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Personally, I think “Web3” will never come. It’s got as much usability issues as the Linux desktop with no obvious draw for as to why most people should care or

by jchw 5y ago

Personally, I think “Web3” will never come. It’s got as much usability issues as the Linux desktop with no obvious draw for as to why most people should care or work on it. It’s a nebulous term that encompasses a bunch of stuff nobody wanted without the blockchain, and I’m not sure why anyone would want it with the blockchain. Of course this could be a Hacker News Dropbox comment moment. And there’s always that quote “the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.” Still, I don’t think the “metaverse” or non fungible tokens will have any long term relevance simply because nobody was asking for this crap to begin with. Like many crypto schemes, the majority of players are now in it to cash out, not because they believe in it.

fartcannon 5y ago
Without the pressure of the frankly outstanding Linux desktop, Microsoft and Apple would be renting your computer to you by the minute or some other coporate nightmare. So beyond even its true day to day usefulness, it's importance to your quality of life is likely immeasurable.
- jchw 5y ago
  Maybe, dunno. I am a passionate Linux desktop user. I have the SwayWM configs to prove it. However, unless Apple and Microsoft really did decide to do that, I don’t see a huge likelihood that someone is gonna swoop in and start putting serious resources into fixing stuff. Stuff like Cairo being virtually unmaintained or Qt… well, being Qt and having about 5000 bugs. (Don’t kill me, I like Qt too, but it’s damn buggy.) The point was that the year of the Linux desktop never comes, and it probably never will. If it’s good enough to act as a counterbalance against dystopian outcomes, then fine. I don’t really see it, because I suspect most people don’t really have that much of a choice, for practical reasons, about the computing environments they’re beholden to.
  - XorNot 5y ago
    Linux desktop works well enough for the types of things "normal" people are allowed to do on corporate networks. Like, the ways it can break are no worse then the numerous utterly broken Windows things which Microsoft ships out of the box these days. The Linux desktop suffers from the reality that businesses don't care about their Windows licensing costs, AD admins are a dime a dozen, but an absolute ton of very specialized - different - pieces of enterprise software work on Windows but nowhere else. Of course this my slight bias from being a Cinnamon user, which delivers a quality useful experience - I'm bit more pessimistic the times I've had to deal with Gnome 3 default, which tries to innovate (and shouldn't - we don't need an "innovative" desktop - we need a rock-solid experience that says "what you know without ads or drama").
    - Idiotfucker 5y ago
      I say this also as a cinnamon user. It's really not there. Mint cinnamon breaks on a few basic common tasks like connecting Bluetooth headphones (and recognizing mics on even wired headphones) and connecting to business wifi networks with a preregistered username and password. Just those 2 things is enough to disregard using it entirely.
      - fartcannon 5y ago
        Those things work flawlessly out of the box.
  - fartcannon 5y ago
    So what do you mean by 'Year of the Linux Desktop'? Because functionality-wise, the Linux desktop has been superior to all competitors since the early days of KDE3.
    - jchw 5y ago
      Even with all its problems, KDE3 kicked ass. Future KDE versions? Little bit more dubious. It’s gotten better, but I find it to be rather buggy at times. Not a huge fan of GNOME either. It has gotten better and worse in my opinion. Year of the Linux Desktop is when the average person can buy a Linux laptop and have a good experience out of the box doing similar things to what they could on macOS or Windows as casual users without breaking the system. When Linux is seen as another viable alternative to Windows the way macOS is. Unless you count ChromeOS or Android, which is obviously Linux based but not the same desktop we’re talking about, that’s not happened. I know someone who was a fairly technical user who got their first Linux laptop with System76 very recently and it went… OK. I definitely had to help on some stuff. The Linus Tech Tips videos on trying Linux as a daily driver is a pretty good showcase of a lot of the problems.
