Joshua Strobl Steps Down From The Solus Project

[Teggs]

A meme distro to another meme distro. Great!

One person's meme is another person's daily driver, apparently.

[You-]

I dont see the point bashing on Josh or Solus here. Solus is a good and stable distro. The team is small, probably too small, but they get it done. If it has no future they it will go down and nobody will care in the end.

You can like or dislike Josh, but he did a lot fot Budgie and a lot for Solus, in his free time which should be appreciated.

I havent really followed Budgie development recently, but has there been much done recently?

After the announced move to Qt there wasnt much publicly promoted development (promoted as opposed to visible in their git instance), so I dont know much work has been done recently.

As for Solus, I could not recommend that to anyone. Any distribution using deliberately outdated versions of software is open to a security nightmare. It may get away with it by being small, but it will not benefit from bug fixes or security updates for any applications that have moved to libhandy years ago.

(Linux Mint had the same issue previously - they did not turn o updates. but this lead to a backlash a few years ago. Right now I don't know their default stance.)

[You-]

One person's meme is another person's daily driver, apparently.

Definitely. There are even users of FreeDOS to this day.

[STiAT]

I havent really followed Budgie development recently, but has there been much done recently?

After the announced move to Qt there wasnt much publicly promoted development (promoted as opposed to visible in their git instance), so I dont know much work has been done recently.

As for Solus, I could not recommend that to anyone. Any distribution using deliberately outdated versions of software is open to a security nightmare. It may get away with it by being small, but it will not benefit from bug fixes or security updates for any applications that have moved to libhandy years ago.

(Linux Mint had the same issue previously - they did not turn o updates. but this lead to a backlash a few years ago. Right now I don't know their default stance.)

Well, libhandy is considered unstable by them. And there are a bunch of distributions with even more outdated packages.

Some packages they removed, the only packages which suffer this are apostrophe, gnome-music, gnome-calendar, epiphany and gnome-clocks.

Solus actually has a very up-to-date repository. But well, the argumentation for the hold-back of libhandy is quite ... a strange one, on that I can agree. If upstream considers it stable enough it probably should better be. I mean .. looking at KDE... there is quite some not so very stable stuff around.

Since I personally prefer distributions which are not "based upon X", and Arch is a hot mess when it comes to optional depends (for desktop use), I prefer Debian testing .. which often is not exactly up-to-date either .

[blackiwid]

What Mr Strobl got: "libhandy is for phones and we don't do that here" and blocking countless application updates for his petty failure to read the damn documentation.

I might be wrong but not only did this library got introduced for and I believe by the Librem team for their Smartphones, but also in germany people call smartphones or mobile phones "handy".

So he is not really wrong about it. Now do they use it for tablets or other devices, probably, too, and widen the use cases, I am sure but he is not totally wrong. I just don't see why you would limit your distribution to Desktop only and want this horrible propriatary spyware systems in much greater numbers than computers free of gnu/linux is beyond me.

About this whole thing, I think it's a storm in a water glass. A distro that nobody uses in the first place, that has to my knowledge (the desktop itself at least) no feature worth mentioning that all other popular desktops don't have. At least Unity had and has it's HUD and a few such innovations, the problem with Unity was that they tried to force feed it to their users with getting rid of any gnome support over night while still supporting fringe things likes lxde and stuff but just over night going from major desktop to not support gnome at all, even make it impossible to install gnome without breaking unity and you needed at some point 3 PPAs to get close to a full gnome desktop. Not to mention the Mir garbage.

But at least Unity had something good and bad, and some money behind it, Budgie on the other hand, maybe they hide their super great features somewhere is just another desktop that behaves like every other desktop on linux.

Heck even PopOS has introduced tiling support and a few other things to the gnome desktop and soon new desktop. Just googled for it they have a window shuffler, but that is nowhere close to a real tiling support that uses the available space most efficiently, like open the first window maximized and with a 2nd application by default split the screen, to show them both.

Which I never get, that under Linux there are desktops and window manager that focus on mouse users and one that focus on keyboard users, but no desktop tries to use both user groups, like people are binary and on different wake stages or tasks they want to use their computers differently.

[You-]

Well, libhandy is considered unstable by them. And there are a bunch of distributions with even more outdated packages.

Some packages they removed, the only packages which suffer this are apostrophe, gnome-music, gnome-calendar, epiphany and gnome-clocks.

