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Here are two things I feel I don't understand about a number of quite similar "desktop distributions". One, what's the target user? Is it really every type of

Here are two things I feel I don't understand about a number of quite similar "desktop distributions". One, what's the target user? Is it really every type of desktop computing? In that case you're competing with not only KDE but also GNOME, even if we confine ourselves to Linux based desktops. Two major desktops are already a bit much for such a narrow market. I totally get doing something for friends or for the joy of it, but any semi-commercial endeavour pretty much needs to outcompete them both. It's not like GNOME's problem is too slow development which some healthy competition can fix. Seriously, I don't think I am a completely atypical user when I value most importantly my desktop to stick around for the next decade, and work with whatever new hardware changes that comes around without annoying me too much along the way. Two, are you developing a desktop environment or a Linux distribution? In the latter case, you're competing with massive projects like Debian and Fedora. The testing required to release a general Linux distribution on just one architecture is enormous. Security response must bascially never sleep if users should be kept from risk. If the answer is "both" I don't know what to say really. I'm not saying there should never be any more Linux distributions, or that the computing desktop is perfect as it is. Far from it. I'm just saying that competing with the established projects here is realistically going to take a decade or more, and maybe finding a niche other than a general desktop for everyone might be a good start.

ironmagma 5y ago
The Linux world generally seems devoid of product-thinking people, and that is probably the main reason it hasn't taken over the desktop space IMO. Plenty of focus on technical matters, but not much thought given to whole user stories or holistic coordination happening.
- 29athrowaway 5y ago
  Sounds like someone who does not use Linux. Installing Linux is the easiest experience among operating systems on supported hardware. Updating Linux software is the easiest as well. Using a desktop environment like Gnome is straightforward too.
  - ironmagma 5y ago
    Nice attempt there. However, I've been a user of Linux since circa 2004. (I think it'd be hard to exist here on HN long without doing so.) No, using Linux is not straightforward. Nearly every user-facing element has something broken about it.
    - 0des 5y ago
      You sound like someone who hasn't used Linux in a capacity with any permanence, your remarks are off base with reality.
      - ironmagma 5y ago
        And you sound like someone who has used Linux far too much and lost touch with what most people's experience with it is. Your remarks are similarly off base with reality.
        0des 5y ago
        You got me, sport
    - 29athrowaway 5y ago
      You mean like the Metro UI, the frakenstein on DMT that's impossible to understand?
      - ironmagma 5y ago
        Yes, like that. Note that two wrongs don’t make a right.
  - Jorge1o1 5y ago
    Clearly you’ve never tried to update nvidia graphics card drivers, add a webcam, a printer, or run a 32-bit application on linux. Compared to Windows/Mac these simple tasks are hellish — and for nontechnical users, nearly impossible.
- akselmo 5y ago
  I think the problem is just that almost all prebuilt machines come with Windows and nobody ever gets exposed to alternatives. And most people just dont care.
  - bobthepanda 5y ago
    A lot of people are fine with Windows. When you ask people to change something that they are fine with and used to, * they think you’re making them do more work by relearning everything * they’re quick to notice faults, and they’ll jump ship just as quickly as well
    - akselmo 5y ago
      If the machine had linux with windows skin on, most people wouldnt notice since everything is done through web browser nowadays
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        Then Desktop Linux is a useless concept anyways, KDE and GNOME devs can all go home because Chromebooks are already everything 'most people' need or want, right? Perhaps attitudes like this towards potential users are another reason Linux Desktop still doesn't have much buy in.
        akselmo 5y ago
