8 ms·

> The bottom line is that this 'experience' isn't about you, its about who you can be sold to To be honest, I didn't jump from Windows to Linux because of this

by derleth 14y ago

> The bottom line is that this 'experience' isn't about you, its about who you can be sold to To be honest, I didn't jump from Windows to Linux because of this. I jumped because Windows ME was just that bad. However, this makes me increasingly happy I jumped with each new version of both Windows and MacOS. > Time to start a 'developers' company that works very much on the same model that Sun Microsystems started on, hardware designed from the ground up to be developed on, open systems so that folks can easily work with it, and a team dedicated to making sure integration and support is there so that folks like you and I can say "Hey this audio doesn't work when you set the sampling rate to 40Khz" and they can fix it and release that fix. Bits and pieces of this are already here. We need a Wozniak to find the best way to put them together and create the new pieces we need. Too bad that of The Two Steves, Jobs gets the accolades and Wozniak gets ignored.

w1ntermute 14y ago
> To be honest, I didn't jump from Windows to Linux because of this. I jumped because Windows ME was just that bad. However, this makes me increasingly happy I jumped with each new version of both Windows and MacOS. Yup, every time I use someone else's computer I'm astounded by the sorts of things they put up with. A simple example - after years of using AdBlock and FlashBlock, I simply don't have any tolerance for ads on the web. I don't have the ability to ignore them.
egypturnash 14y ago
IMHO you also need a Jobs who wanders around (a) selling the thing to normal humans and (b) being a relentless advocate for the user experience, with the power to delay releases if something is broken.
- derleth 14y ago
  > being a relentless advocate for the user experience The dark side of this is why I hate MacOS: There are things in MacOS I consider broken that I cannot fix, because Apple is dedicated to One Apple Way. Great for the Mac Fan, lousy for someone who has their own workflow. Apple only has room for one Jobs, one person to dictate how the experience is. Anyone else has to bow to Jobs or GTFO. The solution is good defaults with configurability maintained as a first-class citizen. Ubuntu has this, mostly to the extent it keeps non-Unity window managers and desktop environments in the Ubuntu package repos. I can still use all of the Ubuntu stuff except the tiny amount that really does depend on Unity, which wouldn't make sense with my workflow anyway.
  - MiguelHudnandez 14y ago
    > ... lousy for someone who has their own workflow. "You're holding it wrong," indeed. Your comment makes me want to try Ubuntu again on my MacBook. What I liked about it last time was that everything worked--just like on OS X. I guess the hardware premium and hardware monoculture are helpful even in the open source community.
    - derleth 14y ago
      > the hardware premium and hardware monoculture ... the culture of hardware developers that isn't focused on 'It works on Windows', the culture of driver developers that aren't (apparently) seen as loss-centers by the hardware makers, and a number of other things that slip my mind, I'm sure. The only thing better is something like Stallman's current laptop, which was built ground-up to be Free and Open. Given Stallman's track record with 'crazy' predictions like 'The Right To Read', I fully expect to eventually end up on something like that as my primary machine.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
The pieces are all there already, but you can't pull it off with dis-associated independent groups. Canonical comes close, as does Redhat, either could do this is they started making their own hardware, or contracting out a HW 'spec.' But you need a 'real' company to say to someone like an Atheros that you'll design in their wireless chip only if they will commit to driver support for it on your OS. That sort of thing doesn't happen between a company and an 'interested third party' sadly. The other thing folks will have to come to realize that you won't be able to combine your "TV" and your "computer" much longer. The demands of content producers are reaching a point that 'general purpose computing' on devices that can show their content are made increasingly more difficult and eventually they won't legally exist. Secure boot, HDCP, all of these things are manifestations of externally exerted control over the platform. The good news is that computers will go back to being computers. It is going to feel a bit weird for a while though.
GuiA 14y ago
>Too bad that of The Two Steves, Jobs gets the accolades and Wozniak gets ignored. Oh please, not this again. But OK, I'll bite: Wozniak was given plenty of recognition for his work at Apple. But he quit in 87, which was 25 years ago. What has he done since? Not that much, really. Steve Jobs, on the other hand, has brought tremendous contributions to a number of industries. In the light of this, it makes complete sense that Steve Jobs is a household name, whereas Wozniak isn't (but Wozniak is definitely a "hacker household name", which is what he deserves to be).
- mikeash 14y ago
  It's even worse than that, as Woz effectively left Apple after his plane crash in 1981. He continued to officially be an employee, but didn't contribute a whole lot after that point. Quitting in 1987 was more of a formality than anything. The last Apple computer Woz had a direct hand in designing was either the Apple II or the II+ (I can't quite figure out which), over three decades ago. Woz was a genius when it came to minimal and effective designs and it's certain that he played a key role in getting Apple off the ground, but he has had no real impact on the company or anything the company does for nearly as long as I've been alive. Woz helped build Apple into a successful company, but the scale isn't even remotely the same. The Apple that Jobs subsequently built decades later now sells more hardware in a month (or so) than Woz's Apple sold during his entire tenure.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    I'm sure Woz continued to be an influence on Jobs for quite some time though. I guess if you have seen somebody build one of the worlds first affordable computers out of some bits in garage it probably seems like anything is possible when you have a few billion $.
  - mturmon 14y ago
    Thanks to both you and the parent for thoughtfully laying out the history. Saying the "two Steves" as if they are parallel doesn't make sense.
    - 14y ago
keithpeter 14y ago
"Now that Norton was gone, I personally happen to like Comodo firewall. So I go to download it, but the installer nicely tells me that this doesn't work on Windows 8, and I need to download another file instead. However, this is their pro product, which basically means it's filled with crap. It's a good thing I noticed the tiny Customize Installer button because otherwise it would have: Changed my home page, subscribed me to something called GeekBuddy, enrolled me to their cloud program, change my DNS servers, and sent information about each scan it does to the company. The same was true with many of the applications I installed, like Adobe Reader trying to install McAfee, or QuickTime trying to sign me up for offers." I hope Mark Shuttleworth might read and understand this paragraph before he continues to reduce the trust of Ubuntu users. The crucial difference between users of Windows/Apple on the one hand and GNU/Linux on the other is that Linux users have choices at the distribution level. A secondary advantage for GNU/Linux users is that once a distribution has been chosen, application software is packaged centrally with some degree of oversight so this kind of bait and switch by software vendors becomes harder. The Ubuntunaughts at Canonical seem to be heading in the direction of selecting hardware which they can ensure will 'just work'.
- jeremyjh 14y ago
  Its hard for Shuttleworth because he has burned millions and millions on Canonical and it is now clear that the company is going to fail. People simply will not pay for linux desktop support and there really is no other model. So all this crap they are doing, it is their death throes and they should be pitied and not mocked.
  - keithpeter 14y ago
    "People simply will not pay for linux desktop support and there really is no other model" RHEL need no competitors at all then?
    - jeremyjh 14y ago
      RHEL is a server product, I guess I don't follow your comment. Do they even sell desktop support? If you are suggesting Ubuntu should focus on the server market - well they have put a lot into that too but they cannot get the market share required to sustain their business from that. RHEL is far too entrenched.
stcredzero 14y ago
> Bits and pieces of this are already here. We need a Wozniak to find the best way to put them together and create the new pieces we need. No Wozniak required. Aren't there already companies that sell Linux laptops that "just work?" Really, the big challenges are in organization, distribution, and marketing. How about this? http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/11/zareason-ultralap-430-a-penguin-friendly-ultrabook-that-doesnt-suck/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/11/zareason-ultralap-430...
- helmut_hed 14y ago
  And also these guys https://www.system76.com/ https://www.system76.com/. I have bought two laptops from ZaReason, with mixed results. They mostly "just work".

