Discussion on:

2011: A year full of right and wrong for Linux

I would not name Mandriva 2011 a "high point". Instead, I'd rather put it into failing list.

Anyway... is it coincidence, or something else, today I published my own top three failures and successes in Linux-2011.

http://linuxblog.darkduck.com/2011/12/three-greatest-failures-in-linux-world.html
http://linuxblog.darkduck.com/2011/12/three-greatest-successes-in-linux-world.html

First, I am not so pessimistic about Linux on tablets. Once Windows 8 tablets hit the market we're going to see a huge shakeout of the market. People are going to see Nook and other eReaders invading the Android space and expect Android and iPads to drop price to compete. These will be the entry level tablets that will suite most users. But there will be a higher level tablet market that will mostly appeal to business users. This will be your Windows 8 tablet space, and I predict before long even an OS X tablet. In such an environment Linux will do what it always does best, improve the OS offerings of the hardware sold for the higher end tablets.

And secondly, I happen to really like Unity and wish everyone would get off the Unity-bashing bandwagon.

Of course both these quibbles may just be wishful thinking on my part.

You cannot write off Linux-in-a-tablet without quoting the guys who are actually doing something about it: the guys at the startup basysKom and their project, Plasma Active. They are tucking a Linux system with a heavily modified version of KDE, with relative success. They began with a WePad, and now you have Plasma Active running in Tegra 2 tablets and in the Nokia N950.

Expect Plasma Active Two in a matter of weeks.

I'm running the latest Ubuntu distro and while I'm not a power user (it's basically on a box used only to run Chromium and store some docs and photos), I've never seen anything to be displeased by.

Having said that, with all of the good press that Mint has been getting, I'm thinking about switching over just out of curiosity.

I've never been more disgusted with a linux distro as I was when I logged into Ubuntu 11.10 ... my last experiences having been with Debian and Gnome2.

The concept of Unity is great ... what *isn't* great about it is the distance for selection ... top left, get active ... then move more than 10 % of the screen diagonally out just to get to the first icon ... and after switching to Applications view ... then having to go to the far right to select the common grouping that you would normally have had under the menuing system which was centered around the upper left side of the screen only (unless you customized).. Then add into this if you selected say System ... on the right ... ran the app tile .. then came back in .. and went into applications again.. the last menu used was not the one that was active now ... it went back to the default of *all*.

Worse than this, in Ubuntu, was the File-Help menu structure being removed from the application window to the top panel ... if you're running full screen with all your apps, maybe then that would make sense ... but if you're windowed .. it leaves you traveling from where ever your mouse is now .. all the way up to the top to activate the file menu .. granted you can use keyboard shortcuts, but you shouldn't have to force users to learn them simply because the interface separated the controls from the window .. the whole point of HAVING the controls with the window is because its clear their association ... if you have a FILE menu on the edge of the windowed program you're dragging around or typing text into .. etc.. then you *know* that FILE menu is for *that* program .. while the NAME of the program shown in the top panel bar as soon as the "file" menus were active (mouse in the area) your program name was partially obscured, thus if you were alt tabbing to different windows you might mistake which window is active when trying to do File ~ Help menu items!

Worse evan than Menu/Window relationship, and worse still than this huge travel for your mouse hand ... is the incomplete thought and nature to some of the default tools .. this goes directly to heart of Gnome3 .... Bring up System Settings ... go into Screen .. or Background or Displays ... all of these separated functions.. SOME OF WHICH BELONG together .. like Display, Background, and Screen ... you go into ONE of these functions.. and the TITLE BAR changes to that function .. Screen's title is "Screen" right below that .. what do we have? A button that says ALL SETTINGS ... WHO IN THEIR RIGHT F**KING MIND LOOKS AT THAT BUTTON, ITS POSITION IN THE APPLET, UNDER THE TITLE BAR of "Screen" THINKS "ALL SETTINGS" SHOULD TAKE YOU BACK TO SYSTEM SETTINGS??!?!?!

