Will there be Iconways and Themeways as well? It would be nice to skip reading through 52 reddit posts to figure out how to fix appearances after an update.
Because it’s a great idea but for instance the Linux kernel would have to come with documentation that mentions the tens of thousands of authors. A massive undertaking that doesn’t help anyone, really.
> Linux is GPL and I doubt it would have tens of thousands of authors if it were not.
Why? There's plenty of permissive F/OSS projects with large numbers of contributors.
> It would have a dozen proprietary forks.
Probably, but proprietary forks don't stop F/OSS contributions. They can even be the source of them, as upstreaming everything that isn't secret sauce reduced the cost of maintaining the proprietary fork. A number of the big sources of F/OSS contributions to Postgres are maintainers of proprietary downstream distributions (I don't know that all are strictly forks, since I think the proprietary bits of at least some are using the extension mechanism.)
> Why? There's plenty of permissive F/OSS projects with large numbers of contributors.
Companies invest in developing Linux to create a commodity they can leverage to sell their products and services. The GPL ensures the investment remains a commodity and cannot be used in proprietary products that can't be also leveraged by the initial contributor.
There was a lot of BSD in the core of every proprietary Unix, each tied to a given manufacturer.
> There was a lot of BSD in the core of every proprietary Unix, each tied to a given manufacturer
Except MacOS X, the major proprietary Unixes all predated permissively-licensed releases of BSD, and the early permissively licensed releases were under a copyright cloud for years that prevented anyone from relying on them for commercial downstream distributions.
Documentation is not the problem. The problem is that, the advertising clause requires ALL promotional materials to include these acknowledgements, for ALL software that has been used in the software. It was not a problem for BSD back then, since UCB was the only developer. But for projects with multiple copyright owners, such as the Linux kernel, a Linux distro poster would contain a thousand lines of acknowledgements, and this is not even counting the packages in the userspace.
A modern revisiting would probably require crediting the project as a whole rather than each individual author, and maybe have separate consideration for products that derive from a large number of such projects.
The primary problem is that 4-clause BSD is incompatible with the GPL since it adds restrictions to distributing the software (notably the advertising clause)
This license is also sometimes called the “4-clause BSD license”.
This is a lax, permissive non-copyleft free software license with a serious flaw: the “obnoxious BSD advertising clause”. The flaw is not fatal; that is, it does not render the software nonfree. But it does cause practical problems, including incompatibility with the GNU GPL.
The Flowplayer Free version is released under the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 3 (GPL).
The GPL requires that you not remove the Flowplayer logo and copyright notices from the user interface. See section 5.d below.
You may convey a work based on the Program, or the modifications to produce it from the Program, in the form of source code under the terms of section 4, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
* If the work has interactive user interfaces, each must display Appropriate Legal Notices;
Thanks. I'm am aware of this. I research this all the time, and regularly come away disappointed. I don't know if I verbalised clearly enough, but I have actively wanted good options for years, and I'm always open to whatever alternatives are current at the time of purchase.
Seriously, I'm in the market for a new laptop and there are still too many concerns relating to support for these devices... not just Dell but usually for whatever manufacturer I'm looking at. Once you start reading about people's experiences there are always issues - many of which have been discussed to death on HN.
Just because Dell claim that Linux is officially supported does not mean that it will be a smooth ride. I don't think that has changed much at all over the last few years? But perhaps this year is different.
Do you own this though? If you're using this new XPS model without power consumption issues, excellent wifi (wifi chips issues seem to always be the main downer), good mousepad behaviour? Perhaps it's finally not a problem? I will gladly lap up any positive news that you can give on this front.
I'm using the Thinkpad X1 Carbon 7th generation and I feel like with the latest Ubuntu 20.04 LTS it's finally at the level of usability I want in a Linux laptop. Everything works out of the box, including the speakers, camera, microphone, wifi & bluetooth, and fingerprint reader. I can even use my fingerprint for sudo! (I did have to run one or two commands to get that working though). The trackpad is also great, if a little small. Probably comparable to the Dell's. Also haven't got a chance to test real-world power consumption because I'm stuck at home lately (thank COVID for that) but it seems to be okay.
That's awesome! I just bought the new XPS 13 (9300) with 32gb of ram. Unboxing it today, I've heard it works flawlessly with Ubuntu 20.04 except the fingerprint reader, and Dell says that will be possible later this year.
