Ubuntu Considering an HTML5-Based OS Installer (phoronix.com) 179
An anonymous reader writes: Ubuntu's Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator for Life, Mark Shuttleworth, is considering backing a new Ubuntu installer that would be using HTML5 via the Electron Framework. This theoretical installer would re-use the company's existing HTML5 code for managing MAAS installations, integrate with Electron, and also better support their Snap packaging format, according to his proposal. What could possibly go wrong with an HTML5/Electron operating system installer? Mark also announced that Ubuntu 18.10 is codenamed the Cosmic Cuttlefish.
Cool! (Score:5, Funny)
I hope it has jQuery. It's the best!
and i say to myself (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
ipmi with an iso over an slow link can get you that slow down.
Re: (Score:2)
If you find yourself booting from ISO images all the time, get something like the IODD 2531 and put an SSD in there or use Yumi or Easy2boot with a good flash drive.
Re: (Score:2)
IODD is the Korean original. Zalman is a lower quality manufacturer of essentially the same hardware with inferior firmware.
Re: (Score:3)
I still prefer installing from optical media. It's so handy. You just burn it and write "System ABC, release XYZ" - done. You know what it is from a glance, there is no doubt. And it's there forever, whenever you need it. If you use a flash drive, you go: "okay, which one had Windows, which one had Linux, which one had my documents... is it still there or did I reuse this drive for something else... now I have to download the system and prepare a new boot drive again... and how do I do that when my computer
Re: (Score:2)
Have you ever tried, you know, writing a label on a USB key?
Re: (Score:2)
They're tiny, and cost many times more than a blank disk, so I'd likely reuse them for something else.
Digging through old Ubuntu. (Score:2)
You just burn it and write "System ABC, release XYZ" - done.
Serious question : How often do you need go back to a specific version of a certain GNU/Linux distro ?
In most of the use cases I've been through, I generally need "whatever is the most up-to-date and patched release of distro 'Xyz' or LTS version of distro 'Abc' ",
so generally, fetching an up to date installation iso (usually the minimalist Net install that will then pull the uptodate installer and package from the net) and writing it to a bootable USB key is the way to go.
I've rarely needed to keep archive
Re: (Score:2)
If you're the "computer emergency guy" in your family or circle of friends, it's useful to have Windows 7, Windows 10, and Linux [pick your favorite distro] always handy. So, 3 flash drives, ~$5-10 each. Or blank DVDs, ~20-30 cents each. But then again, many new PCs don't even come with optical drives, so I admit, perhaps that's not much of a point anymore.
Re: (Score:1)
It's much more useful to say "I don't do Windows".
Re: (Score:2)
They would know it's a lie. I would love to not do Windows, but it's where the games are.
Re: (Score:2)
I've never had a burned disc go bad due to age.
I have burned CDs from the 90s that have seen several USB drives come and die. Those flash drives are in a landfill somewhere. Those CDs are in my closet, perfectly readable.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I've lost a bunch over the years myself, before I learned the "rules": You need to respect the nature of your media.
A lot of (especially cheaper) CD/DVD-Rs use organic dyes which break down quickly if exposed to UV (sunlight) or heat (and possibly moisture), and more slowly regardless - even the good branded and cased ones back in the early days, unless they were specifically "archival grade" or similar, though I've heard recently they have gotten better. You pretty much had to store them in a cool,
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
can you point me to at least one comment - maybe on slashdot that stated - "I want HTML based installer in linux"?
Re: (Score:2)
99% of Ubuntu users couldn't care less what languages the installer is written in, as long as it works. If HTML is easier for them to develop in, I for one don't really care. It's just an installer, it's not like rewriting KDE in HTML.
For servers the text mode one is best GUI one is l (Score:3)
For servers the text mode one is best GUI one is limited in choice now the redhat/centos and suse GUI ones are a lot better.
Re: (Score:2)
Working on actual improvements (Score:1)
If only Linux distributions spent as much time on improving the operating system as they have with the installer over the years (how many times Fedora/Ubuntu/etc installer have been rewritten?), the year of Linux on desktop would have happened ages ago.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, when I recently installed Ubuntu LTSR server I was timewarped back more than 20 years because the install process was exactly the same one I used to install Redhat Linux in the 90's. The CentOS installer on the other hand was very modern and user friendly. If you want to have the year of the Linux desktop having an installer that doesn't automatically turn off 99.9+% of users is probably a good idea.
