"Shuttleworth founded Canonical in 2004, back in the day when Linux on the desktop was, if not exactly a contender, at least a more widely discussed alternative to Windows PCs than it is today."
I feel like Linux is a better contender now then it was in 2004. Or am I just in a "developers tech savvy world" and viewing linux as a viable contender now compared to the typical layman?
It was discussed (in tech media) much more back then ("This is the year of Linux on the desktop!" used in a non-sarcastic manner), but you're right in that it is actually more viable today than it was then, mostly due to Microsoft shooting itself in both feet in the interim.
It is still unlikely Linux will achieve any sort of mainstream adoption (for a few reasons, including Ubuntu following a very Microsoft-like policy of going all-in with touch at the expense of UX for traditional desktop users, continued fragmentation of the various distros, etc), but at least these days it isn't nearly as surprising to learn some of your more casually tech savvy friends use Linux as it would have been back then.
When we talk about Linux as an OS, we don't talk about Linux as the kernel. This is very tiring to read this everytime. The Android userland has nothing to do with any of the Linux distros out there.
It's not Linux who went mainstream, it's Android userland. Try running Android applications in "non-Android" Linux for good fun.
I wouldn't be surprised if Linux achieved a majority-share in the Desktop PC market... caused by the Desktop PC becoming completely irrelevant to consumers. (If only developers own PCs, and the majority of developers use Linux, then the majority of PCs will run Linux.)
In polls here, more respondents report running OS X than report running Linux on their desktops and laptops.
So, it is uncertain whether it will ever be the case that the majority of devs use Linux although I guess there's a good chance of it happening if Apple ever decides to abandon the desktop / laptop market.
That or if someone invests heavily enough into building a coherent linux desktop.
There are a lot of great things about linux and some of the desktops are quite good (gnome 3.4+, kde) but they just aren't quite there with the small glitches and annoyances that come up just often enough to be off putting for end users.
I think linux or another free OS needs a huge backing to make it mainstream and we may see that with android (or something in a similar vein) in the future but for now the desktop is left Apple and Microsoft
Sounds like something Ubuntu has been castigated for trying to do.
Don't work on open source, unless you do everything each person wants (and these may be conflicting) then someone will decide it isn't open enough regardless of the actual license.
I don't understand why it has to be open at all. Why isn't there a company building a closed/polished corporate desktop experience on top of Linux? (Basically, doing with Linux what Apple did with BSD.) It's not like anything in Linux has switched to GPLv3, so there's nothing stopping this from happening.
Dev here. Moved from OSX to Ubuntu a year ago. Love not having to agree-click ULAs all the time. Setting up dev stacks is very often so much easier and better documented. Working with open source software to develop open source projects is very enjoyable and very often I feel this is just the beginning of something very profound.
With proprietary OSes I constantly have the feeling of banging against elaborately engineered limitations. This feels so counter-productive. Instead of producing something great why not spend incredible amounts of work-years on creating artificial limitations for the users, right. No thanks.
I don't think they are that wedded to Apple long term. Unix yes. they like the hardware but there are costs to not running on a production like environment. If docker or similar takes off it will push more to Linux as there will be less virtualization in the stack.
i'm going away from apple products as a developer due to apples fierce decision to not let me decide how I want to use the hardware I bought. No bitcoin, can't run a live USB unless it contains OS X.. all bullshit. Looking to offload my Macbook Pro and iPhone 4 as we speak and going back to linux + droid. Have been a LONG time apple user but their continued hostility and undercutting of developers ideas at the expense of developers is crooked.
Anytime someone comes up with an extremely good app.. It magically becomes part of iOS leaving that person high and dry. Done. With. That. Shit.
Even developers may not need PCs for much longer...with the emergence of browser IDEs (my startup is working on one), especially for web development, PC becomes unnecessary...Even Microsoft has taken a baby step in bringing visual studio to the browser.
take the long view...it is possible to cache data in the browser..performance is a temporal issue, there is already major performance improvements happening in the browser...don't be so quick to shoot down the browser:)
> I feel like Linux is a better contender now then it was in 2004. Or am I just in a "developers tech savvy world" and viewing linux as a viable contender now compared to the typical layman?
For the typical layman, what matters is mostly "can I get it and use it without thinking about it", which is, really, more about major vendor (both hardware and app developer) adoption than it is about substantive features. Insofar as Linux is a contender there, for the average individual user, its largely in the form of ChromeOS rather than traditional desktop linux distros, not because ChromeOS is more feature appropriate, but because of its backing.
There is a reason Microsoft is running negative ads about ChromeOS and not about, say, Ubuntu.
From a development perspective, Linux has been adequate as a main OS for a long-time, though better virtualization solutions make having to choose one OS full-time -- or use comparatively awkward dual-boot solutions -- less a reality.
