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The reason why desktop Linux is so bad has not very much to do with it being free software, but instead it's more of a political problem which many open source

The reason why desktop Linux is so bad has not very much to do with it being free software, but instead it's more of a political problem which many open source proponents still haven't understood. Everyone seems to point to Linux as the best model of open source community that managed to outgrow and outpace any commercial offering. Why is that? The secret sauce for any project, open source or not, that can grow as fast as successfully as Linux is the presence of a BDFL at the top. The one that sets the vision, that pushes back again anything that would impact negatively from that vision and, yikes, might reject patches people have spent their free time on. Blender and Godot are other fully open source project that are competing with commercial offerings, and all have either a BDFL or a very close-knit governance model at the top, that is not afraid to take the next step and find sources of funding for its own full time developers. All of which is opposite to the governance model of the two biggest UI projects in the Linux desktop world, GNOME and KDE. It's a loose bunch of passionate people that work on whatever tickles the fancy right now, and if they get bored they'll just rewrite a core library or app, backward compatibility be damned, we're just volunteer we don't owe you anything. We'd have Linux on the desktop in 2020 if any of those projects had some Torvalds-like figure ranting on a mailing list about why the user is always right, shame on you on redesigning the menubar yet again breaking any UI convention for no real purpose, and no, Canonical/Red Hat/whoever, we will not accept this patch that undermines the goals of this project. So it's really got nothing to do with open source, it's just an organisational problem. Well, that, and the fact that the vast majority of Linux users seems to be incredibly stingy and reluctant to support and pay for these volunteers' time.

tsimionescu 6y ago
The major reason why Linux thrives and other projects do not is not the governance model, but the fact that Linux solves a real, difficult problem for a large number of companies. The major contributors to Linux are companies, not anyone individual people. Would a Linux Steering Committee have worked for early Linux? Probably not. Would it work now? Absolutely.
cycloptic 6y ago
>We'd have Linux on the desktop in 2020 if any of those projects had some Torvalds-like figure ranting on a mailing list about why the user is always right, shame on you on redesigning the menubar yet again breaking any UI convention for no real purpose, and no, Canonical/Red Hat/whoever, we will not accept this patch that undermines the goals of this project. I think if you followed things more closely you would see that this is not true. There is no shortage of highly opinionated people making angry rants and throwing out patches. That's not going to help with the ridiculous amount of edge cases it takes to keep a desktop working. Using the Linux kernel as an example, there has been a meme there for quite a long time from overworked maintainers complaining about how the BDFL model scales poorly. (Recent writing here: https://lwn.net/Articles/703005/ https://lwn.net/Articles/703005/)
ogre_codes 6y ago
> We'd have Linux on the desktop in 2020 if any of those projects had some Torvalds-like figure ranting on a mailing list about why the user is always right, shame on you on redesigning the menubar yet again breaking any UI convention for no real purpose, and no, Canonical/Red Hat/whoever, we will not accept this patch that undermines the goals of this project. I don't think a Torvalds like BDFL would save Linux desktop. With the Linux kernel, there is a massive incentive for everyone to circle their wagons around one kernel. By having a single Linux kernel, it makes it much easier for vendors to create drivers and services against. With the desktop, the incentive to stick with "one" desktop solution drops off quickly. If I want a tabbed window manager and one doesn't exist, I create it. This is great for me and the people who want a tabbed window manager, but for the other 95%+ of the population, it's essentially worthless. Multiply that effect by thousands of decision points and you have the Linux desktop: An abundance of fairly mediocre to good options with few really great ones.
na85 6y ago
HURD and Emacs have RMS as their BDFL, and both are niche products at best. Emacs at least works pretty well (I use it almost every day) but HURD is a joke. Emacs is a great editor but is dwarfed in usage by vim and vscode. What's the difference between HURD and Linux that make one successful but not the other? I can't be a BDFL.
- thrower123 6y ago
  Stallman is a terrible dictator.
  - na85 6y ago
    Because his ideas are wildly divorced from reality and what's practical?

tsimionescu 6y ago

The major reason why Linux thrives and other projects do not is not the governance model, but the fact that Linux solves a real, difficult problem for a large number of companies. The major contributors to Linux are companies, not anyone individual people. Would a Linux Steering Committee have worked for early Linux? Probably not. Would it work now? Absolutely.

cycloptic 6y ago

>We'd have Linux on the desktop in 2020 if any of those projects had some Torvalds-like figure ranting on a mailing list about why the user is always right, shame on you on redesigning the menubar yet again breaking any UI convention for no real purpose, and no, Canonical/Red Hat/whoever, we will not accept this patch that undermines the goals of this project. I think if you followed things more closely you would see that this is not true. There is no shortage of highly opinionated people making angry rants and throwing out patches. That's not going to help with the ridiculous amount of edge cases it takes to keep a desktop working. Using the Linux kernel as an example, there has been a meme there for quite a long time from overworked maintainers complaining about how the BDFL model scales poorly. (Recent writing here: https://lwn.net/Articles/703005/ https://lwn.net/Articles/703005/)

ogre_codes 6y ago

> We'd have Linux on the desktop in 2020 if any of those projects had some Torvalds-like figure ranting on a mailing list about why the user is always right, shame on you on redesigning the menubar yet again breaking any UI convention for no real purpose, and no, Canonical/Red Hat/whoever, we will not accept this patch that undermines the goals of this project. I don't think a Torvalds like BDFL would save Linux desktop. With the Linux kernel, there is a massive incentive for everyone to circle their wagons around one kernel. By having a single Linux kernel, it makes it much easier for vendors to create drivers and services against. With the desktop, the incentive to stick with "one" desktop solution drops off quickly. If I want a tabbed window manager and one doesn't exist, I create it. This is great for me and the people who want a tabbed window manager, but for the other 95%+ of the population, it's essentially worthless. Multiply that effect by thousands of decision points and you have the Linux desktop: An abundance of fairly mediocre to good options with few really great ones.

na85 6y ago

HURD and Emacs have RMS as their BDFL, and both are niche products at best. Emacs at least works pretty well (I use it almost every day) but HURD is a joke. Emacs is a great editor but is dwarfed in usage by vim and vscode. What's the difference between HURD and Linux that make one successful but not the other? I can't be a BDFL.

thrower123 6y ago
Stallman is a terrible dictator.
- na85 6y ago
  Because his ideas are wildly divorced from reality and what's practical?