A FAILED UNITY

Well ... this one is a surprise.

The firm Canonical has announced its ending it's work on the Unity project. Unity was basically a GUI, Graphical User Interface, for Ubuntu what is an Operating System which is built on Linux ... which is kinda ... a version, free one, of Unix.

Confused?

Yeah well that's probably why it failed.

And did I say I was surprised?

Yeah, I was only surprised by the fact this was reported on in the BBC News app!

I had a little try of Unity and Ubuntu on a laptop and I was not impressed. It was also overheating my laptop which was shutting itself down.

I ... published an article or piece somewhere criticising Unity and Ubuntu and basically got rid my some idiot fanboys that I was a newbie and did not know what I was talking about.

Funny then that we fast a forward a few years and not only is there this announcement that its ending, in part, but that there is also a mention of difficulties with laptops.

Funny, no one who criticised me mentioned that there was a long running issue getting it to work on laptops.

I was criticised for trying to run it on an AMD Radeon as apparently they didn't work so well as they did not have an open system when it cage to drivers. I stated that this only made things even worse! I pointed out that there are not one but TWO companies producing graphics cards and that you would think that was something with warning people about?!

No ... all I heard and read was how fantastic the OS was, easy to install and worked great. Umm ... no.

What my critics failed to know, as is often the case with fanboys in anything that are obviously brain dead, is that I have a BSc Single Honours Degree in Applied Computing.

They also failed to realise I'm somewhat older than your average teenager by more years than I care to admit.

But what this does mean is I had a Binatone Pong gaming system, Atari 2600, Commodore VIC-20, Commodore Amiga and my first PC was a Pentium 2.

I also built one of the first SLI rigs with an Athlon64 and two Before 6800GT's. Or was it 8800? I forget. It was around a month or so before CustomPC did an article on it and his difficult it was. 

Umm ... no it wasn't. Well ... except for the fact it didn't occur to me that I had to install the GPU driver twice!!

No, nor did they know that I set up my PC to dual boot with various operating systems which included Linux RedHat 4.5, I think it was, back around 1998. Now that was a pain in the arse. Considering attending lectures and assignments to complete it took me two days to get it working. One lecturer I was friendly with said I would not get it working. The look on his face when I told him that I had got Windows and RedHat dual booting but that it did take two days.

One again, like the damned SLI setup it never occurred to me they might use different file formats and to achieve this you had to use specific partitions a certain way and think about the boot sector.

Yeah but if you've played around with something for five minutes you get the right to accuse everyone else of being thick newbies if you don't praise the thing you love.

Hey?! At least in this case it's something that is free they have not paid through the nose for.

The reason I tried it again is like I said with RedHat all those years ago, Linux needs to go a long way before it will become relevant. That was because back then they said it would overtake Windows eventually. "Not anytime soon out won't" I said to this remark.

The funny thing is I see people saying that when I run down the operating system.

On the one hand they said it was better than Windows and would overtake it in its market share.

But they also said it was an operating system for people who liked to 'tinker'. Errr no.

Those two things don't go together and of you just want to get things done you can't have something you need to keep buggering about with.

It also needs to be bloody intuitive for it to ever come close to the number of installs Windows has.

The funny thing is something else that also runs on a Unix, is it actually Linux as I forget, core gets launched and does overtake Windows to boot ...

Android.

Boy I would have hated being Mark Shuttlecock or worse still, anyone who had been working on Linux for like well over ten years. To watch Android just get launched and then rocket upwards.

Funny thing is I'm not a fan of Android either and it seems to have developed faults and bad habits as it is supposed to get better.

I really wouldn't want an Android desktop computer! Nor, even, a laptop.

Maybe one day someone might actually being out a version of Linux where I know I could give up Windows entirely?

I just hope that wait is not as long as my last one from RedHat 4.5 to Ubuntu 14.6, I think it was, Pangolin ... that one?

Maybe if Canonical had just concentrated on desktops and laptops we might have already gotten one?

Oddly I never liked the look of many of the other Linux distros, Mint probably being about the best outside of Unity.

I might build a PC to run Linux on later this year and I'll look into the GUI's then to see what's on offer.

I guess I can stop searching for that Ubuntu Phone now?

