13 ms·

Linus Torvalds responds to what killed the Linux desktop

183 points by netsmashers 14y ago

gcb 14y ago
Yet another ZDnet article listening to middle-manager De Icaza. Wasting the community time. I bet Linus has a g+ bot to reply to those. I would.
sciurus 14y ago
This is essentially a duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4467653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4467653 from one day before.
- mindstab 14y ago
  Except this is the actual thread that's still evolving while the other was some cut up quote filled "news" post. The conversation here may parallel the other but I think this link is more valuable.
vacipr 14y ago
At times like this I wonder why am I even trying to read discussions on G+. http://i.imm.io/D7zA.png http://i.imm.io/D7zA.png
- ronnier 14y ago
  I don't enjoy it either. The tampering of the scrollbar and having the text stuffed into some sort of frame ruins the experience. Those two problems make it difficult to read on G+ so I usually just avoid it.
- thornofmight 14y ago
  At first I thought this would just be an easy CSS fix, and it almost is -- but the reason this problem exists is because they put that huge sidebar at the top of the page with the guy's face and four or five links under it. Seeing as long posts and discussions are starting to become pretty common on G+ I hope that the G+ team invests some time into figuring out how to make everything more readable.
gokhan 14y ago
Off topic. App.Net says it is "a real-time social feed without the ads". This G+ page is quite on topic with some heavy participants, design looks good, and clear from ads. Why would I want to pay App.Net?
- sergiotapia 14y ago
  Saying "off-topic" doesn't give you a go-ahead to flak on off topic things. This has nothing to do with App.net. I agree, it's one of the dumbest things I've heard of, but has nothing to do with this thread.
- mmahemoff 14y ago
  For one thing, G+ doesn't have a serious API yet, whereas App.Net already has Android and iPhone apps by third-parties using its API. But overall, I've found it interesting how little G+ comes up in discussions about Twitter and App.Net. I happen to think it's an absolutely excellent product and find it much more engaging than Twitter. Most people I see complaining about it have made hardly any posts and haven't taken the time to build up a network.
  - msbarnett 14y ago
    > But overall, I've found it interesting how little G+ comes up in discussions about Twitter and App.Net. Probably because it's completely Apples-to-Oranges. Twitter/App.net is for short status updates. I deeply value the enforced brevity. G+ posts tend toward blog-style bloviating; the use cases really don't overlap.
    - mmahemoff 14y ago
      Fair point. I've noticed G+ doesn't work at all for live event updates, so expecting them to build a Facebook-like "heartbeat" thing on the side at some stage. At the same time, I can say I've moved a lot of link sharing to G+, so for that use case, it's a fairly direct substitute. The rich embedding is better and I can say what I want without having to cram it. It's like that Pascal quote about not having time to make it concise...G+ just lets you write a couple of sentences, or more on whim, without having to then manicure it into 140 characters.
antirez 14y ago
Reading this discussion is hard for me without thinking, what would have happened if the whole Linux ecosystem was BSD-licensed?
- recoiledsnake 14y ago
  That's easy,some BigCo would've co-opted it, paid developers to go the last mile and polish it to make it usable, and make it incompatible with everything out there and sold it. Perhaps Sun or IBM or even Oracle. E.g See OS X and to a lesser extent, Linspire/Lindows.
  - protomyth 14y ago
    Hasn't happened to PostgreSQL and I doubt it would have happened to Linux. The leader and community are pretty strong with Linux and that is not about the GPL. I would imagine some folks would fork it, but that always is a losing game from a business point of view (paying for a fork vs. patching and getting everyone to pay). Having BSD licensed kernel at that point in history during the AT&T BSD lawsuit would have been seriously interesting.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      Maintaining a fork isn't a big issue if you have enough resources, considering that if Linux was BSD licensed they would still have had their proprietary fork mirror it "close enough" to pull in at least some of the big changes from the main Linux tree. Android seems to work in this manor to a certain extent (although they open source patches back when they have to because of GPL). You would most likely have ended up with a bleeding edge open source version and several more conservative closed ports. Bear in mind that a lot of the reason Linux development is strong is because many of it's developers are paid to work on it and then contribute back (again because of GPL). If a company could gain a competitive advantage by paying the same people to work on a closed fork..
      - protomyth 14y ago
babarock 14y ago
I'm a little confused. Are Linus (and Alan, Ingo and even Ted Ts'o) arguing that the GNOME team experiences breakages because they ignored the kernel team practices and used internal interfaces instead of the public ones? Also why do they refer to GNOME as a "research" project?
- microtherion 14y ago
  No, they're arguing that the GNOME team defends breaking (GNOME) public APIs by arguing that the kernel team does not hesitate to break internal APIs, instead of recognising that actual public Linux APIs are highly stable.
  - recoiledsnake 14y ago
    It's a bit more nuanced than that. Miguel(the founder of Gnome but was uninvolved since 5 years) said that the culture of Linux was to break things(see driver ABI) and then use the fact that the driver source is available for most drivers to get around that and just recompile them with changes. And that the userland adopted that practice(see autoconf) and led to fragmentation of the software platform with library hell, leading to commercial software staying away for the most part. As you say, others responded with external vs. internal interfaces, but what is an external and internal interface for things like Gnome or KDE? They have only one API that's used by both their other libraries/applications and application writers.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      "They have only one API that's used by both their other libraries/applications and application writers." Which is a problem they without doubt did not inherit from the kernel team. There is little doubt that the GNOME guys have been using kernel practices to justify their actions. The point being made here is that they are wrong to do so.
