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- Poor backwards compatibility - Needlessly complex UI APIs (e.g. X Window System) - Fragmentation - Lack of a singular UI vision - Bad UI design, bad UX -

- Poor backwards compatibility - Needlessly complex UI APIs (e.g. X Window System) - Fragmentation - Lack of a singular UI vision - Bad UI design, bad UX - Lack of accessibility support - Complex interfaces designed for 1% of users I could go on... The only successful UNIX interfaces dropped X Window, dropped most of the community's ideas and APIs, and started afresh. Look at Quartz (Apple), ChromeOS (Google), and Android (Google). They're much simpler at every layer, have a singular vision, and designed for normal users rather than by programmers for programmers. But no doubt this thread will somehow find a way to blame Microsoft as is the tired song of the Linux community.

AlexeyBrin 9y ago
> The only successful UNIX interfaces dropped X Window, dropped most of the community's ideas and APIs, and started afresh. Look at Quartz (Apple), ChromeOS (Google), and Android (Google). They're much simpler at every layer, have a singular vision, and designed for normal users rather than by programmers for programmers. The above mentioned Unix interfaces were successful not because they dropped X or started fresh but because they were promoted by huge companies with big budgets that could afford to impose on what hardware you run the modified GUI.
- mattmanser 9y ago
  There can be more than one reason why they're successful.
  - AlexeyBrin 9y ago
    True, but in the end everything is governed by how much money you can invest in a product for quality and publicity.
- Dayshine 9y ago
  Please point me at a distro that has a reliable, complete "app store". E.g. installation never randomly fails That's a feature all three nail. apt-get is great, so it's not a hardware problem, but I have yet to come across a GUI that is at all consistent.
  - ac29 9y ago
    >Please point me at a distro that has a reliable, complete "app store". E.g. installation never randomly fails Are you referring to GUI frontends for distro package managers [0]? The CLI equivalents are as close to never failing as they can get on the distros I use (~0.1% of upgrades require manually editing or merging a new config file, or something of that nature). I wish Windows was that reliable in installing/updating applications. [0] As an aside, I dont see any real user-demand for these. They seem about as desirable about the macOS store or the Microsoft Store -- just about no one wants or uses them. Trying to shoehorn in smartphone style features into desktop OS' generally hasnt been done well, or received well.
nxsynonym 9y ago
>>...designed for normal users rather than by programmers for programmers This is the crux of the issue. The Linux ecosystem philosophy is rooted in choice. Normal users don't want and/or need that much choice. Average Joe doesn't care what an operating system stands for, or how involved the developer community is, or how customization a system is. They need a spreadsheet/internet browser/email machine that can run some misc. business software, but most importantly they need something that just works. For all of the benefits of using Linux, the one thing it has never nailed down is intuitiveness. Say what you want about the (many) flaws of Windows, but you can't deny that one of the easiest out-of-the-box-this-thing-just-works experiences. It's also the same experience every single time you use a Windows machine. Try explaining the difference between Arch, Ubunutu, and Debian to a normal consumer and their eyes glaze over before you even begin.
- AlexeyBrin 9y ago
  > It's also the same experience every single time you use a Windows machine. Recently I helped a small company migrate their PCs from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Trust me, it is not the same experience at all for the end users. They (the users) will get used to the new interface and way of interacting with the OS not because it is more intuitive but because they will use it and gain experience with it.
  - Spivak 9y ago
    I think the mistake is assuming that software can be intuitive. I think the correct model is that it's more like language. You memorize a few fundamental concepts and then you amass a catalog of rote steps for accomplishing your goals. Then there will be a moment where it all clicks and you realize you're fluent enough for your purposes and can understand the unfamiliar in the context of what you already know. Going from Windows 7 -> 10 is like going from English to Scottish. The grammar is mostly the same but a lot of the words and phrases are different.
  - cm2187 9y ago
    I will never get used to have ads being displayed in the OS or to have random junk apps appearing in my start menu every couple of months. Microsoft sabotaged their main platform. It would have a major opportunity for other OS.
Someone123456 9y ago
1 - Do windows have better backwards compatibility? Not according to my experience. For example plenty of old games run better with linux+wine than with new windows versions. 2 - X is not a UI API, Qt and GTK+ are. You're thinking about the graphics server which's not any better on windows(better isolation, maybe?). 3. Why is choice a bad thing? Even if fragmentation is a drawback it's not an important one. 4. Singular UI vision is the worst - just look at how clunky are all windows UIs. They're needlessly complex and uncustomizable. They also assume that their users are stupid but they aren't. I like nice and user-friendly UIs like KDE and cinnamon and clever UIs like i3 and awesomewm. I've installed linux for many non-techie users and they quickly learned how to use their desktops - and for my surprise they started to prefer using the terminal over the software center. 5. Not sure how windows is better there. Maybe you got used to it. 6. There IS accessibility support but not perfect. Please, go on. But in the reality the actual reasons are these: 1. Regular users(or people in general) don't like change. 2. Missing apps: adobe suite, ms office, specialized apps(at schools and offices) and the most hyped games. 3. ms has far better marketing and makes deals with governments, schools, universities and hardware vendors/sellers.
