Torvalds Takes Issue With De Icaza's Linux Desktop Claims 616
An anonymous reader writes "Linux creator Linus Torvalds has poured scorn on claims made by the co-founder of the GNOME Desktop project, Miguel de Icaza, that he (Torvalds) was in any way to blame for the lack of development in Linux desktop initiatives. De Icaza wrote in his personal blog: 'Linus, despite being a low-level kernel guy, set the tone for our community years ago when he dismissed binary compatibility for device drivers. The kernel people might have some valid reasons for it, and might have forced the industry to play by their rules, but the Desktop people did not have the power that the kernel people did. But we did keep the attitude.'"
Update: 09/02 18:39 GMT by U L : The original source of the comments (and an exciting flamewar between Free Software heavyweights).
WTF. (Score:5, Informative)
I got linux on desktop.
It works perfectly.
Seriously, what's the problem? Just because ever-growing bloated software megapackages like KDE and GNOME aren't as successful as they were meant to, even on a platform that is meant not to favor such big packages, the linux on desktop is failing? Come on.
Re:Paging Mr. Roark (Score:4, Informative)
Linux does just fine without GNOME. Does it work the other way?
Yes [freebsd.org]
Re:Before dismissing De Icaza (Score:1, Informative)
Windows 2000 (Score:5, Informative)
Its mmazing how fast it runs. I've installed it on one of my laptops some months ago just for nostalgia and man lxde/xfce have nothing on its speed.
Re:WTF. (Score:5, Informative)
De Icaza is a rat fink, period. He long ago used up any capital he had in the FOSS community with his dalliances with Microsoft. Frankly, if there was never another /. article involving anything that piece of crap had to say, we would still have about three dozen too many articles out there involving his weasily mutterings.
His "lets make it like Windows!" attitude turned me off years ago. Now he sounds like a has-been, trying to get into the spotlight and blaming everyone else for his failures.
Actual discussion (Score:5, Informative)
Here is the actual discussion on G+ [google.com] instead of an article that just quotes everything they say.
Re:WTF. (Score:0, Informative)
What's wrong with KDE? It comes with a lot of utilities, most of which you don't need, but it's not like you can't get rid of them, and seriously - how big of a problem really they present?
The problem that I have with GNOME is that as an end-user I consider this completely unusable. It confuses the heck out of me, I cannot figure out which windows are open, which applications are running, and even how to get back to stuff I've opened just a few seconds ago. From usability point of view, GNOME is a pure nightmare and no amount of "api breakage" is going to fix that.
No surprise the only people who think that this monstrosity is good for anything are people with the same mentality - people who put together distros based on .deb package system - similar piece of carp that should not have existed in the first place - another subsystem that rams someone's ideology on "how software must be done" down my throat.
Re:WTF. (Score:5, Informative)
The company that bought Novell completely threw his projects out during the take over.
Can you imagine how little value Mono and his other projects must have if a holding company just wrote them off?
Re:Failure of de Icaza.... (Score:4, Informative)
Bonobo, you mean De Icaza's attempt to make a clone of Windows OLE and COM?
It's been replaced by D-BUS.
Re:Re-inventing the wheel (Score:5, Informative)
Are you kidding? I've been doing copy/paste from the Windows command line (cmd.exe) since Windows NT 4.0. (Not to mention setting the width and the scroll back buffer size among many other options.) And all of that is available in PowerShell as well.
If you right-click anywhere in the title bar, you'll get a context menu, and at the bottom of that menu is properties. In there you'll find, on the options tab, a box labeled Edit Options that contains two check boxes: Insert Mode and QuickEdit Mode. These two check boxes are essential for doing copy/paste operations in cmd and PowerShell. Now if you go over to the Layout tab, you'll find you can tweak the height, width, and under "Screen Buffer Size", the "Height" setting there actually the scroll back buffer length. All very handy stuff. :)
Now once you have everything setup correctly, pasting into the terminal is done by right-clicking in the window and choosing paste. Now copying from the terminal is a little different. Generally, you just highlight what you want to copy with the mouse, then just right-click on top of the selected text. Your highlighting will disappear, but the text was put on your clipboard. If you paste into Notepad (or other app) you should get whatever you copied from the terminal.
Re:Paging Mr. Roark (Score:0, Informative)
Theoretically yes, GNOME can exist w/o Linux, but in reality, it sticks to Linux like a leech.
You wanna know why? Because nothing else is as credible a threat to MS on the mainstream desktop as Linux is. As long as MS can keep their hooks in Gnome via Miguel, they can "manage" it. You see what happened when Linux slid from under the Gnome/traditional desktop thumb with Android. In a short time half of the smartphones and a third of the tablets on the planet were running Linux at the core. MS fears this and so does their lackey Miguel.