      - recoiledsnake 14y ago
        >Which is a problem they without doubt did not inherit from the kernel team. Interesting point, Windows, OS X, iOS etc. get derided for having internal private APIs that they try to prevent external devs from using, and not doing the same thing is now a 'problem' for GNOME and KDE? Isn't the whole point of Linux for developers, freedom to use it as you see fit?
mmahemoff 14y ago
OT - Now would be a really good time for Google Plus to permalink comments (like Slashdot and others have done since ancient history).
andyl 14y ago
IMHO, Gnome2 was great, but since then its all gone downhill. Still cursing Ubuntu for Unity.
- adamtaylor 14y ago
  Have you tried the GNOME 3 "classic" desktop in Ubuntu? It's very similar to GNOME 2. So far it's worked out well for me.
  - andyl 14y ago
    Yes - I'm using Gnome3 "classic". It is ok - just doesn't seem as configurable as Gnome2. XFCE might be good - I just don't have the time to figure it out.
    - wtetzner 14y ago
      Yeah, at first I was annoyed with the lack of configurability in Gnome 3. But when I discovered you could press the super key and just start typing the name of a program to start it, I found it nicer to use than Gnome 2. Also, installing plugins for Gnome 3 is really convenient. For example, I didn't like Alt+Tab switching between programs instead of windows, so I installed this: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/. There are still some things that bug me though, like I don't see any way to configure the format of the Date/Time.
- gitarr 14y ago
  FUD, Unity is great and you know it. People bashing Unity have not really tried it yet.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    Is it really inconceivable that other people might not like something that you do? Give me a break.
  - danielweber 14y ago
batgaijin 14y ago
The Linux desktop will never succeed as long as nobody can profit from it. As long as Microsoft prevents the distribution of Linux through tithes or threats of patent litigation, why would anyone spend a penny making the desktop look better? edit: sources http://www.informationweek.com/windows/microsoft-news/microsofts-new-cash-cows-linux-and-andro/231601809 http://www.informationweek.com/windows/microsoft-news/micros... http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090619161307529 http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090619161307529 http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2331462,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2331462,00.asp
- stcredzero 14y ago
  > The Linux desktop will never succeed as long as nobody can profit from it. There is a strong case for someone paying developers to create a free alternative to Windows to commoditize desktop operating systems, thereby attacking Microsoft's revenue stream. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html The problem has been that it's been too difficult to produce something easy enough to transition away to from Windows and Windows apps for this to work.
  - cooldeal 14y ago
    >There is a strong case for someone paying developers to create a free alternative to Windows to commoditize desktop operating systems, thereby attacking Microsoft's revenue stream. See Ubuntu bug number 1. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1 Mark Shuttleworth is that 'someone'. >The problem has been that it's been too difficult to produce something easy enough to transition away to from Windows and Windows apps for this to work. Everytime a Linux distro is made one bit "easier" or simpler, the power users find it "dumbified" and quit that distro and move on.
    - rbanffy 14y ago
      I think we have enough developers now using Linux that UI nitpicking should have a negligible impact. On every conference I go, I see tons of Macs. Those developers are very unlikely to find Gnome 3 or Unity too constraining for their tastes.
bonch 14y ago
In-fighting instead of making a good Linux desktop killed the Linux desktop.
haberman 14y ago
What users actually depend on Linux's iron-clad promise to never break binary compatibility? It's curious to me that this issue is considered so sacred and yet I rarely hear the rationale or actual user stories of people who want to run 20-year-old userland on a new kernel. In particular, note that the promise of kernel binary compatibility does not guarantee that an old binary will run on a modern Linux distro unless the binary is statically linked. Most user-space libraries bump their major version number every so often, so it's unlikely that the required .so's for a very old binary will be present on a new system.
- DeepDuh 14y ago
  You raise a good point. Why are most open source programs dynamically linked again? Static linking is one of the nice things about the OSX ecosystem. If only Apple wouldn't unnecessarily break their runtime environment every few releases.
  - dman 14y ago
    Shipping security fixes in core libraries is easier this way.
  - haberman 14y ago
    > Why are most open source programs dynamically linked again? Probably because dynamically-linked binaries are smaller, use less memory (by avoiding duplication), and can get fixes or security updates without rebuilding or re-deploying. When you're a distro it hardly makes sense to ship a copy of libc inside every single binary. Any fix/update to libc would require re-downloading basically the whole system!
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - akavel 14y ago
      "I tend to think the drawbacks of dynamic linking outweigh the advantages for many (most?) applications." -- John Carmack "Dynamic linking considered harmful": http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/dynamic-linking/ http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/dynamic-linking/ http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/dynamic-linking/versioned-symbols http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/dynamic-linking/versioned-... OTOH, arguments of the other side, for proper polemics: "Static linking considered harmful": http://www.akkadia.org/drepper/no_static_linking.html http://www.akkadia.org/drepper/no_static_linking.html
