Is Linux keeping the desktop?

[Dubslow]

Heh. 9 months and counting. (Not counting ~1/2 the summer and all of winter break, so < 9 months). I'd hardly call me experienced. xilman seems to have a couple of orders of magnitude lead over me, though then again I'm sure it's new to him too. It's also a sign of how fast it evolves.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by chalsall

Then *please* tell me how to have widgets in the panels?

Two answers:

1) I don't know. I've not tried to find out.

2) I said "you can make it look pretty much like G2". I did not say "identical to".


Perhaps I may be able to give you more information after upgrading to F16.

Paul

[Dubslow]

Originally Posted by xilman

G3 is sufficiently reconfigurable that you can make it look pretty much like G2 both in appearance and in behaviour.

That's what got him excited. (Would have made me excited too, if I used G3.)

Originally Posted by xilman

Added in edit: "Motif" rings a bell. Bad associations with the words "Motif" and "mwm" but perhaps I'm thinking of something else.

http://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html

Ctrl+F 'motif'

(I just happened to be reading this page a couple of hours before you posted )

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Dubslow

That's what got him excited. (Would have made me excited too, if I used G3.)

Sure, but as I said "pretty much" is not the same as "identically".

Thanks for the Motif link.

Paul

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by Rodrigo

Your description of Linux as, "code that controls the hardware," as opposed to the GUI which is "code that interacts with the user," was a great insight for me. In the early days of Windows, the GUI was in fact distinct from the "real" OS, which was MS-DOS. Windows ran "on top of" DOS. Over the years, this distinction was blurred and then obliterated on the MS side of computing. It's easy to forget the difference now.

This distinction is back, more and more, with the "new" trends from Micro$oft, like "CE", "mobile", "xp embedded", blabla, etc, they are calling it "OEM Layer" or "HAL" (hardware adaptation layer), it includes plenty of functions and stuff which is more or less hardware-related (but not all, for example the routines doing the calibration for a stylus, having quite high-level matrix manipulation stuff inside, which has nothing to do with the hardware itself), and it is not quite accessible to the end user, or to the normal "application programmer". But it is there, well hidden inside. Nothing new under the sun :D

[Rodrigo]

Originally Posted by LaurV

This distinction is back, more and more, with the "new" trends from Micro$oft, like "CE", "mobile", "xp embedded", blabla, etc, they are calling it "OEM Layer" or "HAL" (hardware adaptation layer), it includes plenty of functions and stuff which is more or less hardware-related (but not all, for example the routines doing the calibration for a stylus, having quite high-level matrix manipulation stuff inside, which has nothing to do with the hardware itself), and it is not quite accessible to the end user, or to the normal "application programmer". But it is there, well hidden inside. Nothing new under the sun :D

LaurV,

Very interesting, thanks -- I didn't know most of that. And this kind of process is ongoing on the software side: With each new recent version, the "main" consumer Windows has been moving steadily in the direction of hiding the innards of the system. Vista, for example, introduced the concept of "libraries" to Microsoft customers and at the same time made it harder to see the whole directory path in Windows Explorer. Windows 7 then introduced the idea of "jump lists," which I'm having a hard time telling apart from libraries but it's clearly another nudge away from the user's dealing directly with the actual folders. Vista also started hiding the Temporary Internet Files from plain view, making it harder to retrieve contents from it and eliminating one way to erase unwanted cookies.

Rodrigo

[Rodrigo]

Originally Posted by xilman

Two answers:

1) I don't know. I've not tried to find out.

2) I said "you can make it look pretty much like G2". I did not say "identical to".


Perhaps I may be able to give you more information after upgrading to F16.

Paul

Paul,

In my get-acquainted reading on Linux, I've seen that some (many? most?) of the major distributions seem to have new releases on a pretty frequent basis, like every six months or so.

What does this mean for users? Are they encouraged (pushed?) to upgrade to the new version and reinstall every last bit of software, drivers, and settings they've set up since the last release? Without upgrading, does a user quickly fall behind and lose functionality and/or security (due to end of support)? Can you upgrade to the latest version without having to reinstall tons of things? Or can you happily go on with your 2- or 5-year-old version without skipping a beat?

Thanks for any insights on this process.

Rodrigo

[Dubslow]

Each version should be stable enough to go 2-5 years, even without updates/support. Upgrades to new versions are entirely optional. You may or may not get updates ("support") to the old version after a newer one comes out, depending on the distro. For Ubuntu at least, see here as well as the lovely graphic just below the table.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Rodrigo

In my get-acquainted reading on Linux, I've seen that some (many? most?) of the major distributions seem to have new releases on a pretty frequent basis, like every six months or so.

What does this mean for users? Are they encouraged (pushed?) to upgrade to the new version and reinstall every last bit of software, drivers, and settings they've set up since the last release? Without upgrading, does a user quickly fall behind and lose functionality and/or security (due to end of support)? Can you upgrade to the latest version without having to reinstall tons of things? Or can you happily go on with your 2- or 5-year-old version without skipping a beat?

It's rare you need to upgrade unless you want new functionality. If the machine works now then, barring hardware failure or accidental damage to software (and you do keep backups, right?) it will continue to run the same way for the foreseeable future.

The one essential instance of new functionality, IMO, is to fix security problems when they arise(*). Like all good software distributors, the Linux distros push out security updates long after any other functionality changes are abandoned for a particular release.

Users are encouraged, by and large, but rarely pushed in my experience. Upgrades very rarely require reinstallation of third-party software or of user-configured settings. Again, in my experience.

Sometimes it's hard to upgrade by more than one or two versions. Sometimes it's possible but the stability of the result is questionable. In such cases, of course, you'll probably want to reinstall from scratch, requiring re-installation of third-party software and user-configured settings. (You did take a backup before re-installing, didn't you?)

Hope this helps.

Paul


(*) Asuuming that the system has a significant attack profile, by being on the net for instance. If no-one can attack it then security requirements can generally be relaxed. Though it's not a good idea, IMO, to develop sloppy habits.

[Dubslow]

Whoops. I'll just add an example to his post, namely that Ubuntu definitely does keep user -generated settings/content during upgrades.

[Rodrigo]

Originally Posted by Dubslow

Each version should be stable enough to go 2-5 years, even without updates/support. Upgrades to new versions are entirely optional. You may or may not get updates ("support") to the old version after a newer one comes out, depending on the distro. For Ubuntu at least, see here as well as the lovely graphic just below the table.

Thanks, Dubslow. And that IS a beautiful graphic, BTW! (But, how DO they pick those weird names? Edgy Eft? Oneiric Ocelot?)

Your next post was good to hear -- you've already gone through the upgrade process and didn't run into any issues having to reinstall everything. Good, good, good.

Rodrigo