6 ms·

This is the right thing to do and I hope it is not too little too late. Free/libre OSS won the battle for the server, lost the battle for the desktop, but deskt

This is the right thing to do and I hope it is not too little too late. Free/libre OSS won the battle for the server, lost the battle for the desktop, but desktop is not (that) relevant anymore. FLOSS phone ecosystem will be hard to next to impossible, in my opinion, but worth going into. Self-hosted server side software has a very good chance of succeeding. For a long time I essentially wanted something like Synology and QNAP but completely open, with a single package installation interface and ecosystem of phone apps working with my self hosted software.

idobai 10y ago
> Free/libre OSS won the battle for the server, lost the battle for the desktop I don't think it lost the battle on desktop - if you don't rely on platform(or interest)-specific software like the adobe/microsoft suites and some 3A games then you'll be more than fine on the linux desktop.
- tornadoboy55 10y ago
  Shame that the battle for the desktop is actually (mostly) being fought on the laptop - and Linux sucks there. The default settings are usually extremely poor for powersaving. Why doesn't powertop+TLP get installed, configured and activated by default when Ubuntu/Fedora detects its installed on a laptop? Also, sleeping still isn't reliable (if I close my Macbook with some work on I can be damn sure it'll be exactly as I left it when I open it. With Linux, its still not 100% reliable). Wifi still also isn't nearly as reliable (packet loss, connection drops etc.) as either Windows or macOS.
  - idobai 10y ago
    I use linux on laptop and I don't have problems(especially with xubuntu). I just install the base, run additional drivers, install the wifi/gpu drivers and done. It was always like this on my previous laptops and on others' laptops I've installed it. Power saving on windows is an illusion, I don't remember getting more things done with the same laptop. Maybe it's the case if you use Unity/KDE/Gnome3 and similar heavy stuff... If you want to spare more energy then use integrated graphics and amd|nvidia only if you want to play. Bumblebee can also help. Using XFCE, Firefox, playing videos with vlc(not with web players!), installing a blocking extension for your browser, avoiding electron/jvm/mono-based apps(ironic, I'm a Scala developer) can also reduce energy consumption. I use neovim for coding and it's a huge boost for me. Suspending was always realiable on ubuntu for me. But with arch or arch-based distros it's a ~70% possibility for failure(according to my experience). On the other, hand putting windows to sleep is a serious hazard, it's not just hurts performance but it makes the os and its apps unstable(I use win7 at work). I've heard that there are people with wifi problems but connection drops and packet losses are issues which are better to be reported. There is askubuntu.com, you can get help pretty fast by searching or asking.
  - eikenberry 10y ago
    The fact that TLP exists is a great step. It wasn't that long ago that I had a dozen different custom hacks in place to get better power usage while on battery, now TLP does all of them and more.
    - tornadoboy55 10y ago
      Still kind of disheartening that I get 10-14h battery life on my 13" 2015 Retina under macOS, but it drops to 4-5h on untweaked Ubuntu. I can push that to about 7-8h with the help of Powertop and TLP. That's still a vast, vast chasm to overcome for Linux. Yes, I know Macbooks do non-standard things with Wi-Fi and Thunderbolt controllers (special ACPI sleep modes etc.), that isn't a bad thing, Linux should attempt those as well. To end on a positive note: I do agree TLP (and other powersaving tools) are good progress.
- no_wizard 10y ago
  I take slight issue with this. It's not you personally, but I see this a lot in tech, in particular from the FOSS crowd 'Well, if you don't need x or y, then its fine!' FOSS will always be second tier for most people until the plethora of software available is at some relative parity, similar to that of macOS at least. (I'm talking strict availability). The fact that there isn't more cohesive efforts to have big software vendors port their software to FOSS systems I feel like is part of the problem. I personally feel the FOSS community doesn't have good evangelism to actual software developers that develop non-idealistic software. Adobe is a good example of this. So is Microsoft. So is Autodesk (With some exceptions, granted, but I think those come from the need to run in parallel processing environments that Linux supports quite well, and Maya). Heck, so is Wunderlist. Or 2do. 1password. They don't make native apps or even some semblance of apps for any FOSS platform, and I see no attempts to evangelize coming out of FOSS communities to get these places on their side. I'm sure there are exceptions I'm missing or perhaps some of these examples listed have progressed but my point still stands. FOSS is great for users, and has really evangelized well to a certain subset of users in particular (mostly the tech literate enthusiasts and developer crowd, myself included). I however, will never accept this is a good answer. We should be demanding better evangelism to get big name products on the platforms. I do the best I can myself in this regard, but I feel that the entire idea that we should be more inclusive of these vendors/companies/developers is scoffed at in the FOSS/OSS communities and I do not inherently understand why. Yes, they create code that isn't meeting the guidelines of FOSS/OSS, but if you don't create the best toolsets independent of them or have some semblance of balance, then the platform will stagnant at x number of users. I think idealism colors perspectives but reality is much more grey than either side is willing to cede, perhaps.
  - idobai 10y ago
