Windows 8's Metro: The face of a DOA operating system.

Some of my die-hard Windows friends are very excited by Windows 8 arrival later this year. Others fear that Windows 8 will be a repeat of Microsoft’s Vista disaster. Me? I know Windows 8 will be a Vista-sized fiasco.

Before jumping into why I think far most PC users will still be running Windows 7 in 2016 than Windows 8, let me explain that while I prefer Linux as my desktop operating system, I don’t see Windows 8 charge into a brick wall as being a pro-Linux or anti-Microsoft issue.

In fact, as desktop operating systems go, I rather like Windows 7.  Yes, really. Besides, it’s not like Windows 8’s forthcoming failure will help desktop Linux. Looking back, when Vista flopped, in the long run it actually hurt desktop Linux. That’s because Vista’s failure, combined with the threat of netbooks, caused Microsoft to revive Windows XP. If Windows 8 goes down the same path, I’m sure Microsoft will extend Windows 7’s lifespan.

So, why is Windows 8 destined to be a non-starter? Simple:

1. No one needs Windows 8 on the desktop.

Quick: Name one thing about Windows 8 that they don’t already get from Windows 7-or a great desktop Linux like Mint or Mac OS X Lion? I can’t.

Indeed, I can’t think of a single significant new improvement in Windows 8. The ability to refresh the operating system? Faster booting? A Windows Store? Live boot from a USB drive? Come on! All these features have been around in other operating systems for years, and while sure, they’re nice, put them all together and at most they’re worth a Windows 7 Service Patch–not a whole new operating system.

2. Metro: An ugly, useless interface.

As everyone knows, Windows 8 has a totally new default interface: Metro. When I look at Metro, however, I see gaudy colors, boxy designs, applications that can either run as a small tile or as full screen with no way to resize or move windows. Where have I seen this before? Wait, I know! Windows 1.0!

More to the point, almost everyone knows the current Windows interface. It’s changed over the years, but you could take someone who last touched Windows back in the Windows 95 days and drop that in front of them of Windows 7 and they’d be able to get work done. Metro? It’s entirely different. Heck, Microsoft has even dropped the Start button in the latest version!

In short, even if Metro was the best thing since sliced bread, which it isn’t, it will still require users to learn a new way of doing the same old thing. That’s a failure of an idea right here. Sure, you can use the ‘Classic’ desktop experience instead, but hey, I have an idea! Why not just use the Windows XP or 7 “classic” interface instead?

3. Where are the Windows 8 Applications?

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview (read Windows 8 public beta) will be here real soon now and we still don’t know next to anything about Windows 8’s applications. As Mary Jo Foley recently pointed out we still don’t even know where Office 15 will be Metro, non-Metro, or partially Metro.

Seriously? Windows 8 will probably be out by this fall and we still don’t know jack about its apps? Not even Microsoft’s own flagship office application? Come on! How can you take this operating system seriously?

4. Vexed Windows developers.

If you’re unhappy about the state of Metro applications, think about the poor Windows programmers. You’ve spent years learning .NET, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), and now they have to learn WinRT and Jupiter/XAML.

Even developers who like WinRT give it “complements” like “It’s a great time to get involved with WinRT, as the platform is still in its infancy, and will need a lot of developer support to build even more robust tools.” Really? That comment was made in January 2012, and the development tools are still in diapers!?

Last, but not least, Windows developers will need rewrite their Metro apps for the more traditional Windows-style desktop. Oh, and they’ll also need to build them for both x86 and ARM platforms. That’s a heck of a lot of work to do without a lot of time to do it in. Put it all together and I see little chance about Windows 8 having many mature, ready-to-run applications come launch day.

Heck, Brandon Watson, head of developer experiences for Windows Phone, just left Microsoft for Amazon’s Android-based Kindle team Think he might know something?

This reminds me, what do you call an operating system without developers or applications? The answer? Dead.

