13 ms·

I'm more excited about the possibility of a high quality desktop OS rather than the kernel. The Linux kernel is great but a great open-source desktop OS doesn't

I'm more excited about the possibility of a high quality desktop OS rather than the kernel. The Linux kernel is great but a great open-source desktop OS doesn't exist today. Specifically, this product doesn't exist today: - Desktop environment that matches or surpasses Mac OS in quality, performance and UX design. - It includes seamless synchronization between devices. - Apps are sandboxed, similarly to Android or iOS. - There is a clearly defined platform / SDK, like in Android or iOS. If it works in your development environment, it's guaranteed to work everywhere. - You can easily make a commercial product, like in Android or iOS. - It has 10% on the market (or software creators believe it's on the trajectory to get there). I don't understand why Google hasn't done this yet. Of course, the answer could be that such project just doesn't have the required ROI.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ForHackernews 6y ago
I really doubt Google has any interest in building a "great open-source desktop OS". Everything they've done with Android suggests they'll throw releases over the wall, but keep any interesting or useful bits proprietary & closely tied to Google cloud services.
- mav3rick 6y ago
  All of Chrome OS is open.
  - pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
    Can you point me to the source code for verified boot?
  - pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
    Can you point us to the source code for verified boot? How about auto-update?
    - milkey_mouse 6y ago
      https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/depthcharge/ https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/depthc... https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/courgette/ https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/courgette/
    - mav3rick 6y ago
      Each component uses it's own resources and logic to make up "verified boot". For e.g. there is dm-verity, for block level hashes and then there is key signing for images. Here is a talk on verified boot - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdpZC9jFzZA&feature=emb_logo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdpZC9jFzZA&feature=emb_logo https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/ https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/ All associated projects - "uboot", "update_engine" are there. Some are also in platform2/. Let me guess ? You"ll come up with some other snark to put down how this OS is open source.
      - pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
        You said Chrome OS was open. In another comment, I pointed out that only Chromium OS is open. I asked you for a link to the Chrome OS source code. You provided a link to Chromium OS source code. Thank you.
  - gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
    Android was a lot more open at first.
    - mav3rick 6y ago
      Chrome OS is not a nascent project !
      - gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
        It is in terms of user base and market share.
        mav3rick 6y ago
        Chrome is still open source. You clearly want to extrapolate for the sake of it.
hellcow 6y ago
You just described ChromeOS.
- RivieraKid 6y ago
  ChromeOS has some pretty serious limitations that make it DOA as a Mac OS / Windows / Linux alternative.
  - krn 6y ago
    I believe Linux (Beta) for ChromeOS[1] should eliminate most of these limitations. There is also Fedora Silverblue[2], which is an immutable desktop OS. [1] https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/9145439?hl=en https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/9145439?hl=en [2] https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-silverblue/ https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-silverblue/
    - RivieraKid 6y ago
      But that would basically make it an awkward Linux distribution that doesn't have much benefits over the existing ones. It seems like an afterthought, a second class citizen. Where's the documentation for Chrome OS SDK (for native apps)?
      - krn 6y ago
        > But that would basically make it an awkward Linux distribution that doesn't have much benefits over the existing ones. The main benefits of Chrome OS are immutability and zero-maintenance. If Chrome OS added a native support for flatpak[1], it would cover most of the desktop use cases without losing any of its benefits. [1] https://flatpak.org/ https://flatpak.org/
      - dfasdjlf 6y ago
        > Where's the documentation for Chrome OS SDK (for native apps)? https://developer.android.com/topic/arc https://developer.android.com/topic/arc
scythe 6y ago
>I don't understand why Google hasn't done this yet. If Google or some similar company were to make a desktop OS, it would probably be packed with so many monetization "features" that the free software community wouldn't be very interested and may even see it as a threat. Chrome OS already demonstrated most of this pattern. The elementary project has done some great work with their UI, but the limitations of a decentralized funding model mean that it just isn't as complete as the major OSes. Meanwhile the jousting between Red Hat and Canonical over control of the GNOME ecosystem alienates a lot of users. Meanwhile corporate control of Qt has limited KDE's popularity. In all three cases the organizational problems associated with developing a truly freedom-preserving OS in a profit-oriented world crop up in different ways. Google taking over doesn't sound like a solution to me. Some kind of alliance between free software developers and hardware manufacturers has long been dreamt about but hasn't materialized over the last two decades. All too often, Linux OEMs attach a half-baked homegrown distribution and their hardware tries to rely on it. We've also hoped that democratic countries will decide that a free and open-source operating system would be good for national security and fund development. In practice, interest has mostly come from Russia and China, with user freedom off the priority list. Google isn't a deity. They don't exist to serve humanity but rather their investors. The organization problem continues to be difficult.
jpab 6y ago