by derleth 14y ago

w1ntermute 14y ago

> To be honest, I didn't jump from Windows to Linux because of this. I jumped because Windows ME was just that bad. However, this makes me increasingly happy I jumped with each new version of both Windows and MacOS. Yup, every time I use someone else's computer I'm astounded by the sorts of things they put up with. A simple example - after years of using AdBlock and FlashBlock, I simply don't have any tolerance for ads on the web. I don't have the ability to ignore them.

egypturnash 14y ago

IMHO you also need a Jobs who wanders around (a) selling the thing to normal humans and (b) being a relentless advocate for the user experience, with the power to delay releases if something is broken.

derleth 14y ago
> being a relentless advocate for the user experience The dark side of this is why I hate MacOS: There are things in MacOS I consider broken that I cannot fix, because Apple is dedicated to One Apple Way. Great for the Mac Fan, lousy for someone who has their own workflow. Apple only has room for one Jobs, one person to dictate how the experience is. Anyone else has to bow to Jobs or GTFO. The solution is good defaults with configurability maintained as a first-class citizen. Ubuntu has this, mostly to the extent it keeps non-Unity window managers and desktop environments in the Ubuntu package repos. I can still use all of the Ubuntu stuff except the tiny amount that really does depend on Unity, which wouldn't make sense with my workflow anyway.
- MiguelHudnandez 14y ago
  > ... lousy for someone who has their own workflow. "You're holding it wrong," indeed. Your comment makes me want to try Ubuntu again on my MacBook. What I liked about it last time was that everything worked--just like on OS X. I guess the hardware premium and hardware monoculture are helpful even in the open source community.
  - derleth 14y ago
    > the hardware premium and hardware monoculture ... the culture of hardware developers that isn't focused on 'It works on Windows', the culture of driver developers that aren't (apparently) seen as loss-centers by the hardware makers, and a number of other things that slip my mind, I'm sure. The only thing better is something like Stallman's current laptop, which was built ground-up to be Free and Open. Given Stallman's track record with 'crazy' predictions like 'The Right To Read', I fully expect to eventually end up on something like that as my primary machine.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

