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Old Arguments May Cost Linux the Desktop
itwbennett writes "The old Linux arguments that pit one tool against another — Evolution vs. Thunderbird, LibreOffice vs. OpenOffice, and GNOME3 vs. Unity vs. KDE vs. everything else — may cost Linux its shot at the desktop, opines blogger Brian Proffitt. 'We can compare LibreOffice to OpenOffice.org to Office till the cows come home,' says Proffitt. 'But what happens when Google Docs gets truly robust enough for business and high-end document production? Or Prezi gets enough mindshare to start an upwards trajectory of user numbers?' It should be the case that increasing reliance on cloud software will make it easier for businesses to choose Linux, but for that to happen, Linux communities need to stop fighting the old fights, says Proffitt."
Is LibreOffice vs. OpenOffice an old argument? It's hardly a year old...
Linux does not have a shot at the desktop and never will. That is some /. nerd fantasy.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
So, let me get this straight: "Linux On the Desktop" is doomed because, when 'cloud applications' come into the fore, there will still be nerds with strong opinions about native applications?
Isn't that exactly backward?
If "The Cloud" rises up and devours natives software, nobody will give a fuck about any application on the Linux desktop, except for the browser(the state of which is fine) and none of the suits will care about the raging emacs/vi crusades, so long as they can get their almost-thin-clients booted into gmail as cheaply as possible...
The hypothetical rise of in-browser stuff renders battles about the relative value of assorted linux-native applications irrelevant, that's sort of the whole point.
In other news this week:
Call Of Duty vs Battlefield - who could possibly choose? Certainly nobody could ever like both! :'(
Brown bread vs white - when will the madness end?
Blondes vs brunettes vs redheads - the human race is falling apart!
Peanut butter vs jelly - the only choice at breakfast time is to cry
Coffee vs tea - the hot beverage industry will implode if we don't just CHOOSE ONE gods-damn-it!
which is totally what she said
It may not be on grandma's desktop, but again, why would I care?
Developers of specialized software lack the resources to support every platform. They choose which platforms to support based on which could make the most money for them. And right now, Windows and Mac OS X have much clearer economies of scale than GNU/Linux. So if GNU/Linux isn't widespread, it won't draw a large selection of specialized software, especially in those markets that free software has historically had trouble serving.
Linux, and open source in general, will never be that popular, simply because of cognitive load. It's software designed by engineers, with no clear understanding of style or ergonomics.
To use a car example, it's like a car with high torque and excellent gas mileage, but ugly to look at and the instruments are labelled differently and in the back seat.
Many companies hire artists and usability experts to look at the final product and make tweaks and recommendations. Some even take the trouble to engage focus groups of customers to find out what features are confusing, what aspects are uncomfortable, what looks ugly. They take this information and change their product for the better.
For the most part, the success of Apple products is for this reason: the iPod was not the first MP3 player on the market, but it's usability and aesthetic appeal and robustness made it highly popular.
Open source, on the other hand, is usually done by a single engineer putting in most of the effort. The results usually have the following pattern:
1) Documentation: Writing documentation is boring. Put up a wiki and let the users fill in the details.
2) Aesthetic looks: This is not important. Give the user a panel to change the environment to suit their tastes.
3) Compatibility: Not important. "Search for text" is different in every application, it's impossible for your fingers to memorize the action.
4) Simplicity: More features is better! Try viewing the man page for "ls" some time. Or preferences in VLC.
5) Descriptives: Don't choose descriptive names for anything. Instead of "Internet Explorer", "Paint Shop Pro" and "Media Player", use terms like "Gimp, Firefox, and VLC".
This last is one reason why old folks have a tough time using the new technology. They have to learn a completely new language: Every random word that they *thought* they knew ("pidgin", "handbrake", "calibre") means something different in the new system.
Gimme a break.
The top five or so open source projects try to deal with these issues, but the overwhelming majority are robust, strong, functional, and totally enigmatic.
Where are the open source tech writers? The ones who take that part of the problem and work alongside the engineers to ensure quality documentation? Where are the open source ergonomic experts, the usability analysts, the aesthetic artists? Who ever does usability studies, or consistency between apps?
Until the engineers get a clue, open source projects will never be more than a closet of hobbyist projects.
Making good software is more than robust coding.
"Once people shift to using cloud-based software" ....they will get bitch-slapped by its limitations.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
For Linux to ever have a shot on the desktop, it would have to stop being Linux. Namely it would have to get some standards beyond the kernel. It would have to become a system where a lot more was standardized and you could rely on features, packages, UIs, etc being in all distributions. To desktop users, an OS isn't a kernel, it is a rich experience that comprises, well, everything you find on a Windows or MacOS disc. Until that happens, it'll never be an OS people want to use on the desktop because people don't want choice, they want consistency. That doesn't mean it couldn't still be flexible, just that it would have mandatory features and defaults.
Along those lines it would have to do away with having source be something a user had any idea existed. No distributing programs as source, no recompiling the kernel to make something work, all binary all the time for users. Again, wouldn't mean it would have to get rid of source, just that the user experience couldn't include it. That would have to be all nice guided installers that are fast and easy.
These things aren't important to servers, and completely unimportant to embedded devices, hence Linux has done well there. However they are what people need on the desktop.
Notice that the end-user facing Linux that has had the most success by far is Android and it does precisely those things. It gives users and developers a consistent environment and set of tools that are guaranteed to be there, since they are a part of what Android is. It provides easy, binary-only installs for users so they just click on what they want and get it.
That's what Linux as a whole would have to do to have a chance of capturing a significant share of the desktop market. So long as the answer to problems remains "Oh just use a different distro, that one doesn't have feature X and Y," or "Recompile your kernel with these options to make that work," it'll be the sort of thing that there isn't widespread interest in.
You assume that Linux is developing in a vacuum, and it magically got good enough to be on your desktop. But that's not how it happened.
Linux got good enough quickly enough that various critical players assumed it would soon (or at least eventually) be a viable desktop alternative. So they began to support it. You probably wouldn't be using Linux on your desktop (at least not exclusively) were there no nVidia drivers, various HP printer drivers, Broadcom (yes, a late comer) and, yes, Flash support available for it. But what you willfully refuse to see is that all of those things became available because their vendors assumed they'd get some advantage from providing them.
There's a whole rash of things that never became available (Quicken, games, etc), because their vendors didn't see the advantage of Linux support, or were holding back to wait for critical mass, or wanted to jump in, but were stymied by the need to choose a platform on top of Linux (GNOME, KDE, etc) to target.
If it becomes obvious that critical mass will never come, those last players may never jump in. And the first group may jump out (no nVidia drivers for new classes of cards, etc). Hell, even Firefox support on Linux is lagging Windows these days. So you can argue all you want that 'choice is good' and 'I can use Linux, so why should I care', but you can only use linux because other people have cared in the past. Wake up. World domination is not the goal - viability is, and that goal can slip through your fingers even though you are happy with your Linux setup today.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...