4 ms·

Not sure on the timelines, but snap, upstart and Mir were all attempts at evolving Linux ecosystem that lost to RedHat-backed systems. Unity was legit abandoned

Not sure on the timelines, but snap, upstart and Mir were all attempts at evolving Linux ecosystem that lost to RedHat-backed systems. Unity was legit abandoned, and bazaar... Not sure what they were trying to solve there with git and forges already existing.

ddtaylor 7mo ago
Wayland was created in 2008. Mir was created in 2013. Bazaar and Git were created around the exact same time. Unity was abandoned after a failed attempt to circumvent Gnome 3. I was actually involved with the development of Compiz and they hired Sam to work on Unity, as he was one of the masterminds behind Compiz, but again they just didn't have the vision or execution to make it work.
- pjmlp 7mo ago
  Unity was great, after it was abandoned I tried yet again GNOME 3, me that in the past have collaborated with Gtkmm, ended up moving into XFCE, and nowadays I am fully on macOS/Windows anyway. If I ever go back to GNU/Linux full time, GNOME certainly won't be it.
  - ddtaylor 7mo ago
    Things improved a lot with Gnome over the years, but as a fellow Gnome 2 user the initial release of 3 and the following years were a real kick in the teeth. Things have improved, but the overall Gnome Foundation attitude hasn't improved. They are still very stubborn and remove basic features. This seemed to start when they did their infamous "focus groups" where they claim users can't understand basic things. I get the desire to provide a cohesive experience, but I think you can do that while also giving people control. KDE is shaping up to be much better and it's likely because Valve is providing commercial support and exposing it to a larger audience. Cosmic is the new kid backed by system76 and its pretty nice too and may rescue Gnome in some ways in due time.
- zeroc8 7mo ago
  Mir worked in 2014? Wayland took until 2025.
loloquwowndueo 7mo ago
> Not sure what they were trying to solve there with git and forges already existing. What? Bzr predates git (by a few days but still). Launchpad predated GitHub by a lot. canonical just played those cards horribly and lost.
- ddtaylor 7mo ago
  I still maintain some Launchpad packages and recipes. It's an insanely archaic system and borderline non-functional. I wouldn't wish it upon most.
  - loloquwowndueo 7mo ago
    It was deprioritized for years, the team gutted to staff other shinier projects you likely haven’t even heard of.
foresto 7mo ago
> bazaar... Not sure what they were trying to solve there with git and forges already existing. You are mistaken here. Bazaar, Mercurial, and Git appeared at about the same time, and I think Bazaar was released first. IIRC, Bazaar tried to distinguish itself by handling renames better than other version control systems. In practice, this turned out not to be very important to most people. (Tangent: It wasn't clear at the time whether Mercurial or Git was the better pick. Their internal design was very similar. Mercurial offered a more pleasant user interface, superior cross-platform support, and a third advantage that I'm forgetting at the moment. Git had unbeatable author recognition. Eventually, Git's improved Windows support and the arrival of GitHub sealed its victory in the popularity contest. But all of that came to pass well after Bazaar was released.)
- omcnoe 7mo ago
  Lightweight branch model of git mapped so much better to the way that actual development processes of medium to large projects really work(ed). Named branches vs bookmarks in hg just means bike shedding about branching strategy. Bookmarks ultimately work more like lightweight git style branches, but they came later, and originally couldn't even be shared (literally just local bookmarks). Named branches on the other hand permanently accumulate as part of the repository history. Git came out with 1 cohesive branch design from day 1.
  - nottorp 7mo ago
    I work on a mercurial hosted project right now. What ticks me off is all those unnamed heads you need to handle every time you pull other people's changes. Yes they're more flexible. Most of the time that just means extra operations for no good reason.
  - usrnm 7mo ago
    That is very different from my experience with git. I know that the kernel uses branches a lot, but that's probably because of git's history with the project. At every company I worked git is used exactly the same way as CVS or SVN was used many years ago: you make some local changes, you push these local changes to the central store, you forget about it. Branches make local switching between tasks easier, but apart from that nobody cares about branches and they're definitely not treated as an important part of the repo. In fact, they're usually deleted immediately after the change is merged.

