11 ms·

GitLab is a lot like Firefox, or "Linux on the desktop" in that way. It's what a lot of us want to use, but the less-open but more-polished option has always se

by veidr 8y ago

GitLab is a lot like Firefox, or "Linux on the desktop" in that way. It's what a lot of us want to use, but the less-open but more-polished option has always seemed the more pragmatic choice. But that can change. Recently (just as most of the world has apparently moved on from desktop computing, haha) Linux is pretty much fine for the traditional desktop computing. I have current Mac, Windows, and Ubuttnu on my desk, and they are essentially interchangeable except for a few special-case purposes (say, Final Cut video editing, or opening one of those weird wonky Excel sheets that only open on Windows). Firefox, too, is suddenly performant and I've switched to it as my main browser (for default website use) — something absolutely, utterly unimaginable two years ago. I hope that GitLab is reaching the same kind of transition point. I've heard horror stories from people that used it 2-3 years ago and are happy to be back on GitHub. But I don't hear much recent grumbling. I moved a toy project to it and it seems nice. As fast as GitHub for me (though I am in Japan, and GitHub is slow in Japan). More features. A nice, sort of adult/professional aesthetic. And — yay! — the open source core it's always had. I might be wrong, since I haven't used it for reals, but it looks like they might have hit that critical usability threshold? Open source and worse isn't a very compelling sales pitch. But an open source tool that is broadly equivalent to a closed source one is generally more attractive, especially when you're talking about services that will be used as part of your core infrastructure.

