13 ms·
The Year of Linux on Everything but the Desktop
- coldtea 10y agoGive it some time, it will be mostly just on the server again -- as Android will be switching to Google's own OS: http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/15/12480566/google-fuchsia-new-operating-system http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/15/12480566/google-fuchsia-ne...
- sqeaky 10y agoThere is no reason to believe that Linux, and other possibly OSs, won't all grow during this time. As long no one is monopolistic and anti-competitive there is a ton of room for competition in this space. The network effect, the winner takes all effect, is becoming less pronounced as there are more ways to build cross platform software.
- IshKebab 10y agoThere is reason to believe that. Linux hasn't fundamentally changed in .. well has it ever? The driver model still sucks (I guess this is probably the main reason Google is moving away from it), the security is still embarrassing, the graphics story is very much stuck in the 90s (does display hot-plugging work yet? what about secure password entry?). It started as a Unix clone and it's still a Unix clone. What makes you think that will change? I think the time is ripe for a new OS. Especially given that Google's OSes don't expose much of the OS to apps - it should make it quite easy to port their userspaces over.
- sqeaky 10y agoI think that many of you complaints are without merit. For fundamental there have been several schedulers, the removal of the "Big Kernel Lock" and many other changes. For monitoring hotplugging, yes it works. I did it several times today. I have 3 laptops with 3 different GPUs and it works on all of them.
- IshKebab 10y agoAnd security? http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2017/q1/471 http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2017/q1/471
- kev009 10y agoIt's funny to see a downvote brigade on anything calling into question Linux's supremacy. The overwhelmingly devops HN crowd is probably the worst group to poll on systems software advancement.
- PublicFace 10y agoWhy do downvote brigades even EXIST on this website? I feel like this upvote downvote garbage is an echo chamber in the making. Just sort comments by replies or randomly, or not at all. Or just have a "garbage post" flag and call it a day. Anything is better than this pseudo-democracy thing that Reddit has shown to be useless for real discussion time and again.
- smitherfield 10y agoAgreed (and upvoted). I think HN has a generally high quality of discussions (except on certain political or fanboyism-related topics where only one side of the debate is tolerated). But, the best discussions on sites I frequent are on blogs that simply sort comments by time and thread, and where the host encourages open and intelligent discussion. Scott Alexander's (https://slatestarcodex.com https://slatestarcodex.com) is a good example. The flipside is that "report" buttons can become surrogate downvote buttons, and the lopsided volume of reports leads to inconsistent enforcement of rules, so commenters unpopular with the crowd or mods are more and more likely to be banned, while discussion devolves to groupthink, cliquishness and sycophancy towards the locally-powerful. IME BBSes are the most prone to fall victim to this; the communities are small enough that you can't be "anonymous," and with threads that can continue and be bumped to the top indefinitely, there's no mechanism besides moderator intervention to stop a flame war. Blogs and HN/Reddit-style aggregators do better because old threads are quickly buried.
- coldtea 10y ago>There is no reason to believe that Linux, and other possibly OSs, won't all grow during this time. As long no one is monopolistic and anti-competitive there is a ton of room for competition in this space. Well, grow enough to counter-balance the sudden loss of billions of Android devices? I don't think there's reason to believe that. It had stalled for ages on the desktop, and mostly got to devices outside the embedded space through Android. (Of course Android-Linux devices will continue to exist -- but eventually those with the new Google kernel/OS underneath will overtake them, especially if Google insists on OEMs using it to get access to the various Google apps). >The network effect, the winner takes all effect, is becoming less pronounced as there are more ways to build cross platform software. It's not about having some cross platform software though, it's about the whole ecosystem. Which is e.g. one of the reasons why Firefox OS, et al never got anywhere.
- sqeaky 10y agoThe ecosystem is important. What do you think about systems that make it easy to ship software for multiple platforms? Consider Unity, the game making tools. When shipping there is pretty much a series of checkboxes for what kinds of packages you want to make. Unless you went out of your way to use some OS specific stuff it will work everywhere. There are other tools like this for other non-gaming domains, do they contribute in your view of OS ecosystems?
