Unusable until moving your mouse to the edges of the screen and clicking makes it hit the scrollbar, or the exit button. Right now it initiates a resize. For maximized windows.
Bloated how? Disk size? API area? The default non-mobile buttons layout? The number of smaller packages that are designed this way because being monolithic made people call it bloated, triggering a major reorganization to what you see now?
Qt (and probably the KDE frameworks) resource usage is so optimized they made some lightweight DEs go "out of business".
I'm curious because I would stop using Linux if there was only GTK applications (I avoid Electron as well). I think the only exception that doesn't drive me mad is Inkscape but I don't need it. I'd rather have bloat than no features at all. GIMP has a manpage for manually drawing circles for christs sake.
Again, the reliance on KDE components. I don't use KDE, therefore relying on them for a package when they shouldn't be necessary for a simple Qt application, adds bloat and dependencies that I would not use otherwise. KDE is not a lightweight DE, especially when compared to Sway and other similar tiling window managers for Wayland.
So disk size is your concern? Because you can't possibly be worried about the kind of complexity I think you're hinting at. Not when just to boot your desktop you'll have to go "over" firmware, the OSes in your disks, the OSes hidden in your CPU, the OSes inside your GPU, a bloated kernel, so on and so forth.
If you use a modern computer you're living in pure bloat. Neofetch showing a small number of packages is placebo. "But I can make sense of everything that's installed in my machine" is placebo. Installing a 5mb window manager on top of that is placebo, and Wayfire feels lighter and faster than Sway in my tests. KDE Plasma is a full desktop environment and that's why it comes with bloat (features) included. Not using Krita because of dependencies doesn't feel like a good argument in the current state of desktop software. Security wise we have so many targets to attack that a few more packages would not make any difference.
I wish it wasn't like that too though. Let's just agree we have a very different definition to what bloat is and call it a day.
The KDE Frameworks 5 libraries we use are functional, useful and have nothing to do with the KDE Plasma desktop. In any case, the word "bloat" is a sure sign the person who uses the word has no clue what they are talking about.
There are only 3 distros worth using. Fedora KDE Plasma upgrading after stabl-er point releases, Arch and openSUSE Tumbleweed.
Everything else is very unprofessional or full of technical or human issues. I'm not trying to gatekeep newbies, like, if you use elementaryOS or Linux Mint you're still using Linux. No elitism intended I'm just giving you my opinion.
For exploration or self inflicted harm you can also use NixOS or weird small distros. Although I like Nix' concepts I don't like their implementation or approach to users.
There's no point in using LineageOS after they dropped PrivacyGuard instead of expanding it. You start going down this road and suddenly you'll have a phone that doesn't pass SafetyNet anymore. You have to use 3rd-party applications and probably a ROM made by a random internet user not affiliated with LineageOS because they drop support for devices all the time. The phone manufacturers bribe ROM developers to do that or they just move on quickly.
MicroG is another really unstable experience. Google bought KaiOS and will buy the next KaiOS too. They moved and continue moving features to their proprietary castle. There's just no way you can win this fight against Google.
Long term the only solution is by some miracle a FOSS phone gets enough popularity for developers to want to make apps for it. I doubt it. My solution is unfortunately using two separates phones. Android and a FOSS one.
Privacy Guard) I was the one who purposely removed it. I spent days ( if not weeks ) trying to get it working properly ( read, it never worked properly and causes many issues we still have tickets for ) futhermore Google basically rewrote the full stack once again, while introducing the, now publicly available in 12, permission hub that somehow gave a better view of permissions and easy access to remove them. We know it removed some more granular ops, but it wasn't worth the effort.
SafetyNet) Nothing can legally pass it unless Google certifies it, we can't do much, only Google can enforce it to be used only for security related reasons
Bribing) I wish I got a single cent from any of the OEM I worked on, name it, Motorola, Asus, Huawei, OnePlus, Xiaomi.
Not once they threatened us to stop working on their devices, and at the same time didn't help at all ( the only outsider is Asus that is willingly to help )
We simply can't continue supporting every device that enters the door, we don't have any real way to improve it, everyone is doing it voluntarily with no expectation, and so do we as project directors.
I don't think anyone is especially happy about the LineageOS shortcomings you point out, but that's why people are working on supporting the mainstream Linux stack on existing hardware.
