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).
Re:WTF. (Score:5, Interesting)
I got you beat. I have 4 laptops in my house all using some version of mint from 11. They all work just fine for the 4 of us even with three of the people wife/kids being casual users. People not into computers could care less about eye candy cosidering most computer usage will be browsing the web or office work. So why do you need some compicated bloat ware for opening programs or changing the desktop background.
Re:Paging Mr. Roark (Score:0, Interesting)
We don't need binary compatibility. It's just furthering the goals of proprietary software developers. The desktop is dependent on a vibrant community of free software developers. Without them Linux fails. We need to focus on developing a hardware ecosystem for GNU/Linux and removing proprietary components. Not binary compatibility.
And in reference to not needing the GNOME developer. We don't need Linus either. He undeservedly gets credit for a movement that he has shown hostility towards. There is enough momentum without him and he hasn't exactly furthered the desktop. This is not to say he shouldn't get any credit. It's just that associating him with the movement misses the point. The movement is about freedom. He doesn't care about freedom so long as it “works”. For him freedom is just convenient. The problem is the Linux desktop doesn't work without freedom. On the one hand he bashes the free software movement and on the other hand he bashes those who outright ignore the movement (nVidia- proprietary drivers). All in all Linus could be a better role model. If he was a bit less contradictory and more focused on keeping Linux free we would all be better off in the long run. As it is we are dependent on projects like Debian and linux-libre to remove and segregate proprietary software that we should never had let in in the first place. The benefits (more commercial gaming on GNU/Linux) are not worth the costs.
There are companies making money off free software. There are developers making money off free software. There is no risk to software developers from free software. There is on the other hand a lot of fear amongst software developers that free software will put them out of a job. Richard Stallman hasn't exactly calmed those fears. It is an ethical issue and the majority fail to understand the position. Just because we make compromises out of strong desires and self interest (raising kids) doesn't make those acts (writing proprietary software to feed ones children) justifiable. Writing proprietary software is not justifiable no matter how much you want to feed your children. If you accept that your acts are not justifiable we're ok. None of us are perfect. You should however try to avoid these acts. Fortunately this is not a real issue. Free software is not a threat to software developers. Adding children to the mix is a FUD tactic by those who fear freedom.
Re:Before dismissing De Icaza (Score:4, Interesting)
This type of continual ABI breakage is not seen in both the Mac and Windows worlds
And nor is it seen in the BSD world, since they don't keep breaking ABI or API compatibility.
What's worse is that every variable in the Linux subsystem is versioned, be it the library version, the compiler, the version of GTK or Qt, and so on. Trying to mix and match them would just numerically be a nightmare - never mind that in most Linux distros, they don't test out all these. In short, all this 'openness' just contributes to making a mess of things from a compatibility standpoint.
The problem with GNOME (Score:3, Interesting)
Is C. GNOME is still 98% built using C which is crazy in this day and age. And not modern, pretty nice c99, but ancient c89 because the latest GNOME has to compile on some 20 year old Solaris workstation otherwise Sun wont support the project. Now Sun is gone and Oracle doesn't give a shit. Novell has given up on using GNOME as a way to push Mono and only Redhat remains. Maybe stuff will change now because previously gnome has been incredibly resistant to change that is not initiated from within one of those three companies.
I want to see more changes in Gnome not less. And I want them to finally realize that they are spending 10x as much effort writing gui components in C as they would have in C#, Java or any other managed language.
If you are looking for someone to blame for the .. (Score:5, Interesting)
... mess that computers, particular PCs, are in, blame the peripheral industry. Some of this blame also belongs to Microsoft when they made it easy in DOS and BIOS for peripheral makers to effectively add drivers. But this is a very small blame because the full scope of what we could have had not even been envisioned. Flexibility was needed for new kinds of devices and peripherals. But the peripheral industry abused this by making new devices of the same class operate differently in too many cases. Access to floppies and IDE hard drives escaped a lot of this just because those were boot devices, and adding BIOS drivers increased the price. The peripheral makers could not even establish compatibility standards within their own product lines. So many new models of a device simply failed to be compatible with the previous interface (and driver) even if all you wanted to do was do the same old things of the previous model. This was not just a case of manufacturers trying to protect some kind of intellectual property or lock people in to their own product.