Do you mean Chrome OS? Google is a web company; they want people to use the web. They made a laptop/desktop operating system built around their web browser, because they want everything to be on the web. It does most of the things you list, including synchronizing between devices since your data is all "in the Cloud". As for market share, I'm not sure what power you think Google has, but getting 10% of the desktop OS market has got to be pretty difficult for anyone. I do not know what share of the market Chrome OS has.
- RivieraKid 6y ago
  No. I mean a full-fledged alternative to the major operating systems. Do people in charge of Chrome OS say "In 5 years, we want developers, designers and project managers at Google use this OS"? I don't think so - it's not their ambition to compete with Mac OS or Linux.
  - kgersen 6y ago
    why 5 years? They can already if they want to.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - mav3rick 6y ago
    Developers , PMs already use Chrome OS at Google. Designers can / will also happen.
    - RivieraKid 6y ago
      So Chrome OS team's explicit ambition is to provide a full-fledged alternative to Windows and Linux distributions?
      - mav3rick 6y ago
        I don't know what the ambition is. But it sure looks like it's a perfectly fine machine for developers and PMs.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
Hear hear. It seems to me that any such effort either has to be built on the Linux kernel (forgoing much of the horrid userland) or rely on a something like Fuchsia that's backed by a large corporate entity becoming so widely used as to have significant driver buy-in from hardware manufacturers. Unfortunately, I don't believe that relying on a for-profit third party entity like Google is a good idea due to the conflict of interest, even if their OS is FOSS. Just look at what Google has done throwing its weight around as the big-man in browsers, even though the browser engine is FOSS. Incidentally, this might be of interest to you: https://github.com/probonopd/hello https://github.com/probonopd/hello Not much there yet, but I believe Probonopd's intent is to gather a community of people like ourselves.
csomar 6y ago
A good functioning Desktop experience for Linux is impossible. - It requires a massive centralized investment. Microsoft/Apple/Google can do that. But Linux is run by amateurs (not talking about skills but rather guys who are not on a payroll). - Linux is for people who have rather weird setups. Apple uses limited hardware (ie: You have few Macbook Pros, etc...). Windows is supported by manufactures because it is the standard of Desktop computing for most of the world (and still can be a mess). Linux, on the other hand, has to do all that work alone. - Linux professional and profitable market is still in servers/deployment where you don't need a desktop space.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  And yet a good functioning desktop experience for Linux is possible. I haven't looked back once I switched to KDE on my work computer.
moron4hire 6y ago
You just described UWP apps on Windows 10. Developers flat out rejected it because of the smartphone-like sandboxing.
- monadic2 6y ago
  Can you elaborate? What is UWP and why did devs not like it? All the critique i see with a quick google comes from game devs.
  - vezycash 6y ago
    Developer push back first started with windows 8 with fears of lockdown. Valve's CEO was the most vocal because it looked like MS's end game would be to crush steam. Microsoft didn't help matters with the 99 dollars developer fee - not high per se but in an existing free for all operating, pushbacks would happen. Microsoft basically said to use this shiny new crippled toy, you must use our store and pay money. Microsoft also fanned the fire when they announced that only one metro browser was allowed. That is you could only use the metro browser of your default desktop browser. Others would be disabled For me as a user I hated/hate, UWP, metro and all it's incarnations because: UWP apps are slower than regular apps. In the early days they crashed a lot. They wasted desktop real estate with too much whitespace. Initially they were not resizable like normal windows application. Oh... The hidden settings menu sucked. Microsoft also consistently undermined the new format by limiting UWP to the latest operating system. Metro apps couldn't run on Windows 7. Most Universal apps made for Windows 10 won't work on Windows 8.1 and lower. Some wouldn't even work on some Windows 10 versions. For developers, having to maintain multiple versions written with different API's for "one operating system" is crazy. UWP apps are basically unusable without mouse or touch screen. Almost all the shortcuts we know and love don't work. This flat UI nonsense that makes it difficult for users to detect the active menu or even clickable items was started by Microsoft with windows 8. Google and Apple take the credit cos Microsoft failed with mobile.
    - LudwigNagasena 6y ago
      So it has little to nothing to do with sandboxing.
monadic2 6y ago
> Desktop environment that matches or surpasses Mac OS in quality, performance and UX design. Is there any evidence google can pull this off or wants to? I’d think they would want you in a browser.
- philistine 6y ago
  I’d think they’d want you looking at ads.
  - monadic2 6y ago
    No idea why you were downvoted, this clearly contributes to conversation.
StreamBright 6y ago
> I don't understand why Google hasn't done this yet What would be the financial incentive?
idoby 6y ago
If something works in your Android dev environment, it is absolutely not guaranteed to work everywhere, or work the same everywhere. Differences exist between vendors, and every between different models by the same vendor.
- smichel17 6y ago
  Yep. Anything to do with battery optimization, for one.
sly010 6y ago
> There is a clearly defined platform / SDK, like in Android or iOS. If it works in your development environment, it's guaranteed to work everywhere. Are iOS/Android SDKs good examples of stable platforms? They are just as much a moving target as anything else and the only thing certain about them is that they _will_ require maintenance.
- m4rtink 6y ago
  Not to mention SDK == not self hosting, which is IMHO rather bad.
- zerkten 6y ago
  I think the poster means consistent, rather than stable, or backwards compatible.
notyourday 6y ago