Re: (Score:2)
Did it have the redneck language choice?
Re: (Score:2)
Did it have the redneck language choice?
No, it doesn't copy Microsoft.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, when I recently installed Ubuntu LTSR server I was timewarped back more than 20 years because the install process was exactly the same one I used to install Redhat Linux in the 90's. .....
On May 1, 1998 I installed RH 5.0 as my first Linux experience. It's installer did not look or behave anything like the installer on Kubuntu 18.04 (Bionic Beaver), which is based on Ubuntu 18.04, that I installed last week. RH did not have the graphical map of the US that allowed geographical selection of the time zone. It did not have a partition editor comparable to gparted because Gnome wasn't around back then.
Besides, if you are the Linux guru server installer that you seem to want us to believe,
Re: Working on actual improvements (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If you want to have the year of the Linux desktop having an installer that doesn't automatically turn off 99.9+% of users is probably a good idea.
.... The more popular Linux gets the more it transforms into Windows. ....
It doesn't look like M$ is going to have the "Year of Win10" anytime soon,
https://bit.ly/2I2n6F2 [bit.ly]
because Win10, launched 2 years ago, is still 8% behind Win7, which was launched 9 years ago, and it's not trending up except in M$'s PR blurbs.
The installer on most Linux distros are similar to each other and to Windows, except that Linux users have to reboot only once per install, and that is to start up the system.
My first experience with a graphical Linux desktop which was equal to or better than WinXP was K
Re: (Score:2)
All you really are saying is that you've had no experience installing Linux in the last 10 years.
Here is a video clip showing Kubuntu 18.04 being installed as a guest host in VirtualBox.
https://youtu.be/BYB1FiUCvGE?t... [youtu.be]
You can't get any simpler unless you pre-install it by customer order at the factory, which is what System76 does.
Re: (Score:2)
Electron is cancer (Score:1)
Electron is the bloated cancer which is killing the software industry.
An 80mb "runtime" with every simple 100 line application. WORST TIMELINE.
Re: (Score:2)
Not Invented Here (Score:3)
It seems like this is just another example of NIH syndrome made manifest. Who needs something to be functional when you can have original, fancy and slow?!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It seems like this is just another example of NIH syndrome made manifest.
They are switching to a web interface.. that they invented. This is about consolidating development resources onto a single installer instead of developing two separate interfaces that do the exact same thing.
As to slow, who cares, it's an OS installer interface. It's not exactly a high performance application to configure a .conf file.
Re: (Score:2)
The old installer was developed by the guys in room 21a. The HTML installer is from the guys at 21b. It's just down the corridor, on the the left.
Sounds Awesome! (Score:5, Interesting)
In theory, HTML5 based installer sounds awesome. The core system management would still be the same, just a few shell commands initiated from JavaScript within a minimalistic browser environment...
But then I looked into what this "Electron" framework actually is, and who's using it for what.
1) Skype - buggy as fuck
2) GitHub Desktop - clunky as fuck
3) Atom Editor - slow as fuck
4) WordPress - need I say more..?
5) Slack - too many issues to even name any
6) Discord - known for literally blue-screening computers
7) Visual Studio Code - classic VS was amazing, why fuck up a good thing?
I'm all for rapid development within HTML5 + JS + CSS, but PLEASE, for the fucking love of god, use tool sets that don't have such a horrendous reputation!?
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think I'd go so far as to say HTML5 based installer sounding awesome... It's an installer, not much to say about it for the last decade or so. There's no amount of innovation in an installer that's going to change the fortunes of the platform at this point. Even if wanting to make changes, I would think that reworking so much of it would set you back so far and there's no way walking back from that sort of rewrite will save time for whatever incremental functionality people can dream up. The mai
Re: (Score:2)
I haven't used it a ton yet but VS Code is pretty good for the couple dozen config files I've managed for my OpenHAB install, it's like Notepad++ with Intellisense, very nice.
Re: (Score:1)
VS Code is actually pretty decent. The Visual Studio branding is weird but it does justify its existence compared to the normal VS by being cross platform and highly extensible resulting in support for a huge number of languages. Yes classic VS has plugins but it is much easier to develop them for VS Code and it shows in the enormous variety of extensions available. It shocked me because, as you say, every other Electron app I've tried using is total garbage.
Re: (Score:2)
HTML5 is just the new VT100 or ANSI.