Most people.. see that button and their first reaction seeing a minimalist set of options or "Settings" in a window like Screen or Display .. etc. will think you hit the "ALL SETTINGS" button and it will show you ALL SETTINGS OF SCREEN! or of DISPLAY etc etc etc..

THAT SINGLE CONCEPT proved to to me instantly that both Unity and Gnome3 is stuffed with a bunch of f*ing morons. If you cant associate how things SHOULD BE grouped together... then you have really lost your way.

The LAST point of issue .. is making it easier FIRST TIME as well as later, access to a switcher INSIDE your login, that helps you customize features without having to resort to bringing up DConf or a browser to search for how to do things simply because they aren't logically thought out.

Lets take for example.. the bottom bar in standard Gnome3 ... great running applications show up there... much like the start bar in windows .. but to start another application you have to go back up top, and you have a bar up there... so now you have 3/4ths of an inch of screen space lost to these two bars. No simple way to "combine them" because.. oh yeah.. the File-Help menu structure goes up into that mostly barren top bar ... add to this under Unity & Gnome that the side launcher bar isn't an auto hide .. its there if you move up to the corner in Gnome3 and there all the time in Unity .. loss of screen realestate again.

and why don't you have simple but complete tools to fix this? Oh.. System Settings.. yup.. again.. NONE of those options are there.. not even to fix the absurdly thin side walls that make it damned near impossible to stretch top bottom or side.. sure.. the BOTTOM RIGHT corner has been "enlarged" to make it easier to grab from *THERE* but what about where my mouse is now? so again.. the user is penalized by making them move their mouse over all hell and creation..

And last of all of this.. the simple fact that the design is Tablet and TOUCH centric .. it is *NOT* for a standard desktop system ... key in that is mouse movement .. you've designed the interface for fat fingers on the computer screen to make selection and action easy ... FOR A TABLET ... but not everyone is ON a tablet .. and in contrast .. as above and elsewhere people have said they don't have tablets running this OS yet.. So why is the default presentation to a user ... as a TABLET -centric interface without an easy and clear way to change it from the beginner and novice point of view? Sure.. if you are super geek .. you know to uninstall X and reinstall with KDE or something else.. but you're not even presenting THOSE options to the user because they are competitors.. well why not make your interface something easily customizable out of the box so that the user doesn't have to resort to (or out of frustration of) dumping Gnome for someone else?

Its that arrogance of thinking that is also killing linux on the desktop .. make the tools, make them easy to use, make them easy to modify or to switch without users having to resort to google searches and you'll finally start making inroads to the average (or lower) computer user that can USE the pc but not build one.

Unity may have been an unusable 'mess' on 11.04, but it doesn't appear that you even looked at it on 11.10 yet - as autohide for the left panel is the default! If you actually set up your 'likely to be used' programs where you need them, Unity is actually a very fast, easy and clear way to operate.

What it is NOT yet, is easy to customize, especially in ways that people have been used to. The difference between the first 2 releases convinces me that all will be well soon (probably in time for the LTS release). Not even Linux can get it all done in a day...

By the way, the Mint 12 direction is also very interesting, but it is not quite ready either - so you might try what I'm doing right now - working on Mint 11 OR on Ubuntu 11.10 depending on what it is, and slowly setting the Ubuntu up to do what I need. Switching between tasks is actually fast and simple there - good for actual work tasks but not so good for fun tasks.

Hopefully didn't ramble too much, but you have to keep trying something out before you can hate it effectively... which is why I didn't hate Vista (couldn't be bothered to try it out enough to learn how badly it actually performed so I could rant about it knowledgeably!). Just don't use it if it doesn't match up to your 'way' of working - don't jump all over others that might find it good!

Find it good?

do *YOU* like to move your mouse the length of a football field to get access to what *were* menued items before?

And what about the REST of the mess.. the disconnection and disassociation of buttons and menus?

did my "All Settings" completely zoom over your head? Again.. who in their right mind puts "All Settings" on a button under a title bar for ONE specific "Setting" rather than "Return to Settings" or "Return" or even "All System Settings" or "System Settings" on the button ....

