6 ms·

As for the headline, I don't know what Linux lost. Loss implies that you had it at some point, but Linux never really had the desktop, (sadly), so it could not

As for the headline, I don't know what Linux lost. Loss implies that you had it at some point, but Linux never really had the desktop, (sadly), so it could not have lost it. It still dominates in the server, supercomputer & embedded markets.

nailer 8y ago
Linux also dominates mobile, which in turn dominates desktop.
- emilsedgh 8y ago
  Linux kernel has a good presence on the mobile through Android but the Linux ecosystem aka GNU/Linux does not. And it seems that Google has plans to swap Linux with Fuschia in the long term.
  - LukeShu 8y ago
    Linux is the kernel. The rest of it is... not Linux. It's almost like RMS had a point with the rant that he gets mocked for.
    - oytis 8y ago
      Yes, sounds kind of funny to me. If you're building an embedded system with busybox, it's proper GNU/Linux, because busybox is GNU. But once you replace it with Toybox, it becomes not-quite-Linux.
      - amyjess 8y ago
        BusyBox is not a GNU project. It's GPL, sure, but being released under the GPL doesn't make it GNU.
        oytis 8y ago
        Sure, you're right. But still working on Raspberry Pi with busybox make the same unixy feel as working on laptop with GNU coreutils (not to say on Raspbian with coreutils). So I don't think it makes much sense to make a distinction here. After all it's possible that some other implementation of coreutils gets adopted by major distros one day, and people would probably care less than they did about the transition from SysVinit to systemd.
    - rndgermandude 8y ago
      Most of what actually runs in userland on a desktop and even server isn't GNU. Sure, you got the glibc, bash and coreutils and a bunch of other shell tools. A lot of it is just a matter of preference and/or tradition; there is nothing making a lot of these tools unique and you could supplant a lot with alternatives e.g. from the BSDs. But your modern desktop is probably Gnome or KDE or similar or something like i3 or similar. And tons of users run a shell other than bash. So why not KDE/Linux? Your servers probably run stuff like containers, or node servers or php ones or java ones, or some database software and the like. How much of that is developed under the umbrella of GNU? Your browsers most likely aren't GNU, your music players probably are not either, your videos get decoded and encoded by ffmpeg. Few probably edit their documents in GNU software, and even when it comes to text, GNU editors are far from dominant. Few systems probably have their usage dominated by GNU (not merely GPL licensed) software, even if you count time spent in glibc. So, to still insist that it's "GNU/Linux" sounds... a bit silly and narcissistic to me, given all the non GNU stuff that runs on a typical system and doesn't get - let alone requests - special mention.
      - bloak 8y ago
        It seems reasonable to use the term "GNU/Linux" to refer to a system based on Linux and the GNU C library and utilities. You could also just call it "Linux", but with the term "GNU/Linux" you distinguish it from Android and BusyBox-based systems (with some other, smaller C library, such as musl), which are also "Linux". Certainly, you'd expect most of the CPU time to be spent in application software, but we're talking about how to name the platform, aren't we?
        amyjess 8y ago
        The platform nowadays is heavily dependent on systemd and either GTK+ or Qt, none of which are GNU.
        LukeShu 8y ago
        GTK+ is a GNU project.
    - amyjess 8y ago
      Android doesn't feel like Linux because Android throws out everything Unix-y about it, not because it isn't GNU. The Nokia N900 wasn't a GNU system at all—the userland was a mix of a non-GNU libc and BusyBox—but it still felt like a Linux distro because the UI used X11 with GTK+ and Qt, it had a terminal with all your familiar *nix command-line utilities (thank you, BusyBox!), and app distribution was done through an apt frontend. A good many apps for the N900 were straight-up ports of existing Linux apps, too... the ecosystem was almost entirely FOSS. Android goes out of its way to hide the terminal, the GUI is based on nothing from the desktop, and it has its own packaging and package distribution format.
  - nailer 8y ago
    Yes, and yes, but I know this, you know this, everyone on HN knows this, everything possible has been said, and reminding us doesn't contribute anything
hoaw 8y ago
Here is the qoute from the article: > “We were the Linux of social media,” as Hassan puts it. “We never had the clear mental model of what the site was, but we had the features. We had the knobs and tuneables and features. Every feature that Facebook has rolled out since I left LJ, we had it first: post by photo, post by SMS, we had those a million years ago. You could call a phone number and record a message, and the audio would get posted to your journal. We had custom friend groups so you could manage where you wanted to post. We had basically all the major features you see today, like a friends page. But we didn’t quite figure out how to tell the story or keep people interested. We had every option, but nobody could get it to work. We had the robust privacy options that nobody understands how to use on Facebook. It was a less-public age of the Internet, and one that I sometimes wish we could go back to.” It isn't a mind blowing comparison, but it isn't bad either. I can only speak for myself, but I run more and more Linux instances everyday, but less and less of Linux itself. Which isn't necessarily an easy distinction to make, but I think you get the point.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ubermonkey 8y ago
I'd love to peek at the alternate universe wherein Apple doesn't migrate to the FreeBSD-based OSX. In the late 90s I got so worn out with stability issues inherent to Win98 on laptops that I switched to the Mac, largely because a co-worker was using one and I could SEE how much it didn't crash, and how sleep actually WORKED, and how good the hardware was, etc. Since my job at the time was primarily project management, and I lived in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, I had no compatibility issues, and my work life got better. Then the dot-com crash happened and I found myself coding again as a freelancer on web projects, all of which were LAMP-stack efforts. My Mac had shipped with OS 9, but by then I'd upgraded to OS X -- which could run the same frameworks we were using on the server. My dev environment was my actual laptop, which was GREAT. I feel like that was the moment that the Mac pulled in a lot of very technical and very influential people, with good reason. If OS X hadn't happened, I suspect desktop Linux would be further along because lots of people like me would've been kinda forced into it ca. 2001-2002 instead of having the Apple option.
- devereaux 8y ago
  > I'd love to peek at the alternate universe wherein Apple doesn't migrate to the FreeBSD-based OSX. (…) > I feel like that was the moment that the Mac pulled in a lot of very technical and very influential people, with good reason You can look right now at what's happening to these very technical people. The ones I know are giving up on Apple and moving to Microsoft instead: because the WSL subsystem works, and the keyboard has most of the keys they want. We are living in interesting times!
  - chrisfinazzo 8y ago
    WSL certainly helps as the same or very similar toolchain works everywhere, but what does the keyboard have to do with anything? Any keyboard issues w/ Apple are hardware reliability concerns, but that's really a separate issue, I think.
    - aasasd 8y ago
      > what does the keyboard have to do with anything? https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/59pipx/apple_touch_bar_for_developers_will_look_like_this/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/59pipx/app...

