Slashdot Mirror
Are Open-Source Desktops Losing Competitiveness?
An anonymous reader writes "Peter Penz has been a user of KDE since version 1.2, and he led the development of the Dolphin file manager for the past six years. Now, he's quitting KDE development and handing off Dolphin. His reasons for quitting KDE development are described in a blog post. Penz speaks of KDE losing competitiveness to Apple and Microsoft due to increased complexity and other reasons. 'Working on the non-user-interface parts of applications can be challenging, and this is not something that most freetime-contributors are striving for. But if there are not enough contributors for the complex stuff behind the scenes and if no company is willing to invest fulltime-developers to work on this... well then we are losing ground.' Are open-source desktops losing?"
*nix users have been moving to OS X on the desktop for a long time. If you defend the X desktop in a lot of circles where it would have been popular in another time, prepare to be mocked, ridiculed and told to just "buy a Mac".
Under these conditions it doesn't surprise me that KDE is stagnant. Fewer people are interested in it these days.
- Still an X11 user when I have the choice.
You guys really do live in basement caves with little to no grasp of reality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_Law_of_Headlines
This is a really bizarre troll-baiting headline, and based on sample size of 1? By an "anonymous reader" nonetheless. Y U NO require a pseudonym, at least?
My productivity has never been higher using "awesome" at home and work
http://awesome.naquadah.org/
Installation was quite painless, apt-get install awesome and its all done, pretty much. It is... awesome
Oh wait, were they talking about those gigantic slow clunky things that include a kitchen sink and everything? Yeah, those can just go away... please.
I kind of liked xfce4 also but thats getting a bit too desktoppy. Too much extra junk I'll never use. I want my apps not the desktop environment's selection.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Rest assured anonymous writer, Open-Source Desktops are staying just as competitive in their constant fight to make your favorite GUI just as unusable and obtuse as those produced by Microsoft or Apple. I am confident that, be it KDE or GNOME, you'll have just as frustrating of a time using the latest versions as you would using Metro or OSX.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
But I spent a bit of time delving into this interface, and I have have now given up my Windows unless I absolutely MUST use it. No more hunting through menus looking for files or software functions. One hot key, followed by a few letters in the name, and up it pops. Wonderful!
Now that Microsoft has thrown sand in the face of their OEMs, perhaps the OEMs won't be so afraid of pursuing and investing in non-Microsoft operating systems. Microsoft may have a legacy, but much of that legacy could be emulated or relegated to VMs if necessary. And here's a perfect example of such an opportunity.
If anything, now's the time to do it as Microsoft won't be able to punish the OEMs without being blatantly anti-competitive. And it'd breathe some life into the stagnant PC space.
So your the kind of guy that wants to order some guys or a corp around to force them to make sure your OS works ! Your the kind of guy that complains, bitch and screams at your IT, forum or whoever you can get a hold of and ask (order by threatening their family if you don't get help) for help ! Your the guy that cries that he lost millions in contract cause your email (free of charge by the ISP) doesn't work. yeah I know you...
Linux is not for the lazy....plain and simple. It's for people that when they have a problem, they can use their brain cells, observe the problem and try to solve it, if it doesn't work, they ask for help...nicely since the linux community (like me) are not paid to do so ...were happy to help that's all
So before you said idiot things like that (like always) remember that windows, mac and all other operating systems are not perfect and they do have their fair share of problems.
Of course, by "yes" I mean, "never had a prayer."
I love Linux. I have a great life thanks to Linux. But Linux on the desktop is complete shit and always has been. Especially now with Gnome 3, Unity and KDE 4 giving the finger to users and designing craptastic interfaces.
I'm using Cinnamon at the moment just for a semi usable desktop experience. XFCE is also good. But by and large, desktop environments on Linux are a disaster and it's only getting worse with Gnome pushing systemd on us and Fedora fucking everyone by forcing restarts all the damn time.
I'll stick to server OS's with crappy window managers that I can tweak myself from now on and keep a Mac around for anything desktop related I really want to do. I'm tired of fighting with the fucking desktop environment. I have real work to do.
Gnome devs and KDE devs pissed away promising interfaces and aren't even taking community feedback into consideration anymore. The best thing anyone says about these environments these days is "It's not as bad as it used to be." or "It doesn't crash every 15 minutes like it used to"
People like me moved to Linux because we were sick of Windows 95 crashing all the damn time. We laughed at Bill Gates when Windows 98 crashed during a live demo presentation to the world. Now suddenly we have desktop environments that are worse than 95/98 ever were and we're expected to stick around for this shit? Fuck no.
Wow! I've heard of trolls that write like they're 5, but never of one that writes like they're in-utero. Kudos, sir! You have raised the bar for everybody!
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
He goes on to explain how the user interfaces are becoming simpler while the functionality of the applications are increasing without an effective UI, increasing complexity of non-UI elements of applications, etc.
Yes. And it's a Good Thing (TM Some Slashdot guy).
UIs have gotten so complex that the learning curve of an application has gotten to be almost like a programming language.
Good Grief!
That's where Apple's current theme of KISS has been winning and F/OSS needs to keep up or get out of they want to "compete".
And how many of you Linux guys just chuck the UI and go for the command line because it's actually easier? *raises hand*
Go online, google the problem you want to solve, copy and paste the command line instruction and away we go!
UI? Bring up the instructions. Click on some menu item and then a sub menu item and then click on attributes" brings up dialog that has a bunch of tabs, GO to the tab that says Advanced. Click on button that says .... you get the idea.
I've have been working on a desktop app BUT I am making the UI like a phone/tablet/whatever app. Just two menu items and some entry fields.
That's all - and it's still too much!
UNIX once had this them of simple small apps to do one task. That's all the phone/portable/tablet guys are doing - aping the original UNIX paradigm. It wasn't until Mac (1980s - 1990s) and Windows that we got this UnHoly mess of overly complex applications and the subsequent UIs.
Fill in the blanks:
"Don't feed the ________".
Obvious ______ is obvious".
Yes, I love my Win7 laptops at home, but at work we're all still very comfortable running XP. I have less than no interest in adopting Win8, or even The Ribbon. Meeting increasing challenges of hardware, web standards, etc. is necessary (maybe,) but the thing that XP-7-8 has taught me is that needless complications are needless. Maybe it's time the open source community starts asking *why* a particular change is desirable or necessary to the userbase. (Are you listening, Mozilla???)
Honestly, probably 80% plus of my Word Processing work I could still do in WordPerfect 5.1, if only there were an OS that could handle it.
I figured this out on the day in 2003 when I first tried out OS X. I've been using LInux since 1995 and had tried every available desktop: CDE, KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment (The horror .. the horror ...), Window Maker/AfterStep, fvwm, and even older ones like Motif and twm. I'd used Mac OS 7 and 8 in college and hated it, but OS X was a revelation.
I still use Linux as a server, but for a Unixlike desktop that actually works and runs a lot of applications, OS X is it. Period.
screw off, Steve.
Getting FOSS developers to merge projects is like herding cats. The vast majority of it is ego driven, merging and potentially taking a backseat to someone else is rarely an options.
I swear there are a significant number of people here who think the answer is a flat out NO. And the rest of us are looking around at each other wondering if we should leave before we end up with a pet penguin to take care of.
Apart from drivers/compatibility issues, sucky desktops are what's keeping me away from Linux. Not only are they not very good in theory, they are mostly buggy and not.. play-tested. Honestly, the next-to-latest Unity, KDE, and Gnome were unholy horrors that, as a user, made me not only not want to use them, but also lose confidence in whatever governing bodies are driving features and validating code. My next Linux desktop will probably be lxde or xfce.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Two relevant sayings:
1) You can't fall off the floor
2) You can, however, hit rock bottom and continue to dig
maybe start his own window manager, i prefer the lightweight window managers and no longer use Gnome or KDE, and i dont even use XFCE anymore, i tend to bounce around between icewm, openbox, dwm, and sometimes windowmaker, yes windowmaker is not dead anymore it seems to have picked up active development again :)
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
"never were" -- competitive, or losing competitiveness?
Both. They never were competitive. You can't lose something you don't have, so they can't be losing competitiveness.
I meant to say the answer to the question in the summary, not your post. Sorry. So I'm saying it's not a serious question and that YES open-source desktops are losing. Now, what's the best marinade for a penguin?
