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Year of the Linux Desktop Is Bullshit (2020)

24 points by dsego 5y ago

PaulHoule 5y ago
There is nothing wrong with Linux that you can't fix by uninstalling X Windows and logging in with ssh. I dream of bringing a video game character into our world with a mirror and doing a sketch comedy act with it somewhere, and Linux would be a good choice for that because I'm certain I could make it never pop up a dialog that says "Failed to download software updates". (In the meantime I'd better learn how to work a deck of three-sided cards like a puppet.)
coldtea 5y ago
Cue the persons totally missing the point and writing: (a) Well, Desktop Linux has been a reality for me for over a decade. I've even had it installed in my parents laptops. (b) But Linux dominates the mobile space with Android.
yepthatsreality 5y ago
The only bullshit part of the saying is that there will be a single year where this convergence will happen. When in truth it has already happened. Linux has great desktop choices for those who would like to use Linux. Those of us who do have moved over to the OS and probably haven't looked back, nor are they looking to bring the general public into it. If the general public wants the plastic toy OS experience then let them burn with that ship. I've spent a lot of time advocating for the move to Linux and more open source systems and voting with your wallet in the computer landscape that my general position is now to talk to someone about it and when they're upset with the status quo, I'll be on the other side saying "I told you so." Then I usually end up helping people when they come back to me. Furthermore, the commandline is a core part of the computer experience in my book. Just because Apple, Google, Microsoft want you to live on the internet doesn't mean it has to go away or have a friendlier alternative. There will always be a divide between people who have an interest in computers and willingness to learn them and people who just want to like buy something off Amazon. The latter will probably never use Linux no matter how popular it is on their phone or desktop.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  "it's a great choice for those who would like it" seems a bit tautological, it it ever possible for that to be false?
  - yepthatsreality 5y ago
    It's just another way of saying: it has it's niche and that we should recognize it for what it is, instead of trying to make it the globally recognized OS of the Year for desktop PCs, I guess.
  - compiler-guy 5y ago
    I wanted to use Linux for a long time back in the early 2000s, but it just wasn't up to snuff for a wife variety of daily tasks. Was a great development machine, but as soon as you wanted to do things like audio, or video editing, or whatever, it just wasn't there. So yeah, I wanted to, but it wasn't ready. Things are much, much better now.
- expunged 5y ago
  I’ve been using Linux for better than 22 years. It was the only operating system in my home for more than 12 of those years and I pretty much live at the command line. I’ve voted with my wallet and backed open source initiatives over that time too, but there comes a point where you just want stuff to work and you want to be able to interact with the rest of the world with the same feature set they enjoy. This is where Linux falls short. It’s a last mile problem with window managers and their associated apps. It’s further divided between software ecosystems within Linux. Another commenter pointed out how web-based apps are increasingly powerful, and I think that’s helping but there’s still a gap. I have an interest in computers and I know a whole lot about them, but I want my daily experience to be smooth and to just work and I want to be able to relate to the rest of the world in terms of software. So, I use Linux for work and Windows or OSX everything else. My point is that your comment seems to say that if people had an interest in computers they would (of course) be using Linux, and that’s absolutely not true.
  - 5y ago
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
Two things that are about 20 +/- 3 years old: 1) the idea of "the year of the Linux desktop" 2) articles containing 90% of the complaints that this one does.
zamadatix 5y ago
Honest question as I'm not sure if it's just my own bubble - when was the last time you ever heard someone say "the Linux desktop will take off this year" or something similar? Not "I'm going to switch to Linux" or anything individual statement but something to the effect all of the "Year of the Linux Desktop" articles talk to. I.e. is there really this consistently significant portion of people that think Linux is going to take off in popularity in <current year> or is it just a bunch of people that like Linux try to get more people to try it out during these kinds of release cycle changes.
- cryptoz 5y ago
  A google for Year of the Linux Desktop shows a big number of seemingly serious articles from the last few years.
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    Sure, I can find many seriously saying just about anything on the internet if I go looking for it. I meant a literal you in "when was the last time _you_ ever heard someone say 'the Linux desktop will take off this year' or something similar?" I've personally heard "year of the Linux Desktop" from people directly many times per year every year that I can remember but in terms of response/meme/joke/etc not actually taking the stance "it _is_ the year of the Linux desktop". Yet I can't even think of the last time I even naturally ran across someone proposing the concept online (sans trying to purposefully find such a person like Googling) let alone someone I know being serious about it. Not sure if that is a normal experience and people just like to talk/joke about how it isn't all the time or if my bubble/filter is just abnormal.
