Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Fragmentation is only a problem in the binary, closed source world. Diverging source trees only result in more work for the one maintaining the divergent tree.

More like, Nokia decided to move on with Maemo 6 instead of migrating over the MeeGo, which they thought wouldn't be complete at the time. Silly, and poorly timed, but they were already in a bad spot and then Elop came along.

No. This is complete and utter nonsense of the purest form.

No, they've got their own way of doing things and it's not shown itself to be lacking. You may disagree, but then it comes down to you saying "they're doing it bad and wrong because I don't like it" and your technical arguments have to deal with Debian's success regardless of whatever flaws there may be in the packaging system, all of which could be fixed.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Well, I've never been a Debian guy, but saying if Nokia goes bankrupt it's even partially Debian's fault is a real stretch.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

No. There is LSB-standard about packet management and undeniably having transaction support there is a benefit and practically is more secure having GPG signatures embedded and not detached; so Debian's legacy reasons are just irrational and childish.

It doesn't much matter to end user, so I just cannot get it why Debian won't follow the standard which would be better than its own.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Really? Do you have examples of their irrational and childish reasons?

So you don't actually have any "reasons," just your personal perspective on what's better?

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

I have had these conversations for about 10 years already on different forums, and I haven't heard any rational reason lately. In the old days sure, rpm had dependency problems when people were installing rpm packages cross the realeases and there wasn't rpmfusion, but those problems are long gone.

There is the standard. Not using the standard is causing problems, like with Nokia now. Technically and practically the standard is better. So, no, they should get to work and change it already. Of course it won't be easy, but staying out of standard is bad for everyone and for the whole Linux "ecosystem" (sorry vi_ :-)

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Perhaps I am simply confused, but Nokia's problem goes much deeper than the lack of a compatible packaging system. Packages built for openSuSE aren't guaranteed to work on Fedora or Mandriva.

Then why are you picking a bone with Debian and the far more numerous other distributions that don't use RPM or DEB?

Remember, the LSB is not a hard standard in the Linux world. And Debian not using it (or even switching to it) would solve no extra problems in the grand scheme of things, as packaging is hardly a problem in the Linux world.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

The (deb-) change should start from the Debian or from Ubuntu. They should see the importance. And yes, it is a problem. All software could have *.spec file written for it already by the developer and use cryptographic safe packages from the start when they are just distributing test packages for their alpha-testers. It would be safer and chances to get Trojan horse to Linux ecosystem would be smaller. It would solve some of the problems and would be the good start to get more non-fragmented ecosystem for commercial companies making software for Linux.

Linux Foundation is right not to give permission to use "Meego"-name for N950 unless it uses rpm-package system. We do not want nor need more fragmentation in Linux ecosystem than there already is.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

But what about all those other horrible non-RPM distributions? What should they do?

The "ecosystem" isn't fragmented as it is, unless you're talking about a lazy proprietary developer (the ones that whine loudest about the kernel's dynamic nature, for instance) that insists on everyone conforming to their desires.

About the only way to eliminate this "fragmentation" of which you speak (you may be confusing it for diversity) would be to forcibly shut down every distro outside the one you prefer, since even openSuSE and Fedora differ in ways such that packages don't migrate cleanly.

Yet despite Linux's dynamic nature, some companies, like Xilinx, still deliver their most powerful software in a manner that works on more Linux systems than just RHEL or SuSE Enterprise.

I suppose you are suggesting that this would allow developers to generate their own packages. There's nothing stopping them now, and they'd still have to generate multiple RPM packages, one for each distro in question.

Yes, because the MeeGo standard explicitly states compliance to the LSB and the LSB specifies using RPM. That, however, is only a tiny issue with respect to why Maemo 6 does not qualify for the MeeGo name.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

I believe it is the biggest reason, from what I've read in meego.org
Do you have some other information?
Having rpm-support, N950 would be easily upgraded to newer version Meego-components and Meego-applications could be installed by an end user easily. Now practically as it seems to come with Maemo6, users should do a community based switch to real Meego in some point and it will cause problems and confusion.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Netmarketshare "statistics" are utterly useless, unless you want to count the percentage of OS used by idiot douchebags, which I guess alot of marketers would be fine with, as they are easier marks

Netmarketshare gives their clients a javascript and tracking cookie combination tracker, so their clients can track users across any netmarketshare using websites. Their data comes from these website clients, which means that a high percentage of the sites are probably crappy douchebags, who have no qualms about such things. Netmarketshare then has lots of marketing data to sell to other idiots.

