Google Eliminates Gizmo5 Client For Linux 176
cuttheredwire writes "Evidence on the Gizmo5 forum (login required) confirms that since Google's takeover of Gizmo5, only the Windows, Mac, and iPhone clients are available for download from the official Web page. The Linux download link no longer works. This is a potential problem for happy Linux users with paid-up credit in their Gizmo5 accounts if they need to reinstall the software. A back-door download is still available, although it is speculated on the forums that it will go away soon. Does this mean that (as with other Google projects such as Google Talk) Linux will be the poor relation for Google Voice also?"
Protest this. (Score:4, Insightful)
Do not allow Linux users to be silenced
Re:Protest this. (Score:5, Informative)
Better yet (Score:2)
Put DOWN the pitchfork (Score:5, Informative)
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> there's no shortage of SIP clients for Linux
Care to name one? I have looked for one that will talk to an asterisk PBX and came up dry. Fedora 11+ packaged preferred but I'd build it from source if I had to. I found some that almost worked but something was wrong enough with each one that I uninstalled it.
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Ekiga (default with ubuntu if I recall correctly)
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Let's see now...
Ekiga
Twinkle
Linphone
There's a few others...and, yes, they apear to work fine as I've used all of them against an Asterisk server, along with several different SIP ATA's and SIP-phones against the server. I had more issues with the hardware SIP devices than I did with Ekiga when I last tried it all. Once you got the SIP client config done up right and picked a sane codec, it just simply worked with the lot of them.
Main complaint I had with Asterisk is that it didn't handle multiple differin
Chrome OS? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Chrome OS? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Redundant? More like insightful. Forget malware installing itself on your OS and sending back information about your data and activities, ChromeOS just sends all of your data itself to servers somewhere where it can be picked through and analyzed in detail, and ensures that all of your activities are actually performed on those servers so that you can't actually do anything without them.
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Chrome OS probably won't spy on you itself, it doesn't need to. It's the web applications which Chrome OS encourages you to use that spy on you. That privacy-intruding experience is available on every browser and every operating system, it's which web app you use that matters.
Re:Chrome OS? (Score:4, Interesting)
Modded troll. Hmmm. Fanbois bite.
The fact is, I like Google. I use a good bit of their stuff. But, another fact is, they make tons of money. They also answer to investors. Could ChromeOS be the ultimate spyware? Yes, it COULD!! Do I expect it to be? Not really. But, all the same, why don't we wait and see just how much spying it does in it's final version? I know for a fact that Google has a ton of spy crap watching us on the web. This is why I have AdBlock Plus - I don't like Google Analytics analyzing every move I make on the web.
Come on, children, let's stop being fanbois, and do our own analysis. And, someone mod Johnsie back up to at least a zero.
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I know for a fact that Google has a ton of spy crap watching us on the web.
And all Chrome OS does is the web. It runs all your Google Apps, on your Google Browser, on your Google OS, in your Google Life (beta!). They're never going to make features like JavaScript or cookies able to be turned off, or add any real ability to run adblocking (there goes the revenue stream). If they intend to subsidise the OS or the netbooks that are likely to run it, expect to see the hardware locked down so you can't reflash it with a custom image, and expect to see advertising embedded everywhere,
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I TOO would be skeptical of ChromeOS, but only because it is from a company that makes its money through advertising revenue.
So far, Google is "...no evil" but there are still some questions about that since Google has managed to stir up trouble in various parts of the world that simply do not agree with Google legally and/or politically. But in the end, they make their money selling ads. The Android phone platform is agreeable to most mobile carriers because Google is willing to share ad revenue with the
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Like the kickass version of Chrome for Linux? Oh, right, there isn't one...
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the chrome-unstable seems to update every 2 weeks or so whereas the only chromium releases I have found are the nightlies from the PPA.
about 1/5 of the chrome-unstable releases have an annoying bug (selects don't show options, form auto-complete box renders but doesn't show options, random crash, etc) and if I get hit with one of those I normally switch to a chromium nightly until chrome-unstable updates.
