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Much of the Linux desktop is balkanized and fragmentation is indeed a huge issue. People's obsession with choice is irritating given that doing more or less the

Much of the Linux desktop is balkanized and fragmentation is indeed a huge issue. People's obsession with choice is irritating given that doing more or less the same thing in 10 different ways half-right is worse than doing it once correctly. The entire distro-zoo built on top of the same distributions with different DE's on top of it is an example. The problem with Windows or Mac isn't that it looks, feels and works the same everywhere. That's what most people want, they don't want to spend hours tinkering with their UIs, they want to get work done. It's not even right to compare Linux to Windows, or maybe even call Linux distros operating systems in a strong sense because they don't provide genuinely stable interfaces. People often remark on alleged benefits of open source software such as compatibility, yet it's Windows where I can click on a 20 year old executable and it runs, while I don't know if anything that has been built 2 Ubuntu LTS releases ago still works. It's funny that one of the things that has actually driven Linux adoption is Proton. As one blogger a few months ago remarked, Win32 is basically the stable Linux userland ABI. https://sporks.space/2022/02/27/win32-is-the-stable-linux-userland-abi-and-the-consequences/ https://sporks.space/2022/02/27/win32-is-the-stable-linux-us...

3a2d29 4y ago
To add to this, I think Linus himself mentioned this issue at a talk at a Debian conference. I think he even mentioned maybe gaming would save Linux from this, since games will not constantly update to fix compatibility issues so distros would be forced to behave.
vladvasiliu 4y ago
Is that really an issue? You want to use Gnome? Use Gnome. You want to use KDE? Use KDE. I3? ditto. Etc. Oh, some random GTK app will look weird on KDE? Tough. Every Windows app looks different, and even MS's apps always felt out of place on their own OS. And with the proliferation of Electron apps, nothing ever looks "native" anymore. > while I don't know if anything that has been built 2 Ubuntu LTS releases ago still works Maybe, maybe not. But that's also an issue on MacOS. And while Windows prides itself on backwards compatibility (and mostly delivers), that doesn't come free. There's also hardware backwards compatibility. Many devices that used to work with older versions of Windows or MacOS just don't work anymore. Even those that never required custom drivers from their manufacturer. On Linux, if it works once, it'll usually keep on working. I have such an issue: a PCIe USB 3 card, so it isn't even something that old. Used to work with MS Win 10 provided drivers, now (win 11) it's unusable.
- thereisnospork 4y ago
  >You want to use Gnome? Use Gnome. You want to use KDE? Use KDE. I3? ditto. Etc. To play devil's advocate: What do those even mean and why should I care? I want to view my files and folders and click a shortcut to run a program and install steam. And I want that process to be stable and smooth and be both logically transparent and consistent. There's too much I have to critically compare and understand in my life to want to add 'desktop GUI flavor' to the list.
  - vladvasiliu 4y ago
    That doesn't contradict my point. If you don't care, just grab some distro that seems reasonably prevalent, like Ubuntu or whatever. They have spins or flavors or whatever they're called, but on the website you don't exactly have to make a choice. There's a big "download" button that gives you the "recommended" choice. Install that. You'll be able to view your files and folders and click a shortcut to run a program. And that process will be quite stable and smooth, I'd argue even more than on Windows, since you can actually find useful apps on the "store", as opposed to having to hunt on random websites. If you want consistency, presumably over time, then yeah, you may not get that. But neither will you on Windows, who've changed the explorer in Windows 10 and now again in Windows 11. The explorer-like app that seems to have been the most stable is Finder. But then macOS changed in other ways... It seems you can't really win at this, regardless of your OS of choice... So it think that's not fair to only throw Linux under the bus for this, while praising the others.
    - robonerd 4y ago
      > The explorer-like app that seems to have been the most stable is Finder. Dolphin has been basically the same for 16 years as far as I can tell/remember.
  - _2paq 4y ago
    > What do those even mean and why should I care? If you don't like configuration, you shouldn't care. Just pick any popular distro and use whatever's shipped by default.
vkou 4y ago
> That's what most people want, they don't want to spend hours tinkering with their UIs, they want to get work done. The people most capable of fixing the problem you describe are the people who like spending hours tinkering with their Linux UIs. Besides, Windows usability is rubbish, there's a reason why the first thing that I, and, uh, a few other weirdos do on a new Windows install, is set up an orthodox file manager. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Manager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Manager
em-bee 4y ago