Linux users are more likely than any other OS user to run Noscript, have javascript turned off in general, not allow non whitelisted cookies, use a hosts file to block useless bandwidth wasters like netmarketshare (their web analytic url hitslink.com is in my hosts file) or use privoxy. This means they won't show up in netmarketshare's "analysis". To add to that, are the larger number of linux user who change their useragent string, than other OS users.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

There's nothing about rpm that makes it inherently better than any other package system.
It used to be the *worst* package manager, now it's merely mediocre.
Switching to rpm should *not* be a priority. I'd prefer no switch at all since there was nothing wrong with the old way of doing it.
And, IMO debian packages have a history of much better quality maintainers.

Why not opkg? (formerly ipkg, suitable for embedded)
Or portage? (currently the best)

Why is the top brass at Nokia micro-managing developers into choosing crappy solutions?
Clearly they are clueless about the technical burden of their decisions.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

There is. See previous page.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

What? transactions?
We're talking about an embedded system here, recording unnecessary information because of the odd chance that a user wants to roll back to an old, possibly even more faulty version of something is a good idea? New versions of packages are there because they are better, this is the same kind of brain damaged thinking that microsoft has going on with their "driver-rollback" which causes more problems than it solves.
It's extremely likely, that the old version of the software won't be able to cope with a newer configuration format, and tadaa! you've lost all your configuration, with the real possibility of a broken system.

I don't know what you mean about the embedded gpg signing, can't .deb files be signed?

And don't even get me going about the LSB, their idea of standards is everyone doing the same misguided stuff they do. Stable ABI anyone?
They've been around for what, 10 years? And how many cared? Mainly distros used exclusively by people who wear ties? (the same people who might come up with an idea like LSB)
And wtf is ubuntu doing in there? I can almost hear Linus reaching 18krpm in his grave, oh wait, he's not dead yet?
It's lucky they only have a list of compliant distros, since a list of non-compliant distros might be way too long.
Propaganda like the LSB damages free software.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Arguing about deb vs. rpm now, eh? This gotta be the geek version of a tit-for-tat fight.

Tastes great, less filling... Ford vs. Chevy... boobs vs. booty...

Either system will have fans... apparently.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

No, because in this case, there's a chevy and a chevy factory, and someone wanted everything changed to produce fords instead, because hell, ford sounds nicer.

Now, if they wanted it changed to produce lamborghini instead, the situation would be different.

This might be the stupidest car analogy yet, but the point still holds.
(I've mentioned two other package managers, and there are others, which are in different ways superior to both the choices currently on the table, but switching from .deb to rpm is just plain stupid)

It's irrelevant what you, I or other people are fans of, you have to be able to argue solely based on technical merit, otherwise you're in the wrong business.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Wow.. this was a pleasantly unexpected result.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5CETMV4nz0

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

This is again wrong thread about this discussion, but here goes once again....

Roll back is not the only property which comes with transactions. Transactions makes package updates error tolerate. For example if battery goes dead middle of updating, or you drop your phone and battery flies off. When the system reboots, it can auto-correct the problem either finish the transaction or cancel it and tell the user that last action was not successful but it didn't broke anything at least. Or if some developer (maemo test and devel repos) forgets something and there is a dependency problem, after installation some other things are not working, user can rollback to the previous state and report the problem to the developer.

Transactions is good to have in the package management, some people might think it is essential as the system state is pretty much like a critical database. Of course transactions feature can be disabled if there is good reasons, but I doubt in high end mobile phones there would be any. Anyway, rpm is in this way much better than deb, although in other technical ways they are pretty much identical.

I mean that in rpm-based systems nowadays it is a common practice to have all rpm-packages GPG-signed. GPG-signatures are embedded in the packages and do not get lost even if you transfer and install packages through ftp-program, wget, usb-stick, bluetooth OBEX transfer and so on and then install the package without alive connection to the original repository.