5. Too little, too late for the smartphone/tablet market

Metro’s real point, of course, isn’t for desktop users. It’s Microsoft’s last gasp attempt to be a player on tomorrow’s computers: smartphones and tablets. If Microsoft was bringing something truly revolutionary to mobile devices, or they were still able to strong-arm original equipment manufacturers (OEM)s into loading Windows on their devices, I think they’d have a shot at the mobile space. Neither is true.

Smartphones are a dog fight between Android and iOS. Tablets did belong to Apple, but now Samsung, Amazon and Barnes & Noble are giving the iPad a fight for the tablet marketplace. Android and IOS are mature, have enormous developer communities and are wildly popular. Heck, if you count smartphones, thanks to the iPhone Apple is now the number one “PC” vendor in the world.

On top of that, the U.S. phone carriers have no interest in a Windows Phone. Too old, too slow Microsoft is arriving much too late to the 2010s style of mobile computing to be a significant player and that means Windows 8 Metro won’t find an audience either. I see no room left for a major third-party platform. A minor player, like KDE or Ubuntu? Sure. A Microsoft? No.

Add it up. The majority of Windows users have only just switched over from XP to Windows 7 in, at best, November 2011. Microsoft is now asking for its users to switch to a platform with no significant improvements, a radically different interface, and which is very likely to have few applications. The result? Window 8 will be dead on arrival.

Related Stories:

Microsoft removes ‘Start’ button from latest Windows 8 build

Windows Phone developer lead leaves for Amazon’s Kindle team

Windows Phone 8: What’s on the feature list

Windows 8 Consumer Preview nears - what we know about Metro apps

Windows 8 ARM devices to have a ‘classic’ desktop experience?

From the Start Your Coding dept.:
This will be the 8th year for Google Summer of Code, an innovative program dedicated to introducing students from colleges and universities around the world to open source software development. The program offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source projects with the help of mentoring organizations from all around the globe. Over the past seven years Google Summer of Code has had 6,000 students from over 90 countries complete the program. Our goal is to help these students pursue academic challenges over the summer break while they create and release open source code for the benefit of all.

From the Release Early dept.:
Pre-releases of Precise Pangolin are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs.

Alpha 2 is the second in a series of milestone images that will be released throughout the Precise development cycle.

This is the first Ubuntu milestone release to include images for the armhf architecture, for the ARM CPUs using the hard-float ABI.

New packages showing up for the first time include:
* Linux Kernel 3.2.2 (3.2.0-12.21)
* Upstart 1.4
* Unity 5.0
* LibreOffice 3.5 beta 2

From the Whoah dept.:
In a letter to Google’s chief executive Larry Page, Europe’s ‘Data Protection Working Party’ wrote that “we call for a pause in the interests of ensuring that there can be no misunderstanding about Google's commitments to information rights of their users and EU citizens, until we have completed our analysis”.

The committee gave no indication of how long it would like the pause to be.

A senior source at Google expressed surprise at the move, but noted that there was a month for the committee to examine its concerns. The source also said that while the committee had no legal authority to require any delay, the tone of its letter was significantly less aggressive than those Google has received in the past.

From the Taking it Seriously dept.:
Today we’re revealing a service we’ve developed, codenamed Bouncer, which provides automated scanning of Android Market for potentially malicious software without disrupting the user experience of Android Market or requiring developers to go through an application approval process.

The service performs a set of analyses on new applications, applications already in Android Market, and developer accounts. Here’s how it works: once an application is uploaded, the service immediately starts analyzing it for known malware, spyware and trojans. It also looks for behaviors that indicate an application might be misbehaving, and compares it against previously analyzed apps to detect possible red flags. We actually run every application on Google’s cloud infrastructure and simulate how it will run on an Android device to look for hidden, malicious behavior. We also analyze new developer accounts to help prevent malicious and repeat-offending developers from coming back.

From the Makes Sense On a Server dept.:
...Red Hat. The company has just announced that it is extending the production lifecycle of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5 and 6 from seven to 10 years in response to enterprise customer demand and Red Hat’s hardware original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partners.

