Preview: Ubuntu's Performance Over The Past Two Years

[frign]

Okay

Both of you have been off-topic for some time already, but it is entertaining

Maybe you're right .
What do you think about the topic?

[frign]

Get your facts straight

X.org can't do what is necessary for today's desktop. That is the issue. Not the fact that it has too many dependencies, or that it's too big on memory use, or that it's not fast enough. You are arguing that the reason Wayland exists is basically the same for the reason why Gentoo exists. And it isn't.

A comparison with Windows is very suitable, the fact that is proprietary doesn't matter for 99.99% of the population. The fact remains that Windows > Ubuntu > Gentoo and not only in popularity. Arguing that you can do stuff in Gentoo that you can't in Windows just opens up the fact that there are many more things that you can do in Windows that you can't do in Gentoo. Arguing that Gentoo is better means pinpointing a very small thing that may be an advantage (again, may be an advantage) and ignoring the deficiencies that come exactly from that 'feature' just so that you can prove your point. Fact is Gentoo isn't very supported by the community (compared to Ubuntu Fedora etc.) and that alone is a reason not to use it. No support is really bad to have especially in a distro known for being hardcore. There is no corporate backing nothing. Absolutely no reason to use it, just the delusional argument that compiling your own stuff is somehow better. Even if it would be in some small case scenarios, Gentoo remains a very hard next to impossible sell, except of course for nerds who have nothing better to do than tweak their computer all day.

You have injected your Gentoo in this thread because you thought that Gentoo will somehow end up superior to Ubuntu. Not gonna happen.

Okay, you are officially insane. I'm sorry to tell you.

Concerning Xorg: Learn the difference between cause and effect.

Concerning the comparison with Windows: Not even close. Gentoo has a big community and has one of the best documentations next to Arch. Many people might use Ubuntu, but you can't just compare the naked numbers: If you have an active Gentoo-user, this person is with high probability skilled enough to help others.
That's the fundamental difference.
Ubuntu is developed by only one company: Canonical. It's not directly supported by the community. Even though corporate backing is great, it is better to have a skilled userbase with the right mindset, which by the way protects you from the NIH-syndrome and unfree licenses (Canonical CLA).
Most normal corporate projects (like Ubuntu) fall short and require corporate support for the end-users, because most of its users don't know their way around the system. You don't need corporate support on Gentoo specifically, because the users support themselves and provide excellent documentation.
The Linux-Kernel is a different story, because the companies are involved for different reasons and don't affect Gentoo directly (It's a GNU/Linux-distribution after all).

I don't know what you want and may never satisfy you. I get the impression you aren't even listening.
You should invest your energy into something else, because you can't win this discussion by sabotaging it. I never expect and even hope Gentoo to end up superior to Ubuntu when it comes to popularity. I prefer a smaller community with people who know their stuff.
Having spent some time in the Ubuntu-Forums taught me and will teach you this lesson soon enough. One thing is clear:

Windows or Ubuntu might be superior in the marketshare, but they are inferior to Gentoo technologically. Your unqualified, childish rants will never change that in any way.

[pandev92]

Tell me how does 3DS Max work on your Gentoo. Or games. Or Photoshop. Surely they run perfectly since it's superior. How can this Gentoo be so superior and yet inferior at the same time?

Ubuntu is 'made' by Canonical if you choose to ignore the Debian base of course.

I'm a mac user, but yesterday I installed funtoo on my pc, so easy if you read the wiki of funtoo linux. If photoshop, or others programs in the future will run on linux with .deb, they will run perfectly on gentoo like steam in this moment.

[frign]

You disqualified yourself

Tell me how does 3DS Max work on your Gentoo. Or games. Or Photoshop. Surely they run perfectly since it's superior. How can this Gentoo be so superior and yet inferior at the same time?

Ubuntu is 'made' by Canonical if you choose to ignore the Debian base of course.

It was not smart of you to bring this argument in, because Ubuntu doesn't support 3DS Max, Photoshop and most games either. If we were discussing GNU/Linux in general, then this would be a perfect point, but here it disqualifies you.
For my part, I can live without the proprietary software you exemplified. But there are solutions like Wine, which allow you to run those programs easily, and lots of free alternatives.

Ubuntu is a distribution based on the Debian unstable sources. For the most part, the Canonical developers rely on the work of the Debian package-maintainers. They apply their own patches and distribute it as "Ubuntu".
If you want to change something as a user, you must suggest it to a Canonical-employee. If you have bad luck and they don't accept the change or patch, you'll have to patch every new version manually or try contacting the Debian-upstream.
We'll see this strongly in the future, when Wayland comes to the (*)buntu-desktops and there will be a conflict between Mir and Wayland-compositors.

All in all, Ubuntu users rely on Canonical and have limited power themselves.

[phoen1x]

You don't understand what a package manager is, you think photoshop works in Ubuntu, you don't understand how popularity and quality aren't tied to each other...

If popularity means having more BO$$es around, i can't, in any way, see how that's a good thing.

Just ignore that retard BO$$. Some brain damaged kid keeps trolling like 24/7, but TBH i'm not sure if he is trolling, i guess it's mental disease.

[frign]

Troll-B0$$

Just ignore that retard BO$$. Some brain damaged kid keeps trolling like 24/7, but TBH i'm not sure if he is trolling, i guess it's mental disease.

I am not sure if you can explain his actions just with mental disease. In the end he might turn out to be a Solaris-user .

[frign]

Free Software

And you with your limitless power in Gentoo in which you can write your own kernel. Except it's only the illusion of power. Do you want to say that anything that you submit to Gentoo gets accepted?