- bb88 5y ago
  It would bounce back and forth for a few years. And then people joked that 2017(6?) was "The year of the Minix desktop" when Intel added minix to their IME.
- superjan 5y ago
  It has always sounded like wishful thinking to me, especially since server developers switched to macs (pretty and unix on the inside).
lysecret 5y ago
I almost fell off my chair when I talked to a friend of mine (whose completely no tech ) and she told me she's using Ubuntu desktop. A friend of hers installed it and it ran completely fine. I think it's because most everything we do now is web based. Also I think people tend to forget how big a deal google docs actually is.
- thanatos519 5y ago
  I have a few non-tech friends who have installed Ubuntu themselves and never looked back. It does everything they need to do, and it doesn't bit-rot like Windows. Anyone who just uses their computer for web browsing, playing music, and other simple stuff just doesn't need any more, and that's been true for at least a decade.
- Animats 5y ago
  I've been using Ubuntu for over a decade. I still have a Windows 7 desktop. I really should power it up and see if it still works.
- dheera 5y ago
  I've used Linux as my only desktop OS for 20+ years (since high school) and Ubuntu for the past 10 of those years (previously Gentoo, RedHat). It's not yet ready for prime time. When I set up a new machine there are still tons of things I have to "fix" from the command line. Touchpad scrolling. Getting my Jabra to not auto-adjust volume to 0 every time I speak. Modprobe this, modprobe that. Setting up an L2TP VPN. Getting bluetooth audio to support AAC/AptX. Getting Chinese input to work properly. Configuring the extra buttons on my keyboard and mouse to do useful things. Disabling IPv6. Installing CUDA and CUDNN. Creating a virtual camera. Ignoring TCP reset packets (commonly needed when visiting China). Adding support for ExFAT SD cards, which almost all Canon cameras use. Writing files to USB thumb drives without root permissions. Mounting an SMB or S3 volume automatically at startup. Setting programs to start automatically at startup. Scheduling tasks to execute at certain times. I need to go to the command line to do all of these things. On Windows and Mac most of these things can be done graphically. Oh and even Chrome doesn't install on a default Ubuntu 18.04 system. You have to do "sudo apt-get install libpango" first or "sudo apt-get -f install" after installing it.
snvzz 5y ago
I believe the "Linux Sucks 2021" [0] video did a great job of explaining not just how the YoLD hasn't happened, but why it will never happen, now. Linux is built with a bad architecture (spaghetti monolithic kernel with no stable APIs), which has a tremendously high cost of development, and also a high cost of maintenance. Large companies (e.g. Google) have realized this isn't sustainable, and are shifting away into better architectures (e.g. Fuchsia), which tend to be microkernel multiserver systems. As money goes away, Linux maintenance cost can't be met, and it'll crumble on its own weight. I do still hope a good desktop/workstation OS with a FOSS license will happen. It just won't be Linux, because its architecture was never suited for it. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtJ9T_IJOPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtJ9T_IJOPE
- phoe-krk 5y ago
  Honest question: are the NT or XNU kernels any better architecture-wise? What about BSDs?
  - sharikone 5y ago
    I am not qualified enough to answer for NT and BSD (I only can note they appear very stable nowadays). But XNU is not much better than Linux. It has a schizophrenic soul with its BSD and Mach duality for everything. It is bogged down by Apple's never-ending "security" lock down efforts. It has no equivalent of "jails/containers". And, again, it is practically unusable for anything that is not created by Apple and is not extendable now that they are phasing out kexts. I think a very interesting recent effort in kernel architecture innovation is Fuchsia.
- tagrun 5y ago
  What do you mean by "kernel with no stable APIs"? Linux developers, as a policy, don't break user space. And since when Google became the representative of stable APIs? During 90s, the de facto desktop OS used a monolithic kernel, so clearly, having a monolithic kernel doesn't prevent common adoption on desktops. Fuchsia is a microkernel, which would play nice with phone vendors with binary blob drivers, but this is a licensing issue not a technical one.
xorcist 5y ago
Chromebooks sold 30M+ units last year. That's a bog standard Linux desktop accounting for about one tenth of 300M in total personal computer sales. As everything gets more web based, the client OS gets less important, for better and for worse. Just as many people predicted 20 years ago. Radical changes takes time.
- bostonsre 5y ago
  I haven't used chromebook but isn't it a web based os? How is that standard Linux?
  - bb88 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrome_OS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrome_OS
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
    ChromeOS is basically desktop Android
    - wmf 5y ago