    Alternatively, if you don't need: privacy, a fast OS with a diverse set of desktops for power users, comfortable development environment with power tools, security, open standards, sane package management(don't even mention Program Files and Control Panel...) and a helpful and progressive community then you'll be fine with windows. Yeah, you can run adobe and ms software natively, instead of using wine or crossover. Seriously, you either avoid the ms bloat or find alternatives(ez). The FOSS community needs an industry but doesn't need the industrial abuse. By default, NOBODY should depend on a company or a "network" of companies and their software. That's the sin of public education - selling the youth to companies. It's now like in Pascal Lainé's book - "L'Irrévolution(1971)" where the youth after finishing the school goes to the town's factory. There is no choice - you've been sold.
- posterboy 10y ago
  that's the point though, DRM-protection is largely incompatible with oss (it seems, but maybe not inherently so).
shmerl 10y ago
> Free/libre OSS won the battle for the server, lost the battle for the desktop, but desktop is not (that) relevant anymore. Desktop won't stop being relevant in the foreseeable future - there is nothing to replace it with for a whole variety of tasks. And usage of Linux on the desktop is gradually growing.
- banterfoil 10y ago
  I'm a Linux desktop user myself, but what evidence do you have to support that Linux desktop is growing?
emilsedgh 10y ago
It was not about world domonation. It was about having a good free desktop. And we nailed it. We have several desktops and they all have decent quality. It seems that the problem on phones isnt that Android/iOS have all the market share. Biggest problem seems to be closed hardware.
- mlinksva 10y ago
  It is about world domination, or rather liberation. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/a-preliminary-analysis-of-high-priority-projects-feedback https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/a-preliminary-analysis-o... : > projects of strategic importance to the goal of freedom for _all computer users_.
  - eikenberry 10y ago
    All computer users have the freedom. They are free to switch to it at any time. That is the thing about freedom, you are free to not do it.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      There are still obstacles that prevent someone from switching - lack of Free alternatives to software used in their working environments, lack of knowledge about the existing alternatives, even the lack of understanding of the difference between Free and non-Free software.
brudgers 10y ago
If GNU's idea of free software and open source are lumped together, I'm not convinced that the battle for the desktop and mobile are over due to the direction Microsoft is currently heading and the way in which Apple's closed source ambitions are increasingly subject to criticism on the basis of being closed source. Of course the caveat is I'm looking at it more as the 100 Years' War [1] than the 30 Years' War [2]. The reason I take the long term view is that it seems to me that open source development provides advantages that play out over the long term. At the very least, Google and Red Hat's hybrid models look more and more like the main stream default. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Years%27_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Years%27_War [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War
mhd 10y ago
Given the popularity of SaaS and Electron apps, I think everyone lost the battle for the desktop.
- webmaven 10y ago
  What's wrong with Electron apps?
  - flukus 10y ago
    They're slow, bloated and not native anywhere.
    - apsdsm 10y ago
      There's plenty of programs which are native to the environment they work in which are also slow and bloated.
      - flukus 10y ago
        But there are plenty that aren't, which can't be said for electron. I'll avoid the bloated ones regardless of the tech.
  - shakna 10y ago
    The only well-written Electron app I'm aware of is VSCode. Everything else is slow, memory hungry, and insanely bloated.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  The interesting part of it is that those applications are mostly written by GNU/Linux developers, thus decreasing the likelihood of GNU/Linux ever becoming a relevant desktop in world wide market share.
problems 10y ago
> FLOSS phone ecosystem will be hard to next to impossible, in my opinion, but worth going into You can run Android without gapps fairly well, I believe there's even a project that replaces gapps and uses xposed to fake signatures so that they look legitimate to replace Google Maps and other in-app widgets frequently used on Android. Or you can run with GApps if you're willing to tolerate some level of proprietary software. FLOSS on phones is actually in a quite good state, F-Droid is pretty good, many well maintained open source roms. Better than most other platforms.
- hub_ 10y ago
  Does that include open source code for ALL the hardware?
  - chriswarbo 10y ago
    > Does that include open source code for ALL the hardware? I've stuck with my OpenMoko FreeRunner due to the lack of alternatives, and even that uses a proprietary driver for the GSM modem :( Hopefully projects like GNUradio will lead to a solution for this.
finid 10y ago
> FLOSS phone ecosystem will be hard to next to impossible, in my opinion Plasma Mobile is not in a bad state [1] [1]: https://plasma-mobile.org/ https://plasma-mobile.org/
- flukus 10y ago
  It is when you consider the state of hardware support. Hopefully something like the fairphone will become popular.
  - synchronise 10y ago
    It doesn't help that the architecture that they build these phones on isn't largely standardised as it is on desktop PCs. Until that is resolved, I don't see the hardware support issue being resolved.

