Phones, phones, phones

Ive got a lot to think about when it comes to phones. Currently, I have a few offers lined up for me:
There is an Incredible S on offer for 170 and then I can buy a SIM only deal to accompany that, I can get a contract with the Galaxy S II, for 25.00 per month with 50 handset cost, or 20.00 per month with 190 handset cost (it all depends on the minutes and texts as to those prices), or I can buy a Nexus S when it goes down in price and SIM only that.

Two things: Why are similar phones all priced randomly, with the Wildfire S going from over 300 down to 160 or lower, and then other phones all outselling each other? It makes no sense. The phones all fit into the 150-500 range and that is a massive problem. They need to be put in smaller brackets.

And the other point is, when buying a phone, try and keep it simple for yourself. It make life much better.

Gnome, Guhnome, Genome...

I've just been thinking about Gnome 3.2 and Gnome Shell.

The new updates of 3.2 have included some good and bad stuff. Good has been the new Documents app, and some theme integration, and making things more shell-like, but the login screen is different

Yes is looks like Shell, and not the old Gnome, but there is a purple border around the password box, which is not at all fitting, and you have to press on the up/down key to be able to select the username and press enter to login without using the mouse.

Other things like Online accounts, improved Usermenu (when you click on your name in the top right corner), and general Theming is awesome.

As a concept, the desktop is awesome. Fullscreen program menu, with search and categories, search for documents, contacts, etc. and tucking everything away in the Activities overview. Also, the CSS theming, and the default black is very subtle, making for a nice experience. All they need to do is keep improving stuff, making it simpler without removing functionality, making it look nicer, and easier to use, and to redesign the login screen. Again.

Dependant on Dependancies? "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em"

I think I have just found the best Package Management system ever. Probably. Definitely. And, as far as I'm concerned, even though I would rather get rid of the Packagement problems and have some sort of Mac-style App system, but with a Libs folder for all external libraries to go to, this is as good as package managers get. It's even got an awesome name.

...The world's best package manager ever, is.....

Pacman!!! from Arch Linux. I've been installing Arch (and am using it at the moment to write this post) and it's so simple to use

Like normal commands, options can be strung together, rather than Apt-get's way of making you either update, upgrade OR install, but not update and then install a new package.

To update the mirror list and upgrade to the latest packages, you simply run (as root) pacman -Syu

To install package foo, simply type pacman -S foo

It can also install package groups, so for example instead of having to install each dependency of gnome like sudo apt-get install gnome-system-monitor empathy empathy empathy-dbg... you just type pacman -S gnome and it asks you for the packages you want install (it displays a list)

Gary the Snail

Windows users are like snails. And so is Windows to be fair. It takes ages to do anything, and puts in features what happened ages ago, but the most snail-like thing I have found is this:

Back in the early 2000s and before that, we had the browser wars with Netscape Navigator, and Internet Explorer (4,5,6) and a few others. But, then it all ended and we now have FF and Chrome, and other stuff. But Windows users, with the release of Windows 7 have discovered the browser wars, and are fighting Chrome against IE.

That was so last decade, lads! keep up!

So, in 20 years time, when windows is Dead, it will be Linux vs MAC OSX, at the rate everything is moving in the proprietary world.

Hair, sorry, hare and tortoise, except the hare wins

"Package Managers...Why"

Right, a quote form Mike Saunders about package managers, and it applies to most of the Linux desktop in general. The problem, is the ongoing choice vs cohesion battle. We want competition for apps, and choice is always good; it means we end up with better quality software (well, sometimes, *ahem LIBREOFFICE-SLOW-STARTUP-TIMES*) and if not, we can change to another program. But, it ends up rather silly with Linux, because even though most of us accept multiple web browsers, email clients, word processors, even calculators and text editors, there has to be a line.

Sometimes this line is over-stepped, and we have multiple desktop environments, and shells within these environment (looking at you, Unity). This has got to the point where there is too much choice, and even distros which use the same package format use different package managers. Now, standardizing on these would be impossible (especially as the LSB have picked the wrong package format for a standard) so I propose a solution.

