KDE Developers Continue To Be Frustrated With Canonical

[chrisb]

Maybe you should have concentrated more on quality than quantity when selecting the quotes then? But when Martin basically says "I never intended to insult Ubuntu in the past, but I don't care anymore now"

A normal person does not interpret "I have never attacked any of the Mir developers or have attacked the software in any way... I have in no way attacked Canonical, Ubuntu or Mir." as meaning "I never intended to insult Ubuntu in the past, but I don't care anymore now"

[Andrecorreia]

this guys don t have life!

this dev cant understand something, canonical dont cares about this opinion, or kde, they drop kubuntu support long time ago

[jayrulez]

You know that I'm German and part of being German is being blunt and direct. You can see pretty much the same btw. with Lennart. It's no surprise, we are both very technical people :-)

I know quite a few Germans. None of them are dicks. Your nationality should not be used as a valid excuse for your behaviour.

[GreatEmerald]

It is difficult to infer from that anything other than the fact that you think "Canonical sucks". Maybe you didn't mean it, but that is how it will be interpreted when you say "Canonical sucks.. is a valid approach". Consider "I can't just say that KDE sucks to discard them as an option, even though I think that is a valid approach".

Eh? By this logic, your words here read as "It is difficult to.. think". That's not how people interpret the words, if they actually read attentively.

A normal person does not interpret "I have never attacked any of the Mir developers or have attacked the software in any way... I have in no way attacked Canonical, Ubuntu or Mir." as meaning "I never intended to insult Ubuntu in the past, but I don't care anymore now"

Then I'm not a normal person? The form "I have never..." implies an action that has never happened up to the present. It does in no way imply that it won't happen in the future. "I have never seen this newspaper; it looks pretty interesting" is a valid sentence, and it means that the person has just seen the newspaper.

[chrisb]

Your statement about KDE is clearly an direct attack, my statement would be the same if there is not the fact behind it "I can see this in the bug tracker". As said I can give references for that (published before that blog post). Thus it's for me a fact and a fact can never be an attack. That's certainly also something about culture. You know that I'm German and part of being German is being blunt and direct. You can see pretty much the same btw. with Lennart. It's no surprise, we are both very technical people :-)

"KDE has always had some of the worst software in the free software world. I can see this in the bug tracker. The quality of KDE software is really bad." : that would still be interpreted as an attack. What you are saying is that you get more bug reports from Kubuntu users than for other distributions, which, in itself, would be a completely valid statement. But the way it is stated is antagonistic. You can state that fact without the emotional language ("worst", "really bad")

I had been thinking about what you wrote and the quotes you picked.

I probably went overboard on the quotes. Sorry. I just wanted to show why some of the Ubuntu developers might be upset by some of the things that have been written. And misunderstandings only escalate the problem. At the end of the day, most Ubuntu developers are working on free software because they like free software and want it to succeed. They care about their work, just like you care about your work. And when you care about something, you feel emotionally connected to it. They are not monsters; they are decent people, with families etc. But when their work is criticised, they are going to take it personally, because that is what people do. (And, no, I am not an Ubuntu developer...)

[chrisb]

I know quite a few Germans. None of them are dicks. Your nationality should not be used as a valid excuse for your behaviour.

You are absolutely right, but it is also true that cultural differences can be a valid reason for misunderstandings. What is acceptable behaviour in one nation can be completely unacceptable behaviour in another. What is interpreted one way in one nation may be interpreted in a different way in another. And that does include simple things like the way that people act and speak.

[chrisb]

Eh? By this logic, your words here read as "It is difficult to.. think". That's not how people interpret the words, if they actually read attentively.

I think you are just proving the point - that different people, of different native languages and nationalities, will interpret things differently.

Then I'm not a normal person? The form "I have never..." implies an action that has never happened up to the present. It does in no way imply that it won't happen in the future. "I have never seen this newspaper; it looks pretty interesting" is a valid sentence, and it means that the person has just seen the newspaper.

It's more complicated than that, because it depends on what the context is. "I have never tried skydiving" indicates that I may be interested in trying skydiving. "I have never murdered a child" certainly does not imply that I might be thinking about changing this status.

[Alex Sarmiento]

Well, no because every company changes is essentially for their own benefit and majority of changes are not reviewed by Linus at all. You can point out to a few silly flamefests but that doesnt change the simple fact that Linux kernel development is almost entirely dominated by commercial organizations. You do need appropriate licensing and policies with neutral governance and those are provided by non-profit foundations like FSF, Apache, GNOME foundation, Linux foundation etc. If you have a real concern, state it directly. Merely pointing out commercial influence is not news to anyone.