You can google lots of bad examples where people install un-authenticated deb-packages with dpkg -i. MITM attack on non-authenticated data (stream) is trivial if you have the skills.

The kludged way to embed GPG signatures in the deb-packages is not really used by anyone or anywhere. Show me where debsigs would be actively and routinely used, like embedded GPG signatures are used almost without exceptions for example in Fedora? Also it is important that developers have a standardized way to embed the GPG signature to the package release automatically.



There are many good things in LSB. Without them Linux would be even more fragmented it already is. And as said, if Debian+Ubuntu would had changed to use rpm-system long ago, Nokia now wouldn't have the problem with its developers implementing rpm support to Ovi and Meego. A good case of fragmentation in Linux which clearly causes troubles.

Debian and Ubuntu (and some other smaller players) haven't just taken the fragmentation problem in Linux seriously enough, and now see, it costs Nokia lots of money and eventually may mean that Meego won't succeed because it was too late compared to Android.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Hello Everyone.

I bet every single one of you will hate me after this post but...

I've been thinking a lot about the Nokia-Microsoft partnership, and about You didn't like (most of You anyway) the decizion. I've been reading your posts about disappointment, anger and so on. I've been reading about wrong decisions, and that Nokia turned the community down.

Well, it's not Nokia fault. It's YOURS.

Nokia gave you the best platform evere created for the mobile phone, and the decent hardware, i could risk saying - the best hardware at the time. And what You give in return?
When i bought my N900, there was about 300 applications on maemo-extras. It was June 2010 - after 6? 8? months maemo community created 300 applications... For an android i bet there are 300 diferent solitaire games.

Here is the problem - it is community that wasted the biggest potential a mobile phone ever had. How do you expect Nokia to invest in platform, that have almost no applications?

Nokia gave you tools, build the ship, but it is the crew - You, who burned it. Android - this pathetic, poorely featured OS, has 300 apps daily. We have yearly. It is not about a support, or money - there are LOTS, better or wors apps for Android. And it is because of community,that android grows. Not because google made so much effort about it.

I believe, that if there was 60k apps for maemo, Nokia won't even think about pairing with M$.

And now - we have meego. It is available for n900 for how long 4? 6 months? How many games there are for meego? I didn't find any - yes i wasn't looking to hard. But nor will the average user.

There will be n950. Don't waste the second chance, because there will not be any more.

Sorry, if my post is chaotic, i bet it is.
Sorry, if You don't agree with me.

And please - don't say i didn't appreciate your work. Some of you have written great apps, which i use every day. I just think there are to few. And don't say "if you are so smart, why didn't you writ e this tousand apps?" I didn't because i can't - but i'm not yelling about nokia mistake and disapointment.

Now You can hate Me.
Regards...

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Wow...honestly?

Are you ******ed?

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

@Qrchack

Are you serious? Do you really think that ALL Android apps are made by the community?
The difference between Maemo and Android is that we have ONLY THIS community, while Android has its own community, Google and many other companies working for it.

Nokia-M$ partnership has nothing to do with applications or communities: it's based only on $$$

You want more apps? Start coding.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Zimon,

I just want to say thanks for that excellent and enlightening explanation. ;)

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

@vi_ : well, maybe, but i just tried to look at the case from the nokia point of view

@MaddogG :
1. And by whom? By google? Who do You think was first, before big time developers smelled the money? Why the big D's invested time? Because of the community, who started with all those little do nothing apps.
2. OF COURSE it is about money. And here is the point: Average user in lets take... february 2010 looks on apps base and sees: Android: 10k apps (just guessing, but much more than maemo anyway) Maemo: 200 apps... HMMMM what to take? Android of course. Will he boy nokia? NO. Will Nokia earn money? NO. Will Nokia earn money from the partnership with M$? Dunno, But i can GUESS, that Microsoft can encourage bigger and smaller devs to write apps. Desperate step perhaps. Time will show.
3. I didn't say i want more. I have android market on NITDroid. I have extras-devel and testing. Me, You, and few others here would like to take a risk. Average customer would not. Averages see 600 apps. And 600 is to few for averages... AND for Nokia. Sorry

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Ok, please don't flame me for this, but in my opinion maemo has loads of apps for just about any task, most of them great.
But many of the new maemo specific apps were not entirely up to what you'd expect from kde/gnome apps in general (not at all strange when considering the time frame they were developed in).
Although they were about as good as apps on other mobile platforms.