Re:WTF. (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, what's the problem?
Here is a nice and detailed List of Major Linux Problems [narod.ru].
Re:Paging Mr. Roark (Score:4, Informative)
Nobody cares if GNOME3 *EVER* can run on BSD. Last I heard they weren't "discussing" making systemd mandatory - they were dictating it.
Systemd and its dependencies add 2 million lines of code to the early boot process [phoronix.com], which on the face of it is a pretty gratuitous burden and negatively affects reliability. It's about 200 times as many lines to support as simple init scripts.
Pretty much any other DE/WM can run on BSD, and many of them are far superior to GNOME3.
Stop spreading misunderstanding please (Score:5, Informative)
"One of the core kernel rules has always been that we never ever break any external interfaces. That rule has been there since day one, although it's gotten much more explicit only in the last few years. The fact that we break internal interfaces that are not visible to userland is totally irrelevant, and a total red herring."
""However it's not an Open Source disease its certain projects like Gnome disease - my 3.6rc kernel will still run a Rogue binary built in 1992. X is back compatible to apps far older than Linux."
Re:WTF. (Score:5, Informative)
Oh come on. Miguel has done more for OSS than most people here.
Yes, but what? No, really: what does he have contributed that was worth it? He worked a lot of time, that's for sure, but all his projects, or his views on the projects he contributed to, don't seem of much value. At the time Evolution was the great program that GNOME users praised the most, I remember perfectly that he told us in a conference in Barcelona that it "now that we completed it, it's clear that it was a mistake writing it in C because it took too much time". I honestly don't see much value in what he contributed. Specially if we consider the negative impact that his other "endeavours" have done (Mono, OOXML, and texts like the one that started this).
His pragmatic approach and understanding that computers should be for people and not just computer geeks is refreshing and was helpful in developing Linux into a desktop OS.
You say that in a way that implies that everybody else wanted Linux to be used only with a text console. Go read Matthias Ettrich's original announcement about KDE [kde.org]. He repeats GUI and END USER a bazillion times. Because he wanted applications and user interfaces for the average user... like everybody else!
Re:Paging Mr. Roark (Score:5, Informative)
But that's kind of my point. They don't care to make money on an operating system because they know it's a losing game - the market will continue to drive the cost of an operating system to zero and Apple wants no part in trying to fight an inevitable trend.
If Surface is any indication, someone at Microsoft finally explained this concept to Balmer in a way he could understand. General purpose software is a short term market. There will always be hobbyists and grad students and open source companies to churn out free alternatives.
People don't use desktop Linux for two reasons: 1) Gnome and KDE suck and the alternatives that don't suck are the niche desktops/lack the razzle-dazzle of OS X/Win 7. 2) Microsoft Office.
#2 is nicely being taken care of by LibreOffice and Wine. It can be scratched off the list here in a couple years. #1 is the roadblock (and, getting back to the topic of the original story, a reason De Icaza probably shouldn't be pointing fingers).
People don't have a problem with Linux. If people had a problem with Linux then Android wouldn't be the huge success it is. People just wants something that suits their needs. Desktop Linux will eventually get to that point even if progress has been rather stymied as of late. It'll probably take a long time, but a long time isn't NEVER EVER EVER.
I also don't understand your emphasis on Apple stuff. I agree that they have the right strategy - their strategy strengthens my argument: software isn't a reliable source of income as the price is always driven to zero, so they sell hardware and use software to compliment it. Desktop Linux probably won't affect Apple too much -- it's going to bone MS (their hardware partners would abandon them in a second if they could).
Also, when considering desktop Linux, I think it's important to consider places outside the first-world. I'm willing to bet, in a couple decades, if traditional operating systems are still used, Linux will run on the most computers in the world. Maybe some Unix system, something like Hurd that actually works, but whatever it is it'll be free and based on expired patents.
Re:Paging Mr. Roark (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedict_Arnold [wikipedia.org]
Benedict Arnold (January 14, 1741 [O.S. January 3, 1740] â" June 14, 1801) was a general during the American Revolutionary War who originally fought for the American Continental Army but defected to the British Army. While a general on the American side, he obtained command of the fort at West Point, New York, and plotted to surrender it to the British forces. After the plot was exposed in September 1780, he was commissioned into the British Army as a brigadier general.
Because of the way he changed sides, his name quickly became a byword in the United States for treason or betrayal. His conflicting legacy is recalled in the ambiguous nature of some of the memorials that have been placed in his honor.
I know it is a bit off topic, but I can't be the only non-American who said who? Excellent choice he would have been viewed as an American hero if he hadn't defected to the other-side after becoming disillusioned with the American cause and had to flee before he caused any major damage.