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Desktop Linux Is Dead
digitaldc writes with this quote from PCWorld:
"It kills me to say this: The dream of Linux as a major desktop OS is now pretty much dead. Despite phenomenal security and stability — and amazing strides in usability, performance, and compatibility — Linux simply isn't catching on with desktop users. And if there ever was a chance for desktop Linux to succeed, that ship has long since sunk. ... Ultimately, Linux is doomed on the desktop because of a critical lack of content. And that lack of content owes its existence to two key factors: the fragmentation of the Linux platform, and the fierce ideology of the open-source community at large."
I upgraded to Ubuntu Maverick Meetkat last week.
It's the best desktop I ever used. And now its dead. :(
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Linux is also the only major OS that cannot advertise. Ubuntu 10.10 has great copy on its website extolling the benefits and showing that you can do pretty much anything on Ubuntu that you can on a Mac or Windows based PC. But...you only see that if you're already on the Ubuntu landing page. Linux also doesnt come pre-installed on the vast majority of new PC's either.
I figured microsoft had more to worry about right now than FUD'ing up the linux arena with Paid-for blogging*, but meh.
Desktop Linux works for me, and has been since 1997. If you don't like it, don't use it. Be thankful you have alternatives. If it weren't for *nix, you probably wouldn't.
[*] - http://www.blogger.com/profile/5530582
http://www.flickr.com/photos/strohmy/315871552/
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
So, by citing many unrelated facts, and some things which the average user doesn't know enough about to care, he has proved that Desktop Linux is dead. Okay, i buy that.
If 2% == 3M, which doesn't seem unreasonable, then 98% == 147M.
I know a VC or two. They aren't investing in companies producing software that has a target market of 3M customers when they could be investing in companies who are writing for those other 147M.
Just look at how long it took Apple to gain traction, and they still have what, 10% of the market? At least what Apple had going for it was a superior user experience over the next best thing at the time. Gnome and KDE have come a long way and they're pretty decent now, but they're not "killer app" better experiences than what you get on Mac and Windows these days.
Its dead again? Good thing it has a bunch of friends that can cast level 9 resurrection.
don't worry, they'll reinvent the wheel
rewriting history since 2109
In the trollish counting system, there are only three numbers.
Troll means "one." Trolltroll means "two." Trolltrolltroll means "definitely two."
Someone had to do it.
Maybe we should start asking what those 1-2% represent.
What kind of people use a Linux desktop full time? Geeks. Developers. Bright minds.
Consider Linux a piece of specialized software. How many computer users run specialized software? A small percentage of the total. Yet those are important for their respective niches.
Apple has 5% but it's the cream of the crop in regard to certain traits: people who favor aestethics and "just works" over everything else and are willing to pay extra for it.
Maybe it's time for Linux to stop aiming for more than 5%, ever, and instead embrace what it is: a professional-grade OS, for professionals.
Why obsess with taking over the desktop of average Joe, against Joe's wishes?
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
I can tell you why the Mac interface drives you nuts. Because compared to Windows and Linux, it sucks. For the most part they are all the same, but Macs have idiosyncrasies that you have to overcome. It is things like using a green + to shrink a window. That is just wrong. Things like the red X sometimes closing the application, and other times only closing the UI to the application leaving the to continue running.
Things like the menu bar being pegged to the top of the primary screen. That made sense when we only had one screen, and resolutions were so low that windows always needed to stack if you had more than one open at a time. Today we have multiple screens, so the 'flick the mouse to the corner' argument no longer applies, and having to figure out what application the menu bar applies to is just annoying and breaks the flow of work.
The list goes on and on, but Apple doesn't seem to want to admit that many parts of their UI are badly designed in the first place, or have become out of date for use on modern hardware, so they just keep repeating the mantra that Apple has an intuitive UI. I can definitely say that the emperor has no clothes.
Linux users have less respect the concept of intellectual property than as most computer users
That sentence is so mangled it's hard to be sure what you were trying to say, but it sounds like an assertion that Linux users have less respect for intellectual property than others. If that is indeed what you're saying, then the following part is a total non-sequitur.
IME, Linux users tend to have rather *more* respect for intellectual property than your average computer user, which is why they stick to using open source software rather than stealing commercial software. I've lost track of the number of times when I've had an average Windows-user-in-the-street asking me for a bootleg copy of Office, Photoshop or indeed Windows itself. Most of them are gobsmacked by the idea that there's something wrong with just copying them.
I use Open Source software because I respect the rights of creators of software - including their right to make it freely available.
I seem to remember software company executives in the 90's drooling over the thought that you'd pay them a monthly fee to access their word processor and photo editor apps from your thin client at home.
