3 ms·

Of course LTE and HTML video is better :p Having so many apps constantly spitting unnecessary data out to trackers and heaven knows what isn't better. Neither

Of course LTE and HTML video is better :p Having so many apps constantly spitting unnecessary data out to trackers and heaven knows what isn't better. Neither is simple apps that can't cope when you go out of data coverage, which seems to be becoming more common. I'd rather have gnome 2 than 3, I'd rather have Win 7 than 10 or XP. I don't consider any of them the pinnacle of design, but I don't think they're currently moving in a helpful direction either. There's been precious little progress or innovation in the OS space for years. I'd rather have google talk, which was small, light, minimal and crucially reliable over hangouts or current skype.

Klathmon 11y ago
Just because software isn't moving in a way that you personally want doesn't mean it's wrong or that it was objectively "better" before. We don't have apps that work offline? Maybe look around more. FFS half of the web apps i use work fine offline. And claiming that there has been no innovation in the OS space for years is silly. There is plenty of innovation, it's just that people don't like change and will instantly reject something that isn't the same as what they are already using. FFS just look at stuff like the ip command or systemd in linux. People lament that it's the end of days because a command is different exactly because they want to innovate past the constraints of the old systems. And if we are playing the "What i want is what is best" game... I much prefer Windows 10 over linux now. It's gotten that nice and i'm tired of constantly fixing stuff on my workstation. And I much prefer current hangouts to the old google talk plugin. "small", "light"? Did you ever use it. You needed to download and install 2 separate programs to get Google Talk video chat working. Sometimes you'd need to do some port forwarding bullshit just to get it to work. Now i install chrome and sign in, and within a minute hangouts is installed and working. Don't want to install chrome? Run it from a browser tab by going to https://hangouts.google.com/ https://hangouts.google.com/ Don't want to make a google account? You can video-chat with guests by sending them a unique link. All of those things were impossible with the old google talk.
- matzipan 11y ago
  Windows 10 is a pretty good OS but has serious issues with drivers (it tries to be clever and breaks stuff). And the startup is sooooo slow and the UI crashes twice before I ever get the chance to give it input. The Mail, Calendar and OneNote apps kept me hooked. But the lack of a decent terminal was killing me. Also, Skype didn't work properly half the time and the new "Video" and "Messaging" apps built on top of Skype were crashing 90% of the time.
  - untog 11y ago
    > And the startup is sooooo slow and the UI crashes twice before I ever get the chance to give it input. Then your installation is clearly broken. No, it's not good, but let's not pretend these issues didn't exist in the "good old days".
    - matzipan 11y ago
      Windows 8 came preinstalled with the computer and then just updated to Windows 10 from it. If the main upgrade method is broken, I'm not sure what to believe anymore...
      - Klathmon 11y ago
        Don't be disingenuous. There isn't a consumer OS out there that can do 100% smooth seamless upgrades between major versions. OSX, iOS, Android, Linux, and Windows all have pretty big issues when doing upgrades.
        matzipan 11y ago
        I haven't really had problems with OS X. There's the occasional odd package under Linux which remains installed and you need to manually remove it, but nothing unfixable. But I guess that depends more on the underlying OS structure. I'm looking forward to see more widespread usage of Snappy Ubuntu. Since that is the main way people migrate to Windows 10, I would've expected them to be more careful with it.