Being that it is an interpreted formatting language, it has its limitations, and tools to push past them, tend to not work too well.
There were Hacks on the IBM CGA screen, where the Text format was quarter. So you can get 16colors at 160x100 resolution. But text will not be readable.
The big issues with these tool sets is it is asking html5 to do things that html5 doesn't want to do by default.
Re: (Score:3)
The main thing is that electron means everyone has a distinct browser process. It eschews OS platform provided facilities and as such has to reinvent the wheel and resource sharing between applications is pretty well defeated.
Beyond that, there's the *tendency* for these developers to be sloppy and stop at 'mostly works'. This is not to say you cannot make a solid application with these tools, just that a lot of people who cannot otherwise manage to produce desktop applications can *appear* to succeed wit
Re: (Score:3)
Kids these days
Part of ANSI standards is terminal emulation standard. [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Visual Studio Code is amazing and fast compared to Atom.
How? It is the same editor just different skin as both are electron based and use the same pluggin model
Re: (Score:2)
Yet, he's not wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
I imagine what's behind this move is how hard it is to find macbook-pro-having designers to work with Linux GUI stuff.
All in all, I give this idea a "meh, why not?"
Re: (Score:2)
That explains why Discord is so bad and why it needs updating every few days.
GitHub Desktop succeeds the old GitHub client that was also really slow and crappy. IIRC it was Java... They seem to love bloat.
Re: (Score:2)
"The ATOM editor works just fine."
Lol, no.
Not only is it noticeably slow even on powerful equipment, open bugs on Github go untouched for ages. I followed one for broken shortcut keys in a Save File dialog (https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/14145) that went unresolved for nearly a year.
I gladly paid for Sublime Text in order to avoid the mess that is Atom.
Re: (Score:2)
Not only is it noticeably slow even on powerful equipment
I guess my equipment is a lot more powerful than yours.. No pun intended, I swear.
open bugs on Github go untouched for ages. I followed one for broken shortcut keys in a Save File dialog (https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/14145) that went unresolved for nearly a year.
Eh. Mac specific. My sympathy just went down the toilet.
I gladly paid for Sublime Text in order to avoid the mess that is Atom.
Sublime is also pretty cool. Infinitely more expensive, but still cool.
Re: (Score:2)
Wahhhhhhhhhh!!!!
Re: (Score:2)
Wrong. If it were based around an earlier version of HTML I might agree, but with HTML5 there's the opportunity for an entirely new selection of things going wrong. Like a video getting stuck in a playback loop.
Alternatives? (Score:2)
I've got an idea and cause to do something like this (telling users to go to a localhost URL seems to be too difficult...) but I've heard lots against Electron. Custom UI's for Mac & Windows would be too time-consuming, especially with an existing HTML/JS gui. :/
What are good alternatives? I know sciter but it's not open source, and for reason I'd prefer it to be open source.
Re: (Score:3)
QT comes to mind...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
A good one? Define 'good' in this context, please?
Re: (Score:2)
WxWindows, now known as WxWidgets [wxwidgets.org].
Re: (Score:2)
"Time consuming"? if this means time to develop, is this now a factor in designing an actual product for actual customers to use? I'd say if a customer can actually see it and touch it and be affected by it in some way, then you never ever want to rush on it. If it's a dev only tool, then sure, rush it since it doesn't hurt anyone but themselves.
So? (Score:5, Insightful)
He's talking about replacing Ubuntu's configuration/install engine with... a different configuration/install engine. It's fundamentally just a big script that gathers input from the user and punts the results to a bunch of other scripts and applications to do the actual install magic.
Other than the people maintaining it, who really gives a shit what language/framework it's built with?
Re: (Score:2)
People who like being able to install with less than 8GB of RAM.
Re: (Score:2)
Of the Linux distros I'd choose to run on a lighter system, Ubuntu is not (any longer) on the list.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Other than the people maintaining it, who really gives a shit what language/framework it's built with?
144 Slashdot posters evidently...
Re: (Score:2)
They're just here for the arguments.
Re: (Score:2)
They're just here for the arguments.
No they're not. :-)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Shuttleworth is the sole shareholder of Canonical Ltd.
He has direct control over the company, though has appointed other people CEO in his stead before.
If you're talking about the government or the mafia coming in and putting a gun to his head demanding he cede control, then you were a fucking waste of finger tendon lifespan, and I hope you drown in vomit.
