[adamtaylor]

This article is strange: Some parts of it are sooo right, but then some parts are sooo wrong. Yes, the Linux world should stop obsessing about mobile and tablets, since they've basically already lost that battle. (And frankly: Who gives a damn about mobile? Some of us have work to do...) And yes, they should focus on their strengths in the desktop. But their strength is not web design and multimedia. As someone pointed out, they lost that domain to Apple a long time ago. Their strength is the scientific and technical desktop users. CERN uses Linux heavily. Many of the screenshots from the Curiousity landing showed a Linux desktop. I.e. people who need the computing equivalent of a truck, not a car. That's the core audience that desktop Linux should be trying to serve. And frankly, both Unity and the Gnome 3 Shell are steps in the wrong direction. Unity is clearly aimed at netbooks and tablets, and both Unity and Gnome Shell value simplicity over power, which is not what scientific and technical users want.

For my money, the recent moves Linux Mint has been making are the most promising ones happening in the Linux ecosystem right now: Don't fix what isn't broken, and make a distribution the just works out of the box. When the Gnome 3 goofballs eliminate yet another piece of useful functionality, do a fork. (And now they've started selling Linux Mint branded hardware, another smart move. One of the real problems with Linux these days is that you just can't buy hardware with Linux pre-installed that is equal in quality to Apple's hardware.)

Or at least that's my two cents.

[jiggy2011]

Yes, the Linux world should stop obsessing about mobile and tablets, since they've basically already lost that battle.

Well that depends on if you include Android or not and I don't really understand the logic not to.

[adamtaylor]

You're right, I was being imprecise. I should have said Gnome and Canonical should stop obsessing about mobile and tablets. I guess I see more evidence of them obsessing about tablets and netbooks than about mobile. The thing that really bothers me is when I see the "workstation" experience get worse so that the tablet/netbook experience can be made better. I spend all day in front of a workstation, and maybe an hour a day with a tablet.

[wmf]

GNOME definitely does not include Android; it's a completely different OS that happens to share mostly the same kernel.

[jiggy2011]

Well he said Linux rather than Gnome, not sure which he actually meant.

As far as I'm aware Gnome have never really tried to get in on the phone/tablet space. I'm not aware if there is even a phone that you can purchase with Gnome installed.

[donniezazen]

I am less concerned about getting Gnome or Unity on my phone and more concerned about an experience that you get between iPhone and Mac. A seamless integration. Their is no single media player in Linux that does that. libmtp doesn't really work.

[josteink]

You mean you want iTunes for Android? Yeah. Good luck with that.

Personally, I'm glad I have a phone which I have no need to "sync" with any of my PCs anymore. It just feels very, very old-fashioned.

[jiggy2011]

I don't know if I'm just old school, but I prefer just to plug my devices in and drag files over. Seems fairly seemless to me.

[donniezazen]

I have thought about doing that but I would like to setup a media player which automatically generate playlist based on my listening habits like most played, recently played, etc. And it to work two ways.

Playlists can be very useful.

iSyncr and iTunes can do that but I haven't found a seamless solution for Linux yet.

[mapgrep]

>Who gives a damn about mobile? Some of us have work to do

Who gives a damn about these "personal computers"? They are toys for obsessive nerd hobbyists. Some of us have work to do.

Who gives a damn about this "multimedia?" It's all toy sound cards for vidgames and silly fragile CD ROMS. Some of us have work to do.

Who gives a damn about the consumer internet? It's all AOL sex chat and Pez dispenser trading. Some of us have work to do.

Who gives a damn about these "social networks?" It's for sex-crazed drunken college students, child molesters, and shut-ins. Some of us have work to do.

Who gives a damn about this "Linux?" Its a neo-communist academic experiment for people too poor to license a real commercial Unix (TM) or even Windows NT. Some of us have work to do.