Has Google ever created any non-web product that it supported for more than a token amount of time, that it continued to re-iterate on for years that was not linked to Google properties?
- scythe 6y ago
  Golang would qualify, but it's not really a "product" from the perspective of most users.
- zingermc 6y ago
  Android, Maps, Chrome?
  - notyourday 6y ago
    Google support for Android is atrocious, I do not think this is really debatable is it? Even Google's own hardware ( Nexus ) does not newer versions. Maps is a web project. Chrome is a feeder for Google's web properties.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
heavyset_go 6y ago
> Desktop environment that matches or surpasses Mac OS in quality, performance and UX design. I've got Plasma setup to take advantage of a decade of Mac muscle memory, and think it does "macOS" better than macOS itself. > Apps are sandboxed, similarly to Android or iOS Install firejail, and its wrapper scripts. The wrapper will automatically wrap common commands and apps in a sandbox, and you can use the firejail CLI to launch apps that it doesn't wrap. I agree with your other points, however I lament that BSD-style licensing will prevent a lot of cool things from having their sources see the light of day or be upstreamed.
- amarshall 6y ago
  > I've got Plasma setup to take advantage of a decade of Mac muscle memory Care to elaborate or share? I’ve recently moved from macOS to Linux.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    Latte-dock with auto-hide for a dock, and custom KWin button arrangements to mimic macOS. A top panel with Window Title + Window Appmenu Plasmoids for a global menu. System Tray and Event Calendar Plasmoids on the same panel, the latter of which has a drop down calendar like in macOS. KRunner, or either the Search or Application Launcher Plasmoids to replace Spotlight. The Screen Edges setting can mimic macOS hot corners. Widgets on the desktop is a compromise for a Dashboard replacement, as is the Launchpad Plasma Plasmoid. Workspaces, Activities and various Screen Edges views can replace Mission Control. Dolphin can be configured to look like Finder, and you can set Finder keyboard shortcuts, too. There's a setting somewhere to make menus transparent and blurred, as well. Most of these are extensible or scriptable, and have actions that can be triggered with custom shortcuts. KRunner in particular is extensible. Plasma lets you change or set shortcuts for everything, so, for example, you can mimic the Mac screenshot shortcuts well, since KDE's Spectacle is comparable to the latest updates to screenshot functionality in macOS. Oh, and symlink 'xdg-open' to 'open', or create an alias.
padraic7a 6y ago
Sandboxing in Linux is developing with both Snaps and Flatpaks. Linux really does miss an SDK though. Realistically if you target Ubuntu you'll reach the majority of Linux users but the community of power users (ugh, hate that phrase but can't think of a better one) and developers is scattered any number of desktops and Linux varients.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  We build and package Ardour, a cross-platform DAW, as a single installable for every version of Linux except nixOS. Same installer, same package. Every version of Linux (except nixOS). I am not sure what you are talking about.
  - jack1243star 6y ago
    Not OP, but as a NixOS user I don't know how I should react.
  - rowanG077 6y ago
    LMAO I feel physically hurt as a NixOS user.
oh-4-fucks-sake 6y ago
I think the missing golden keystone w/in the "UX design" category is the physical touchpad quality and its driver. The mac touchpad that is so accurate, responsive/sensitive, jitter-free/steady, and effortless that I've yet to come across the like in Windows or *.nix land. I would more than love to be proved wrong in this thread!
- seandoe 6y ago
  I agree. I'm not sure why the mac touchpad is so far and away better than everything else. Touch screen and gestures are just as good on android phones as apple phones. Idk
  - elcritch 6y ago
    Laughed to myself "that maybe Linux laptops should just use a slimmed down android phone as a touchpad". But then thinking about it, maybe it'd actually work. Use it as a security enclave similar to touchbar on macbooks as well.
mattigames 6y ago
About the MacOs thing I couldn't disagree more, I'm forced to work with a Macbook at my current job and it's the dread of my existence, I even wrote an article about such pain points: https://ivanca.tumblr.com/post/615979862803562496/15-flaws-of-the-macbook-pro-and-macos https://ivanca.tumblr.com/post/615979862803562496/15-flaws-o...
- bwat49 6y ago
  I agree with most of your points, but I actually much prefer OSX's app/icon based alt tab to windows style window/thumbnail based alt tab
joshmarinacci 6y ago
Question. Would you pay a monthly fee to use such an OS? If so then there might be ROI to it.
sudosysgen 6y ago
KDE does most of what you're talking about. Qt is a stable, established SDK, KDE Connect offers seamless integration, Plasma has a very good UX, and so on. Only thing missing is market share and a flagship distro.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
  More over, plasma is for smartphone is getting better. So using same environment on desktop and on mobile with private sync can soon be a reality.
bsd44 6y ago
Hold on, you want all this...for free? People really haven't learned anything.
dTal 6y ago
I don't know if you've tried Plasma but it's an excellent DE that hits your "seamless synchronization" and "better UX than MacOS" requirements. Sandboxed apps are a no-go on a productive desktop. Have you tried using Snaps? They're sandboxed by default, and it's extremely annoying having barriers in the way sharing data between them. Sandboxing is the sworn enemy of composition. It's like keeping all the interior doors of your house locked. Clearly defined platform / guaranteed to work: Linux-the-kernel provides a binary-compatible ABI. This is entirely sufficient, if you bundle everything including libc. If you don't want to do that, well glibc is backwards-compatible so you can just build against some reasonably old version of glibc and it'll work on any recent distro. This isn't some obscure method - lots of software is binary-distributed this way (Firefox, Blender). Easily make a commercial product: well, I'm currently using Pointwise and Mathematica on Linux, so it doesn't appear to be that hard.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ForHackernews 6y ago