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You may also want to have a look at SRWare Iron, a Chromium build with the Google tracking crap removed. It also includes things such as adblocking (not finished in the Linux version, nor is Flash support)
Linux version is in alpha, but works very well for me.
http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php [srware.net]
This is will almost certainly be the /.ers choice for a Chromium-based browser in the long run.
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Heh your comment reads like a FOX headline.
Sure there's no stable release of Chrome for Linux yet, however you can download the current dev version from http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel [chromium.org]
It's being worked on, and if anything ChromeOS (which is linux+chrome) should tell you they're taking it quite seriously
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Actually there is, it's just not officially sanctioned.
I use it myself and for an "unstable" product it's performed remarkably well.
They even added plugin support recently. I got my youtube back.
Abandoning the windows market is suicide. I'm actually proud of google for not leaving linux completely in the dust.
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Maybe you should check your facts.
"Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier." [google.com]
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Maybe you should check your facts.
Slashdotters don't check facts.
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Hmm, my bad. Well I was half right. Google Chrome and Chroms OS seem to be a marketing moniker slapped on top of Chromium and Chromium OS. It's Chromium [chromium.org] where the development is happening and the real code lives. There's no difference as far as I can see between the Chrome browser on Windows and the Chromium browser on Linux other than the name.
Try installing it then look for yourself:
$ rpm -q chrome
package chrome is not installed
$ rpm -q chromium
chromium-4.0.252.0-0.1.20091119svn32498.fc12.i686
Then starti
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Ha, you're just pissed because you hitched all your wagons to slowlaris, and now you can't play with the worlds fastest browser. Looooser :-P
Re:Chrome OS? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'm disappointed that [Google] have so much infrastructure running on [Linux] and have been letting the (desktop, admittedly) community down a bit lately.
Likewise, I'm disappointed that Nintendo have so much infrastructure, such as devkits, running on PCs and have been letting the (PC gaming, admittedly) community down a bit lately.
My point is that a lot of companies that use Linux in the server room think Linux is for servers and Windows is for GUI apps.
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Well, I have news for Google. They are not yet a total monopoly, and while some of their products are actually quite useful, they d
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As a Googler, I can only say that this is misleading.
Google has no antipathy for Linux, but unless someone internally steps up and says "I'll make it for Linux!".. well, there is a lack of linux support.
I have yet to meet a windows-using technical person at Google. I'm rather amazed that we tend to pump out windows-only software.
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"Google has no antipathy for Linux, but unless someone internally steps up and says "I'll make it for Linux!".. well, there is a lack of linux support.
I have yet to meet a windows-using technical person at Google. I'm rather amazed that we tend to pump out windows-only software."
Your "amazed"? You haven't met a "windows-using technical person at Google", so everyone is using either Linux or Mac, yet Windows & Mac are supported but Linux is not.
You have actually proved the contention of posters who say
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Or perhaps Google is just more Web focused?
Oh and as many other people pointed out, you can use any standard SIP client with Gizmo5, so there are valid alternatives out there
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Re:Chrome OS? (Score:5, Funny)
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An app using Wine runs natively (Score:2)
The current version is 3.5, available for Windows and OS X.
If sudo apt-get install wine makes an application designed for Windows work as advertised on GNU/Linux without a performance penalty, what's the point of having a separate download for Windows?
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And tied to it in some way, so if you run 'generic linux', you have to switch.
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The whole goal of ChromeOS is to have *no native apps*, it's all web baby, so a conspiracy theories about native ChromeOS Gizmo5 app might have to be re-thought.
Cool; what about the rest of their apps? (Score:2)
Gtalk client?
etc, etc, etc
Linux Clients (Score:2)
To make it clearer, there is NO lock in, you pick your Client, then use any SIP server of your choice.
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Actually, I didn't see much of Gnu in ChromeOS. It's a freaking kernel with a browser. Gno Gnome, gno Gnash, gno gnothing. Just Linux and Chrome. That may be subject to change, but from the things I've read, gnot freaking likely.
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So we need to write an OSS distributed search engine called Gnugle? It could run as the idle task in your browser or screensaver and replace the centralized ad-supported search with distributed free software. Time to take back the internet from Google.
Listen up ICANN, DNS would be next.
