4 ms·

Actual quote from Linus as opposed to the click-bait title: > I still wish we were better at having a standardized desktop that goes across all the distributio

Actual quote from Linus as opposed to the click-bait title: > I still wish we were better at having a standardized desktop that goes across all the distributions. There's been some progress there. I mean, this is not a kernel issue, so this is just more of a personal annoyance how the fragmentation of the different vendors have, I think, held the desktop back a bit. But there has been some progress on that front too with Flatpak and things like that, so I'm still optimistic, but it's been 25 years. It's going to be another few years at least.

marmot777 8y ago
Yes, he essentially says we're on our way there but we have a few more years or so to go. The headline hyperbolic click bait.
msiyer 8y ago
Considering what KDE has achieved with Plasma 5, I am really happy. I use Plasma 5 on all my machines that are capable enough to handle it. Gnome 3, consequently, has never found a place. On old machines, I use Xfce only. Xfce is, in no way, for the masses. Plasma 5 could easily be the Desktop Environment that everyone loves, if they continue to improve. I have helped people migrate from Windows to Plasma 5. They loved it. However, getting\installing software and general system management is still not straightforward enough. We also need system management tools that are solid. No terminal gymnastics at all for the common user on distros targeted at the masses. Flatpak is all cool, but we need core user-space applications to be standardized. LibreOffice, for example, needs to become the industry standard office-suite. How can we achieve that? People I know just do not want to move away from MS Office. Even government agencies invest heavily in MS Office. This might just be the most important impediment. I think, the Linux ecosystem shows us what a real "free market" looks like. Lots of small players and no monopoly. People love choices and they have. You want a minimal Window Manager, you got many to choose from. You want a full-blown Desktop Environment, you are spoilt for choice. Not a bad thing in an ideal world, but...
- lstamour 8y ago
  I bet Linux for the desktop will actually start when Microsoft ports Chromium-based Edge and Office apps to Linux for specialty users, primarily developers. I mean, if you want developer mindshare and apparently improving or replacing cmd.exe will never happen... it’s not like these proprietary apps aren’t possible to ship for Linux to run at least as well as they do on an Android phone...
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Those proprietary apps on Android have two things working for them that GNU/Linux lacks. In spite of piracy, a large set of population actually pays for them, versus bashing the authors for considering to charge money for their work while suggesting free alternatives. A full stack framework that in spite of OEM customization is relatively standard across all devices with an Android label on them.
- Chyzwar 8y ago
  Why every Linux related topic needs to end with KDE vs Gnome discussion. The problem is not DE fragmentation but the packaging. Every distribution spends more time on packaging and integration testing than developing useful functionality. When developing for Linux you need to package your application in a few different formats. We also have different init systems to make it more difficult. Every distro has own store and repositories. For GUI there are different frameworks and display servers. If Linux world standardizes around snap/flatpak, systemd and wayland then we stand a chance.
  - msiyer 8y ago
    First impression is the... DE being the first thing a common user interfaces with, it holds a very important position, in my opinion. KDE and Gnome are very different w.r.t design principles, hence the polarization and debate. KDE and Xfce are not so different. I like Gnome, but have no use for it. I agree with all else. Also, I think, a real "free market" would resemble Linux ecosystem. No monopoly, small players and lots of choices. However, if we wish to compete in "real world", we need to do something similar to what you say.