idobai 10y ago

> Free/libre OSS won the battle for the server, lost the battle for the desktop I don't think it lost the battle on desktop - if you don't rely on platform(or interest)-specific software like the adobe/microsoft suites and some 3A games then you'll be more than fine on the linux desktop.

tornadoboy55 10y ago
Shame that the battle for the desktop is actually (mostly) being fought on the laptop - and Linux sucks there. The default settings are usually extremely poor for powersaving. Why doesn't powertop+TLP get installed, configured and activated by default when Ubuntu/Fedora detects its installed on a laptop? Also, sleeping still isn't reliable (if I close my Macbook with some work on I can be damn sure it'll be exactly as I left it when I open it. With Linux, its still not 100% reliable). Wifi still also isn't nearly as reliable (packet loss, connection drops etc.) as either Windows or macOS.
- idobai 10y ago
  I use linux on laptop and I don't have problems(especially with xubuntu). I just install the base, run additional drivers, install the wifi/gpu drivers and done. It was always like this on my previous laptops and on others' laptops I've installed it. Power saving on windows is an illusion, I don't remember getting more things done with the same laptop. Maybe it's the case if you use Unity/KDE/Gnome3 and similar heavy stuff... If you want to spare more energy then use integrated graphics and amd|nvidia only if you want to play. Bumblebee can also help. Using XFCE, Firefox, playing videos with vlc(not with web players!), installing a blocking extension for your browser, avoiding electron/jvm/mono-based apps(ironic, I'm a Scala developer) can also reduce energy consumption. I use neovim for coding and it's a huge boost for me. Suspending was always realiable on ubuntu for me. But with arch or arch-based distros it's a ~70% possibility for failure(according to my experience). On the other, hand putting windows to sleep is a serious hazard, it's not just hurts performance but it makes the os and its apps unstable(I use win7 at work). I've heard that there are people with wifi problems but connection drops and packet losses are issues which are better to be reported. There is askubuntu.com, you can get help pretty fast by searching or asking.
- eikenberry 10y ago
  The fact that TLP exists is a great step. It wasn't that long ago that I had a dozen different custom hacks in place to get better power usage while on battery, now TLP does all of them and more.
  - tornadoboy55 10y ago
    Still kind of disheartening that I get 10-14h battery life on my 13" 2015 Retina under macOS, but it drops to 4-5h on untweaked Ubuntu. I can push that to about 7-8h with the help of Powertop and TLP. That's still a vast, vast chasm to overcome for Linux. Yes, I know Macbooks do non-standard things with Wi-Fi and Thunderbolt controllers (special ACPI sleep modes etc.), that isn't a bad thing, Linux should attempt those as well. To end on a positive note: I do agree TLP (and other powersaving tools) are good progress.
no_wizard 10y ago
I take slight issue with this. It's not you personally, but I see this a lot in tech, in particular from the FOSS crowd 'Well, if you don't need x or y, then its fine!' FOSS will always be second tier for most people until the plethora of software available is at some relative parity, similar to that of macOS at least. (I'm talking strict availability). The fact that there isn't more cohesive efforts to have big software vendors port their software to FOSS systems I feel like is part of the problem. I personally feel the FOSS community doesn't have good evangelism to actual software developers that develop non-idealistic software. Adobe is a good example of this. So is Microsoft. So is Autodesk (With some exceptions, granted, but I think those come from the need to run in parallel processing environments that Linux supports quite well, and Maya). Heck, so is Wunderlist. Or 2do. 1password. They don't make native apps or even some semblance of apps for any FOSS platform, and I see no attempts to evangelize coming out of FOSS communities to get these places on their side. I'm sure there are exceptions I'm missing or perhaps some of these examples listed have progressed but my point still stands. FOSS is great for users, and has really evangelized well to a certain subset of users in particular (mostly the tech literate enthusiasts and developer crowd, myself included). I however, will never accept this is a good answer. We should be demanding better evangelism to get big name products on the platforms. I do the best I can myself in this regard, but I feel that the entire idea that we should be more inclusive of these vendors/companies/developers is scoffed at in the FOSS/OSS communities and I do not inherently understand why. Yes, they create code that isn't meeting the guidelines of FOSS/OSS, but if you don't create the best toolsets independent of them or have some semblance of balance, then the platform will stagnant at x number of users. I think idealism colors perspectives but reality is much more grey than either side is willing to cede, perhaps.
- idobai 10y ago
  Alternatively, if you don't need: privacy, a fast OS with a diverse set of desktops for power users, comfortable development environment with power tools, security, open standards, sane package management(don't even mention Program Files and Control Panel...) and a helpful and progressive community then you'll be fine with windows. Yeah, you can run adobe and ms software natively, instead of using wine or crossover. Seriously, you either avoid the ms bloat or find alternatives(ez). The FOSS community needs an industry but doesn't need the industrial abuse. By default, NOBODY should depend on a company or a "network" of companies and their software. That's the sin of public education - selling the youth to companies. It's now like in Pascal Lainé's book - "L'Irrévolution(1971)" where the youth after finishing the school goes to the town's factory. There is no choice - you've been sold.
posterboy 10y ago
that's the point though, DRM-protection is largely incompatible with oss (it seems, but maybe not inherently so).