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Actually, I didn't see much of Gnu in ChromeOS. It's a freaking kernel with a browser. Gno Gnome, gno Gnash, gno gnothing. Just Linux and Chrome. That may be subject to change, but from the things I've read, gnot freaking likely.
Are you confusing GNU with Gnome?
I haven't seen ChromeOS, but I'd imagine that all the GNU binutils are there, as well as bash, and all binaries are compiled with gcc...
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Sorry troll, wrong thread. This one isn't about "Linux" vs "GNU/Linux". This one is solely about how much third-party FLOSS code Google is using in ChromeOS, regardless of the name.
ok now more seriously-- (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:ok now more seriously-- (Score:4, Informative)
Gizmo does use SIP. I have an Asterisk box for my home phone that registers to their SIP server.
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Why not use MO-Call ?
MO-Call [mo-call.com]
It is standard SIP, they have a QT based Linux client and you can use your account on your mobile as well - they support different methods to make calls, so you have more flexibility.
Disclaimer, I am involved with MO-Call, so this is more of a plug - we are aiming to support as many methods to make international and voip calls as we can.
Re:ok now more seriously-- (Score:4, Informative)
I have Gizmo5 working just fine with my Linksys ATA. There are even instructions on the Gizmo home page on how to set it up.
Gizmo5 + my ATA + Google Voice means I now have a spare phone line that allows me free unlimited calling on a normal telephone (though I do have to initiate calls from my web browser). My primary phone is my Blackberry, but it's nice having a spare line with unlimited minutes.
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Probably could, and that's an excellent point, but I make most of my calls on my cell phone anyway. I have about 4,000 rollover minutes by now, so it's not a huge deal. :)
I tend to answer the Gizmo line on incoming GV calls.
really just linux? (Score:2, Informative)
Mindless panic as usual (Score:5, Informative)
Gizmo, entirely unlike Skype, is based on standard SIP interfaces. You don't need their proprietary client to use the service.
Just pick your favorite SIP client, preferably with a lot of codecs and STUN support, and get on with your day.
Panic over!
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Saying Skype is easier to use than SIP is incorrect, Skype is not a protocol, it is a package. Its kinda like saying Firefox is easier to use than SSH. Skype is a single, isolated environment, with their own way of connecting to phones. SIP is a standard, has ton's more features, and can natively work with most phone systems (including many commercial PBX's from Cisco, Shoretel, Avaya, etc) and is being heavily used and invested in by business. I can show you that a Shoretel or Asterix phone system can
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- Needs to have a simple installer
- Needs to run without any setup besides running the installer and registering an account
- Needs to be able to be recommended to others who can use it without any explanation whatsoever
- Needs to take care of NAT automatically
- Needs to provide voice and video over IP without any further setup besides possibly camera calibration
- Needs a large user base
- Needs to
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-locate and install via ubuntu add/remove program (example)?
-given that pidgin can handle that for all the protocols it can speak, i see no reason why a SIP client cant bundle the settings for gizmo, if published somewhere.
-explanation of the interface or explanation of the install procedure? even skype have a help section on their page.
-UPMP usually comes enabled on most routers these days.
-usually not a problem if sane, open codecs are used.
-hurray for inertia, also known as chicken and egg. The "only" wa
Chicken little ? (Score:2)
Are you sure? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Are you sure? (Score:5, Funny)
Why, that's just shocking!
Use Ekiga (Score:2)
It has issues, but is has serious development team behind. It supports lot of codecs, including industrial standards and commercial ones.
Non-story (Score:3, Informative)
iPhone? (Score:2)
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Google uses Goobuntu internally, which is a modified Ubuntu.
Re:Time to learn a lesson about Linux support (Score:5, Insightful)
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right on, gizmo5 works fine with *every* soft phone client package I've tried under Ubuntu, Debian and Centos and also works great with Asterisk. It should be windows and Mac users complaining their OS doesn't support it out of the box!
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1998 called, they want their rant back.
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Do you realise that Linux's desktop share is hardly much greater than it was in 1998? Why is it that could it be The elitist and arrogant attitude of most Linux developers who dont care about the common users needs? These idiots who think granny and most people are going to learn how to edit 100 configuration files and compile their own drivers?