koboll 8y ago
>GitLab is a lot like Firefox, or "Linux on the desktop" in that way. It's what a lot of us want to use, but the less-open but more-polished option has always seemed the more pragmatic choice. But that can change. I wonder if this move by GitHub is motivated by them seeing this writing on the wall.
- lawnchair_larry 8y ago
  No, it’s motivated by 5 billion dollars (or whatever the real number is). That’s why people funded GitHub.
  - himom 8y ago
    a16z, Sequoia and friends got their liquidity event from $350+ M invested. Looks like a (probably $3.5+ B) 10x or better ROI, which should help VC’s IRR numbers. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/github https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/github
    - skinnymuch 8y ago
      Your numbers are a bit off. The fundings were done at roughly $750M and $2B valuations. Still going to be great for investors, but most likely not 10x or better.
Qwertie 8y ago
I have been using gitlab heavily for the last year and since then nothing terrible has happened. The worst thing was for one day it was pretty slow but was fixed the next day and no data was lost. GitLab today in my opinion is now a better piece of software than github.
irq11 8y ago
People here are deluding themselves. Gitlab, without gobs of VC money and the promise of a big IPO payday, is an abandoned open-source project with a tiny fraction of the team that built the code. So yes, you can fork the code, but without the money and resources of the parent company, good luck keeping it up to date! Worst case, you get another mysql: neglected by an acquiring company, with lots of bureaucracy and infighting and IP tangles to slow things down. Gitlab is essentially salting the earth for dev tool startups. I had my issues with Github, but at least they had built a business around a dev tool, behaved ethically and gave back generously, and so I wished them well. To see so many people dropping them for a fauxpen-source competitor whose primary selling point is “it’s free!” just makes me sad. If you want nice things, you have to pay for them. If you aren’t, I guarantee you that someone else is, and they’re the ones with control.
- Jedd 8y ago
  Sounds like you've got an axe to grind. > I had my issues with Github, but at least they had built a business around a dev tool ... That's a strange claim given that in the current top story - of Microsoft buying Github - the following claim is made: "The acquisition provides a way forward for San Francisco-based GitHub, which has been trying for nine months to find a new CEO and has yet to make a profit from its popular service ..." Perhaps it comes down to your definition -- can something be non-profitable for a decade and still be called a business?
  - paulie_a 8y ago
    >can something be non-profitable for a decade and still be called a business Just ask Amazon
    - mandeepj 8y ago
      > Just ask Amazon Maybe, we should ask ourselves first if it's a fair comparison. Amazon kept investing the profits into themselves. I don't think that is the case with Github though
fireattack 8y ago
As a faithful Fx user since 1.5, I'm not sure about Firefox analogy. Its market share was actually much higher in the past and only went down (the introduction of Quantum didn't really help market share wise). And in term of polishness.. Firefox was MILES ahead of any browser for a very long time. When Chrome launched, it was as horrible as you can think in term of functionality, and Firefox at that time was already as solid as today. But Chrome advances very fast. People often attribute Chrome's success (merely) to Google's push, but Chrome's technological development plays a bigger role IMO.
- mikekchar 8y ago
  Chrome made a big thing about unit testing at the beginning of their development. I'm not sure if their definition and my definition of "unit test" matches up, or even if they still have that drive, but I've often wondered how much that has made a difference in their development process. My own experience has been that an early commitment to unit testing can make a massive difference to sustained development pace (pays off more as time goes on). My inner confirmation bias would love it to be true :-)
  - drchickensalad 8y ago
    I think the true advantage you're referring to is automated regression testing, which isn't necessarily just unit testing (or at all)
    - mikekchar 8y ago
      The interesting thing is (and without meaning to denigrate your point of view) I actually think that automated regression testing is not particularly valuable when you have unit testing. I actually want unit testing for the ability to help you reason about the code. One of the things that I would dearly like to discover is whether or not my view holds any water. It certainly feels that way from my perspective, but I'm biased ;-) However, I think you are probably correct in that I think it is far more likely that Chrome has a good automated regression test suite than it has a good unit test suite.
tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
I use it for reals at my job. Enterprise version. I love it.
marmaduke 8y ago
We deploy GitLab locally and it’s a great experience.
- anyzen 8y ago
  Same here. The CI is easy to use and makes sense, though it lacks some features - for instance being able to automatically run manual jobs as soon as their predecessors complete. Now I have to wait (!) and then click so the manual job starts... But all in all, good product, I hope they succeed!
  - Heliosmaster 8y ago
    wouldn't those "automatic manual jobs" just be normal jobs?
    - lloeki 8y ago
