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> Open-source, meanwhile, has struggled to provide a basic desktop environment to rival the best from five years ago. Open-source is pretty young on the deskto

> Open-source, meanwhile, has struggled to provide a basic desktop environment to rival the best from five years ago. Open-source is pretty young on the desktop arena. Consider that Microsoft ruled the entire nineties and tried all tricks in the book to sabotage linux. Despite this, the fact that linux desktops are even available today is nothing short of a miracle! IMHO, the GNOME and Unity desktops are mature enough to handle 90% of users' needs, the only exception is gaming but that gap is also rapidly getting filled. > It's simply too much work without a paid, focused, and highly-skilled product team consisting of more than just developers. Consider that the OS that powers all kinds of devices from satellites to embedded devices is Linux, an open-source project where payment isn't a top-priority for developers, but merit is! > And they're still fighting the chicken-and-egg problem of user-adoption. All endeavors are like that, not just software projects. More the user participation, better the product focus and development. > I don't like the spyware "features," but I don't think I'll be going back to Linux any time soon and giving up all the great software I've come to depend on. Can you cite a single widely used software that doesn't have a FOSS alternative which works on Linux. Unless you are heavily dependent of Microsoft Excel worksheets and their arcane proprietary macros, I don't see a reason not to switch (besides just being lethargic to learn something new).

