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> This post is a bit too ranty for its own good, but it has a valid point, and one that is unfortunately common in the open source community: because you have n

> This post is a bit too ranty for its own good, but it has a valid point, and one that is unfortunately common in the open source community: because you have no monetary obligation to your "customers" (=users), there's not really a lot that forces you to maintain backwards compatibility. And yet, distros like Ubuntu are too conservative, because they are too careful not to break something. Their signalling is then considered as it works, we don't have to fix anything, Ubuntu will keep things broken for us. Due to this attitude, they have slowed down Linux desktop by years, by not switching to Wayland by default in the past LTS release. Compare with Apple: in the same timeframe they've deprecated and removed support for entire architecture (i386) while Ubuntu just thinks about doing one step. Apple breaks compatibility at much faster rate than Linux world, and everyone is fine with it. The difference is in signaling: Apple decides and does. In Linux world, we have articles like these, that try to slow down everyone.

72deluxe 6y ago
I don't know if everyone is fine with Apple making so many changes. I think it's because they have no choice, being stuck with whatever Apple decides. eg. for years you couldn't resize a window from the left edge and everybody was "fine" with it. When they actually bothered to implement it, it was astounding to think you couldn't do it before! As for me, I await each Apple release with trepidation and fear. Will my audio hardware continue to work? (They break the utilities most releases). Will I need to buy a new version of Parallels or VMWare because Apple changed the virtualisation API? (This happened a few years ago). Will my apps no longer work? (Goodbye useful 32 bit apps that I can't find a 64 bit version of). Will they just break random things? eg. PDF viewing, Quickview of multiple files (both of these happened to me). Will they change random things for the sake of it? eg. Giant spacing between icons on the menubar on Big Sur. Behaviour of the maximise button into "full screen" button just because they could (a few releases ago). Will my machine be slower for no apparent reason? HFS+ to APFS makes my machine start up TWICE AS SLOW. The best bits are due to the Objective-C message passing, old apps will make a "call" to a function that no longer exists and it won't break - it'll just do nothing. You literally have no idea if your app will continue to work between releases, even if it runs and the certificate for the app hasn't expired... And I say this as a daily user of macos! It just isn't reliable between releases.
- vetinari 6y ago
  My point is exactly as yours; it was addressing comments as the GP one, where the FOSS community is being shown as the one constantly breaking compatibility, while commercial vendors are being shown as example worth to follow. My example intended to show exact opposite -- I'm also Mac user (Windows user and Linux user too), and while I understand the rationale for some steps (i.e. deprecating i386 was in order to not overly complicate Rosetta2), it doesn't mean it won't hurt the users anyway.
- hodgesrm 6y ago
  I abandoned Mac OSX for Win 10 (manager half of brain) and Linux (dev half of brain) years ago. It got really tiresome rebuilding my dev environments in particular with every new release. Butterfly keyboard, touch bar, and other hardware choices were additional hindrances. Infuriating design choices like doing away with 'Save As' were the last straw. I don't really care about UI improvements, to be honest. OSX Leopard was usable for everything I do in normal life.
  - 72deluxe 6y ago
    I forgot the "Save As" removal! I type this on a Macbook with an irritating noisy butterfly keyboard where the left shift key works 40% of the time and I get duplicate "i" inputs periodically, with a touchbar that has a fault so the F12 region is constantly flashing in my face... I remember Snow Leopard being a deep joy to use.
simion314 6y ago
>And yet, distros like Ubuntu are too conservative, because they are too careful not to break something. Their signalling is then considered as it works, we don't have to fix anything, Ubuntu will keep things broken for us. Due to this attitude, they have slowed down Linux desktop by years, by not switching to Wayland by default in the past LTS release. How can you complain about Ubuntu LTS keeping Xorg as default in an LTS when RedHat itself had Xorg as default at that time. Isn't this hypocrisy or irony? (same thing of idiots complaining about upstart being shit while RedHat and Goole were still using and supporting it. IMO let RH use Wayland as default for a few years , then hopefully they can't ignore user bugs and fix them.
- vetinari 6y ago
  > How can you complain about Ubuntu LTS keeping Xorg as default in an LTS when RedHat itself had Xorg as default at that time. Isn't this hypocrisy or irony? RHEL8 uses Wayland as default. RHEL8 was released in May 2019. Ubuntu LTS was released in April 2020. What hypocrisy you are talking about? > (same thing of idiots complaining about upstart being shit while RedHat and Goole were still using and supporting it. Redhat uses systemd since RHEL7; Upstart was used in RHEL6. Story time: Redhat management didn't see the point of systemd originally; Poettering did it in his spare time, and Redhat management has seen the point only after Fedora and Arch adopted it. Meanwhile, RHEL6 was already deep into its release cycle.
  - simion314 6y ago
    So did you check the show stopper bugs that Ubuntu found? or they should ignore the bugs to please RH and it's fanbase ? Maybe the next LTS could profit by the fact that RH recently was forced to fix the bugs in Wayland (though not sure how many paying customers started using it yet and submit tickets for the devs to fix)
    - vetinari 6y ago
      Show stopper for Ubuntu was screen capture. So screen capture works today, and if they switched, if would be difficult only for the first few weeks, when Ubuntu is buggy anyway. But they didn't and the long-term consequences of delaying it will be felt across all linux distributions for years to come. So much for appeasing RH and it's fanbase.
alpaca128 6y ago
> Apple breaks compatibility at much faster rate than Linux world, and everyone is fine with it. That's news to me. I have yet to read or hear the sentence "removal of magsafe was a great idea", or "I love carrying around this bag of $50 USB-C adapters". Or "this touchbar sure is a gamechanger, who needs the F-row on a Pro device anyway". > Apple decides and does. And Linux decides not to break everything just because they got a new favorite technology. I am not sure why you complain so much about Ubuntu when you can just use another distro that does things differently. Because unlike with Apple, you actually can choose, and without buying new hardware. Which is also the reason I'm not that invested in the whole Xorg vs. Wayland debate; I am certain one distro or another will still support Xorg for a long time, and who knows, maybe one day Wayland is actually mature enough for me to use out of the box.
- vetinari 6y ago
  > That's news to me. I have yet to read or hear the sentence "removal of magsafe was a great idea", or "I love carrying around this bag of $50 USB-C adapters". Or "this touchbar sure is a gamechanger, who needs the F-row on a Pro device anyway". I'm not talking about hardware. I'm talking about software. How they changed the network filtering several times in last 5 years. How they deprecated and removed i386 support during the same timeframe that Ubuntu only considers switching to Wayland. Heck, my ~2015 Samsung MFP in office doesn't scan with MacOS anymore, apparently the latest driver from September 2020 is too old now. And bazillion other examples, see them in sibling thread. > I am not sure why you complain so much about Ubuntu when you can just use another distro that does things differently. I do use another distro that does things differently. To problem with Ubuntu is, that application developers do target Ubuntu, not those another distros. So when Ubuntu doesn't need Wayland (or Pipewire, or whatever), they won't allocate manpower for Wayland (or Pipewire, or whatever) support. Then we get stuff like "Wayland is still broken after 10 years". > I'am certain one distro or another will still support Xorg for a long time, That's certainly fine > and who knows, maybe one day Wayland is actually mature enough for me to use out of the box. In order to mature, it has to be used by critically-sized amount of users. If you just push it aside, it will stay aside. It is not just Wayland's problem, for another example see ARM support under Windows.