I really doubt Google has any interest in building a "great open-source desktop OS". Everything they've done with Android suggests they'll throw releases over the wall, but keep any interesting or useful bits proprietary & closely tied to Google cloud services.

mav3rick 6y ago
All of Chrome OS is open.
- pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
  Can you point me to the source code for verified boot?
- pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
  Can you point us to the source code for verified boot? How about auto-update?
  - milkey_mouse 6y ago
    https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/depthcharge/ https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/depthc... https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/courgette/ https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/courgette/
  - mav3rick 6y ago
    Each component uses it's own resources and logic to make up "verified boot". For e.g. there is dm-verity, for block level hashes and then there is key signing for images. Here is a talk on verified boot - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdpZC9jFzZA&feature=emb_logo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdpZC9jFzZA&feature=emb_logo https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/ https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/ All associated projects - "uboot", "update_engine" are there. Some are also in platform2/. Let me guess ? You"ll come up with some other snark to put down how this OS is open source.
    - pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
      You said Chrome OS was open. In another comment, I pointed out that only Chromium OS is open. I asked you for a link to the Chrome OS source code. You provided a link to Chromium OS source code. Thank you.
- gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
  Android was a lot more open at first.
  - mav3rick 6y ago
    Chrome OS is not a nascent project !
    - gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
      It is in terms of user base and market share.
      - mav3rick 6y ago
        Chrome is still open source. You clearly want to extrapolate for the sake of it.

hellcow 6y ago

You just described ChromeOS.