AlexandrB 11y ago
> IMHO, the GNOME and Unity desktops are mature enough to handle 90% of users' needs, the only exception is gaming but that gap is also rapidly getting filled. This is not really true. For example, high-dpi is still a complete crapshoot, font rendering is often bad bordering on terrible. Unity itself is a usability disaster that hides some of an applications most important elements (menu bar) most of the time. Network manager (Ubuntu) breaks frequently. I could go on...
- oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
  > hides some of an applications most important elements (menu bar) I don't know Unity; are you referring to it using a global menu bar, as OSX does? Because the latter is a wonderful idea as far as I'm concerned - it save screen real estate, reduces unnecessary distractions, and has no negative effect on functionality.
  - AlexandrB 11y ago
    By default in Ubuntu (and I know of no way to change this) the global menu bar in Unity is just an empty gray slate until you hover over it and "File", "Edit", "View", etc. appear. This means you have no idea where your mouse should be going until you've reached the top of the screen and have to move left/right until you get to the desired menu.
    - oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
      Oh, fair point - that sounds ridiculous! Is there any advantage to that as opposed to the OSX method (which is to just always show a global menu bar, that acts pretty much like any standard GUI menu, populated with items pertinent to the active application)?
      - rms_returns 11y ago
        > Oh, fair point - that sounds ridiculous! Don't say that thing until you try something for yourself! In the latest versions of unity, the global menu is integrated with the title-bar of the window itself. It means, you move the mouse pointer to the title area (which the user naturally does to invoke a menu anyways) and the menu appears there. Moreover, once you get into the habit of doing this, it comes naturally, so the above point that it is non-intuitive to user is just ridiculous. And speaking of: > Is there any advantage to that as opposed to the OSX method The advantage is that unity makes a more sensible use of your screen-real estate. Firstly, by combining both title bar and menu bar into one, you have just one bar on the screen when the window is maximized (which is how about 95% of users use it about 99% of time). Secondly, since menu bar is hidden by default, the only thing you focus on is the window or app content, and the title which also relates to the content. I personally find this kind of workflow much better to work.
- thomnottom 11y ago
  Interesting, because I find dealing with high DPI significantly better on Ubuntu than Windows. And Unity works well for me, my wife, and daughter.
  - melted 11y ago
    I switched my parents to Ubuntu about 5 years ago. They didn't even blink, and for me maintenance is easier since I can even upgrade the OS over ssh. Zero problems so far.
PuffinBlue 11y ago
> Can you cite a single widely used software that doesn't have a FOSS alternative which works on Linux. Yes. Photoshop and Lightroom. And before you all jump in and slather me with suggestions of Darktable, Shotwell, GIMP, ASP, RAWtherapee et al please know that NONE of these are a true substitute for Lightroom and Photoshop. Individually you can put together a decent work flow with Linux programmes but it's slow. Particularly for wedding photography as there's just nothing that can offer the same level of speed AND quality that you get from Adobe's programmes. Running them on WINE is hit and miss and very slow for me, and the newest CC versions don't seem to be supported as far as I could see. I ran Linux Mint for the last year and switched to Windows 10 a few days ago. I absolutely love Linux Mint and would switch back to it immediately (especially as Windows seem a lot more long-winded in terms of 'developer' stuff so far) if I didn't need Lightroom and Photoshop but I just couldn't get a fast enough workflow together. I'm a massive Linux fan, and I'd literally jump back to it this evening if someone can show me in the comments below a workflow that can match what Lightroom/Photoshop offer. But the reality is there are certain types of requirement that Linux just can't provide yet and, tough as it is to swallow, that's the truth of it.
- Alupis 11y ago
  > Yes. Photoshop and Lightroom. Have you tried PlayOnLinux (a very, very good and very easy to use WINE wrapper).[1] It supports CS6 (including PhotoShop) and Creative Cloud installs on Linux.[2] [1] https://www.playonlinux.com/en/ https://www.playonlinux.com/en/ [2] https://www.playonlinux.com/en/app-2316-Adobe_Photoshop_CS6.html https://www.playonlinux.com/en/app-2316-Adobe_Photoshop_CS6....
  - PuffinBlue 11y ago
    Unfortunately I only have Intel graphics at the moment, so I can't use that. I will look into a cheap card if it does work though, I really would rather use Linux if I can.
- ajross 11y ago
  > Individually you can put together a decent work flow with Linux programmes but it's slow So... you're saying that there are substitutes, but that they aren't as fast, you don't want to use them and that (getting back to the discussion) you don't view the privacy concerns with commercial OSes as sufficient incentive. If so, why not just say that and avoid all the pointless flamage.
agentultra 11y ago
> Consider that the OS that powers all kinds of devices from satellites to embedded devices is Linux, an open-source project where payment isn't a top-priority for developers, but merit is! I get that and I don't want to denigrate contributors. I've contributed to FOSS of one stripe or another over the years myself. However I'd probably do a much better job at it if I was paid a decent salary and allowed to work on it full time. And the software would be better for it if I had a team of similar developers, user experience and design people, etc. Being all things to all people is a great way to be nothing particularly amazing at one thing... something a desktop experience needs. > All endeavors are like that, not just software projects. More the user participation, better the product focus and development. It's tough! I think that's the primary reason for porting games to Linux. It'd be great if there was more to the gaming world than Windows. However for small studios there's no incentive to develop for Linux: there's just not a market big enough to sustain a business. How do you break out of that? I dunno. A black swan maybe. > Can you cite a single widely used software that doesn't have a FOSS alternative which works on Linux. Wacom drivers. There aren't any shipped by Wacom for Linux. The open source ones are a stop-gap and better than nothing but aren't as good. Ergo Gimp is a marvelous piece of software but not comparable to Photoshop for professional uses. I'd add that any alternative that wants to gain traction must provide some benefit over its contemporaries. Software freedom just doesn't cut it for more pedestrian uses of computers. I can think of several applications provided by the Omni group which have no real analog in FOSS that I'm aware of.
