Further, it works really well with "Assistant" / Home. "Play that song that goes ... " "Go back 10 seconds" "Pause" "Resume" "Listen to song X on all speakers" "Play Journey song from the Tron Soundtrack" all work well... but... they've got no damned API, so that sucks.
That seems like a suspiciously large bump. I could imagine a scenario where the numbers are right, though. Is Chrome OS counted as Linux? School is starting up again in many areas...
Well, it seems like either:
1) Chrome has a market share less than FreeBSD, and so is not mentioned
2) Chrome is not considered a desktop/laptop OS, or
3) The Linux numbers include Chrome.
Option (3) seems the most likely, and I have to agree that it's driven by schools. A lot of mainstream schools are starting to use Chromebooks for their students, it's almost the default school option now, I think.
If you're counting operating systems by the kernel, why would ChromeOS be counted as anything other than Linux. Sure it is a variant, but so is Fedora or Gentoo or Arch.
I don't think you should really count the operating system by the kernel. You should count it by the API it exposes. That's what really matters.
Under this system Android and ChromeOS wouldn't really be counted as Linux because you can't easily run normal Linux programs on them. Although they may use Linux under the hood, that isn't really visible to user-space programs. Android, and especially ChromeOS could easily switch kernel with no visible effect to apps. The kernel is an implementation detail.
Many people that count on Android as Linux, just because of the NDK, usually don't have any idea how little of Linux is actually exposed to developers using the NDK for app development.
Basically any POSIX like kernel with enough support for libc and libc++ would do the job.
That was my first question, where is Chrome OS counted? Is it considered a desktop or mobile OS? I figured it should be counted with the laptops, and the mobile category doesn't include Windows so laptops must be in the desktop category. Since they don't break Chrome OS out on its own, I assume it's counted as Linux.
Even then, there's either way more chromebook-using students than I'd have ever guessed, or there's way fewer other linux users...probably a little of both.
Firefox does have their own, documented and seemingly stable remote debugging protocol. I haven't used it recently, but there is the Valence project (https://github.com/mozilla/valence) which provides adapters for their debugging tools for other protocols, namely Chrome's remote debugger. In the past, I have used this to debug Chrome with firefox's devtools. Maybe it works for your needs?
As minor counterpoint: Firefox is not strictly speaking developed "by Mozilla" but by the community. Mozilla's the curator, and has a fair bit of staff also working on it, but vast swathes of the codebase are community contributions. If you need FF to do a thing, and you think you have good enough ideas to contribute the solution there, then rather than upvoting a bug, or bumping it to ask what's happening, be the person to make the happening happen =)
Of course, but bug upvotes don't hurt that cause, either. I have a few reasons that I work on open source projects. First, to fix a bug or add a feature that affects me directly. Second, to learn something new. If I'm just doing the latter, I'd prefer to tackle a bug with more interest/votes, to help others out while I'm at it and increase the odds of finding a willing reviewer.
In general, they do well, but there are a few categories which they don't seem to "get". They do a good job of trying to remove a lot of barriers to objectivity, even when useful reviews require subjective knowledge. They also try hard to find equivalent, reproducible tests so that they can use them on multiple products, even if they're not exact equivalents. This means, for instance, that they might end up testing ice-braking tires by measuring the stop distance in an indoor ice rink where they can control the conditions... that makes it easy to measure the tires against other tires, but it's not real-world. They also purchase their products, rather than accepting them from the companies, which helps increase the odds that they're getting the same things off the shelf you do. Again, they seem to be clueless about a few categories, though, such as certain electronics. Just look at the ratings for the Google Home and Amazon Alexa--very poor--because they get lumped in with wireless speakers where sound quality is the utmost importance.
Read/Write API or it didn't happen. There was a time a few years ago when I thought companies were moving in the direction of ensuring their products could be extended through APIs first and foremost and launching those APIs a the time of product launches, but either I dreamed it or that time seems passed.
Is there some kind of organization out there whose mission is (at least partly) to pressure companies into providing data import/export and full access API's to prevent lock-in, data loss and such?
Since when was there an obligation to provide an API for every new platform release?
Frankly, I get the sense that a lot of people want an API so they can build their own little businesses on top of someone else's good idea, only to feel shafted when the originator of that good idea goes in a different direction.
I guess I've been burned enough by drastic application/feature reworks, policy changes, and product shutdowns that I'm extremely wary of any new product that doesn't offer a publicly documented programmatic option for getting data in and out (and preferably basic interaction). Maybe my experience is unusual, but I can't believe it that more people aren't clamoring for APIs or at least data export options from their services before wasting time getting tied to them.
There's a good alternative to this on Android, namely apps like Tinfoil for Facebook, which are simply convenience webkit wrappers around the Facebook WebView
> You can pay someone else to isolate and secure your XP installation as well (for the minimum amount of stuff you need in there). Put it in a VM, behind a firewall, secure it, prevent unknown services from running in it, etc.
Of course, you can also pay someone to do the same for a free software OS. You might even have more options for safely isolating it. I suspect the main point is that you have options, e.g. you don't simply have to isolate it (that may not work depending on how you use the software), you could also maintain / fork it.
In theory, with enough money, I'm sure you could also pay MS to maintain it for you or (as I've seen done once or twice in the business world) simply buy out the company and have them support it, but it seems like the cash barrier required to getting those things done could be lower than self-supporting the software in many circumstances.
That's true. However, for the majority of cases, it's not worth it.
You theoretically could have an old version of Red Hat running and then self-support there, but I believe the answer is probably something similar to what would be done with Windows XP. Even if what you need to run there is Free Software. Easier and probably more feasible, true. Still, very unlikely.
The last option you pointed out is a possibility as well and it happens, however it's usually a way of throwing a lot of money for very little gain
We're eagerly awaiting an alternative to LastPass after the recent sale. 1Password is the best on OS X, but really lags everywhere else (Win, Android), but the total lack of support on Linux (for writing) is a non-starter. It'd be great to see something, even a simple CLI app to provide basic password read/write without a GUI. The threads in AgileBits' forums referencing this topic are really depressing. Is there another way to express a "vote" for basic Linux support?
Thanks for the write-ups that you did. It's so much more tempting to contribute to a project when there are active public summaries of work being done. Sometimes, I admit, I don't even bother submitting my pull requests on projects with 50 unmerged PRs and no activity. When I see evidence of a progress and organization like those blog posts, it makes me want to contribute even if I don't necessarily have a personal itch to scratch.
I'd love to see more posts soon, if you or someone else ever gets the time*!