- stormbrew 11y ago
  > And I much prefer current hangouts to the old google talk plugin. "small", "light"? Did you ever use it. You needed to download and install 2 separate programs to get Google Talk video chat working. Sometimes you'd need to do some port forwarding bullshit just to get it to work. I'm pretty sure the GP is referring to the native google talk client that gtalk was originally launched with. It was indeed a very simple jabber+sip client (by far the simplest of the major available clients) and had a tiny memory footprint. It did nothing but chat and voice calls. It looked like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/75/Google_talk.gif https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/75/Google_talk.g...
  - Klathmon 11y ago
    And you needed to install that client, then install the video and voice chat plugin if you wanted that, then sign in to your account (and if you had 2 factor auth you needed to jump through some other hoops). It just seems like people will rewrite history. It was cumbersome, had strange scaling issues on many of my PCs at the time, didn't work on macs, you needed to just do it yourself on linux (and i'm not even sure if videochat worked on linux...).
    - stormbrew 11y ago
      I still think you're talking about a different, later thing. The client I'm talking about had no plugins and didn't support video, but did support voip directly. It was actually a selling point at the time over MSNM/AIM, iirc. You're right it didn't work on macs, or linux for that matter, because it was a native windows program and they never released a client for any other platform and there was no web interface to it at the time (but you could use any xmpp client with it, as you still can). I'm pretty sure it was also before google even had TFA.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  The ip command is a monstrosity. It is basically trying to emulate Cisco's IOS in a command to placate those that want to use Linux as their router firmware. compare something simple as enabling a network card using ifconfig vs using ip, as you can easily tell the difference. You end up 3 layers deep before you can even enter the card id you want to do anything with! When seasoned kernel devs don't want to touch a tool, warning lights should come on.
  - Klathmon 11y ago
    But that's exactly my point! When it's not something you want, it's to "Placate people". But if it was something you wanted, i'm sure it would be a welcome feature! And it's not that complicated, just different. Want a "traditional" list of interfaces? `ip addr` Want to list running interfaces? `ip link ls up` Want to set a device up/down? `ip link set dev {DEVICE} {up|down}` Quick question! How do you set the MTU length in a legacy REHL system? Because with ip it's just `ip link set mtu 9000 dev eth0`! Yeah, its new and will require some learning, but it's not inherently bad... And talking about seasoned kernel devs, name one time that there wasn't a minority of kernel devs bitching about a new feature! Every change is going to make some people worse off.
    - digi_owl 11y ago
      "just". Ifconfig gets the job done, unless RH has been odd selves again... As for devs, Torvalds didn't have much love for the ip command last time i looked into things. And a year or so back i ran into a Ts'o posting about his dislike for polkit (a close cousin of systemd).
- Can_Not 11y ago
  > There is plenty of innovation, it's just that people don't like change and will instantly reject something that isn't the same as what they are already using. It's not change that people don't like, it's the mountains of randomly missing features, settings and control remotely subverted away from the system owner, tons of software no longer working, a terrible UI nobody asked for. Who wants 10 steps of innovation forward if it comes bundled with 1,000 undocumented steps backward?