For any company, upgrading to a new version of an operating system requires detailed advance planning. Red Hat has extended the Red Hat Enterprise Linux lifecycle so customers can remain on their current version longer. With the new Red Hat Enterprise Linux lifecycle, customers will benefit from continued feature enhancements while Red Hat’s application binary interface (ABI) and application programming interface (API) compatibility for their existing application.

From the Paid For dept.:
The UK Government has published a report that calls for all publicly funded research to be made freely available. The report says: "Government will work with partners, including the publishing industry, to achieve free access to publicly-funded research as soon as possible and will set an example itself," Research councils will be required to ensure compliance with existing mandates to "deposit published articles or conference proceedings in an open access repository at or around the time of publication" and will investing £2 million (€2.4 million) to develop a 'Gateway to Research' website that could also include non-publicly funded research.

From the Army of Many dept.:
Apple’s iPad reigns supreme from whatever angle you choose to look at the tablet market (profits, apps, quality, market share, mindshare, you name it), but research firm Strategy Analytics this morning said Android did manage to capture a record 39 percent tablet OS market share in the fourth quarter of 2011.

From the Hard Realities dept.:
As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. Others are similar but, for historical or cultural reasons, restrict certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content.

From the ShamNow dept.:
The EU ACTA chief has resigned, saying, 'This agreement might have major consequences on citizens' lives, and still, everything is being done to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter. That is why today, as I release this report for which I was in charge, I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this masquerade.'

From the Backdoor dept.:
Ireland is soon to have a law similar to SOPA passed that would give music and movie companies the power to force Irish ISPs to block access to sites suspected of having copyright infringing material on them.

Irish citizens won’t have a chance to lobby their democratic representatives because there won’t be a vote on the law — snappily named “S.I. No. of 2011 European Communities (Copyright and Related Rights) Regulations 2011″ — in the Irish Parliament. Instead the law is being enacted by ministerial order because it is being prepared in the form of a Statutory Instrument.

From the webOS dept.:
...HP says it expects the software will be fully open-sourced by September, at which point its official name will be Open webOS 1.0. The first piece of the puzzle is arriving today in the form of the second-gen Enyo framework, a free tool that lets developers write webOS apps for tablets, phones and desktop browsers.

I like Apple products. God knows I own and use enough of them. But, I hate their out-sourcing business practices and their world-wide anti-Android lawsuits. So, when I learned this morning that Motorola Mobility had won a permanent injunction against Apple’s iCloud service in Germany because of a patent violation and Motorola had followed that up with another patent victory, which has forced Apple to take all its older phones, 3G and 4 and all iPads off its German online store (German language link), I was pleased.

True, Apple can still sell its current iPhone 4S in Germany, but this is a real kick in the teeth for Apple and its patent attack ways. Apple is putting the best face it can on its defeat. An Apple spokesperson said, “Even if some iPad and iPhone models are currently not available in our online store in Germany, customers should have no problem finding these devices in our stores or from authorized dealers.” Sure. Right. The bottom line is that iCloud’s functionality has been crippled and German Apple customers will have trouble getting their favorite mobile products.

Apple iPads and some iPhones are no longer available for sale online in Germany.

As always, the patents that are being used in these cases seem dubious at best to me. In the case of iCloud, Motorola used an old pager-related patent to prevent Apple from using push technology to send e-mail automatically to iCloud enabled services. Push technology, oh yeah, no one thought of that before the 90s!

The Motorola patent that’s knocked most iPhone models and iPads off German stores covers General packet radio service (GPRS). This is the data transmission standard built on top of GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication). GPRS is used for data communication on 2G and 3G GSM networks.

This patent is also stupid. It describes a way to perform a countdown function over a 3G connection. You know, “Ten seconds to complete your download, three, two, one, download complete.” Who could ever have thought of that one!

Apple argued that this countdown mechanism wasn’t essential to data transmission. I agree, but hey, what does anyone with common sense know about software patents? Therefore, Apple tried to defeat this patent lawsuit with a Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory terms (FRAND) defense (PDF Link), The German court didn’t buy this defense.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, should get on the phone to Google and Samsung’s top brass and agree to stop wasting everyone’s time and money with all the “Sue you, sue me” patent lawsuits and start competing in the market place rather than in the court room. That way, the stockholders would save money-international intellectual property lawsuits aren’t cheap!–customers would get cheaper products, and all of us could all get back to comparing products instead of lawsuits.

