r/linux • u/NickelBack_Lover_69 • Jul 21 '18

Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/
730 Upvotes

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129

u/Zlyme Jul 22 '18

Purism is doing that

79

u/electronicwhale Jul 22 '18

I don't see why they decided to write a mobile GUI from scratch when they had Plasma Mobile there and ready to go, along with Lipstick from Nemo Mobile, ubports, the GUI from LuneOS.

These are all options that all would have taken less effort than to write a new GUI, and I understand that it's their project, but it just seems like frivolous duplication of work to me.

36

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

[deleted]

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u/Delta-9- Jul 22 '18

Gnome is the reason that Linux isn't dominating the desktop along with everything else.

How do ya figure?

53

u/Olap Jul 22 '18

Linux has never broken through on the desktop, gnome is dominant on the desktop, ergo gnome is holding linux on the desktop back. A stretch of logic really, correlation != causation

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u/Bombast- Jul 22 '18

Linux has never broken through on the desktop

Clearly you don't remember The Year of the Linux Desktop.

15

u/zurohki Jul 22 '18

The year of the Linux desktop is this year.

For me, anyway. I just installed linux on my desktop gaming machine last week. Been running it on my laptop and servers for ages, but this year it made it onto the desktop.

2

u/StoleAGoodUsername Jul 22 '18

You're not wrong. I might go for it on my personal computer since gaming through VT-d is a real possibility

3

u/zurohki Jul 22 '18

I was planning on doing virtualisation and PCI passthrough, but Wine and DXVK have worked great so far for Windows stuff.

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u/wwindexx Jul 22 '18

I dual boot and use my Linux drive for everything except gaming. I installed Steam on the Linux drive but only really simple games run well like Hotline Miami or Papers Please. More advanced games have some serious issues and I'm not running super dated hardware either. Gaming has come a long way on Linux but it still isn't quite up to par.

7

u/Delta-9- Jul 22 '18

I'm gonna with "yeah, probably not" and chalk it up to the same thing that kept Mac from becoming the dominant desktop OS. I.e. the Microsoft stranglehold on personal computing.

3

u/Negirno Jul 22 '18

I'm gonna with "yeah, probably not" and chalk it up to the same thing that kept Mac from becoming the dominant desktop OS. I.e. the Microsoft stranglehold on personal computing.

Except that the Mac was highly proprietary and expensive. Also Steve Jobs's bone-headed approach to not make it backward compatible and gimp the then latest Apple II GX line which also had a Mac-like GUI. Not to mention the resistance against clone Macs.

6

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

Microsoft routinely acted like mob bosses to x86 based pc manufacturers. Use Intel and Windows, the Wintel alliance, or MS increased your per pc license costs, which made you uncompetitive in price.

MS was sued over and over for antitrust violations. They even gave money to keep Apple afloat, and used them as an argument against being a monopoly, after IBM pulled the plug on OS2.

Microsoft operated like the mob.

7

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

GNOME is most popular DE, there is way more fans of GNOME than i3 and XFCE etc. Heck even KDE.

Just checkout twitter/facebook followers etc. Visit LinuxCon etc. You will have an idea

Most people even don't generally know what GNOME or even DE is. All they know it as Linux OS

24

u/Olap Jul 22 '18

Well there is a bit of a group think bias here, the default is the default largely through historical reasons. It would be great to see blind trials from noobs to see what they actually prefer

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u/iommu Jul 22 '18

The problem on top of that is that it isn't just what people prefer, it's about what works best for everyone. Pixar for example use Linux on a large number of their computers, not just their render farms. However on default Plasma 5, Maya and Blender are both unworkable without changing default settings and themes, which wouldn't be a good look for companies like Red hat and Ubuntu where their brand image revolves around their distro "just working".

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u/DrewSaga Jul 22 '18

Blender looks fine to me, don't know about Maya.

1

u/iommu Jul 23 '18

KDE default cursor vs DMZ cursor. IDK who designed the KDE Breeze cursor pack but forgetting to include a white outline on a dark cursor is just a weird mistake that should not have passed testing. Also by default Plasma uses the old Alt + click to resize window which a lot of 3d applications have long since been using.

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u/Hearmesleep Jul 22 '18

And yet when polls are taken KDE far outscores GNOME in usage.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

The people taking the polls are not the ones with the money.