XPS 9560 4k model (2017 15") using Arch Linux. Recently formatted and re-installed arch (i had made a mess of some core linux things over the years and wanted a clean slate), and I don't recall any specific issues that were not user error trying to install or maintain an arch installation. The main "problem" that comes to mind is optimizing battery life while getting maximum performance from the discrete GPU. I chose not to go down that path--I just dual boot windows for games. As far as system stability goes, I've had zero issues with anything noteworthy. I've never done anything unique to my kernel settings on this device. Everything that i've needed worked out of the box. I may have needed to install some packages for drivers based on my device to improve performance (install nvidia drivers, possibly proprietary touchpad drivers).
Specifically: excellent wifi support, 5-7 hours of battery life, never had a trackpad issue.
Risk areas that i haven't investigated: backlight controls aren't working right now...thats the only thing that comes to mine.
And this is using arch. I'm sure Ubuntu is even more seamless.
I'm on the same machine. Also on Arch linux with Gnome Wayland as my DE.
It's been a complete delight. Actually, it's been leaps and bounds better than macOS Catalina on my work machine.
For me, the transition to Wayland made a HUGE difference. Trackpad actually feels basically the same as macOS, and better than windows 10.
Multi-monitor support is better than macOS (which loses my monitor arrangement consistently with two identical monitors and through a usb-c dock).
Bluetooth works as expected. (Not so for macOS catalina anymore, they've fucked up an truly astounding number of things...)
Suspend/resume are both fine.
Battery life is actually around 10 hours if I'm just doing light dev.
Basically - I've been pestering my office to let me switch for a while now. I'd take an XPS running linux over the current iteration of macbook/macOS hands down.
I switched from a macbook to a system76 laptop around 6 years ago and the only negative I noticed functionality-wise was the worse trackpad. But I would guess that different users are sensitive to different problems.
E.g. power management isn't much of an issue for me because I use my laptop unplugged for only a couple hours per day, so I wouldn't have noticed any problems related to that.
I have been keeping an eye on the system76 stuff too - not just Dell. For a long time system76 seemed to only make laptops with large keyboards with extra number pads and asymetric mouse pads which put me off (many manufacturers do this, so it's not just them).
I notice that they finally have more tenkeyless models, so slowly but surely my checklist is being satisfied. Are you still able to use a recent version of Pop!_OS after all this time, or are you using another recent version of another distro? I'm interested in the longevity in terms of being able to install up to date OSes over the years. I mean that really shouldn't be an issue with Linux - support usually only gets better as time advances and new drivers / modules are written, but it would be nice to know how you got on, regardless.
I bought the laptop back when System76 used Ubuntu and have never tried their Pop!_OS, and I use Fedora nowadays. Haven't had any problems with newer versions of Fedora.
Thanks. When you say "without much issue", have you ever lost more than a few hours to "required tinkering" over those years, or was it pretty much plain sailing?
Anything else I should take a look at? What would your ideal next laptop be?
Not the OP but I've been using various Thinkpads running Ubuntu since 2010. Been using Linux for many years prior to that on desktops. Also have my family kitted out with them (again on Ubuntu). It is possible to use just fine from a default install with none to very minor tinkering required. However if you do put in a few hours of tinkering you'll reap the rewards in having the laptop behave exactly how you want it to. Here's a hint, install tlp along with the thinkpad kernel access source ("sudo apt-get install tlp tp-smapi-dkms" on Ubuntu) and set the battery charge thresholds. This will help with runtime on battery and also extend the life of the battery itself. is set to start charge at 88% and stop at 95%. In the past five years my battery has only depleted by a few percent in capacity.
I have used Macs (had 2 Mac Book Pros and a Mac Mini) and Windows but its Linux all the way now, specifically Ubuntu LTS. Not sure how people put up with Windows 10's constant forced updates. If it has to be Windows give me Windows 10 LTSC.
Ideal next laptop? Probably a Thinkpad X1 Carbon gen 7 or Dell XPS 2020.
>> have you ever lost more than a few hours to "required tinkering" over those years
- Not really. And Linux ecosystem has improved tremendously in last 10 years.
For one of the colleague at the office, tried some Thinkpad , but that was not such a good experience. Now everyone on the team (> 30 people) gets Ubuntu Laptop or Desktop.
If you are going to use it main dev machine, then definitely Latitude. Ask Dell guys to preinstall it for you. They will install proprietary drivers for you.
I also have Macbook Pro 2015 model. Don't expect trackpad experience like it. I always use external mouse and keyboard any way.
Can your code work on AWS Lambda with one of their DB services? If you need it to scale with growth starting on a cloud platform will save headache later. If you don't need scaling it's possible you could run it on the permanently-free tiers or very low cost once you utilize the free quotas each month.
but wait... do you want them to go from that to today's dev environments? ;)