The Linux Desktop Sucks

First the Linux hater, and now some developers and power users state what they REALLY feel about Linux on the desktop.  vanRijn experienced the beauty of sweet candy land that is the Mac OSX world and laments why we can’t see the same in Linux-o-landia.  dkite proofs more an optimist, saying yes its broken and but will get better… someday.  Also some finger-pointing to the manufacturers for not getting their act together, and states some heroic community coding is needed.  Funny how Dell engineers are helping to make Dell machines running Linux able to recover themselves, just like under the most common desktop OS.

Dorian’s thoughts: The Linux desktop worked for me, on a laptop in 2002, so stop your bitching guys.  I’ll agree the legendary saga that is fixing X and sound, etc. is reaching epic proportions.  And yes devs from vendors are leading the way in many cases.  But in some cases it seems easier to start from scratch as with Wayfarer or Moblin or PulseAudio.  Still building a solid and expandable underlying architecture is hard, so everyone does so in a piecemeal fashion.  And in traditional UNIX fashion, we argue and argue over what we want to build and how to do it.  Instead of wringing hands, help fix the problem.

Android is Not Linux

Sounds like another bad recursive hacker pun, no?  Looks like the guys at Google, took a Linux, through out the parts that worked-yes, shocking some parts of Linux actually work quite well thank you very much-and replaced them with their own jerry-rigged replacements.

Dorian’s thoughts: Why guys, why?  Just learn to use the tools, and I’m sure the standard Linux stuff works pretty darn well on a mobile device.  At least one real handset maker seems able to use the existing Linux stack, and run with it.  Sure the UI needed a replacement and some optimizations are required, but rip and replace with crappier renditions?  Not cool guys.  Google needs to learn to work with the FOSS community, and not around it.

Nokia N900s Dropping Out of Orbit

So the N900 already launched… but Nokia started pumping out, shipping out their amazing N900s and stocking retailers with these pieces of mobile computing paradise.  And unlike Google, Nokia knows how to build on top of existing Linux stacks and without stomping on existing FOSS communities.  Not like a giant robot ravaging a city… Google.

Dorian’s thoughts: Remember about us Canadians!  We’re that country above the US, and we’d like some N900s too, pretty please.

In Other News:

• A documentary on LugRadio?  Kewl!
• The Khronos guys who brought you OpenGL, OpenCL and OpenSL E, want to bring you a standard windowing framework for Linux mobile devices: OpenWF.
• Big multinationals and big government want to fix copyright to work for YOU.  YOU being a big multinational or a big government, of course.  Cause  another global over-arching treaties is a good idea.  <smirk /> And this treaty will solve one of the world’s problems: the publishing industry’s losing their profit margin, which was the highest of any industry to being with. <smirk  />  World hunger and peace can wait until next week’s meeting of “elites”.

OK, Dorian must end his newcast here and scurry back to his other work.