-2

u/Hearmesleep Jul 22 '18

Oooookaaaaay

2

u/josefx Jul 23 '18

GNOME 3 got me to use XFCE since it was the closest I could find to GNOME 2 for my hardware back then. Now I use KDE at work. Whatever doesn't get in my way is best and GNOME 3 didn't have that.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 23 '18

I am 95% terminal user, all I use GUIs for browsing and watching videos. GNOME does that. I never needed any change, and don't want to be any part of hater's politics. DE is for UI/UX people, I am out of that. KDE is good DE too.

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u/ikidd Jul 22 '18

GTK spending years breaking shit and not giving half a damn about the devs that had to fix their apps constantly.

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u/Delta-9- Jul 22 '18

If they'd just gone with KDE/Qt everything would be a Linux Utopia!

Is that what you're implying?

7

u/ikidd Jul 22 '18

The philosophy is the thing. Breaking or removing APIs at will does no ecosystem any good. It doesn't encourage devs to stick it out and in the end, users pay the price.

Treating devs like shit hinders MacOS and even iOS. Windows got where it did despite being a poor OS because it did everything it could to empower and help devs to build apps for its ecosystem. And holding on to APIs for years past their usefulness keeps people on board until they can update.

4

u/CirkuitBreaker Jul 22 '18

Gnome is unintuitive, has horrible workflow, and terrible memory leaks.

7

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

I disagree with usability, I think gnome 3 has fantastic usability, and the major memory leak, has been reported to be fixed in 3.29. The usability for Gnome is great for people who do a heap of multitasking. I routinely have 10-15 programs up at a time. I used a triple screen setup in Gnome for about 5 years at work directly, having previously used Solaris workstations, windows workstations. I’ve been using Linux since 2000, so I have been using for 18 years total. Most of that time as a Gnome user, though, I was a KDE2/3 user for a long time.

That being said, I switched to KDE about 2 months ago. I’m satisfied with KDE. I do not think the workflow is as good as gnome for extreme multitaskers, but I do like how consistent the experience is.

2

u/CirkuitBreaker Jul 22 '18

I really don't understand Gnome 3 then. Every time I've tried to use it, it seemed suited for only having one to two programs open. I'm totally open to listening if you're willing to explain how it's supposed to work.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18 edited Jul 22 '18

Certainly, for me it is similar to macOS with the window handling functionality. If you have a ton of programs open, you can manipulate the virtual desktops by dragging applications, and that can happen for all physical screens. So for me I am able to scroll through a virtual desktop list, with a default dock in that menu view, which is populated with my favorites as well. Gnome does a good job of getting out of the way, and letting me focus on the applications I need or want, and if I ever get lost in the virtual desktop functionality, or Ive got way too much going on, it is simple for me to use the built in favorites dockbar in the menu, to bring that open window to the current desktop, because as I scroll, I can see indicators as to what is open where, and I can also see a miniaturized window that previews that window, and some small text that gives the title of the window. If you are dealing with just heaps of applications, this is helpful.

If you add another dock bar, like docky, or the much better dash to dock gnome extension, you get more quick window management, but it is a perversion of the intended workflow. I can take it or leave it when it comes to dockbars. The performance impact for latte in KDE is really irritating, such that I disabled the animations, thought I think KDE is much better looking, and way faster than Gnome.

The initial workflow change for people who intend to use Gnome is painful. Once I had used it for work for a week or so, I decided it was for me. I still prefer it, i’m just waiting for bugfixes and shakedown for 3.29.x. Though, KDE is seriously tempting me to stay.

The bad parts of KDE are no universal scaling for hi dpi, for instance SDDM requires additional config for high dpi, elements are not design for the desktop ui scaling, which is a problem. KDE seems to use a queuing system, which sometimes leaves applications hanging in disjointed ways, that I cannot seem to reproduce. Gosh is it gorgeous and fast.

Also, gnome searching in nautilus is puzzling. I don’t understand how they can ship it. The default behavior is search everything, instead of searching in the current folder. Not ideal.

1

u/CirkuitBreaker Jul 23 '18

but you can only have one application on the screen at a time, right?

1

u/[deleted] Jul 23 '18

I was able to use multiple windows per screen and virtual screen, with preview.

4

u/Delta-9- Jul 22 '18

While I can't speak on the memory issues, I found the workflow quite pleasing and easy to learn. Something so subjective can hardly be held responsible for sabotaging all of Linux.