      Android is not desktop Linux either.
  - yencabulator 5y ago
    It's Chrome running on Wayland under Linux. There can be non-Chrome Wayland clients, and Linux VMs can run any Linux Wayland/XWayland app.
- jbluepolarbear 5y ago
  How many of those were sold to schools? I know every kid in my nephews district got a chrome book and everyone hates them. They’re slow.
throwaway984393 5y ago
The Linux Desktop is like building a house by asking random craftspeople to each design, build, and install a single piece of the house. One craftsperson preparing one plank of wood; a second craftsperson preparing a second plank of wood, etc. Later, one craftsperson turning those planks of wood into a door frame. Then another craftsperson to add a handle & lock. And another adding the hinges. Yet another hanging it on the wall. On and on, for every single component in the house. This does not lead to a well-functioning house. It will be creaky, leaky, drafty, and ugly, and more difficult/costly to maintain. Yes, you can live in it. It may even be lighter, or cheaper, or in some other way technically superior to other houses. But most people will get really annoyed by it, and just want a house built by a single contractor that "just works". This is even ignoring the gigantic elephant in the room, which is hardware support. Getting hardware to work with a Linux desktop has only two options: buy from an OEM that ships a supported Linux OS, or play a combination of russian roulette & home auto mechanic. (Linux desktop user for 20 years)
- aliswe 5y ago
  why the downvotes, this is spot on.
- pizza234 5y ago
  I think this is overly pessimistic, although fundamentally correct. The silliest yet most iconic (no pun intended) problem I can think of is the necessity to create bookmarks multiple times for each of the graphic libraries of the system, depending on the program run. Yikes. On the other hand, I think it's crucial evaluate the audience and their expectations. Even with the small flaws, Linux has reached the point where it can be used by the vast majority of users, the ones without too many expectations. They will complain about bluetooth with any operating system anyway ;) Hardcore users will fix the system at any cost (I do), so they don't really matter, and I think they're a few (in proportion). I think linux is paradoxically not fit for middle ground - the power user, who expects a certain consistency when digging deeper than just regular user. How much of the whole audience those three segments represents... it's hard to say. All in all though, I'm certainly disappointed that even on laptops that officially support Linux, there are still minor issues.
- 5y ago
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
I have never met anybody who has looking into Linux outside of a Computer Science degree or as a computer hobbyist. Those people as it stand are a marginal amount of the population. The kind of people that bawk when you open up control panel. Or can only open up windows settings and find a how to online. None of these people have ever touched Linux. If you told them they had to run just "sudo apt-get update" in terminal, you instantaneously keep them from wanting to use it further. The shell is so scary to most people that they think it's hacking. I mean jesus I saw on CNN several years ago that when they described hacking, they had a backdrop video of someone running Ubuntu doing something like "sudo chmod x+ 777" and then "./the_virus_cnn_is_covering" or something.
thanatos519 5y ago
For me, 1994 was the year of the Linux Desktop. YMMV.
gentleman11 5y ago
I’ve used Linux desktop for 3-4 years now. Love it. Only use windows when a program only runs in windows, which is maybe every other week? Usually graphics intensive programs
Animats 5y ago
Short: Every single Desktop Environment, then and now, does an absolutely piss poor job of abstracting away the need for a casual user to ever whip out the terminal. Yes. In the original MacOs, there was no command line. That was by intent. It was a decision Steve Jobs made. And it led to the popularity of the Macintosh. The Macintosh was not text-oriented internally. It was resource-oriented. You could tweak a lot of things using ResEdit. Where things were in directories was not too critical. The Finder would find applications anywhere, and they were self-contained in one file with resources. This was elegant. It was a complete rejection of the DOS/Unix approach. Users loved it. It suffered from some implementation problems that dated from the Macintosh's original floppy-based configuration. Writes were deferred too long and resource editing was very brittle. This gave resource forks a bad reputation, especially when applications wrote configuration and status into their own resource fork. Any abnormal program exit left the resource fork damaged. When Apple took over NeXT, they got a system built on UNIX. So now they were stuck with the command line and the UNIX baggage again. They tried to keep the resource fork at first, but gradually gave up. It didn't play well with the UNIX file system model. The Linux tradition is that GUI system tools suck. They exist, but try to do anything and you soon find you need to use a command line. The GUI tools are never complete, and they're often wallpaper over a command line tool. Often they don't really know what they're doing to the system; they're just creating commands and displaying the responses.