Apple iPhone Germany store Image via Apple/ZDNet.

Related Stories:

Motorola wins iCloud injunction; iPhone, iPad pulled from online store

Can Apple really beat Android in the courts?

And this is why Apple doesn’t want to settle Android patent lawsuits

Android’s Revenge on Apple’s iPhone & iPad

Apple’s Worldwide War on Samsung and Android

From the Read Carefully dept.:
...A single SpiderMonkey runtime (that is, instance of JSRuntime) — and all the objects, strings and contexts associated with it — may only be accessed by a single thread at any given time. However, a SpiderMonkey embedding may create multiple runtimes in the same process (each of which may be accessed by a different thread).

That means it is up to the embedding to provide communication (if any) between the runtimes via JSNative or other SpiderMonkey hooks. One working example is the new implementation of web workers in Firefox which uses a runtime per worker. Niko Matsakis is experimenting with a different architecture in his new parallel JS project.

From the KNew KNews dept.:
The KDE community has released version 4.8 of their Free and open source software bundle. The new version provides many new features, improved stability, and increased performance. Highlights for Plasma Workspaces include window manager optimizations, the redesign of power management, and integration with Activities.

From the Spicy dept.:
Cinnamon 1.2 is out! All APIs and the desktop itself are now fully stable! I hope you'll enjoy the many new features, the desktop effect, desktop layouts, the new configuration tool, the applets, changes, bug fixes, and improvements that went into this release.

Spark, the first free software, Linux tablet is due to arrive in May 2012.

Aaron Seigo, one of the KDE’s lead developers, and a leader of the Spark free-software Linux tablet development effort, has reveled more about the Spark, including, alas, that the Spark won’t be available until May 2012.

Seigo explains, “We have a lot of pieces to coordinate, and not just technical issues like the OS image and the content add-on store, but things like packaging design, manufacturing, shipping, import, retail channel coordination. So far we’re on track, but I don’t want to offer a more precise date than ‘May’ until we pull the trigger on production.”

When it does roll down the production line, Seigo says, “the Spark will be available for order online worldwide. We will be focusing primarily on Europe first, but we will be able ship worldwide from day one. We are looking for retail partners elsewhere in the world: USA and Canada, South America, Australia, etc. to make it easier to procure.” Pricing will be around $260 or 200 Euros.

As had been speculated, the Spark will be built around the Zenithink C71. This is an inexpensive tablet with a 1GHz AMLogic ARM processor, Mali-400 GPU, 512 MB RAM, 4GB internal storage plus SD card slot, a 7? capacitive (16×9) multi-touch screen with 800 x 480 resolution, For connectivity it uses 802.11b/g Wi-Fi connectivity. It also has a 1.3 MPixels front camera, built-in microphone and stereo speakers. In addition, the tablet will come with 2 USB ports, a microSD slot, and a 3.5mm audio jack.

It will not, have in the first production run, 3G or GPS. Both will be supported by the system’s Linux operating system.

The Spark will run Mer, the community continuation of MeeGo, an embedded Linux. On top of Mer, the Spark will use KDE Plasma Active for its user interface (UI). Plasma Active runs on the traditional Linux desktop stack, including the Linux kernel, Qt, and KDE’s Plasma Framework. The UI uses Plasma Quick, a declarative markup language. This, in turn, is based on Qt Quick, an easy to use interface software development kit and framework.

If you’re a developer and you want to write for Spark, Seigo recommends QtQuick for applications targeting the Spark. There are also KDE libraries, including the Plasma framework, on the device. However, Spark is happy to support non-Qt apps. I play Battle for Wesnoth [a popular fantasy strategy game] on mine. ;) Developers will have access to the add-ons store as well, so getting your apps to Spark users will be dead simple.”

You will not be able to run Android applications on Spark though. Seigo notes though that “It is theoretically possible to package a Dalvik [Android's Java virtual machine] runtime for Plasma Active and make it available on the Spark. No one has attempted this yet, but it would make for a killer project.”