        What attitude am i conveying? I really dont know, english is not my first language. I just dont think that most people just care what the thing is running as long as it does the job. Computers are an appliance to many, just like a toaster. If the functionality is close to what theyre used to (windows or mac) then there shouldnt be big adaptility problems until they want to go deeper into the device than web browsing.
        bobthepanda 5y ago
        no, people care about having to change things. the average person on HN is not representative of the general population. The keyword in your statement is "close" but normal people who use the computer as an appliance have extremely low tolerance for "close."
- Beltalowda 5y ago
  The thing is, who exactly in the "Linux world" should be doing this thinking? Unlike Microsoft or Apple it's not a single organisation with a single leadership, but a whole bunch of small projects and individuals with different goals, preferences, styles, etc. Quite a lot of people doing open source stuff aren't really in the business of "building a product" in the first place. That said, at least both KDE and Gnome have offered fairly comprehensive and complete desktop environment about on-par with a standard Windows or macOS installation for many years now. There's also things like XFCE, LDE, Cinnamon, and probably others – but I don't really keep up. There are plenty of issues with "Linux on the desktop", but I don't think this is one of them.
  - ironmagma 5y ago
    Even the well-thought-out desktop environments, however, have massive glaring holes in them, e.g. the wifi utility on Ubuntu and Mint is totally broken, almost all the time, occasionally even lending itself to stroboscopic behavior, and I've never found a distro where the wifi utility actually did everything it was supposed to. Yes, it's distributed ownership, and while that explains why the problem exists, I don't feel it's an excuse. There is definitely room for someone to come in with good product sense plus technical excellence and work to make a really great desktop OS on Linux, it just hasn't happened yet.
    - dangus 5y ago
      That last sentence is a multiple 6 figure salary's worth of job description. The reason why the "year of the Linux desktop" has never happened is because nobody wants to work for free. As soon as you say the word "product" the word "salary" has to follow.
      - ironmagma 5y ago
        Most of the programming that happens in the Linux world would be compensated along those lines as well. The trick is that developers tend to be deeply aware of the value of contributing to open source and, well, product managers less so.
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
I don't think you're wrong per se, but IMO elementary is among the more unique distros. They have a very particular user experience in mind, and there's nothing quite like it in the Linux world.
kitsunesoba 5y ago
The problem with the distribution/DE divide is that there’s a lot that doesn’t fall squarely in the realm of one or the other, and so confining yourself to just being a DE means making a big pile of compromises and diluting the end product. I don’t know specifically what those things are in the case of elementary, but for example one could imagine certain bits of design in a desktop’s file manager being tied to how the distribution’s filesystem is arranged. Sure the file manager would technically work with other filesystem designs, but then the file manager may as well not exist because it brings little to the table that other file managers haven’t already. So I can see why someone who’s concerned with fine tuning details in the desktop experience they’re crafting wanting to also be a distribution. Unfortunately that’s also a massively tall order due to the time, personnel, and effort required to pull such a feat off.
michaelmrose 5y ago
Desktop distributions exist because users like and will pay for complete experiences and the effort to make yet another Ubuntu derivative lie virtually entirely in the parts that you choose to develop not in packing it up into Elementary. It also means you can update your software on your own schedule with modifications where necessary instead of being sandbagged into working around someone else's limitations on their schedule. Furthermore the general desktop for everyone space and the server space are literally the only ones on planet earth that have enough Linux users for a reasonably sized community. > Two major desktops are already a bit much for such a narrow market. Basically there needs to be at least one environment that isn't crap. Gnome - Has a