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Well there's always the elitist and arrogant attitude of those who haven't used linux since 1998 and don't even realise that most modern distros are far better for common users needs than their current Windows box. These idiots who think granny and most people are going to learn how to edit registry files and remove their own viruses?
You want ReactOS (Score:5, Insightful)
If we could combine the transparency of Linux system and its expert friendliness, with the user friendly GUI characteristics of Windows and Windows backwards driver and app backwards compatability, it would be a winning combination.
Windows drivers rely on services provided by the NT kernel. So the only way to ensure compatibility with Windows drivers is to reimplement the NT kernel. ReactOS [reactos.org] attempts to clone Windows NT 5.x thoroughly, but it's nowhere near ready for prime time. So let me sum up your rant: "I'm disappointed that development has concentrated on Linux rather than ReactOS."
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Linux does not even need to support Windows drivers though that would really break down a lot more barriers to it being adopted. All it needs to do is support ITS OWN drivers from past editions of the kernel.
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No, no, no. You could implement a wrapper on Linux that would allow you to run Windows drivers on Linux. This would give you both compatability with Linux and with Windows stuff. I actually like the Unix system, however, this would also allow for a lot of Windows drivers to be used on Unix as well. I dont really like the ReactOS concept, its better to implement a compatability layer on Linux.
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You could implement a wrapper on Linux that would allow you to run Windows drivers on Linux.
If you want the wrapper to be more general than, say, ndiswrapper, the wrapper would have to implement every function call that every driver makes. At that point, you're essentially making a kernel-mode Wine, which isn't that much different from paravirtualized ReactOS.
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If hardware doesn't work on Linux, it's usually not worth using at all.
Unless you either A. have received the hardware as a gift (this is common for individuals and charities) or B. still own the hardware when switching from Windows to desktop Linux.
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I could, but, if I did, i am sure the Linux developers would never accept it, so it would be a pointless waste of time. Linux is so badly documented its difficult for anyone except the elite inner group to know about the kernel. Its an elitist OS and the only reason anyone uses it is it costs less than windows. But its basically a piece of crap. For companies who can afford it, tend to go with windows for its ease of use.
Re:Google: Community Taker, Not So Much Giver (Score:5, Insightful)
Color me confused, this is a brand of open source that I haven't heard of before: Are you saying that any company that uses open source software should also support Linux with all their projects?
Can you please point me to the text in the GPL/APL/BSD licenses that states that?
Or are you saying that companies *shouldn't* use open source software if they are not willing to see (by most recent estimates) a 1% to 2% Linux desktop market share as a primary platform?
Personally I would be happy that a large company is contributing new programming languages (Go), support & employ the main guy behind Python, contribute to the kernel, released their webbrowser and mobile phone os as open source, organize and sponsor a 'Summer of Code' projects that contribute to open source, spend heaps of cash sponsoring large open source conferences, and, well released over 100 open source projects?
In fact Google is one of the larger contributors to the OSS movement that I personally know of
Citing the "do no evil" does not make you automatically cool, smart or insightful imo, just boring and lame (something about crying wolf comes to mind)
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No, you're not confused. Just disingenuous. Of course there are no licensing obligations to do that, but if Google puffs itself up and struts about mouthing "do no evil" while not releasing Linux versions of its clients then it
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Actually Google does not strut about mouthing "Do no evil", it's in the "Ten things we know to be true" (http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html) that it believes it can do business without being evil, but the strutting around mouthing the "Do no evil" mantra is done by the people who want to use it as some kind of perverted emotional blackmail to force a company to do their bidding.
Now evil is not an objective term, what to one could be considered 'evil' might be perfectly normal to others (drinking
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I hope you realize that this is the kind of attitude that impedes greater commercial support of open-source technology. If businesses think that using FOSS means having to placate rabid fanboys like you who bitch and moan that the
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I am sorry, but I have to say it.
Slashdot moderation system is being vandalized by Google fanboys. The same happened some years ago in other public forums, we called them astroturfers.
Just correlate moderation points of pro-Google posts versus anti-Google ones.