Programs for the Spark will be available, said Seigo on “the standard Mer repositories as well as the Open Build Service. However, that’s not overly person friendly (unless that person happens to be technically adept and familiar with Linux), so we are providing an add-on store from which people can easily download and install books, applications, desktop widgets and services … with more to be added with time.” Developers will be able to sell their programs to end-users on the Spark application store.

If you want to run the Spark operating system on other platforms, you can do that as well, but that’s not the Spark’s team goal. Seigo explains, “There are images for Intel based tablets as well as nVidia Tegra 2 and other ARM tablets available, and you can help by getting involved with the amazing Mer project. It is our hope that Spark will ignite interest in other vendors as well who will pick up the opportunity to increase the diversity of options. Yes, we’re looking to grow what would traditionally called competitors. We see them as co-conspirators. ;) Welcome to the world of Open.”

I’m a little disappointed that we won’t see the Spark until May, but I’m still hopeful for the project. Seigo hopes that his next blog posting on Spark will be to announce the pre-order Web site. I hope so too.

Related Stories:

Spark: The first free-software, Linux tablet is on its way

KDE takes on Android, Apple’s iOS on smartphones and tablets

Can Ubuntu Linux win on smartphones and tablets?

Textbook of the Future: The hardware

The double-edged sword facing competitors of the iPad

Even better, we also exceeded our "behind the scenes" goal, which was to sign up at least 400 new members over the two months. I'm really thrilled to welcome so many new supporters, including our 423 new associate members.

On behalf of everyone here at the FSF, I'd like to thank all of you who donated and joined, and all of you who helped promote the effort through your networks. The amount of response this year was incredibly gratifying, and makes me feel extremely optimistic about what we can get done in the year ahead.

I'd specifically like to thank Mark Holmquist, who referred 15 of those 423 new members all by himself, our intern emeritus Danny Piccirillo who went above and beyond in getting the word out, Max and the gang from reddit, and everyone who donated $500 or more to appear on our ThankGNU list.

We had a lot of fun writing the fundraiser pieces this year describing the work of the different staff members here at the FSF, and how we could get more done in each area with increased financial support. We didn't get a chance to write about everyone yet (like, ahem, me!), but we'll pick up where we left off next time. Thank you to all of you who wrote to us with encouraging comments about this series of articles — of course we always worry about annoying our supporters by being too pushy, so it was very good to hear that the articles were worthwhile reading.

Now that you've given us a vote of confidence to do more for you, it's time for us to get to it!

You can keep tabs on our work by signing up for our monthly Free Software Supporter newsletter (along with occasional interim updates), and subscribing to our blogs RSS feed.

I hope to see all of you in person at LibrePlanet this March in Boston! And for anyone who will be at FOSDEM this weekend, look me up.

Say hi to Spark, the first free software, Linux tablet.

Open-source software and Linux, thanks to Android, is well represented on tablets. But, if you didn’t want to deal with proprietary firmware and software, you were out of luck… until now. Aaron Seigo, one of the KDE’s lead developers, and his team are just about ready to roll-out the first tablet based entirely on Linux and free software: The Spark.

For those of you who are a little puzzled right now–”But, isn’t Android based on Linux??” let me start by explaining that yes, Android is Linux and open-source software. But, its implementations on various smartphones and tablets always uses some proprietary software, firmware, and/or shims to combine the code into a working device. Spark is different.

As Seigo explains, “We decided to go with Mer, the community continuation of MeeGo, as our base OSS [open-source software]. With the amazing help of the Mer community, we have been able to bring up a non-Android, built-from-source kernel on the device and even boot into Plasma Active. There is still work left, and we still do have some binary drivers, but this progress is already one massive crowbar that’s prying open the doors that have been shut on the world of ARM based devices.”