weirdly bad way of handling multiple monitors - Requires twice as many steps to perform common operations via its graphical interface - Relies on hot corners which are both possible to trigger by accident and hard to organically discover. It also makes a lot less sense with multiple monitors. - Spent the first 8 years of gnome 3 constantly leaking memory until it fell over if you left it on too long. This was caused by a weird mismatch between its javascript desktop and its compiled code that was too hard to fix so they decided to just constantly run the garbage collector and marveled at how not horrible this performed in actuality. - Deprecates features that people use without replacement. See tray icons for a literal decade - Has repeatedly has major figures in its development promote the idea of removing themeing and extensions in favor of a vanilla gnome experience. An experience that is notably lackluster. - Has no addon API forcing addons to monkey patch the javascript desktop ensuring such efforts can trivially fail on any version update and addons that aren't actively developed will stop working. - Worse if they crash they especially under Wayland take down the entire session - Lacks basic features in its file manager I could go on. The basic problem is confusing an ecosystem of compatible software for a company with labor resources that can be allocated to different tasks that is somehow needlessly wasted on developing two different desktops. Eliminate KDE and you don't get a stronger gnome you get a weaker one because someone passionate about KDE doesn't magically become a gnome developer because they aren't reallocated by their manager to work on a similar project you just lose incidental contributions to mutually useful parts of the open source ecosystem and less cross fertilization of ideas.
- throwaway82652 5y ago
  Some of your comments are valid and I agree with them, but some of them are a lot of nonsense. >This was caused by a weird mismatch between its javascript desktop and its compiled code that was too hard to fix so they decided to just constantly run the garbage collector and marveled at how not horrible this performed in actuality. No, this is not even close to what happened. There was never any weird mismatch, the refcounting is very similar in both of them. The bug was that the garbage collector wasn't running correctly. Please read the (now 4 years old) blog post: https://feaneron.com/2018/04/20/the-infamous-gnome-shell-memory-leak/ https://feaneron.com/2018/04/20/the-infamous-gnome-shell-mem... >Deprecates features that people use without replacement. I would like to know about these desktops that are still under active development and have never removed or deprecated features. I've never seen one. I'm sure if you look hard enough you can find people complaining that Windows 11 doesn't support 8-bit color displays at 640x480. >See tray icons for a literal decade This never happened, there has been several extensions for tray icons for the entire decade. The real problem here is that all the APIs for tray icons are broken and nobody bothered to implement one correctly. >Has no addon API forcing addons to monkey patch the javascript desktop ensuring such efforts can trivially fail on any version update and addons that aren't actively developed will stop working. This has nothing to do with javascript or addons. In general code that isn't being developed has a high probability it will stop working at some point. And this presents a false choice too. I've heard this statement so many times but nobody has ever proposed what a real addons API should look like. AFAIK there are no desktop platforms or mobile platforms anywhere with an addons API that does everything that can be done with GNOME extensions. The closest I've ever seen are things like addon widgets for Android and KDE which aren't even close to being the same thing. >Worse if they crash they especially under Wayland take down the entire session That's not really important anywhere, the apps themselves are supposed to implement session management to insure against any system crash. If I were you I would avoid commenting on these things again unless you have a proposal to make, they cheapen the rest of your comments. It's honestly tiring to keep seeing these long lists of random grievances where the ultimate suggestion is "just throw it away and start over while somehow avoiding all these issues in a way that is not explained". Do you really think having yet another choice is going to make a difference?