michaelbuddy 11y ago
I enjoy toying with linux mint occasionally and have for years, but I think for average user, Linux needs to get as much printer support as humanly possible. I used to say Tax Software was a deal breaker but I guess you CAN get that in the browser now I suppose. I just suspect if I load Linux to revive say my aunt's old laptop, it'll probably struggle with wifi, have printer issues and she'll be annoyed if she bought taxcut at the store and gets home realizing she can't use it. a big plus is I think netflix runs natively in the chrome browser now, or pretty soon. Netflix was a hassle for years that made it so I knew I couldn't just recommend Linux to the common man.
Sanddancer 11y ago
I tried using a fully Open Source desktop from 1998 to 2007. I finally gave up, because things were "better" but still far worse than windows. It's only gotten worse since then. One of the biggest examples I can see right now is the support compiler chains give in terms of the development process. Visual Studio makes simple what open tools like emacs make near impossible. Remote debugging on windows is a matter of downloading and running the remote debug server, and connecting to it with the local copy of windows. Visual Studio will install any requisite dependencies, transfer app over, and run it all with just pushing debug remotely. For the things I'm working on, where I need access to various hardware devices, such availability is a godsend, and as far as I can tell, any Linux based development environments make such difficult if not impossible to replicate. Other things I notice are Free Software checkers for things like MISRA-C compliance, which puts C programs through much more rigorous checks for safe usage and avoiding poor design decisions. Being open source shouldn't be an excuse for the software to have a fraction of the features other environments have.
- blub 11y ago
  Remote debugging is actually quite simple when using QtCreator, gdb and gdbserver. MISRA-C is not just "more rigurous" checking, it significantly restricts the way C is written. It is also a commercial standard that must be bought by implementers. IMO Windows is a primitive development platform out of the box, one needs to install many tools, a lot of them commercial to replicate what's available on Linux. I've done my share of development on both and strongly prefer investing more effort and time into open source tools instead of some proprietary solution that I have to pay for and which I am not guaranteed to be able to use in future projects.
  - CamperBob2 11y ago
    There is nothing even remotely "primitive" about Windows as a development platform. You let the air out of your own argument when you say things like that.
    - Tiksi 11y ago
krick 11y ago
> Can you cite a single widely used software that doesn't have a FOSS alternative which works on Linux. Woah, really? There are plenty. Photoshop & Lightroom debatable, but I can agree — nothing FOSS really substitutes them, unfortunately. AutoCAD & ArchiCAD. Solidworks. Pretty much all specific 3D modelling tools like Poser (though I don't really need that last one). Ableton, Cubase, everything from NativeInstruments, including sample libraries which sometimes are the reason why you need KONTAKT, and not some other sampler. U-he Zebra. Hundreds of various VST plugins from different developers: reverbs, phasers, limiters, etc. Often this stuff is quite trivial, but there just is some amount of domain knowledge which random opensource developer just doesn't possess. That's why free stuff available sucks or even doesn't exist. Decent speech recognition and text to speech. Nonexistent. OCR is quite better, but still loses to commercial alternatives like ABBYY. Understandably so. To put it shorter: pretty much any software which isn't trivial to write or requires domain knowledge. The only decent examples of these in the FOSS world I can remember are Blender and Krita.
- merb 11y ago
  > Decent speech recognition and text to speech. Nonexistent. Nuance Dragon SDK runs on Linux, it's not FOSS but it runs there. Just no GUI / Command Line App. > OCR is quite better, but still loses to commercial alternatives like ABBYY. Understandably so. Nuance and ABBYY SDKs running on Linux. Quite well. Just no GUI / Command Line App. Oh and you don't need to use FOSS only just because you are using a FOSS OSS. And yes Audio / Video is pretty weak on Linux, thats true. However for most other things there are good enough tools. Especially LibreOffice is really really great. It's better for Users migrating from Office 2003 than to migrate to 07/10/13/16. However there are weaknesses, too, like the Dictonary. Also some bigger Office's Macro's aren't easy replaceable. However Linux is good enough for the most.
  - krick 11y ago
    Question was about FOSS. Answer is about FOSS. Thus, what you are saying might be useful for somebody, but totally irrelevant to my comment.
- deleted 11y ago
stonemetal 11y ago
>Linux, an open-source project where payment isn't a top-priority for developers, but merit is! That makes nice PR to bad it isn't all that true. According to the linux foundation more than 80% of kernel development is done by people being paid for their work.
- icebraining 11y ago
  Getting paid to do something doesn't necessarily mean the payment is the top priority. They might just have been lucky enough to get companies to pay them to do what they would be doing anyway. The question is: could they get a better/higher-paying job working on something else?
stonemetal 11y ago
>Linux, an open-source project where payment isn't a top-priority for developers, but merit is! That makes nice PR to bad it isn't all that true. According to the linux foundation more than 80% of kernel development is done by people being paid for their work.
CamperBob2 11y ago
Consider that the OS that powers all kinds of devices from satellites to embedded devices is Linux, an open-source project where payment isn't a top-priority for developers, but merit is! Of course, something that satellites and most embedded devices have in common is minimal need for user interaction. It would be perfectly unsurprising if the world's best embedded OS turned out to be the world's worst desktop OS.