If you're going to defend a POS interface.. then nail EACH point.

The interface again.. MAY be great for a touch screen .. but IT DIDNT EVEN BOTHER to find out if the USER was going to be on a touch screen or a standard laptop/desktop screen and then configure the method for access properly..

you can't force a touch screen interface onto a user with a mouse.. it DOES NOT WORK! You have to design the interface for MORE than one specific set of user ... and if not.. you're going to do nothing more than turn that user against you. And *THAT* is where the Unity and Gnome 3 hate comes from...

Again.. make it easy for the USER to control the interface type.. and you'll go a hell of a lot further down the road of Desktop Linux Adoption. Failing that .. all you do is provide users a piss poor interface from an ill conceived idea.

I rather dislike things like having to open an application before I can permanently put a shortcut for it in the dock/bar/whatever-the-hell it's called this week, some applications that for some reason will not persist there no matter how many times I try to place it there permanently, windows that randomly decide to change size and shape because they decide that a mouse movement with no button-click means I'm trying to resize, toolbars/docks/whatevers that sometimes insist on unhiding behind an application instead of in front of it, and scads of other problems that I ran into while using Unity (due to command from on high; I sure didn't choose it for myself).

I call the wretched abomination on the left side of "Unity" the Wiper.

I am the systems admin at a school in Sweden. We run Ubuntu 11.04 clients. No one has complained or even suggested that we return to 10.04. During this term 3 people have asked me to remove MSWin from their computers and replace it with 11.10. Our teachers (those that complain the most over change) were given the choice with new dualboot laptops and only one chose to return to MSWin (within a week it need ghosting). I cannot, therefore, see that Unity is a failure it just requires some open mindedness.

A small addition concerning the vote. I am unable to vote because there is no row: Good: Thank you Ubuntu.

UNITY, "yes", made a bad appearance before 11.10 in that users were thrown into a brand new menu/bar interface with no alternative choice. Not such a good move. With 11.10, there were a LOT of new "nice" features added. The system still has missing components that one would expect in the distro ... and you still have to "Google" and find the cheat steps to get your CHOICE back so that you can "choose" whether you want to log into UBUNTU with the Unity or the standard menu.

Me? I installed a "dock" utility and got rid of the Unity bar. Now it "hides".
Ubuntu still needs work on the Unity ... but the rest of the OS ... "good job" guys!!

Works just fine on my Toshiba Portege, even better than XP Pro!

A highlight this year was the release of Centos 6 and the easy upgrade through the continuous release rep to 6.1. Server users will have several years of stable use and and easy maintenance path.

Gnome 3 isn't that bad although, for full disclosure, I did switch from a Gnome 3 and Avant Window Navigator environment to XFCE4. 3.2 is a lot better and I may switch back for Fedora 17.

Those unhappy people on mail lists have been that way since Usenet. The real problem is that they provide a bad example of how to behave for new list members.

It's sad that in an article about Linux, you don't even mention at least Dennis Ritchie.

I was thinking along the same lines. Both Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy died around the same time as Steve Jobs. From a purely technical perspective, Dennis Ritchie's death (and probably McCarthy's as well) is much more significant than Steve Jobs'. Business people might find Steve Jobs' death more significant, but technical people ought not do so.

You are totally right about users stuck in the past and defending their history with bashing and rude language as the lowest in 2011.
However: defining Ubuntu/Unity as the absolute low of Linux in 2011 makes you a user also stuck in the past and resisting change. I admit: there are a couple of things that could improve Unity but I'm absolutely sure that this will happen in 12.04. In the mean time, since 11.10, I'm a happy Unity user.
And with regards to Linux on tablets: I consider Ubuntu the only candidate that is taking the right course towards this form factor. Why? guess what: because of Unity.