- contextfree 10y agoThe success rate for new ground-up modern OS projects achieving broad adoption isn't great - Microsoft's Midori, GNU Hurd, Apple's "Pink", etc. AFAIK there basically hasn't been a broadly successful one since Windows NT in 1993. Which isn't to say people should stop trying and it'll be fantastic if they do succeed with this, I just wouldn't count on it.
- harigov 10y agoIt may not be so bad because most of Android apps are built on Java which isolates a lot of what OS does. For other native apps, if Google builds a POSIX compliant OS, it should be fairly easy to port/run.
- mathattack 10y agoI recall reading a book about the development of NT. One of the key figures joined in because it was seen as the last great chance to create an OS from scratch. Seemed very short sighted to me at the time.
- coldtea 10y agoThat's because those weren't completed in time due to feature creep and second system effects (Apple's Pink/Copland), lack of interest and slow progress (Hurd), etc. Midori is just a research project, so noone pushed for it to be adopted anyway. With a completed OS (which nowadays isn't so difficult, large parts of the stack are either ready or there for the taking), and a big vendor behind it, it's another story. Microsoft pulled it off with NT, and Apple's OS X was a whole new OS as far as Mac customers were concerned (the fact that it already existed as NeXT didn't matter much -- it still required all new software (it didn't run old NeXT stuff as is), new drivers, had a new SDK that Mac developers had to cater too, etc. Besides Android is not like a full desktop OS Linux -- it abstracts most things for apps through its SDK/"Java", and Linux is just the kernel.
- tekklloneer 10y agoThat is complete speculation. There are tons of reasons why Google wouldn't switch Android "over", including established development environments, drivers, and licensing. It's fun to speculate on the purpose of this but it's just that: speculation. Don't get me wrong: there are massive improvements to the existing linux ecosystem just ripe to be made, but many of them are in the environment and not just the kernel.
- kev009 10y agoAnd by the same coin there are a lot of reasons they would. Drivers can be fork lifted by implementing KPI compatibility, and that can be done in a shortest path fashion or done in a way to realize new protection from the new OS. Development environments can be preserved indefinitely with image activation and personalities. The first never mattered to Apple, and the second was effectively realized on OS X.
- tekklloneer 10y agoNot by the same coin, I'm saying that it's speculation. And, I provided some examples as to why it's speculation.
- ageofwant 10y agoAnd then Fuchsia will replace Desktops. If the vast majority of devices runs Fuchsia and it comes embedded on Laptops everywhere it will be the end of Windows on the desktop. I'm OK with that.
- pgtan 10y agoI use the non-preemptive (server) scheduler on my linux desktop machines with fvwm as favorite long-time WM. At work: RHEL with dwm, which I'm starting to love, also forced to use Windos 7. Boy, this MS sh*t drives me mad. The focus stealing alone is enough to go berserk. The slowness, the deadkeys, the placement of the windows, the lack of virtual desktops...
- tomjen3 10y agoFor the rest of us who were confused: only the kernel part is non-preemptive. A user program can still be interrupted at any time. That said, how much better performance are you seeing.
- pgtan 10y agowell, running heavy multiprocess pipes (netpbm, imagemagick, tesseract, TeX) in the background does not slow down the graphic apps, mainly emacs, firefox, gimp, feh, etc. Even watching a video with mplayer is mostly without any freezing. Distro is Gentoo as cleaned and lean as possibe. And this on 10 years old Opteron PCs.
- catnaroek 10y ago> Meanwhile Linux advocates have to be happy with the hollow victory of The Year Of Linux (Android) On The Smartphone, because how do you hack on a smartphone? Type in C code on the onscreen keyboard? If that's victory, I don't even want to imagine what defeat looks like...
- davidgerard 10y agoThis history misses netbooks. 2007 was the year of Linux on a desktop: when Microsoft actually had to start giving Windows to netbook manufacturers at $5 down to $0 because they were selling computers with a fully-functioning Linux desktop on them.