ddtaylor 7mo ago

Wayland was created in 2008. Mir was created in 2013. Bazaar and Git were created around the exact same time. Unity was abandoned after a failed attempt to circumvent Gnome 3. I was actually involved with the development of Compiz and they hired Sam to work on Unity, as he was one of the masterminds behind Compiz, but again they just didn't have the vision or execution to make it work.

pjmlp 7mo ago
Unity was great, after it was abandoned I tried yet again GNOME 3, me that in the past have collaborated with Gtkmm, ended up moving into XFCE, and nowadays I am fully on macOS/Windows anyway. If I ever go back to GNU/Linux full time, GNOME certainly won't be it.
- ddtaylor 7mo ago
  Things improved a lot with Gnome over the years, but as a fellow Gnome 2 user the initial release of 3 and the following years were a real kick in the teeth. Things have improved, but the overall Gnome Foundation attitude hasn't improved. They are still very stubborn and remove basic features. This seemed to start when they did their infamous "focus groups" where they claim users can't understand basic things. I get the desire to provide a cohesive experience, but I think you can do that while also giving people control. KDE is shaping up to be much better and it's likely because Valve is providing commercial support and exposing it to a larger audience. Cosmic is the new kid backed by system76 and its pretty nice too and may rescue Gnome in some ways in due time.
zeroc8 7mo ago
Mir worked in 2014? Wayland took until 2025.

loloquwowndueo 7mo ago

> Not sure what they were trying to solve there with git and forges already existing. What? Bzr predates git (by a few days but still). Launchpad predated GitHub by a lot. canonical just played those cards horribly and lost.

ddtaylor 7mo ago
I still maintain some Launchpad packages and recipes. It's an insanely archaic system and borderline non-functional. I wouldn't wish it upon most.
- loloquwowndueo 7mo ago
  It was deprioritized for years, the team gutted to staff other shinier projects you likely haven’t even heard of.

foresto 7mo ago

> bazaar... Not sure what they were trying to solve there with git and forges already existing. You are mistaken here. Bazaar, Mercurial, and Git appeared at about the same time, and I think Bazaar was released first. IIRC, Bazaar tried to distinguish itself by handling renames better than other version control systems. In practice, this turned out not to be very important to most people. (Tangent: It wasn't clear at the time whether Mercurial or Git was the better pick. Their internal design was very similar. Mercurial offered a more pleasant user interface, superior cross-platform support, and a third advantage that I'm forgetting at the moment. Git had unbeatable author recognition. Eventually, Git's improved Windows support and the arrival of GitHub sealed its victory in the popularity contest. But all of that came to pass well after Bazaar was released.)

omcnoe 7mo ago
Lightweight branch model of git mapped so much better to the way that actual development processes of medium to large projects really work(ed). Named branches vs bookmarks in hg just means bike shedding about branching strategy. Bookmarks ultimately work more like lightweight git style branches, but they came later, and originally couldn't even be shared (literally just local bookmarks). Named branches on the other hand permanently accumulate as part of the repository history. Git came out with 1 cohesive branch design from day 1.
- nottorp 7mo ago
  I work on a mercurial hosted project right now. What ticks me off is all those unnamed heads you need to handle every time you pull other people's changes. Yes they're more flexible. Most of the time that just means extra operations for no good reason.
- usrnm 7mo ago
  That is very different from my experience with git. I know that the kernel uses branches a lot, but that's probably because of git's history with the project. At every company I worked git is used exactly the same way as CVS or SVN was used many years ago: you make some local changes, you push these local changes to the central store, you forget about it. Branches make local switching between tasks easier, but apart from that nobody cares about branches and they're definitely not treated as an important part of the repo. In fact, they're usually deleted immediately after the change is merged.