I highlighted a huge problem for you in there. A browser is a huge security hole and any browser must be patched and be kept up to date. There are no two ways about it.

(I agree with the rest of your post after that bit that I didnt quote)

So he is not really wrong about it.

Of course he is totally 100% wrong about it. You can play semantics, but desktop apps use it in their desktop/non mobile modes. Developers found it useful so they added it to their apps.

The two valid choices are to not allow apps that use libhandy, and remove any apps that have been updated to use it, or use libhandy. I will say the latter is easier, but if you have technical reasons, the former is an option.

The only option when you are unwilling to update an app because it has started to use libhandy is to remove it totally. Insecure apps are a danger.

Ofcourse this also exposes him as a developer with a closed mindset, not allowing choice etc, mudballs that he throws at others.

[blackiwid]

The Linux community and development in essence: wars, infighting, a huge duplication of effort, creating bicycles, creating half-assed products instead of fixing years old issues in already existing projects.

Well in windows you can't fix other projects or do forks, if a software really sucks or has bugs for years, you either use or you can shut up because nobody want to listen. Yes if you have no public forum often and ignore all feedback and have 1 or 2 dictators of a project and bind all developers inhouse by working contracts and Signed NDAs and stuff. Sure you don't see any fighting publicly.

And if people are unhappy about it, they start doing the minimum work to not get fired or in trouble. More defensively they don't risk anything anymore have no visions nothing.

While I agree that Distributions is a lot of ego boosting, Ohh I have another distro that does absolutely nothing special except a different theme, but it has my name on it or in the about page. I rather have 90% garbage distros and good innovations in the other 10% than having 1 Desktop that sucks (Windows) where there is no way to fix or change anything except some minor things.

Press should maybe stop talking about distros then they would not attract so many narcissists that like to read their name on newssites every few days or 6 months, by doing useless reinventing the wheel the 5000 time. Again I am not saying it would be healthy to have only 1 desktop or so, but if you have your own desktop and not work together with other desktops much, bring at least some really destinctable features not just the good old NIH Syndrome.

[blackiwid]

Of course he is totally 100% wrong about it. You can play semantics, but desktop apps use it in their desktop/non mobile modes. Developers found it useful so they added it to their apps.

But why do they use it? Because they want to support also other devices mainly phones right? I agree that supporting phones is no bad thing and should not be a reason to ban a technology or that his reaction made any sense (knowing not the internals enough of this project), but what you call semantics is the main point, yes it was made for phones and it's major reason for existing and reason to use it, EVEN if it would be now this thing that gave applications on 100% desktop only apps some great advantages, which I would be wondered about, does it? It would still be true that it WAS made for "Handies" aka Smartphones.

But maybe you only did not articulate what he was stupid about well enough, that it is made for handies is at least not what he god wrong, he might have missed something different important but you expressed that not very well so far imho.

[You-]

But maybe you only did not articulate what he was stupid about well enough, that it is made for handies is at least not what he god wrong, he might have missed something different important but you expressed that not very well so far imho.

I will respond to this bit first. It is highly stupid to leave an app not updated with the latest security fixes, especially if it is a web browser. That is asking to get your users hacked. If you do not want libhandy in your distribution, fine. as it is your distribution, your rules. But do not leave apps without updated and exposed security vulnerabilities.

But why do they use it? Because they want to support also other devices mainly phones right? I agree that supporting phones is no bad thing and should not be a reason to ban a technology or that his reaction made any sense (knowing not the internals enough of this project), but what you call semantics is the main point, yes it was made for phones and it's major reason for existing and reason to use it, EVEN if it would be now this thing that gave applications on 100% desktop only apps some great advantages, which I would be wondered about, does it? It would still be true that it WAS made for "Handies" aka Smartphones.

It may have started off as focussed on smartphones, but it ended up as a utility library. It could just as easily have been called LibEgg, LibEel, LibFoo, or have been a copy pasted set of files that every application bundles with its own fixes and hacks (like gnomecanvas/foocanvas/eelcanvas).

It isnt aimed at just mobiles. It contains other widgets that may change faster than the normal pace of major gtk releases. Not allowing the library to be included because it is called libhandy or because it was originally aimed at mobile is stupid. By the same account they should not include clutter/cogl which were originally targetted by Nokia for the Maemo mobile platform.

[blackiwid]

You- that made now more sense being a bit more extensive and nuanced or specific explains your point better. Maybe I am not used to twitter size polemic statements. But thanks for clearing up what you meant.