Klathmon 11y ago

Just because software isn't moving in a way that you personally want doesn't mean it's wrong or that it was objectively "better" before. We don't have apps that work offline? Maybe look around more. FFS half of the web apps i use work fine offline. And claiming that there has been no innovation in the OS space for years is silly. There is plenty of innovation, it's just that people don't like change and will instantly reject something that isn't the same as what they are already using. FFS just look at stuff like the ip command or systemd in linux. People lament that it's the end of days because a command is different exactly because they want to innovate past the constraints of the old systems. And if we are playing the "What i want is what is best" game... I much prefer Windows 10 over linux now. It's gotten that nice and i'm tired of constantly fixing stuff on my workstation. And I much prefer current hangouts to the old google talk plugin. "small", "light"? Did you ever use it. You needed to download and install 2 separate programs to get Google Talk video chat working. Sometimes you'd need to do some port forwarding bullshit just to get it to work. Now i install chrome and sign in, and within a minute hangouts is installed and working. Don't want to install chrome? Run it from a browser tab by going to https://hangouts.google.com/ https://hangouts.google.com/ Don't want to make a google account? You can video-chat with guests by sending them a unique link. All of those things were impossible with the old google talk.

matzipan 11y ago
Windows 10 is a pretty good OS but has serious issues with drivers (it tries to be clever and breaks stuff). And the startup is sooooo slow and the UI crashes twice before I ever get the chance to give it input. The Mail, Calendar and OneNote apps kept me hooked. But the lack of a decent terminal was killing me. Also, Skype didn't work properly half the time and the new "Video" and "Messaging" apps built on top of Skype were crashing 90% of the time.
- untog 11y ago
  > And the startup is sooooo slow and the UI crashes twice before I ever get the chance to give it input. Then your installation is clearly broken. No, it's not good, but let's not pretend these issues didn't exist in the "good old days".
  - matzipan 11y ago
    Windows 8 came preinstalled with the computer and then just updated to Windows 10 from it. If the main upgrade method is broken, I'm not sure what to believe anymore...
    - Klathmon 11y ago
      Don't be disingenuous. There isn't a consumer OS out there that can do 100% smooth seamless upgrades between major versions. OSX, iOS, Android, Linux, and Windows all have pretty big issues when doing upgrades.
      - matzipan 11y ago
        I haven't really had problems with OS X. There's the occasional odd package under Linux which remains installed and you need to manually remove it, but nothing unfixable. But I guess that depends more on the underlying OS structure. I'm looking forward to see more widespread usage of Snappy Ubuntu. Since that is the main way people migrate to Windows 10, I would've expected them to be more careful with it.
stormbrew 11y ago
> And I much prefer current hangouts to the old google talk plugin. "small", "light"? Did you ever use it. You needed to download and install 2 separate programs to get Google Talk video chat working. Sometimes you'd need to do some port forwarding bullshit just to get it to work. I'm pretty sure the GP is referring to the native google talk client that gtalk was originally launched with. It was indeed a very simple jabber+sip client (by far the simplest of the major available clients) and had a tiny memory footprint. It did nothing but chat and voice calls. It looked like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/75/Google_talk.gif https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/75/Google_talk.g...
- Klathmon 11y ago
  And you needed to install that client, then install the video and voice chat plugin if you wanted that, then sign in to your account (and if you had 2 factor auth you needed to jump through some other hoops). It just seems like people will rewrite history. It was cumbersome, had strange scaling issues on many of my PCs at the time, didn't work on macs, you needed to just do it yourself on linux (and i'm not even sure if videochat worked on linux...).
  - stormbrew 11y ago
    I still think you're talking about a different, later thing. The client I'm talking about had no plugins and didn't support video, but did support voip directly. It was actually a selling point at the time over MSNM/AIM, iirc. You're right it didn't work on macs, or linux for that matter, because it was a native windows program and they never released a client for any other platform and there was no web interface to it at the time (but you could use any xmpp client with it, as you still can). I'm pretty sure it was also before google even had TFA.
digi_owl 11y ago
The ip command is a monstrosity. It is basically trying to emulate Cisco's IOS in a command to placate those that want to use Linux as their router firmware. compare something simple as enabling a network card using ifconfig vs using ip, as you can easily tell the difference. You end up 3 layers deep before you can even enter the card id you want to do anything with! When seasoned kernel devs don't want to touch a tool, warning lights should come on.
- Klathmon 11y ago
  But that's exactly my point! When it's not something you want, it's to "Placate people". But if it was something you wanted, i'm sure it would be a welcome feature! And it's not that complicated, just different. Want a "traditional" list of interfaces? `ip addr` Want to list running interfaces? `ip link ls up` Want to set a device up/down? `ip link set dev {DEVICE} {up|down}` Quick question! How do you set the MTU length in a legacy REHL system? Because with ip it's just `ip link set mtu 9000 dev eth0`! Yeah, its new and will require some learning, but it's not inherently bad... And talking about seasoned kernel devs, name one time that there wasn't a minority of kernel devs bitching about a new feature! Every change is going to make some people worse off.
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    "just". Ifconfig gets the job done, unless RH has been odd selves again... As for devs, Torvalds didn't have much love for the ip command last time i looked into things. And a year or so back i ran into a Ts'o posting about his dislike for polkit (a close cousin of systemd).
Can_Not 11y ago
> There is plenty of innovation, it's just that people don't like change and will instantly reject something that isn't the same as what they are already using. It's not change that people don't like, it's the mountains of randomly missing features, settings and control remotely subverted away from the system owner, tons of software no longer working, a terrible UI nobody asked for. Who wants 10 steps of innovation forward if it comes bundled with 1,000 undocumented steps backward?