ironmagma 5y ago

The Linux world generally seems devoid of product-thinking people, and that is probably the main reason it hasn't taken over the desktop space IMO. Plenty of focus on technical matters, but not much thought given to whole user stories or holistic coordination happening.

29athrowaway 5y ago
Sounds like someone who does not use Linux. Installing Linux is the easiest experience among operating systems on supported hardware. Updating Linux software is the easiest as well. Using a desktop environment like Gnome is straightforward too.
- ironmagma 5y ago
  Nice attempt there. However, I've been a user of Linux since circa 2004. (I think it'd be hard to exist here on HN long without doing so.) No, using Linux is not straightforward. Nearly every user-facing element has something broken about it.
  - 0des 5y ago
    You sound like someone who hasn't used Linux in a capacity with any permanence, your remarks are off base with reality.
    - ironmagma 5y ago
      And you sound like someone who has used Linux far too much and lost touch with what most people's experience with it is. Your remarks are similarly off base with reality.
      - 0des 5y ago
        You got me, sport
  - 29athrowaway 5y ago
    You mean like the Metro UI, the frakenstein on DMT that's impossible to understand?
    - ironmagma 5y ago
      Yes, like that. Note that two wrongs don’t make a right.
- Jorge1o1 5y ago
  Clearly you’ve never tried to update nvidia graphics card drivers, add a webcam, a printer, or run a 32-bit application on linux. Compared to Windows/Mac these simple tasks are hellish — and for nontechnical users, nearly impossible.
akselmo 5y ago
I think the problem is just that almost all prebuilt machines come with Windows and nobody ever gets exposed to alternatives. And most people just dont care.
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  A lot of people are fine with Windows. When you ask people to change something that they are fine with and used to, * they think you’re making them do more work by relearning everything * they’re quick to notice faults, and they’ll jump ship just as quickly as well
  - akselmo 5y ago
    If the machine had linux with windows skin on, most people wouldnt notice since everything is done through web browser nowadays
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      Then Desktop Linux is a useless concept anyways, KDE and GNOME devs can all go home because Chromebooks are already everything 'most people' need or want, right? Perhaps attitudes like this towards potential users are another reason Linux Desktop still doesn't have much buy in.
      - akselmo 5y ago
        What attitude am i conveying? I really dont know, english is not my first language. I just dont think that most people just care what the thing is running as long as it does the job. Computers are an appliance to many, just like a toaster. If the functionality is close to what theyre used to (windows or mac) then there shouldnt be big adaptility problems until they want to go deeper into the device than web browsing.
        bobthepanda 5y ago
        no, people care about having to change things. the average person on HN is not representative of the general population. The keyword in your statement is "close" but normal people who use the computer as an appliance have extremely low tolerance for "close."
Beltalowda 5y ago
The thing is, who exactly in the "Linux world" should be doing this thinking? Unlike Microsoft or Apple it's not a single organisation with a single leadership, but a whole bunch of small projects and individuals with different goals, preferences, styles, etc. Quite a lot of people doing open source stuff aren't really in the business of "building a product" in the first place. That said, at least both KDE and Gnome have offered fairly comprehensive and complete desktop environment about on-par with a standard Windows or macOS installation for many years now. There's also things like XFCE, LDE, Cinnamon, and probably others – but I don't really keep up. There are plenty of issues with "Linux on the desktop", but I don't think this is one of them.
- ironmagma 5y ago
  Even the well-thought-out desktop environments, however, have massive glaring holes in them, e.g. the wifi utility on Ubuntu and Mint is totally broken, almost all the time, occasionally even lending itself to stroboscopic behavior, and I've never found a distro where the wifi utility actually did everything it was supposed to. Yes, it's distributed ownership, and while that explains why the problem exists, I don't feel it's an excuse. There is definitely room for someone to come in with good product sense plus technical excellence and work to make a really great desktop OS on Linux, it just hasn't happened yet.
  - dangus 5y ago
    That last sentence is a multiple 6 figure salary's worth of job description. The reason why the "year of the Linux desktop" has never happened is because nobody wants to work for free. As soon as you say the word "product" the word "salary" has to follow.
    - ironmagma 5y ago
      Most of the programming that happens in the Linux world would be compensated along those lines as well. The trick is that developers tend to be deeply aware of the value of contributing to open source and, well, product managers less so.

Wowfunhappy 5y ago

I don't think you're wrong per se, but IMO elementary is among the more unique distros. They have a very particular user experience in mind, and there's nothing quite like it in the Linux world.

kitsunesoba 5y ago

The problem with the distribution/DE divide is that there’s a lot that doesn’t fall squarely in the realm of one or the other, and so confining yourself to just being a DE means making a big pile of compromises and diluting the end product. I don’t know specifically what those things are in the case of elementary, but for example one could imagine certain bits of design in a desktop’s file manager being tied to how the distribution’s filesystem is arranged. Sure the file manager would technically work with other filesystem designs, but then the file manager may as well not exist because it brings little to the table that other file managers haven’t already. So I can see why someone who’s concerned with fine tuning details in the desktop experience they’re crafting wanting to also be a distribution. Unfortunately that’s also a massively tall order due to the time, personnel, and effort required to pull such a feat off.

