It's easier than having umpteen hundred thousand symlinks thrown around the system.

          Honestly, I don't understand how it's that difficult.

          • Re:Any chance (Score:3, Insightful)

            by MBGMorden ( 803437 )
            The package manager:

            a. Doesn't always have the latest version available.

            b. Doesn't always work correctly. (am I just supposed to decide not to use a program if the package manager refuses to install it?)

            c. Doesn't have every program known to man. Again, I'm not going to say "Gee golly darn. I'd love to use Avidemux since it seems so nifty, but there's no package. Guess I'll just patiently wait."

            Using the package manager is not always a viable option. I use portage (Gentoo) whenever I can, but on some pr
        • Use your distro's package manager to uninstall the program. :)
    • This comment intrigues me. On one hand it (sort of) brings up the point about how annoying it is that each distribution seems to want to throw random files in seemingly random locations, instead of their being a standard spot for them.

      On the other hand... the rest of it seems to be just random garbage, but it's gotten +3 Interesting mod.
  • Is that there are so many to choose from....

  • This sounds good (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Stevyn ( 691306 ) on Friday October 21, 2005 @09:37AM (#13843891)
    It looks like companies, specifically Adobe, are realizing that people want to switch from windows to linux, but a big problem is still the native applications that are available. This is the long time chicken and egg problem facing linux growth. Adobe reader 7 for linux is great and works just as good as the windows counterpart so hopefully we'll see photoshop and the other parts of CS2 ported to linux. And if microsoft doesn't want to port their applications to linux (for obvious reasons) then I think people can still find good alternatives to their programs and use programs like photoshop that they are familiar with.
    • Adobe reader 7 for linux is great and works just as good as the windows counterpart

      ...unless you're not on the single architecture that it supports.

  • good intentions, but really a trojan horse (Score:4, Interesting)

    by CDPatten ( 907182 ) on Friday October 21, 2005 @09:37AM (#13843893) Homepage
    The more big companies get involved in forcing standards, the less the single developer at home has to say about what happens with the OS.

    One of the strengths that Linux has is that anyone can write good code and alter the direction. If Money driven corporations start calling shots, then politics come into play, and they start promoting/forcing standards that are advantageous to how they believe the market should be, or standards that work best with their business model.

    This is really a wolf in sheep's clothing.
    • that's why things like debian and slackaware exists.

      "distros for the rest of us" i call them, with apologies to frank constanza...
      • "that's why things like debian and slackaware exists."

        As long as they resist things like the so-called Debian Common Core which, like this Adobe-Intel-etc thing here, might just be another conglomerate of businesses that want to tell GNU/Linux how to be disguising themselves as the white horse of standards and uniformity.

    • Re:good intentions, but really a trojan horse (Score:4, Insightful)

      by pekoe ( 623399 ) <smiorgan AT ntlworld DOT com> on Friday October 21, 2005 @10:20AM (#13844180)
      From an LSB whitepaper [freestandards.org]: "without a widely supported binary standard for linux, a single vendor, de facto standard will emerge, effectively removing choice and locking end users in". I feel that as long as linux competes with itself it won't effectively compete with other commercial OS (at least for mass adoption on the desktop). Also, I'd be more interested in learing compiling stuff if the differences between distros didn't create such a moving target for the student. I'm keen to learn, but make it too hard and I'll go off and learn something different.
      • Eh? Moving target? Haven't you heard of 'make?'

        The fact is, there are actually a large number of distinct (but very similar) Operating Systems that use the Linux kernel, and a lot of people get confused about this and talk about 'Linux' as if it were an Operating System alone. They're all source-compatible, which means it's trivial to run the same Free Software across the board, but it's slightly less than friendly to closed binary-only distribution.

        A lot of people don't have a problem with that. Those that
        • Goodness me...

          Yes, I've heard of make. Here's my problem: if I have to start editing a makefile to point to the right libraries (assuming my distro has the libraries) to get a compilation going, and depending on which distro I use the bits I need aren't all in the same place. Make isn't a standard unless there is a standard way of writing a makefile - and if there is, it isn't transparent to me, based on my experience. I have a lot of trouble learning how to do a complex and esoteric thing when I have to
    • The more big companies get involved in forcing standards, the less the single developer at home has to say about what happens with the OS.

      And the more that single developers insist on trotting out oddball standards for everything that comes to mind, the less they'll be able to complain about business users not adopting Linux.