I used a linux desktop for 7 years. I dutifully updated when any improvement was made.
Linux desktops were in my experience never competitive because they require too much technical knowledge. That is an obstacle easily overcome by technical types, but *not* the majority of the user population. It just isn't sustainable to say "Here, tinker, it's cool" to everybody - or more accurately ANYbody outside of technical folks who enjoy the work necessary to update one application or another. It's why many have grown tired of Windows. It's why OSX, with its draw backs, is becoming more popular - the user population at large want an experience that doesn't require at lot of work to keep working. imho.
I don't see there being a need for competition amond DE/WMs. Alot of people say "OS X is the best." Perhaps, but I want a system and a DE/WM for which there is no hegemony. I want to have a free license and the ability to customize how I like.
I use FOSS for a reason. It's not always "best" technologically, but it's best morally and free from hegemony, which these days is a dying thing. Supporting these small developers who make cool stuff is always a nice thing to do.
Am I the only one who loves KDE? I like the desktop. I like Dolphin. I think kio_slaves (if they are still called that) provide enormous out-of-the-box connectivity to nearly every remote system I need to connect to.
And KWrite rocks.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
What tinkering exactly?
What exactly does "a lot of work to keep working" actually mean beyond completely empty rhetoric.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Gnome 3, for all of its detractors, is pretty nice... but Windows file dialogs and shell explorer dialogs are simply miles ahead of it, and the gap seems to be widening. I mean, simple things like rename a file within a file save dialog, let alone copying files, seem to forever elude Linux desktops, and on Windows I take it for granted. Gnome has a pretty rough story when it comes to fonts, for sure.
And yes, not only is Windows 7's U/I more stable than Gnome 3 or KDE (would you like to send us a crash report ) 4, but Windows 8's latest preview is as well.
This is my sig.
KDE tries to be too much like Windows and actually does it. There are soooo many services, extensions, config files, dot directories (aka crap strewn all over the place) that it's simply become a bloated buggy mess. Gnome/Unity did some really strange and confusing things but in the end ended up being railroaded into the Mark Shuttleworth Agenda and is pretty much a tablet UI on a PC desktop now.
This is the evolution of FOSS. Things which start to suck tend to get replaced by things which suck less. The open source desktop isn't losing, it's just KDE has jumped the shark and Gnome (Unity) has gone insane. Two of the earliest game changers of the FOSS Desktop. Luckily, people with more time than I have saddled themselves with the task of changing what sucks (Thanks guys/gals) about these two Desktops and we've got some alternatives. You can't do that with Windows or Apple. You get only one and if it sucks, too bad. Buy the next version and hope.
PS: have a look at LXDE or Cinnamon for something similar, yet different.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Wow! I've heard of trolls that write like they're 5, but never of one that writes like they're in-utero. Kudos, sir! You have raised the bar for everybody!
Or lowered it to the floor, for the would-be limbo dancers.
Of course, it could have been Balmer. What else can he do for amusement on a non-monkey-dancing non-chair-throwing day?
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I used a linux desktop for 7 years. I dutifully updated when any improvement was made.
Linux desktops were in my experience never competitive because they require too much technical knowledge. That is an obstacle easily overcome by technical types, but *not* the majority of the user population. It just isn't sustainable to say "Here, tinker, it's cool" to everybody - or more accurately ANYbody outside of technical folks who enjoy the work necessary to update one application or another. It's why many have grown tired of Windows. It's why OSX, with its draw backs, is becoming more popular - the user population at large want an experience that doesn't require at lot of work to keep working. imho.
My KDE desktop worked great "out of the box". No tinkering required. However, tinkering is an option if you want to take that road. Gnome2 was the same way.
I wont comment on Unity or Gnome3 because I think they suck and won't use them.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I think it's a pity if FOSS desktops really feel the need to compete with Microsoft and Apple. Those companies need to keep "innovating" in order to drive sales of their latest products -- something that FOSS is unhindered by.
Instead of bounding towards some super-slick desktop nirvana, more emphasis should be given to settling on a familiar and stable working environment.
People are adaptable and they can be extremely productive using systems with which they have grown familiar.
The qwerty keyboard is nothing like the perfect layout, but it is familiar. Imagine if every time you upgraded your PC you were forced to learn the latest "ergonomic" keyboard layout. It may be progress, but I'm happy with what I've got thanks.
The same goes for desktop environments.
cwm(1) !
why would you need more? too used to the microsoft windows paradigm?
Like the herd of wandering drunken sailor-cats we call "open source developers" could agree on anything more meaningful than that the analog clock app should have a hundred dozen different skins so you can always find one you like.
/Rant over. ps, love you xfce, you saved me from the horror of kde4
Everyone critisizes the horrors of proprietary software development where some dumbshit schizophrenic customer jerks your chain around constantly and you can't actually write good code as a result. Or your idiot boss gives you half the time you would've needed to do it right at the start, then changes course halfway through and shaves several weeks off the due date along the way. Unfortunately the Linux desktop environments have gone the exact opposite way and it's just as bad - now with no one to make difficult decisions, we get horrible interfaces that stay horrible forever because there's no one to tell the developers (who of course don't see what's wrong with it, they fucking wrote it) "this piece of shit interface needs to be completely rewritten" and no one to make them actually do it, no matter how badly it needs to be done.
So you get these little groups, disconnected from reality, floating along in their own virtual stasis (try playing bzflag and suggest after a while that tanks should have hitpoints. Just try) having no idea that no one outside their little in-group who isn't a masochist can possibly use their programs. And just wait, I promise you I'll get a "Well you should be thankful for whatever they give you" response from the same group who complains so loudly that people don't use FOSS... Well which is it:: Do you want to do your own thing or do you want to write software people will use?
if they were, the headline would say Open Source Desktops Are Losing Competitiveness
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
Desktop environments in general are losing ground aren't they?
In favor of cloud-clients and tablet-specific os's, no?
Apologies for going slightly off topic, but I think I've a personal anwser to all this desktop dystopia discourse. Like a lot of others, I really liked gnome 2. And I find Unity and Gnome-Shell a step back (despite at least 5 months of perserverance). I've tried XFCE, and was planning on giving KDE and Cinnamon a good go, until I installed gnome-session-fallback in Ubuntu 12.04, which is, as far as my testing so far has seen, almost identical to gnome 2.
Is this a proper 'destop environment'. Is it even gnome3? Can it be used on other distros? Does it have a future?
I can at least anwser the last question, which is that from now on, it will be the 5-year future for anyone asking me to install linux on their computer.
Given that KDE and its applications are written in and married to C++ (and QT) I'm not surprised that few people want to contribute.
I know that C++ is the Big Thing and Right Thing in mainstream industry, but it is extremely complex with an enormous learning curve and huge demands on development resources, and developer time.
I, for one, certainly wouldn't contribute to a C++ project for fun. I only do it when I'm paid, and only if I can't avoid it.
Stick Men
create one new master desktop
That's the mistake. There is no one master desktop. Its like convincing a bunch of book authors instead of writing a bunch of pulp, they should all cooperate to write the one great american novel.
10000 religions all claiming the other 9999 are wrong? Eh, they should give it up and all cooperate on the one master religion. (with our luck, unrestrained crony capitalism?)
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Carbon Paper copies.
When signatures are required in triplicate all forms of printing that are not dot-matrix lose. This particular purpose is essentially the entire reason dot-matrix printers still exist.
It is hard to be competitive without funding... We need a yearly funding drive effort like NPR. The biggest problem (and strength?) is that we have a lot of duplicate solutions. We are a large fragmented democracy fighting a well-funding dictatorship with a great PR department. If only we could elect a leader for 2 years and unite against Apple and MS. The irony is that we can't beat them without becoming them...
I've run X11 since 1989. I started with TWM, then CTWM, then KDE.
KDE2. was great, KDE3 was fine, KDE4 is bloated. I don't care about eye candy. I don't care about UI guidelines thought up by some hipsters. I don't want widgets. I don't want spinning 3d cubes when I change workspaces. All I want is a desktop env. that works. What I care about:
- The ability to customize window the window manager enough to map Alt-mouse-1 to move, Alt-mouse-2 to resize and Alt-mouse-3 to iconify. These are hardwired in my brain after 23 years.