10 different ways half-right is worse than doing it once correctly. The problem with Windows or Mac isn't that it looks, feels and works the same everywhere what's correct for you is not necesarily what's correct for me. the problem with windows/mac is very much that it doesn't work the way i want it to work. why even have multiple oerating systems at all, if we don't need choice? we could all be using windows. i don't see how removing choice solves anything at all.
- Klonoar 4y ago
  There is no reason there can’t be one agreed upon blessed way of doing things in Linux while still enabling users like you to have choice. Heavily enforced defaults are important for growth.
  - _2paq 4y ago
    Yes, let's search for the One True Font, One True Theme, and Unicorns while we're at it. Oh, let's also pretend that we'll give users a choice. Well, technically, we will but we will make it "unsupported" and call it a hack. Wait, I think that reminds me of a desktop environment.
    - Klonoar 4y ago
      shrug You can have as much snark as you want. I specifically said that Linux should remain the platform of choice, just that the defaults should be stronger so that it's a more consistent and approachable platform for people. GNOME has made great advancements in this regard, which has been awesome to see.
      - _2paq 4y ago
        > just that the defaults should be stronger Agreed. > GNOME has made great advancements in this regard, which has been awesome to see. I wasn't joking or being hyperbolic in my previous post. GNOME may have good defaults in certain cases but it ends there. User choice and customization are seen as design defects and anti-features. They really do believe that there is a One True Font and One True Theme out there and anything else is unsupported. Sane defaults shouldn't come at the cost of user choice. If they do, there's little reason to use Linux over a Mac because the former essentially becomes Android style "look but don't touch" open source.
robonerd 4y ago
kitsunesoba 4y ago
I think it would help a lot if it were the norm for DEs to come with a bunch of prefab configurations right out of the box, which the community could then add to. It'd be cool if configs could be exported and shared too. That would give many distros much less of a reason to exist, and could instead be configuration profiles for GNOME, KDE, etc that could easily be loaded on -any- distro. It would also allow the configurations to be iterated on independent of distros which would eventually lead to much higher levels of polish.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  I think it would help to get an honest ranking of active user or community size for different desktop Linux distros. Half the strength of Linux isn't the nerdy details, it's the community and packaging chops.
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
The fragmentation peeves me as well. The Linux community is like herding cats with fragile egos. One disagreement and a dev will go try and make their own thing, further diluting the Linux ecosystem. There are way too many distros that are half baked trash that make it into bad listicles returned in search results. The Linux community sabotages itself.
- robonerd 4y ago
  > The Linux community is like herding cats Stop trying to herd people? I didn't sign up for whatever agenda you're trying to advance, so of course I'm going to spit in your face when you try to tell me what to do.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    Exhibit A
    - robonerd 4y ago
      Proudly. If your agenda is to take away my customization and make the Linux desktop into something with broad mainstream appeal, then I proudly sabotage that.
      - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
        That's not my agenda.
        robonerd 4y ago
        Whatever your agenda is, I didn't sign up for it. And if you truly have no agenda at all, then you have no business trying to 'herd' people. Either way, pound sand.
- Koshkin 4y ago
  > too many distros that are half baked trash I do not see a problem as long as there are a few good ones to choose from.
simion314 4y ago
It would be a depressing parallel universe where some God would force us Linux users to all run the exact same thing, no customization, have updates forced on us and have the latest GUI fad change our workflow yearly. As Kubuntu LTS users I don't feel that I am losing anything if someone else uses Arch with GNOME. Also there are distro made for children with custom DEs, distros for blind people, distros for media etc. The diversity is not the problem, the problem might be some secondary side effects like some developer really wants to use some bleeding edge thing but he does not have an easy way to deploy it to more stable distros.
twic 4y ago
Putting the whole community's wood behind one arrow would be a great idea - if it was the right arrow. But the big teams of desktop developers have repeatedly run off and built things that they thought were shit hot, but were not what people actually needed to be productive (Unity, Gnome 3). It's only the "fragmentation" that has meant Linux hasn't ended up like Windows 11.
hulitu 4y ago
> The problem with Windows or Mac isn't that it looks, feels and works the same everywhere. Did you use Win 10 ? One GUI in Teams, another in Office 365, a calculator which comes from outher space, 2 interfaces for configuration, disable microfon for admin account -> no microfone for user account.
- 323 4y ago
  Nobody cares. People don't care that TikTok looks different than Instagram looks different than Gmail looks different than NYTimes.com looks different than a flight reservation site.
draw_down 4y ago