michaelmrose 5y ago

Desktop distributions exist because users like and will pay for complete experiences and the effort to make yet another Ubuntu derivative lie virtually entirely in the parts that you choose to develop not in packing it up into Elementary. It also means you can update your software on your own schedule with modifications where necessary instead of being sandbagged into working around someone else's limitations on their schedule. Furthermore the general desktop for everyone space and the server space are literally the only ones on planet earth that have enough Linux users for a reasonably sized community. > Two major desktops are already a bit much for such a narrow market. Basically there needs to be at least one environment that isn't crap. Gnome - Has a weirdly bad way of handling multiple monitors - Requires twice as many steps to perform common operations via its graphical interface - Relies on hot corners which are both possible to trigger by accident and hard to organically discover. It also makes a lot less sense with multiple monitors. - Spent the first 8 years of gnome 3 constantly leaking memory until it fell over if you left it on too long. This was caused by a weird mismatch between its javascript desktop and its compiled code that was too hard to fix so they decided to just constantly run the garbage collector and marveled at how not horrible this performed in actuality. - Deprecates features that people use without replacement. See tray icons for a literal decade - Has repeatedly has major figures in its development promote the idea of removing themeing and extensions in favor of a vanilla gnome experience. An experience that is notably lackluster. - Has no addon API forcing addons to monkey patch the javascript desktop ensuring such efforts can trivially fail on any version update and addons that aren't actively developed will stop working. - Worse if they crash they especially under Wayland take down the entire session - Lacks basic features in its file manager I could go on. The basic problem is confusing an ecosystem of compatible software for a company with labor resources that can be allocated to different tasks that is somehow needlessly wasted on developing two different desktops. Eliminate KDE and you don't get a stronger gnome you get a weaker one because someone passionate about KDE doesn't magically become a gnome developer because they aren't reallocated by their manager to work on a similar project you just lose incidental contributions to mutually useful parts of the open source ecosystem and less cross fertilization of ideas.

throwaway82652 5y ago
Some of your comments are valid and I agree with them, but some of them are a lot of nonsense. >This was caused by a weird mismatch between its javascript desktop and its compiled code that was too hard to fix so they decided to just constantly run the garbage collector and marveled at how not horrible this performed in actuality. No, this is not even close to what happened. There was never any weird mismatch, the refcounting is very similar in both of them. The bug was that the garbage collector wasn't running correctly. Please read the (now 4 years old) blog post: https://feaneron.com/2018/04/20/the-infamous-gnome-shell-memory-leak/ https://feaneron.com/2018/04/20/the-infamous-gnome-shell-mem... >Deprecates features that people use without replacement. I would like to know about these desktops that are still under active development and have never removed or deprecated features. I've never seen one. I'm sure if you look hard enough you can find people complaining that Windows 11 doesn't support 8-bit color displays at 640x480. >See tray icons for a literal decade This never happened, there has been several extensions for tray icons for the entire decade. The real problem here is that all the APIs for tray icons are broken and nobody bothered to implement one correctly. >Has no addon API forcing addons to monkey patch the javascript desktop ensuring such efforts can trivially fail on any version update and addons that aren't actively developed will stop working. This has nothing to do with javascript or addons. In general code that isn't being developed has a high probability it will stop working at some point. And this presents a false choice too. I've heard this statement so many times but nobody has ever proposed what a real addons API should look like. AFAIK there are no desktop platforms or mobile platforms anywhere with an addons API that does everything that can be done with GNOME extensions. The closest I've ever seen are things like addon widgets for Android and KDE which aren't even close to being the same thing. >Worse if they crash they especially under Wayland take down the entire session That's not really important anywhere, the apps themselves are supposed to implement session management to insure against any system crash. If I were you I would avoid commenting on these things again unless you have a proposal to make, they cheapen the rest of your comments. It's honestly tiring to keep seeing these long lists of random grievances where the ultimate suggestion is "just throw it away and start over while somehow avoiding all these issues in a way that is not explained". Do you really think having yet another choice is going to make a difference?