Performance, hastily done user interfaces, loads of missing features, and let me re-iterate; performance: A lot of the software written for maemo needs optimisation and lots of it.
I also think maemo hasn't reused enough code, a lot of reinventing the wheel going on.

And after the release, it felt like devs moved onto other things and those apps haven't been improved too much since.

I'm talking about the phone, address book, calendar, notes etc. (firefox is slow to begin with, so not much can be done about it, and we have opera anyway)

None of this is a show stopper, it's just my opinion that 3rd party apps weren't a problem, but possibly some of the 1st party ones.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

@Qrchack
First off get your figures right (Thousands not hundreds) if you need extra fingers to count with im sure the iphone has an app for that.
Second all the Apps in the repositories are developed by all sorts of enthusiasts and expert developers/programmers. They produce some of the best apps and ports available on ANY platform. There are too many to go through but all the hard work and effort they put in is then given mostly free of charge back to the community. You can slate many things to do with the N900 but do not start on this community.

Ps I dont hate you I pitty you if you really are that narrow minded and actually believe the crap you wrote.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

I hate you. :)

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

First:
Companies don't wait for a new platform to be fully finished and polished to start developing for it: look at MeeGo, it's clearly NOT finished, but there are already companies working on it. Why? For sure, not because of the huge number of community-made apps: I have a WeTab and its market is ridiculous atm. Companies started working on MeeGo because there is Intel (and Nokia...until the Elop-Day) behind it, and they started when the SDK was released, they didn't wait for the community to grow. This has nothing to do with MeeGo community. The same happened with Android. Google said "I will make a new os for smartphones!" and software companies said "Google&smartphones = $$$!" and they started developing for it asap. Intel, Nokia, Google, Apple: they are all winning horses, they all mean money. This is the reason why software houses started developing for iOs, Android, MeeGo. Why Maemo failed? Because Nokia stopped supporting it. Without a big name behind a product, this product will never sell, even if it's a very good one. This is, sadly, "The Truth"!

Second:
I don't care if Android and iOS have trillions of apps: I need only one music player, one video player, one file browser, one web browser...and I DON'T NEED A F*****G FARTING APPLICATION!
How many Android apps are really useful? How many of them are "well done"? How many of them are unique? We have less apps, this is true, but most of them are really good pieces of software and satisfy almost all our needs: this is the real important thing.

Third:
Qrchack, you are blaming a community (probably one of the best you will ever see on the net) that is doing what Nokia should have done, asking nothing in return. You blame people who are working for you, in their spare time, for free, and you didn't nothing to make Maemo better. Do you really think that is their duty to develop applications for free? This should be Nokia's duty, not theirs.

Two words: epic fail.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

@all to replyed
Well... it seems You didn't understand me. I didn't write about all those apps available through app-get, extras-devel and so on, and so on.
For all of geeks here all theese are natural. I'm talking about an average user looking on www.maemo.org. Downloads for maemo: 613. 613! Amazing! after 1,5 years of development, really, really promising platform.
And chmmm, what do we see on apple app store? 600 daily (just a guess)

I don't want to say, any of n900 app is a crap. I don't want to say that n900 is a crap. I AM USING IT. AND I LOVE IT. But You, the Community must take a look not from a point of view of a geek like many of You are. But from the point of view of a guy, who barely can turn on the phone and is happy when he can download angry birds (and thinks he is a pro after doing it). This is the point of view I believe Nokia took.

So, stop showing the stats unavailable for ppl as mentioned. They won't give a f... They see 600 aps, and this is to few.

Besides, correct me if i'm wrong. How many useless eye-candy apps do we have for N900? Two? Liqflow (much better than any interactive wallpaper on android) and live-wallpaper? There are hundreds of them on and. averages don't give a f... about OO3.0 working on a phone. They want those funny little fishes running from the finger.

QUANTITY not USEFULNESS. That's what's missing.