What was needed was a generalized model of how a CPU based host would access peripherals. A message based model would still have provided plenty of flexibility to expand the capabilities of new devices, as well as the ability to move more device drivers into user space, outside of the kernel. Ideally, all that was needed was one message bus controller interface design, and one driver to operate it to send and receive messages and status reports. Beyond that a ring of trusted device driver processes could be used. Combined with some community and market pressure to maintain compatibility over short time frames (about 8 to 10 years), devices could easily be interchangeable with minimal driver changing.
Then every once in a while, a class of device would have its standard message interface/protocol upgraded to a new version, and it would be expected that all new devices would adopt that. And this could still be done with full compatibility with the previous version via a version code in the basic standard message header. The new version would include a standard way to access features that were generally available now and had been implemented via extensions in the previous message protocol version.
Linus is not to blame. He just gets blamed sometimes because his vision of making the Linux kernel more usable for everyone sometimes means others might have to do a little more work to keep up (any vision would, but his is the one we see).
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Paging Mr. Roark (Score:4, Interesting)
Then why is Miguel crying about Linux "setting the tone" then?
Because "setting the tone" is something that happens on a social level, and has nothing at all to do with the technical capability of running on one operating system or another?
Re:WTF. (Score:1, Interesting)
Oh come on. Miguel has done more for OSS than most people here. 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. Binary compatibility is important and I never understood why, if even just in the name of good architectural design, Linus was against it. Maybe it was cause he only thinks like a low level guy.
Alternate take (Score:2, Interesting)
I had a Mac for several years, and didn't find OS X - much less the idiotic Dock - to be any more useful than plain old Windows XP
I had run XP for a number of years before I gave up and bought a Mac.
Even older versions of OS X I found way more useful. Just the UNIX integration alone was SO much better, but even the straight-up OS things were so much nicer on OS X. Joining and managing networks was simpler (well, party because again the UNIX integration). Managing files was better because as bad as Finder is, Explorer was more frustrating still (and even there OS X was better partly because of UNIX, like the ability to have real symlinks).
Even over the years while I continued to use OS X at home I had to use XP at work, many hours a day. Over all that time, EVERY day I was wishing I was working and coding in OS X.
Just the fact that OS X starts with real UNIX at the core and no need to deal with Cygwyn zombie-unix bullshit automatically puts it miles ahead of XP, especially for anyone who used to run Linux (which I did for years before I bought the Mac).
Re:de Icaza never understood users (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course backup/restore was available. But that assumes that nothing else changed in the meantime. Using a system level backup/restore is the classic sledgehammer/nut issue.
Providing no way back using the package management tools is epic FAIL.
Re:Paging Mr. Roark (Score:3, Interesting)
I beg to differ. Evolution was for me *the* killer app of Gnome.
As someone who worked on a helpdesk supporting commercial linux software in a 100% FOSS environment I needed a powerful mail client to replace mutt (and all the associated power user features) when the CEO mandated we send all our email in HTML. The only mail client at the time that came even close was Evolution, and it had great features for managing a mailbox where I received 100+ emails a day.
Re:Paging Mr. Roark (Score:5, Interesting)
Miguel hasn't done an original project, period; his initial project Midnight Commander [wikipedia.org] was a Norton Commander rip off. Then he got excited and took GTK [wikipedia.org], Gimp Tool Kit to build a desktop because he found the original non-GPL QT license that KDE used offensive, so Gnome is a KDE work-a-like (well tries to be a work-a-like); after that he did a .net rip-off called mono. After that he went over to the darkside and actually worked for Microsoft.