- gsich 9y ago
  1 - absolutely. You have high chances that a program that was written 20 years ago still works with Windows 10. Games might be an exception, but usually OpenGL or DX games work too.
  - Someone1234567 9y ago
    I've only heard the opposite and frankly, experienced bad backwards compatibility since win7.
    - gsich 9y ago
      Of course, nobody gives positive feedback on this. But hearing and experiencing are different things.
lucideer 9y ago
This all sounds plausible, but I actually don't buy any of it. An example anecdote: we gave our technophobic MD a desktop that had been used by a previous sysadmin add a temporary machine while he was waiting for a new Windows one. It was running Maté on Mint. He never noticed it wasn't Windows. The reason the Linux Desktop hasn't happened is multifaceted (as you contend) but by far the biggest factor is OEMs. Normal users don't know/care what an OS is, so they're certainly not going to install one. If you're contending that usability is a factor, look at Windows 8.0 or early Androids. There was plenty of complaints about both, mostly valid imo, but they still got a lot more new users than traditional Linuxes. Because people don't download OSes, they buy devices. And if they get stuck with one that's less than usable, they just stay stuck, and maybe get a relative to help. They don't switch. All the reasons you listed are valid and true criticisms, but the above makes them moot. The idea that fixing X Windows' complexities or unifying the community on a focused UI/UX vision will popularise the Linux Desktop is hopelessly naïve. You won't get far without a device manufacturing operation and billions of dollars.
pasta 9y ago
I dont blame Microsoft, but yeah, they are a big reason desktop Linux failed: they just have a user friendlier OS, just like Apple. I've been using Linux for over 10 years at home, but man, all those issues, it's crazy. And every forum has the same answer to all your problems: just enter sudo... into your console. For me as a more experienced user this might not be a problem (although I'm getting tired of it) but for normal users this doesn't work at al. They see a GUI so they want to fix things via the GUI. And ofcourse they don't want to fix things at all. I have my reasons to stay at Linux but it's no fun that sometimes sleep doesn't work, every update Cuda support is broken and so on.
Yizahi 9y ago
Christian in the OP post actually tries to blame MS for aggressively discounting Windows which denied market to completely free Linux desktop. "Microsoft came running in offering next to free Windows licensing to get people to stay put." so people choose "next to free" instead of "completely free" exactly why? Also he doesn't mention any MS progress in software and moving from dark side to the good in the last decade.
- Kuraj 9y ago
  > so people choose "next to free" instead of "completely free" exactly why? I mean I am not one to bash Microsoft out of principle, but this is easy to understand - people choose Windows because that's what everyone is already familiar with. The battle over the desktop space is over, and for the same reason Microsoft couldn't gain any traction in the mobile segment.
notacoward 9y ago
> Look at Quartz (Apple), ChromeOS (Google), and Android (Google). Really good point. In my "last mile" comment I failed to address these success stories, but the two points are pretty complementary. MacOS abandoned Linux entirely. Android abandoned most of it - kept a lot of the system bits but threw away practically all of the bits a user (or even a typical developer) would see. ChromeOS is the closest to a real Linux desktop, and even it's changed quite a bit. I have a second-gen Chromebook Pixel laptop and I love the fact that I can use it both as a turnkey web-browsing appliance and as a real Linux development machine simultaneously (via crouton). But that only happened because Google invested millions in crossing that "last mile" for their own users. Many millions if you include all the money they've poured into Chrome and Google Docs and other things without which Chromebooks wouldn't be usable for most people. I guess I should amend my point to say that native app based desktop Linux will always succumb to the last-mile problem. The very freedom that lets anyone develop whatever they want also means there will be regression to the mean when it comes to quality - and the mean just isn't good enough. Someone has to pay to raise that standard, and anyone who's paying won't pay for random half-finished crap. An integrated, polished system is the only kind of desktop the market will support.
- dman 9y ago
  From a workstation point of view this whole thing looks completely inverted. All the polished commercial offerings are moving farther and farther away from the power user. For those linux/freebsd/openbsd seem much better.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Not from a Xerox PARC or ETHZ workstation point of view.
    - dman 9y ago
      Sadly I never got to use either of those, so cant fully get the gist of your comment. Could you elaborate?
pjmlp 9y ago
> They're much simpler at every layer, have a singular vision, and designed for normal users rather than by programmers for programmers. Many programmers seem to forget other programmers are users too. Just because I am a programmer doesn't mean I have to endure software that thinks a PDP-11 coupled with twm experience is the climax of UI/UX.
johnchristopher 9y ago
The blog post actually puts the blame on MS Office.