      - fartcannon 5y ago
        OK, so for example Dell sells Linux desktop machines. And Linux laptops. They'll have a good experience out of the box. Thats pretty average. You can argue that the users lack of knowledge of the OS will mean they don't have a good experience, as you seem to be, but isnt that the same for Windows users who change to Macs? Or vice versa? Software across those two OSes is not ubiquitous either. The only difference is marketing budget, if you ask me. As for Linus Sebastian, he threw his credibility in the dumpster with that whole clown show.
        jchw 5y ago
        Linus Sebastian showed the world what it would look like if the average non-programmer would experience if they tried to use Desktop Linux. Love it or hate it, I’ve experienced the same shit first-hand. Is there hope for Linux as a viable desktop for everyday users? I think so, but probably not any time soon if it continues on the same trajectory. The average person is just not going to have time to digest why screenshare doesn’t work on Zoom unless they log in via “X11 Session” instead of “Wayland Session.” Is some of the problem on Zoom? Kind of yes, kind of no. The practical result, however, is completely undetermined by who is at fault for any given issue. I mean, I’ve been using Linux since I was 12, and I can debug my way around some ALSA driver issues, recompile kernels, tweak the pulseaudio config, set up Samba, etc. and all of those things are not necessarily great things if you wind up needing to do them to accomplish something the average user would consider “easy.”
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- mytailorisrich 5y ago
  Linux is irrelevant on the desktop. Its market share is insignificant and it's constantly trying to play catch-up in term of user experience.
  - fartcannon 5y ago
    No, not really. The UX has been better for more than 20 years. What you're used to isn't synonymous with best.
    - mytailorisrich 5y ago
      I have been using Linux, Windows, and MacOS for all that time, and more, and no Linux still hasn't got a better UX... In any case, as I mentioned it does not really matter because Linux is irrelevant on the desktop.
      - fartcannon 5y ago
        I'm forced to use all three, as well, and again, KDE has been the best option since 3.5 in my opinion.
throwaway82652 5y ago
>Of course this could be a Hacker News Dropbox comment moment. It's not. Cryptocurrency has been around for over a decade at this point, suffice to say that it doesn't work. And why should it? The stated purpose of it is to be another form of unregulated private money, which we already knew was a bad idea hundreds of years ago. Wrapping it up in layers and layers of confusing (and pointless) technology doesn't make it any less of a bad idea.
- jchw 5y ago
  I’m with you. Of the folks I know who mess with crypto stuff in any capacity, none of them seem to actually think it’s a good idea. It’s just a way to make money. I don’t think VC-funded companies see it any differently. Maybe referencing the Dropbox comment is unfair. I know it gets widely over-referenced to begin with. I mostly just mean, I could always be wrong.
  - throwaway82652 5y ago
    I really can't blame them for doing it, when everyone around you appears to be in a mad gold rush then it makes sense to start selling shovels. At least if you get stuck with a bunch of shovels you can't sell, you can start a landscaping business or a farm. With crypto not so much.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  The purpose of crypto is to build a trusted, decentralized ledger that allows for the implementation of "smart contracts" defined by code. That could have plenty of applicability as a basic layer for all sorts of things. "Currency" might be one of them but not exclusively.