- coldtea 10y agoBecause they were pretty much a non story? Less than 1/2 the impact of something like the iPad, and lots of people switched them that could to Windows anyway. On their best years (around 2008-2011) they sold like 16-20 million units per year (iPad has sold ~350 million units thus far).
- scholia 10y agoNo. The actual price of Windows XP ULCPC was $11 to $15, though OEMs could get that close to zero by installing crapware. Sales soon evaporated because the high cost of installing Linux on netbooks -- and the even higher cost of supporting them -- made them unprofitable. Worse, a lot of those netbooks were returned, which killed manufacturers working on very slim margins.
- type0 10y agoI had one of those netbooks, it came with both XP and some sort of Linux in dual boot. The thing worked like crap though.
- digi_owl 10y agoBecause Intel freaked and pushed everyone over to ATOMs where as the early EEEPCs etc had used discount celerons. Basically Intel feared that the netbooks plus citrix would strangle the lucrative ultraportable market segment. At the same time MS gave Windows XP another stay of execution just to have a Windows option to offer OEMs (Vista was just too darn bulky). Thing is that XP, or more correctly the version of the Windows Update version it used, had a flaw where it would grow slower and slower over time as it tried to enumerate all the patches on each boot.
- johnsmith21006 10y agoExcellent article. Last year both Mac sales and Windows sales declined YoY. Only one "desktop" grew. ChromeOS is Linux base and grew over 35% YoY. Still small numbers but is now #2 in the US and growing quickly. "Chromebooks surpass Macs in U.S. sales for the first time" http://www.zdnet.com/article/chromebooks-surpass-macs-in-u-s-sales-for-the-first-time/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/chromebooks-surpass-macs-in-u-s...
- tdkl 10y agoSadly the Linux base doesn't matter much if it's just a thin client for the Google data collection machine.
- Radle 10y agoI disagree. The Article i stupid. There's never been a war. A war is destructive. Microsoft is doing well for itself. Win10 is arguably the best Windows ever. The world is going cross platform. Ubuntu is a great distro, Linux server Systems are awesome. Android is awesome. Everyone did their best and many people and organisations are doing well for themselves. If that was a "war", everyone seems to have won it.
- scholia 10y ago"Chromebooks are still largely a US K-12 story." This is for reasons that were unique to US education market. http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/19/11711714/chromebooks-outsold-macs-us-idc-figures http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/19/11711714/chromebooks-outso...
- smartmic 10y agoEven when installed on a desktop, Linux is not a desktop system but remains a server OS from its heart. This makes it so extraordinary powerful for any users who want to keep control of their software/system. For folks like me, there is no big point to distinguish between server and desktop. But yes, this view does not hold for the mainstream/non-technical IT user.
- lucaspiller 10y agoThis is pretty much why I switched from Mac. The main apps I use are a terminal emulator and web browser. Yes it's not going to be as pretty, but in terms of work it's a lot more productive.
- dredmorbius 10y agoHow do you distinguish "server" vs. "desktop"? OSX is Unix at its heart. Is it a server OS?
- shmerl 10y ago> Windows users would not switch simply because they didn’t need Linux. Not really. The author identified the real reason before that. Users wouldn't switch because most users don't even think about the choice of OS, which would mean switching. I.e. they only ever use what comes on the computer pre-installed, and that's it. They don't care much what it even is. Therefore the main blocker wasn't the bad advocacy or anything of the sort, but the old and crooked stranglehold of MS on manufacturers. The only way to seriously increase Linux desktop adoption is for availability of Linux pre-instsalled computers to significantly rise. And MS use their heavy leverage of Windows pricing to prevent that. > and the desktop itself became irrelevant I hear this often, but it remains as wrong as ever. Desktop usage has its place, and it's not going anywhere in the foreseeable future. > They still just want something that plays games and checks the Internet. And Linux is good for that already. So, as above, that's not what prevents its adoption.
- jimmaswell 10y agoMost popular/AAA titles aren't released for Linux, unless you mean Facebook/other web games.
- shmerl 10y agoTheir number is gradually rising. Higher availability of games needs breaking the catch 22, it's not an instant process (i.e. bigger market means more games). Linux gaming grew in the last 5-6 years tremendously already. And it in turn increased Linux desktop usage. So catch 22 is eroding and things are progressing in the right direction. Recent bigger focus on improving graphics situation (Vulkan and etc.) is helping that as well.
