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To be honest, the Linux desktop killed itself (or rather, never really took off), because, well .. it sucks. It sucks because it is fragmented. If a developper

by norswap 14y ago

To be honest, the Linux desktop killed itself (or rather, never really took off), because, well .. it sucks. It sucks because it is fragmented. If a developper wants to write a nice GUI application that integrates nicely with the desktop, he needs to target 4 or 6 different desktops, and maybe even more variations (taskbars software, menus, whatever). So the developer makes a console application instead, and the Linux desktop suffer. Of course, some open-source enthusiasts will cobble together some script to integrate the program with their favorite desktop software. It will work one time out of two, and will break with every update of the program or of the desktop environment. You end up with complex desktop environments nobody understands fully except the core devs and an abysmal user experience.

gizmo686 14y ago
I don't know what Linux you are talking about, but it is not the Linux I know. I started off in Linux with Ubuntu 10.04. About 4 months ago, I switched window managers from Gnome to Awesome. Awesome is nice, but pretty minimal, so I wanted a bunch of the widgets from my old gnome desktop. When I ran the widget program (IE, nm-applet for network manager...), the network manager applet icon appeared in the corner of my screen, and behaved just like it did under gnome. I use Thunderbird for e-mail. When I get a new e-mail, I still get a desktop notification under my widget tray. One of the things that sets Linux apart is modularity and standards, so if you write a program to work with one envirement, it would almost definitively work in another envirement. Put another way, what is a form of desktop integration that requires targeting multiple desktops. Also, developers make console application because they are: 1) Easier to make 2) The norm on Linux 3) More developer/power user friendly 4) More compostable I find the (mainstream) desktop envirements more understandable than Windows, with a better user experience.

by norswap 14y ago

gizmo686 14y ago

I don't know what Linux you are talking about, but it is not the Linux I know. I started off in Linux with Ubuntu 10.04. About 4 months ago, I switched window managers from Gnome to Awesome. Awesome is nice, but pretty minimal, so I wanted a bunch of the widgets from my old gnome desktop. When I ran the widget program (IE, nm-applet for network manager...), the network manager applet icon appeared in the corner of my screen, and behaved just like it did under gnome. I use Thunderbird for e-mail. When I get a new e-mail, I still get a desktop notification under my widget tray. One of the things that sets Linux apart is modularity and standards, so if you write a program to work with one envirement, it would almost definitively work in another envirement. Put another way, what is a form of desktop integration that requires targeting multiple desktops. Also, developers make console application because they are: 1) Easier to make 2) The norm on Linux 3) More developer/power user friendly 4) More compostable I find the (mainstream) desktop envirements more understandable than Windows, with a better user experience.