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Huh. I just read a comment elsewhere on HN from somebody who said desktop on Linux has never been easier since most of what they do happens in the browser anywa

Huh. I just read a comment elsewhere on HN from somebody who said desktop on Linux has never been easier since most of what they do happens in the browser anyway. I remember talking with a buddy of mine about Linux, and he said the same thing you did about any distro outside of Fedora or Ubuntu: That Linux is held together by a scrappy group of volunteers competing against millions of dollars of investment and armies full of full-time employees. That was 1998 and what do you know, Linux is doing just fine. Linux desktop is still innovating. GNOME might do stupid stuff (though they haven't "literally" hung anybody that I'm aware of) but they innovate. Marketshare hasn't changed much but the size of the market has grown massively. 3% now is a lot different from 3% in 2010, and there are tons of developers and sponsors helping to keep Linux alive on the desktop. I was the only Linux desktop user in my office of 150 people for awhile. The absolute bullsh*t everybody had to eat from OSX (let alone windows) astounded me. And they just smile and gobble it up because they have a gui in front of their VPN. Let 'em I say. The Linux desktop will do fine without them.

Beltalowda 5y ago
> Linux is held together by a scrappy group of volunteers competing against millions of dollars of investment and armies full of full-time employees. The best example I know of this is GIMP; it has just a few (4 IIRC, could be 3 or 5 too, but thereabouts) people working on it in their spare time. That's it. Folks complain that it's not as good as Photoshop, and that's true, but if you consider the team size it's actually pretty darn impressive! How many people work on Photoshop? I betcha it's a few more than a handful. Not all of the Linux ecosystem is just volunteers though; most kernel contributions come from various companies; Ubuntu and RedHat work on a lot of different things (cue systemd discussion), etc.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  That's a great achievement for its developers but as a user it doesn't matter; if the tool doesn't do what I need I will use a different tool. Whether it has 2 developers or 2000 doesn't change that fact.
  - Beltalowda 5y ago
    Sure, but the point is that Linux-the-ecosystem is largely written by a bunch of people in their spare time, not infrequently for their own reasons (fun, "I want this", etc.), with fairly impressive results, and that expecting this to be on-par with a paid for-profit product with hundreds if not thousands of people working on it is kind of an unreasonable comparison. Seeing these things as "products" where "users" have to choose from in a "free market" is already a flawed outlook. That's not what people are doing or how they're thinking.

Beltalowda 5y ago

> Linux is held together by a scrappy group of volunteers competing against millions of dollars of investment and armies full of full-time employees. The best example I know of this is GIMP; it has just a few (4 IIRC, could be 3 or 5 too, but thereabouts) people working on it in their spare time. That's it. Folks complain that it's not as good as Photoshop, and that's true, but if you consider the team size it's actually pretty darn impressive! How many people work on Photoshop? I betcha it's a few more than a handful. Not all of the Linux ecosystem is just volunteers though; most kernel contributions come from various companies; Ubuntu and RedHat work on a lot of different things (cue systemd discussion), etc.

Nextgrid 5y ago
That's a great achievement for its developers but as a user it doesn't matter; if the tool doesn't do what I need I will use a different tool. Whether it has 2 developers or 2000 doesn't change that fact.
- Beltalowda 5y ago
  Sure, but the point is that Linux-the-ecosystem is largely written by a bunch of people in their spare time, not infrequently for their own reasons (fun, "I want this", etc.), with fairly impressive results, and that expecting this to be on-par with a paid for-profit product with hundreds if not thousands of people working on it is kind of an unreasonable comparison. Seeing these things as "products" where "users" have to choose from in a "free market" is already a flawed outlook. That's not what people are doing or how they're thinking.