3 ms·

Lets see I can buy an Android phone for $300 that runs an operating system that is state of the art and one of the world's largest tech giants is currently spen

by Kequc 13y ago

Lets see I can buy an Android phone for $300 that runs an operating system that is state of the art and one of the world's largest tech giants is currently spending a billion dollars developing. Or I can buy a $800 phone for neckbeards that runs Ubuntu, an operating system that hasn't made headway in approximately a decade.

MarcScott 13y ago
"an operating system that hasn't made headway in approximately a decade." I don't think Ubuntu existed a decade ago. So I think that from nothing to being one of (if not the most) popular Linux distros on desktops can probably be considered headway. "I can buy an Android phone for $300" Yes you can. It is unlikely to have 4Gb of RAM and 128Gb of storage though. "neckbeards" You got me. I'm going to go and shave.
- gwilkes 13y ago
  Approximately a decade is close enough, it will be 9 years this October.
- arh68 13y ago
  > I think that from nothing to being one of (if not the most) popular Linux distros on desktops can probably be considered headway. The last Ubuntu release I really liked was Hoary Hedgehog, but I can agree to disagree. With a $300 android phone, I'd probably still have enough left over to buy a 4GB/128GB netbook. A $300 phone, a $300 netbook, and a $100 ssd only comes to $700. Ubuntu Edge is just at a weird price point these days.
forgottenpaswrd 13y ago
Lets see, you can use an OS that a single company has spent a billion dollars in order to control it, or you could use a real operating system that tens of companies(like IBM) had spent tens of billions of dollars developing. The fact that you need to insult to get your point is not good man.
- chris_wot 13y ago
  I took neckbeard as a compliment.
- DannyBee 13y ago
  Wait, so you honestly believe canonical is doing this out of the goodness of their heart, and doesn't want to control it?
  - phaemon 13y ago
    Yes. Of course. Why else would Canonical have used the GPL for the software they'd developed? Why else would they release their OS for free? Profits have clearly never been their overriding reason for existence and they look very much like a social enterprise to me. See, this is why I hate cynicism: it's intellectually lazy. It doesn't bother looking at the actual detail of any particular case, just hand-waves away details with a suggestion of naivety for even considering them. Give me a solid reason why Canonical should not be considered as a social enterprise?
    - tarabukka 13y ago
      The Amazon advertising fiasco? The commercial "Ubuntu Software Center"? The lack of upstream patches for many years? Debian maintainers and Red Hat wouldn't even thinking of pulling off that kind of junk. It's not about deeply analysing every possible motivation for every single thing involving them -- Canonical simply shows an attitude of taking from the open source community and not giving back.
      - phaemon 13y ago
        The Amazon lens that everyone knew about and could be removed with one command? The whole thing was massively blown out of proportion, often by people who'd never even used Ubuntu. What's wrong with selling commercial software? I could understand it if you were all about Open Source, but you're clearly not. Redhat certainly sell proprietary software solutions. Debian don't, but then that's their raison d'être. They've given back a whole OS to people. They've released plenty of their own software under the GPL. Fine if you think that's not enough, but it's far more than many companies have done and accusing them of not giving back at all is flat out wrong.
auvrw 13y ago
what's a neckbeard? i imagine you sporting a magnificent handlebar mustache as a result of this remark. anyways: i'd phrase it as "i can buy an $800 computer that doubles as a phone." ever since smartphones appeared, having a really portable computer has been more appealing to me than having a phone that is a computer. indeed, i continue to use a dumbphone, a cheapo mp3 player, and sometimes (gasp!) pen & paper to duplicate all the functionality i ever really used my smartphone for. of course, phrased that way, it might make more sense to shapeways-up a really stylish case for a raspberry pi than buy a $800 phone, but the point is that i don't really agree with the way that you've framed the decision to begin with. but even phrased that way, i /still/ disagree, because android strikes me as more of art of the state than state of the art: i think the vm (dalvik, i think?) is wedged in at way too low a level. large parts of the window system and other core components are written in java rather than C, which, coming from GNU-land (clean-shaven, thank you) strikes me as rather strange. i mean, i like intents, content providers, and all these other high-level parts of the system design, i just wish more of the implementation were in C so that it would be more portable. i'd like to be able to bind whatever language i choose to the code that's flinging surfaces, at least, even if not to the window toolkit. although there is this scripting layer, which might be a good start, but i haven't used it as it advertises itself as "alpha quality."
bwb 13y ago
best comment ever +999999999
mcintyre1994 13y ago
> an operating system that hasn't made headway in approximately a decade. Hmm, that seems a little harsh. One of the biggest names in desktop Linux, and the third largest Linux distro on production web servers[1] seems like making significant headway. Searching "Linux" on duckduckgo, which should avoid any bias from me having visited their site before from Google, they're the first distro to come up and third result overall. [1] http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-linux/all/all http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-linux/all/all
pessimizer 13y ago
The entire appliance model of Android, iOS, and the new App ecosystem is such a throwback that I'm surprised that you don't have to insert a cartridge to switch applications. Android is not a general purpose operating system, intentionally. It's a new false scarcity distribution model that's designed to largely withstand the pressures of the Internet's zero-friction instant scaling. Ubuntu, though annoying, is a general purpose operating system.

