Fedora 18 Will Get 256 Color Terminals

[droidhacker]

Terminals are so 80's. Sure, they do and always will have their uses, but user interfaces are simply the superior way of doing things. Linux isn't intended to be confined to geeks, it actually has a future.

That doesn't mean that it should be confined to wondoze newbs. One of the biggest WEAKNESSES of wondoze, is that it lacks a strong terminal. That's why ALL of the 'geeks' as you so insultingly call them, have gone to Linux -- because it has a strong terminal in which they can be effective.

Overall, I'm not very enthused about F18. F17 had a ton of features that were immediately beneficial to a user, but most of the stuff in 18 seems to be plumbing stuff, or something like this for the terminal.

OTOH, I'm sure that many of these F18 features will make F19 fantastic.

So lets have some complete consideration here;
In order to satisfy the 'geeks', you need to have the terminal and plumbing -- for them to be efficient. When the geeks are satisfied, they are able to spread sprinkles to make YOU happy.

Quite frankly, a computer is a device that is supposed to DO STUFF to make your life easier. It is NOT a device that is just there to LOOK PRETTY. FUNCTION > FORM. First and foremost, it must WORK, after that, you can waste time making it 'pretty'.


Remember that YOU (and those just like you) are not the only one(s) using this. The objective is for it to appeal to EVERYONE.

[RahulSundaram]

But nobody has the hobby of fixing bugs and doing all that tiresome dirty work that's necessary to make things run smoothly.

IME hobby stuff tends to fulfill the needs and desires of the hobbyist, not some end consumer.

Businesses operate on a whole different plane.

Your assumptions don't match reality. If you are passionate about something, you tend to do the tedious work along with the interesting work and for some people, certainly finding out the source of a problem and fixing it can be personally very rewarding. I know I have spend a lot of my own time on such things.

[RahulSundaram]

I am not telling anyone what he/she should do, but if the stated goal is to get rid of windows on the desktop (and from what I read this seems to be the long term goal), shouldn't we do things that move linux in that direction? I think too much time is wasted on things that do not contribute to that goal. Now we have an opportunity with windows 8 and instead of taking advantage of it we have ubuntu 12.04 which is a buggy mess for example. Is this the alternative that will make people jump ship from microsoft? Shouldn't developers like fix things in ubuntu instead of adding new UIs and other buggy stuff? (I know this is about Fedora but the points still hold. Fedora will not take over anything in the current state)

I don't think the point holds at all for Fedora. Fedora isn't trying to take over anything and Fedora contributors simply don't have that culture.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Overview#Our_Mission

[BO$$]

Yes I knew that, but the idea was that this type of behaviour isn't happening just in fedora but also in ubuntu and a lot of other projects which are trying to take over the world.

[Ancurio]

I am not telling anyone what he/she should do, but if the stated goal is to get rid of windows on the desktop (and from what I read this seems to be the long term goal), shouldn't we do things that move linux in that direction? I think too much time is wasted on things that do not contribute to that goal. Now we have an opportunity with windows 8 and instead of taking advantage of it we have ubuntu 12.04 which is a buggy mess for example. Is this the alternative that will make people jump ship from microsoft? Shouldn't developers like fix things in ubuntu instead of adding new UIs and other buggy stuff? (I know this is about Fedora but the points still hold. Fedora will not take over anything in the current state)

Wow... now you really made me curious. Care to provide any citations?

[johnc]

Your assumptions don't match reality. If you are passionate about something, you tend to do the tedious work along with the interesting work and for some people, certainly finding out the source of a problem and fixing it can be personally very rewarding. I know I have spend a lot of my own time on such things.

Ok so the people at Ubuntu aren't passionate about creating a usable desktop.

Maybe I'll switch to Fedora then.

[droidhacker]

I am not telling anyone what he/she should do, but if the stated goal is to get rid of windows on the desktop (and from what I read this seems to be the long term goal), shouldn't we do things that move linux in that direction? I think too much time is wasted on things that do not contribute to that goal. Now we have an opportunity with windows 8 and instead of taking advantage of it we have ubuntu 12.04 which is a buggy mess for example. Is this the alternative that will make people jump ship from microsoft? Shouldn't developers like fix things in ubuntu instead of adding new UIs and other buggy stuff? (I know this is about Fedora but the points still hold. Fedora will not take over anything in the current state)

Fact is that many [most?] people hate microshit with a passion.
They are where they are as a direct result of vendor lock-in.