- qplex 10y agoSteam Top 3 (# of players playing right now) Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (518008), Dota 2 (456350), ARK: Survival Evolved (58477) Linux version? 3/3.
- azemetre 10y ago
- qplex 10y agoSo what Linux did not have was a proper pitch to the OEMs, so that you could buy a pre-configured, pre-installed Linux computer from Walmart that would be compatible with existing standards. This was pretty much impossible because of many things, but mainly because of the proprietary standards in both hardware and software. Even if you'd manage it technically, you'd then have to face with the legal trouble.
- icc97 10y agoI'd love to know the number of people who bought a computer with Linux installed on it and decided to put Windows on it. I think this must be some alternate dictionary definition of zero. Linux is so impressive that people will spend days and months learning and figuring out how to switch. It's a really painful process (because of all the problems you mention with proprietary hardware). I tried to persuade Novatech in the UK [0] who will sell machines without operating systems to actually sell machines with Linux on them. It just wasn't worth the support overhead. [0]: https://www.novatech.co.uk/
- icc97 10y agoAs recently as two weeks ago their support were replying on their forum about their reasons for not being Linux compatible [0]. > To add to this, to be able to say a system is "Ubuntu Certified" for example, requires sending one of every unit to Canonical for them to run tests and ensure everything works 100%. Every time we have looked into it the admin & costs involved is onerously high unfortunately :( [0]: http://forum.novatech.co.uk/t/linux-compatibility-what-are-the-best-current-laptops-to-choose-from-any-experience-im-thinking-novatech-for-a-new-laptop-i-wont-use-windows-anyway/621
- qplex 10y agoI'm sure some people did that - or rather, returned the Linux machine because it didn't run the software they were expecting it to run. I've heard the netbooks that had Linux pre-installed (circa 2009) had a higher return rate than their Windows counterparts.
- 10y ago
- jimmaswell 10y agoWhat about chromebooks? They did alright.
- scholia 10y agoSales are tiny -- probably around 8 million a year -- and the majority are in the education market. (This is why sales are hard to track.) This isn't a lot for a product launched in 2011. I'll be delighted if you can find an authoritative figure.
- digi_owl 10y agoI think the recent years of TLA over-reach has not helped much, because the major sales pitch of the Chromebooks is that everything is stored (backed up?) by Google.
- scythe 10y agoThe year of Linux on the desktop was somewhere around 2009 (whenever we got multiple monitors working for the most part), but nobody noticed, because we had all switched to laptops. The year of Linux on the laptop will probably be a few years after we all stop using laptops.
- Arizhel 10y agoI have a laptop, running Linux Mint, which uses multiple monitors through a docking station. Since when does using a laptop preclude having multiple monitors? And how would people possibly stop using laptops? What are they going to switch to? Tablets? Don't make me laugh. Maybe they'll switch to using "laptops" with VR goggles.
- scythe 10y agoI think you're misinterpreting my comment. Pretty much the last reasonably common piece of desktop hardware that Linux had trouble supporting was multiple monitors, which was largely a solved problem by 2009. As of then, you could use Linux on a desktop and get all the functionality you had on other OSs. By contrast, suspend and Wi-Fi on laptops has been a perpetual headache, and suboptimal GPU utilization is a common cause of battery life issues on Linux laptop setups. Furthermore, the peculiarities in laptop keyboards, webcams and touchpads are often incompletely supported; generally only the most common laptop models will get support for the topbar keys before they're obsolete. These problems all have a common root, which is that installing an OS on a laptop is fundamentally harder than a desktop and often requires some intervention/software from the OEM, and this happens because of the more idiosyncratic nature of laptop hardware, which is necessary to exploit the small form factor as efficiently as possible. However, because OEMs are forever tied to the commercial enterprise market, the patent encumberance of some popular Linux software creates big legal problems for any manufacturer who wants to ship a laptop with the kind of hardware support usually reserved for Linux laptops. The result is that only huge companies (Dell, IBM) and a few dedicated "ideological businesses" like system76 ship Linux on the laptop, and the preinstalled OS often requires significant intervention from the user in order to do tasks which are mundane on Windows, like playing mp4s or Flash, or watching Netflix. These factors combine to stymie the deployment of quality Linux laptops at a reasonable price point despite the apparent technical and economic feasibility of the project.