  - JaimeThompson 5y ago
    >defined by code. Humans a worse at writing code that does what it should and only what it should then they are at writing thing in their native languages.
  - 5y ago
throw93232 5y ago
And Windows is supposed to be usable? I had to use Windows 10 recently (after 12 years on Linux). My compilation was very slow. I discovered antivirus is using 80% of CPU during my task. I disabled it, but somehow it re-enabled itself. Eventually I gave up and used Windows 7 on offline WM. I have no idea how difficult it would be to use Windows as daily driver. Dig into registry every day to disable all spyware and crapware. Browse shady forums to find "hack of the week" to make Windows usable again after recent update. Normal web and financial system has the same quirks. Right now the most convenient way to send money from EU to Russia is crypto.
- 7steps2much 5y ago
  > Right now the most convenient way to send money from EU to Russia is crypto. Which is kind of the point right about now? I am not sure one can compare deliberately introduced sanctions to crappy products...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
_fat_santa 5y ago
> Still, I don’t think the “metaverse” or non fungible tokens will have any long term relevance simply because nobody was asking for this crap to begin with. I listened to the podcast between Lex Friedman and Mark Zuckerberg the other day and I remember Mark describing the metaverse and one comment got me, he said how you would no longer have to go to a concert or gathering to be there, you and all your friends could join up and go see it in the metaverse. And I thought to myself "Mark, this is not why people go to concerts". Yes people go to concerts to hear the music, but that's only part of the draw. It's the vibration in the floor, the screaming fans, the whole environment that makes you want to go, not just the music. I think that Facebook is making a grand miscalculation with the metaverse. They assume people will "Do X in the metaverse" versus "Doing X in real life", missing the point that people don't necessarily go do X for X itself, they do it for all the other small reasons including X.
- pureliquidhw 5y ago
  I would have agreed with you back when I only watched concerts that cost $20 bucks and the seats were General admission. But lately most acts I see are $100+ and you're assigned a seat and eventually everyone stands. Examples include Foo Fighters, TSO, Dream Theater, Book of Mormon (no standing), and Doobie Brothers. All were at different venues and all were enforced assigned seats with no energy allowed. I'm not sure VR is there yet, but I bet in less than a decades time there will be economical virtual options that achieve parity of experience for some people. I'm not claiming it's the same for everyone. I'm not claiming concerts are going to go away. I do however see a valid business opportunity in creating a new class of seat. Remote workers could go together, long distance relationships could make it a date. Rural Polish fans of Japanese metal could see a more immersive set than just a YouTube video. The issue I see is that FB doesn't have a moat for this type of experience. Anything in the metaverse can be replicated by MS (discord + Xbox), Sony (hardware experience + Playstation), or maybe a partnership between Valve, ticketmaster, and Twitter. In short, virtual concerts, probably. FB being saved by them, probably not. But hey, I've been wrong about Facebook since their IPO.
  - onetokeoverthe 5y ago
gmays 5y ago
I'm still forming my opinions on this, but I think I agree. There will be a web3 in terms of the next era of the internet, but it won't match this blockchain/NFT/metaverse vision that it currently describes. This would also makes sense since it's near impossible to accurately describe a future that hasn't arrived yet. Few of us will predict it, but it'll all make sense in retrospect.