      I think GP means that you know that for this one pipeline related to commit X you want manual step Y to proceed once previous steps are ok, and you know it right now, so instead of waiting for previous steps to complete you want to trigger the step in a delayed fashion. Kind of like "merge this as soon as tests pass" on MRs.
      - anyzen 8y ago
        Exactly. (& sorry for late reply)
- Sir_Substance 8y ago
  Same, I've had it running on a proxmox VM on a nuc in my room for years. It's considerably better than github, and damn that CI is good.
bigbugbag 8y ago
I certainly disagree with this comparison. I've been using linux on the desktop for over 15 years with no intention to ever stop the near future. I had been using firefox since its first release under the name phoenix then firebird then firefox (I had been using mozilla suite before that) and I've stopped with no intent to ever come back to it when mozilla finally killed what made firefox useful to me after a lengthy agony process (BTW the claim of firefox being not performant enough 2 years ago is totally unsubstantiated as I used it daily with over 250 tabs open concurrently without a single hiccup despite having 35 extensions loaded as they were required to put back the useful features mozilla had removed, to remove the unwanted cruft mozilla has added and to add the necessary features mozilla refused to add). I have now switch to waterfox, and its name says it all. So really comparing gitlab to linux on the desktop means gitlab will never happen, and comparing gitlab to firefox means it will be mishandled into irrelevance by a shady finance operation aiming for market domination. To me Gitlab seems a better alternative to proprietary and centralized github that will be bought at some point in the not so distant future, has been my stance on this matter. That Microsoft is the one buying would not have been my first bet but is not a huge surprise either considering their change of PR to jump on the opensource bandwagon as an attempt to extend their agony further.
Lorkki 8y ago
> Recently (just as most of the world has apparently moved on from desktop computing, haha) Linux is pretty much fine for the traditional desktop computing. It's been fine for the past decade, it's just the trope of "Linux on the desktop" that's slow to die.
- vanderZwan 8y ago
  Eh... it's mostly fine. It's just that when something doesn't work, you're screwed if you're not technically confident enough. Emphasis confident - you have to trust your instincts when digging through internet fora for a solution. Something that I can never see my mother doing, for one.
  - fnord123 8y ago
    >Eh... it's mostly fine. It's just that when something doesn't work, you're screwed if you're not technically confident enough. As opposed to Windows or OSX where you're just screwed. There are rough edged in Linux on Desktop but people seem to be completely house-blind* about Windows and OS X. If you spend a lot of time on Linux and go back to Windows or OS X the rough edges in those platforms become immediately obvious. * If English isn't your first language, house-blind is where you get so used to something being out of place that it becomes part of the decor. e.g. a jumper on the back of a chair that stays there for a week+.
    - vanderZwan 8y ago
      Oh, I agree with everything you say! But we have to put this in the context of an elderly lady who is terribly frightened of breaking the computer and always believes it's her fault when software screws up, because the feedback loop of computers is terrible (either absent, or opaque jargon, or marketing lies). That is, my mother. And keep in mind that I live abroad. Helping her out remotely is a very difficult and slow process - if I lived close by the story would be different. In that context, when it comes to Windows or OSX, my mother has a lot of people who can help her out other than me - my sisters, my father (they're separated but still get along), some of her friends. Now, my younger sisters are getting into programming (because all professions need it) so maybe I can get them into Linux too - they're definitely capable but the question is whether they consider it worth the investment. But still.
jacksmith21006 8y ago
It should change and suspect quick. The big tech companies will have to move off of GitHub and go somewhere. So either they do it themselves which is a risk or looks like GitLab.
mseebach 8y ago
> Recently (just as most of the world has apparently moved on from desktop computing, haha) Linux is pretty much fine for the traditional desktop computing. It's exactly because the world has moved away from desktop computing that Linux on the desktop has become viable: collaboration tools are increasingly web-based (or is at least web-enabled for the 80%-usecase), and those tools are exactly what tends to anchor an organisation on a single platform. These days, even Outlook has a perfectly usable web-interface that works fine in Chrome and Firefox.
lameiam 8y ago
> But that can change. That's because change is the only constant.
amelius 8y ago
> Linux is pretty much fine for the traditional desktop computing Yeah, on the desktop things are getting better. But ... everybody is moving to the smartphone. And there things are getting worse. For example, my Banking app works only on 2 platforms, which are not open.
- crtasm 8y ago
  But I assume their online banking website works on all/most modern browsers? Do you need to use the app?
jkabrg 8y ago
Off topic but I couldn't get hibernate to work on Ubuntu Linux. I purchased a laptop with Linux pre-installed; but apparently, if a manufacturer claims to support Linux on a laptop, that does not include hibernate support. Now that we've reached the milestone of Linux on a desktop, I'm looking forward to the Year Of Linux On The Laptop.