smacktoward 8y ago
there has been some progress on that front too with Flatpak Don’t worry Linus, with Snaps and AppImages we’re hard at work fragmenting that front too!
- keyboardmowing 8y ago
  Isn’t flatpak like npm where it just flat stores all the libraries? So it’s a huge waste of space ?
  - jackfraser 8y ago
    There's been a continual oscillation between bring-your-dependencies (ranging from statically compiled executables, to composed things like docker containers, snaps, npm / ruby / php composer apps, etc.) and use-the-systemwide-stuff (like most linux apps). The tradeoff is pretty obvious: on the one hand you get full control over what code you bring in, but you also get full responsibility of keeping it up to date and it does indeed take up more space. On the other hand you get systemwide updates, but also unpredictability which can break things. In the former, you have a lot of work to do yourself to maintain your ecosystem between releases. In the latter, a greater amount of effort and responsibility goes onto those who maintain the packages at a distribution level to ensure mutually compatible package selections. This can be done (viz. most of the top tier distributions successfully doing this with occasional problems for decades) but we keep trying new all-in-one mechanisms every few years. I'm not convinced that there's ever going to be a final answer to this, but it is clear that storage is cheap as chips...
    - simonh 8y ago
      Was cheap as chips. The age of flash has dawned.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
        Still cheap as chips. 1TB name brand flash drives can be had for under $200.
VvR-Ox 8y ago
He is right with that. There is a few desktop environments that are quite good like: KDE (Plasma), Gnome (with enough options tuning & customizing) and maybe pantheon (see elementary OS) We'd need something more smoove and better over-all integration because there is still too many shortcomings and tiny bugs that could annoy a day-to-day user that doesn't want to know anything about config files or extended menus with special settings. It should be a great thing out of the box with sane defaults. That includes the icon set as well as a decent file browser and terminal emulator experience (iTerm2 on mac is THE REFERENCE here, I wouldn't want anything less). Next comes workflows like office /graphics /audio stuff. I like how OSX handles PDFs etc and would love to see that on linux as well. But I'm afraid this scattering is one of the biggest enemies of adoption and maturity of open source software. There is so many OSes and tools that you often have to research stuff for hours before you start off with a shitty tool that get's the job half done and then you recognize you can start from scratch because it doesn't work as you expected. Instead many open source projects could live up to their potential if they'd combine efforts to merge the best they did and create ONE super awesome tool. The reallity is that very often projects are just abandoned because adoption / donations etc. are too low or the 2 maintainers are tired after years of working on a project only 100 ppl on the globe are using. Unite! At least converge to 2 big streams: Pro-Users (the ppl making jokes about shellscripts) and People (your mom) Just focus on delivering for these 2 groups and I think most ppl would be glad about the end product. I for myself will try to do my best in putting efforts into projects I hope will have the biggest adoption.
- speedplane 8y ago
  > There is a few desktop environments that are quite good ... Unite! This is happening. The web is becoming the de-facto desktop environment.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Thing is, the Web as de-facto desktop environment is one reason less to even care about Linux's existence. A browser could run bare metal for what I care.