      If Money driven corporations start calling shots

      They're called "users with money to spend." You're confusing the vendors with the people the vendors work for (users). No happy

    • Its open source, if you don't like the way Linux goes fork it.

      Right now I think Linux could use some standards, not that every distro will follow it, but if you know any program that says it follows the standard runs (easily) on any distro that follows it.

      Do any lone developers really alter the direction of Linux these days? And how would standards actually stop them? If we are talking about things like stanard libraries or interfaces, I don't think the market or business models are going to have much i

    • Please explain what "politics" you're referring to and how they are not in play right now. Some of the biggest businesses in the world are already heavily involved with Linux kernel development. Last I remember, people who don't like the strongly copylefted GNU GPL dismissed it in part on the grounds it was a "political" license (yet they also fail to explain precisely what that means and how that is a bad thing). Also, explain how the license of the Linux kernel (GNU GPL v2 plus linking permission, if I
  • I'm probably going to catch H. E. double hockey sticks for this, but it's about frigging time!

    A. lack of standardized libraries across the Linux board is a big problem, I hope they release at least 3 three standards though, Server, Desktop/Workstation/Laptop, and Embedded.

    -manno

    P.S. Did you know OO.o2.0's spell check has the correct spelling of "frigging"?
    • what's that? I mean, what botanicals do you suppose are in it?
    • I personally, am not sure about standardization of the install process. Currently there are three major package types: rpm, deb, and tgz. Each has its own package management, each of which has its strengths and weaknesses. RPM requires a large bloated database for functionality. It also seems to have the bulk of Linux users behind it. DEB is a close second as it is the package type behind many of the live CDs (Morphix, Knoppix) as well as Ubuntu. Apt seems to be pretty cool, but I have too limited exp

      • ...or within a given window manager. But part of the draw of linux is its flexibility.

        No, standards have a place at every level of the software hierarchy, and especially across window managers. This, in fact, is required in order to achieve flexibility. You've gotta have good standards for things like drag-and-drop, copy-and-paste, configuration files, multimedia frameworks, etc. or else each "desktop environment" (how I hate that phrase!) becomes an ivory tower, cut off from every other one. Because o

        • I hear you about desktops. I agree that it can be frustrating. As the author of an unofficial installer for Vector Linux, I can tell you that it is a pain trying to place an icon on the IceWM, Fluxbox, KDE, and XFCE desktops when a new program is installed. Each particular WM uses a different standard. In fact, some WMs don't natively even support icons and require an addon such as ROX to support icons. That said, many features supported by some WMs are simply not even supported or even wanted by other

  • A Window By Any Other Name (Score:3, Interesting)

    by yancey ( 136972 ) on Friday October 21, 2005 @09:39AM (#13843899)
    I find it interesting and somewhat disturbing that the only way to achieve broad acceptance of an operating system is to offer the product with as few options as possible. An gross exaggeration? Yes, but consider this. The article states, "Developing applications for Linux desktops is a complicated endeavor now because of significant differences between two prevailing versions, called GNOME (GNU Network Object Model Environment) and KDE (K Desktop Environment)." So what we're saying is that an OS cannot be accepted by the masses if it has a choice of desktop environments, because it's hard to develop for two desktop environments? You know, a window is a window is a window. Is the code needed to create a window not abstracted from the window manager? Is what you display within the window dependent on the window manager? I don't see why this is so hard. Someone explain it to me. I know you will. :-)

    • Re:A Window By Any Other Name (Score:4, Insightful)

      by cerelib ( 903469 ) on Friday October 21, 2005 @09:46AM (#13843938)
      It is not about having no choice. It is about having a stable platform to target for development. Kind of like the appeal of Java is not the language, it is the platform.

    • Re:A Window By Any Other Name (Score:4, Informative)

      by LordKazan ( 558383 ) on Friday October 21, 2005 @09:53AM (#13843986) Homepage Journal
      yes writing applications ontop of KDE and Gnome requires using different system libraries that have incompatable APIs

      IIRC

      I always use wxWidgets.

      You also want the presentation of your controls to be as similiar as possible. Take these two images for example - they're both the same app that i'm working on - one is on windows/wxWin and linux/wxGTK

      POF Constructor Suite 2.x Alpha build 20050902 Win32 [ferrium.org]
      POF Constructor Suite 2.x Alpha build 20050919 Linux [ferrium.org]

      You'll notice the data editor panel in the lower left hand corner has marked alignment issues under linux/wxGTK (it also has them under linux/wxX11).
    • You know, a window is a window is a window. Is the code needed to create a window not abstracted from the window manager?