You are chasing your own tail around my point . I have no concerns about the influence of companies on the open source code for their own benefit . Actually i pointed out directly that Wayland is dominated by some commercial interests . This group behind Wayland does not like the fact that Canonical decided to do its own thing . And Canonical decided that their strategy is better served by doing their own thing with MIR. Having said that i do not understand the FUD and melodrama against Canonical , even more when the so called community is in reality a community of companies .

Regarding linux. My point was that despite the fact that a lot of companies contribute to the code of the linux kernel, and that the linux code is what it is today in great part thanks those contributions , the maintainers of the mainline kernel have to deal with a lot of self-interests from a lot of companies . I pointed out a couple of examples to illustrate my point. Linus and the other maintainers who review the submitted patches have to rule with an iron fist to maintain some neutrality against the self interests of some companies . It does not matters how many times you repeat the state of the obvious about the contribution made by companies, that's not the point since that's redundant . So i am very skeptical the same thing is happening with Wayland and , of course, with MIR. And i am certain that there is no neutral governance in MIR. Wayland, KDE/KWIN or Gnome .

What all this means? It means that all the nonsensical FUD surrounding this "controversy" is driven by the interests of these companies. This also means that these KDE developers are whining about the wrong thing, a dead horse , the most ridiculous whining . Furthermore, all this rationalization on technical merits and supposed "anti-comunity" is nothing else than just BS.

This means that users and developers will have to decide what is better for them. Going for the business of red hat and intel or the most desktop oriented approach of Canonical . There is also a conflict of interests in the tablet and smartphone arena. So i suggest to the users to pick what is better for themselves , not what is better for this so called "community" of companies.

[marciocr]

You are absolutely right, but it is also true that cultural differences can be a valid reason for misunderstandings. What is acceptable behaviour in one nation can be completely unacceptable behaviour in another. What is interpreted one way in one nation may be interpreted in a different way in another. And that does include simple things like the way that people act and speak.

And this can explain the "Tea party" issue.
For a American "Tea party" it is just a conservative people. But for a European, because of "extreme right" image that the media sold, "tea party" is a extreme right people. And for a German, can be sound like neo Nazi.

[dee.]

Yeah, that's the point - Intel does not want to be nonexistent on mobile.

Sure, maybe not. It's not their main source of income though, and probably never will be (not in any near future anyway). Intel makes more money on desktop/server CPU's than many ARM SoC manufacturers counted together. The competition on the mobile side is tougher, profit margins slimmer.

Yes, desktops are profitable, but sales are falling, and mobile sales are increasing. Also ARM is making moves around server CPUs. There is a risk for Intel that ARM could come to dominate the server world, particularly in large Google/Facebook-style datacenters where ability to run legacy x86 code is no advantage.

Oh plz. Sales are falling? Yeahright. Sales of winAche machines are horrible because no one wants them. The desktop PC is simply falling back to it's roots, the markets had been artificially inflated anyway. The truth is however, tablets and other mobile gadgets are never going to replace the desktop PC entirely, there will always be need for high performance machines for various uses. PC gaming hasn't seen any kind of decline, on the contrary, it's been increasing and eating away the consoles. Sales of gaming PC's is steady as ever. Also there's software developers (which is still a growing profession), graphics designers, animators, musicians, web designers, CAD designers, enterprise workstations... a whole lot of huge markets for desktop PC's that will never be replaced by tablets or phones.

ARM is not yet a huge threat for servers either. Maybe for some applications but I'm not seeing the server markets jumping to abandon x86, POWER or other server archs in favour of ARM right now, simply because of performance reasons. ARM has poor per-core performance and not all tasks can be parallelized. For parallelizable tasks, GPGPU is where it's at anyway.

They once demoed MeeGo hardware, how did that turn out?

Durr, are you stupid? MeeGo died only because MS infiltrated their mole, Steve "The Elopstrophy" Elop aka. Hungry Steve, into Nokia, who managed to kill the OS - a lot of Meego development was tied to Nokia, and when Nokia abandoned the platform, Meego went bye bye (later to be resurrected by Jolla in the form of Sailfish). That's when Intel entered partnership with Samsung to develop Tizen.