3a2d29 4y ago

To add to this, I think Linus himself mentioned this issue at a talk at a Debian conference. I think he even mentioned maybe gaming would save Linux from this, since games will not constantly update to fix compatibility issues so distros would be forced to behave.

vladvasiliu 4y ago

Is that really an issue? You want to use Gnome? Use Gnome. You want to use KDE? Use KDE. I3? ditto. Etc. Oh, some random GTK app will look weird on KDE? Tough. Every Windows app looks different, and even MS's apps always felt out of place on their own OS. And with the proliferation of Electron apps, nothing ever looks "native" anymore. > while I don't know if anything that has been built 2 Ubuntu LTS releases ago still works Maybe, maybe not. But that's also an issue on MacOS. And while Windows prides itself on backwards compatibility (and mostly delivers), that doesn't come free. There's also hardware backwards compatibility. Many devices that used to work with older versions of Windows or MacOS just don't work anymore. Even those that never required custom drivers from their manufacturer. On Linux, if it works once, it'll usually keep on working. I have such an issue: a PCIe USB 3 card, so it isn't even something that old. Used to work with MS Win 10 provided drivers, now (win 11) it's unusable.

thereisnospork 4y ago
>You want to use Gnome? Use Gnome. You want to use KDE? Use KDE. I3? ditto. Etc. To play devil's advocate: What do those even mean and why should I care? I want to view my files and folders and click a shortcut to run a program and install steam. And I want that process to be stable and smooth and be both logically transparent and consistent. There's too much I have to critically compare and understand in my life to want to add 'desktop GUI flavor' to the list.
- vladvasiliu 4y ago
  That doesn't contradict my point. If you don't care, just grab some distro that seems reasonably prevalent, like Ubuntu or whatever. They have spins or flavors or whatever they're called, but on the website you don't exactly have to make a choice. There's a big "download" button that gives you the "recommended" choice. Install that. You'll be able to view your files and folders and click a shortcut to run a program. And that process will be quite stable and smooth, I'd argue even more than on Windows, since you can actually find useful apps on the "store", as opposed to having to hunt on random websites. If you want consistency, presumably over time, then yeah, you may not get that. But neither will you on Windows, who've changed the explorer in Windows 10 and now again in Windows 11. The explorer-like app that seems to have been the most stable is Finder. But then macOS changed in other ways... It seems you can't really win at this, regardless of your OS of choice... So it think that's not fair to only throw Linux under the bus for this, while praising the others.
  - robonerd 4y ago
    > The explorer-like app that seems to have been the most stable is Finder. Dolphin has been basically the same for 16 years as far as I can tell/remember.
- _2paq 4y ago
  > What do those even mean and why should I care? If you don't like configuration, you shouldn't care. Just pick any popular distro and use whatever's shipped by default.

vkou 4y ago

> That's what most people want, they don't want to spend hours tinkering with their UIs, they want to get work done. The people most capable of fixing the problem you describe are the people who like spending hours tinkering with their Linux UIs. Besides, Windows usability is rubbish, there's a reason why the first thing that I, and, uh, a few other weirdos do on a new Windows install, is set up an orthodox file manager. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Manager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Manager

em-bee 4y ago

10 different ways half-right is worse than doing it once correctly. The problem with Windows or Mac isn't that it looks, feels and works the same everywhere what's correct for you is not necesarily what's correct for me. the problem with windows/mac is very much that it doesn't work the way i want it to work. why even have multiple oerating systems at all, if we don't need choice? we could all be using windows. i don't see how removing choice solves anything at all.