The pieces are all there already, but you can't pull it off with dis-associated independent groups. Canonical comes close, as does Redhat, either could do this is they started making their own hardware, or contracting out a HW 'spec.' But you need a 'real' company to say to someone like an Atheros that you'll design in their wireless chip only if they will commit to driver support for it on your OS. That sort of thing doesn't happen between a company and an 'interested third party' sadly. The other thing folks will have to come to realize that you won't be able to combine your "TV" and your "computer" much longer. The demands of content producers are reaching a point that 'general purpose computing' on devices that can show their content are made increasingly more difficult and eventually they won't legally exist. Secure boot, HDCP, all of these things are manifestations of externally exerted control over the platform. The good news is that computers will go back to being computers. It is going to feel a bit weird for a while though.

GuiA 14y ago

>Too bad that of The Two Steves, Jobs gets the accolades and Wozniak gets ignored. Oh please, not this again. But OK, I'll bite: Wozniak was given plenty of recognition for his work at Apple. But he quit in 87, which was 25 years ago. What has he done since? Not that much, really. Steve Jobs, on the other hand, has brought tremendous contributions to a number of industries. In the light of this, it makes complete sense that Steve Jobs is a household name, whereas Wozniak isn't (but Wozniak is definitely a "hacker household name", which is what he deserves to be).

mikeash 14y ago
It's even worse than that, as Woz effectively left Apple after his plane crash in 1981. He continued to officially be an employee, but didn't contribute a whole lot after that point. Quitting in 1987 was more of a formality than anything. The last Apple computer Woz had a direct hand in designing was either the Apple II or the II+ (I can't quite figure out which), over three decades ago. Woz was a genius when it came to minimal and effective designs and it's certain that he played a key role in getting Apple off the ground, but he has had no real impact on the company or anything the company does for nearly as long as I've been alive. Woz helped build Apple into a successful company, but the scale isn't even remotely the same. The Apple that Jobs subsequently built decades later now sells more hardware in a month (or so) than Woz's Apple sold during his entire tenure.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  I'm sure Woz continued to be an influence on Jobs for quite some time though. I guess if you have seen somebody build one of the worlds first affordable computers out of some bits in garage it probably seems like anything is possible when you have a few billion $.
- mturmon 14y ago
  Thanks to both you and the parent for thoughtfully laying out the history. Saying the "two Steves" as if they are parallel doesn't make sense.
  - 14y ago

keithpeter 14y ago

"Now that Norton was gone, I personally happen to like Comodo firewall. So I go to download it, but the installer nicely tells me that this doesn't work on Windows 8, and I need to download another file instead. However, this is their pro product, which basically means it's filled with crap. It's a good thing I noticed the tiny Customize Installer button because otherwise it would have: Changed my home page, subscribed me to something called GeekBuddy, enrolled me to their cloud program, change my DNS servers, and sent information about each scan it does to the company. The same was true with many of the applications I installed, like Adobe Reader trying to install McAfee, or QuickTime trying to sign me up for offers." I hope Mark Shuttleworth might read and understand this paragraph before he continues to reduce the trust of Ubuntu users. The crucial difference between users of Windows/Apple on the one hand and GNU/Linux on the other is that Linux users have choices at the distribution level. A secondary advantage for GNU/Linux users is that once a distribution has been chosen, application software is packaged centrally with some degree of oversight so this kind of bait and switch by software vendors becomes harder. The Ubuntunaughts at Canonical seem to be heading in the direction of selecting hardware which they can ensure will 'just work'.

jeremyjh 14y ago
Its hard for Shuttleworth because he has burned millions and millions on Canonical and it is now clear that the company is going to fail. People simply will not pay for linux desktop support and there really is no other model. So all this crap they are doing, it is their death throes and they should be pitied and not mocked.
- keithpeter 14y ago
  "People simply will not pay for linux desktop support and there really is no other model" RHEL need no competitors at all then?
  - jeremyjh 14y ago
    RHEL is a server product, I guess I don't follow your comment. Do they even sell desktop support? If you are suggesting Ubuntu should focus on the server market - well they have put a lot into that too but they cannot get the market share required to sustain their business from that. RHEL is far too entrenched.

stcredzero 14y ago

> Bits and pieces of this are already here. We need a Wozniak to find the best way to put them together and create the new pieces we need. No Wozniak required. Aren't there already companies that sell Linux laptops that "just work?" Really, the big challenges are in organization, distribution, and marketing. How about this? http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/11/zareason-ultralap-430-a-penguin-friendly-ultrabook-that-doesnt-suck/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/11/zareason-ultralap-430...

helmut_hed 14y ago
And also these guys https://www.system76.com/ https://www.system76.com/. I have bought two laptops from ZaReason, with mixed results. They mostly "just work".