- The ability for the icon manager to work vertically, so I can stick it on the side of my workspace, rather than the top or bottom. Today's stupid widescreen monitors are too cramped vertically, and I begrudge any pixels taken away from my applications
- multiple desktops
- multiple monitor support
- no fancy GL stuff that screws up VLC or mplayer playing hardware accelerated video.
That's it. That's all. I could give a flying you now what about file managers, widgets, etc.
Probably, not having an installer for an application in your distribution's repos... non-techie is belly up. Maybe configuring video settings when your system isn't configured properly and the GUI's don't give you all the options... belly up again. Could be enabling TRIM support in the FSTAB vs. some automatic system or through a GUI... There are still a lot of things you need to do from time to time in an OS that aren't offered up in a GUI (that actually works as you would expect) in Linux. Sure, a lot more are now than used to be, but there are still a lot that are not.
Some 10 years ago, the Linux desktop was The Challenger. The first alternative to Microsoft. The cool OS to use for all the cool tech headed people. All people I knew working in academic research in 'hard science' fields used Linux.
That moment is gone.
All the younger cool tech-headed kids I know use Macs. Most people that I know that used Linux in the late 90's early 2000 years have migrated to Mac computers. Actually I can say that with one or two exceptions everyone migrated to Macs.
[...]
Personal annecdote:
Started using Linux in 1995. Worked as a Linux sysadmin when I was a student. Use Android phones and installed OpenWrt in my router (previous one ran Tomato). Own a Linux NAS (Debian based). I have a LWN.net subscription. My work computer runs RHEL. My parents computer (I bought it and maintain it), runs Ubuntu.
When my wife needed a new laptop, I bought her a MacBook Air. Not a chance I would inflict Gnome/KDE/Whatever on her.
I have a kid, little spare time and a fair amount of disposable income.
With the Linux desktop:
- Do I have a polished, easy to use, easily discoverable video editor? No.
- Polished, high quality photographic manager and processor for Linux (Like say, Adobe Lightroom)? No.
- Something easy to use for creating good looking family photo albums for printing? No.
- Decent priced PDF editor for filling in PDF files? No. (sorry, I am not buying Acrobat for that).
- Does my kick-ass Lenovo work laptop running certified RHEL has the fan on at all times? Yes.
If I went out of my way to find sort-of-good-enough alternatives for these things, could I do it? Probably.
Do I want to spend my time doing that? No.
The question on my mind right now, is which configuration of the new Retina MacBook Pro to order.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "competitive". For me, KDE used to be the best desktop experience available, under any OS. That changed with the 4.x series -- now KDE has degraded to the point where it is not substantially better than Windows or Mac. So in my view, KDE has indeed become less competitive.
Another excellent way to shoot yourself in your foot with a distro is to install some stuff outside the distro by hand. Especially major components and libraries. A disaster waiting to happen for old well disciplined hands, hopeless for noobs.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I dabbled in Linux for awhile, then switched full time to Ubuntu some years back. I wanted to run some specific games and switched to Windows 7 for awhile, until the hard drive crashed and am now back on the latest Ubuntu. I went from Unity to plain Gnome3 and now am on Cinnamon. And yes, I think the open source desktops are losing competitiveness. I personally think at this point in time OSX is the only one keeping things together. Windows 7 is actually very nice but Windows 8 looks like a train wreck. But for Linux it seems like your choices of desktop environments are either stuck in Win95-era or prior feel, or you have a "modern" DE that's half-assed at best and takes a ton of work to make it usable.
Speaking mostly for Gnome, but the colors, themes, icons...they always feel like they're missing that extra polish or something that you get from the commercial OSes. Everything just feels...clumsy. It may work, but it just isn't polished. And while I appreciate pushing new innovations both Unity and Gnome3 seem to be halfway there at best, leaving sort of mostly working setups.
Thing is, with Compiz and the wobbly windows stuff, it actually looked pretty sharp. Honestly, I think the more things I try the less I know what I want, just that what I have isn't exactly what I'm looking for!
Just my $.02.
I haven't seen anyone mention Enlightenment. Enlightenment is pretty good. It's quick, pretty, and themes are streamlined only requiring one file.
Try installing new hardware without doing your homework to make sure chipsets are supported or at least work-around-able. That's what "a lot of work to keep working" means to me. Windows? You could find a driver for a USB-powered Twizzler.
Linux desktops were in my experience never competitive because they require too much technical knowledge. That is an obstacle easily overcome by technical types, but *not* the majority of the user population.
Am I the only one who doesn't see that as a problem?
Average users who don't want to learn new things about their systems are already well represented. They have several good options. What's so wrong with an OS for those who like learning and want to understand how the system works?
As a long-time Linux user, why would I feel a need for the masses to join me? I'm fine with people choosing what suits them best. I don't need them to choose what I choose. I like the choices I made in a way that doesn't depend on what someone else does.
Linux already has what it needs: enough of a userbase that there is active development and the attention of various companies which can contribute. I don't want it to become so thoroughly obscure as to lose that, because that is a good thing. I for one feel no need to "beat Microsoft", as though popularity indicated quality. Anyone who has seriously considered that question has already observed that it frequently indicates the opposite.
Why does Linux need tons of non-technical users who are unlikely to appreciate and understand the Open Source ethic? So that companies will include Linux drivers by default with hardware you buy? I've personally never had problems getting hardware to work, but then the correct way to do this is to match the hardware to the OS. Doing that, I found I had a very wide selection of hardware covering a large range of prices and capabilities. If that's what drives the desire to "go mainstream" more than Linux already has, it seems designed to solve what is not actually a problem. If that's not what drives this urge, then what does?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Oblig:
http://xkcd.com/927/
I actually came back to Linux under this Gnome 3 controversy and really don't mind it. The reactions to this post are as predictable as the post itself, a developer gets sick of providing something for nothing and has a public rage-quit, the self-hating Linux users cry out "why do people hate Linux".
None of it is true!
I formatted my Windows 7 laptop and joyfully have Ubuntu 12.04 on it. My son's Window 7 netbook was running slow and as an experiment I put Ubuntu 12.04 on that , he loves it. He has less problems than he did under Windows 7. Everyone is accustomed to an "app store" in their phones and Linux is the only OS out there that really has the same type of resource.
There has never been a better time for Linux on the desktop! With Windows 8 about to mess everyone up and a leaderless Apple (let's face it)... Ubuntu, Mint and a dozen other distros are fantastic! Ausus' latest EeePc netbook is currently shipping with Ubuntu because of Windows 8 being a mess.
Linux on the desktop is the best option right now.
Fill in the blanks:
"Don't feed the ____seagulls____".
Obvious __George____ is obvious".
you can't lose what you've never had.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I don't need a searchable desktop or any other of the amazing abilities of KDE. I just want something that works fast. The people building KDE are divorced from reality, and I don't blame the article's author for throwing in the towel, even if for the wrong reasons.
I think Soulskill might be looking for a word like uncompetitive. Just a thought.
Pedantry aside, what does being competitive have to do with anything? The big pull of Linux is that you can roll your own. Why does open source have to meet this arbitrary yardstick set by large for-profit companies? Surely the point is that you develop whatever suits your needs, and then share it. It doesn't matter whether it's competitive. Everyone's needs are different after all. Hell, even Window Maker is still around and kicking. Is that a bad thing?
Dolphin 2.1 will be released as part of KDE applications 4.9 on the first of August and to me this is a very special release: After 6 years of development, around 2700 commits and a lot of fun I'll be forwarding the maintainership to Frank Reininghaus. Frank did a great job during the last years to improve Dolphin and I'm really glad that he accepted the maintainership.
For me forwarding the maintainership also means that I won't provide any bugfixes or features for Dolphin anymore. Probably this step is quite surprising for most readers and I think I owe an explanation. Before going into details it might be useful to first describe the reasons for developing Dolphin at all.
THE FIRST STEPS
At the beginning of 2006 I wanted to gain some experience with Qt and I've been looking for a small project. I liked the functionality of Konqueror but was not happy with the user interface - I thought that writing a small and fast file manager fitting just for my own needs and to learn Qt should not be that hard (if somebody would have told me that I'll be spending at least 6 years on this project I probably would have given up immediately). Thanks to some great classes in kdelibs I was able to browse through directories only a few hours later and my (wrong) assumption "this should not be that hard" got tightened.