shmerl 10y ago

> Free/libre OSS won the battle for the server, lost the battle for the desktop, but desktop is not (that) relevant anymore. Desktop won't stop being relevant in the foreseeable future - there is nothing to replace it with for a whole variety of tasks. And usage of Linux on the desktop is gradually growing.

banterfoil 10y ago
I'm a Linux desktop user myself, but what evidence do you have to support that Linux desktop is growing?

emilsedgh 10y ago

It was not about world domonation. It was about having a good free desktop. And we nailed it. We have several desktops and they all have decent quality. It seems that the problem on phones isnt that Android/iOS have all the market share. Biggest problem seems to be closed hardware.

mlinksva 10y ago
It is about world domination, or rather liberation. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/a-preliminary-analysis-of-high-priority-projects-feedback https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/a-preliminary-analysis-o... : > projects of strategic importance to the goal of freedom for _all computer users_.
- eikenberry 10y ago
  All computer users have the freedom. They are free to switch to it at any time. That is the thing about freedom, you are free to not do it.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    There are still obstacles that prevent someone from switching - lack of Free alternatives to software used in their working environments, lack of knowledge about the existing alternatives, even the lack of understanding of the difference between Free and non-Free software.

brudgers 10y ago

If GNU's idea of free software and open source are lumped together, I'm not convinced that the battle for the desktop and mobile are over due to the direction Microsoft is currently heading and the way in which Apple's closed source ambitions are increasingly subject to criticism on the basis of being closed source. Of course the caveat is I'm looking at it more as the 100 Years' War [1] than the 30 Years' War [2]. The reason I take the long term view is that it seems to me that open source development provides advantages that play out over the long term. At the very least, Google and Red Hat's hybrid models look more and more like the main stream default. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Years%27_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Years%27_War [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War

mhd 10y ago

Given the popularity of SaaS and Electron apps, I think everyone lost the battle for the desktop.

webmaven 10y ago
What's wrong with Electron apps?
- flukus 10y ago
  They're slow, bloated and not native anywhere.
  - apsdsm 10y ago
    There's plenty of programs which are native to the environment they work in which are also slow and bloated.
    - flukus 10y ago
      But there are plenty that aren't, which can't be said for electron. I'll avoid the bloated ones regardless of the tech.
- shakna 10y ago
  The only well-written Electron app I'm aware of is VSCode. Everything else is slow, memory hungry, and insanely bloated.
pjmlp 10y ago
The interesting part of it is that those applications are mostly written by GNU/Linux developers, thus decreasing the likelihood of GNU/Linux ever becoming a relevant desktop in world wide market share.

problems 10y ago

> FLOSS phone ecosystem will be hard to next to impossible, in my opinion, but worth going into You can run Android without gapps fairly well, I believe there's even a project that replaces gapps and uses xposed to fake signatures so that they look legitimate to replace Google Maps and other in-app widgets frequently used on Android. Or you can run with GApps if you're willing to tolerate some level of proprietary software. FLOSS on phones is actually in a quite good state, F-Droid is pretty good, many well maintained open source roms. Better than most other platforms.

hub_ 10y ago
Does that include open source code for ALL the hardware?
- chriswarbo 10y ago
  > Does that include open source code for ALL the hardware? I've stuck with my OpenMoko FreeRunner due to the lack of alternatives, and even that uses a proprietary driver for the GSM modem :( Hopefully projects like GNUradio will lead to a solution for this.

finid 10y ago

> FLOSS phone ecosystem will be hard to next to impossible, in my opinion Plasma Mobile is not in a bad state [1] [1]: https://plasma-mobile.org/ https://plasma-mobile.org/

flukus 10y ago
It is when you consider the state of hardware support. Hopefully something like the fairphone will become popular.
- synchronise 10y ago
  It doesn't help that the architecture that they build these phones on isn't largely standardised as it is on desktop PCs. Until that is resolved, I don't see the hardware support issue being resolved.