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  All software and by extension OS are text oriented regardless of appearance. If you take a wad of human readable text and use it to built a binary blob then the blob is a function of the original program text ergo the text is still there just liable to be inscrutable. Classic Mac OS hot garbage. They switched because unix was a better basis for an OS than anything that could possibly have done with their existing OS short of throwing the hard drive containing it out the window and starting over. You can install a user oriented distribution like Mint or Ubuntu and never see a cli if you don't want to. So far as I can tell the gui tools that come with these distros are complete for all standard tasks. Minimal or technical distributions like arch, void, gentoo are pretty obviously meant to managed with the cli although users can still use rich gui tools for many non system tasks. Few are wallpaper over cli tools. I don't know where you got that idea.
smoldesu 5y ago
I read maybe 2 or 3 of these a month, and I get maybe a paragraph in before I feel that they're saying the exact same thing. If you can't use Linux, I'm not trying to deny that from you. I'm a musician, I understand how hard it is to get certain, specific creative tools working. But, here's the deal: The current status of the Linux desktop is fine. There's a significant portion of the computer-buying market (probably 70-85%) that couldn't care less about the operating system they're running. MacOS, ChromeOS, Windows, Linux: it's all the same to many. You just need access to a browser and simple tools for the basics (text editing, email, calendar, etc.). Linux has you covered for those, and if you don't need anything else you'll likely be fine. If you don't want to use Linux, then don't. But articles like these will neither sway current Linux users or stop the never-ending demand for it.
MisterTea 5y ago
My main desktop is an ageing i72600k running Windows 7. It's still fast but I wanted something that could boot from nvme, have more modern USB 3.1/3.2 and not full of security holes. But thing is, I don't want to move to Win 10/11. As a test I installed 64 bit Void Linux Musl on an old AMD A8 6500 using the (VERY CRAPPY) built in GPU and a PCIe to m.2 for a 500GB NVMe SSD. Installed flatpack and Steam and was playing Half Life 2, albeit at lower resolution and framerate. Cities: Skylines also just worked but had to drop graphics. I didn't have to tweak any config files or compile drivers. Then I installed some Proton flatpack and got some Windows games running like Two Point Hospital. Skyrim and amusingly but not unexpectedly, Crysis, fail to run. Though at least the skyrim loader window flashes for a brief second. Though everything else is solid otherwise. This was all very painless and I thought some fringe setup like Void Musl sans systemd would be a no go for gaming but it was quite simple thanks to flatpack dragging in all the dependency and out of the box AMD GPU support. Though it's not perfect. I still have issues with mounting ntfs disks and audio bugs: I lose audio in firefox and while browsing, anything which may trigger audio to play like a video generates a loud pop. Those are annoying and frustrating. Previously I was running Linux Mint which was always buggy in some way so every distro has its quirks. Lastly, Game makers: Please support Linux! I no longer wish to surrender my computer to Microsoft (No to Win 11). I have a 16 core Thread Ripper coming in with 64GB of ECC RAM and a 1TB NVME plus my GTX 1060 which is likely getting Void Linux installed. As far as I am concerned, the year of the Linux desktop is here. Though it lags behind Windows in terms of "ease of use" but it's getting there.
nbzso 5y ago
Valid arguments all around. Personally as a long time Apple user (20+ years) I have a plan to run some stable distribution with KDE on top. RawTherapee is capable enough. Coding for web is not a problem. Resolve is functional under Linux. Vim/Markdown, etc. I am utterly disappointed with Apple. Just colorful marketing tricks on top of rare innovation and telemetry. The whole move towards unification of Mobile and Desktop is a UX mess. The last softwares keeping me on mac os were Sketch and Logic. Windows was never an option and never will be. Windows is just game host os. So for me the year of Linux Desktop is here and now.
simonblack 5y ago
The 'Year of the Linux Desktop' is bullshit for the same reason that the 'Year of the Mercedes Highway' is bullshit. Not everybody drives a Mercedes, and not everybody wants to 'drive' a Linux Desktop. The only people who scream about the 'Year of the Linux Desktop' are the proselytising fanbois. I stopped being one of those years ago. Who cares if Joe Sixpack wants Windows on his desktop. As long as I have Linux on my desktop, I don't give a rats about Joe. Those of us that use Linux had our own 'Year of the Linux Desktop' at some time time in the past. My own 'Year of the Linux Desktop' was 2001, and which followed on from my 'Year of the UNIX Desktop' which was 1991. Interestingly, I personally never had a 'Year of the Windows Desktop'. (I went directly from a MSDOS CLI to a UNIX CLI to a UNIX Desktop several years before Windows 3.0 even came out. When I finally bothered to have a look at Windows 3.1, I couldn't believe how ugly and primitive it was.) And yes, I use lots and lots of xterms on my six virtual desktops. In fact, if the output of the program I am using does not depend on an image, I will be invoking it from an xterm. I eschew those new-fangled IDEs. They get in the way of my curses-based text-editor, make, and CLI to run that compiled program.