Around mid of 2006 I've released the 0.5 version of Dolphin at kde-apps.org. Making a long story short: Matthias Ettrich called me and asked whether I want to help contributing to the filemanager for KDE 4.0. David Faure was very busy with porting parts of kdelibs to that time and more interested in doing the tricky and challenging parts instead of the "boring user interface programming" (I cannot remember anymore the exact words Matthias has used, but it was something like this). Well, suddenly I was part of the KDE community, got great support from Aaron J. Seigo and it started to get a great experience for me to contribute to such a large project. Learning Qt was secondary then, it was more about learning how the whole development for such a big project works and how decisions are made.
It is quite interesting to compare a screenshot from Dolphin 6 years ago to the recent version:
WHAT HAS CHANGED SINCE THEN?
The KDE community is still great and there are enough things left to make Dolphin better, so what has changed since then for me?
One thing is that the time required to keep Dolphin in good shape increased during the last years. I'm doing this project in my spare-time and usually have spend around one evening per week on Dolphin. Especially during the last 2 years this time has increased. In the longterm especially the (for me absolutely necessary) step to port Dolphin to QtQuick2 is something I won't be able to do within a sane timeframe. The interesting thing is that porting the new view-engine to QtQuick2 is probably the easiest part: There is a clean seperation of the representation and the model and exchanging the representation should be doable within a reasonable amount of time. I guess with Qt 5.1 or 5.2 (I don't know) there will be desktop-components for QtQuick2 and porting Dolphin to this components will be a very timeconsuming and boring task: All the settings-pages, the URL-navigator, the information-panel, the search-interface, the tooltips, ... - this is just not doable anymore in my spare-time.
Of course you might ask whether a port to QtQuick2 is really necessary. But to me in the scope of KDE QtQuick2 is the only solution to be able to compete with the other big desktop environments out there in terms of a responsive and beautiful interface.
So would it help if other developers would join the Dolphin project and take care for doing the QtQuick2 port? Sadly for me this still would not be enough to keep on maintaining Dolphin, as there is another reason to quit contributing: I'm using KDE since version 1.2 and I never cared what market share KDE or Linux on the desktop has. However to me it was important t
Linux is not for the lazy....plain and simple. It's for people that when they have a problem, they can use their brain cells, observe the problem and try to solve it, if it doesn't work, they ask for help...nicely since the linux community (like me) are not paid to do so ...were happy to help that's all
I very much respect and appreciate the concept that the more I am willing to put into something, the more I will get out of it. That's about as fair and equitable as it gets. In fact I wish more things in life worked that way.
You're right about laziness. This topic just provides an illustration, a focal point for a more general and unfortunate trend. In the USA there is definitely an anti-intellectual, passive, back-seat way of life that's become popular. It's somehow cool to be ignorant, helpless, and intellectually lazy. Lots of people will validate it. The guy who says you could expect better of yourself is somehow an asshole, I guess for telling you that you're more capable than you know, for not supporting the culture of self-limitation.
The message that you can not only understand, but also master, anything you put your mind to is more unwelcome now than it ever has been. I suppose because people love having excuses for why they can't do something, and this message threatens (to them) to take those excuses away. If you were younger and worked a service-type job where you had to deal with the general public, you know precisely how helpless adult people choose to be. They will ask you where something is when they're standing right in front of it, because crying for help is easy while observing what's in plain view is harder (for them). I could name countless examples like that.
I could say I make at least a small effort to help myself and only when that fails do I look for help from others because I don't secretly my time is more precious to me than someone else's time is to them, like the childish self-centered people do. But that's only the surface of it. Look at bit deeper and what you will see are people who are their own worst enemies, who limit themselves needlessly, and think you're launching a personal attack when you suggest however politely that they don't have to. They're very sensitive about it because they know it won't withstand examination. Somehow that's not reason enough to change it, for them.
This amounts to large numbers of passive, helpless people who are forever denied the discovery of their own personal genius. It's a nuisance but more than that, it's quite a tragedy.
Computing just brings it into the foreground because it's a machine. It won't humor or coddle someone. It won't work just to make someone feel better. It only works when it's used correctly. That's precisely where the anti-intellectualism runs into problems.
So before you said idiot things like that (like always) remember that windows, mac and all other operating systems are not perfect and they do have their fair share of problems.
They certainly do. There are lots of Windows problems and Windows forums. Windows isn't the automatic slam-dunk of usability that some might claim. You still have to learn how to use it. With Windows there is at least some expectation that you should get some support because you have purchased it, but average home users probably aren't getting this from Microsoft. They are probably going to the OEM, or paying a local computer shop.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Linux will always be behind for this reason. Noble ideals and good intentions will only get you so far when money makes the world go 'round.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
By competitiveness I assume you mean "crappier with every release", which seems to be the philosophy driving Windows, GNOME, Unity and KDE development. Apple are slowly heading that way too (did you get media with your OSX Lion? No? Okay, then how to install xcode? With iTunes? wtf?).
At present the usable desktops seem to be XFCE and LXDE with efforts from the likes of Cinnamon and MATE for as long as they're around.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
My KDE desktop worked great "out of the box". No tinkering required. However, tinkering is an option if you want to take that road.
No, tinkering is what you end up with when things don't work as expected. Small things like my side mouse buttons not working, or the wifi actually being supported but requiring a very bleeding edge kernel, the sound volume resetting to 0 on every reboot, the upgrade process failing and all sorts of little shitty things I've had to deal with. And the KDE launch bar has crashed on me more times than Windows explorer has. And I've done the distro/version/reinstall merry-go-round as people insist it must be my borked distro/version/install that is the problem only to find it's a great waste of time as they all have different bugs. At best you solved one bug and got one new, at worst it solved nothing and gave you two more.
I still hear that now, that the next version that came six months after I left for Windows 7 fixed everything and now it's all good. Except I heard that being repeated 6-7 times for the 3.5 years I ran Linux and it was never true, why should I believe it now? It's been cried wolf too many times for me to believe in. I'm not sure I like where Windows and OS X is going, last time I switched from Windows XP to Linux over Vista. But this time I'm not switching again, it's more the "You can wipe Win7 from my computer over my cold, dead body" style. And hope that somebody comes to their senses, but I'm not betting on it being the OSS crowd. I am considering Android though, but it's not exactly run by the community.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
fhdfgh
That's a fascinating insight.
As for me, I'm just going to sit back and watch the fallout. This is gonna be fun.
That's not "keeping it going". That's tinkering.
If you don't bother to know what you are buying, you can end up with a lemon. The fact that you are running Windows doesn't alter this. Stuff still needs to be fit for your purposes, reliable, and fast enough.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
For me the Linux desktops were competitive with windows and Mac until 2005 or so when spotlight desktop search came along (followed by its windows counterpart). In GNOME (and hence in Ubuntu) there was never* a stable, solid search function that would search inside all file types and index the results for instant retrieval. For me that is now the primary way I navigate the OS, and it wasn't until 2012 that Ubuntu had anything even remotely similar (and I don't think that searches inside files instantly yet).
So yes, Desktop search was the killer function that Linux could never get working quite right. I could have totally put up with a lack of prettiness, but the desktop search mess was what made it clear to me that windows and Mac had surpassed the Linux desktops in terms of relevancy of goals for the non-immature power user. Yes the kernel rocks but GNOME and KDE lack a philosophically mature developer base.
*yes yes I know about beagle tracker google desktop and all that. These have always been in various states of disfunction or non-support and are frankly a mess.
Am I the only one who doesn't see that as a problem?
No, you're not alone. Fortunately for many linux users.
Average users who don't want to learn new things about their systems are already well represented. They have several good options. What's so wrong with an OS for those who like learning and want to understand how the system works?
That's exactly what I say to many people: If you are comfortable with their current desktop, don't switch, because you will finish trying to mimic things. Linux desktops are not for everybody, but for people who enjoy to learn and understand things in deep. If you don't like to learn, linux is not for you, period. For me, linux has been a fantastic learning experience for almost 10 years. Not only linux itself, but many technical details about software, algorithms, hardware low level protocols, and a huge list of interesting things. What's the problem with an OS that motivates that?
The GUI's not having all of the options is not a problem limited to Linux. A cursory search of enabling TRIM in Windows and MacOS quickly led me to references for command line tools.
The last time I looked into enabling GPU video decoding in Windows, the instructions weren't for the faint of heart either.
