4 ms·

>So in that light, I think the idea that the Linux desktop got "killed" is sort of missing the point. It's no more moribund now than it was before. Oh, but it

by batista 14y ago

>So in that light, I think the idea that the Linux desktop got "killed" is sort of missing the point. It's no more moribund now than it was before. Oh, but it is. Because it has lost a lot of momentum that it had, momentum that was coming from the "we're gonna overtake MS and win over the Desktop" feeling prevalent at the time. Heck, the guy behind GTK complained recently that he is just one man taking care of the project. The full GUI foundation for Gnome, and one that is far from feature complete at that, and it only has one guy working on it. It has also lost a lot of people and companies associated with it at the time betting on this possibility [of it winning the desktop]. Most companies nowadays support Linux development only for the server stuff, but it wasn't always so. Miguel moved on, Ximian moved on, Hazel moved on, Rasterman moved on, etc etc. Even Adobe quit developing Flash for it. And it also lost a lot of "alpha geeks" to OS X, which wasn't even commercially available at the time (1997-2001). This "desktop UNIX" come out of nowhere and it was it that did what Linux was supposed (and expected) to do, ie eat into MS market share. Well, even OS X didn't eat that much, but 15% is still a lot. >He's also an inconsolate "platform fan". Much of his early work was chasing Microsoft products and technologies, of course; now he's an iPhone nut apparently, and that doesn't really surprise me. You're saying it like it's a bad thing. Gnome (or Linux for that matter) are also platforms. And to be frank, his early work was not "chasing Microsoft products and technologies". His early world was Midnight Commander, Gnome, Gnumeric, and Evolution. He indeed like the component model (not the Window platform itself) when it was presented to him at a Microsoft visit, though (the story of this visit should be up there somewhere). But what's not to like about it? A good, clean, component model of sorts was also needed for FOSS, maybe still is. The phase you describe, IIRC, was several years _later_, when he saw the .NET platform and got hooked.

ajross 14y ago
I really didn't intend it as a swipe against Miguel, but I think it does inform his perspective. And I meant "platform fan" in the advocacy sense: he has a tendency to "fall in love" with favorite products. That's not uncommon in the general population (it's pretty much the norm at HN!), but it certainly is among core Linux people who tend to prefer doing new things in different ways. > His early world was Midnight Commander, Gnome, Gnumeric, and Evolution. Clones of Norton Commander, Windows, Excel, and Outlook. To be fair, Gnome 1 wasn't really a "clone" (though it did mimick more than innovate) and mc was chasing a Symantec product, not a Microsoft one. But to claim that these were innovative new projects is silly. Miguel's career has been one of seeing something he loves in an existing product and duplicating it in his preferred free software environment. There's no shame there. But it's absolutely the same thinking that drove the Mono project.
- batista 14y ago
  >And I meant "platform fan" in the advocacy sense: he has a tendency to "fall in love" with favorite products. Well, for one, C#/CLR was not a favorite product when he fell in love with them, were they? At the time lots of people thought MS was foolish to try to overtake Java, and it took a couple of years for people to accept and like .NET. >But to claim that these were innovative new projects is silly. Sure, they weren't, but it's not like Linux in general has given us much innovative things in the desktop space.
  - MatthewPhillips 14y ago
    > Sure, they weren't, but it's not like Linux in general has given us much innovative things in the desktop space. O.o Two off the top of my head: workspaces, app stores.
    - flatline3 14y ago
      Workspaces? You mean virtual desktops? Those date back 1986, implemented at Xerox PARC (and patented!). As for appstores, I assume you're talking about the packaging systems, which are similar only if viewed from 50,000 feet. The packaging systems were not stores. You couldn't buy packages. They didn't serve as an agent to sell other people's personally submitted packages. They had "apps" but no "store". The applications weren't sandboxed to make it relatively safe for them to sell 3rd-party submitted packages. The applications were expected to be open-source. The only similarity to the app stores is that they had a repository of software and an automated installation system used to install it.
      - batista 14y ago
        Plus the dependencies. With app stores you (usually) get one program and that's it. It works. With package systems you have to install several dependencies for each, sometimes an absurd number (say, 100 packages to get Gnome). And then there's dependency problems (had my share in Debian at older times).

by batista 14y ago

ajross 14y ago

I really didn't intend it as a swipe against Miguel, but I think it does inform his perspective. And I meant "platform fan" in the advocacy sense: he has a tendency to "fall in love" with favorite products. That's not uncommon in the general population (it's pretty much the norm at HN!), but it certainly is among core Linux people who tend to prefer doing new things in different ways. > His early world was Midnight Commander, Gnome, Gnumeric, and Evolution. Clones of Norton Commander, Windows, Excel, and Outlook. To be fair, Gnome 1 wasn't really a "clone" (though it did mimick more than innovate) and mc was chasing a Symantec product, not a Microsoft one. But to claim that these were innovative new projects is silly. Miguel's career has been one of seeing something he loves in an existing product and duplicating it in his preferred free software environment. There's no shame there. But it's absolutely the same thinking that drove the Mono project.

batista 14y ago
>And I meant "platform fan" in the advocacy sense: he has a tendency to "fall in love" with favorite products. Well, for one, C#/CLR was not a favorite product when he fell in love with them, were they? At the time lots of people thought MS was foolish to try to overtake Java, and it took a couple of years for people to accept and like .NET. >But to claim that these were innovative new projects is silly. Sure, they weren't, but it's not like Linux in general has given us much innovative things in the desktop space.
- MatthewPhillips 14y ago
  > Sure, they weren't, but it's not like Linux in general has given us much innovative things in the desktop space. O.o Two off the top of my head: workspaces, app stores.
  - flatline3 14y ago
    Workspaces? You mean virtual desktops? Those date back 1986, implemented at Xerox PARC (and patented!). As for appstores, I assume you're talking about the packaging systems, which are similar only if viewed from 50,000 feet. The packaging systems were not stores. You couldn't buy packages. They didn't serve as an agent to sell other people's personally submitted packages. They had "apps" but no "store". The applications weren't sandboxed to make it relatively safe for them to sell 3rd-party submitted packages. The applications were expected to be open-source. The only similarity to the app stores is that they had a repository of software and an automated installation system used to install it.
    - batista 14y ago
      Plus the dependencies. With app stores you (usually) get one program and that's it. It works. With package systems you have to install several dependencies for each, sometimes an absurd number (say, 100 packages to get Gnome). And then there's dependency problems (had my share in Debian at older times).