Have all the desktops, window managers, text editors, shells, compositors you want, but for packages have some single unified program to install them, so maybe the Ubuntu Software Center, or PackageKit, but it uses either Deb or RPM underneath. (Actually, maybe discount Ubuntu as it seems to be trying to become an open source Apple). Then, make a standard toolkit and theme format for dekstops (CSS and either QT or GTK). Now, all you need to do is to make an official Linux 2011, Linux 2012, where all the distros pool their resources into to create some super-uber desktop OS. All the normal Fedoras, *buntus, Debians, Gentoos and Crunchbangs happen underneath, but for newbies there is a proper 'official' standard to go to.

Have Gnome-shell, KWin with KDE4, Unity and Compiz, but make something that has a simple mode, an Advanced mode and can be used by anyone from Windows, through to OSX, through to Solaris or even FreeBSD

GIVE US SOMETHING TO INSTALL ON OUR PARENTS' LAPTOP AND THEY CAN USE STRAIGHT AWAY!!!!!!!!!!!!
Then Linux might be taken more seriously by manufacturers. And, give the user a default, but let them change it, let them choose Thunderbird or Postler over Evolution if they want, but make sure there is a default.

"So Mike likes packages then" - Package managers for Linux

(Today's quote comes from the Tuxradar podcast)

Apt, RPM, Gdebi, tarballs, scripts, Synaptic, Add/Remove software, Software manager, Conary, Aptitude, Apt-fast, packman.................................................

The list never ends. How many more package managers do we need? Most package formats are based on old archives and are a pain to manage. Nearly every Linux distro from the top 50 probably has its own package manager or format. Having different formats is bad enough, but having Synaptic, MintInstall, Software Centre, Add/Remove software aptitude and good old apt-get for one package format is really bad. Hoy many ways can there be to install a program???? Does every community really feel the need to make a new package manager either because they don't like the current one or because they just want to? Can't they all just merge and work on 1? At lest then we would only have to worry about Apt, RPM and tarballs without having to explain to each user that they might have to try a different method to get an image editor or audio creator. Another problem is providing programs on disc. There isn't enough room to put three different packages of each program on a disc.

This Apt has Super Cow powers

Debian made a good package format back when their distro was released and called it Apt (Advanced Packaging Tool). However, this successful format and tool was built on the aging archive .ar and this lets it down as it could be updated to be more efficient. Synaptic is the natural graphical tool to use in place of the command apt-get and most others like MintInstall are based around it. But Synaptic has a very complex interface where packages are shown by name not by program name. As these contain version numbers and lib or -devel prefixes and suffixes this confuses newbies and that is why so many other managers were created. Why can't all the Apt managers form one combined program which has the easy interface ideas of the spin-offs but the advanced functionality of Synaptic (maybe an advanced mode that IS Synaptic)?

RPM-Fusion

Red Hat, the company behind RHEL and Fedora made RPM. This again uses an old archiving system: CPIO. It is so old it was used for putting data onto tape storage and is reallyhard t ouse. RPM has no 'standard' graphical interface like Apt does with Synaptic, instead is only has the rpm command and makes use of Add/Remove software or whatever each distro provides. Again using the rpm command is harder than apt-get (sudo apt-get install somepackage) as you have to use some cmoplicated su stuff (again I hate why some distros use sudo some use su and others use both) or yum. Again this changes every release. so it's either 'su -c 'yum install -optionhere packagename'' or 'su -c 'rpm -i packagename''

And there is Slackware. I leave Pat with his custom package format as it is a one-off special case.

Why can't we have 1 unified package format with others open to choosing, but a friendly Linux package like Apt? Update it to work with a better archive and it will fit the bill every time. I understand that programs or Desktops can be argued over but package formats?? They are a core part of the system. How hard is it to have a standard??? I know this is free software, but there are some other versions of software created for the sake of creation! The core parts of any operating system, open or closed should be the same without any differentiation except where changed by the user for personal preference. There should be a Linux 2011 where all the best aspects and learning points from all distros are rolled into 1 and the others are still there for people to choose but there is a standard.