24 points by dsego 5y ago

There is nothing wrong with Linux that you can't fix by uninstalling X Windows and logging in with ssh. I dream of bringing a video game character into our world with a mirror and doing a sketch comedy act with it somewhere, and Linux would be a good choice for that because I'm certain I could make it never pop up a dialog that says "Failed to download software updates". (In the meantime I'd better learn how to work a deck of three-sided cards like a puppet.)

coldtea 5y ago

Cue the persons totally missing the point and writing: (a) Well, Desktop Linux has been a reality for me for over a decade. I've even had it installed in my parents laptops. (b) But Linux dominates the mobile space with Android.

yepthatsreality 5y ago

The only bullshit part of the saying is that there will be a single year where this convergence will happen. When in truth it has already happened. Linux has great desktop choices for those who would like to use Linux. Those of us who do have moved over to the OS and probably haven't looked back, nor are they looking to bring the general public into it. If the general public wants the plastic toy OS experience then let them burn with that ship. I've spent a lot of time advocating for the move to Linux and more open source systems and voting with your wallet in the computer landscape that my general position is now to talk to someone about it and when they're upset with the status quo, I'll be on the other side saying "I told you so." Then I usually end up helping people when they come back to me. Furthermore, the commandline is a core part of the computer experience in my book. Just because Apple, Google, Microsoft want you to live on the internet doesn't mean it has to go away or have a friendlier alternative. There will always be a divide between people who have an interest in computers and willingness to learn them and people who just want to like buy something off Amazon. The latter will probably never use Linux no matter how popular it is on their phone or desktop.

zamadatix 5y ago
"it's a great choice for those who would like it" seems a bit tautological, it it ever possible for that to be false?
- yepthatsreality 5y ago
  It's just another way of saying: it has it's niche and that we should recognize it for what it is, instead of trying to make it the globally recognized OS of the Year for desktop PCs, I guess.
- compiler-guy 5y ago
  I wanted to use Linux for a long time back in the early 2000s, but it just wasn't up to snuff for a wife variety of daily tasks. Was a great development machine, but as soon as you wanted to do things like audio, or video editing, or whatever, it just wasn't there. So yeah, I wanted to, but it wasn't ready. Things are much, much better now.
expunged 5y ago
I’ve been using Linux for better than 22 years. It was the only operating system in my home for more than 12 of those years and I pretty much live at the command line. I’ve voted with my wallet and backed open source initiatives over that time too, but there comes a point where you just want stuff to work and you want to be able to interact with the rest of the world with the same feature set they enjoy. This is where Linux falls short. It’s a last mile problem with window managers and their associated apps. It’s further divided between software ecosystems within Linux. Another commenter pointed out how web-based apps are increasingly powerful, and I think that’s helping but there’s still a gap. I have an interest in computers and I know a whole lot about them, but I want my daily experience to be smooth and to just work and I want to be able to relate to the rest of the world in terms of software. So, I use Linux for work and Windows or OSX everything else. My point is that your comment seems to say that if people had an interest in computers they would (of course) be using Linux, and that’s absolutely not true.
- 5y ago

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

Two things that are about 20 +/- 3 years old: 1) the idea of "the year of the Linux desktop" 2) articles containing 90% of the complaints that this one does.

zamadatix 5y ago

Honest question as I'm not sure if it's just my own bubble - when was the last time you ever heard someone say "the Linux desktop will take off this year" or something similar? Not "I'm going to switch to Linux" or anything individual statement but something to the effect all of the "Year of the Linux Desktop" articles talk to. I.e. is there really this consistently significant portion of people that think Linux is going to take off in popularity in <current year> or is it just a bunch of people that like Linux try to get more people to try it out during these kinds of release cycle changes.

cryptoz 5y ago
A google for Year of the Linux Desktop shows a big number of seemingly serious articles from the last few years.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  Sure, I can find many seriously saying just about anything on the internet if I go looking for it. I meant a literal you in "when was the last time _you_ ever heard someone say 'the Linux desktop will take off this year' or something similar?" I've personally heard "year of the Linux Desktop" from people directly many times per year every year that I can remember but in terms of response/meme/joke/etc not actually taking the stance "it _is_ the year of the Linux desktop". Yet I can't even think of the last time I even naturally ran across someone proposing the concept online (sans trying to purposefully find such a person like Googling) let alone someone I know being serious about it. Not sure if that is a normal experience and people just like to talk/joke about how it isn't all the time or if my bubble/filter is just abnormal.
bb88 5y ago
It would bounce back and forth for a few years. And then people joked that 2017(6?) was "The year of the Minix desktop" when Intel added minix to their IME.
superjan 5y ago
It has always sounded like wishful thinking to me, especially since server developers switched to macs (pretty and unix on the inside).