- digi_owl 10y agoThe big problem, outside of questionable conduct from MS, is the lack of stability surrounding the userspace plumbing. The DEs and their friends lower in the stack can't stop CADTing the APIs etc, and that scares away third parties.
- randomsearch 10y agoIt does seem that Apple are keen on migrating their users to Linux of late. I'm actively considering going back to Linux myself, and have already jettisoned a bunch of apple products. Is it conceivable that the conventional desktop market will shrink to a core of Linux hackers developing software that runs on the tablets and phones of everyone else? With IDEs provided by MS/Google/whoever but not OSs? Finally, the year of the Linux desktop arrives, when the desktop comes to an end.
- shmerl 10y ago> It does seem that Apple are keen on migrating their users to Linux of late. Indeed, especially MacOS gamers. Wine on Apple won't be able to play DX11 games (because Apple abandoned OpenGL there), and it's some incentive for them to switch to Linux.
- throwawayish 10y ago> when the desktop comes to an end. Just... lol.
- kev009 10y agoThere's really nothing special about Linux, but timing was right and political blunders beset all other contenders. In the end the price tag of a free UNIX was too good for cheap web hosts and eventually hyperscalers and Linux had insatiable hype and sidestepped most blunders. Less importantly for numbers but critically important for actual engineering talent (hyperscalers are pretty low on anything other than ops talent), high end IT applications like RDBMS and three letter acronym software from IBM, Oracle and HPC also needed to land somewhere as the commercial UNIX market shit the bed. That brought in things like RCU and high core count scalability relatively early on that turned out to be well suited for mainstream servers a short few years later. One interesting thought experiment is that cost model is the primary thing holding the WinNT kernel back as again hyperscalers tend to have very low expertise and contribution to the systems software space. A free WinNT heavily focused on the Linux (I want to say POSIX but that would be unnecessary friction at this point) personality that did containers and orchestration well would actually be interesting and a pretty easy path for MS to navigate. The space is terrible enough the MS could navigate a superior solution due to vertical integration. Think Joyent's SDC but from MS. In effect, this was what happened to Linux on the desktop -- Apple executed in a way that vertical integration can always out-engineer the bazaar model on coherence, and OS X took over desktop UNIX. Linux on the phone and embedded space I actually expect to see this erode as IoT disasters come home to roost. Things like Google's Magenta kernel, capability kernels, seL4 will probably displace it. As in the server space, the Linux personality may live on in image activation here due to entrenched developer mindset, but it's really never been a good platform to build these things on.
- baxuz 10y agoDon't really agree with the claims in the article. I myself and dozen of my friends and colleagues have been trying to get linux as a desktop OS all the way back when the Tango / Gnome aesthetics emerged as a counter to the glossy 3d aesthetics of XP and OSX. The thing is... It just didn't work. There wasn't any available software for it. The open-source alternatives such as OpenOffice, Inkscape and Gimp were lacking to put it mildly. Games were out of the question. But that isn't the worst part. The desktop itself, and by extension the OS as a desktop OS didn't work. Getting hardware video acceleration to work was almost impossible. Time to edit xorg.conf again and run the glsl demo. Maybe it won't crash the xserver this time. You want your microphone to work? Time to download and compile some obscure ALSA forks. UTF-8? Here, have some EN-US whether you like it or not. God help you if you have a USB device which isn't a mouse or a keyboard. And then there were the crashes. I still remember typing `startx` regularly as the GUI would crash all the time. I really want linux to succeed as a desktop OS, but I don't see that happening ever.
- oliwarner 10y agoThese are some pretty dated critiques to base your "don't see that happening ever" prediction on. A lot has changed in the past 6 years.