Everyone assumes that there's never any problems with Windows or even MacOS and it's all some idealistic fantasy. It isn't necessarily.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Average users who don't want to learn new things about their systems are already well represented. They have several good options. What's so wrong with an OS for those who like learning and want to understand how the system works?
Being technical and "learn new things about their system" are two different things. I have a graduate degree in A.I. and spent 15+ years as a programmer, but right now I spend my free time learning statistical techniques and tools and don't really want to futz with my system UI. MacOS X provides an aesthetically-pleasing and well-designed UI, and lets me plunge into the command line to compile open source tools, too. I can focus on learning what I need to learn to do what I want to do.
You have to carefully define "system" and what parts of that system you feel are beneficial to learn new things about and what parts you simply want to work well.
Yeah, Dolphin kinda sucks. Konqueror was a much better file manager, flawed and over-complicated though it might have been. Sadly enough, the best file manager on the market will be Windows Explorer, when Win8 is released. They have done some upgrades and finally it's as good as File Manager was, back in the Win3.1 era.
However, so are the commercial alternatives.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
[Citation needed], I've been looking for a USB-powered Twizzler for ages!!
I think that part of the underlying problem with GNOME and KDE is that they are vertical, and because they are vertical, they have grown to be too big and too bloated.
Each environment (and now, each major version of each) has its own manager, handler or subsystem for this or that and they are all interconnected -- but only within the same desktop environment.
What I think that the Linux desktop world needs is to go back to what people used to call the Unix philosophy: more small programs where each program does less, but does it well. One of the best things with Open Source used to be that there was breadth: there were many different window managers, tools and utilities out there to choose from to use on your desktop, and if one did not work well for you, you could find another one on freecode.com to try.
What I hear (read) about new versions of GNOME and KDE is that new versions are broken in one way or another. A new menu system is not as easy to use, or a feature that used to work in the previous system is broken or not implemented. Well ... it should be a simple matter of reverting to the previous version of that program and it should still work. People should be able to mix and match the best program launchers and managers from both Gnome and KDE.. But sadly, that is not the case. The developers are instead trying to make the next MacOS X, Windows Metro, or whatever from the ground up.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
My KDE desktop worked great "out of the box". No tinkering required.
That's funny, because just yesterday I installed Linux Mint 12 KDE edition (KDE 4.7.x) and found that there was definitely some tinkering required out of the box. The most recent annoying thing I bumped into a few minutes ago was having to dig and search through Dolphin to find the screen where I have the option of adding the Configure Dolphin button to the toolbar, so that I then can click OK, and then click the Configure Dolphin button to configure it. Only to find the configuration option I wanted does not exist, because this is a half assed joke of a file manager.
I hate windows, osx, kde and gnome. I use exactly the same ratpoison setup on my laptop and on my desktop. Its not for everyone, but i think the core principle of having an window manager that is almost invisible could be taken MUCH further, and provide a great window manager that techs and non-techs would be happy using. People dont actually need to USE a window manager, they need to use their applications, the WM is just the middleman. The problem is that a gutted out highly optimised WM is not be very desireable to the majority. They dont pick WM because they are easy to use, they pick largely based on 'bling' (if people see my windows flipping about doing summersaults they will think I am l33t h@x0r!!). So perhaps they get the WM's they deserve.
Open source desktops certainly aren't loosing. They have grabbed a solid userbase, however; many of the features only found in open source solutions are now being implemented in the commercial ones. In the case of like Windows vs Early KDE / Gnome, KDE/Gnome both had many features and control that was completely nonexistant or not as powerful. Over the years windows and other commercial systems have adopted many of the features that the open source community has thrown into its own software. This hasnt hurt the open source desktops but they dont have as much appeal as they used to if your looking for something thats just mindblowingly awesomer than windows.
http://interserver.net/
Huh? 2-year-old kids and 86-year-old grandmothers effortlessly use Linux Mint!
Of course! It's the 30 year old professionals who have problems with it.
Source: I used a Linux desktop exclusively for over a decade. Even bought a Dell Ubuntu laptop at a ridiculously high price. Linux is not and likely will never be ready for the desktop, at least not with KDE, Gnome, or any of the present distros. Linux needs a reboot, by an organization that actually knows WTF it's doing. Until then I'll stick with Windows 7, thanks.
...are Microsoft, Apple, GNOME (GNOME3 and Unity), and others copying KDE 4.x? KDE is leading the edge of desktop development right now.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
My computer is a tool. I have no desire to spend any intellectual energy whatsoever in making my computer work. I have work to do, both at work and at home, and I would prefer my computer simply never stand in the way of getting that work done. (At work, my job is protocol-level network equipment diagnostics, at home it's your typical surf, e-mail, light office work, games, etc.)
Just like I am mostly ignorant of the metallurgy and exact mechanical parts of the torque wrench I used to change out my brakes today, I have no need nor desire to understand the inner workings of my operating system. I understand the knowledge I require to do my job, just as I understand how brake calipers, pads, fluid, and rotors interact to stop my car. Knowing the secrets of torque wrench construction or OS operation is not something I have or want. While knowledge is a good thing, I have limited hours in my day, and do not have time to learn everything.
To be blunt, I have better things to do with my time than to use it making my computer work properly. I spend all day, every work day, making enterprise computer equipment work, and I do not want to dedicate any resources there, or at home, making my personal computers work properly also. For all its many faults, Windows works well enough to get my jobs done. Linux, with the tweaking, endless GUI "wars" (HOW long has the Gnome vs. KDE thing been going on?), driver morass, and stacks 'o Googling required for general operations, does not. The cheap Windows laptop I'm typing this on has never required more than occasional reboots for updates or crankiness. It has not required one iota of tweaking or a single download of some obscure driver or utility, nor the editing of a single configuration file, to make it work.
There is nothing wrong whatsoever to wanting something to "just work." Knowing HOW it works can be a valuable and enlightening process (there is a reason I have a degree in Computer Engineering, and I DO largely know how it works on a low level), but it should never be required, unless it is your job.
X and the current event subsystem designs render all that is built upon them uncompetitive in the current climate. We need a new graphics layer optimised for local graphics, with remote stuff added via a different layer. Much novel stuff can be done with events handling from devices. But so long as we stick doggedly with X, that won't happen. We need to move on, and have needed to do so for a decade or so.
John_Chalisque
... just looks like an asshole.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
Am I the only one who doesn't see that as a problem?
No, but there are a lot of Microsoft astroturfers in this thread.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Don't forget daisy wheel printers. (o;
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Should an editor who headlines an article with a question mark be impaled with a pine cone?
Just asking a question.
--
BMO
No, tinkering is what you end up with when things don't work as expected. Small things like my side mouse buttons not working, or the wifi actually being supported but requiring a very bleeding edge kernel... ...the lack of virtual desktops, the lack of window shading, the lack of built in ssh, the lack of filesystems in user space, the lack software repositories and all sorts of shitty little things I've had to deal with.
Windows is no better than Linux in regards to the amount of tinkering you have to do to get a usable system.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
And continues as Haiku.
http://haiku-os.org/
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Compete with what? Did anyone notice that about 1/4 or 1/3 of all computer users still use XP? So XP is still "competitive", whatever that means. Large part of the remaining users will run whatever is installed on the computer they buy regardless of how "modern" the UI is. Most people are using the computer to do something else than play around with their desktop. Just because a few geeks apparently can't work without wobbly windows and new window decorations every week, doesn't mean that the rest of humanity cares about those things too.
Everybody is always switching over to the mac for the past 10 years or so. One would think that over that time period, somebody would have actually switched over.
BTW, does anyone else feel like "modern" is such a stupid concept? Modern doesn't mean good. Modern doesn't mean better. It simply means different from before. I don't want a "modern" desktop. I want one that works well enough so that I can happily totally ignore it and get on with whatever I actually want to do.
I worked on the overhaul of a marine vessel a couple years ago. Going in for the log printers were brand new Okidata dot matrix printers WITH USB capability.
What's the alternative? Apple has limitations; some technical, but mostly philosophical, that ensure they won't cannibalize the Linux world. Microsoft and Linux are still miles apart on both technical and philosophical aspects. Where are the Linux users going to go?