by Kequc 13y ago

MarcScott 13y ago

"an operating system that hasn't made headway in approximately a decade." I don't think Ubuntu existed a decade ago. So I think that from nothing to being one of (if not the most) popular Linux distros on desktops can probably be considered headway. "I can buy an Android phone for $300" Yes you can. It is unlikely to have 4Gb of RAM and 128Gb of storage though. "neckbeards" You got me. I'm going to go and shave.

gwilkes 13y ago
Approximately a decade is close enough, it will be 9 years this October.
arh68 13y ago
> I think that from nothing to being one of (if not the most) popular Linux distros on desktops can probably be considered headway. The last Ubuntu release I really liked was Hoary Hedgehog, but I can agree to disagree. With a $300 android phone, I'd probably still have enough left over to buy a 4GB/128GB netbook. A $300 phone, a $300 netbook, and a $100 ssd only comes to $700. Ubuntu Edge is just at a weird price point these days.

forgottenpaswrd 13y ago

Lets see, you can use an OS that a single company has spent a billion dollars in order to control it, or you could use a real operating system that tens of companies(like IBM) had spent tens of billions of dollars developing. The fact that you need to insult to get your point is not good man.

chris_wot 13y ago
I took neckbeard as a compliment.
DannyBee 13y ago
Wait, so you honestly believe canonical is doing this out of the goodness of their heart, and doesn't want to control it?
- phaemon 13y ago
  Yes. Of course. Why else would Canonical have used the GPL for the software they'd developed? Why else would they release their OS for free? Profits have clearly never been their overriding reason for existence and they look very much like a social enterprise to me. See, this is why I hate cynicism: it's intellectually lazy. It doesn't bother looking at the actual detail of any particular case, just hand-waves away details with a suggestion of naivety for even considering them. Give me a solid reason why Canonical should not be considered as a social enterprise?
  - tarabukka 13y ago
    The Amazon advertising fiasco? The commercial "Ubuntu Software Center"? The lack of upstream patches for many years? Debian maintainers and Red Hat wouldn't even thinking of pulling off that kind of junk. It's not about deeply analysing every possible motivation for every single thing involving them -- Canonical simply shows an attitude of taking from the open source community and not giving back.
    - phaemon 13y ago
      The Amazon lens that everyone knew about and could be removed with one command? The whole thing was massively blown out of proportion, often by people who'd never even used Ubuntu. What's wrong with selling commercial software? I could understand it if you were all about Open Source, but you're clearly not. Redhat certainly sell proprietary software solutions. Debian don't, but then that's their raison d'être. They've given back a whole OS to people. They've released plenty of their own software under the GPL. Fine if you think that's not enough, but it's far more than many companies have done and accusing them of not giving back at all is flat out wrong.

auvrw 13y ago

what's a neckbeard? i imagine you sporting a magnificent handlebar mustache as a result of this remark. anyways: i'd phrase it as "i can buy an $800 computer that doubles as a phone." ever since smartphones appeared, having a really portable computer has been more appealing to me than having a phone that is a computer. indeed, i continue to use a dumbphone, a cheapo mp3 player, and sometimes (gasp!) pen & paper to duplicate all the functionality i ever really used my smartphone for. of course, phrased that way, it might make more sense to shapeways-up a really stylish case for a raspberry pi than buy a $800 phone, but the point is that i don't really agree with the way that you've framed the decision to begin with. but even phrased that way, i /still/ disagree, because android strikes me as more of art of the state than state of the art: i think the vm (dalvik, i think?) is wedged in at way too low a level. large parts of the window system and other core components are written in java rather than C, which, coming from GNU-land (clean-shaven, thank you) strikes me as rather strange. i mean, i like intents, content providers, and all these other high-level parts of the system design, i just wish more of the implementation were in C so that it would be more portable. i'd like to be able to bind whatever language i choose to the code that's flinging surfaces, at least, even if not to the window toolkit. although there is this scripting layer, which might be a good start, but i haven't used it as it advertises itself as "alpha quality."

bwb 13y ago

best comment ever +999999999

mcintyre1994 13y ago

> an operating system that hasn't made headway in approximately a decade. Hmm, that seems a little harsh. One of the biggest names in desktop Linux, and the third largest Linux distro on production web servers[1] seems like making significant headway. Searching "Linux" on duckduckgo, which should avoid any bias from me having visited their site before from Google, they're the first distro to come up and third result overall. [1] http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-linux/all/all http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-linux/all/all

pessimizer 13y ago

The entire appliance model of Android, iOS, and the new App ecosystem is such a throwback that I'm surprised that you don't have to insert a cartridge to switch applications. Android is not a general purpose operating system, intentionally. It's a new false scarcity distribution model that's designed to largely withstand the pressures of the Internet's zero-friction instant scaling. Ubuntu, though annoying, is a general purpose operating system.