mcot2 14y ago
I don't really consider the Linux desktop "dead". Besides Android, it just has a marginal market share because you mostly need to be tech oriented to use it or install it. I think the risk for the future is that the idea that the traditional desktop is dying out. In some respects the touch capable tablet UI's are much more user friendly. On the other side, the lightweight web-only interfaces (Chrome OS) are becoming increasingly more powerful/useful. Windows and Mac have already moved to hybrid designs.
conradfr 14y ago
I don't really get the problem. The desktop never really needed Linux, and Linux never really needed the desktop. People seemed to like Ubuntu some years ago though.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  I think the problem is that some Linux detractors do not realize that there are two seperate standards of success (as mentioned on the Google+ discussion). There is the business standard, and there is the community standard. Linux doesn't need to be a threat to Apple/Microsoft in order to be a success. That is an artificial bar that some people seem to have become obsessed with.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    I agree, I often get criticised for running a Linux desktop by Windows and Mac people because "nobody uses that apart from geeks lol". Well I'm a geek and I use it because it's the best system for what I do (writing Linux hosted server side stuff) so why do I care what the rest of the market is doing? I guess there is some merit to this argument in the sense that if Linux was the defacto standard on the desktop I wouldn't have to maintain a dual boot. On the other hand I quite like using a niche OS because it means that I'm not a target for malware/shovelware/adware vendors.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      ""nobody uses that apart from geeks lol". Well I'm a geek" Exactly. I cannot count the number of times I have had the discussion: "You should use [MacOSX/Windows].", "Why?", "My grandmother can use [MacOSX/Windows] all by herself." It is hard to physically restrain myself when people think that is an insightful thing to say.
      - ekianjo 14y ago
        Same thing here. I get the "why dont you like/use a Mac/iPad?" quite often these days, which is seriously annoying when coming from non-tech litterate people.
grandalf 14y ago
I think this flamewar is just a viral marketing strategy for Google+
- pooriaazimi 14y ago
  I don't think so. It's so hideously designed [1] that the more people don't use it (and have a feeling that it's great, as they've heard others like it), the better for them. Now I'm trained to not open G+ posts unless I'm absolutely sure there's something I will enjoy/learn from. YMMV. [1]: That stupid "Join G+" black bar, the absolutely unnecessary chrome around the content that takes up more than 83% of screen real state on my 15" MBP, no links to comments
corkill 14y ago
Here's a few places it falls short with reaching mainstream consumers, I realize many people may not care about that, but I think it could be a viable alternative to windows or OSX for many people if it were easier to get started with and use. 1. Not clear how easy it is to dual boot install with windows for non tech users. e.g. difficult to get started. 2. Make it faster, latest ubuntu is sluggish. The UI gets non tech users excited, a few minutes of using it and they are going to bounce. 3. Make installing programs easier, I know how to get them running, I still don't know how to get them properly installed. Average Joe has no chance. 4. Support all common user tasks out of the box, for example viewing videos online. To me it feels like Ubuntu is 90% of the way there, just a few things stop it from being a good alternative (these things of course are probably not trivial to fix, but I would say they are critical).
richardk 14y ago
I personally felt that the "What killed the Linux Desktop" article was completely irrelevant. It seems there's always going to be some people who complain that GNU/Linux isn't 'good enough' or whatever, and as a community we should simply ignore these people.
autophil 14y ago
Epic thread. I haven't used Linux much since early 2000, but all the giants of Linux I remember from my Linux hacking days are there. Interesting read!
stevewilhelm 14y ago
I has been a while since I stopped using a Linux desktop. The reasoned I stopped: a. there were at least two of everything: GNOME, KDE, vi, emac, gedit, Firefox, Opera, kasablanca, ftpcube ... b. crap device support: graphics cards, printers, cameras, thumb drives ... c. highly variable levels of application quality and support
f4stjack 14y ago
has linux desktop failed? Really? Correct me if I am wrong but we are talking about a concept which has spawned thousands of distros used in millions of computers still. And main argument is rotten as heck: backward compatibility out of the box? On Mac? Please! You have to install Rosetta for that, without it you have no chance of running that escape velocity on your shiny macbook pro. Windows 7 make you feel like it can do backward compatibility jig, until you meet ultrahyperfast running software. And no I am not talking about some console application but the second incarnation of Saints Row. I mean I would have understood if he simply said "I have started using Mac Os insert-cat-name-here and liked it" nobody would have any problems. I really can't understand the need to declare previously used software dead, bad or other derogatory terms. You use Mac, I use linux and it's still alive and kicking, considering I got security updates this morning.
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  >has linux desktop failed? Really? Correct me if I am wrong but we are talking about a concept which has spawned thousands of distros used in millions of computers still. Desktop linux has utterly failed, yes, clearly. OSX grew to over 10%. Linux desktop continues to remain statistical line noise. That doesn't mean that literally no one on the planet uses it, just that a very small number of people use it.