As much as we would all like Linux to replace the existing OS giants on the desktop and tablets like it has on servers we seem to forget that open source is not about taking over the world, except for super villains, but is about choice.
Unity is just another choice as is KDE or Gnome. People choose to make software. Some of them then choose to make it open source. Then people get to choose what they want on their system, what system to buy and if they want Linux on that system. It's just a few clicks away on the net or you can choose to build your own system and put your choice of OS and window manager(s) on it.
To me the reason that Linux is doing so well in Servers is because the people buying them know they have a choice. Face it IT guys are the only real group out there that knows Linux exists. And a few ads or billboards are not going to change that.
But if say Google or other high profile company plus say a few BIG PC makers started doing a lot more educating and advertising for Linux then people might start to learn about it and learn of the benefits and our economic benefits and the open source economy would start to take over.
Until everyone knows they have a choice and that the choice is not just the mac kid vrs the PC windows tubby guy, Linux will just be a choice for us and not really a choice for everyone.
Open source is about choice but if no-one knows they have a choice then there really is no choice.

People know about Linux. They choose not to use it because it isn't mainstream, or it cannot run the applications people demand.

It's not [business] users who select software they need to work with.
Yes, there are OSS alternatives to many Win-applications. But not all, that's a very valid point.
Have you ever tried to run SAP from Linux? How about SAP BEx?
Without proper support from software vendors... what are we talking about?

Because I haven't met any outside IT that know anything about Linux. Name recognition is better than it use to be, but even those folks just know, "It's not Windows".

I'm not an IT pro, I know a bit more than the average user, but I'm no IT guru for sure. I meet people all the time that have heard about Linux when I tell them I use it rather than WIN or MAC, and usually that's the limit of their knowledge and interest... they don't know what open source is, and if they have, they don't trust it, thanks to free-ware and malware. But they've heard of Linux all the same. A lot of the people I play QuakeLive with run Linux, more than I would have thought... probably because QuakeLive is a quality FPS that is written in Java and Browser-based, so OS is not an issue with it as with so much other software.

The most important lesson that developers can learn from QuakeLive and Google is that software doesn't HAVE to be OS specific... Because Google Docs and other Google services are so portable, I've begun switching as much as I can to google. Anywhere there is internet, I can access and edit my documents... I don't need to store them locally. This demonstrates that the same thing is possible for ANY software... anyplace where there is a java enabled web-browser, I can play QuakeLive, and I can access my documents. With the proliferation of handheld devices, like cellphones and tablets, it's only a matter of time before ALL software is web-based

"I meet people all the time that have heard about Linux when I tell them I use it rather than WIN or MAC, and usually that's the limit of their knowledge and interest."

That's what I said; they may have name recognition but they don't know anything beyond that.

I agree that web-based apps are becoming the way to go, especially in the consumer arena. (See Justin James' blog entry on this subject: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/programming-and-development/why-html5-makes-justifying-native-applications-more-difficult/4903?tag=mantle_skin;content ) But the average user doesn't switching OSs; he runs what came on the system. (Your presence on an IT site raises you above the 'average'.) Until pre-installed Linux systems gain a much wider market share, the public will continue to run Windows.

It is really hard to get the original Quake to run on a modern Windows version. I have a wicked Quake setup going on my Linux boxes. If you're into the original Quake get an engine called Darkplaces. It is unbelievable! Some mods I like are Quoth, Warpgate, and Nehahra.

Except it's not that the software isn't out there for Linux, it is, it's more that 90% of the open source software is dead, unfinished, low on the development timeline or even just not very good. Plus like the author says, the forums for most projects like ghost-towns, and if you do finally get an answer, you've either figured it out on your own, or left it as a bad idea.

Really I think that the answer lies more with making it easier for major software developers to port Linux versions, especially for game developers. I know, there's Wine and Virtualbox, etc... but those still rely on the existence of Windows, and Wine just doesn't work for so many apps and most that do work with it require a lot of playing around to get there, plus it's not like there's one version of Linux, no one can say "yes it'll work no matter which Linux distro you're running"

Also lets not forget Intel and its current project with Samsung Tizen. Based on Meego, collaboration with Nokia (that didn't go as planned, but still a very, very promising OS), Tizen could potentially be a fourth player in the tablet arena.