AlexeyBrin 9y ago

> The only successful UNIX interfaces dropped X Window, dropped most of the community's ideas and APIs, and started afresh. Look at Quartz (Apple), ChromeOS (Google), and Android (Google). They're much simpler at every layer, have a singular vision, and designed for normal users rather than by programmers for programmers. The above mentioned Unix interfaces were successful not because they dropped X or started fresh but because they were promoted by huge companies with big budgets that could afford to impose on what hardware you run the modified GUI.

mattmanser 9y ago
There can be more than one reason why they're successful.
- AlexeyBrin 9y ago
  True, but in the end everything is governed by how much money you can invest in a product for quality and publicity.
Dayshine 9y ago
Please point me at a distro that has a reliable, complete "app store". E.g. installation never randomly fails That's a feature all three nail. apt-get is great, so it's not a hardware problem, but I have yet to come across a GUI that is at all consistent.
- ac29 9y ago
  >Please point me at a distro that has a reliable, complete "app store". E.g. installation never randomly fails Are you referring to GUI frontends for distro package managers [0]? The CLI equivalents are as close to never failing as they can get on the distros I use (~0.1% of upgrades require manually editing or merging a new config file, or something of that nature). I wish Windows was that reliable in installing/updating applications. [0] As an aside, I dont see any real user-demand for these. They seem about as desirable about the macOS store or the Microsoft Store -- just about no one wants or uses them. Trying to shoehorn in smartphone style features into desktop OS' generally hasnt been done well, or received well.

nxsynonym 9y ago

>>...designed for normal users rather than by programmers for programmers This is the crux of the issue. The Linux ecosystem philosophy is rooted in choice. Normal users don't want and/or need that much choice. Average Joe doesn't care what an operating system stands for, or how involved the developer community is, or how customization a system is. They need a spreadsheet/internet browser/email machine that can run some misc. business software, but most importantly they need something that just works. For all of the benefits of using Linux, the one thing it has never nailed down is intuitiveness. Say what you want about the (many) flaws of Windows, but you can't deny that one of the easiest out-of-the-box-this-thing-just-works experiences. It's also the same experience every single time you use a Windows machine. Try explaining the difference between Arch, Ubunutu, and Debian to a normal consumer and their eyes glaze over before you even begin.

AlexeyBrin 9y ago
> It's also the same experience every single time you use a Windows machine. Recently I helped a small company migrate their PCs from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Trust me, it is not the same experience at all for the end users. They (the users) will get used to the new interface and way of interacting with the OS not because it is more intuitive but because they will use it and gain experience with it.
- Spivak 9y ago
  I think the mistake is assuming that software can be intuitive. I think the correct model is that it's more like language. You memorize a few fundamental concepts and then you amass a catalog of rote steps for accomplishing your goals. Then there will be a moment where it all clicks and you realize you're fluent enough for your purposes and can understand the unfamiliar in the context of what you already know. Going from Windows 7 -> 10 is like going from English to Scottish. The grammar is mostly the same but a lot of the words and phrases are different.
- cm2187 9y ago
  I will never get used to have ads being displayed in the OS or to have random junk apps appearing in my start menu every couple of months. Microsoft sabotaged their main platform. It would have a major opportunity for other OS.

Someone123456 9y ago

1 - Do windows have better backwards compatibility? Not according to my experience. For example plenty of old games run better with linux+wine than with new windows versions. 2 - X is not a UI API, Qt and GTK+ are. You're thinking about the graphics server which's not any better on windows(better isolation, maybe?). 3. Why is choice a bad thing? Even if fragmentation is a drawback it's not an important one. 4. Singular UI vision is the worst - just look at how clunky are all windows UIs. They're needlessly complex and uncustomizable. They also assume that their users are stupid but they aren't. I like nice and user-friendly UIs like KDE and cinnamon and clever UIs like i3 and awesomewm. I've installed linux for many non-techie users and they quickly learned how to use their desktops - and for my surprise they started to prefer using the terminal over the software center. 5. Not sure how windows is better there. Maybe you got used to it. 6. There IS accessibility support but not perfect. Please, go on. But in the reality the actual reasons are these: 1. Regular users(or people in general) don't like change. 2. Missing apps: adobe suite, ms office, specialized apps(at schools and offices) and the most hyped games. 3. ms has far better marketing and makes deals with governments, schools, universities and hardware vendors/sellers.