The LineageOS folks have a very difficult job to do, they must keep up with developments in AOSP while supporting dozens of existing hardware models, each with its own "exciting" quirks. Is it really any wonder that some hardware gets dropped from official support? Usually that just means bugs have turned up which would make LineageOS not fully usable on the hardware, and they don't have the volunteer manpower to address them.
Complaining about SafetyNet and microG is even less understandable, as these will always amount to unsupported hacks and we don't really need them for a usable device. Just get your apps from F-Droid, and you won't have to care about either.
I had not noticed that Lineage dropped PrivacyGuard. Damn, there really is no choice these days.
Lineage is also so frigging annoying how they just drop old phones. They won't even provide the last good build or previous builds. Really bad thinking over there in general I guess.
They do provide source for all devices, which you can just compile yourself. PrivacyGuard was dropped in order to provide compatibility with a loosely-equivalent solution that's included in AOSP, hence in most custom ROMs. Unfortunately, this also means that the supported feature set has regressed, and getting back to parity will take some effort.
GNOME being slow and not having basic features like thumbnails in the file picker after almost 18 years was often attributed, by their maintainers, to be caused by GTK3 limitations. Even now Glade still needs a lot of "volunteering" to be production ready for GTK3. I don't use GTK anymore, this is my opinion after reading a lot about it and seeing recommendations like "if you need documentation just read existing code", "why is Glade missing X or Y? just copy some XML node, just edit the XML and pray".
Anyway who cares, maybe GTK4 is good and new GTK threads will not be full of people talking about how bad it was. But why not move the tools together with the rest? I know, it's open source, lack of maintainers, but I wouldn't dare to declare my toolkit stable until basic tools work. Qt is also guilty of doing that in some ways but at least the previous version is still production ready and they move really fast.
I don't know I'll ever get over my irrational anger about how they handle(d) GTK.
They add a unique identifier to EFIVARS. That's why if you install a MS store application without being logged in, completely wipe/replace your disks you can still see the list of previous installed applications in the store.
>This is really cool. Kudos to Microsoft for really getting open source lately
If they get open source so much it means not open sourcing what really matters is intentional. And quite frankly getting rid of patents, their litigiousness and data collection. But I'm asking too much and I would settle for them to just stop suffocating competitors, innovation and stop with vendor lock in. Same deal for their competitors.
Anything that really matters is just like the same old MS you know. DirectX, Office, Xbox, everything SaaS, IDE, compilers, debuggers, language servers, file formats, UI frameworks, UI patents, GitHub, Windows, Server, you'll find examples in every area. Practices like buying or killing competitors like Vulkan related acquisitions. I get it they are a company and need to maximize profits, so it's cool.
Microsoft has so many quality projects and good people working for them, it's just so frustrating that it's still like this. This will only get worse as the exploitative behavior and business models of their competitors like Google force their hand to do the same.
Microsoft joined the open invention network; a defensive patent pool protecting Linux (kernel and distributions). This directly cut into their patent revenue and removed some of their leverage towards Android OEM's. This matters a lot to the android and wider Linux ecosystem.
Moreover, every single Microsoft patent will now be used to fight against any patent claim concerning Linux, related open source software, and a limited set of codecs. [0]
Given the recent inclusion of an exFAT driver in Linux, this hurt MS's business even more.
Moreover, every single Microsoft patent will now be used to fight against any patent claim concerning Linux, related open source software, and a limited set of codecs.
Did Microsoft contribute all of their patents to the OIN? I seem to recall IBM only contributed a specific subset back in the day.
According to the zdnet article I posted in a sibling comment, they did contribute all their patents, which is about 60,000 of them. They gave up significant licensing revenue.
Is there a breakdown somewhere of their patent licensing revenue from Linux licensees, and the legal expenses they have in enforcing it?
Did they give up Linux patent licenses from Android makers? They had billions coming in from Samsung and LG in the past but that was all under NDAs, we don’t know what patents were under discussion.
I have no idea what their legal expenses were, but they explicitly said it covered all their patents. The link I posted mentions Android as something that would be covered.
My recollection from previous OIN threads was that it came with a lot of caveats. I can't comment any further from lack of knowledge about patents and its subtleties. Would love to see an analysis of what really happened in practice since they did that.
All the technologies listed above are good from a technological standpoint. My critique is about corporate ethics rather than whether or not those technologies are good or convenient.