      KDE and GNOME aren't just window managers. The code needed to make a full-featured (or even not full-featured) KDE or GNOME application relies on the presence of KDE or GNOME libraries and resources.

      • The code needed to make a full-featured (or even not full-featured) KDE or GNOME application relies on the presence of KDE or GNOME libraries and resources.

        ...which is why GNOME and KDE are harmful! GNOME and KDE represent a huge duplication of effort, which should have instead been put into libraries that are designed to work for any unix-like system. We did it for libc, we did it for SDL, we did it for XLib, we did it for ALSA... why can't we do it for widget sets?!

        See, the problem is that the very id

        • GNOME and KDE represent a huge duplication of effort, which should have instead been put into libraries that are designed to work for any unix-like system.

          Huh?!?!? That's exactly what they are! For historical and political reasons, they're not considered "standard" Unix libraries (although the GNOME guys pushed a while ago for some of their libs to be considered standard), but that has noting to do with any technical difference.

          By the way, who is this "we" you did all that stuff with...?

          • Huh?!?!? That's exactly what they are!

            No, it's not, because they only work with themselves. If they were truly compatible, you'd be able to mix-and-match them with each other, and with other toolkits (e.g. Motif).

            For historical and political reasons, they're not considered "standard" Unix libraries

            Exactly! That's what I'm complaining about!!! Linux is being held back because it's "hard to write for", because it doesn't have a standard desktop toolkit! And the worst part is indeed that it's due to st

            • Exactly! That's what I'm complaining about!!! Linux is being held back because it's "hard to write for", because it doesn't have a standard desktop toolkit!

              I'm sorry, but you simply don't understand this.

              X11 isn't a Unix standard because it's more intrinsically "standard" than the KDE and GNOME libraries are. It's standard because it's accepted as such. There's nothing technical keeping KDE or GNOME from being any less standard than X11; each simply has been unable to displace the other the way X displace

        • X11 applications suck. That's why people want to make Gnome or KDE applications; so they don't suck.

          You want to write your own widget set? No? Then use someone else's. Feel free to Write a Gtk+ application or a Qt application that doesn't require Gnome or KDE, but you'll be somewhat limited.

          KDE apps run just fine on my Gnome desktop.
    • Yes, the KDE versus GNOME thing is mostly irrelevant. But your statement that broad acceptance is dependent on having fewer options is probably also true. What often happens in situations like this is that the winner takes all [a9.com]. That ultimately leads to fewer good choices. Sure there will always be choices on the fringe but you can pretty much guarantee that it'll take more effort to live there.

      I think this whole discussion is pretty much irrelevant anyway. The real problem with Linux is not application

  • Linux standards - history repeating itself? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21, 2005 @09:40AM (#13843908)
    I find all this talk of "Linux standards" amusing. To me it appears like POSIX, etc, all over again and I expect it will have about just as much success and impact as POSIX and friends did in standardising Un*x.

    The first problem here is most of the "new blood" involved weren't around to witness the mistakes of Un*x in the early 1990s and so Linux has been as different as it can be whilst still being POSIX compliant.

    What everyone needs to understand is that standards will never deliver what people are claiming they will.

    What we should do is just accept that RedHat, Ubuntu, SuSE, Caldera, Debian, etc, are all different operating systems that happen to share a common source code -base-.

    In the end, I expect that the standard will be nice but "not enough" because there will be "differences" in key places to allow each vendor to provide more functionality, expand, etc.

    Can't the others just copy for compatibility? Yes and they can do so today but they don't because of different ideals.

    All that said, I would love it if the mechanism to install a new software package and have it enabled at bootup was the same on _all_ Linux platforms. Unfortunately, today, it isn't and given the gratuitous differnces in how this is done, I'm not confident that it ever will be the same everywhere.
    • What we should do is just accept that RedHat, Ubuntu, SuSE, Caldera, Debian, etc, are all different operating systems that happen to share a common source code -base-.

      I feel like you're saying (and correct me if I'm wrong) that one of the strengths of Linux is that it has variety (hence it evolves, matches very specific needs, etc.). I agree that this is a good thing. Having different distros target different needs, different types of users, different types of usage environments... this is a good thing.
    • History is not repeating itself. The previous attempts weren't backed up with LOT$ OF $$$$. And I for one welcome our new corporate Linux overlords :-) (really, someone had to organize the Linux "tribes", don't you think?)