183 points by netsmashers 14y ago

gcb 14y ago

Yet another ZDnet article listening to middle-manager De Icaza. Wasting the community time. I bet Linus has a g+ bot to reply to those. I would.

sciurus 14y ago

This is essentially a duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4467653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4467653 from one day before.

mindstab 14y ago
Except this is the actual thread that's still evolving while the other was some cut up quote filled "news" post. The conversation here may parallel the other but I think this link is more valuable.

vacipr 14y ago

At times like this I wonder why am I even trying to read discussions on G+. http://i.imm.io/D7zA.png http://i.imm.io/D7zA.png

ronnier 14y ago
I don't enjoy it either. The tampering of the scrollbar and having the text stuffed into some sort of frame ruins the experience. Those two problems make it difficult to read on G+ so I usually just avoid it.
thornofmight 14y ago
At first I thought this would just be an easy CSS fix, and it almost is -- but the reason this problem exists is because they put that huge sidebar at the top of the page with the guy's face and four or five links under it. Seeing as long posts and discussions are starting to become pretty common on G+ I hope that the G+ team invests some time into figuring out how to make everything more readable.

gokhan 14y ago

Off topic. App.Net says it is "a real-time social feed without the ads". This G+ page is quite on topic with some heavy participants, design looks good, and clear from ads. Why would I want to pay App.Net?

sergiotapia 14y ago
Saying "off-topic" doesn't give you a go-ahead to flak on off topic things. This has nothing to do with App.net. I agree, it's one of the dumbest things I've heard of, but has nothing to do with this thread.
mmahemoff 14y ago
For one thing, G+ doesn't have a serious API yet, whereas App.Net already has Android and iPhone apps by third-parties using its API. But overall, I've found it interesting how little G+ comes up in discussions about Twitter and App.Net. I happen to think it's an absolutely excellent product and find it much more engaging than Twitter. Most people I see complaining about it have made hardly any posts and haven't taken the time to build up a network.
- msbarnett 14y ago
  > But overall, I've found it interesting how little G+ comes up in discussions about Twitter and App.Net. Probably because it's completely Apples-to-Oranges. Twitter/App.net is for short status updates. I deeply value the enforced brevity. G+ posts tend toward blog-style bloviating; the use cases really don't overlap.
  - mmahemoff 14y ago
    Fair point. I've noticed G+ doesn't work at all for live event updates, so expecting them to build a Facebook-like "heartbeat" thing on the side at some stage. At the same time, I can say I've moved a lot of link sharing to G+, so for that use case, it's a fairly direct substitute. The rich embedding is better and I can say what I want without having to cram it. It's like that Pascal quote about not having time to make it concise...G+ just lets you write a couple of sentences, or more on whim, without having to then manicure it into 140 characters.