by veidr 8y ago

koboll 8y ago

>GitLab is a lot like Firefox, or "Linux on the desktop" in that way. It's what a lot of us want to use, but the less-open but more-polished option has always seemed the more pragmatic choice. But that can change. I wonder if this move by GitHub is motivated by them seeing this writing on the wall.

lawnchair_larry 8y ago
No, it’s motivated by 5 billion dollars (or whatever the real number is). That’s why people funded GitHub.
- himom 8y ago
  a16z, Sequoia and friends got their liquidity event from $350+ M invested. Looks like a (probably $3.5+ B) 10x or better ROI, which should help VC’s IRR numbers. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/github https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/github
  - skinnymuch 8y ago
    Your numbers are a bit off. The fundings were done at roughly $750M and $2B valuations. Still going to be great for investors, but most likely not 10x or better.

Qwertie 8y ago

I have been using gitlab heavily for the last year and since then nothing terrible has happened. The worst thing was for one day it was pretty slow but was fixed the next day and no data was lost. GitLab today in my opinion is now a better piece of software than github.

irq11 8y ago

People here are deluding themselves. Gitlab, without gobs of VC money and the promise of a big IPO payday, is an abandoned open-source project with a tiny fraction of the team that built the code. So yes, you can fork the code, but without the money and resources of the parent company, good luck keeping it up to date! Worst case, you get another mysql: neglected by an acquiring company, with lots of bureaucracy and infighting and IP tangles to slow things down. Gitlab is essentially salting the earth for dev tool startups. I had my issues with Github, but at least they had built a business around a dev tool, behaved ethically and gave back generously, and so I wished them well. To see so many people dropping them for a fauxpen-source competitor whose primary selling point is “it’s free!” just makes me sad. If you want nice things, you have to pay for them. If you aren’t, I guarantee you that someone else is, and they’re the ones with control.

Jedd 8y ago
Sounds like you've got an axe to grind. > I had my issues with Github, but at least they had built a business around a dev tool ... That's a strange claim given that in the current top story - of Microsoft buying Github - the following claim is made: "The acquisition provides a way forward for San Francisco-based GitHub, which has been trying for nine months to find a new CEO and has yet to make a profit from its popular service ..." Perhaps it comes down to your definition -- can something be non-profitable for a decade and still be called a business?
- paulie_a 8y ago
  >can something be non-profitable for a decade and still be called a business Just ask Amazon
  - mandeepj 8y ago
    > Just ask Amazon Maybe, we should ask ourselves first if it's a fair comparison. Amazon kept investing the profits into themselves. I don't think that is the case with Github though

fireattack 8y ago

As a faithful Fx user since 1.5, I'm not sure about Firefox analogy. Its market share was actually much higher in the past and only went down (the introduction of Quantum didn't really help market share wise). And in term of polishness.. Firefox was MILES ahead of any browser for a very long time. When Chrome launched, it was as horrible as you can think in term of functionality, and Firefox at that time was already as solid as today. But Chrome advances very fast. People often attribute Chrome's success (merely) to Google's push, but Chrome's technological development plays a bigger role IMO.

mikekchar 8y ago
Chrome made a big thing about unit testing at the beginning of their development. I'm not sure if their definition and my definition of "unit test" matches up, or even if they still have that drive, but I've often wondered how much that has made a difference in their development process. My own experience has been that an early commitment to unit testing can make a massive difference to sustained development pace (pays off more as time goes on). My inner confirmation bias would love it to be true :-)
- drchickensalad 8y ago
  I think the true advantage you're referring to is automated regression testing, which isn't necessarily just unit testing (or at all)
  - mikekchar 8y ago
    The interesting thing is (and without meaning to denigrate your point of view) I actually think that automated regression testing is not particularly valuable when you have unit testing. I actually want unit testing for the ability to help you reason about the code. One of the things that I would dearly like to discover is whether or not my view holds any water. It certainly feels that way from my perspective, but I'm biased ;-) However, I think you are probably correct in that I think it is far more likely that Chrome has a good automated regression test suite than it has a good unit test suite.

tenaciousDaniel 8y ago

I use it for reals at my job. Enterprise version. I love it.

marmaduke 8y ago

We deploy GitLab locally and it’s a great experience.

anyzen 8y ago
Same here. The CI is easy to use and makes sense, though it lacks some features - for instance being able to automatically run manual jobs as soon as their predecessors complete. Now I have to wait (!) and then click so the manual job starts... But all in all, good product, I hope they succeed!
- Heliosmaster 8y ago
  wouldn't those "automatic manual jobs" just be normal jobs?
  - lloeki 8y ago
    I think GP means that you know that for this one pipeline related to commit X you want manual step Y to proceed once previous steps are ok, and you know it right now, so instead of waiting for previous steps to complete you want to trigger the step in a delayed fashion. Kind of like "merge this as soon as tests pass" on MRs.
    - anyzen 8y ago
      Exactly. (& sorry for late reply)
Sir_Substance 8y ago
Same, I've had it running on a proxmox VM on a nuc in my room for years. It's considerably better than github, and damn that CI is good.