  • The Next Question Is: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by geomon ( 78680 ) on Friday October 21, 2005 @09:41AM (#13843911) Homepage Journal
    How many of the distros will follow the standard? I know that it is commercially important for the major distros to follow the standard, but newer and more innovative distibutions may forgo them. If you spend much time running Red Hat or SuSE, you can get frustrated sitting down and attempting to edit scripts on Debian, or at least that had been a problem in the past. Gentoo seems to follow its own path, and I haven't spent more than a few hours working with Slackware in five years. These are just a few of the different approaches to linux file management (especially the rc scripting). Then there are the various package management systems, updaters, and user scripts. I haven't had time to play with Ubantu, but it would take me time to work through the directory tree to see how things are arranged as well.

    Linux standards are a great idea, but I don't know how many of the dozens of distros will follow it.
    • I think the many distros are the reason these companies want standards. They want to make sure their software will install and run on Gentoo, SuSE, Redhat, Fedora, Mandriva, etc etc. with no errors of libraries not being found, or missing directories. This is a good thing. If they want to have these companies' end goal software running on their distro, they will have to follow these standards.
      • I think the many distros are the reason these companies want standards. They want to make sure their software will install and run on Gentoo, SuSE, Redhat, Fedora, Mandriva, etc etc. with no errors of libraries not being found, or missing directories. This is a good thing.

        No argument here. What developer in their right mind would trade creating software for one file hierarchy and library standard for the current situation?

        If they want to have these companies' end goal software running on their distro, they
      • They want to make sure their software will install and run on Gentoo, SuSE, Redhat, Fedora, Mandriva, etc etc. with no errors of libraries not being found, or missing directories.

        then they should fsking static link in ALL dependencies then... don't rely on the library being there... make sure you've compiled your code so it has everything it needs.

    • It doesn't matter if distros follow them. If you can't run say Adobe photoshop and Microsoft word on a distro because it ain't compliant it will probably lose market share and die out. The important thing is that developers don't have to target 10 distros, how many developers have experience in 10 distros and time to do that.

      I don't see this as a big problem anymore. Take vmware as an example, closed source. Needs kernel module. Messes with init scripts. Still, I haven't tested a distro vmware doesn't run o
    • How many follow is not important. How many *mainstream business* ones follow is. If you get Red Hat, SuSE, (and maybe Debian/Ubuntu,) you've already won the battle. That's enough busniess linux market share to justify building apps commercially.

  • Apt...rpm...KDE...Gnome...choices choices (Score:3, Interesting)

    by manarth ( 919856 ) on Friday October 21, 2005 @09:47AM (#13843951)

    independent software vendors may choose not to target the Linux desktop

    From TFA:

    Some big names in the computer industry are pledging to make the development of desktop applications for the Linux operating system much easier than it has been.

    I'm all for a good set of standards; installation already varies across apts, rpms, and make installs. The article raises the issue of a standard desktop installation method, question is, will we see yet another install method?

    How will this impact server systems and installation methods (apt/rpm) for non-desktop systems? What about software that operates desktop framework components and what you'd typically consider 'server' stuff...will there be two installation methods, one for the desktop and another for the service?

    Cross-desktop compatibility...

    I'm sure everyone here knows of KDE and Gnome as the two most popular desktops - so will these standards just be targeted at these? Or just one of these? What about the (near infinite) variety of other windowing systems - the only common thread is X-Windows (and not always that...what's about Sun's JDS Java Desktop System [sun.com]?)

    Packaging Photoshop for linux will always be difficult because of this variety - Adobe can only support so many variations. The only way this will work is if they standardise on a single desktop system, killing off the others.

    TFA talks about 'the first specification for Linux desktop software' and 'It plans to give compliant applications a "Linux Standard Base Desktop" certification mark.'. This does indeed suggest the death knell is sounding for variety on the linux desktop.

    • the only common thread is X-Windows (and not always that...what's about Sun's JDS Java Desktop System?)

      JDS is X11 and GNOME with all the buttons relabeled to SUN- or Java-something. Not only that, but in Solaris x86, the X11 server is X.org 6.8.