marmot777 8y ago

Yes, he essentially says we're on our way there but we have a few more years or so to go. The headline hyperbolic click bait.

msiyer 8y ago

Considering what KDE has achieved with Plasma 5, I am really happy. I use Plasma 5 on all my machines that are capable enough to handle it. Gnome 3, consequently, has never found a place. On old machines, I use Xfce only. Xfce is, in no way, for the masses. Plasma 5 could easily be the Desktop Environment that everyone loves, if they continue to improve. I have helped people migrate from Windows to Plasma 5. They loved it. However, getting\installing software and general system management is still not straightforward enough. We also need system management tools that are solid. No terminal gymnastics at all for the common user on distros targeted at the masses. Flatpak is all cool, but we need core user-space applications to be standardized. LibreOffice, for example, needs to become the industry standard office-suite. How can we achieve that? People I know just do not want to move away from MS Office. Even government agencies invest heavily in MS Office. This might just be the most important impediment. I think, the Linux ecosystem shows us what a real "free market" looks like. Lots of small players and no monopoly. People love choices and they have. You want a minimal Window Manager, you got many to choose from. You want a full-blown Desktop Environment, you are spoilt for choice. Not a bad thing in an ideal world, but...

lstamour 8y ago
I bet Linux for the desktop will actually start when Microsoft ports Chromium-based Edge and Office apps to Linux for specialty users, primarily developers. I mean, if you want developer mindshare and apparently improving or replacing cmd.exe will never happen... it’s not like these proprietary apps aren’t possible to ship for Linux to run at least as well as they do on an Android phone...
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Those proprietary apps on Android have two things working for them that GNU/Linux lacks. In spite of piracy, a large set of population actually pays for them, versus bashing the authors for considering to charge money for their work while suggesting free alternatives. A full stack framework that in spite of OEM customization is relatively standard across all devices with an Android label on them.
Chyzwar 8y ago
Why every Linux related topic needs to end with KDE vs Gnome discussion. The problem is not DE fragmentation but the packaging. Every distribution spends more time on packaging and integration testing than developing useful functionality. When developing for Linux you need to package your application in a few different formats. We also have different init systems to make it more difficult. Every distro has own store and repositories. For GUI there are different frameworks and display servers. If Linux world standardizes around snap/flatpak, systemd and wayland then we stand a chance.
- msiyer 8y ago
  First impression is the... DE being the first thing a common user interfaces with, it holds a very important position, in my opinion. KDE and Gnome are very different w.r.t design principles, hence the polarization and debate. KDE and Xfce are not so different. I like Gnome, but have no use for it. I agree with all else. Also, I think, a real "free market" would resemble Linux ecosystem. No monopoly, small players and lots of choices. However, if we wish to compete in "real world", we need to do something similar to what you say.

smacktoward 8y ago

there has been some progress on that front too with Flatpak Don’t worry Linus, with Snaps and AppImages we’re hard at work fragmenting that front too!

keyboardmowing 8y ago
Isn’t flatpak like npm where it just flat stores all the libraries? So it’s a huge waste of space ?
- jackfraser 8y ago
  There's been a continual oscillation between bring-your-dependencies (ranging from statically compiled executables, to composed things like docker containers, snaps, npm / ruby / php composer apps, etc.) and use-the-systemwide-stuff (like most linux apps). The tradeoff is pretty obvious: on the one hand you get full control over what code you bring in, but you also get full responsibility of keeping it up to date and it does indeed take up more space. On the other hand you get systemwide updates, but also unpredictability which can break things. In the former, you have a lot of work to do yourself to maintain your ecosystem between releases. In the latter, a greater amount of effort and responsibility goes onto those who maintain the packages at a distribution level to ensure mutually compatible package selections. This can be done (viz. most of the top tier distributions successfully doing this with occasional problems for decades) but we keep trying new all-in-one mechanisms every few years. I'm not convinced that there's ever going to be a final answer to this, but it is clear that storage is cheap as chips...
  - simonh 8y ago
    Was cheap as chips. The age of flash has dawned.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
      Still cheap as chips. 1TB name brand flash drives can be had for under $200.

VvR-Ox 8y ago

He is right with that. There is a few desktop environments that are quite good like: KDE (Plasma), Gnome (with enough options tuning & customizing) and maybe pantheon (see elementary OS) We'd need something more smoove and better over-all integration because there is still too many shortcomings and tiny bugs that could annoy a day-to-day user that doesn't want to know anything about config files or extended menus with special settings. It should be a great thing out of the box with sane defaults. That includes the icon set as well as a decent file browser and terminal emulator experience (iTerm2 on mac is THE REFERENCE here, I wouldn't want anything less). Next comes workflows like office /graphics /audio stuff. I like how OSX handles PDFs etc and would love to see that on linux as well. But I'm afraid this scattering is one of the biggest enemies of adoption and maturity of open source software. There is so many OSes and tools that you often have to research stuff for hours before you start off with a shitty tool that get's the job half done and then you recognize you can start from scratch because it doesn't work as you expected. Instead many open source projects could live up to their potential if they'd combine efforts to merge the best they did and create ONE super awesome tool. The reallity is that very often projects are just abandoned because adoption / donations etc. are too low or the 2 maintainers are tired after years of working on a project only 100 ppl on the globe are using. Unite! At least converge to 2 big streams: Pro-Users (the ppl making jokes about shellscripts) and People (your mom) Just focus on delivering for these 2 groups and I think most ppl would be glad about the end product. I for myself will try to do my best in putting efforts into projects I hope will have the biggest adoption.

speedplane 8y ago
> There is a few desktop environments that are quite good ... Unite! This is happening. The web is becoming the de-facto desktop environment.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Thing is, the Web as de-facto desktop environment is one reason less to even care about Linux's existence. A browser could run bare metal for what I care.