The pox on both your houses, KDE and GNOME. I run ICEWM with my most-commonly-used apps in the launch bar. KDE jumped the shark when Kmail started requiring an effing SQL database!!! KDE and GNOME have the Microsoft disease... every year or two "everything you know is wrong". You have to unlearn navigating/using the desktop and learn a whole new paradigm. Having *ONE* learning curve to get into linux is bad enough. Having to repeat it every 18 months is insane.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Thanks to X, you can kill the desktop, window-manager and taskbar, and start another WM/DE without even closing your applications. X makes this really easy. (For example, "metacity --replace").
Fortunately, you don't have to stick with a single DE. For example, start with xfce (window manager and panel), then mix-and match GTK/QT/other applications (kwrite + firefox + vlc), add extra services (xscreensaver), and configure the rest with xbindkeys/xinput/xmodmap. All window-managers work the same way (you can even script with devilspie). Most panel applets are interchangeable.
But I do wish that the desktop developers would get version N working perfectly and polished before starting to work on version N+1 (which is completely unrelated).
We're talking about two different things, you're talking about functionality I'm talking about the functionality actually functioning as intended. If you want me to start listing all the things Linux doesn't have like 98% of the games, ms office, photoshop etc. I think you'll agree that cuts both ways. Of course the mantra has been repeated often enough that many eyes make all bugs shallow but I find that's only true for code with a high eyeball/LoC ratio. Many projects are happy to have a developer working on it at all so beggars can't be choosers when it comes to code quality, while in closed source shops you typically have some forced review.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
So, I'm a software developer, ex-Asterisk Administrator, like tinkering, and am more than capable of using a Linux desktop, and I prefer Windows. It's not because I am "lazy", but I feel like a lot of Linux lovers think that. It's just that text based OS configuration, command line scripts, and archaic help files aren't my particular brand of fun. I don't enjoy tinkering with that, I would rather do other things. I use my computers to do things, and I'd rather not waste time trying to get my sound card to work. Even if, in the end, after all the tinkering, I get a marginally better experience, it's not worth the time for me. I want my computer to browse the internet, do some light image manipulation (Paint.NET is what I use), listen to music, and run an IDE. Windows makes that easy for me. Linux may or may not.
It's not laziness, or not wanting to learn. It's that I don't care what is running behind the scenes. Even if Linux is the best, it's not leaps and bounds better to be worth the effort.
Average users who don't want to learn new things about their systems are already well represented. They have several good options. What's so wrong with an OS for those who like learning and want to understand how the system works?
Being technical and "learn new things about their system" are two different things. I have a graduate degree in A.I. and spent 15+ years as a programmer, but right now I spend my free time learning statistical techniques and tools and don't really want to futz with my system UI. MacOS X provides an aesthetically-pleasing and well-designed UI, and lets me plunge into the command line to compile open source tools, too. I can focus on learning what I need to learn to do what I want to do.
You have to carefully define "system" and what parts of that system you feel are beneficial to learn new things about and what parts you simply want to work well.
Ah but for me that's so simple. Any chance to learn something I didn't previously understand is beneficial. Even if there is no immediate, pressing, pragmatic need for it, I still get to learn new things and expand my capabilities. There is a joy of discovery that does not lend itself to the usual monetary methods of assessing value. It's something I really appreciate.
For others who do not appreciate this, I consider that their loss. Many things that would be enjoyable for me resemble pitched battle for them, mostly because they resent having to deal with it. That's their choice, and they must freely choose just as I did.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I never liked Dolphin and had hoped that with Webkit, Konqueror would get a new lease on life via backports and inspiration from it's children, but sadly not.
As a long-time Linux user, why would I feel a need for the masses to join me?
Because it is a hell of a lot easier to draw money and talent to the development of client applications --- programs ---- that have a reasonable prospect of running on the systems used by 99% of their potential market.
I had a daisy wheel printer through high school and college because I couldn't afford a laser printer, and dot matrix print was not accepted. In some cases, the use of a computer was "not allowed", but how can you tell the difference between what is typed and what comes off a daisy wheel unless variable spacing is used?
I even wrote software that would use the period and micro-spacing to generate headline fonts and line graphics. It was slow and hard on ribbons, but it worked.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Betteridge's Law of Headlines is an adage that states, "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'".
And so it is with this article. Must be a slow news day, or perhaps the slashdot editors are desperate for a few extra clicks, and they knew all the paid Microsoft shills and OSX fanbois would dutifully come out and talk about how much teh Linux desktop sux0rs.
The Linux desktop is doing just fine, thank you. Innumerable satisfied users use it every day to get things done. So quit your whining.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
KDE3 is alive and well in the Trinity project: http://www.trinitydesktop.org/
"That's either incredibly asinine or the most brilliant troll I've ever read. Not sure which." -Anonymous Coward
I have done this for 10 years. I started with KDE1 through 4. And nothing got ever better. Whatever distro I used, and whatever version of KDE. It is just a big mess.
While OS X might have take some stuff away, in the grand picture it just works, and at some point you just want it to work and get that stuff done, that you need to get done.
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
Open source's character is fundamentally at odds with the precepts exemplified by Apple. The Open Source movement is one of, by, and for developers -- programmers who primarily want to make things easier on themselves by developing rad tools. On the other hand, Apple's philosophy has always been "make it hard on the programmers, to make it easy on the users". The APIs are highly abstracted, the human interface guidelines are extremely complex and precise, and the walled garden concept is taking it all to the next level.
I'm inclined to believe that each side has its merits and drawbacks, and that neither is the overall better choice in any universal sense. With that said, I'm glad there's as much competition at the OS level as we have these days.
As a long time linux user, I lost interest in KDE almost from the very beginning. I totally agree that KDE is unnecessarily complicated. I am going the route like KDE->gnome->openbox->dwm. Now I am very satisfied with dwm with dmenu and no interest in microsoft and apple at all.
Parent needs to be modded up. Marketshare/mindshare reliably attracts developer talent. Without the majority of non-technical people wanting to use linux, there is less incentive for people to want to develop applications for the platform. This is why multi-platform (meaning good Windows and OS X ports, not just the OSS *nixes) desktop applications exceed in quality and design the rest of the apps stuck on minority platforms.
Well, there is GIMP and Krita and a lot of other things that blow MSPaint out of the water, there is a pretty standard NetworkManager which is lightyears better than the Windows GUI for networking, there is a huge potential for configuration in KDE, going from the style of Win7 to mac to classic desktop to gnome, and most of the bloat (E.g. semantic desktop, akonadi, etc.) can and should be switched off.
Frankly saying, yes, Windows is the lowest common denominator, everything works under it. But don't you dare say that it doesn't suck. DLink WIFI adapters suck a magnitude more under Windows because of the unstable user interface. Your electric shaver may require a kitchen sink of a driver to work. Non-UVC cameras under Win7 are a nightmare. I have kind of determined that, if something works without much hassle in Linux, it probably works better in Windows too.
No, I don't think you're the only one. In fact yours in one of the few reasonable and sane posts. I think the worry is that the Linux Desktop will fade away unless it keeps up.
What is sad is that I really don't care anymore. I used to keep up with Linux and FOSS using Fink on OSX. And, sitting there, with them side by side, made is so clear how I didn't want to keep using FOSS. I could go on about how this or that sucked. Maybe they did or maybe they didn't. The point is, when I wanted to do something, I didn't choose FOSS.
a) I'm using Fedora 16 with KDE4 on 3 different laptops, one is a Asus Nettop. From my wife or the friend of my wife I do not get any complains. If I look to my friends with Windows 7 how sluggish their desktop is I feel only pity and sadness. At the same time Oxygen looks sexy and stylish compared to anything I saw from Microsoft or Apple or other desktops.
b) I'm using present all desktops and present all windows in a regular basis. Also the switch windows in a sexy and fast cower switch. It is fast, it is very useful. If you want it fast, just set Animation Speed: Instant in Desktop Effects. I don't like any animations, so yet again I'm very very glad that KDE lets me disable them.
c) I can define shortcuts for any KDE application in a central way as well as for KWin. Alt+Tab to switch windows, Win+Tab to switch desktops, Win+Left/Right/Top/Bottom to go to the desktops. Win+V for Klipper, Amarok Key Bindings, etc. Easy set the caps lock key as an extra Ctrl key.
d) I can Keep Above Others for any windows, set transparency, KDE has a smart window placement. I can set what window go to what monitor or desktop. I can show a window on all desktops.
e) Kate, KWrite, Amarok, Kile, Dolphin, and many more. No other desktop or system have them and I miss them because no other is feature complete and useful and sexy and sleek as them.