AlexandrB 11y ago

> IMHO, the GNOME and Unity desktops are mature enough to handle 90% of users' needs, the only exception is gaming but that gap is also rapidly getting filled. This is not really true. For example, high-dpi is still a complete crapshoot, font rendering is often bad bordering on terrible. Unity itself is a usability disaster that hides some of an applications most important elements (menu bar) most of the time. Network manager (Ubuntu) breaks frequently. I could go on...

oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
> hides some of an applications most important elements (menu bar) I don't know Unity; are you referring to it using a global menu bar, as OSX does? Because the latter is a wonderful idea as far as I'm concerned - it save screen real estate, reduces unnecessary distractions, and has no negative effect on functionality.
- AlexandrB 11y ago
  By default in Ubuntu (and I know of no way to change this) the global menu bar in Unity is just an empty gray slate until you hover over it and "File", "Edit", "View", etc. appear. This means you have no idea where your mouse should be going until you've reached the top of the screen and have to move left/right until you get to the desired menu.
  - oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
    Oh, fair point - that sounds ridiculous! Is there any advantage to that as opposed to the OSX method (which is to just always show a global menu bar, that acts pretty much like any standard GUI menu, populated with items pertinent to the active application)?
    - rms_returns 11y ago
      > Oh, fair point - that sounds ridiculous! Don't say that thing until you try something for yourself! In the latest versions of unity, the global menu is integrated with the title-bar of the window itself. It means, you move the mouse pointer to the title area (which the user naturally does to invoke a menu anyways) and the menu appears there. Moreover, once you get into the habit of doing this, it comes naturally, so the above point that it is non-intuitive to user is just ridiculous. And speaking of: > Is there any advantage to that as opposed to the OSX method The advantage is that unity makes a more sensible use of your screen-real estate. Firstly, by combining both title bar and menu bar into one, you have just one bar on the screen when the window is maximized (which is how about 95% of users use it about 99% of time). Secondly, since menu bar is hidden by default, the only thing you focus on is the window or app content, and the title which also relates to the content. I personally find this kind of workflow much better to work.
thomnottom 11y ago
Interesting, because I find dealing with high DPI significantly better on Ubuntu than Windows. And Unity works well for me, my wife, and daughter.
- melted 11y ago
  I switched my parents to Ubuntu about 5 years ago. They didn't even blink, and for me maintenance is easier since I can even upgrade the OS over ssh. Zero problems so far.

PuffinBlue 11y ago

> Can you cite a single widely used software that doesn't have a FOSS alternative which works on Linux. Yes. Photoshop and Lightroom. And before you all jump in and slather me with suggestions of Darktable, Shotwell, GIMP, ASP, RAWtherapee et al please know that NONE of these are a true substitute for Lightroom and Photoshop. Individually you can put together a decent work flow with Linux programmes but it's slow. Particularly for wedding photography as there's just nothing that can offer the same level of speed AND quality that you get from Adobe's programmes. Running them on WINE is hit and miss and very slow for me, and the newest CC versions don't seem to be supported as far as I could see. I ran Linux Mint for the last year and switched to Windows 10 a few days ago. I absolutely love Linux Mint and would switch back to it immediately (especially as Windows seem a lot more long-winded in terms of 'developer' stuff so far) if I didn't need Lightroom and Photoshop but I just couldn't get a fast enough workflow together. I'm a massive Linux fan, and I'd literally jump back to it this evening if someone can show me in the comments below a workflow that can match what Lightroom/Photoshop offer. But the reality is there are certain types of requirement that Linux just can't provide yet and, tough as it is to swallow, that's the truth of it.