by jchw 5y ago

fartcannon 5y ago

Without the pressure of the frankly outstanding Linux desktop, Microsoft and Apple would be renting your computer to you by the minute or some other coporate nightmare. So beyond even its true day to day usefulness, it's importance to your quality of life is likely immeasurable.

jchw 5y ago
Maybe, dunno. I am a passionate Linux desktop user. I have the SwayWM configs to prove it. However, unless Apple and Microsoft really did decide to do that, I don’t see a huge likelihood that someone is gonna swoop in and start putting serious resources into fixing stuff. Stuff like Cairo being virtually unmaintained or Qt… well, being Qt and having about 5000 bugs. (Don’t kill me, I like Qt too, but it’s damn buggy.) The point was that the year of the Linux desktop never comes, and it probably never will. If it’s good enough to act as a counterbalance against dystopian outcomes, then fine. I don’t really see it, because I suspect most people don’t really have that much of a choice, for practical reasons, about the computing environments they’re beholden to.
- XorNot 5y ago
  Linux desktop works well enough for the types of things "normal" people are allowed to do on corporate networks. Like, the ways it can break are no worse then the numerous utterly broken Windows things which Microsoft ships out of the box these days. The Linux desktop suffers from the reality that businesses don't care about their Windows licensing costs, AD admins are a dime a dozen, but an absolute ton of very specialized - different - pieces of enterprise software work on Windows but nowhere else. Of course this my slight bias from being a Cinnamon user, which delivers a quality useful experience - I'm bit more pessimistic the times I've had to deal with Gnome 3 default, which tries to innovate (and shouldn't - we don't need an "innovative" desktop - we need a rock-solid experience that says "what you know without ads or drama").
  - Idiotfucker 5y ago
    I say this also as a cinnamon user. It's really not there. Mint cinnamon breaks on a few basic common tasks like connecting Bluetooth headphones (and recognizing mics on even wired headphones) and connecting to business wifi networks with a preregistered username and password. Just those 2 things is enough to disregard using it entirely.
    - fartcannon 5y ago
      Those things work flawlessly out of the box.
- fartcannon 5y ago
  So what do you mean by 'Year of the Linux Desktop'? Because functionality-wise, the Linux desktop has been superior to all competitors since the early days of KDE3.
  - jchw 5y ago
    Even with all its problems, KDE3 kicked ass. Future KDE versions? Little bit more dubious. It’s gotten better, but I find it to be rather buggy at times. Not a huge fan of GNOME either. It has gotten better and worse in my opinion. Year of the Linux Desktop is when the average person can buy a Linux laptop and have a good experience out of the box doing similar things to what they could on macOS or Windows as casual users without breaking the system. When Linux is seen as another viable alternative to Windows the way macOS is. Unless you count ChromeOS or Android, which is obviously Linux based but not the same desktop we’re talking about, that’s not happened. I know someone who was a fairly technical user who got their first Linux laptop with System76 very recently and it went… OK. I definitely had to help on some stuff. The Linus Tech Tips videos on trying Linux as a daily driver is a pretty good showcase of a lot of the problems.
    - fartcannon 5y ago
      OK, so for example Dell sells Linux desktop machines. And Linux laptops. They'll have a good experience out of the box. Thats pretty average. You can argue that the users lack of knowledge of the OS will mean they don't have a good experience, as you seem to be, but isnt that the same for Windows users who change to Macs? Or vice versa? Software across those two OSes is not ubiquitous either. The only difference is marketing budget, if you ask me. As for Linus Sebastian, he threw his credibility in the dumpster with that whole clown show.
      - jchw 5y ago
        Linus Sebastian showed the world what it would look like if the average non-programmer would experience if they tried to use Desktop Linux. Love it or hate it, I’ve experienced the same shit first-hand. Is there hope for Linux as a viable desktop for everyday users? I think so, but probably not any time soon if it continues on the same trajectory. The average person is just not going to have time to digest why screenshare doesn’t work on Zoom unless they log in via “X11 Session” instead of “Wayland Session.” Is some of the problem on Zoom? Kind of yes, kind of no. The practical result, however, is completely undetermined by who is at fault for any given issue. I mean, I’ve been using Linux since I was 12, and I can debug my way around some ALSA driver issues, recompile kernels, tweak the pulseaudio config, set up Samba, etc. and all of those things are not necessarily great things if you wind up needing to do them to accomplish something the average user would consider “easy.”
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
mytailorisrich 5y ago
Linux is irrelevant on the desktop. Its market share is insignificant and it's constantly trying to play catch-up in term of user experience.
- fartcannon 5y ago
  No, not really. The UX has been better for more than 20 years. What you're used to isn't synonymous with best.
  - mytailorisrich 5y ago
    I have been using Linux, Windows, and MacOS for all that time, and more, and no Linux still hasn't got a better UX... In any case, as I mentioned it does not really matter because Linux is irrelevant on the desktop.
    - fartcannon 5y ago
      I'm forced to use all three, as well, and again, KDE has been the best option since 3.5 in my opinion.

throwaway82652 5y ago

>Of course this could be a Hacker News Dropbox comment moment. It's not. Cryptocurrency has been around for over a decade at this point, suffice to say that it doesn't work. And why should it? The stated purpose of it is to be another form of unregulated private money, which we already knew was a bad idea hundreds of years ago. Wrapping it up in layers and layers of confusing (and pointless) technology doesn't make it any less of a bad idea.