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So are you saying that the real story here is that one Linux user decided to install it while the server was momentarily down, freaked out and wrote a panic-mode slashdot submission which was then published to the front page with zero fact checking?
then 2 comments later, your post, with the succinct quote:
It looks like the "Don't Be Evil" days are long gone at Google
This is why I don't pay much attention to slashdot any more, and user-generated content on internet more generally. almost every eloquent vit
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``It's evil to build your huge business on a technology made from community contributions, then take more than you give back while shutting down some community projects.''
I don't agree. If the license allows it, it's fair game. If you didn't want that to happen to your software, you shouldn't have released it under a license that allows it.
If you want licensees to have to make available improvements they make to your code, you may want to take a look at the Affero General Public License. This license requir
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"Google has released some SW into the community, but it's getting notorious for bundling proprietary apps with its distros (like the apps in Android). And while producing new distros and variants like Android is giving back to the community, Google benefits more than the community does, $BILLIONS more."
Yeah, and SoC every year is something a afterthough, a mistake. Ups, it's not. Also about hundred of hours devoted by google engineers to extend such projects as django, hibernate, apache, tomcat, etc. is som
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SoC = Marketing.
Plain and simple, a cheap marketing strategy. Wake me up when some project in SoC targets any sensible Google technology (search/ocr/translation/gis/etc/etc).
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It's moving heavily into the telephone biz with a mobile Linux that's competing with the iPhone by capturing lots of Linux developers already cultivated into productive position by the community.
Good. The iPhone is a proprietary platform that's tightly controlled by Apple and based on "community projects" that Apple has closed. We need an open and open source alternative to that, and Google is providing it. And neither the iPhone nor Android are taking away Linux developers: iPhone is programmed in Obje
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Good points and in regards to the LSB, you are trully correct in the fact that it's a damn joke. I've tried Linux since 96 when I got a copy of Caldera 1.3 and was able to actually get my modem (USR hardware model) to work but in diving into the various versions of RH/Mandrake/Debian/Slack/Gentoo/LFS I discovered that the LSB was a joke for myself as there are to many Distro specific exceptions to the damn thing. RH is allowed to do things their way while Debian is allowed to do the same. Because of this, t
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You wrote:
In Linux though, unless you have a good package system and stick with strickly vanilla packages as offered by the Distro, you are screwed, blued and tattoo'd as soon as you step outside official repositories because of version specific library needs.
But just before that, you wrote:
Although Windows had DLL hell that could give people real headaches, it was fairly easy for the coders to simply change the directory where the app located specific DLL version to it's installation folder though few did.
Why is this solution acceptable for Windows but not Linux? I've seen it done plenty of times on both platforms. Do you just not know what you're talking about? Or are you biased? You are, after all, engaging in apologetics for an admitted fault of Windows when you won't allow the same defense for Linux.
Actually, I think there's a third, far more likely explanation aside from you being uninformed or biased against Linux. People judge potential tasks on a basis of rew
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I agree with the general message of your post. Supporting "Linux" with non-open source software is a lot of work.
The reason is that there really isn't such a thing as the Linux operating system. Or rather, there are hundreds if not thousands of different operating systems based on Linux. Ubuntu and OpenWRT are different operating systems just like OpenBSD and QNX are different operating systems.
In that light, I think it makes perfect sense for an organization to support, say, Fedora Core, but no other Linux
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I agree.
They support OSX in many cases, a BSD, and so they can also support 'a Linux', ideally the distribution that is most popular. If other distributions complain - in the absence of source code - the appropriate response would be "It's a jungle out there".
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"I don't care whether your software is open source or not, Linux is a support nightmare. It's the dozens of distributions. What works on Red Hat won't necessarily work on Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Arch, OpenSuSE, Mandriva, etc. In each case, due to minor differences in libraries, where libraries are stored, customizations of KDE and GNOME, other window managers, different xlib versions, and countless other things, apps often have to be PORTED from one Linux distro to another. And you certainly can't make a bi
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"Don't let the LSB people fool you. There is no single, common, standard Linux ABI set to target when developing a commercial app"
Not true. If you build your app against X86 LSB 3.2, it'll run on any X86 Linux distro that supports LSB 3.2.