antirez 14y ago

Reading this discussion is hard for me without thinking, what would have happened if the whole Linux ecosystem was BSD-licensed?

recoiledsnake 14y ago
That's easy,some BigCo would've co-opted it, paid developers to go the last mile and polish it to make it usable, and make it incompatible with everything out there and sold it. Perhaps Sun or IBM or even Oracle. E.g See OS X and to a lesser extent, Linspire/Lindows.
- protomyth 14y ago
  Hasn't happened to PostgreSQL and I doubt it would have happened to Linux. The leader and community are pretty strong with Linux and that is not about the GPL. I would imagine some folks would fork it, but that always is a losing game from a business point of view (paying for a fork vs. patching and getting everyone to pay). Having BSD licensed kernel at that point in history during the AT&T BSD lawsuit would have been seriously interesting.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    Maintaining a fork isn't a big issue if you have enough resources, considering that if Linux was BSD licensed they would still have had their proprietary fork mirror it "close enough" to pull in at least some of the big changes from the main Linux tree. Android seems to work in this manor to a certain extent (although they open source patches back when they have to because of GPL). You would most likely have ended up with a bleeding edge open source version and several more conservative closed ports. Bear in mind that a lot of the reason Linux development is strong is because many of it's developers are paid to work on it and then contribute back (again because of GPL). If a company could gain a competitive advantage by paying the same people to work on a closed fork..
    - protomyth 14y ago

babarock 14y ago

I'm a little confused. Are Linus (and Alan, Ingo and even Ted Ts'o) arguing that the GNOME team experiences breakages because they ignored the kernel team practices and used internal interfaces instead of the public ones? Also why do they refer to GNOME as a "research" project?

microtherion 14y ago
No, they're arguing that the GNOME team defends breaking (GNOME) public APIs by arguing that the kernel team does not hesitate to break internal APIs, instead of recognising that actual public Linux APIs are highly stable.
- recoiledsnake 14y ago
  It's a bit more nuanced than that. Miguel(the founder of Gnome but was uninvolved since 5 years) said that the culture of Linux was to break things(see driver ABI) and then use the fact that the driver source is available for most drivers to get around that and just recompile them with changes. And that the userland adopted that practice(see autoconf) and led to fragmentation of the software platform with library hell, leading to commercial software staying away for the most part. As you say, others responded with external vs. internal interfaces, but what is an external and internal interface for things like Gnome or KDE? They have only one API that's used by both their other libraries/applications and application writers.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    "They have only one API that's used by both their other libraries/applications and application writers." Which is a problem they without doubt did not inherit from the kernel team. There is little doubt that the GNOME guys have been using kernel practices to justify their actions. The point being made here is that they are wrong to do so.
    - recoiledsnake 14y ago
      >Which is a problem they without doubt did not inherit from the kernel team. Interesting point, Windows, OS X, iOS etc. get derided for having internal private APIs that they try to prevent external devs from using, and not doing the same thing is now a 'problem' for GNOME and KDE? Isn't the whole point of Linux for developers, freedom to use it as you see fit?

mmahemoff 14y ago

OT - Now would be a really good time for Google Plus to permalink comments (like Slashdot and others have done since ancient history).

andyl 14y ago

IMHO, Gnome2 was great, but since then its all gone downhill. Still cursing Ubuntu for Unity.