Vendor lock-in is fading. This is thanks, mainly, to MOBILE platforms, which VASTLY outsell desktops/laptops.

MSWONDOZE sells at a rate of about 240 million units per year:
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/windows-...ews-11836.html

SMARTPHONES 419 million units per QUARTER, of which 56.1% are ANDROID:
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=2017015
419*4*.561=940 million per year.

And so what we have, is that ANDROID is outselling MSWONDOZE by nearly 4:1.
And we haven't even added TABLETS into that. Tablets are still a relatively small market, but on their way up STEEPLY.

Here is where it starts to become really fun;
Smartphones and tablets are at a point now where even a fairly mediocre device is at least as powerful as a desktop/laptop computer of just a few years ago (i.e., around the age of wondozexp --> the last RELEVANT version of mswondoze). So why do you need to duplicate equipment? Connectivity between smartphones/tablets and other devices is increasing quickly, including support for peripherals, like MONITOR, KEYBOARD, and MOUSE. Combined with a trend toward "cloud computing", and an increase in the sophistication of software available to run on mobile devices, the desktop/laptop is becoming less and less important. Get to the office or home and snap your phone into the cradle on your desk, and there you have it -- a complete computer! The needs for software are already making it to the point where software vendors are beginning to build their software specifically for those mobile platforms.

Believe me, desktop Linux is NOT what is going to kill mswondoze on the desktop. The desktop ITSELF is being killed.

[RahulSundaram]

Yes I knew that, but the idea was that this type of behaviour isn't happening just in fedora but also in ubuntu and a lot of other projects which are trying to take over the world.

I don't get your point. You cannot direct volunteers with a list of priorites that you are interested in. Open source project management is more like herding cats. People will work on whatever they are interested in and you can broadly oversee that and bring some rigor. Beyond that, you dont get to dictate or micro manage everything.

[RahulSundaram]

Ok so the people at Ubuntu aren't passionate about creating a usable desktop.

Maybe I'll switch to Fedora then.

I think it is simplistic to view it in terms of distro X vs distro Y. If you want to be guaranteed of things, you have to pay for it. Otherwise, whatever bugs gets fixed depends on who is working on it and how much free time they have and whether they can coordinate with others to get things fixed etc.

[geearf]

Wrong! Wrong! WRONG!!!

We have limited resources. Meaning there is not an infinite pool of programmers with infinite time to do everything. Thus we invent the concept of focus. Right now Ubuntu number one bug is windows has majority of desktop. So we must focus on fixing that. Windows 8 will most probably be a clusterfuck. Let's take advantage of that. For now we must focus on the glaring problems of linux and right now graphics support is a major issue. So programmers should focus on that. Instead of having one idiot creating the 30000th quake 3 engine, another adding 256 colors to terminal and one writing graphics drivers maybe we should have 3 writing graphics drivers, get it? The time is limited. Windows 8 will be an opportunity for people to jump to linux. People should learn FOCUS! Once the graphics is solved they can FOCUS on another problem in order of priority. If you come to linux you see what the problems are, learn the apis and everything necessary to contribute and then contribute. Don't write the bilionth cat command in lisp or whatever you like at this moment!

As much as I agree with you on having many applications that are 98.76% identical instead of a few but with more support, things don't really work that way... (especially when you and I don't pay the big salaries to actually have a say in what people do)

1- You think that graphic drivers are THE problem now. Does everyone agree? Apart from power management there is nothing I need for my desktop's graphic stack and I don't care that much, as for my laptop it has everything I need in that regard. Are they other non-graphic related features I would want/need? Oh yes...
Also a mass of professionals moving to nix distributions would be a good, it does not have to start at home, I do not believe that is how DOS and Windows started either... How many of them need a better graphic stack vs something else? I am not sure if your argument is so strong anymore...

2- Based on your comments I doubt you work in the software industry.
One clear thing is that happy people produce more. If it made some devs happier to get their terminal like this and it got them happier / proud to push that to the outside world, they may very well produce more in the long run (irrespectively of their income actually).
Also as someone said earlier about different people with different skills, you can also get a better return when people work on things they are passionate about rather than being forced to...
The downside is the lack of focus, therefore eventually the big guys in charge of a distribution have to make the big calls, but that does not mean ignoring everyone's feelings for the ONE goal of one person...

3- Finally it could even be an investment for what you want. (no clue if true, just a thought here): having a better dev environment also leads to a better return. If some of the graphics devs get an improved work experience through this change, you may be very happy about it as well.

Smile!

/End