Seigo continues, “Right now we’re still stuck with a few binary drivers which is not a perfect situation. With time I’m confident we’ll get the binary drivers out of the picture, one by one, even if it takes time, effort and some pain. We’ve already managed to get source for some drivers that were not previously available so the trajectory is right. If we wait for perfection, however, we’ll never get anywhere because we need to release and push the status quo level of openness further inch my inch by making releases. It’ll be incremental, but we’re already further than others have gotten.”

Getting back to the tablet, the hardware is powered by 1GHz AMLogic ARM processor, Mali-400 GPU, 512 MB RAM, 4GB internal storage plus SD card slot, a 7″ capacitive multi-touch screen and 802.11n Wi-Fi connectivity. The list price will be 200 Euros or about $260. There’s no word yet though on where it will be available or even if it will be available in the U.S.

If the tablet is, as Kjetil Kilhavn, a SAP consultant and KDE user, speculates, is built around the A9 Zenithink ZT-280 C71 tablet, it has a 7″ (16:9) screen size with 800 x 480 resolution. It also would have a 1.3 MPixels front camera, built-in microphone and stereo speakers.

As for the software, on top of Mer, the Spark will use KDE Plasma Active for its user interface (UI). Plasma Active runs on the traditional Linux desktop stack, including the Linux kernel, Qt, and KDE’s Plasma Framework. The UI uses Plasma Quick, a declarative markup language. This, in turn, is based on Qt Quick, an easy to use interface software development kit and framework. Above that, as Seigo emphasizes, “All the code above the kernel and most of the kernel itself is already open and available for download right now.”

In addition, unlike some phone vendors and hardware manufacturers who are still fighting to keep you from booting your own operating system on their devices, in the Spark, according to Seigo, “openness and freedom goes a lot deeper in Spark than just using GPL and BSD licensed code. For instance, the boot loader isn’t locked so you can boot your own OS if you wish. You can install your own apps, you can even provide your own app delivery system. You can use the Open Build Service to deliver software on top of the Mer core. That is not a property of the open licensing, but of our desire to deliver devices that you not only purchase but wish you own.”

Seigo went on, “The content store is also going to be interesting. On release, the client will be free software and the APIs [application programming interface] openly documented so others can write front-ends. Most interestingly, however, is the server side. It has been designed in such a way that other people with other devices or concepts can use that same back end to make their own stores. It supports the idea of a single, large set of content which can then be curated into any number of different stores with different focuses and delivery targets.

But what if the project doesn’t take off, will you be left with an orphaned system ala HP and WebOS? Nope.

Seigo states, “On release, we will be providing a guarantee that if the project dies or we all fall over, the back-end code for the store will be made immediately available for download under a free software license. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that, of course. Once we are happy with the implementation and scalability of it, we will be making the back-end open as well. We have chosen to delay that release as we don’t want others setting up their own hosted stores before we are confident in the internal design ourselves.”

Want to know more? We’ll have to wait. Seigo promises he’ll answer more questions on February 2nd.

I think this is a very promising project. While the people who will immediately find it the most interesting will be open-source and free-software developers and gadget hounds, I can also see the Spark playing a role in the e-textbook of the future. As Seigo points out, the store back-end code itself could be very useful for schools “to set up a ’store’ with learning materials and content with access granted to their students.”

While no iPad killer, the Spark may be just what’s needed to ignite a fire under innovative free and open-source software tablets. I’ll be very interested in seeing where this project goes and what comes from others in response to it.

Related Stories:

Can Ubuntu Linux win on smartphones and tablets?

Textbook of the Future: The hardware

The double-edged sword facing competitors of the iPad

Windows 8 vs. Android tablets: Which one has the edge? Try neither

Hey, Motorola! Where’s that unlocked bootloader you promised?

From the Zoom dept.:
Google's efforts to improve Internet efficiency through the development of the SPDY (pronounced 'speedy') protocol got a major boost today when the chairman of the HTTP Working Group (HTTPbis), Mark Nottingham, called for it to be included in the HTTP 2.0 standard. SPDY is a protocol that's already used to a certain degree online; formal incorporation into the next-generation standard would improve its chances of being generally adopted. SPDY's goal is to reduce web page load times through the use of header compression, packet prioritization, and multiplexing