"...one of the biggest 'wrongs' to plague the Linux operating system was that it still had yet to find its way onto a tablet. Yes, you can virtualize a Linux environment and Android is still (in my opinion) considered to be built on Linux,..."

I still don't get this. Why is Android not Linux?

No, it's not a full distribution. But every time the subject of market penetration comes up, someone always points out all the gazillion dedicated-purpose computers that run Linux. Cars, DVRs, GPS, etc. Those devices sure aren't running full user-configurable distros either. If those devices are cited by the community as running Linux, what makes Android any different?

I would think the explosion of Android devices would be viewed as a plus. It's probably the only Linux variant that most people can name.

oh, I read it here? LMAO

Jack is, apparently, unwilling or unable to admit in any systematic way that he knows the difference between the Linux kernel and the various OSes based on the Linux kernel. Notice, for instance, that he said "one of the biggest 'wrongs' to plague the Linux operating system was that it still had yet to find its way onto a tablet." He refers to "the Linux operating system" when, in fact, there's no such thing. There is no single Linux operating system. There are craptons of separate operating systems that are built on the Linux kernel, which is why I refer to "Linux-based systems" and "Linux distributions" and the like, but "the Linux operating system" does not exist. Before anyone gets on a GNU high horse, it should be noted that there is not a "GNU/Linux" operating system, either: there are, however, many operating systems based on the Linux kernel that use the GNU utilities as the basis of their userlands.

This unwillingness or inability to differentiate between the kernel and the OSes based on it in a meaningful way is very widespread, and I think it is behind the problems we see with people referring to how to do something "on Linux", where the explanation only works on a very small subset of Linux-based systems (primarily Ubuntu). One especially widespread example of this sort of thing is the practice of explaining how to do things at the shell, where commands start with "sudo". The majority of useful configurations out there for Linux-based systems (and other Unix-like OSes) still do not even have sudo installed as a universal sysadmin authentication tool; many such systems just use sudo the way it was meant to be used, as a way to carefully control what people are allowed to do when they need elevated privileges for some very specific tasks that happen to be critical to their job functions. Confusion arises at times when people using the "wrong" system (usually more "right" for their purposes than Ubuntu, though) run across such examples and can't figure out what's up with this sudo command that keeps erroring out.

In short, Jack Wallen is not saying that Android doesn't use the Linux kernel; he's saying it's not "the Linux operating system", a convenient fiction leveraged by propagandists and a gigantic myth that makes it difficult for the less knowledgeable to communicate meaningfully with others. Android isn't "the Linux operating system" specifically because it is not a full-featured Linux distribution in the tradition of Slackware, Fedora, Debian, Arch, or (of course) Ubuntu.

Like you may understand the subtle difference between what Linux and a distribution are. Actually the difference isn't subtle, but it escapes many as if it was.

I find myself having to deliver the same message over and over again. After about the third time one person makes the same mistake despite my previous explanations, I stop trying to correct that person and use him or her as an example when explaining things to others instead.

I'm down to asking only one more time when my memory fails me again. I better bookmark this one so I can come back to it. I don't want to wind up as 'an example'.

Your repeated questions are so far apart, and separated by so many reasonable statements and questions that do not repeat themselves without addressing previous answers to them, that my own advancing age and deteriorating memory makes me forget you ever asked before, generally speaking.

I read somewhere that Android is technically a Linux distro

I'm really loving Mint11, I've been holding off on upgrading to 12 to let some of the bugs settle out since 11 works fine for me. My only issue with using strictly open source is that most opensource software can't compete for quality. The well developed software works great, such as open office and web browsers and media players, things that everyone uses but GIMP is the best offering for the graphics/desktop publishing community and while it's much better than most other competitors in the field it still doesn't touch Corel Photopaint or Adobe Photoshop... what it does have is effects plugins though... many are better than the mainstream effects Scribus and Inkscape are the other two top open source graphics apps available and they don't even come close to the commerial offerings of Corel or Adobe, and niether Corel nor Adobe work well under wine, if at all. And that's true across the entire open source world not just graphics. So at present all Linux has to offer to the casual user is basic entertainment and office functions so WHY WOULD any manufacturer choose an OS with such limited usefulness even if their product was so hot that buyers wouldn't care?

