Comments on: Linux Standards, And Why They Shouldn’t Matter

By: Response to “Ubuntu Server Edition: Where’s the Official Support?” « Desktop Revolt

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 01:44:49 +0000

[...] market share and a huge user community”, you’re calling people “freetards” (http://www.workswithu.com/2009/06/01/linux-standards-and-why-they-shouldnt-matter/) and “free-software militants” [...]

By: jaklumen

jaklumen — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:40:13 +0000

@Bogdan: excellent article.

The gist of the article is hardware standardization happened YEARS ago. Anyone remember the PC clone wars that yielded the buzzword “IBM-compatible”, then rendered it obsolete? Apple did not fold, but proceeded to crush the “Apple II-compatible” Franklin Ace offerings, when Steve Jobs was at NexTel. However, the PowerPC CPU finally folded to Intel and now Macs don’t have as much proprietary hardware as they used to. Alternate OS virtualization was discussed on Apple computers at least 20-25 years ago, and now… Boot Camp. How many forget the former, but instantly recognize the latter?

So why is software standardization so dreaded when it could very well be inevitable as well?

@Chris Tozzi:
“Militant *geeks?*” Come on, use the original old-school word, hideous though it may be: NERDS. I mean, let’s be realistic: geek usually implies somewhat of a sense of social aptitude. Nerd… I shouldn’t have to complete that sentence. Stand back and look at the user world at large, and you can almost always find a subset of users who tweak everything to the way they want it. Linux tweakers just happen to be much more fluent in code much of the time.

I really support what you’re saying, although I will admit some articles summarized it in a much more elegant and diplomatic way than here. I agree that “choice” and “it just works” should not be contradictory statements.

@Josh (13): “Standardization does not reduce choice, it merely creates a coherent platform for which to deliver choice.”

Aye. Much easier to refer to machines on the whole (clocks, cars, etc.) rather than to explain them by the individual nuts and bolts.

For example: how many people honestly build their cars from scratch? Those that customize usually do it after-market. This shouldn’t be a foreign concept to computing.

By: Bogdan Bivolaru

Bogdan Bivolaru — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 12:58:44 +0000

I found earlier this morning this post on a similar topic http://www.raiden.net/articles/oh_no__linux_standardization_is_the_end_of_the_world__not/

By: F. Fellini

F. Fellini — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 10:30:22 +0000

Whatever happened to statically linked apps. Remember the good ol’ days. Windows and OS X apps worked because vendors often shiped dependencies along with their apps. the side effect was that poor installation systems buggered your Windows installs with incorrect versions of libraries (usually deprecated versions). Windows QT-based apps ship with their dependencies, apps that need readers come with those readers. In recent times users have been required to go to some exotic process of getting dependencies that make their apps work. In Linux it becomes one heck of a cyclical process where dependencies have dependencies that have dependencies, which makes it difficult to support everyone. How do apps like Opera do it, while maintaining the all-desirable attribute of compact download size. Standards base tries to solve the problem of change by simply avoiding the subject altogether, kinda like reigning in street slang by creating a snapshot that defines the boundaries of language by a time reference. Think of how many changes have come over the past few years with the X and sound servers, dbus, file systems, hardware support and so on.
I believe the eventual outcome is that companies like Google will adopt fledgling projects, nurture and mature them into the next generation of software that fills the gaps that exist today. For example, I can’t tell you that I ever heard of clatter before Intel announced Moblin. The redeeming quality of open source is that choice and freedom exists for companies as it does for individuals.

By: Arkadi

Arkadi — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 04:29:20 +0000

I totally agree with the writer of the post.
It is the only way to make some distro a main stream OS.

By: John

John — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:04:07 +0000

A standardised way of distributing proprietary application already developed and is in deployment. It is the LSB (Linux Standard Base). It is a common set of APIs and ABIs that any proprietary developer can expect on an LSB compliant distribution. No need to say we support X distro. Simply list LSB v3 as a requirement. Just like people list Windows Vista, Mac OS X as requirements. There is not a difference.

By: aikiwolfie

aikiwolfie — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:05:11 +0000

Perhaps it’s up to distribution developers like Canonical to make their particular flavour of Linux attractive enough to developers so that developers and consumers (of all kinds) will decide what the standard is.

Too many people are still thinking the kernel is the be all and end all of the OS. Just because we’re all using a version of the same kernel doesn’t mean we’re all using the same OS. There’s a lot more to an OS than the kernel.

Take for example FreeBSD or openSolaris or Minix or Mac OS X. Should their applications all run on Linux without alteration? After all, all of these OSs are based on UNIX. They all work to the same or similar standards and protocols. They are all different implementations of broadly similar concepts.

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 01:07:18 +0000

Totally removing the text referred to by comments removes all context for them. I guess I should have quoted your use of “freetard”. Now, no one reading the comment will have any idea what I was talking about. That’s bad form on your part. “Fool me once…” as they say. Rest assured, it won’t happen again.

By: Leo

Leo — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:01:09 +0000

Zac: you nailed it, this is a short term solution. But what I don’t understand is why this is proposed like something new. This IS happening. Oracle partners with Redhat, IBM Partners with SUSE and RedHat, etc.

In the long run, standarization will help what everyone else is asking for: consolidation. But not de-facto consolidation. Evolutionary type consolidation: since I can run Photoshop in ANY distro that follows the standard, then I’ll chose the BEST (not the one that partnered with Adobe). This will drive healthy competition and make 95% of the users to use 3 or 4 distros, like it has always been anyways

By: Zac

Zac — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 13:45:15 +0000

I personally would like to see some standardization to make it easier to develop and install third party programs. It will encourage them to support Linux and more importantly entice more users from Microsoft. Could this make it easier managing distros as well?I have no idea how this will work as the open source world finds it hard to agree on things. But is it possible? Does it change the concept of what a distro is? Can there be some sort of translator program that can allow a one step trouble-free install?

Supporting the main distros? I would like to this as a short term solution, second best option. As a comment above it is the most realistic option at this point.