RivieraKid 6y ago
ChromeOS has some pretty serious limitations that make it DOA as a Mac OS / Windows / Linux alternative.
- krn 6y ago
  I believe Linux (Beta) for ChromeOS[1] should eliminate most of these limitations. There is also Fedora Silverblue[2], which is an immutable desktop OS. [1] https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/9145439?hl=en https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/9145439?hl=en [2] https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-silverblue/ https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-silverblue/
  - RivieraKid 6y ago
    But that would basically make it an awkward Linux distribution that doesn't have much benefits over the existing ones. It seems like an afterthought, a second class citizen. Where's the documentation for Chrome OS SDK (for native apps)?
    - krn 6y ago
      > But that would basically make it an awkward Linux distribution that doesn't have much benefits over the existing ones. The main benefits of Chrome OS are immutability and zero-maintenance. If Chrome OS added a native support for flatpak[1], it would cover most of the desktop use cases without losing any of its benefits. [1] https://flatpak.org/ https://flatpak.org/
    - dfasdjlf 6y ago
      > Where's the documentation for Chrome OS SDK (for native apps)? https://developer.android.com/topic/arc https://developer.android.com/topic/arc

scythe 6y ago

>I don't understand why Google hasn't done this yet. If Google or some similar company were to make a desktop OS, it would probably be packed with so many monetization "features" that the free software community wouldn't be very interested and may even see it as a threat. Chrome OS already demonstrated most of this pattern. The elementary project has done some great work with their UI, but the limitations of a decentralized funding model mean that it just isn't as complete as the major OSes. Meanwhile the jousting between Red Hat and Canonical over control of the GNOME ecosystem alienates a lot of users. Meanwhile corporate control of Qt has limited KDE's popularity. In all three cases the organizational problems associated with developing a truly freedom-preserving OS in a profit-oriented world crop up in different ways. Google taking over doesn't sound like a solution to me. Some kind of alliance between free software developers and hardware manufacturers has long been dreamt about but hasn't materialized over the last two decades. All too often, Linux OEMs attach a half-baked homegrown distribution and their hardware tries to rely on it. We've also hoped that democratic countries will decide that a free and open-source operating system would be good for national security and fund development. In practice, interest has mostly come from Russia and China, with user freedom off the priority list. Google isn't a deity. They don't exist to serve humanity but rather their investors. The organization problem continues to be difficult.

jpab 6y ago

Do you mean Chrome OS? Google is a web company; they want people to use the web. They made a laptop/desktop operating system built around their web browser, because they want everything to be on the web. It does most of the things you list, including synchronizing between devices since your data is all "in the Cloud". As for market share, I'm not sure what power you think Google has, but getting 10% of the desktop OS market has got to be pretty difficult for anyone. I do not know what share of the market Chrome OS has.

RivieraKid 6y ago
No. I mean a full-fledged alternative to the major operating systems. Do people in charge of Chrome OS say "In 5 years, we want developers, designers and project managers at Google use this OS"? I don't think so - it's not their ambition to compete with Mac OS or Linux.
- kgersen 6y ago
  why 5 years? They can already if they want to.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- mav3rick 6y ago
  Developers , PMs already use Chrome OS at Google. Designers can / will also happen.
  - RivieraKid 6y ago
    So Chrome OS team's explicit ambition is to provide a full-fledged alternative to Windows and Linux distributions?
    - mav3rick 6y ago
      I don't know what the ambition is. But it sure looks like it's a perfectly fine machine for developers and PMs.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago

Hear hear. It seems to me that any such effort either has to be built on the Linux kernel (forgoing much of the horrid userland) or rely on a something like Fuchsia that's backed by a large corporate entity becoming so widely used as to have significant driver buy-in from hardware manufacturers. Unfortunately, I don't believe that relying on a for-profit third party entity like Google is a good idea due to the conflict of interest, even if their OS is FOSS. Just look at what Google has done throwing its weight around as the big-man in browsers, even though the browser engine is FOSS. Incidentally, this might be of interest to you: https://github.com/probonopd/hello https://github.com/probonopd/hello Not much there yet, but I believe Probonopd's intent is to gather a community of people like ourselves.

csomar 6y ago

A good functioning Desktop experience for Linux is impossible. - It requires a massive centralized investment. Microsoft/Apple/Google can do that. But Linux is run by amateurs (not talking about skills but rather guys who are not on a payroll). - Linux is for people who have rather weird setups. Apple uses limited hardware (ie: You have few Macbook Pros, etc...). Windows is supported by manufactures because it is the standard of Desktop computing for most of the world (and still can be a mess). Linux, on the other hand, has to do all that work alone. - Linux professional and profitable market is still in servers/deployment where you don't need a desktop space.