For me KDE4 is light years ahead of other systems or desktops and probably will be always my number one choice. Of course it would be better if some commercial entity would pick up KDE and deliver a good desktop experience. But now all they do is this smartphone and tablets nonsense like Unity and Gnome3. Like the multi-billion PC and laptop market disappeared or will disappear in 5 years. But of course the entry in the desktop market is so much harder, thanks to the Microsoft stranglehold.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
Frankly, I love my Linux desktops better than any Mac or Windows nonsense. I find Windows's gui insanely bad and frustratingly limited. You guys who don't like 'em can go away if you like, no one will miss you anyway. I like all of them, Unity, Gnome3 and KDE4 just fine. I think they are different but all great in their own ways. Gnome3 and Unity might not be popular with some people but they are innovative. Whether you like that innovation or not is your own opinion.
KDE4 gets solidly better and better with each release. So some Dolphin developer decides to throw a hissy fit and leave, honestly, whatever. I personally have not seen this great exodus of Linux users to OSX, nor do I hear "normal" non-fanboi people fawn over OSX all that much.
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."
like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaqY3C7to4U ?
So... what remains is the desktop, not enough..
For me, Windows requires far more tinkering than Linux (yes, with KDE as win manager). Both during install and simple day-to-day maintenance.
Examples:
- My drawing tablet acted was very wonky without doing some really obscure registry editing. Sketching short strokes rapidly would cause its input to stutter, making it completely unusable. Not so under LInux, where it worked out of the box. Without digging out an old forgotten disc somewhere or digging through some company's stupidly designed site in search of the drivers.
- Tethering my phone required installing some awful crapware manager program, that pops up a tonne of useless little notifications and insists on starting every time I start the computer. Under Linux, I just plugged in my phone and it was automatically detected as a 3G modem and worked flawlessly after selecting my operator.
- More generally, when buying a new peripheral, it's always a fucking inconvenience under Windows, with having to install drivers from disc or by download, crapware manager programs, non-standard interfaces, yet another icon in the tray, and so on. Meanwhile, most of the time things just work for me under Linux, using the window manager default means of doing so (cameras and phones appearing more or less like mass storage devices even when their idiot manufacturer designed them otherwise, for instance). Sure, I spend a bit of time before buying things to make sure they work, but I spend a lot longer researching their other capabilities, price, performance, and so on. The compatibility research time is insignificant compared to the overall research time.
- Keeping software up to date is a pain in Windows. Sure, many third party program run some kind of update manager/service, but every time you start the computer every last one pops up and shouts at you. Or else they do so when you launch the program. Then there's the host of applications that don't update at all, except manually. This situation is nowhere near comparable to a package manager, it's just so retardedly behind. (Some of MS's own software and a few drivers do a better job here, allowing themselves to be kept up to date by Windows Update. But then, Windows Update is really obnoxious in and of itself, nagging at you to restart all the time or even outright restarting without asking permission -- yes, that has happened on multiple occasions, once even while I was in the middle of a bloody game!).
- Considerably more frequent crashes, and much "harder" ones at that. I can't recall when last I had to restart my under Linux due to a crash, but I can recall when I had to with Windows. This is quite consistent across the computers I use (two at work and two at home, of which three either dual boot or run Windows in a VM).
And don't get me started on the stupid UI. No virtual desktops. Can't mouse scroll in a window without giving it focus. Absolutely horrible command line. No tabs or split views in default file manager. Only brings out the top window of an application group if clicked in the taskbar (the reason I clicked the grouped icon was because I wanted the damn group, not whichever one happened to have focus last). I can go on, but I think I've made my point.
Though in the end, it is just as anecdotal as yours, and probably won't convince anyone of anything anyway.
I have been using Linux since years of Caldera (i think it was year 96) continiously. I have administated dozens of Red Hat boxes for more than a decade, and developed web apps on it.
By far, by removing a million theme options and a lot of unnecessary code, I actually believe only Ubuntu 12.04 Unity come very close to making Linux usable alternative on desktop.
Perhaps that old joke, Year of Linux desktop, is very close.
Gnome 3 and Unity are two of the most breathtakingly BAD user interfaces I've ever seen. They're not just different, they're a disaster. They destroy decades of workflow and cognitive task mapping for -- well, nothing. They're clumsy. I'd add FireFox to this, too. Why does FireFox shuffle menus that have been the same for a decade? These user interface disasters are just change for no reason. They're not improving anything. People who use computers have muscle memory and cognitive processes that enable them to get work done. When you change for no reason, you're just messing up the lives of people who are trying to get their work done. Inexperienced users don't really matter, since they'll have to learn something new anyway.
I've gotten to where I ignore the GUI as much as possible and just use the command line and GNU Emacs - because I figure the GUI will be shuffled, jumbled, and screwed up before I could learn it anyway.
Note that I'm limiting this rant to Linux - the same arguments could be made about the absolutely atrocious Mac interface (someone really thought it was a good idea to put the close-max-min buttons on the LEFT so you have to drag the mouse completely across the screen to use them?) or Windows 8 which is so utterly unusable that even the mighty Microsoft isn't going to make it fly.
Of course, all you describe are daily tasks for average joe.
At work I've got the same theme on Enlightenment16 that I've been using since 1997, and it still has some features (eg. window snapshots as icons) that only recently turned up in MS Windows7.
I'm using E17 at home (and have tried a pile of others too to see what to recommend to users), but the point is that is that you don't have to even put up with the amount of change that even the slow changing Microsoft systems have if you don't wan't to.
I use Unity, on 12.04.
I've been dabbling with Linux desktops since about 2000, and they always got removed shortly after.
I just didn't like the kitchen sink approach, designed by techies for techies. And I'm a techie.
I've been happily using Ubuntu since 6.06 (dapper) and gleefully watching it improve in leaps and bounds with every release.
I love Unity, it just works. Press Super. Type name. Click Icon. Use application.
I've even started using it for software development.
I find it no real difference between the 3.. Linux has no requirement to "tinker"., and no more technical knowledge to use is needed, than either Windows or OSX .. All three require learning the basics of each system.. How do you start it, how do you find and open programs, how do you add new programs. and the core programs most people use like web browsers and media players and such.. none of the 3 systems really have an advantage here if you starting from a blank slate of having not used any of them.. Everything is easy when you know how to do it. This can be said for all three systems.. The only real difference is when you may become stuck somehow and need help.. Windows users have the advantage in numbers, for free help.. OSX users are probably more inclined to pay for support.. Linux users have to rely on Google and community forums.. The chances of needing help are increased if you go outside the norm and do as you say and "tinker" , but no more so on any of the 3 systems than any other.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
I'm talking about the functionality actually functioning as intended.
I'm talking about the functionality functioning as I intend. That's the whole point of open source.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Quite true, and if Gnome, KDE, Ubuntu and Fedora turn off all the technical users, who will be left to work on these projects when the current developers burn out and leave?
It's been done. It was called CDE. Common Desktop Environment. While there was nothing inherently bad about it the only people that really liked it were a few guys at Sun that were in full control over it. We'd get a similar problem with any other master desktop.
I'm not suprised you haven't heard of this because you'd need an attention span about five times that of the computer industry in general.
As a long-time Linux user, why would I feel a need for the masses to join me? Why does Linux need tons of non-technical users who are unlikely to appreciate and understand the Open Source ethic?
Because non-technical users deserve to use a quality free as in beer and speech computing experience too. In fact, there weas a time when computers themselves were only for technical users.
there's an old Jack Tramiel quote:
Computers for the masses not the classes.
I believe in the following:
Linux is also for the masses not just those who've taken programming classes.
Now you and I might dispute the quality of Linux or whether it's good enough for the masses to use, but that's another issue entirely.
Personally my first LInux was SCE's bastardized Kondara-ized Red Hat for the PS2. I'd been reading slashdot for a while and thought the Linux kit would be an interesting way to dip my toe into Linux and add more functionality to my PS2.
Now this was 2002, with what was essentially a Red Hat 6 or 6.1. I was smart enough to pick up some beginner LInux books before the kit arrived. I had the kit up and running for what most would consider basic computing needs within a day. I first compiled some downloaded source within a week, it was either Abiword or Gaim. My GPG key, was created on that PS2 Linux kit, and I have configuration files that originated from that kit. I am not a programmer and I learned to use a Linux that was LESS user-friendly than modern distros are, so why can't Linux be used by the masses.