bigbugbag 8y ago

I certainly disagree with this comparison. I've been using linux on the desktop for over 15 years with no intention to ever stop the near future. I had been using firefox since its first release under the name phoenix then firebird then firefox (I had been using mozilla suite before that) and I've stopped with no intent to ever come back to it when mozilla finally killed what made firefox useful to me after a lengthy agony process (BTW the claim of firefox being not performant enough 2 years ago is totally unsubstantiated as I used it daily with over 250 tabs open concurrently without a single hiccup despite having 35 extensions loaded as they were required to put back the useful features mozilla had removed, to remove the unwanted cruft mozilla has added and to add the necessary features mozilla refused to add). I have now switch to waterfox, and its name says it all. So really comparing gitlab to linux on the desktop means gitlab will never happen, and comparing gitlab to firefox means it will be mishandled into irrelevance by a shady finance operation aiming for market domination. To me Gitlab seems a better alternative to proprietary and centralized github that will be bought at some point in the not so distant future, has been my stance on this matter. That Microsoft is the one buying would not have been my first bet but is not a huge surprise either considering their change of PR to jump on the opensource bandwagon as an attempt to extend their agony further.

Lorkki 8y ago

> Recently (just as most of the world has apparently moved on from desktop computing, haha) Linux is pretty much fine for the traditional desktop computing. It's been fine for the past decade, it's just the trope of "Linux on the desktop" that's slow to die.

vanderZwan 8y ago
Eh... it's mostly fine. It's just that when something doesn't work, you're screwed if you're not technically confident enough. Emphasis confident - you have to trust your instincts when digging through internet fora for a solution. Something that I can never see my mother doing, for one.
- fnord123 8y ago
  >Eh... it's mostly fine. It's just that when something doesn't work, you're screwed if you're not technically confident enough. As opposed to Windows or OSX where you're just screwed. There are rough edged in Linux on Desktop but people seem to be completely house-blind* about Windows and OS X. If you spend a lot of time on Linux and go back to Windows or OS X the rough edges in those platforms become immediately obvious. * If English isn't your first language, house-blind is where you get so used to something being out of place that it becomes part of the decor. e.g. a jumper on the back of a chair that stays there for a week+.
  - vanderZwan 8y ago
    Oh, I agree with everything you say! But we have to put this in the context of an elderly lady who is terribly frightened of breaking the computer and always believes it's her fault when software screws up, because the feedback loop of computers is terrible (either absent, or opaque jargon, or marketing lies). That is, my mother. And keep in mind that I live abroad. Helping her out remotely is a very difficult and slow process - if I lived close by the story would be different. In that context, when it comes to Windows or OSX, my mother has a lot of people who can help her out other than me - my sisters, my father (they're separated but still get along), some of her friends. Now, my younger sisters are getting into programming (because all professions need it) so maybe I can get them into Linux too - they're definitely capable but the question is whether they consider it worth the investment. But still.

jacksmith21006 8y ago

It should change and suspect quick. The big tech companies will have to move off of GitHub and go somewhere. So either they do it themselves which is a risk or looks like GitLab.

mseebach 8y ago

> Recently (just as most of the world has apparently moved on from desktop computing, haha) Linux is pretty much fine for the traditional desktop computing. It's exactly because the world has moved away from desktop computing that Linux on the desktop has become viable: collaboration tools are increasingly web-based (or is at least web-enabled for the 80%-usecase), and those tools are exactly what tends to anchor an organisation on a single platform. These days, even Outlook has a perfectly usable web-interface that works fine in Chrome and Firefox.

lameiam 8y ago

> But that can change. That's because change is the only constant.

amelius 8y ago

> Linux is pretty much fine for the traditional desktop computing Yeah, on the desktop things are getting better. But ... everybody is moving to the smartphone. And there things are getting worse. For example, my Banking app works only on 2 platforms, which are not open.

crtasm 8y ago
But I assume their online banking website works on all/most modern browsers? Do you need to use the app?

jkabrg 8y ago

Off topic but I couldn't get hibernate to work on Ubuntu Linux. I purchased a laptop with Linux pre-installed; but apparently, if a manufacturer claims to support Linux on a laptop, that does not include hibernate support. Now that we've reached the milestone of Linux on a desktop, I'm looking forward to the Year Of Linux On The Laptop.