    • Re:Apt...rpm...KDE...Gnome...choices choices (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Stevyn ( 691306 ) on Friday October 21, 2005 @10:03AM (#13844059)
      All these package managers are great for distributing OSS, but once you get into the situation of "I paid hundreds for this photoshop CD" things might get complicated. Releasing OSS and even "free" software like adobe reader is easier than something like photoshop. Free software can be distributed and it's up to the distros to make .debs, .rpms, .ebuilds, etc. But how do you do that with something like photoshop or illustrator? People want to buy the CD and pop it into any computer and install it. And adobe can't possibly make a different package for each distro, even the popular ones.

      I'm using gentoo and ubuntu right now. I love them because thousands of software titles are available either with the click of the mouse or a few keystrokes in a console. But this works because people get those free packages and configure them for each distro either because their distro paid them or out of the goodness of their heart. But it'd be illegal for someone to make a photoshop ebuild that distributed all the files. And it's a pain to copy the photoshop files into /usr/portage/distfiles and have an ebuild work from there (as in sun-jdk, crossover office, etc.).

      So yeah, this is a problem without an easy solution. Probably the best thing would be to make a common installer such as autopackage and leave it up to the distro to support it and work with it. Whether the distro wants to use autopackage exclusively isn't required.

    • This does indeed suggest the death knell is sounding for variety on the linux desktop.

      On one hand, yes, on the other hand that death knell could mean a lot more variety in terms of actual applications for the desktop.

    • We already have _several_ package management schemes that work across distributions AND desktop environments.

      Autopackage is extremely user friendly, for example.
      Apt works most everywhere (deb, rpm, tgz distributions)
      SMART takes that integration work to another level (http://labix.org/smart [labix.org])
      klik:// is super-duper friendly for end users, and even with the K its being taken to gnome.

      We don't need new technology. We need the existing technology to be made more wide ranging.

      SMART builds on RPM/DEB/APT/TGZ system

  • I think that there should be multiple levels of the LSB standards. I think there should be an initial LSB filesystem standard, and then above that, there should be an LSB layout standard, and then an LSB application location standard, an LSB standard for package management (rpms, ick!), and further on there should be the LSB desktop environment for X layout.

    I don't think the LSB should be, or have one standards base to rule them all. They should start several layers, so a distro could claim that they m

  • Come on (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bhirsch ( 785803 ) on Friday October 21, 2005 @10:04AM (#13844067) Homepage
    The reason apps are not ported from Windows and OS X to Linux is that it is a poor use of resources. Why port apps to an OS that such a small fraction of users use? LSB will not solve that problem.

    Linux needs to gain popularity from the ground up, not the top down. Especially given the nature of F/OSS and community driven development, the Linux community should not be looking to big software companies for handouts. How much would Adobe have to sell Linux Photoshop for in order to make money off of it?

    Yes, I know there are arguments that companies should be trying to steer their users toward Linux, but without an apparent bottom-line payoff, this will be the exception, not the rule.
  • A lot of people have mentioned the problems of which GUI these companies would write applications for. What if someone were to create wrapper around both KDE and Gnome GUI libraries that applications could use, and would detect which GUI was currently being used. That way, applications that these companies make could work no matter which GUI a user prefers.

    Keep in mind that I don't use linux and am only somewhat familiar with appliction programming (I'm a web developer).

  • KDE vs. GNOME is not Betamax vs. VHS (Score:3, Insightful)

    by srobert ( 4099 ) on Friday October 21, 2005 @01:36PM (#13845970)
    Most of us here know that the choice of desktop systems, KDE, Gnome, other, isn't relevant to what programs we can run. KMail runs fine with GNOME. Gnucash runs in KDE, etc. But users who are considering Linux, and even some developers, don't seem to know this. They seem to equate the choice with choosing a BetaMax or a VHS (I was alive in the 1980's). Each machine couldn't play the other's tapes. Hence, when the general newsmedia reports on the choice of desktops, potential users conclude that the Linux desktop isn't as mature as Microsoft Windows, because it hasn't converged on a consistent way of doing things. Linux advocates should be certain that potential users know that having a choice of desktops doesn't prevent one from running any applications.
      If you're trying to persuade a 40 something then tell them that choosing a desktop system is like buying a video recorder that plays both VHS and Beta and doesn't cost any more.
  • We need a standard so that third-party kernel modules do not need to be recompiled with every minor kernel update. Only on Linux deals with this issue in such archain way. The third party drivers I install on Solaris or Windows boxes do not need to be reinstalled for YEARS despite numerous kernel updates until you do a major OS upgrade.

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