nailer 8y ago

Linux also dominates mobile, which in turn dominates desktop.

emilsedgh 8y ago
Linux kernel has a good presence on the mobile through Android but the Linux ecosystem aka GNU/Linux does not. And it seems that Google has plans to swap Linux with Fuschia in the long term.
- LukeShu 8y ago
  Linux is the kernel. The rest of it is... not Linux. It's almost like RMS had a point with the rant that he gets mocked for.
  - oytis 8y ago
    Yes, sounds kind of funny to me. If you're building an embedded system with busybox, it's proper GNU/Linux, because busybox is GNU. But once you replace it with Toybox, it becomes not-quite-Linux.
    - amyjess 8y ago
      BusyBox is not a GNU project. It's GPL, sure, but being released under the GPL doesn't make it GNU.
      - oytis 8y ago
        Sure, you're right. But still working on Raspberry Pi with busybox make the same unixy feel as working on laptop with GNU coreutils (not to say on Raspbian with coreutils). So I don't think it makes much sense to make a distinction here. After all it's possible that some other implementation of coreutils gets adopted by major distros one day, and people would probably care less than they did about the transition from SysVinit to systemd.
  - rndgermandude 8y ago
    Most of what actually runs in userland on a desktop and even server isn't GNU. Sure, you got the glibc, bash and coreutils and a bunch of other shell tools. A lot of it is just a matter of preference and/or tradition; there is nothing making a lot of these tools unique and you could supplant a lot with alternatives e.g. from the BSDs. But your modern desktop is probably Gnome or KDE or similar or something like i3 or similar. And tons of users run a shell other than bash. So why not KDE/Linux? Your servers probably run stuff like containers, or node servers or php ones or java ones, or some database software and the like. How much of that is developed under the umbrella of GNU? Your browsers most likely aren't GNU, your music players probably are not either, your videos get decoded and encoded by ffmpeg. Few probably edit their documents in GNU software, and even when it comes to text, GNU editors are far from dominant. Few systems probably have their usage dominated by GNU (not merely GPL licensed) software, even if you count time spent in glibc. So, to still insist that it's "GNU/Linux" sounds... a bit silly and narcissistic to me, given all the non GNU stuff that runs on a typical system and doesn't get - let alone requests - special mention.
    - bloak 8y ago
      It seems reasonable to use the term "GNU/Linux" to refer to a system based on Linux and the GNU C library and utilities. You could also just call it "Linux", but with the term "GNU/Linux" you distinguish it from Android and BusyBox-based systems (with some other, smaller C library, such as musl), which are also "Linux". Certainly, you'd expect most of the CPU time to be spent in application software, but we're talking about how to name the platform, aren't we?
      - amyjess 8y ago
        The platform nowadays is heavily dependent on systemd and either GTK+ or Qt, none of which are GNU.
        LukeShu 8y ago
        GTK+ is a GNU project.
  - amyjess 8y ago
    Android doesn't feel like Linux because Android throws out everything Unix-y about it, not because it isn't GNU. The Nokia N900 wasn't a GNU system at all—the userland was a mix of a non-GNU libc and BusyBox—but it still felt like a Linux distro because the UI used X11 with GTK+ and Qt, it had a terminal with all your familiar *nix command-line utilities (thank you, BusyBox!), and app distribution was done through an apt frontend. A good many apps for the N900 were straight-up ports of existing Linux apps, too... the ecosystem was almost entirely FOSS. Android goes out of its way to hide the terminal, the GUI is based on nothing from the desktop, and it has its own packaging and package distribution format.
- nailer 8y ago
  Yes, and yes, but I know this, you know this, everyone on HN knows this, everything possible has been said, and reminding us doesn't contribute anything