Alupis 11y ago
> Yes. Photoshop and Lightroom. Have you tried PlayOnLinux (a very, very good and very easy to use WINE wrapper).[1] It supports CS6 (including PhotoShop) and Creative Cloud installs on Linux.[2] [1] https://www.playonlinux.com/en/ https://www.playonlinux.com/en/ [2] https://www.playonlinux.com/en/app-2316-Adobe_Photoshop_CS6.html https://www.playonlinux.com/en/app-2316-Adobe_Photoshop_CS6....
- PuffinBlue 11y ago
  Unfortunately I only have Intel graphics at the moment, so I can't use that. I will look into a cheap card if it does work though, I really would rather use Linux if I can.
ajross 11y ago
> Individually you can put together a decent work flow with Linux programmes but it's slow So... you're saying that there are substitutes, but that they aren't as fast, you don't want to use them and that (getting back to the discussion) you don't view the privacy concerns with commercial OSes as sufficient incentive. If so, why not just say that and avoid all the pointless flamage.

agentultra 11y ago

> Consider that the OS that powers all kinds of devices from satellites to embedded devices is Linux, an open-source project where payment isn't a top-priority for developers, but merit is! I get that and I don't want to denigrate contributors. I've contributed to FOSS of one stripe or another over the years myself. However I'd probably do a much better job at it if I was paid a decent salary and allowed to work on it full time. And the software would be better for it if I had a team of similar developers, user experience and design people, etc. Being all things to all people is a great way to be nothing particularly amazing at one thing... something a desktop experience needs. > All endeavors are like that, not just software projects. More the user participation, better the product focus and development. It's tough! I think that's the primary reason for porting games to Linux. It'd be great if there was more to the gaming world than Windows. However for small studios there's no incentive to develop for Linux: there's just not a market big enough to sustain a business. How do you break out of that? I dunno. A black swan maybe. > Can you cite a single widely used software that doesn't have a FOSS alternative which works on Linux. Wacom drivers. There aren't any shipped by Wacom for Linux. The open source ones are a stop-gap and better than nothing but aren't as good. Ergo Gimp is a marvelous piece of software but not comparable to Photoshop for professional uses. I'd add that any alternative that wants to gain traction must provide some benefit over its contemporaries. Software freedom just doesn't cut it for more pedestrian uses of computers. I can think of several applications provided by the Omni group which have no real analog in FOSS that I'm aware of.

michaelbuddy 11y ago

I enjoy toying with linux mint occasionally and have for years, but I think for average user, Linux needs to get as much printer support as humanly possible. I used to say Tax Software was a deal breaker but I guess you CAN get that in the browser now I suppose. I just suspect if I load Linux to revive say my aunt's old laptop, it'll probably struggle with wifi, have printer issues and she'll be annoyed if she bought taxcut at the store and gets home realizing she can't use it. a big plus is I think netflix runs natively in the chrome browser now, or pretty soon. Netflix was a hassle for years that made it so I knew I couldn't just recommend Linux to the common man.