Many years ago I worked developing on Windows 7, using C# and MS SQL Server, and had a satisfactory experience at that time. I can see how that convenience has captivated many users.
But knowing how those technologies came to be makes a difference for me.
For example, Direct3D can be great, but the resulting vendor lock prevents other operating systems like Linux from getting game releases. There was a time where OpenGL was the most popular graphics library, but Microsoft frightened OpenGL users and told them that in future Windows releases, OpenGL would go through a compatibility layer with a significant performance cost and that they should switch to Direct3D. As a result, now everyone uses Direct3D.
Fortunately, projects like dxvk have implemented Direct3D on top of Vulkan and now many projects like Wine and Proton use it to run games using Direct3D on Linux.
> IBM + Microsoft. Expected: OS/2. Actual: MS NT kernel
Not entirely true, because in fact NT is heavily "inspired" by VMS, that Dave Cutler, the main architect of NT kernel, used to work in DEC as a technical fellow. This is also one of the reason DEC Alpha can run Windows NT out of the box, as it is quite similar to VMS in nature.
It’s not happening anymore, partly because of reputation and partly because they’re no longer the 800lbs gorilla they once were - but the “Microsoft kiss of death” was a thing - cooperating with Microsoft often resulted in great damage to the other company.
SGI; Nokia; Sando; Spry; there were many others through the years.
Nokia have themselves to blame, with the internal teams competition and the board promising an hefty bonus to Elop if he managed to do what he did, selling the mobile business unit.
Similar examples can be given for other IT giants.
Microsoft unilaterally changed the OS/2 3.0 API to the match the Windows API, IBM did not approve of that, and then the project split, with the Microsoft version of OS/2 3.0 becoming Windows NT.
Apple lawfully licensed technology from the Xerox PARC from Xerox. Xerox knew they were licensing the technology, with the likely objective of copying it. That's a substantial difference with respect to what Microsoft did.
Xerox's decision is considered dumb, but they were told exactly what was going to be done. The executives were stupid enough to agree because they did not want to hear about anything other than photocopiers and toners.
Microsoft on the other hand was initially a close Apple partner, developing the Z-80 SoftCard for Apple II and then helping develop applications for the Macintosh. Once they gained enough trust, they used that trust to clone the Macintosh (Windows 1.0).
> Anything that really matters is just like the same old MS you know.
I have been hearing this kind of thing for years, and I just don't get it.
Microsoft has turned around completely, becoming a huge open-source contributor. They committed all their patents to OIN. They make .NET Core available for MacOS and Linux (including open-source). They are noticeably absent from the congressional hearings of the other huge tech companies who have been bad players.
And yet we hear that they're "the same old MS". I get that no company is perfect, but in all honesty, what could Microsoft do that would change your perspective on them? And do you hold other companies (FAANG) do the same standard?
>what could Microsoft do that would change your perspective on them?
I mean it's really complicated. For starters I'd like them to stop forcing people to use their bad products just because they were there first to lock down the market and or abused their position. This is still happening today.
Then I'll be more open to use their good products, and there's plenty of that. I want to be excited when MS announces a new technology, not to be reminded of how bad they behave as a company and the negative impact they have on my life.
>And do you hold other companies (FAANG) do the same standard?
Yes. At least with e.g. Apple and Google I can just not use their products, but with Google it's getting harder and harder as they monopolize the web and close/lock Android even more. Google removed don't be evil from their motto, MS should change theirs to We love open source when it's convenient. Nothing wrong with doing manipulative PR like everyone else, but don't be surprised when some people don't want to drink it.
They were right, you should never run a GUI as root. The wrong part was not providing the alternative before blocking it. That maintainer left KDE IIRC, not sure why but I heard there were a lot of conflicts.
Last time I checked this feature was in progress by KDE devs, polkit or something like that, that allowed you to do that kind of operation without root.
But it was in a limbo because it was huge and hard to merge. They were trying again last time I checked. They would probably help you or anyone who would like that feature implemented to get started.
Illustrated example from a different compositor https://github.com/WayfireWM/wayfire/issues/570
It's the only DE I'm excited about it so I hope they fix that. Very very promising and the best part is that it made the GNOME people mad.
GNOME: "Sorry I don't see the use case for that, PR closed. Make your own project."
Cosmic: "Yes"