In the end, if we want Linux to go mainstream, AND maintain the open source perogative, we have to overcome the spare-time mentality that goes with opensource
Developers might consider using services like Kickstarter.com for instance

I have to disagree that "...at present all Linux has to offer...is basic entertainment and office functions..."
Begin with graphics. Have a look at Blender, for example, or Salome (both of which may be a bit too sophisticated for the "casual" user, but both of which can run circles around many of the commercial offerings). CAD? Dassault Systemes now offers DraftSight2 for Linux (*.deb and *.rpm). Although not SolidWorks (also from Dassault), quite sophisticated for the "casual" user.
Next, let us have a look at Open Source math options- Scilab, Octave, R, Maxima, KNIME, Eureqa, NIST Dataplot (yes, Open Source from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology)- these are just the ones I have used. There is a whole universe of finished "professional" quality math applications that can do anything Matlab can do (and some things Matlab hasn't figured out yet), and quite often does it better/faster. One will likely find these applications on University servers.
Now let's talk about some SERIOUS Open Source software- too many to list here, but have a look at the CAELinux distro- "CAE" being "Computer Aided Engineering"- for some very serious Finite Element or Computational Fluid Dynamic applications that can also run circles around the commercial offerings (in the right hands).
The Linux world is full of fully functional, sophisticated software that goes way beyond the needs of the "casual user".
Another point- when one visits the quite active forums for many of these specialized packages, civility and helpfulness dominates...

I respect your opinion in what I'm sure will continue to be a shouting match.

I'd like to challenge you and everyone in this debate to direct your criticism as constructively as possible to the distro managers, because I see this as a tectonic rift and a good one at that.

The industry at large, not just the linux community are sorting out what the next generation gui will look like and how (if) it will function across devices with keyboards, touch screens, multi-touch screens and other inputs. This is no simple feat.

I don't think that incremental steps from existing popular desktops will reach that goal in any reasonable time.

I actually give credit to Canonical for taking a swing at the problem with Unity, though I agree with the general sentiment that it came out of the labs WAY too early, making alpha testers out of all of us (its REAL fault).

Let's not forget, the Linux we all know and love is the heart that beats in all of these distros and it is solid. What everyone in the industry is trying to come to grips with is how to best layer a desktop/mobile user experience on an OS (let's not buy in to the oversimplification that an OS includes the presentation layer). In the past, success has come from parroting what Apple or Microsoft do. Unity took some baby steps away from that model. A swing and a miss, perhaps, but I still say, "Hooray!" Someone in the Linux distro world is stepping out from behind the big shadows!

For me, Bodhi Linux was the best thing that happened to Linux in 2011. It gives what unity and gnome don't give, flashiness, customizability, productivity and lightweightness in one package. I'm really loving my experience with it especially with its e17 WM

First, I'm at a complete loss why LaTeX rated two negative assertions. It is a text-processing language fercrissakes! (And any *true* hardcore would be using Plain TeX anyway, but that's another story, which is my point.)

Secondly, I've got to say that other than a couple of X-Windows changes to the Synaptics touchpad drivers, Ubuntu 11.10 with Gnome3 seem just fine to this old user. Yeah, sure, I had to go fetch Synaptic Package Manager, etc, but I do whole-disk encyption on my laptops and the Ubuntu Alternative CDs make that pretty darn easy.

"Naturally I only want to address Linux, this being an open source blog and all."