adamtaylor 14y ago
Have you tried the GNOME 3 "classic" desktop in Ubuntu? It's very similar to GNOME 2. So far it's worked out well for me.
- andyl 14y ago
  Yes - I'm using Gnome3 "classic". It is ok - just doesn't seem as configurable as Gnome2. XFCE might be good - I just don't have the time to figure it out.
  - wtetzner 14y ago
    Yeah, at first I was annoyed with the lack of configurability in Gnome 3. But when I discovered you could press the super key and just start typing the name of a program to start it, I found it nicer to use than Gnome 2. Also, installing plugins for Gnome 3 is really convenient. For example, I didn't like Alt+Tab switching between programs instead of windows, so I installed this: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/. There are still some things that bug me though, like I don't see any way to configure the format of the Date/Time.
gitarr 14y ago
FUD, Unity is great and you know it. People bashing Unity have not really tried it yet.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  Is it really inconceivable that other people might not like something that you do? Give me a break.
- danielweber 14y ago

batgaijin 14y ago

The Linux desktop will never succeed as long as nobody can profit from it. As long as Microsoft prevents the distribution of Linux through tithes or threats of patent litigation, why would anyone spend a penny making the desktop look better? edit: sources http://www.informationweek.com/windows/microsoft-news/microsofts-new-cash-cows-linux-and-andro/231601809 http://www.informationweek.com/windows/microsoft-news/micros... http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090619161307529 http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090619161307529 http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2331462,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2331462,00.asp

stcredzero 14y ago
> The Linux desktop will never succeed as long as nobody can profit from it. There is a strong case for someone paying developers to create a free alternative to Windows to commoditize desktop operating systems, thereby attacking Microsoft's revenue stream. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html The problem has been that it's been too difficult to produce something easy enough to transition away to from Windows and Windows apps for this to work.
- cooldeal 14y ago
  >There is a strong case for someone paying developers to create a free alternative to Windows to commoditize desktop operating systems, thereby attacking Microsoft's revenue stream. See Ubuntu bug number 1. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1 Mark Shuttleworth is that 'someone'. >The problem has been that it's been too difficult to produce something easy enough to transition away to from Windows and Windows apps for this to work. Everytime a Linux distro is made one bit "easier" or simpler, the power users find it "dumbified" and quit that distro and move on.
  - rbanffy 14y ago
    I think we have enough developers now using Linux that UI nitpicking should have a negligible impact. On every conference I go, I see tons of Macs. Those developers are very unlikely to find Gnome 3 or Unity too constraining for their tastes.

bonch 14y ago

In-fighting instead of making a good Linux desktop killed the Linux desktop.

haberman 14y ago

What users actually depend on Linux's iron-clad promise to never break binary compatibility? It's curious to me that this issue is considered so sacred and yet I rarely hear the rationale or actual user stories of people who want to run 20-year-old userland on a new kernel. In particular, note that the promise of kernel binary compatibility does not guarantee that an old binary will run on a modern Linux distro unless the binary is statically linked. Most user-space libraries bump their major version number every so often, so it's unlikely that the required .so's for a very old binary will be present on a new system.

DeepDuh 14y ago
You raise a good point. Why are most open source programs dynamically linked again? Static linking is one of the nice things about the OSX ecosystem. If only Apple wouldn't unnecessarily break their runtime environment every few releases.
- dman 14y ago
  Shipping security fixes in core libraries is easier this way.
- haberman 14y ago
  > Why are most open source programs dynamically linked again? Probably because dynamically-linked binaries are smaller, use less memory (by avoiding duplication), and can get fixes or security updates without rebuilding or re-deploying. When you're a distro it hardly makes sense to ship a copy of libc inside every single binary. Any fix/update to libc would require re-downloading basically the whole system!
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - akavel 14y ago
    "I tend to think the drawbacks of dynamic linking outweigh the advantages for many (most?) applications." -- John Carmack "Dynamic linking considered harmful": http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/dynamic-linking/ http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/dynamic-linking/ http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/dynamic-linking/versioned-symbols http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/dynamic-linking/versioned-... OTOH, arguments of the other side, for proper polemics: "Static linking considered harmful": http://www.akkadia.org/drepper/no_static_linking.html http://www.akkadia.org/drepper/no_static_linking.html

mcot2 14y ago

I don't really consider the Linux desktop "dead". Besides Android, it just has a marginal market share because you mostly need to be tech oriented to use it or install it. I think the risk for the future is that the idea that the traditional desktop is dying out. In some respects the touch capable tablet UI's are much more user friendly. On the other side, the lightweight web-only interfaces (Chrome OS) are becoming increasingly more powerful/useful. Windows and Mac have already moved to hybrid designs.

conradfr 14y ago

I don't really get the problem. The desktop never really needed Linux, and Linux never really needed the desktop. People seemed to like Ubuntu some years ago though.