lysecret 5y ago

I almost fell off my chair when I talked to a friend of mine (whose completely no tech ) and she told me she's using Ubuntu desktop. A friend of hers installed it and it ran completely fine. I think it's because most everything we do now is web based. Also I think people tend to forget how big a deal google docs actually is.

thanatos519 5y ago
I have a few non-tech friends who have installed Ubuntu themselves and never looked back. It does everything they need to do, and it doesn't bit-rot like Windows. Anyone who just uses their computer for web browsing, playing music, and other simple stuff just doesn't need any more, and that's been true for at least a decade.
Animats 5y ago
I've been using Ubuntu for over a decade. I still have a Windows 7 desktop. I really should power it up and see if it still works.
dheera 5y ago
I've used Linux as my only desktop OS for 20+ years (since high school) and Ubuntu for the past 10 of those years (previously Gentoo, RedHat). It's not yet ready for prime time. When I set up a new machine there are still tons of things I have to "fix" from the command line. Touchpad scrolling. Getting my Jabra to not auto-adjust volume to 0 every time I speak. Modprobe this, modprobe that. Setting up an L2TP VPN. Getting bluetooth audio to support AAC/AptX. Getting Chinese input to work properly. Configuring the extra buttons on my keyboard and mouse to do useful things. Disabling IPv6. Installing CUDA and CUDNN. Creating a virtual camera. Ignoring TCP reset packets (commonly needed when visiting China). Adding support for ExFAT SD cards, which almost all Canon cameras use. Writing files to USB thumb drives without root permissions. Mounting an SMB or S3 volume automatically at startup. Setting programs to start automatically at startup. Scheduling tasks to execute at certain times. I need to go to the command line to do all of these things. On Windows and Mac most of these things can be done graphically. Oh and even Chrome doesn't install on a default Ubuntu 18.04 system. You have to do "sudo apt-get install libpango" first or "sudo apt-get -f install" after installing it.

snvzz 5y ago

I believe the "Linux Sucks 2021" [0] video did a great job of explaining not just how the YoLD hasn't happened, but why it will never happen, now. Linux is built with a bad architecture (spaghetti monolithic kernel with no stable APIs), which has a tremendously high cost of development, and also a high cost of maintenance. Large companies (e.g. Google) have realized this isn't sustainable, and are shifting away into better architectures (e.g. Fuchsia), which tend to be microkernel multiserver systems. As money goes away, Linux maintenance cost can't be met, and it'll crumble on its own weight. I do still hope a good desktop/workstation OS with a FOSS license will happen. It just won't be Linux, because its architecture was never suited for it. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtJ9T_IJOPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtJ9T_IJOPE

phoe-krk 5y ago
Honest question: are the NT or XNU kernels any better architecture-wise? What about BSDs?
- sharikone 5y ago
  I am not qualified enough to answer for NT and BSD (I only can note they appear very stable nowadays). But XNU is not much better than Linux. It has a schizophrenic soul with its BSD and Mach duality for everything. It is bogged down by Apple's never-ending "security" lock down efforts. It has no equivalent of "jails/containers". And, again, it is practically unusable for anything that is not created by Apple and is not extendable now that they are phasing out kexts. I think a very interesting recent effort in kernel architecture innovation is Fuchsia.
tagrun 5y ago
What do you mean by "kernel with no stable APIs"? Linux developers, as a policy, don't break user space. And since when Google became the representative of stable APIs? During 90s, the de facto desktop OS used a monolithic kernel, so clearly, having a monolithic kernel doesn't prevent common adoption on desktops. Fuchsia is a microkernel, which would play nice with phone vendors with binary blob drivers, but this is a licensing issue not a technical one.

xorcist 5y ago

Chromebooks sold 30M+ units last year. That's a bog standard Linux desktop accounting for about one tenth of 300M in total personal computer sales. As everything gets more web based, the client OS gets less important, for better and for worse. Just as many people predicted 20 years ago. Radical changes takes time.

bostonsre 5y ago
I haven't used chromebook but isn't it a web based os? How is that standard Linux?
- bb88 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrome_OS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrome_OS
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  ChromeOS is basically desktop Android
  - wmf 5y ago
    Android is not desktop Linux either.
- yencabulator 5y ago
  It's Chrome running on Wayland under Linux. There can be non-Chrome Wayland clients, and Linux VMs can run any Linux Wayland/XWayland app.
jbluepolarbear 5y ago
How many of those were sold to schools? I know every kid in my nephews district got a chrome book and everyone hates them. They’re slow.