It's only by the self restraint of others that you haven't been buried
Cue to complain about JS (Score:3, Insightful)
How about an installer with some added features? (Score:5, Interesting)
Debian/Ubuntu's apt system has been good over the years, since it doesn't have the "rpm hell" RedHat based distributions have, especially if one has multiple repositories.
It would be nice if they had the ability to roll back a version update without having to reinstall. AIX had this functionality, where if an update caused major problems, rejecting the update and rolling back was easy.
Re: (Score:2)
Correct. Cows, not puppies.
I have my our main dev setup scripted with Puppet, and I can create a new clean system in about 30 minutes that's about 98% done for what I need to be productive. I even have Puppet for Windows working well enough that it gets you about 90% of the way there. The two biggest issues we have with Windows are installers we can't automate and VisualStudio's craptastic licensing.
Yay? (Score:2)
I suppose that's great because it's really easy to tweak the UI and make incremental changes.
But really, who cares which tech is used for a UI that you're not using on a daily basis?
As long as it works for its intended purpose, they could write it in COBOL for all I care.
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just write the damn thing in Python or whatever language is hot at the moment. Use framebuffer graphics and a simple mouse driver like FreeBSD uses. How high up the abstraction layer can we go just to copy files to a storage device?
Re: (Score:2)
Alright default to the first serial port if no framebuffer is found. Happy?
Re: (Score:2)
But a serial console is damn nice to use with something like KVM on a remote server. Lights out management (like Dell's iDRAC) is great, but text is so much faster and easier to read on the client side with subpixel rendering.
Re: (Score:2)
You're further demonstrating you have no idea what you're talking about.
Re: (Score:2)
And if there's a problem with the network or SSH config, then what? Drive to the site?
Re: (Score:2)
Cheap PC shit doesn't come with a serial port but most servers and even lowly devices like the Raspberry Pi still communicate via serial ports. Three wires and you're connected. If the OS fails to boot you'll never know because sshd never loaded. I'd see all the kernel messages from my antique serial port while you're grepping DHCP logs.
Cosmic Cuttlefish? (Score:4, Funny)
Postsingular (Score:2)
Text installer (Score:1)
>br geez, re-inventing the wheel....again.
Re: (Score:2)
A GUI is exactly what's needed if Linux wants anyone other than nerds like us using it.
And if done right, a GUI can be much more useable than a TUI even for nerds.
Quote of the year (Score:1)
Let's return to what's TRULY important... (Score:2)
... like when a pre-SCO Caldera had Tetris in their installer. You'd start the installer, set up your disk, it would start copying essential files from the CD, you'd get asked a few config questions (network settings, select optional packages, etc.), then, when you were done, half of the screen would be Tetris and the other half would show the progress of the remaining files.
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/comput... [cnn.com]
Re: (Score:2)
That's pretty brilliant actually. A working web browser would also be good.
Tetris is not free software (Score:2)
If Canonical tried that nowadays, The Tetris Company would sue Canonical and win. See article "US District Court: Game Elements In Tetris Clone Infringe Tetris Co.'s Copyright" [slashdot.org] from June 2012 about Tetris v. Xio.
Server (Score:2)
It's a good solution for server installation!
HTML installer (Score:4, Interesting)
At my previous company, we used a Mozilla based installer front end. We used a cut down mozilla browser, without address bars or anything like that, which allowed easy UI creation for a wizard, embedded HTML online release notes, built in JS engine for customization at the product/package level, easily extended to interface with back end installers using XPCom. All in all, it was a great piece of work and very stable, this was 2004/2005.
Then we were acquired by an unnamed big blue bohemouth, who didn't like the MPL, and moved us to one of their in-house installers (which was awful beyond words.) And just like that, it was gone.
fix (Score:1)
I didn't know that the current installer was broken.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect a lot of web developers suddeny had a desire to develop on a desktop instead but didn't want to learn something new. Also there seems to be an attitude in a lot of comments that writing UI is tedious, but that's why you don't get just a single person on a project and use a team instead. We've been trying to get so-easy-to-develop-that-a-child-can-do-it frameworks since the 80s, and they've always turned out badly.
The end goal of writing software is to have someone use it. When the goal becomes j
Re: (Score:2)
I dunno... Delphi used to be pretty easy. Modern PyQt with Qt Designer is equally toddler-accessible. There did seem to be a bit of a dark age in between though.
Re: (Score:2)