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No, the year of the Linux desktop ended a few years later: - Laptops became hugely popular and Linux never was great at plug and play hardware handling. - Pul

No, the year of the Linux desktop ended a few years later: - Laptops became hugely popular and Linux never was great at plug and play hardware handling. - PulseAudio was part of the fix that wasn't - KDE4 and Gnome 3 happened (even though the plasma desktop was stabilized soon, things like Akonadi and Nepomik have managed to destroy much of the appeal of the unique tight integration of KDE software) - systemd happened. Mentioning this will trigger rabid supporters among the HN crowd, but the fact remains that this is at least a PR disaster on all accounts. The end result of the changes of the last decade is that Linux installations have become extremely opaque even to experts while effectively staying just as brittle as before.

watwut 9y ago
99% of desktop users never heard of systemd nor controversy around it. And if they did, they forget a day later.
- gmueckl 9y ago
  Of course someone got triggered by the presence if the word "systemd". I am surprised that it didn't take longer. But that was not my point at all. The fact is that all attempts to fix the Linux user space have essentially failed to deliver. The additional complexity added over these years did effectively nothing to move the Linux desktop into the 21st century, let alone this decade. I was extremely hopeful around 2003 to 2005 that Linux might carve out a corner in the desktop market. Now I find myself pondering switching to Windows full time after dual booting for two decades.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
    "additional complexity" is the ticket. Linux Desktop tried so hard to chase some strawman of the "average user" over the past 2 decades, while at the same time keeping their identity as a unix system, that they ended up building a nightmarish Rube Goldberg machine that is completely opaque in its operation even to a lot of the people claiming to be experts in using it. They sacrificed "simple" on the altar of "easy" and, unsurprisingly, it didn't get them anywhere. Simple is easy to work with, and easy to reason about. That means that even when you screw up, it will be pretty obvious why, and when it breaks it will be pretty obvious to fix. It also usually means it'll be pretty flexible. DOS was simple, but not easy, for instance. Windows has been trending this way too. Of course, if you ask me, the Linux community always prefered complexity anyway. Take package managers: they only exist to manage complicated dependency relationships. Instead of asking why they have such complicated dependency relationships in their software, or why that causes so many problems for them, they instead wrote a package manager to handle the whole complicated mess; and that package manager was such a rousing success that no one ever wrote another one because it had so elegantly and completely solved the problem. Sigh
    - Dylan16807 9y ago
      > Take package managers: they only exist to manage complicated dependency relationships. Most dependency relationships are very simple. The package manager isn't there as a bandaid over complexity, it's there so I don't have to do repetitive simple downloading by hand. A system could also come with everything installed, or all packages could include their dependencies, but both of those are huge wastes of space without being much simpler.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
        What you're saying is it's a walled garden, an app store. Well then it sucks because of all the problems with those, including but not limited to not being very open for developers to get into without jumping through hoops and therefor having limited application choices based on whatever the package repository maintainer decided to do or not do. All packages including their dependencies is the right way to do it (AppBundles, AppDirs, PortableApps, whatever you want to call that methodology). It's 2017, you can't tell me that sharing a 400k libsomebullshit.so between the 2 applications that use it is worth all this added complexity. Bonus: It's easy as hell for developers to deploy this way. Of course, it does require a defined and stable base system to rely on, and we know how much the Linux community loathes that concept. Still, kudos to AppImage for at least trying to do the right thing.
        Dylan16807 9y ago
        Huh? Package management doesn't imply a walled garden. You can install packages from anywhere. And nothing stops you from having each package install into a single folder, if you want clearer boundaries. Sharing a 400KB library is no big deal, but I don't want a dozen 200MB python installs, etc.
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
        Package management very much does imply a walled garden. You can install packages from anywhere... as long as they conform to your package format... and they aren't incompatible with the way your distro's repository does things... and they aren't too old... or too new... did we mention there's like, 200 distros? Yeah, totally flexible that. And since when the hell can you choose where to install packages? Unless you're talking about very niche things like GoboLinux, or stupid workaround shenanigans with chroot and/or large amounts of symlinks. It's possible this is a thing that has changed and I never noticed because nobody ever does it. However, I doubt that very much given OSS developers' love for hardcoding paths at compile time. People routinely distribute Electron Apps, which are bundled with an entire browser. Minecraft comes with the entire JRE bundled. Doom 2016, as far as I know, doesn't do anything like that but is something like 70GB anyway. 200MB is not a big deal, and for my money the complexity and limitations introduced by a package manager more than outweigh the extra space lost in the few cases where a large dependency might be used by more than one application.
  - greenhouse_gas 9y ago
    That's my problem with the "Linux desktop" - you want to know what's a "Linux desktop"? Its Android. Oh wait, you want a Gnu (or more general, a POSIX) Desktop for the masses? None of the "masses" need it and they _won't_ need it. What I want is the nice niche desktop for nerds.
  - y4mi 9y ago
    he got "triggered" because systemd simply had no impact on the linux desktop space. the rest of your points are true though. and significantly more than systemd, the coming change to wayland will alienate even more people.
  - watwut 9y ago
    You wrote that " the fact remains that this is at least a PR disaster on all accounts." No it is not PR disaster and I dont even use systemd. Or maybe because I dont use it and I am not member of community that fought that fight I can freely say it has zero impact on linux desktop PR.
amyjess 9y ago
I think KDE5 was an even bigger disaster than KDE4. It completely trashed KDE's famously great support for localization, and half the applications still haven't been ported over. And somehow they managed to shoot themselves in the foot with notifications and then drop the ball handling it. For all of KDE4's problems, and it did have problems, KDE5 just feels like half a desktop.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  I think the idea of jumping into QML and having Plasma rewritten in it, was yet another setback.
greenhouse_gas 9y ago
GNOME3 was mostly controversial for the "old timers" and were upset that gnome turned around 180 degrees (it would be like if lxqt were to make their next release look like ... Gnome3). Same thing with systemd.