- Zancarius 10y agoAgreed. I started ~2005 with Gentoo as my desktop (currently using Arch). Most of these complaints are no longer valid. Others (OpenOffice, Gimp) are a matter of taste/needs.
- Zancarius 10y agoI think it's a matter of expectations and needs. I've been using Linux as my primary desktop OS off and on since 2005ish (first Gentoo, now Arch); it's been fine for me, but I suspect my experience is largely different for a variety of reasons--mostly due to needs. However, therein lies the rub: If you use Linux as a desktop environment with the expectation that everything is going to magically Just Work™, there's a greater chance you're going to be unpleasantly surprised. Then again, you might not (again, depending on needs), but if you're using predominantly Windows software and expect to be able to carry that over, it might not happen. I play some Windows games under Wine, and they generally work well, but there's a few that don't (like Guild Wars 2, but it's probably because the game is CPU bound). It happens. Use whatever works for you. As to your specific complaints, it seems to me that most of them are largely outdated by now. OpenOffice/LibreOffice are good enough for the most part (certainly not as polished as MS Office), and the same applies to Inkscape and Gimp (both of which I use under Windows, so there's that). My GeForce GTX 1060 works fine with the NVIDIA kernel drivers; I've not had to edit my xorg.conf file in years (with dual monitors!); audio works fine, yes even using PulseAudio; and UTF-8 is a non-issue (installing the correct fonts does wonders, but make sure to change them in your browser profile!). My webcam works great as well, but I selected it specifically for its Linux compatibility. Same for an ancient HP LaserJet printer. So, I think things have certainly improved--they have since I started using Gentoo. That's not to say you should expect smooth sailing, of course. For my part, I like tinkering with my OS and generally don't mind it when I break something. If that's out of the question and you need something that's going to work out of the box, Linux probably isn't something you should be using in the first place, especially if you have esoteric needs. I won't wax philosophical about "oh, you just need to do X" when certain software is going to work better on Windows, for instance, but having used Linux for my desktop OS as long as I have, I can't complain. I actually grumble more when I have to boot to Windows. ;) However, I have a friend who has a particular penchant for breaking literally everything he touches (coincidentally, he works in QC now). Every time he speculates out loud about trying some random Linux distro, I politely change the subject!
- RandyRanderson 10y agoUsing Ubuntu 16* again after maybe a decade of not using Linux has not left me impressed at the desktop progress. By it's nature, the Open Source (OS) community doesn't have the man-hours or leadership structure in place to make a coordinated desktop system. I would argue that it is at least the rare combination of technical know-how, leadership structure, man-hours and perseverance that makes a system successful. An example would be Linus Torvalds with Linux but there are many others. Further to this, I believe a commercial structure in conjunction with an open-source component/ecosystem has a much greater chance for success, by it's nature. So in this respect I think RemixOS/Android on Linux is a better path to a successful Linux desktop as Android today allows 95%+ of users to do everything they need while also allowing the rest of us the use of all the great facets of the Linux/GNU components.
- progman 10y ago> By it's nature, the Open Source (OS) community doesn't have the man-hours or leadership structure in place to make a coordinated desktop system. That's wrong. KDE and Gnome are coordinated desktop systems. Why do all people cry out for a single desktop? GNU/Linux (Unix also) and the desktop had always been separated, and I consider this a very good design choice. Right now the Linux community is slowly moving towards Wayland. Thanks to the design of Linux it's no problem to add a new series of desktops to Wayland until the best ones will get obvious, likely two or three again (as KDE and Gnome).
- RandyRanderson 10y agoThere shouldn't be a debate about the desktop effectiveness of Android* on one hand and KDE, Gnome, etc one the other for casual users. I definitely did not mean to imply there should be a single dt. I would however, like there to be at least one good one. ;>
- eximius 10y agoTry something other than Ubuntu (Linux Mint w/ Cinnamon is what I use). Ubuntu (and Gnome) have taken some steps in a direction that very many find unappealing.