You have to package it twice, once as rpm and once as deb, to reach everybody, but that's not so hard.
And if there are libraries missing from the LSB, you have to link them statically, or hope that
they have the same package name and ABI on all distros.
That said, commercia
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I use Linux on pretty much all of my computers, and I guess I don't fall in with your stereotype that they can't make money off of me, because I pay for:
- Gizmo5 (have done so since pretty much their launch when were called sipphone.com) x 2 accounts
- Google Voice x 2 accounts
- a couple of other SIP service providers
There is one good solution - make your source available, and given that your program is of some minimal usefulness to their users, the distros will package it for you. Not only that, many times
Re:Linux is a support nightmare (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a very, very old argument, I hope you know. And it's quite wrong.
For all your ranting, you're really just demanding that the open source software ecosystem behave in the same manner as the proprietary software ecosystem that you're used to. I'm surprised that this still needs repeating (especially here on Slashdot), but here it is anyway: Open source software and proprietary software are not the same thing.
In the proprietary software world, all players take responsibility only for their own products. (And often, not even then.) When there's a problem that looks like it might be the fault of some other company's product, the user is directed to the other company for support. Sometimes, the situation reaches a stalemate where one company blames the other and you can't get them to budge from that position. Since the code is closed, you don't even have the option of fixing the problem yourself, even if you have the skills to do so or the money to hire someone. If you want anything besides a base OS install (which generally isn't very useful), you have to go out and buy software, and then go through an often non-trivial installation process involving physical media, registration, CD keys, and reboots.
In the Linux world, the distributions try to take responsibility for the entirety of the end-user's computing experience. On Linux, the onus is on the distribution to provide a stable and usable base system, hardware drivers, desktop environment, and thousands upon thousands of free third-party programs. End-user support is largely community-based, but there are commercial support options as well. To install new software, you just open up your package manager, click a button or two, and your new software (plus any dependencies) is installed automatically. Most hardware devices are completely plug-and-play right out of the box, with no device drivers to manually install or some endless series of reboots.
"Fragmentation," as many people put it, is part of the Linux ecosystem by design. It gives the distributions the freedom to innovate, try new features, new designs, new subsystems, and so on. It gives the end user choice. If they don't like one Linux distribution for whatever reason, there are several others to download and take for a spin. If all distributions were forced into a single unyielding design or set of libraries all for the sake of a few proprietary apps, then there would no longer be any point to having multiple distributions. All distros would essentially be indistinguishable and we'd be stuck with the same interface, bugs, and security problems for decades on end. (Remind you of anyone [microsoft.com]?)
Google certainly can leave it up the distros to port and build, that's the way the Linux software ecosystem is meant to work. All Google has to do is release the source and the distros will do the rest. Subscription fees don't even enter into it. You can't please everyone and there will always get people who get mad at the world because they don't know how to operate their own computer, but if the software is good enough, there will be few support problems. Even in the worst-case scenario, it would even be within Google's right to say, "here's a port of our software to Linux, you're free to use it, but don't come crying to us for support." This is exactly how Skype has always handled it and they seem to be doing just fine.
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In the Linux world, the distributions try to take responsibility for the entirety of the end-user's computing experience.
They deliver it. Take responsibility for it? They're the first to outsource it to "upstream" like no other than open source distros would get away with. They do an important job yes, but this holistic layer is razor thin.
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No kidding. That's why I've been using them instead of Skype.
ANY SIP client works- including SIP based hardware. Their client just simply makes things like setting your voicemail prompt "easier" and couples IM support into the client. It's nice, but it's far, far from the end of the world if they discontinue the Linux client.
I've not used their stuff except on my N800 in quite a long time, using Ekiga, which comes bundled or as a repository install on pretty much any GNOME based distribution.
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There's really not a problem. The client makes for easy add-on of your initial account (So you can "try before you buy"- but you can accomplish the same thing with their web based client or get an account and set up your SIP client of choice...) and makes a few things like setting a new voice mail "easier". It's a nifty idea, but it's aging and you can just as easily use a GNOME or KDE SIP client for it.
It'd be NICE for them to update their client, yes. But, so long as they're properly SIP compliant and