watwut 9y ago

99% of desktop users never heard of systemd nor controversy around it. And if they did, they forget a day later.

gmueckl 9y ago
Of course someone got triggered by the presence if the word "systemd". I am surprised that it didn't take longer. But that was not my point at all. The fact is that all attempts to fix the Linux user space have essentially failed to deliver. The additional complexity added over these years did effectively nothing to move the Linux desktop into the 21st century, let alone this decade. I was extremely hopeful around 2003 to 2005 that Linux might carve out a corner in the desktop market. Now I find myself pondering switching to Windows full time after dual booting for two decades.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
  "additional complexity" is the ticket. Linux Desktop tried so hard to chase some strawman of the "average user" over the past 2 decades, while at the same time keeping their identity as a unix system, that they ended up building a nightmarish Rube Goldberg machine that is completely opaque in its operation even to a lot of the people claiming to be experts in using it. They sacrificed "simple" on the altar of "easy" and, unsurprisingly, it didn't get them anywhere. Simple is easy to work with, and easy to reason about. That means that even when you screw up, it will be pretty obvious why, and when it breaks it will be pretty obvious to fix. It also usually means it'll be pretty flexible. DOS was simple, but not easy, for instance. Windows has been trending this way too. Of course, if you ask me, the Linux community always prefered complexity anyway. Take package managers: they only exist to manage complicated dependency relationships. Instead of asking why they have such complicated dependency relationships in their software, or why that causes so many problems for them, they instead wrote a package manager to handle the whole complicated mess; and that package manager was such a rousing success that no one ever wrote another one because it had so elegantly and completely solved the problem. Sigh
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    > Take package managers: they only exist to manage complicated dependency relationships. Most dependency relationships are very simple. The package manager isn't there as a bandaid over complexity, it's there so I don't have to do repetitive simple downloading by hand. A system could also come with everything installed, or all packages could include their dependencies, but both of those are huge wastes of space without being much simpler.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
      What you're saying is it's a walled garden, an app store. Well then it sucks because of all the problems with those, including but not limited to not being very open for developers to get into without jumping through hoops and therefor having limited application choices based on whatever the package repository maintainer decided to do or not do. All packages including their dependencies is the right way to do it (AppBundles, AppDirs, PortableApps, whatever you want to call that methodology). It's 2017, you can't tell me that sharing a 400k libsomebullshit.so between the 2 applications that use it is worth all this added complexity. Bonus: It's easy as hell for developers to deploy this way. Of course, it does require a defined and stable base system to rely on, and we know how much the Linux community loathes that concept. Still, kudos to AppImage for at least trying to do the right thing.
      - Dylan16807 9y ago
        Huh? Package management doesn't imply a walled garden. You can install packages from anywhere. And nothing stops you from having each package install into a single folder, if you want clearer boundaries. Sharing a 400KB library is no big deal, but I don't want a dozen 200MB python installs, etc.
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
        Package management very much does imply a walled garden. You can install packages from anywhere... as long as they conform to your package format... and they aren't incompatible with the way your distro's repository does things... and they aren't too old... or too new... did we mention there's like, 200 distros? Yeah, totally flexible that. And since when the hell can you choose where to install packages? Unless you're talking about very niche things like GoboLinux, or stupid workaround shenanigans with chroot and/or large amounts of symlinks. It's possible this is a thing that has changed and I never noticed because nobody ever does it. However, I doubt that very much given OSS developers' love for hardcoding paths at compile time. People routinely distribute Electron Apps, which are bundled with an entire browser. Minecraft comes with the entire JRE bundled. Doom 2016, as far as I know, doesn't do anything like that but is something like 70GB anyway. 200MB is not a big deal, and for my money the complexity and limitations introduced by a package manager more than outweigh the extra space lost in the few cases where a large dependency might be used by more than one application.
- greenhouse_gas 9y ago
  That's my problem with the "Linux desktop" - you want to know what's a "Linux desktop"? Its Android. Oh wait, you want a Gnu (or more general, a POSIX) Desktop for the masses? None of the "masses" need it and they _won't_ need it. What I want is the nice niche desktop for nerds.
- y4mi 9y ago
  he got "triggered" because systemd simply had no impact on the linux desktop space. the rest of your points are true though. and significantly more than systemd, the coming change to wayland will alienate even more people.
- watwut 9y ago
  You wrote that " the fact remains that this is at least a PR disaster on all accounts." No it is not PR disaster and I dont even use systemd. Or maybe because I dont use it and I am not member of community that fought that fight I can freely say it has zero impact on linux desktop PR.

amyjess 9y ago

I think KDE5 was an even bigger disaster than KDE4. It completely trashed KDE's famously great support for localization, and half the applications still haven't been ported over. And somehow they managed to shoot themselves in the foot with notifications and then drop the ball handling it. For all of KDE4's problems, and it did have problems, KDE5 just feels like half a desktop.

pjmlp 9y ago
I think the idea of jumping into QML and having Plasma rewritten in it, was yet another setback.

greenhouse_gas 9y ago

GNOME3 was mostly controversial for the "old timers" and were upset that gnome turned around 180 degrees (it would be like if lxqt were to make their next release look like ... Gnome3). Same thing with systemd.