- throw2016 10y ago10 years ago maybe not, but today things like Unity, Gnome, Mate etc given you a modern, stable and reasonably seamless desktop experience. Even games work now if you look at the recent benchmarks done by phoronix. But the whole idea of installing an OS is something very few people do or plan to ever do. That itself limits Linux desktops to enthusiasts or managed deployments. People are also used to applications like Office and will always be reluctant to try something else because its not worth their time. There are applications like adobe creative suite and games that tie users to Windows or OSX and force the OS choice. The only way Linux becomes widespread is if an entity pushes it aggressively like Google does for Android. Without that for the general user what possible reason could there be to turn away from their preinstalled perfectly working windows desktops to reach for Linux?
- APCarr 10y agoThe privacy concerns. Also, older people like me don't enjoy things constantly changing, so having more control over updates is appealing. I despise Windows 10, enough that it prevented me from buying a laptop, until I eventually found a vendor willing to install Windows 8.1, which I merely dislike. I wanted Windows 7 or was willing to try Mint. However they are not available, "no drivers" and so Linux is dead to me.
- franciscop 10y ago> You set up Windows for grandma, installed AOL, and then came back once a month to scrape the inevitable viruses and malware out of her computer until the box was dead, and then you bought a new desktop with more Windows on it Arguably that's a place where Linux has won in the desktop; all my family uses is the browser, some times LibreOffice Writer and Skype. So I'm guessing like me, many other developers installed Ubuntu or other user-friendly distro for the family so the maintenance described here is down to 0.
- JeremyMorgan 10y agoI am a minority when I say that I don't want the Linux desktop to flourish? I've been using Linux since 1996. Though I also use Windows and OSX, I haven't been without a Linux machine for 20 years, and I've seen a lot. It seems the more Linux distributions try to target the "average user" they just dumb it down and/or make it more proprietary. I can barely stand using Ubuntu these days for that reason. I know, it's configurable, I can change anything I want but I don't really want to see that trend continue. I would like to see innovation focused on making Linux better for work, not focusing on the average Joe who doesn't want/need it.
- tmptmp 10y agoThis. The craze of trying to get Linux on desktop is harming the core of it. Average Joe doesn't care for Linux even though he/she may need it and that's because average Joe doesn't even know that they need Linux for reasons like privacy, better protection from viruses as compared to MS. The Linux distro people should concentrate more on making the core better than focusing inordinate amounts of efforts on the desktop. Although, gnome is not direct part of Linux, it comes to my mind for a related reason. The efforts spent on going from gnome2 to gnome3 would have been better spent on making gnome2 apps better.
- nine_k 10y agoFortunately, Linux allows For multiple desktops, both dumbed down, sophisticated, and everything in between. Unfortunately, the UI stuff is hard, and resources are limited, so Xfce will always be less polished than Unity. Frankly, I can live with that.
- JeremyMorgan 10y agoYep, XFCE is great. It has its quirks and it's not as cool looking as the others but definitely lean and "good enough". I left Unity years ago, and the whole Amazon adware thing pushed me away for good (though I have no idea if they're still doing that)
- 3131s 10y ago
- MisterBastahrd 10y agoI've yet to find a reason to switch to Linux as a user of computers when I could instead use a Mac. I get most of the Unixy goodness along with a sensible structure for my personal documents and applications. Oh, and the dock doesn't suck / require reboots / break constantly / be forbidden to be on the bottom of the screen due to fiat of crazy owner of distro, and installing other apps doesn't mean that I get all of the ugly lack of aesthetics as beta-era Swing.
- didibus 10y agoI just installed openSuse with KDE Plasma on my laptop after years of windows, and I have to admit, it's great. All that's missing is app support.
- rascul 10y agoNext year is always the year of the Linux desktop.
- soulbadguy 10y agoI am a linux die-hard, and for my use case (dev C++ target other UNIX platforms), it think it's simply the best OS around by far. For anybody even remotely interested in computer science and software engineering, linux is a great place to be. But i am having a really hard time understanding the reasoning of people trying to put the failure of linux on desktop on anything else than the fact that the linux desktop experience sucks... always have and probably always will be lagging. The recent uptake and use of linux desktop have much more to do with the browsers overtaking everything than anything else...