sudosysgen 6y ago
And yet a good functioning desktop experience for Linux is possible. I haven't looked back once I switched to KDE on my work computer.

moron4hire 6y ago

You just described UWP apps on Windows 10. Developers flat out rejected it because of the smartphone-like sandboxing.

monadic2 6y ago
Can you elaborate? What is UWP and why did devs not like it? All the critique i see with a quick google comes from game devs.
- vezycash 6y ago
  Developer push back first started with windows 8 with fears of lockdown. Valve's CEO was the most vocal because it looked like MS's end game would be to crush steam. Microsoft didn't help matters with the 99 dollars developer fee - not high per se but in an existing free for all operating, pushbacks would happen. Microsoft basically said to use this shiny new crippled toy, you must use our store and pay money. Microsoft also fanned the fire when they announced that only one metro browser was allowed. That is you could only use the metro browser of your default desktop browser. Others would be disabled For me as a user I hated/hate, UWP, metro and all it's incarnations because: UWP apps are slower than regular apps. In the early days they crashed a lot. They wasted desktop real estate with too much whitespace. Initially they were not resizable like normal windows application. Oh... The hidden settings menu sucked. Microsoft also consistently undermined the new format by limiting UWP to the latest operating system. Metro apps couldn't run on Windows 7. Most Universal apps made for Windows 10 won't work on Windows 8.1 and lower. Some wouldn't even work on some Windows 10 versions. For developers, having to maintain multiple versions written with different API's for "one operating system" is crazy. UWP apps are basically unusable without mouse or touch screen. Almost all the shortcuts we know and love don't work. This flat UI nonsense that makes it difficult for users to detect the active menu or even clickable items was started by Microsoft with windows 8. Google and Apple take the credit cos Microsoft failed with mobile.
  - LudwigNagasena 6y ago
    So it has little to nothing to do with sandboxing.

monadic2 6y ago

> Desktop environment that matches or surpasses Mac OS in quality, performance and UX design. Is there any evidence google can pull this off or wants to? I’d think they would want you in a browser.

philistine 6y ago
I’d think they’d want you looking at ads.
- monadic2 6y ago
  No idea why you were downvoted, this clearly contributes to conversation.

StreamBright 6y ago

> I don't understand why Google hasn't done this yet What would be the financial incentive?

idoby 6y ago

If something works in your Android dev environment, it is absolutely not guaranteed to work everywhere, or work the same everywhere. Differences exist between vendors, and every between different models by the same vendor.

smichel17 6y ago
Yep. Anything to do with battery optimization, for one.

sly010 6y ago

> There is a clearly defined platform / SDK, like in Android or iOS. If it works in your development environment, it's guaranteed to work everywhere. Are iOS/Android SDKs good examples of stable platforms? They are just as much a moving target as anything else and the only thing certain about them is that they _will_ require maintenance.

m4rtink 6y ago
Not to mention SDK == not self hosting, which is IMHO rather bad.
zerkten 6y ago
I think the poster means consistent, rather than stable, or backwards compatible.

notyourday 6y ago

Has Google ever created any non-web product that it supported for more than a token amount of time, that it continued to re-iterate on for years that was not linked to Google properties?

scythe 6y ago
Golang would qualify, but it's not really a "product" from the perspective of most users.
zingermc 6y ago
Android, Maps, Chrome?
- notyourday 6y ago
  Google support for Android is atrocious, I do not think this is really debatable is it? Even Google's own hardware ( Nexus ) does not newer versions. Maps is a web project. Chrome is a feeder for Google's web properties.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

heavyset_go 6y ago

> Desktop environment that matches or surpasses Mac OS in quality, performance and UX design. I've got Plasma setup to take advantage of a decade of Mac muscle memory, and think it does "macOS" better than macOS itself. > Apps are sandboxed, similarly to Android or iOS Install firejail, and its wrapper scripts. The wrapper will automatically wrap common commands and apps in a sandbox, and you can use the firejail CLI to launch apps that it doesn't wrap. I agree with your other points, however I lament that BSD-style licensing will prevent a lot of cool things from having their sources see the light of day or be upstreamed.