Heh. I know quite a lot of people who've tried this, and quickly learned the downside of any sort of centralized or "cloud" computing model: If you miss a payment, all your stuff disappears. Sometimes permanently.
And most of the ISPs who provided the early online storage to customers turned out to have contracts saying that putting a file on their server automatically transfers the copyright to the ISP. I know several friends in bands who tried this and learned the hard way that they had assigned the copyrights to all their work to their ISP, who found things that they liked and used in ads. Other people stored pictures of their kids, pets, etc. on "their" web site, and found the ISP using their photos in ads. Remember the fuss when msn.com was caught doing this, and MSN's reps quoted that passage in their contract?
I also have a couple of friends who lost a parent who had been keeping personal info (pics, diaries, etc.) on a hosted site. They were a bit upset to find that after the parent's death, they had no legal access to anything on the site, because the parent hadn't thought to will it to them. And after a few months, the parent's "site" was purged and lost forever.
Going back a bit, one of the original reasons for the rapid adoption of "personal computers" in work environments back in the 1980s was the growing problem of corporate data centers that more and more controlled what employees were permitted to do on the mainframe. Departments learned that if they wanted the computing capability that they needed, the easiest way was with a little computer that the department owned, and which the data center had no control over. This is a continuing battle in corporations everywhere, with no end in sight.
It's an old story. If you don't own the machine(s) that hold your data, you don't own the data, and you have no say in how it may be used. If this means anything to you, you'd be an idiot to trust your data to an organization that views you as a source of income. You need, and will always need, a computer system that you completely control. (And you need it backed up - on your own hardware, not on someone else's. ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
You are just used to the idiosyncrasies of different desktop environments to the point that you don't think about them any more.
This is what Apple fans like to tell themselves. Sorry, but it isn't true, and sticking your head in the sand doesn't make it so. My computer usage far predates both Windows and Mac.
It's a bit silly, for instance, to criticize Apple's UI for inconsistency in close/exit behavior when you click the red X window control, when this button is modal in all other major UIs, with no indication of which mode you are in (hint: it's usually close mode if there is one window open, and exit otherwise).
What are you talking about? One of us is confused about the definition of "Modal". What I can tell you is that the X button on both Linux and Windows is very consistent. It closes the window, and any of the windows children. The only applications I have run across on Windows that do not follow the consistent behavior are bittorrent clients and IM clients. (Inconsistent, but I understand why.) With MacOS, it is all over the board.
The green zoom button always causes grief to new users because they think it's ought to be a minimize/maximize button, which it isn't. This expectation is entirely a consequence of coming from UIs that treat minimize/maximize as a primary UI operation.
You sound ridiculous saying this. The reason that the green + button causes grief is because for as long as any of us have been alive, we have agreed that a + symbol means 'add'. I means you are making something more or bigger. Green means go. So, a green + means go bigger. In fact, if the green + button was minimize/maximize, it would still be wrong. A green plus should never shrink a window.
So, no, it isn't because I am used to other OSes. It is because I am used to being a human who is part of society beyond Mac computers.
The menu bar pegged to the primary screen is indeed an old and debatable quirk of Mac OSes, but it should be noted that your criticism doesn't really apply to the portable market, which might explain why Apple has so much success there.
The placement of the menu was debatable back when single monitors where the only setup. Today, it isn't debatable any more. It is now simply a poor design. So, Apple uses a system that is bad for use at a desk and is neutral for a portable instead of using a UI that would work well for both. Notice I did not say "desktop" because when used at a desk, a laptop will often have two monitors hooked to it. It is funny that you use this argument, yet you claim that the OS is designed to be productive. An OS who chooses to make multiple monitors a second class citizen in it's UI design cannot be claimed as one that is designed to be productive.
I agree that it is inaccurate to describe Apple's UI as intuitive---parts of it are astonishingly sophisticated. Intuitive suggests that it should be easy for new users, but that is the way of Clippy and Start buttons. Apple doesn't design to be intuitive--that's a leftover meme from 1985. Apple designs to be productive, which makes it annoying for people who already have burned in productivity habits from platforms where this is less of a design ethic.
You are the only one claiming this. The mantra of Apple has been that "It just works" (and when it doesn't, it is the users fault) and is "Intuitive". There is nothing inherently more productive about Apples UI. In fact, it is things like the lack of a maximize button, the fact that to increase window size, you can only do it from the lower right corner, and putting the menu for a program on a different screen that the application, that makes the MacOS UI LESS productive.
While Clippy was a failed attempt at a better help system, the Start button is useful, productive AND intuitive. MacOS also has a start button of it's own. It is just split between the 'Appli