Unless Microsoft manages to do the same thing to Samsung that they did to Nokia (highly unlikely, the Japanese are tough nuts and used to the world of Big Business, unlike Finns) it's not going to happen again. Samsung is very committed to Tizen, they want and need another option so they don't have to put all their eggs in Google's basket - particularly, when Google is constantly excerting more and more control over the Android platform, and making it more and more closed.

I doubt that Intel management thinks Linux is going to replace Windows and OS/X on desktop, or even ultrabooks. What does a normal consumer want to own - a Macbook Air or a Samsung Tizen?

A normal consumer doesn't care, as long as the computer is easy to use, and can do the things they require from a computer. For most normal consumers, this includes web browsing, games, document editing, videos/music, etc. Since Tizen's desktop version is a full-fledged Linux distro, based on glibc, rpm, systemd, GNOME and Wayland, it will be able to use all the same Linux software that regular Linux distros already have - Steam client will run on it, most other Linux games will probably also run on it, software like Libreoffice, GIMP, Audacity, Ardour, Firefox, etc. all will run on it. Also, since it uses Intel's x86 platform, even proprietary software will run - with ARM platforms, you only get proprietary software if the author is willing to port it.

Also, curious that you use Macbook as your example here, as Macs have never been market leaders by any stretch of imagination... most consumers don't want Macs, because they're too expensive. Only real Apple fans buy macs because of the hipster factor, they pay for the brand because they think it makes them part of some kind of trend or movement...

If Intel brings Tizen ultrabooks to the market, they will be able to undercut both Win8 and Macs in price. Win8 is hugely unpopular, so people will definitely buy any viable alternative that is offered. And since Intel has the resources to bring these computers to actual retail stores, to the reach of average consumers, it's the best chance currently to bring desktop Linux to the masses.

Even Samsung isn't fully committed to Tizen, and for good reason ("Samsung Slowing Development Of Tizen OS, Postponing Launch Of Smartphone Revision One"). Samsung would love to be the next Apple, with a complete vertical stack of OS+hardware, but I don't see it happening. Maybe I'm wrong, and in a few years Microsoft/Apple will be dying on the desktop, and Samsung Tizen will reign supreme...

That's bullshit and rumours, Samsung is very committed to Tizen. They have several Tizen phones on the way, and the next Galaxy phone will possibly be published with both Tizen and Android versions.

http://www.tizenexperts.com/2013/08/samsung-co-ceo-we-want-tizen-to-be-on-everything/

"Shin [Samsung Co-CEO] also brushed aside recent rumors that Samsung would drop Tizen, and maintained that the company considers it a key operating system alongside Android and Microsoft?s Windows Phone platform. "

Whether ARM can compete with the performance of x86 depends on your application. It's not just about pure performance, but the tradeoff between power consumption, performance, and cost.

Yes, and that's why they do well on markets where those things matter, ie. mobile.

Intel is also already bridging the gap in power consumption with their latest mobile chips, which means that ARM can only compete in price, however, the price differential is not nearly as noticeable on the desktop market as it is on the mobile market.

There may be no real ARM desktop computers yet, but that doesn't mean there won't be in 5 years time.

No, but there probably won't be. Since tablets and other mobile toys are taking over the part of the market that only needs a computer for facespace and twatter, desktop computers are increasingly going to focus on the parts of market where the strengths of the form factor are important, and that means high performance, customizability/extensibility, ergonomics, etc. I'm not saying it's impossible that an ARM-based computer with those attributes would emerge, but I don't see it very likely in this timeframe.

The latest tablets are as powerful as desktops of a few years ago. If Apple released an ARM based iOS desktop with a touchscreen that ran all the Appstore apps I'm sure they would sell. Or an ARM Macbook Air that runs for 60+ hours on batteries alone. That would sell. It's only an accident of history that they ended up with two different platforms, and it's not at all obvious that they will remain separate in future.

iOS laptop, seriously? Get out of here. Yeah, that idea of combining mobile/desktop interfaces went really well for Microsoft... Apple may be doing lots of stupid shit, but at least they know that desktop/laptops and mobile require different interfaces. Also, desktop/laptop users are far less tolerant of walled gardens than mobile/tablet users.

Besides, Apple is already declining in market share anyway. They peaked in 2012 and have been on the decline since. After they lost Jobs, they haven't been able to recover, they've now stopped innovating and only concentrate on patent trolling and other such strategies. Apple is never going to gain mainstream popularity, simply because their products are overpriced, and most consumers cannot afford them.