gsich 9y ago
1 - absolutely. You have high chances that a program that was written 20 years ago still works with Windows 10. Games might be an exception, but usually OpenGL or DX games work too.
- Someone1234567 9y ago
  I've only heard the opposite and frankly, experienced bad backwards compatibility since win7.
  - gsich 9y ago
    Of course, nobody gives positive feedback on this. But hearing and experiencing are different things.

lucideer 9y ago

This all sounds plausible, but I actually don't buy any of it. An example anecdote: we gave our technophobic MD a desktop that had been used by a previous sysadmin add a temporary machine while he was waiting for a new Windows one. It was running Maté on Mint. He never noticed it wasn't Windows. The reason the Linux Desktop hasn't happened is multifaceted (as you contend) but by far the biggest factor is OEMs. Normal users don't know/care what an OS is, so they're certainly not going to install one. If you're contending that usability is a factor, look at Windows 8.0 or early Androids. There was plenty of complaints about both, mostly valid imo, but they still got a lot more new users than traditional Linuxes. Because people don't download OSes, they buy devices. And if they get stuck with one that's less than usable, they just stay stuck, and maybe get a relative to help. They don't switch. All the reasons you listed are valid and true criticisms, but the above makes them moot. The idea that fixing X Windows' complexities or unifying the community on a focused UI/UX vision will popularise the Linux Desktop is hopelessly naïve. You won't get far without a device manufacturing operation and billions of dollars.

pasta 9y ago

I dont blame Microsoft, but yeah, they are a big reason desktop Linux failed: they just have a user friendlier OS, just like Apple. I've been using Linux for over 10 years at home, but man, all those issues, it's crazy. And every forum has the same answer to all your problems: just enter sudo... into your console. For me as a more experienced user this might not be a problem (although I'm getting tired of it) but for normal users this doesn't work at al. They see a GUI so they want to fix things via the GUI. And ofcourse they don't want to fix things at all. I have my reasons to stay at Linux but it's no fun that sometimes sleep doesn't work, every update Cuda support is broken and so on.

Yizahi 9y ago

Christian in the OP post actually tries to blame MS for aggressively discounting Windows which denied market to completely free Linux desktop. "Microsoft came running in offering next to free Windows licensing to get people to stay put." so people choose "next to free" instead of "completely free" exactly why? Also he doesn't mention any MS progress in software and moving from dark side to the good in the last decade.

Kuraj 9y ago
> so people choose "next to free" instead of "completely free" exactly why? I mean I am not one to bash Microsoft out of principle, but this is easy to understand - people choose Windows because that's what everyone is already familiar with. The battle over the desktop space is over, and for the same reason Microsoft couldn't gain any traction in the mobile segment.

notacoward 9y ago

> Look at Quartz (Apple), ChromeOS (Google), and Android (Google). Really good point. In my "last mile" comment I failed to address these success stories, but the two points are pretty complementary. MacOS abandoned Linux entirely. Android abandoned most of it - kept a lot of the system bits but threw away practically all of the bits a user (or even a typical developer) would see. ChromeOS is the closest to a real Linux desktop, and even it's changed quite a bit. I have a second-gen Chromebook Pixel laptop and I love the fact that I can use it both as a turnkey web-browsing appliance and as a real Linux development machine simultaneously (via crouton). But that only happened because Google invested millions in crossing that "last mile" for their own users. Many millions if you include all the money they've poured into Chrome and Google Docs and other things without which Chromebooks wouldn't be usable for most people. I guess I should amend my point to say that native app based desktop Linux will always succumb to the last-mile problem. The very freedom that lets anyone develop whatever they want also means there will be regression to the mean when it comes to quality - and the mean just isn't good enough. Someone has to pay to raise that standard, and anyone who's paying won't pay for random half-finished crap. An integrated, polished system is the only kind of desktop the market will support.

dman 9y ago
From a workstation point of view this whole thing looks completely inverted. All the polished commercial offerings are moving farther and farther away from the power user. For those linux/freebsd/openbsd seem much better.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Not from a Xerox PARC or ETHZ workstation point of view.
  - dman 9y ago
    Sadly I never got to use either of those, so cant fully get the gist of your comment. Could you elaborate?

pjmlp 9y ago

> They're much simpler at every layer, have a singular vision, and designed for normal users rather than by programmers for programmers. Many programmers seem to forget other programmers are users too. Just because I am a programmer doesn't mean I have to endure software that thinks a PDP-11 coupled with twm experience is the climax of UI/UX.

johnchristopher 9y ago

The blog post actually puts the blame on MS Office.