72deluxe 6y ago

I don't know if everyone is fine with Apple making so many changes. I think it's because they have no choice, being stuck with whatever Apple decides. eg. for years you couldn't resize a window from the left edge and everybody was "fine" with it. When they actually bothered to implement it, it was astounding to think you couldn't do it before! As for me, I await each Apple release with trepidation and fear. Will my audio hardware continue to work? (They break the utilities most releases). Will I need to buy a new version of Parallels or VMWare because Apple changed the virtualisation API? (This happened a few years ago). Will my apps no longer work? (Goodbye useful 32 bit apps that I can't find a 64 bit version of). Will they just break random things? eg. PDF viewing, Quickview of multiple files (both of these happened to me). Will they change random things for the sake of it? eg. Giant spacing between icons on the menubar on Big Sur. Behaviour of the maximise button into "full screen" button just because they could (a few releases ago). Will my machine be slower for no apparent reason? HFS+ to APFS makes my machine start up TWICE AS SLOW. The best bits are due to the Objective-C message passing, old apps will make a "call" to a function that no longer exists and it won't break - it'll just do nothing. You literally have no idea if your app will continue to work between releases, even if it runs and the certificate for the app hasn't expired... And I say this as a daily user of macos! It just isn't reliable between releases.

vetinari 6y ago
My point is exactly as yours; it was addressing comments as the GP one, where the FOSS community is being shown as the one constantly breaking compatibility, while commercial vendors are being shown as example worth to follow. My example intended to show exact opposite -- I'm also Mac user (Windows user and Linux user too), and while I understand the rationale for some steps (i.e. deprecating i386 was in order to not overly complicate Rosetta2), it doesn't mean it won't hurt the users anyway.
hodgesrm 6y ago
I abandoned Mac OSX for Win 10 (manager half of brain) and Linux (dev half of brain) years ago. It got really tiresome rebuilding my dev environments in particular with every new release. Butterfly keyboard, touch bar, and other hardware choices were additional hindrances. Infuriating design choices like doing away with 'Save As' were the last straw. I don't really care about UI improvements, to be honest. OSX Leopard was usable for everything I do in normal life.
- 72deluxe 6y ago
  I forgot the "Save As" removal! I type this on a Macbook with an irritating noisy butterfly keyboard where the left shift key works 40% of the time and I get duplicate "i" inputs periodically, with a touchbar that has a fault so the F12 region is constantly flashing in my face... I remember Snow Leopard being a deep joy to use.

