Allow me to preface what I write here with a full acknowledgment that I have been quite absent from Gnome development for recent months and so lack a certain level of reputability. I am aware of this. As with all things on the Internet, you can just pass this opinion on by and ignore it.
Like what seems like everything else in the world, Google has altered me - or, at least, my view of computing. I have been a willing participant - I admit. They hooked me with great web search making my bookmarks and newsgroup reader mostly irrelevant. Later, I upgraded that addiction to Gmail "Apps for Your Domain" - and I started using the Calendar features, thus, thoroughly killing any need for Evolution or Thunderbird. Then came the Google Talk with XMPP federation - irrelevating offerings from jabber.org. And, in the past 48 hours, Google Desktop for Linux. The most recent installment is icing on the cake: I am star struck by the ease with which they have thoroughly beaten Beagle at its own game (providing a service that accomplishes its claims without leaking memory until your system crashes).
So, what am I left with on my desktop? A web browser, an IM client, and a handful of programs and tray applets related to hardware. I go to work in the morning and sign in and my "desktop" has gone with me: all my documents, email, friends, connections.
Many others have said what I have just concluded: the desktop is changing.
By one metric, Linux on the desktop has been phenomenally successful: it lets me get online with relative ease and no costs. Gecko has proven to be ripe for developing rich web applications that rival and sometimes surpass anything on the desktop. And the toolkits, panel and window managers that make that experience managable and aesthetically pleasing cannot go without accolade; they are excellent, minimalist, effective. While Flash installation continues to be quite painful on x86-64, it does, at least, interopperate with the FOSS browser offerings consistently. OpenOffice.org continues to be a large piece of relatively poorly written code, but it does allow what infrequent document manipulation I need to do to occur without too much fuss.
Other than these handful of applications, it doesn't appear to me that the rest of the software included with a default "Gnome desktop" has much shelf-life left in it. Indeed, this includes the very module that I officially (but recently have been absent from) work on: Gnome Games. Nothing in our module compares favorably to any number of Flash-based versions of games in the same genre. How can we compete with such phenomenal "zero-cost" offerings from proprietary vendors? What can we do to stay relevant? Certainly, it seems, the Games module is losing its relevance in the face of these Flash-based competitors.
There are the endless flamewars over Beagle vs. Tracker. In the end, it turns out, that neither one is usable in their respective current forms and both are completely surpassed by GDfL. I also recall the recent flamewar over the inclusion of a Mono-based note taking application, Tomboy. A huge amount of man hours were wasted, by my observation, on a fight over an application that has been obsoleted by web-based offerings, already.
While we fight over table scraps, real people with real needs are being served by proprietary vendors and services. Wholly and completely without FOSS and at no-cost to the user. In what ways can we stay relevant? Why don't we have competitors to all of these proprietary service offerings? Can we change, too?
</stirpot>
Like what seems like everything else in the world, Google has altered me - or, at least, my view of computing. I have been a willing participant - I admit. They hooked me with great web search making my bookmarks and newsgroup reader mostly irrelevant. Later, I upgraded that addiction to Gmail "Apps for Your Domain" - and I started using the Calendar features, thus, thoroughly killing any need for Evolution or Thunderbird. Then came the Google Talk with XMPP federation - irrelevating offerings from jabber.org. And, in the past 48 hours, Google Desktop for Linux. The most recent installment is icing on the cake: I am star struck by the ease with which they have thoroughly beaten Beagle at its own game (providing a service that accomplishes its claims without leaking memory until your system crashes).
So, what am I left with on my desktop? A web browser, an IM client, and a handful of programs and tray applets related to hardware. I go to work in the morning and sign in and my "desktop" has gone with me: all my documents, email, friends, connections.
Many others have said what I have just concluded: the desktop is changing.
By one metric, Linux on the desktop has been phenomenally successful: it lets me get online with relative ease and no costs. Gecko has proven to be ripe for developing rich web applications that rival and sometimes surpass anything on the desktop. And the toolkits, panel and window managers that make that experience managable and aesthetically pleasing cannot go without accolade; they are excellent, minimalist, effective. While Flash installation continues to be quite painful on x86-64, it does, at least, interopperate with the FOSS browser offerings consistently. OpenOffice.org continues to be a large piece of relatively poorly written code, but it does allow what infrequent document manipulation I need to do to occur without too much fuss.
Other than these handful of applications, it doesn't appear to me that the rest of the software included with a default "Gnome desktop" has much shelf-life left in it. Indeed, this includes the very module that I officially (but recently have been absent from) work on: Gnome Games. Nothing in our module compares favorably to any number of Flash-based versions of games in the same genre. How can we compete with such phenomenal "zero-cost" offerings from proprietary vendors? What can we do to stay relevant? Certainly, it seems, the Games module is losing its relevance in the face of these Flash-based competitors.
