Another nail in the coffin of Linux ​"suppo​rt"

The Fedora Legacy project is shutting down.  The reason?  Lack of contributions from outside programmers and funding also played a big part.  So I guess this proves that free is not always a lifesaver and it leaves millions of users needing an upgrade due to lack of security and bug fixes.

Link to article

Not really surprising. Fedora has always been more of a "bleeding edge" desktop distro. If you want system consistency and long term support, use CentOS. It's supported as long as Red Hat supports RHEL, which is 7 years after each release.

I find this interesting. Linux zealots are always ranting about the value of "choice", but is it possible for the open source community to support as much "choice" as there currently is in the Linux market? Sure some of the distributions might be able to stick around, but not all. Eventually there will have to be a big die-off, with the community rallying around the strongest survivor(s).

IMO much of the current "choice" is more the result of ideological differences and politics than it is technology and features.

Maybe SkyOS has something in store for us?

i think whoever (ms, apple or linux) builds the first true user designed, configuarable and themeable OS will be the winner.

ms is busy trying to lock everything up,  mac is top down as well, linux has the freedom thing worked out - but everyone wants to make their own version of it = too many versions

applications are no different.  they are all top down.

acutally - everything we use today is completly backasswords...

OS's and applications should be completly configurable by the user - from the desktop to the error messages, to where buttons appear, to what toolbars you see - to where they go (up,down,side,out,) to what menu text is called, to what links appear in filemanager panes, etc etc

once someone designs these systems for the user to dress as they wish -  all others will be shown as the wolves they really are without the sheep clothes

<cue ms responses>
- what about the lowest common denominator? grannies! think of the children.

= you would set the age as the OS installed - you would be presented with choices - currently mandated within a one size fits all approach - these would have been designed to be chosen / added/ altered simply. (yes there is such a thing) - not whittled down to a sad mish mash of committee soup and PM hidden objectives

Edit - * a global "Change this" icon would need to be fleshed out.  The placement of a "Switch to default" button would need to be included on the main bar (so tech support wouldnt be stymied - sort of a live - living - safemode - just the barebones).  A universal lock/unlock icons would need to be incorporated - usually appearing near  the "Change this" icon..

Why is it File Edit View?  maybe it works for you.  maybe if it doesnt you should have power to change it to whatever you want those to read, what commands you want in them - the phrasing of those commands...  rightnow - its one size fits all

the winner will offer the simplest route to total customization, control and with it - freedom, trust and personalization

google is currently the closest...even WITHOUT an OS  (yet)

jamie wrote:

i think whoever (ms, apple or linux) builds the first true user designed, configuarable and themeable OS will be the winner.

Early versions of GNOME and KDE were just that. It's just that the users were also the developers. It resulted in a mess of a UI with everyone's pet feature shoehorned in and enabled by default. Both projects have since seen the light (in different ways).

I disagree that users want complete configurability. Most users get scared by options (even if they don't HAVE to use them) its another thing they have to remember (god knows why), but what I do agree with them on, is the fact that a solution should be well defined to what its designed for.

DCMonkey wrote:



jamie wrote: i think whoever (ms, apple or linux) builds the first true user designed, configuarable and themeable OS will be the winner.

Early versions of GNOME and KDE were just that. It's just that the users were also the developers. It resulted in a mess of a UI with everyone's pet feature shoehorned in and enabled by default. Both projects have since seen the light (in different ways).

that's true.  ms is actually in the best position of all companies right now to make this a reality... but instead of opening up - they are locking down.

example - vista is for better or worse ..different than XP.  Cut to disabled / blind person whos spent 6 years learning XP ui.  While there are features for disabled people - there is no longer the XP ui.
You remember, the eXPerience that was the defining point of XP.

Well because systems today are designed to sell more than they are to empower - those disabled users now must re-learn windows - instead of being able to choose that UI with the new vista plumbing.

"That's impossible to do!" you may say.  the way stuff is built now - it is.  but if the system was built bottom up to be configurable - keeping the xp ui in vista woulndt have been such a challenge. ( i still dont know why its not there and would use it if it was - oh ya - im also an 10 yr user - who also has to relearn the system based on the preminition that change is good - and that has been decided for me.  wow - thanks

example 2: Coreldraw has a mirad of great features and a pile i never use - but have paid for.  Would it make more sence to purchase a base app - at a much lower price - and have an application be capable of installing features at $1 or 50¢ a pop?