throwaway984393 5y ago

The Linux Desktop is like building a house by asking random craftspeople to each design, build, and install a single piece of the house. One craftsperson preparing one plank of wood; a second craftsperson preparing a second plank of wood, etc. Later, one craftsperson turning those planks of wood into a door frame. Then another craftsperson to add a handle & lock. And another adding the hinges. Yet another hanging it on the wall. On and on, for every single component in the house. This does not lead to a well-functioning house. It will be creaky, leaky, drafty, and ugly, and more difficult/costly to maintain. Yes, you can live in it. It may even be lighter, or cheaper, or in some other way technically superior to other houses. But most people will get really annoyed by it, and just want a house built by a single contractor that "just works". This is even ignoring the gigantic elephant in the room, which is hardware support. Getting hardware to work with a Linux desktop has only two options: buy from an OEM that ships a supported Linux OS, or play a combination of russian roulette & home auto mechanic. (Linux desktop user for 20 years)

aliswe 5y ago
why the downvotes, this is spot on.
pizza234 5y ago
I think this is overly pessimistic, although fundamentally correct. The silliest yet most iconic (no pun intended) problem I can think of is the necessity to create bookmarks multiple times for each of the graphic libraries of the system, depending on the program run. Yikes. On the other hand, I think it's crucial evaluate the audience and their expectations. Even with the small flaws, Linux has reached the point where it can be used by the vast majority of users, the ones without too many expectations. They will complain about bluetooth with any operating system anyway ;) Hardcore users will fix the system at any cost (I do), so they don't really matter, and I think they're a few (in proportion). I think linux is paradoxically not fit for middle ground - the power user, who expects a certain consistency when digging deeper than just regular user. How much of the whole audience those three segments represents... it's hard to say. All in all though, I'm certainly disappointed that even on laptops that officially support Linux, there are still minor issues.
5y ago

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago

I have never met anybody who has looking into Linux outside of a Computer Science degree or as a computer hobbyist. Those people as it stand are a marginal amount of the population. The kind of people that bawk when you open up control panel. Or can only open up windows settings and find a how to online. None of these people have ever touched Linux. If you told them they had to run just "sudo apt-get update" in terminal, you instantaneously keep them from wanting to use it further. The shell is so scary to most people that they think it's hacking. I mean jesus I saw on CNN several years ago that when they described hacking, they had a backdrop video of someone running Ubuntu doing something like "sudo chmod x+ 777" and then "./the_virus_cnn_is_covering" or something.

thanatos519 5y ago

For me, 1994 was the year of the Linux Desktop. YMMV.

gentleman11 5y ago

I’ve used Linux desktop for 3-4 years now. Love it. Only use windows when a program only runs in windows, which is maybe every other week? Usually graphics intensive programs

Animats 5y ago

Short: Every single Desktop Environment, then and now, does an absolutely piss poor job of abstracting away the need for a casual user to ever whip out the terminal. Yes. In the original MacOs, there was no command line. That was by intent. It was a decision Steve Jobs made. And it led to the popularity of the Macintosh. The Macintosh was not text-oriented internally. It was resource-oriented. You could tweak a lot of things using ResEdit. Where things were in directories was not too critical. The Finder would find applications anywhere, and they were self-contained in one file with resources. This was elegant. It was a complete rejection of the DOS/Unix approach. Users loved it. It suffered from some implementation problems that dated from the Macintosh's original floppy-based configuration. Writes were deferred too long and resource editing was very brittle. This gave resource forks a bad reputation, especially when applications wrote configuration and status into their own resource fork. Any abnormal program exit left the resource fork damaged. When Apple took over NeXT, they got a system built on UNIX. So now they were stuck with the command line and the UNIX baggage again. They tried to keep the resource fork at first, but gradually gave up. It didn't play well with the UNIX file system model. The Linux tradition is that GUI system tools suck. They exist, but try to do anything and you soon find you need to use a command line. The GUI tools are never complete, and they're often wallpaper over a command line tool. Often they don't really know what they're doing to the system; they're just creating commands and displaying the responses.

michaelmrose 5y ago
All software and by extension OS are text oriented regardless of appearance. If you take a wad of human readable text and use it to built a binary blob then the blob is a function of the original program text ergo the text is still there just liable to be inscrutable. Classic Mac OS hot garbage. They switched because unix was a better basis for an OS than anything that could possibly have done with their existing OS short of throwing the hard drive containing it out the window and starting over. You can install a user oriented distribution like Mint or Ubuntu and never see a cli if you don't want to. So far as I can tell the gui tools that come with these distros are complete for all standard tasks. Minimal or technical distributions like arch, void, gentoo are pretty obviously meant to managed with the cli although users can still use rich gui tools for many non system tasks. Few are wallpaper over cli tools. I don't know where you got that idea.