There are the endless flamewars over Beagle vs. Tracker. In the end, it turns out, that neither one is usable in their respective current forms and both are completely surpassed by GDfL. I also recall the recent flamewar over the inclusion of a Mono-based note taking application, Tomboy. A huge amount of man hours were wasted, by my observation, on a fight over an application that has been obsoleted by web-based offerings, already.
While we fight over table scraps, real people with real needs are being served by proprietary vendors and services. Wholly and completely without FOSS and at no-cost to the user. In what ways can we stay relevant? Why don't we have competitors to all of these proprietary service offerings? Can we change, too?
</stirpot>
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jasondclinton- Jason D. Clinton
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hendry.myopenid.com : Bye Desktop [+0]
Comments
Google Desktop may serve your needs better than Beagle, but that isn't true for most of the rest of us. As you point out yourself, you are only using your Linux desktop as a vehicle for Internet access, so the advantages of Beagle's GNOME integration features really aren't as valuable to you. Please remember that we don't all have the same needs and many of us can't get by using only web services. I strongly disagree with your assertion that GNOME desktop applications are destined for extinction.
Desktop computing paradigms are definitely undergoing significant changes, but that doesn't mean that the value and usefulness of conventional desktop applications is evaporating. Keep in mind that many popular web services provide open APIs in part because there is a very clear need for integration with desktop applications.
for us, Tomboy is a very useful application, liferea and evolution are indispensable, and the desktop as we know it is very much alive, and will be around for long.
tm: http://traversingmind.blogspot.com
In the end, a web app can't theme or become accessible easily, doesn't take to plugins well, can only integrate with those apps the authors explicitly want it to integrate with, and, most importantly, is rarely at best open source. Some people can work around these problems. I can't, and that's why I still use desktop apps all but exclusively.
Three objections come to mind immediately. First, I am offline for about an hour and a half every day (my commute) when I do need to use various tools, the calendar not the least; and whenever I am traveling I am frequently both offline and in need of my tools and data for many hours at a stretch.
Second, we have tight restrictions - sensibly tight, I agree - on where internal company info and data can be used. Storing it on an unrelated company's servers in a foreign jurisdiction doeas not really strike anybody as prudent. So, we'll be using local software for some communication and analysis in any case, in which case there is no compelling reason to use something else as well.
Third, and to put a not too fine a point on it, many google apps are dogs. Gmail works fine, the calendar works ok - usually, then it doesn't seem to randomly drop categories. But most other stuff just is really not good at all. They're slow, they're flaky and they break a number of UI design rules since their means of interaction are limited. And since your data is tied to the apps there is no easy way to switch to something better.
A final observation is that for most apps I don't get what problem they're trying to solve (excepting gmail). What is the point of having your spreadsheet app online? If you want to share your spreadsheet work across computers, doesn't it make more sense to have the _data_ on a repository somewhare and access it with local apps from wherever you are? Sure, have the online version available as an emergency backup system you you always have some means of working (from a stripped-down hotel guest computer, for instance), but it's having the data, not the apps, everywhere that counts.
As for the privacy and legality issues, they are surely things over which to be concerned but nothing, I think, which is not insurmountable with legal agreements. In the case of Zimbra, which is a fully self-hosted, web-based email and groupware suite, you get the full features of web-based applications but continue to be responsible for your own data storage. I'm not just talking about Google, here. I mean web apps in general and Zimbra certain falls in to that category.
Finally, I agree that some applications clearly do not (yet) fit well in to the web paradigm (GIMP comes to mind.) But that doesn't mean that the future won't bring new technology and competitors. Can we stay ahead of the curve?
At the end of the day, the user doesn't care at all whether or not the application they're using is on the web or somehow installed on their machine. What matters is access, compatibility, and features.
For some people - like you - features are less important, so you use packages like OpenOffice.org less and are more concerned with having your data with you. For others, it's the other way around.
I think the desktop definitely needs much better integration with web applications, and the ability to get at 'your desktop' or 'your data' from a much broader range of places. But, intrinsically, "service" versus "application" is a technical distinction a user likely doesn't care about.
What's that gtk thing they are using then? Understanding stuff like Banshee and OOo documents? Going nicely to the notification area and popping up usably with ctrl-ctrl? Right... It was obvious designed for Playstation 3.
"It also indexes my Pidgin chat logs, which is something that Google Desktop doesn't support yet."
Yet? I doubt it ever should. It should index Google Talk conversations though, WHEN the client for Linux will be released.