In fact, it was even earlier too, e.g all around 1999/2004, when Linux was discussed to win the Desktop "any day now".
There were even desktop targeted Linux distros backed by companies such as Corel, startups working on Linux desktop/office desktop stuff (like the Evolution email client or the Nautilus file browser), and skyrocketing Linux IPOs (VA Linux anyone). Plus several attempts at releasing pre-installed Linux PCs at places like Walmarts (that most people bought for cheap and converted to Windows).
I really wonder whether this is going to be a partnership with Xiaomi...
after Hugo Barra went there from Google and made this quote "“If I do my job right, in a few years, the world will be talking about Xiaomi in the same way that they talk about Google and Apple today.”"
It appears the company will be gearing up for a big smartphone release in 2014, which would also fit into the timelines here.
Xiaomi tends to be known for the high-performance low-price phones, but have always had poor software letting the devices down.
I think/hope it will be some of those "chinese phones" which is quite interesting. Even the big ones of them like Huawei, make really good phones for good prices. Thats why I did not understand the hype about this Motorola thing for 200 bucks or something. Those china guys do this for quite a while and are now really pushing here (europe) in the market with really quality and competitive phones.
As soon as there's a powerful mobile device that comes with a Terminal as a first class citizen and lets me compile/run Go programs, I'm ditching my iOS device and getting that.
This would be amazing on a device like the Moto G or something similar. If they get this in the sub $200 or sub $100 price point with reasonable performance, it could be a real big deal.
They should be able to hit the sub-$200 price point with one of their hardware partners, but that is hardly a differentiator these days now that the Moto G and the Lumia 520 are already there for Android and Windows Phone.
I'm personally mildly excited for the idea of a "real" Linux phone, if it carries out the concept of being a phone that can be used in desktop/laptop docks (which various people have attempted without success on Android phones) to serve as your one very portable computer. Also it needs to have a competent nav/driving app. Basically the sole thing that keeps me on Android these days is Google Maps, and Google has even been testing me with that since the dreadful redesign they did with 7.x.x.
Don't the planned Ubuntu Touch phones (and the current Dev builds) run a modified Cyanogen kernel and a bionic-linked userland? (i.e. Android in Ubuntu-brown)?
As far as I'm concerned, the next Linux phone is the Jolla.
I believe the current builds run a (standard?) kernel, with a partial Android userland in an LXC container. I assume the point of this is to access some services that are implemented in Android.
They were indeed running Android with Ubuntu in the container, until the container flip a few months ago.
> I believe the current builds run a (standard?) kernel, with a partial Android userland in an LXC container. I assume the point of this is to access some services that are implemented in Android.
Most mobile devices use an Android kernel since there's far more support for ARM SoCs, etc. with the Android kernel. Plus you can't really run an Android userland without running an Android kernel somewhere; they're intimately tied (see Binder).
Excellent for Canonical. I look forward to the day I can walk into the local phone shop and buy an Ubuntu Mobile.
Bit worried by the 'high end' qualification in the OA. I'd imagine Apple/Samsung have that sewn up, and the lower end in China/Asia has the volume. But we shall see.
They are different. Ubuntu for Android is for running a desktop Ubuntu from a phone plugged into a monitor. Meanwhile Ubuntu Touch is the stand-alone mobile OS.
This could really turn into a messy war versus the crippled but strangely compelling ChromeOS, which once croutoned becomes radically more useful. Something that doesn't have those restrictions out of the box is going to have a clear advantage.
The problem from a dev point of view is just what security model for apps are they going to go with? I haven't seen any discussion about the exact details for how they plan on managing the app packaging, separation and permissions fun that exists on mobile today.
Great news, I think once you get one others will follow if it's good enough.
I've been rooting for the Ubuntu Phone ever since they released that marketing video with the docking station. That really hit a nerve for me...gogo let me buy one in 2014 :)
This also means I'll not get a Nexus/Nexus 4 for xmas now (solely for Ubuntu stuff, I own another smartphone) because I'll just wait a bit. I was somewhat set on tinkering but thankfully there's other tinkering projects.
The Venue Pro and the contemporaneous Streak Android models were designed and manufactured for Dell by Qisda.
They were indeed very solid pieces of kit, being aimed at the corporate Latitude-laptop-buying market. My Streak 5 is still going strong after four years.
Are you thinking of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bada ? I've never heard of a purpose-built BSD phone other than those (although there are plenty of unofficial ports)
Darwin itself uses very little BSD code. It's built on Mach. OS X does however import much of the BSD userland, but I don't even know if much of that makes it into iOS.
I think it'd be a fair guess to say that iOS likely contains very little BSD Unix code.
I feel like Linux is a better contender now then it was in 2004. Or am I just in a "developers tech savvy world" and viewing linux as a viable contender now compared to the typical layman?