That's not natural at all. Linux is not the sum total of "open source", it is not synonymous with "open source", and it is damned far from the only thing interesting about "open source". Firefox, Chromium, MySQL, and OpenOffice.org are all open source applications with name recognition in the same general league as Linux, and some of those are probably more widely deployed. LibreOffice and PostgreSQL are quickly catching up as regards name recognition as well. SQLite is not so well known, but is probably more widely deployed than all of them put together (especially considering it is a dependency of Firefox). The various BSD Unix systems collectively comprise the invisible giant in the realm of other open source OSes. Darwin OS is a far more widely deployed open source desktop OS than all the Linux distributions put together (if we neglect Android), as the basis for Apple MacOS X. As horrible a piece of software as it is, let us not forget WordPress, which powers a substantial percentage of the "blogosphere", including TR.

It's fine you decided to write an article about Linux-related news in 2011. Go for it. It's the subject you know best within the realm of open source software, and it's great at drawing eyeballs to TechRepublic. Claiming, however, that it's somehow natural for you to focus specifically on Linux just because this is the "open source" column at TR is to give the world of people who know better the impression that you probably don't know much about open source software at all.

You might want to watch that, in the future.

It's considered VERY poor form to mention open source applications that degrade themselves by running on non-open operating systems. We'll overlook your faux pas this time, dear, but we don't do that in polite society, dontchaknow?

At the risk of being tagged another "rude, temperamental, anti-social user" who's "stuck in the past" (not that I care, really), I think finding new environments to which Linux may be applied is always a good idea. However, this whole "my desktop is better than yours" nonsense, combined with the current SOP of throwing what works under the bus because it's not "new" should end, before Linux usage, outside of pure hobby and/or super techie realm, ends altogether.

Honestly, these idiotic graphical desktop distros are not what makes Linux, Linux. The Kernel and the collection of UNIX-mimicking binary applications are what make Linux the OS to be reckoned with. The GUI stuff, more often than not, creates just as many problems as it professes to solve. Heaven forbid that someone should get it right, even once, because there'll be some troublemaker waiting along the sidelines with a "fresh" version of Glib or GTK+ that obsoletes all previous versions (and all the proper working applications that used it), and the usual herd of lemmings will chase after that new, shiny thing, crying "Upgrade, upgrade, upgrade ...". What was done? Oh, the case of the externs was changed (not in the release notes).The order was rearranged, too. Some stuff was added in the middle, and at the end. You can't build older applications against it now, unless you want to spend weeks modifying them. But who cares? Nobody of account uses those old applications anyhow. Right? Oh bother.

There's nothing inherently wrong with the concept of GUI interfaces, but the competition to have the "best" and to have it on corporate and government desktops around the world, would be better were it a quality-driven task, as opposed to the propaganda-driven one which presently exists.

Referencing Distrowatch makes me giggle, something I do very little anymore, and Mandriva in particular, who have decided to shove sluggish KDE4 down their user's throats. What fun! And, just how many new distros appear each year that are merely repackaged Ubuntu-something? Take a basic Ubuntu and juice it up with your favorite applications and presto! You've got a new distro. Just make sure you give it a really silly name - one that'll stick in everyone's mind (like the Oscar Meyer wiener song), or you'll never make the list. It isn't really new, but it's yours and if you hawk well, you'll be very popular: high on the list; That is, until next month when your nemesis dethrones you. Or, you could be like Fedora, with your own little group of devotees who do nothing more with their computers than install your latest releases, and no sooner have they done that, then they begin salivating for the next one.

Seriously, people who want to develop and produce a Linux distro should be more concerned about bug-free releases, perpetual support for primary system libraries, (you can add on to them, but don't modify or rearrange the external references, symbols, and entry points), maintaining reasonable backward compatibility, instead of worrying so much about the artistic qualities of the desktop display while trashing everything you don't like.

Someone should try it and see what happens, since what's been going on doesn't seem to foster anything but peeing contests.

That deserves a standing ovation.

Call me too much conservative, but to me Slackware is still the best dirtribution. And keeps adding new useful features!
Regards fron Hector