smoldesu 5y ago

I read maybe 2 or 3 of these a month, and I get maybe a paragraph in before I feel that they're saying the exact same thing. If you can't use Linux, I'm not trying to deny that from you. I'm a musician, I understand how hard it is to get certain, specific creative tools working. But, here's the deal: The current status of the Linux desktop is fine. There's a significant portion of the computer-buying market (probably 70-85%) that couldn't care less about the operating system they're running. MacOS, ChromeOS, Windows, Linux: it's all the same to many. You just need access to a browser and simple tools for the basics (text editing, email, calendar, etc.). Linux has you covered for those, and if you don't need anything else you'll likely be fine. If you don't want to use Linux, then don't. But articles like these will neither sway current Linux users or stop the never-ending demand for it.

MisterTea 5y ago

My main desktop is an ageing i72600k running Windows 7. It's still fast but I wanted something that could boot from nvme, have more modern USB 3.1/3.2 and not full of security holes. But thing is, I don't want to move to Win 10/11. As a test I installed 64 bit Void Linux Musl on an old AMD A8 6500 using the (VERY CRAPPY) built in GPU and a PCIe to m.2 for a 500GB NVMe SSD. Installed flatpack and Steam and was playing Half Life 2, albeit at lower resolution and framerate. Cities: Skylines also just worked but had to drop graphics. I didn't have to tweak any config files or compile drivers. Then I installed some Proton flatpack and got some Windows games running like Two Point Hospital. Skyrim and amusingly but not unexpectedly, Crysis, fail to run. Though at least the skyrim loader window flashes for a brief second. Though everything else is solid otherwise. This was all very painless and I thought some fringe setup like Void Musl sans systemd would be a no go for gaming but it was quite simple thanks to flatpack dragging in all the dependency and out of the box AMD GPU support. Though it's not perfect. I still have issues with mounting ntfs disks and audio bugs: I lose audio in firefox and while browsing, anything which may trigger audio to play like a video generates a loud pop. Those are annoying and frustrating. Previously I was running Linux Mint which was always buggy in some way so every distro has its quirks. Lastly, Game makers: Please support Linux! I no longer wish to surrender my computer to Microsoft (No to Win 11). I have a 16 core Thread Ripper coming in with 64GB of ECC RAM and a 1TB NVME plus my GTX 1060 which is likely getting Void Linux installed. As far as I am concerned, the year of the Linux desktop is here. Though it lags behind Windows in terms of "ease of use" but it's getting there.

nbzso 5y ago

Valid arguments all around. Personally as a long time Apple user (20+ years) I have a plan to run some stable distribution with KDE on top. RawTherapee is capable enough. Coding for web is not a problem. Resolve is functional under Linux. Vim/Markdown, etc. I am utterly disappointed with Apple. Just colorful marketing tricks on top of rare innovation and telemetry. The whole move towards unification of Mobile and Desktop is a UX mess. The last softwares keeping me on mac os were Sketch and Logic. Windows was never an option and never will be. Windows is just game host os. So for me the year of Linux Desktop is here and now.

simonblack 5y ago

The 'Year of the Linux Desktop' is bullshit for the same reason that the 'Year of the Mercedes Highway' is bullshit. Not everybody drives a Mercedes, and not everybody wants to 'drive' a Linux Desktop. The only people who scream about the 'Year of the Linux Desktop' are the proselytising fanbois. I stopped being one of those years ago. Who cares if Joe Sixpack wants Windows on his desktop. As long as I have Linux on my desktop, I don't give a rats about Joe. Those of us that use Linux had our own 'Year of the Linux Desktop' at some time time in the past. My own 'Year of the Linux Desktop' was 2001, and which followed on from my 'Year of the UNIX Desktop' which was 1991. Interestingly, I personally never had a 'Year of the Windows Desktop'. (I went directly from a MSDOS CLI to a UNIX CLI to a UNIX Desktop several years before Windows 3.0 even came out. When I finally bothered to have a look at Windows 3.1, I couldn't believe how ugly and primitive it was.) And yes, I use lots and lots of xterms on my six virtual desktops. In fact, if the output of the program I am using does not depend on an image, I will be invoking it from an xterm. I eschew those new-fangled IDEs. They get in the way of my curses-based text-editor, make, and CLI to run that compiled program.