Sanddancer 11y ago

I tried using a fully Open Source desktop from 1998 to 2007. I finally gave up, because things were "better" but still far worse than windows. It's only gotten worse since then. One of the biggest examples I can see right now is the support compiler chains give in terms of the development process. Visual Studio makes simple what open tools like emacs make near impossible. Remote debugging on windows is a matter of downloading and running the remote debug server, and connecting to it with the local copy of windows. Visual Studio will install any requisite dependencies, transfer app over, and run it all with just pushing debug remotely. For the things I'm working on, where I need access to various hardware devices, such availability is a godsend, and as far as I can tell, any Linux based development environments make such difficult if not impossible to replicate. Other things I notice are Free Software checkers for things like MISRA-C compliance, which puts C programs through much more rigorous checks for safe usage and avoiding poor design decisions. Being open source shouldn't be an excuse for the software to have a fraction of the features other environments have.

blub 11y ago
Remote debugging is actually quite simple when using QtCreator, gdb and gdbserver. MISRA-C is not just "more rigurous" checking, it significantly restricts the way C is written. It is also a commercial standard that must be bought by implementers. IMO Windows is a primitive development platform out of the box, one needs to install many tools, a lot of them commercial to replicate what's available on Linux. I've done my share of development on both and strongly prefer investing more effort and time into open source tools instead of some proprietary solution that I have to pay for and which I am not guaranteed to be able to use in future projects.
- CamperBob2 11y ago
  There is nothing even remotely "primitive" about Windows as a development platform. You let the air out of your own argument when you say things like that.
  - Tiksi 11y ago

krick 11y ago

> Can you cite a single widely used software that doesn't have a FOSS alternative which works on Linux. Woah, really? There are plenty. Photoshop & Lightroom debatable, but I can agree — nothing FOSS really substitutes them, unfortunately. AutoCAD & ArchiCAD. Solidworks. Pretty much all specific 3D modelling tools like Poser (though I don't really need that last one). Ableton, Cubase, everything from NativeInstruments, including sample libraries which sometimes are the reason why you need KONTAKT, and not some other sampler. U-he Zebra. Hundreds of various VST plugins from different developers: reverbs, phasers, limiters, etc. Often this stuff is quite trivial, but there just is some amount of domain knowledge which random opensource developer just doesn't possess. That's why free stuff available sucks or even doesn't exist. Decent speech recognition and text to speech. Nonexistent. OCR is quite better, but still loses to commercial alternatives like ABBYY. Understandably so. To put it shorter: pretty much any software which isn't trivial to write or requires domain knowledge. The only decent examples of these in the FOSS world I can remember are Blender and Krita.

merb 11y ago
> Decent speech recognition and text to speech. Nonexistent. Nuance Dragon SDK runs on Linux, it's not FOSS but it runs there. Just no GUI / Command Line App. > OCR is quite better, but still loses to commercial alternatives like ABBYY. Understandably so. Nuance and ABBYY SDKs running on Linux. Quite well. Just no GUI / Command Line App. Oh and you don't need to use FOSS only just because you are using a FOSS OSS. And yes Audio / Video is pretty weak on Linux, thats true. However for most other things there are good enough tools. Especially LibreOffice is really really great. It's better for Users migrating from Office 2003 than to migrate to 07/10/13/16. However there are weaknesses, too, like the Dictonary. Also some bigger Office's Macro's aren't easy replaceable. However Linux is good enough for the most.
- krick 11y ago
  Question was about FOSS. Answer is about FOSS. Thus, what you are saying might be useful for somebody, but totally irrelevant to my comment.
deleted 11y ago

stonemetal 11y ago

>Linux, an open-source project where payment isn't a top-priority for developers, but merit is! That makes nice PR to bad it isn't all that true. According to the linux foundation more than 80% of kernel development is done by people being paid for their work.

icebraining 11y ago
Getting paid to do something doesn't necessarily mean the payment is the top priority. They might just have been lucky enough to get companies to pay them to do what they would be doing anyway. The question is: could they get a better/higher-paying job working on something else?

stonemetal 11y ago

CamperBob2 11y ago

Consider that the OS that powers all kinds of devices from satellites to embedded devices is Linux, an open-source project where payment isn't a top-priority for developers, but merit is! Of course, something that satellites and most embedded devices have in common is minimal need for user interaction. It would be perfectly unsurprising if the world's best embedded OS turned out to be the world's worst desktop OS.