[adamtaylor]

I probably should have said that _I_ don't give a damn about mobile. I spend my whole day in front of a workstation, and maybe a few minutes a day using my cell phone. But still: Do you really think that Gnome and/or Canonical should be focussing on mobile?

[mapgrep]

I don't.

Open source tends to work better in mature markets where there is something relatively stable to copy and where there are a lot of players who are incentivized to cooperate and adhere to standards. That's not mobile right now, and by the time mobile turns that corner Android (currently locked down on most installs in a very non Free way) will probably be the open source contender of choice.

From what very little I know about GNOME, it sounds like a great plan. I just happen to think mobile is extraordinarily important and look forward to the day I ditch the iOS platform.

[subsystem]

There's a lot of similarities between a good scientific platform and a good creators platform. Text processing, image/signal-processing, 3d modeling/simulation, low latency, input/output devices etc. even things like storage.

[krupan]

Add to CERN and JPL every ASIC (chip) design shop in the world. My team is all on Ubuntu 10.04 and I dread the upgrade to the next LTS because Unity and Gnome 3 are not engineering workstation desktops.

[natrius]

How will Unity hinder your work, other tan having to get used to a new interface? I've had plenty of success using the latest Ubuntu as an engineering workstation desktop. It's better than everything else I've used.

[pyre]

I agree. While I'm not happy with the way the Unity switch was handled, this is definitely not a "KDE4" type disaster where entire apps were ported over with new bugs, and half the feature-set of the KDE3 versions.

I've been running Ubuntu 11.04 (first release with Unity) for a while as a workstation desktop, and while there are warts that I'm sure are dealt with in 11.10 and 12.04, it's mostly annoyances. Nothing that has seriously impacted my productivity.

[rrmm]

Yes, the Linux world should stop obsessing about mobile and tablets, since they've basically already lost that battle.

Android is doing ok I think. Or do you just mean linux with a gnu/unix userland?

[josteink]

I think the fact that Android is largerly ignored when people consider the (lacking) success of Linux on mobile speaks enormeously of its success.

Android is just too good to be Linux. That sort of reasoning.

[gue5t]

Android is too bad to be Linux. It's a platform dominated by closed-source application software, a cathedral-developed kernel and core, and dubiously open bootloaders. It's utterly useless for development, and it makes numerous sacrifices on many levels to try to appeal to 'regular users'. When one pines for Linux success, one means GNU/Linux [and whatever DE or graphical environment you like]. Nobody cares what kernel your phone runs.

[josteink]

All fair points, but it depends on how you determine success. If you measure Linux-based OS'es penetration in the mobile market today, you will find that it 's the biggest player. That's success.

Yes, you have problems with locked bootloaders and closed hardware on some phones, American carrier-phones in particular. This is bad, but no fault of Android.

That most software on Android, a Linux-distro, may be closed source may sadden a FOSS proponent, but it still doesn't mean it's not Linux.

On my Android tablet I can fire up a terminal, hook up a keyboard via USB and then hack away in a Linux userland, using either supplied binaries, or busybox, or other Linux binaries compiled for the ARM architecture. And it will all work.

For lots of tasks where in the past I would need a PC, I no longer do. Because my Linux-based, mobile platform has me covered. If I want to build my own stuff, I can actually use the normal Linux toolchain to do so. I can do all that because Android, either you appreciate it or not, is Linux. There is no debating that.

And right now Android is dominating the mobile space. I think it's fair to say that Linux, in a form you appreciate or not, has succeeded where your traditional DE based Linux-environment has not.

[jiggy2011]

The android platform is open source, http://source.android.com/.

There's a lot of closed source software for Android and many phones are sold with locked bootloaders.But it's possible to buy those without and google don't care if you root your phone.

So unless your definition is a system 100% open source software that is of no interest to "regular users" (not even Ubuntu qualifies) then this is unrealistic unless you are Richard Stallman.

[donniezazen]

World has changed a lot from the Cathedral and the Bazaar era. Linux will succeed with help of Cathedral and not without.