jchw 5y ago
I’m with you. Of the folks I know who mess with crypto stuff in any capacity, none of them seem to actually think it’s a good idea. It’s just a way to make money. I don’t think VC-funded companies see it any differently. Maybe referencing the Dropbox comment is unfair. I know it gets widely over-referenced to begin with. I mostly just mean, I could always be wrong.
- throwaway82652 5y ago
  I really can't blame them for doing it, when everyone around you appears to be in a mad gold rush then it makes sense to start selling shovels. At least if you get stuck with a bunch of shovels you can't sell, you can start a landscaping business or a farm. With crypto not so much.
zozbot234 5y ago
The purpose of crypto is to build a trusted, decentralized ledger that allows for the implementation of "smart contracts" defined by code. That could have plenty of applicability as a basic layer for all sorts of things. "Currency" might be one of them but not exclusively.
- JaimeThompson 5y ago
  >defined by code. Humans a worse at writing code that does what it should and only what it should then they are at writing thing in their native languages.
- 5y ago

throw93232 5y ago

And Windows is supposed to be usable? I had to use Windows 10 recently (after 12 years on Linux). My compilation was very slow. I discovered antivirus is using 80% of CPU during my task. I disabled it, but somehow it re-enabled itself. Eventually I gave up and used Windows 7 on offline WM. I have no idea how difficult it would be to use Windows as daily driver. Dig into registry every day to disable all spyware and crapware. Browse shady forums to find "hack of the week" to make Windows usable again after recent update. Normal web and financial system has the same quirks. Right now the most convenient way to send money from EU to Russia is crypto.

7steps2much 5y ago
> Right now the most convenient way to send money from EU to Russia is crypto. Which is kind of the point right about now? I am not sure one can compare deliberately introduced sanctions to crappy products...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

_fat_santa 5y ago

> Still, I don’t think the “metaverse” or non fungible tokens will have any long term relevance simply because nobody was asking for this crap to begin with. I listened to the podcast between Lex Friedman and Mark Zuckerberg the other day and I remember Mark describing the metaverse and one comment got me, he said how you would no longer have to go to a concert or gathering to be there, you and all your friends could join up and go see it in the metaverse. And I thought to myself "Mark, this is not why people go to concerts". Yes people go to concerts to hear the music, but that's only part of the draw. It's the vibration in the floor, the screaming fans, the whole environment that makes you want to go, not just the music. I think that Facebook is making a grand miscalculation with the metaverse. They assume people will "Do X in the metaverse" versus "Doing X in real life", missing the point that people don't necessarily go do X for X itself, they do it for all the other small reasons including X.

pureliquidhw 5y ago
I would have agreed with you back when I only watched concerts that cost $20 bucks and the seats were General admission. But lately most acts I see are $100+ and you're assigned a seat and eventually everyone stands. Examples include Foo Fighters, TSO, Dream Theater, Book of Mormon (no standing), and Doobie Brothers. All were at different venues and all were enforced assigned seats with no energy allowed. I'm not sure VR is there yet, but I bet in less than a decades time there will be economical virtual options that achieve parity of experience for some people. I'm not claiming it's the same for everyone. I'm not claiming concerts are going to go away. I do however see a valid business opportunity in creating a new class of seat. Remote workers could go together, long distance relationships could make it a date. Rural Polish fans of Japanese metal could see a more immersive set than just a YouTube video. The issue I see is that FB doesn't have a moat for this type of experience. Anything in the metaverse can be replicated by MS (discord + Xbox), Sony (hardware experience + Playstation), or maybe a partnership between Valve, ticketmaster, and Twitter. In short, virtual concerts, probably. FB being saved by them, probably not. But hey, I've been wrong about Facebook since their IPO.
- onetokeoverthe 5y ago

gmays 5y ago

I'm still forming my opinions on this, but I think I agree. There will be a web3 in terms of the next era of the internet, but it won't match this blockchain/NFT/metaverse vision that it currently describes. This would also makes sense since it's near impossible to accurately describe a future that hasn't arrived yet. Few of us will predict it, but it'll all make sense in retrospect.