I never said that photoshop works in Ubuntu. I was just showing the Windows superiority. Running Windows doesn't mean that you have bosses. No more than running Linux. In Linux you just have the illusion of freedom. It's not like you will rewrite your own kernel in this lifetime.

Okay, I will add to the list:

• BO$$ doesn't understand software freedom

Why exactly is Windows superior when it can run Photoshop and why are you shooting yourself in the foot by bringing in freedom? Your arguments for why GNU/Linux allegedly is only an illusion of freedom are lacking.
At the latest after it has become public knowledge that Microsoft has known backdoors in Windows and Apple & Microsoft are diligently sharing data with the NSA we all know which choice we have to make for the greatest freedom in computing.

People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both.

[frign]

The ideas of free software

So what exactly to you understand by software freedom? Why don't you give me a run down so I can refute your every point?

You could at least try it .

The FSF speaks of four essential freedoms which define free software:

• Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program, for any purpose
• Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works and change it
• Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies
• Freedom 3: The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions

Over the years, I can definitely say that these points are far from being "unreal" as you stated: Lots of software breaks those freedoms, for example:

• Freedom 0: SecureBoot, which in itself even prevents free operating systems from booting
• Freedom 1: Proprietary Software
• Freedom 2: Proprietary Software, whose source code is provided under a NDA
• Freedom 3: Restrictive "Open Source" licenses

As you can see, you can evaluate every software there is with this easy system of consecutive freedoms.

The benefits of free software are manifest!
If you can't control the program, the program and thus the developer controls you. It's that easy.
"Freedom" itself is hard to measure. It is easy, though, to see what the consequences of restricted freedom are: subordination, backdoors for authorities, compulsion to use a vendor-specific operating system (you can't disable SecureBoot on ARM-devices), deprecation of old software (code-rot happens, too, but it's fixable and often is due to no need for a given software), (total) surveillance, less security, censorship ...
In the short-term, those issues are not observable by the normal user. But the nightmare has just begun.

To finish with the words of George Orwell: "Don’t let it happen. It depends on you."

Free Software is the key to that.

[frign]

Explaining trust

If you can't control the program, the program and thus the developer controls you. It's that easy. It applies to both Windows and any Linux distro.

This could theoretically happen: A company would release a program under a free license and bring in a backdoor, which is hard to identify. This could be a problem, but never happened before.

Your limited view on the case, though, may give you a hard time understanding why it is mostly secure to use the Linux-Kernel: I don't write it myself, but thousands of people and even more volunteers check the Kernel code every day. If there is a security-hole, it usually gets fixed quickly. If it takes longer or people are still on an old revision, they are vulnerable. That's called the "0-day-problem".
You can't go all the way; there is no definite security or definite freedom, but:
I put my trust in the Kernel developers, because they prove to be trustworthy every single day, and I don't expect them to be infallible (no human is). Corporate commits are checked thoroughly.
I don't put trust in Microsoft, because it is not trustworthy. In the past, it has been revealed, that Microsoft put in a NSA-backdoor into its operating system. And we found out just a few weeks ago, that it provides all Cloud-data to the NSA.
I don't put trust in Apple, because it does the same.
I don't put trust in Facebook, because it sells user-data.
I don't put trust in Adobe, because it spies on its users.
If Linus Torvalds decided to bring a patch into the Kernel to send all user-data to one of his servers, there would sure as hell be at least dozens of people noticing it. Kernel development is a process supervised by thousands of people.

Your demands are unrealistic and far from the truth. It's like asking a boss of a big construction company why he doesn't do the work of his over 1000 employees himself. He can't trust them to follow his orders exactly every day! What if they stole something? By trying to make GNU/Linux bad, you distort reality and the term "trust" into something, which allegedly is only there when you do it yourself.
Of course, something _could_ happen, but the more people are involved, the less likely it is.
If you look at Microsoft, development happens behind closed doors. We don't know what they build into the software and you have to trust a company. The difference between trusting a company and trusting a community is that the former has a business plan and is greedy by definition. Its business interest is to control its customers.
A community of free software enthusiasts doesn't aim for highest profits and thus wouldn't for instance have the aim to sell the users' data. Unlike most companies, a community of this kind is normally regulated and there is no way for a single person to push through his own interests without being checked first.

Same applies to any other software project. The more people are watching, the safer you are. And if you stumble upon a small project, you could still check the source code yourself, which would normally be not too long itself.

Life is risky. Life with it.
And start putting trust in people; it's the first step to make friends. You most probably lack both.

[pandev92]

In fact I do trust both since I use both Windows and Ubuntu. That is what I am saying. You have to trust both since you can't actually test if they don't do bad things. You say that you trust open source guys because if something evil would happen it would get reported. Well Microsoft is a bunch of guys after all. A corporation is made of people. People who would notice if something evil is happening and could report it (even anonymously so nobody can fire them and others can check if what they say is true by a little disassembly here a little port listening there etc.). So it's basically the same thing. Where things are a little different is that you can't create a custom windows kernel. That is true. But then again most people don't do that with Linux kernel either.

Think about it this way: in any organization, if it gets big enough and does evil things there will be whistleblowers (there will always be people who want to 'stick it to the man'). You like to think that because open source is, well open, then bad things get reported easily while ignoring that the same things also happen in closed evil organizations. Now I am not saying that we should put blind trust in Microsoft or any other company, but to think that the open source world is really much more open might not exactly be true. With how things go today it's pretty hard to create a soviet style gulag without anyone knowing. Either proprietary or free.

I am not trying to make Linux seem bad, just saying that you have to trust people in both cases. Neither one guarantees anything actually.

It's not the same thing, a company has an obligation to make money, doing things right or wrong, indiscriminately. Theirs workers simply must do what the bosses tell. An open source community search the benefit for all the people.