Looking through the menus - id have saved a lot of money for things i do not need - but are installed by default anyway.

This also means base packages - could in theory - be free - no ads, tracking, trial periods nadda.  Just the app with its core feature.  Want more - add it in.  Id be more likely to try 5 or 6 features for a few dollars - than paying 150$ every other year for an upgrade full of "better printing, more security -honest!" and yadda

So anyway - while all that is pretty close to impossible the way things are designed now - if they - or someone - or whoever just started back at the begining - with the user choices FIRST - then i bet the end result youd see on most peoples machines would more than likely look pretty much like what you see in windows now.  the only real difference is they chose it - not someone else

ps - i know this goes all over the place

stevo_ wrote:

I disagree that users want complete configurability. Most users get scared by options (even if they don't HAVE to use them) its another thing they have to remember (god knows why), but what I do agree with them on, is the fact that a solution should be well defined to what its designed for.

but if the system / application is designed from the most plain vanilla starting point there could be - how would confusion get in there - unless they themselves added it?

other posts (where ive gone on about this..)  

MS Personas - dec 2004
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=33650

User side programming -sept 2004
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=23935


"Views for Sure" Should website GUIs be configurable?  aprl 2005
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=56358

*zap - back to topic
Linux too anarchistic chaotic - ms -too controling
...so we should be needing "support" for at least another 10 years 

jamie wrote:

google is currently the closest...even WITHOUT an OS  (yet)

huh?  closest at what?

kettch wrote:

I find this interesting. Linux zealots are always ranting about the value of "choice", but is it possible for the open source community to support as much "choice" as there currently is in the Linux market? Sure some of the distributions might be able to stick around, but not all. Eventually there will have to be a big die-off, with the community rallying around the strongest survivor(s).

IMO much of the current "choice" is more the result of ideological differences and politics than it is technology and features.

Yup. There's s bit to much "choices" of software available, so it's virtually impossible to maintain a database to every software for every legacy version of a distro...

It would be better if the individual projects can maintain the packages themselves, but not every projects has the team and resources as large as Samba...

It's not so well known the packages for "inactive" versions of Fedora or other distros Samba can be found at here. It's best that if each projects can have server like this and have FedoraLegacy point to them.

Xaero_Vincent wrote:

Maybe SkyOS has something in store for us?

SkyOS Team Promises 2007 Release

The Article wrote:

After what seems about 30 years worth of work (I'm sure even more to Robert), SkyOS will finally be released to the public. Lots of details are still being worked out on this one (as well as the obvious issues still present in the system), but we're really shooting to make it happen."

And still I'm not convinsed that I'm realy going to use Linux as a desktop some day. Did you ever needed to recompile the kernel to run a driver ?!?!?

ReactOS anyone?

Jamie, what you are proposing is incredibly difficult to design properly (to prevent it becoming a mess of options that users don't understand anyway), almost equally difficult to implement, and it exponentially increases opportunities for obscure bugs ("feature X doesn't work when toolbar Y is locked and option Z is turned off") and thus the size of the testing matrix.

If MS would start right now designing Vista's successor to be the way you describe through-and-through, I wouldn't expect it to be ready before 2025. And I'm betting that when it's done, it'd still not be the user-centric paradise you are imagining.

EDIT: I'm not saying all customization is bad, and it definitely can be done right. Visual Studio 2005's customizable automatic formatting is a good example of useful customization (and even there it results in literally hundreds of options burried in complicated options dialogs). But I think it's too difficult to do on the scale you are proposing.

I have to agree with Sven, that would be an absolutely massive undertaking both in terms of actually developing such a monster and in the cost of training people to maintain and support it.

It would also mostly be a waste of time, because the average Joe Bloggs doesn't customize things. Developers, yes. Advanced users, yes. The other 99.99% of the population, nope.

If you didn't have to care about old software, I'd say it's not far fetched to build the desktop (shell), explorer, IE, mail and other basic stuff users regard as "Windows" purely with WPF. If you cheated a bit, applications running in this would be running inside the WPF "shell", not as native processes thus avoiding playing around with the interop too much.

And since they'd be built with WPF, it'd be much simpler to customize their looks too I guess.

It would probably take a monster of a machine to run that smooth, but in few years maybe not.