"As nice as it is to have my data available everywhere, having my mail client or my RSS reader at my hands at every computer..."
First of all, the online functionality is primary use, why they exist. Second, they are actually atm making offline versions.. They will be ready soonish.
"In the end, a web app can't theme or become accessible easily, doesn't take to plugins well, can only integrate with those apps the authors explicitly want it to integrate with, and, most importantly, is rarely at best open source. "
There are good standards for making accessible web pages/applications. Also, why have plugins if the primary functions are good enough. They will integrate nicely with the rest of the Google toolset, don't worry, at least some day :) Last, being Open Source by itself produces no value.
"And since your data is tied to the apps there is no easy way to switch to something better."
Yeah that's right, the export functions of all the Google Docs for instance suck majorly ;) (Have you ever even taken a look? Not obviously!) Also others export quite nicely.
"What is the point of having your spreadsheet app online?"
Collaborative editing. Fire up Google Talk, put on your headset and you can start crafting stuff while chatting with others, live. Sure, those features really don't seem to make any sense if you have no friends or real work to do, I can understand that... Especially the Writer is magnificent! Also, it makes awesomely nice to publish and distribute stuff, and they provide insanely good hosting for my web pages :)
---
Kids, the OP is 100% correct on his assestment. It's because his view is based on real world instead of your delusional zealot nerd planet.
You're right. It's designed for a variety of things, many of which are also part of the GNOME desktop. But the point is that, as much as it half-tries to integrate, it's still restricted by the fact that it only targets a few things at the expense of wider integration.
"Yet? I doubt it ever should. It should index Google Talk conversations though, WHEN the client for Linux will be released."
This is exactly the problem. It doesn't integrate with the standard Linux desktop; by your arguments it refuses to do so! I don't know about you, but I expect desktop search to index my data, not just 'the data that Google helped create.' The former is useful. The latter is craven and lame.
"First of all, the online functionality is primary use, why they exist."
Yes, but the author was advocating them for general use. Read before you argue.
"Second, they are actually atm making offline versions.. They will be ready soonish."
Can I access the GB of mail GMail tells me I have offline? Every document Docs has in my account? The huge amount of data *other Google app* has?
"There are good standards for making accessible web pages/applications."
And, frankly, most of them suck.
"Also, why have plugins if the primary functions are good enough."
Because no basic feature set is going to be good enough for everyone. Is Firefox's feature set good enough for most people? Yes, of course! That's why it's in by default. But is it good enough for everyone? Of course not! Hence the massive Firefox plugin community. Plugins exist exactly because people have a need that cannot be sanely integrated by default.
"They will integrate nicely with the rest of the Google toolset, don't worry, at least some day :)"
And if I don't want the 'Google toolset' for something? Oh, oops, no integration with anything else!
"Last, being Open Source by itself produces no value."
Yes, it does. That's pretty much the whole point of the FOSS community.
"Yeah that's right, the export functions of all the Google Docs for instance suck majorly ;) (Have you ever even taken a look? Not obviously!) Also others export quite nicely."
So, outside of using a desktop app or perhaps POP, how could I import all of my GMail mail into mboxes for another app? Can I transfer flagged news items from Google Reader? Do fun things to my Bookmarks outside of what's allowed by the default feature set of Google Bookmarks? Is there any way to export the metadata relationships of your documents that Google establishes? No! One app does not exportability make.
"Kids, the OP is 100% correct on his assestment. It's because his view is based on real world instead of your delusional zealot nerd planet."
Stop being a troll.
Weirdly, Gnome and Microsoft have the same problem: all of a sudden these Internet applications are becoming useful and people aren't using their desktop applications. What to do?
If you're Microsoft you start talking about Rich Functionality. Sure Internet apps are cute, but they don't provide Rich Functionality! In the glorious future people will be using Avalon/Xaml/.Net/???... to create Compelling User Experiences!
But is this a realistic prediction or just wishful thinking? I can see why Microsoft would like to see a move away from HTML/Javascript back to the desktop technologies, being a provider of such a platform and being dependent on it for revenue.
Does Gnome have the same problem? Not literally, but you can see pushback in the comments above. The web is not a threat to the future of the Gnome project -- we still need to put a friendly face on Linux computing. But the current crop of Internet applications are kicking our desktop app's asses!
-G
Google of course wants your data, so will probably never offer such things.
http://telepathy.freedesktop.org/wiki/
http://www.conduit-project.org/
(and numerous other projects!)
The Web API are open standards which is good enough for me.
I do see unsavoury huge concentration of "Web service power" with Google and Facebook say. Though I am confident FOSS will come in and hopefully launch competitive services that even the playing field a little (e.g. Wikipedia).