I saw this on the BBC and thought you should see it: Ubuntu ends Unity software unification project - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39490848

STEAM OS IS MORE VAPOUR

Oh dear.

I had become quite excited by the fact that Half Life and Steam creators Valve announced they were working on Steam Operating System based on Linux.

For too long people have created Linux OS's that do not come up to expectations. After a long pause without using it myself I kept hearing a great deal about Ubuntu and decided to give it a go.

However after a nightmare few weeks I discovered that the very thing a Linux OS had going for it, speed and stability, was now terrible. The thing it missed previously, a good graphical user interface, was now quite good?!

The other thing is that of  proprietary drivers. The one thing an OS simply MUST DO is work. If you enjoy the fact that it dies not work immediately and have to tinker for days then your missing the whole point of the very idea and term of operating system. Basically because it is not operating making many look somewhat foolish.

When this involves a standard and necessary piece of hardware whereby there are only TWO companies, though it could be argued there are three, this is even worse! No is and buts but ridiculous. Linus users may love the idea it is a novelty but the fact is that anyone who creates a Linux OS dearly wants it to go mainstream. The End! When you have installed it into an already outdated laptop and the drivers do not work it is not really an OS, as you are not able to operate the system. In fact it was quite the opposite and my laptop over heated and shut down several times and I never even had games installed?! Good know how much extra per it sucked from the wall socket and I dread to think.

At a time when Microsoft have screwed up three out of for operating systems an opportunity appeared to pass the Linux bridge by. But then Valve, who must have spotted this, announced Steam OS.

Unfortunately though and from what I read in the report below I think Valve will not do as well as they think that they will? As some guys got to mess around with a beta version of Steam they discovered many things that have had me scratching my head...

1 Users seem to be locked out of many things, including repositories that are not Valve's...uh-oh!

2 It looks and feels exactly like the Stream client on Windows or other Linux machine...uh-oh!

3 To get to something resembling a desktop you had to alter something in settings...uh-oh!

They may have been one or two other things but the first thing I thought was oh dear it is that cash cow creation thing going on again. This is the one thing users do not like and many Linux stalwarts in particular. I asked a Linux guy once why he died not like posting for software and he simply said "so you can spend more on faster hardware" though I can understand this it is not really workable. They sound like socialists of the computer world?

Yes OK Microsoft, and Apple, are extremely greedy and much of their software is expensive. Though with Apple it is the hardware. But I do not think it sensible to expect to pay nothing for something that could take a few years to create for a team of people.

Well you could if the software was boosted with advertising. Oddly enough I saw the Amazon Kindle tested by a woman who inspects hotels and she went mad at the adverts that kept popping up. Yup would drive me batty too. Turns out you had to pay them a fee of £10 to have them removed. I did not like the sound of Tesco tablets nor Argos Tablets for the same reason and that the OS on these devices have Bern created by them. Even if things start of great you have no way of knowing if this will suddenly go downhill with an update? My guess would be YES!

Case in point, my faulty and used Motorola Atrix suddenly showed down after around 18 months and now runs slower than the Motorola Defy I owned before hand. But the Atrix is dual core 1Ghz while the Defy was single core and 800Mhz?!

Added to this I have even reinstalled the Operating System several times to cure it's various ills to no effect whatsoever. Yet when someone hands me their new phone and this applies to cheap single core entry level phones to they go so fast they make my Defy look like it is going backwards in time.

I really DO NOT like updates. They drive you bloody nuts to be updated for no real visually noticeable  improvement and seemingly every five minutes. Before long you do notice changes as the software starts paying up or refused to work altogether.

That leaves me with such a bad taste in my mouth I want to vomit repeatedly!!! Why? Because this behaviour is no different to that of pick-pockets stealing things from you in the street.

At least pickpockets have done excuse or other at times, like they are starving or drug addicts!! Not because a few million in a few years is not good enough or not fast enough.

Yes a very bad taste.

So Valve appears on first impressions to be going down that street of shame but I cannot say I am surprised. I never did like the Steam client and thought it would not work. Several years to early.

Let us hope things improve but after  reading this, albeit early report, I salt very much doubt it.

Maybe the price of twinkies have gone up?

In Depth: First look: Valve SteamOS - http://pulse.me/s/IgBRn