@MaddogG Quick reply: Of course u don't need the farting app. Neither do I. But this bald men, with this ***** face, cursing every two words will love it. And he is the majority, not You, Me, or anyone on this forum.
And let me ask one think, when did Nokia stop supporting the N900? And Maemo, of course?

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

If quantity instead of usefulness is the secret for success, I'm happy to be a looser...

Because they were already investing on Symbian, because they started working on MeeGo, because a partnership with Intel could have led to more dinero. Why they dropped MeeGo in favour of WP7? http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...okia+1+billion

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Although, it can be argued that a market full of many different variations of music players, video players, file browsers, web browsers and so on does foster far more competition and new ideas than a platform with far fewer or with far less interest to do so. Firefox vs Chrome vs IE vs Opera, anyone? It's always nice to have choices, too.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Is quantity a source of success? YES - IT IS.

Just look on iPhone. Could u think of ANY rational reason why ppl buy such piece of crap like iphone 3GS? iPad?
Even Samsung i9000 with super hiper AMOLED screen, super turbo fast 1ghz CPU is a crap with this shitty android because it is a problem to run 5 apps simultaneusly. And this bald man with a m0r0n face I mentioned befor will buy it. Any reason? Advertisements? Marketing? No. He heard that his friend has an app that can fart when he shake a phone.

And as I can see, You didn't read my posts carefully - I didn't ask WHY. I asked WHEN.
I also didn't write quantity is good. I write it is good for the majority.
I didn't say I WANT anything from YOU. I wrote majority wants.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

I was blaming the 1st party, ie. Nokia. Who left a lot of the initially installed, and most used (on a phone) apps to rot, while focusing on something else.
I'm not saying that something else wasn't more important, just wondering, what happened?

Previously, I've owned a few groundbreaking linux appliances (pacemaker, squeezebox etc) that really sucked when I first bought them, but after very few firmware updates the difference was like night and day. They turned out golden, much surpassing any expectations I might have had. The N900 is of course a much more complicated device, it's too bad it didn't turn out the same way yet.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Yeah... that is a point

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

more apps = maintenance nightmare

I for one don't want a phone that is made to cater for the majority. Since I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like it.
For example, the "majority" doesn't seem to care if there's a proper keyboard on the phone, I do. I don't even think a touch screen is strictly necessary.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

I absolutely agree...but only if the "variants" are not "clones".

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

All the browsers should be taken out and shot one by one, until the internet becomes text again. Then browsing the web will be fast, even on a phone. :D

Nobody dare mention WAP!

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Ok it seems, i need to write it, if You can't figure it out by yourselves. It is not about YOUR needs. and by YOU i mean the community. You, and people of your, lets call it - level, are a fraction of percent of so called smartphone users in the world. And money are not made on a fraction. Money are made on masses.

You don't need a phone for a masses: Sure. And i don't want You to need. But the Community needs to understand, that if You want a platform to prosper - it needs to be available (in every meaning of this word) for masses, and not just for few geeks. Don't You understand, that even I, who insulted You, am a part of this fraction? And i'm proud of it! The problem is. that my, Your and any others pride cannot be sold for dollars.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

You are wrong. A few facts: Linux is fragmented to death. This community is its own worst enemy. Nokia has only recently figured out what MOST people want, and it is not GHz monsters or Communicators or geeky N9XX, and MOST people couldn't care less about Qt or Linux or any other OS related stuff. MOST people simply want an easy to use farting phone.

YOU people here on this forum should stop caring about what Nokia should do to become popular. You should stop caring about apps. You should stop caring about market shares. You should start caring about what YOU want. If what YOU want is not a pocketable Linux box with phone functionality, then why are you here? If you want apps and games, why don't you get an iPhone?

Nokia + MS is going to be the thing YOU do not want, but the thing most people want. All I hope is that Nokia will continue to be Nokia, and continue to make at least some devices that are not 100 percent mainstream. If they make one cameramonster, one communicator and one N9XX each other year, I will be satisfied. You can rest assure, no one else is going to do it, they will all make mainstream farting and games phones.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Whether I agree or not...
http://pleco.org/heh/dead_horse.jpg