Having used linux for over 20 years now - the 'fragmenting the Linux desktop' idea boggles my mind.
The entire Linux eco-system exists of competing things. Nginx vs Apache, sendmail vs qmail vs postfix, ... the list goes on. There is no singular 'desktop' when it comes to Linux, and there will never be one. Thinking and hoping there will be is simply not understanding what drives the whole Linux world: options and competition.
"I’m writing to let you know that we will end our investment in Unity8, the phone and convergence shell. We will shift our default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS."
I checked the date of the post really carefully as well. That is certainly a change of direction.
I guess unity was the only thing driving Mir then? Is dropping one the same as dropping both?
Seems like good news to me, having a significant player like canonical contributing to the community instead of fragmenting without much benefit can't be bad can it?
I don't use it on the desktop anyway, but I hope that moves in this direction are rewarded by the community.
My (limited) understanding is that Gnome includes Wayland as an integral component, and so reverting to Gnome as default desktop for 18.04 will preclude use of the Mir graphical server.
Huh. Maybe I'll move back upstream to Ubuntu. Although at this point LinuxMint works fine for me, so it's hard to see a compelling reason. But Ubuntu's desktop games are what finally drove me out, as a desktop.
Surface is getting all the heat in the article, but in the linked interview [1] he blames pretty much every part of the infrastructure other than the interface:
> The other communication systems involve the press box to the coaches on the field, and then the coach on the field, the signal caller, or the coach-to-quarterback, coach-to-signal caller system. Those fail on a regular basis.
> And again, there's a lot of equipment involved, too. There are headsets in the helmets, there's the belt pack, that communication, there's a hookup or connection to internet service or that process and so forth with the coaches and the press box. So, there are a number of pieces of equipment, there is a number of connections that are on different frequencies.
> And then during the game sometimes something happens and it has to be fixed, and first of all, you have to figure out what the problem is. Is it a battery? Is it the helmet? Is it the coaches' pack? Is it the battery on the coaches' pack? I mean you know, again, it could be one of 15 different things.
If Belichick threw his paper notebook^1, would you assume it's because of the notebook? Or because his team just threw an interception, missed a field goal, or lost the game? I don't think we have any context as to what happened in that gif.
He threw the tablet because it wasn't working for him, per Belichick:
> As you probably noticed, I’m done with the tablets. I’ve given them as much time as I can give them. They’re just too undependable for me. I’m going to stick with pictures as several of our other coaches do as well because there just isn’t enough consistency in the performance of the tablets, so I just can’t take it anymore.
I see no called-out connection between anything in the article and the gif at the top of it. It's a good gif to go along with the article, but I don't think we can say "he threw the tablet in this image because he was angry with it".
Edit: this comment is at -2 at the moment. If I'm wrong, please make the connection. I earlier pointed out that coaches are often emotional^1, and we have no idea if him throwing the tablet is related to him being angry at it, or even if it's a recent image.
Consider a video of an office worker smashing their keyboard in frustration and an interview about the server being constantly down. If the article and comments section focused on the clear inferiority of Logitech peripherals you would probably wonder if brand prejudice was playing a role.
THIS. Read the transcript, he rants almost exclusively about the entire "system" and it's many parts that all seem to fail at some point. The "tablet" issue is a minor sub point but you know ... clicks = money so the headline "Bill Belichick Hates Microsoft Surface" is what every "journalist" went with.
True, but the Belichick quote near the front of the article is
> “As you have probably noticed, I’m done with the tablets,” he said.
...so I would just attribute this to people naturally referring to the frontend of the system they're using as the system itself. When he said "I'm done with the tablets" perhaps he means "I'm done with the system that I am using from my tablet".
It seems almost as if NFL confesses that it's not [necessarily] MS here, "... multiple factors that can cause issues within our sideline communications system either related to or outside of Microsoft’s technology."
I gave my iPad to my kids and "upgraded" to a Surface Pro 3 a while ago and I regret it every morning when I sit down with my breakfast to read hacker news.
It's not a good tablet, and it's not a good laptop. It attempts to sit in the middle which is not what I want.
I was expecting the tablet interface to be a lot more finished, but there are a lot of rough edges and missing features.
I'll be going back to iPad on the next cycle.
As a long time OSX user as well, I was surprised to see how unpolished Windows 10 Desktop is as well.
I think they're saying it's not the best way to go about asking someone for a gift of money. It's not all that cynical to be skeptical of vaguely defined goals.
This is why I switched to SMSSecure. It's a TextSecure fork that continues to support encrypted SMS direct to the phone and not through a server of any kind.
If you use crouton [1] to manage chroots, you can easily run Sublime and everything else in Linux land. You should be aware of what developer mode is on Chrome OS, though, and all of the negatives that comes with it. The xiwi crouton target allows you to connect to the chroot in a popup window. You can also now launch individual applications giving an integrated experience, including copy/paste.
I ordered the LS pixel, and it was by far the nicest computer I've ever used. I used IntelliJ IDEA in a popup window with zero lag for Java development. After enabling a kernel flag, VirtualBox worked too (with several networking caveats), and thereby Docker.
Ultimately I returned it and got the entry level MBP retina for the same price. Relying on crouton for functionality, meant small stuff would break here or there, much like running Arch Linux. For example, the home, end, page up/page down shortcuts broke in xiwi windows after an update. VirtualBox would cold cut the power to the machine if I enabled bridged networking. 64 GB is exactly half the minimum hd space I need. Developer mode is not a first class citizen within the OS, so I was constantly fighting the machine to get a stable work environment. Etc.
I really really miss it though. Especially the touch screen. It felt like using my future computer today. I needed a dev machine that I could rely on, and my current situation could not justify a $1300 toy. The ecosystem is rapidly evolving, and I am certain I will eventually be using something very much like the Pixel within a couple years. Hope that helps.
You are right to not do so. Describing what is not impossible is hardly advocacy, however. There are a few uses for allowing mouse in terminal emulated emacs of varying utility. Same with the GUI version, but just to get basic mouse/wheel functionality is not one of them.