Klonoar 4y ago
There is no reason there can’t be one agreed upon blessed way of doing things in Linux while still enabling users like you to have choice. Heavily enforced defaults are important for growth.
- _2paq 4y ago
  Yes, let's search for the One True Font, One True Theme, and Unicorns while we're at it. Oh, let's also pretend that we'll give users a choice. Well, technically, we will but we will make it "unsupported" and call it a hack. Wait, I think that reminds me of a desktop environment.
  - Klonoar 4y ago
    shrug You can have as much snark as you want. I specifically said that Linux should remain the platform of choice, just that the defaults should be stronger so that it's a more consistent and approachable platform for people. GNOME has made great advancements in this regard, which has been awesome to see.
    - _2paq 4y ago
      > just that the defaults should be stronger Agreed. > GNOME has made great advancements in this regard, which has been awesome to see. I wasn't joking or being hyperbolic in my previous post. GNOME may have good defaults in certain cases but it ends there. User choice and customization are seen as design defects and anti-features. They really do believe that there is a One True Font and One True Theme out there and anything else is unsupported. Sane defaults shouldn't come at the cost of user choice. If they do, there's little reason to use Linux over a Mac because the former essentially becomes Android style "look but don't touch" open source.

robonerd 4y ago

kitsunesoba 4y ago

I think it would help a lot if it were the norm for DEs to come with a bunch of prefab configurations right out of the box, which the community could then add to. It'd be cool if configs could be exported and shared too. That would give many distros much less of a reason to exist, and could instead be configuration profiles for GNOME, KDE, etc that could easily be loaded on -any- distro. It would also allow the configurations to be iterated on independent of distros which would eventually lead to much higher levels of polish.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
I think it would help to get an honest ranking of active user or community size for different desktop Linux distros. Half the strength of Linux isn't the nerdy details, it's the community and packaging chops.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

The fragmentation peeves me as well. The Linux community is like herding cats with fragile egos. One disagreement and a dev will go try and make their own thing, further diluting the Linux ecosystem. There are way too many distros that are half baked trash that make it into bad listicles returned in search results. The Linux community sabotages itself.

robonerd 4y ago
> The Linux community is like herding cats Stop trying to herd people? I didn't sign up for whatever agenda you're trying to advance, so of course I'm going to spit in your face when you try to tell me what to do.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  Exhibit A
  - robonerd 4y ago
    Proudly. If your agenda is to take away my customization and make the Linux desktop into something with broad mainstream appeal, then I proudly sabotage that.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
      That's not my agenda.
      - robonerd 4y ago
        Whatever your agenda is, I didn't sign up for it. And if you truly have no agenda at all, then you have no business trying to 'herd' people. Either way, pound sand.
Koshkin 4y ago
> too many distros that are half baked trash I do not see a problem as long as there are a few good ones to choose from.

simion314 4y ago

It would be a depressing parallel universe where some God would force us Linux users to all run the exact same thing, no customization, have updates forced on us and have the latest GUI fad change our workflow yearly. As Kubuntu LTS users I don't feel that I am losing anything if someone else uses Arch with GNOME. Also there are distro made for children with custom DEs, distros for blind people, distros for media etc. The diversity is not the problem, the problem might be some secondary side effects like some developer really wants to use some bleeding edge thing but he does not have an easy way to deploy it to more stable distros.

twic 4y ago

Putting the whole community's wood behind one arrow would be a great idea - if it was the right arrow. But the big teams of desktop developers have repeatedly run off and built things that they thought were shit hot, but were not what people actually needed to be productive (Unity, Gnome 3). It's only the "fragmentation" that has meant Linux hasn't ended up like Windows 11.

hulitu 4y ago

> The problem with Windows or Mac isn't that it looks, feels and works the same everywhere. Did you use Win 10 ? One GUI in Teams, another in Office 365, a calculator which comes from outher space, 2 interfaces for configuration, disable microfon for admin account -> no microfone for user account.

323 4y ago
Nobody cares. People don't care that TikTok looks different than Instagram looks different than Gmail looks different than NYTimes.com looks different than a flight reservation site.

draw_down 4y ago