simion314 6y ago

>And yet, distros like Ubuntu are too conservative, because they are too careful not to break something. Their signalling is then considered as it works, we don't have to fix anything, Ubuntu will keep things broken for us. Due to this attitude, they have slowed down Linux desktop by years, by not switching to Wayland by default in the past LTS release. How can you complain about Ubuntu LTS keeping Xorg as default in an LTS when RedHat itself had Xorg as default at that time. Isn't this hypocrisy or irony? (same thing of idiots complaining about upstart being shit while RedHat and Goole were still using and supporting it. IMO let RH use Wayland as default for a few years , then hopefully they can't ignore user bugs and fix them.

vetinari 6y ago
> How can you complain about Ubuntu LTS keeping Xorg as default in an LTS when RedHat itself had Xorg as default at that time. Isn't this hypocrisy or irony? RHEL8 uses Wayland as default. RHEL8 was released in May 2019. Ubuntu LTS was released in April 2020. What hypocrisy you are talking about? > (same thing of idiots complaining about upstart being shit while RedHat and Goole were still using and supporting it. Redhat uses systemd since RHEL7; Upstart was used in RHEL6. Story time: Redhat management didn't see the point of systemd originally; Poettering did it in his spare time, and Redhat management has seen the point only after Fedora and Arch adopted it. Meanwhile, RHEL6 was already deep into its release cycle.
- simion314 6y ago
  So did you check the show stopper bugs that Ubuntu found? or they should ignore the bugs to please RH and it's fanbase ? Maybe the next LTS could profit by the fact that RH recently was forced to fix the bugs in Wayland (though not sure how many paying customers started using it yet and submit tickets for the devs to fix)
  - vetinari 6y ago
    Show stopper for Ubuntu was screen capture. So screen capture works today, and if they switched, if would be difficult only for the first few weeks, when Ubuntu is buggy anyway. But they didn't and the long-term consequences of delaying it will be felt across all linux distributions for years to come. So much for appeasing RH and it's fanbase.

alpaca128 6y ago

> Apple breaks compatibility at much faster rate than Linux world, and everyone is fine with it. That's news to me. I have yet to read or hear the sentence "removal of magsafe was a great idea", or "I love carrying around this bag of $50 USB-C adapters". Or "this touchbar sure is a gamechanger, who needs the F-row on a Pro device anyway". > Apple decides and does. And Linux decides not to break everything just because they got a new favorite technology. I am not sure why you complain so much about Ubuntu when you can just use another distro that does things differently. Because unlike with Apple, you actually can choose, and without buying new hardware. Which is also the reason I'm not that invested in the whole Xorg vs. Wayland debate; I am certain one distro or another will still support Xorg for a long time, and who knows, maybe one day Wayland is actually mature enough for me to use out of the box.

vetinari 6y ago
> That's news to me. I have yet to read or hear the sentence "removal of magsafe was a great idea", or "I love carrying around this bag of $50 USB-C adapters". Or "this touchbar sure is a gamechanger, who needs the F-row on a Pro device anyway". I'm not talking about hardware. I'm talking about software. How they changed the network filtering several times in last 5 years. How they deprecated and removed i386 support during the same timeframe that Ubuntu only considers switching to Wayland. Heck, my ~2015 Samsung MFP in office doesn't scan with MacOS anymore, apparently the latest driver from September 2020 is too old now. And bazillion other examples, see them in sibling thread. > I am not sure why you complain so much about Ubuntu when you can just use another distro that does things differently. I do use another distro that does things differently. To problem with Ubuntu is, that application developers do target Ubuntu, not those another distros. So when Ubuntu doesn't need Wayland (or Pipewire, or whatever), they won't allocate manpower for Wayland (or Pipewire, or whatever) support. Then we get stuff like "Wayland is still broken after 10 years". > I'am certain one distro or another will still support Xorg for a long time, That's certainly fine > and who knows, maybe one day Wayland is actually mature enough for me to use out of the box. In order to mature, it has to be used by critically-sized amount of users. If you just push it aside, it will stay aside. It is not just Wayland's problem, for another example see ARM support under Windows.