amarshall 6y ago
> I've got Plasma setup to take advantage of a decade of Mac muscle memory Care to elaborate or share? I’ve recently moved from macOS to Linux.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  Latte-dock with auto-hide for a dock, and custom KWin button arrangements to mimic macOS. A top panel with Window Title + Window Appmenu Plasmoids for a global menu. System Tray and Event Calendar Plasmoids on the same panel, the latter of which has a drop down calendar like in macOS. KRunner, or either the Search or Application Launcher Plasmoids to replace Spotlight. The Screen Edges setting can mimic macOS hot corners. Widgets on the desktop is a compromise for a Dashboard replacement, as is the Launchpad Plasma Plasmoid. Workspaces, Activities and various Screen Edges views can replace Mission Control. Dolphin can be configured to look like Finder, and you can set Finder keyboard shortcuts, too. There's a setting somewhere to make menus transparent and blurred, as well. Most of these are extensible or scriptable, and have actions that can be triggered with custom shortcuts. KRunner in particular is extensible. Plasma lets you change or set shortcuts for everything, so, for example, you can mimic the Mac screenshot shortcuts well, since KDE's Spectacle is comparable to the latest updates to screenshot functionality in macOS. Oh, and symlink 'xdg-open' to 'open', or create an alias.

padraic7a 6y ago

Sandboxing in Linux is developing with both Snaps and Flatpaks. Linux really does miss an SDK though. Realistically if you target Ubuntu you'll reach the majority of Linux users but the community of power users (ugh, hate that phrase but can't think of a better one) and developers is scattered any number of desktops and Linux varients.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
We build and package Ardour, a cross-platform DAW, as a single installable for every version of Linux except nixOS. Same installer, same package. Every version of Linux (except nixOS). I am not sure what you are talking about.
- jack1243star 6y ago
  Not OP, but as a NixOS user I don't know how I should react.
- rowanG077 6y ago
  LMAO I feel physically hurt as a NixOS user.

oh-4-fucks-sake 6y ago

I think the missing golden keystone w/in the "UX design" category is the physical touchpad quality and its driver. The mac touchpad that is so accurate, responsive/sensitive, jitter-free/steady, and effortless that I've yet to come across the like in Windows or *.nix land. I would more than love to be proved wrong in this thread!

seandoe 6y ago
I agree. I'm not sure why the mac touchpad is so far and away better than everything else. Touch screen and gestures are just as good on android phones as apple phones. Idk
- elcritch 6y ago
  Laughed to myself "that maybe Linux laptops should just use a slimmed down android phone as a touchpad". But then thinking about it, maybe it'd actually work. Use it as a security enclave similar to touchbar on macbooks as well.

mattigames 6y ago

About the MacOs thing I couldn't disagree more, I'm forced to work with a Macbook at my current job and it's the dread of my existence, I even wrote an article about such pain points: https://ivanca.tumblr.com/post/615979862803562496/15-flaws-of-the-macbook-pro-and-macos https://ivanca.tumblr.com/post/615979862803562496/15-flaws-o...

bwat49 6y ago
I agree with most of your points, but I actually much prefer OSX's app/icon based alt tab to windows style window/thumbnail based alt tab

joshmarinacci 6y ago

Question. Would you pay a monthly fee to use such an OS? If so then there might be ROI to it.

sudosysgen 6y ago

KDE does most of what you're talking about. Qt is a stable, established SDK, KDE Connect offers seamless integration, Plasma has a very good UX, and so on. Only thing missing is market share and a flagship distro.

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
More over, plasma is for smartphone is getting better. So using same environment on desktop and on mobile with private sync can soon be a reality.

bsd44 6y ago

Hold on, you want all this...for free? People really haven't learned anything.

dTal 6y ago

I don't know if you've tried Plasma but it's an excellent DE that hits your "seamless synchronization" and "better UX than MacOS" requirements. Sandboxed apps are a no-go on a productive desktop. Have you tried using Snaps? They're sandboxed by default, and it's extremely annoying having barriers in the way sharing data between them. Sandboxing is the sworn enemy of composition. It's like keeping all the interior doors of your house locked. Clearly defined platform / guaranteed to work: Linux-the-kernel provides a binary-compatible ABI. This is entirely sufficient, if you bundle everything including libc. If you don't want to do that, well glibc is backwards-compatible so you can just build against some reasonably old version of glibc and it'll work on any recent distro. This isn't some obscure method - lots of software is binary-distributed this way (Firefox, Blender). Easily make a commercial product: well, I'm currently using Pointwise and Mathematica on Linux, so it doesn't appear to be that hard.