jlgreco 14y ago
I think the problem is that some Linux detractors do not realize that there are two seperate standards of success (as mentioned on the Google+ discussion). There is the business standard, and there is the community standard. Linux doesn't need to be a threat to Apple/Microsoft in order to be a success. That is an artificial bar that some people seem to have become obsessed with.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  I agree, I often get criticised for running a Linux desktop by Windows and Mac people because "nobody uses that apart from geeks lol". Well I'm a geek and I use it because it's the best system for what I do (writing Linux hosted server side stuff) so why do I care what the rest of the market is doing? I guess there is some merit to this argument in the sense that if Linux was the defacto standard on the desktop I wouldn't have to maintain a dual boot. On the other hand I quite like using a niche OS because it means that I'm not a target for malware/shovelware/adware vendors.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    ""nobody uses that apart from geeks lol". Well I'm a geek" Exactly. I cannot count the number of times I have had the discussion: "You should use [MacOSX/Windows].", "Why?", "My grandmother can use [MacOSX/Windows] all by herself." It is hard to physically restrain myself when people think that is an insightful thing to say.
    - ekianjo 14y ago
      Same thing here. I get the "why dont you like/use a Mac/iPad?" quite often these days, which is seriously annoying when coming from non-tech litterate people.

grandalf 14y ago

I think this flamewar is just a viral marketing strategy for Google+

pooriaazimi 14y ago
I don't think so. It's so hideously designed [1] that the more people don't use it (and have a feeling that it's great, as they've heard others like it), the better for them. Now I'm trained to not open G+ posts unless I'm absolutely sure there's something I will enjoy/learn from. YMMV. [1]: That stupid "Join G+" black bar, the absolutely unnecessary chrome around the content that takes up more than 83% of screen real state on my 15" MBP, no links to comments

corkill 14y ago

Here's a few places it falls short with reaching mainstream consumers, I realize many people may not care about that, but I think it could be a viable alternative to windows or OSX for many people if it were easier to get started with and use. 1. Not clear how easy it is to dual boot install with windows for non tech users. e.g. difficult to get started. 2. Make it faster, latest ubuntu is sluggish. The UI gets non tech users excited, a few minutes of using it and they are going to bounce. 3. Make installing programs easier, I know how to get them running, I still don't know how to get them properly installed. Average Joe has no chance. 4. Support all common user tasks out of the box, for example viewing videos online. To me it feels like Ubuntu is 90% of the way there, just a few things stop it from being a good alternative (these things of course are probably not trivial to fix, but I would say they are critical).

richardk 14y ago

I personally felt that the "What killed the Linux Desktop" article was completely irrelevant. It seems there's always going to be some people who complain that GNU/Linux isn't 'good enough' or whatever, and as a community we should simply ignore these people.

autophil 14y ago

Epic thread. I haven't used Linux much since early 2000, but all the giants of Linux I remember from my Linux hacking days are there. Interesting read!

stevewilhelm 14y ago

I has been a while since I stopped using a Linux desktop. The reasoned I stopped: a. there were at least two of everything: GNOME, KDE, vi, emac, gedit, Firefox, Opera, kasablanca, ftpcube ... b. crap device support: graphics cards, printers, cameras, thumb drives ... c. highly variable levels of application quality and support

f4stjack 14y ago

has linux desktop failed? Really? Correct me if I am wrong but we are talking about a concept which has spawned thousands of distros used in millions of computers still. And main argument is rotten as heck: backward compatibility out of the box? On Mac? Please! You have to install Rosetta for that, without it you have no chance of running that escape velocity on your shiny macbook pro. Windows 7 make you feel like it can do backward compatibility jig, until you meet ultrahyperfast running software. And no I am not talking about some console application but the second incarnation of Saints Row. I mean I would have understood if he simply said "I have started using Mac Os insert-cat-name-here and liked it" nobody would have any problems. I really can't understand the need to declare previously used software dead, bad or other derogatory terms. You use Mac, I use linux and it's still alive and kicking, considering I got security updates this morning.

flyinRyan 14y ago
>has linux desktop failed? Really? Correct me if I am wrong but we are talking about a concept which has spawned thousands of distros used in millions of computers still. Desktop linux has utterly failed, yes, clearly. OSX grew to over 10%. Linux desktop continues to remain statistical line noise. That doesn't mean that literally no one on the planet uses it, just that a very small number of people use it.