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I’m sympathetic but it’s tilting at windmills. These are the exact same things people were arguing about 20 years ago- if only everyone in the desktop Linux wor

by mwfunk 8y ago

I’m sympathetic but it’s tilting at windmills. These are the exact same things people were arguing about 20 years ago- if only everyone in the desktop Linux world would all agree to standardize on a bunch more high-level common things (package managers, desktop environments, etc.), then some form of desktop Linux would become a juggernaut that would steamroll Windows and take over the world. Arguably Android has achieved the role of Windows in the mobile world, but not because the Linux community collectively all agreed to standardize on it. The fact that it’s Linux under the hood is almost incidental to its success. I don’t think that’s the kind of victory he wants though. 20 years ago there was a sense that desktop Linux would just magically converge, eventually, to effectively a single platform. But there’s never been a critical mass of support for any one distro or desktop that caused all competition to wither away. There may absolutely still someday be a popular form of desktop Linux that can go head to head with the big players in terms of market share, but if so I don’t think it will be referred to as “Linux”, and most users won’t even know that they’re using a Linux/GNU/etc. system. Maybe ChromeOS can get there, who knows. But that’s likely not what he wants either, he wants what so many people thought was inevitable 20 years ago. I would never dissuade anyone from trying to make that a reality, but I personally lost hope many years ago.

gizmo686 8y ago
This talk is not about Linux. Linux is a great platform that takes ABI and backwards compatibility seriously. This is about the common userspace stack that we commonly refer to as Linux. There are two issues with this stack. One issue is that there is no major distribution that takes its role as a platform seriously [0]. The second issue is that there is a lot of common ground between the major distributions that is not standardized. If different distributions have different ideas of package management, then that is one thing, and we can live with that difference. If different distributions have the same idea of using openssl, then they should do so in a compatable manner. [0] I would go further and say that there is no distribution that even pretends to be a platform.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
> There may absolutely still someday be a popular form of desktop Linux that can go head to head with the big players in terms of market share, but if so I don’t think it will be referred to as “Linux” I agree. The Linux Desktop community has proven over several decades that it is simply not up to the task of doing what needs to be done to put together a good Desktop OS. If the Linux kernel starts being a serious contender on Desktops it will be because someone has completely replaced the userspace that currently sits above it and given it a new name to differentiate it from all the problems of the Linux Desktop. I thought google might do this with Android, but it seems that they aren't really interested. Even their recent additions to ChromeOS seem to be only targeted towards enabling web dev workflows.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Android is all about their version of Java, the NDK is there only as helping hand for implementing native methods, importing code from other platforms, audio and 3D graphics. Brillo was supposed to be Android with userspace C++ for IoT, until it got rebooted as Android Things, having features that regular Android still lacks, like userspace drivers in Java[0]. Which is understandable from the point of view of security, but also shows how the actual kernel is mostly an implementation detail for the large majority of app developers. [0] - Actually Treble allows them as well, but in a different way.
pjmlp 8y ago
Exactly because Android has a standard desktop stack in form its Frameworks, and the NDK only exposes Android native APIs, ISO C and C++ libraries, nothing Linux specific. ChromeOS as well, in this case by standardizing on the Web Platform as user space APIs. If Google plans for Fuchsia really come to fruition, that incident will be another footnote on Linux's desktop presence.

by mwfunk 8y ago

gizmo686 8y ago

This talk is not about Linux. Linux is a great platform that takes ABI and backwards compatibility seriously. This is about the common userspace stack that we commonly refer to as Linux. There are two issues with this stack. One issue is that there is no major distribution that takes its role as a platform seriously [0]. The second issue is that there is a lot of common ground between the major distributions that is not standardized. If different distributions have different ideas of package management, then that is one thing, and we can live with that difference. If different distributions have the same idea of using openssl, then they should do so in a compatable manner. [0] I would go further and say that there is no distribution that even pretends to be a platform.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago

> There may absolutely still someday be a popular form of desktop Linux that can go head to head with the big players in terms of market share, but if so I don’t think it will be referred to as “Linux” I agree. The Linux Desktop community has proven over several decades that it is simply not up to the task of doing what needs to be done to put together a good Desktop OS. If the Linux kernel starts being a serious contender on Desktops it will be because someone has completely replaced the userspace that currently sits above it and given it a new name to differentiate it from all the problems of the Linux Desktop. I thought google might do this with Android, but it seems that they aren't really interested. Even their recent additions to ChromeOS seem to be only targeted towards enabling web dev workflows.

pjmlp 8y ago
Android is all about their version of Java, the NDK is there only as helping hand for implementing native methods, importing code from other platforms, audio and 3D graphics. Brillo was supposed to be Android with userspace C++ for IoT, until it got rebooted as Android Things, having features that regular Android still lacks, like userspace drivers in Java[0]. Which is understandable from the point of view of security, but also shows how the actual kernel is mostly an implementation detail for the large majority of app developers. [0] - Actually Treble allows them as well, but in a different way.

pjmlp 8y ago

Exactly because Android has a standard desktop stack in form its Frameworks, and the NDK only exposes Android native APIs, ISO C and C++ libraries, nothing Linux specific. ChromeOS as well, in this case by standardizing on the Web Platform as user space APIs. If Google plans for Fuchsia really come to fruition, that incident will be another footnote on Linux's desktop presence.