hoaw 8y ago

Here is the qoute from the article: > “We were the Linux of social media,” as Hassan puts it. “We never had the clear mental model of what the site was, but we had the features. We had the knobs and tuneables and features. Every feature that Facebook has rolled out since I left LJ, we had it first: post by photo, post by SMS, we had those a million years ago. You could call a phone number and record a message, and the audio would get posted to your journal. We had custom friend groups so you could manage where you wanted to post. We had basically all the major features you see today, like a friends page. But we didn’t quite figure out how to tell the story or keep people interested. We had every option, but nobody could get it to work. We had the robust privacy options that nobody understands how to use on Facebook. It was a less-public age of the Internet, and one that I sometimes wish we could go back to.” It isn't a mind blowing comparison, but it isn't bad either. I can only speak for myself, but I run more and more Linux instances everyday, but less and less of Linux itself. Which isn't necessarily an easy distinction to make, but I think you get the point.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

ubermonkey 8y ago

I'd love to peek at the alternate universe wherein Apple doesn't migrate to the FreeBSD-based OSX. In the late 90s I got so worn out with stability issues inherent to Win98 on laptops that I switched to the Mac, largely because a co-worker was using one and I could SEE how much it didn't crash, and how sleep actually WORKED, and how good the hardware was, etc. Since my job at the time was primarily project management, and I lived in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, I had no compatibility issues, and my work life got better. Then the dot-com crash happened and I found myself coding again as a freelancer on web projects, all of which were LAMP-stack efforts. My Mac had shipped with OS 9, but by then I'd upgraded to OS X -- which could run the same frameworks we were using on the server. My dev environment was my actual laptop, which was GREAT. I feel like that was the moment that the Mac pulled in a lot of very technical and very influential people, with good reason. If OS X hadn't happened, I suspect desktop Linux would be further along because lots of people like me would've been kinda forced into it ca. 2001-2002 instead of having the Apple option.

devereaux 8y ago
> I'd love to peek at the alternate universe wherein Apple doesn't migrate to the FreeBSD-based OSX. (…) > I feel like that was the moment that the Mac pulled in a lot of very technical and very influential people, with good reason You can look right now at what's happening to these very technical people. The ones I know are giving up on Apple and moving to Microsoft instead: because the WSL subsystem works, and the keyboard has most of the keys they want. We are living in interesting times!
- chrisfinazzo 8y ago
  WSL certainly helps as the same or very similar toolchain works everywhere, but what does the keyboard have to do with anything? Any keyboard issues w/ Apple are hardware reliability concerns, but that's really a separate issue, I think.
  - aasasd 8y ago
    > what does the keyboard have to do with anything? https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/59pipx/apple_touch_bar_for_developers_will_look_like_this/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/59pipx/app...