First, there is a dramatic drop in the use of Desktop PC's and Laptops in favor of Tablets and Phones. Linux has lost out big time as the big tech companies transition into closed garden platforms. So yes, there is less interest in Linux on the Desktop because there is less interest in the Desktop.
Second, Linux for the Desktop has never been overly competitive and has always trailed. Its no surprising that there is not enough interest in keeping Linux "competitive" with products like OS X or Windows because after 20 years of failure its hard to get excited and stay motivated to contribute to a failing product.
I am not saying there is no room for Linux in the world, but the era of the idea that Linux will "eventually" become a true competitor to Windows is over. Linux lost on the desktop, period.
What needs to happen is for the Linux community to realize this and shift towards making Linux relevant again. Stop trying to "Beat Windows" and instead find new markets where Linux CAN be competitive in. For the most part I have found that the Open Source community is not shifting into the mobile device market fast enough. Sure Android is *nixy, but its not Linux and Google is pulling the strings pretty tightly (Android is NOT a community project, period). Linux has been shut out of a new generation of mobile devices.
The bottom line is there is a general lack of leadership in the Linux camp. Linus Torvalds is an idiot, period. He has delusions of grandeur and is still stuck in a reality where he is trying to "Beat Windows". The shame is that Linux is an OS that can pretty much run on ANYTHING, and would have been ideal if he started focusing on creating an excellent mobile/consumer electronics OS 5 years ago rather they trying to make an "awesome" kernel for the Desktop. While Linux might pepper a handful of TV devices, its still not a prominent player in a new generation of living room products, where again companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft are making a massive push.
Linux is proof that design by committee fails. Linux needs a leader to define the next 10 - 20 years of focus rather then dozens of hap-hazardously planned projects that go nowhere.
Linux is excellent, but it lacks excellence in its leadership.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Linux is not for the lazy....plain and simple.
Sure it is! I am very lazy and one of the things I like about Linux is that I don't have to fuss with it. I set things up the way I like and they stay that way. And it's also nice that if I really wanted to go to the effort, I could set up cron to do certain things automatically for me.
Heck, I was as pleased as punch when I attached a printer to my first X86 Linux install and it configured it without me doing anything. Sure it might have been a little less fun than actually pulling up cups or whatever, but it was nice to not have to even bother.
And let me point you to an IBM page called "Lazy Linux: 10 essential tricks for the admins":
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-10sysadtips/
Does anyone see CDE, or IceWM as recommendations in the comments? No: because they are arguably "worse" than the others. KDE, Gnome, and Unity are recommended along with xfce because they are relatively "better" than most of the rest. Expectations change. Devs try to keep up.
You see comments about the Windows 7 interface sucking, and whining about the osX interface as well. From the view of the people who don't like them, it's because there are bad things there. (God forbid a 'nix user open up a terminal interface on a mac, or powershell in winblows...) Hell, if you want, you can run the interface you want via cygwin on windows (if you build from source probably).
Perhaps Linux as a desktop will take off if webmail takes off in the enterprise. But probably not. Outlook-Exchange has always been driving Windows sales in the US, and that lockin will probably be kept via SharePoint if hosted email takes off. If SharePoint does not keep lock-in, I would not be suprised if some sort of tablet took over. Why hasn't Open Office taken over? Because of Outlook-Exchange (in large part). If you get a good word processor, and a decent spreadsheet with a hosted email client - then why not a tablet with a dock (to use a keyboard, mouse, and large display)? It won't work for heavy lifting, but we have servers for that.
I agree, but I must admit that it is rather funny to have someone who's slashdot username is inspired by "Master Control Program" to speak out for the "Users"
Are there any desktops other than CDE that let you define multiple actions for a given file type and have those actions be scripts? For example most desktops let you define what application to open a file type with, but CDE lets me define as many open actions as I want, and allows me to have shell scripts perform those actions.
So instead of a text file being restricted to only canned Open and Print actions, I can define OpenReadOnly, Edit, SpellCheck, SpellCorrect, PrintEnscript1Col, PrintEnscript2Col, Encrypt, etc.
I actually like Win8 better than 7. There are things I don't like, but I'm so happy to get the up button back in file explorer I can overlook them.
If you don't run metro apps you can pretty much just ignore the metro stuff and the only thing you notice is the start menu is now full screen instead of just a menu. It still works about the same, and the old one was too small anyway.
Of course when the best new feature of an OS is they put back something they removed from the last version then there's something wrong.
One thing that did make me really angry, though, was when I accidentally opened a metro app. (I'd forgotten to install my own pdf reader) There's no obvious way to close the app! I had to google how to close the program. So yeah, I don't see many businesses installing this one.
It's not just the herding cats problem, part of it is a fundamental disagreement about philosophy. Look at GNOME, for instance: their whole idea is to dumb everything down as possible and remove as much configurability as possible, because some "usability experts" and "usability studies" say this is a good thing somehow. Then look at KDE: it's completely the opposite, with as much configurability as they can pack in there, and also different UIs for different devices (plasma-desktop for desktops and laptops, plasma-netbook for netbooks, plasma-active for phones and tablets). There's no way to make two groups of people with such diametrically-opposed philosophies agree to merge projects, when they can't even agree on such fundamental items like whether users should be allowed to configure things or not.
Or maybe we should get rid of separate countries, and all cooperate on having one master country? We can even let Ahmadinejad or Kim Il (new guy, can't remember his name) lead it!
There's a reason people splinter into different groups: it's because they can't agree on things. If you can't agree on things, and can't agree to a compromise, the only two solutions are violent conflict, or going your separate ways.
Linux desktops were in my experience never competitive because they require too much technical knowledge. That is an obstacle easily overcome by technical types, but *not* the majority of the user population. It just isn't sustainable to say "Here, tinker, it's cool" to everybody - or more accurately ANYbody outside of technical folks who enjoy the work necessary to update one application or another. It's why many have grown tired of Windows. It's why OSX, with its draw backs, is becoming more popular - the user population at large want an experience that doesn't require at lot of work to keep working. imho.
I've toyed with Linux but never really did anything with it. Too busy with life.
Things have changed radically since my first PC in 1985. Back then the "computer hobby" was like the short wave radio hobby. Most people tended to build their own systems or at least upgrade major components. I bought that first PC (a Pinecomm XT with a wonderful flip-top case so you get right into the guts) from one company and the 20 MB hard drive from a different company. Before I even had a complete and legal copy of MS-DOS (I had a bootable Rogue disk with a handful of system utilities included) I wrote an editor (before I eventually moved to PC-Write) by copying console to file blocks, catting the blocks, compiling with Mix C until I had a version which could replace lines, and then used it to write itself. That was then.
Now computers are just an appliance that the mass market wants to buy and just have work, like a microwave (or really, a car since you don't really have microwave hobbyists). Only enthusiasts want to tinker. No OS that requires constant tinkering is going to gain widespread adoption.
Scanners, for one, are notorious for lacking support from one version of Windows to another.
Unity and Gnome3 are not copying anyone, they're blazing new trails. The problem is, the trails they're blazing are headed straight over a cliff, because their UI design sucks. Microsoft is actually copying them, and their idea of trying to have a single UI that works for touchscreens and regular desktop/laptop machines; Gnome3 and Unity were there first.
KDE is a totally different animal, as it copies a lot from Windows and CDE and also tries to be everything to everyone by having configuration options for everything under the sun. The other two, like Mac and Windows, offer little if any configurability.
BTW, in KDE, I don't need to know whether a WLAN AP is WEP or WPA2, that's all automatic.
Why the hell would a user give a rat's ass if a desktop environment is written in C++, C, or FORTRAN, as long as it works? This seems rather idiotic. You think Windows' GUI is written in C? Or Apple's? Think again.
It's all I ask. It's the only thing holding me back. I have Ubuntu on my machine right now. I just need my programmable Trackball to work.
On a purely technical basis, maybe But the sheer number of apps for Windows and Macs that don't run on open source desktops, makes the question a nobrainer. Take fro instance the chrome PC. Where is it now? Counting Androids on tablets and phones may tilt it towards Open source a few years on. OK
You must be trolling
You must be an idiot
Users -> MBA -> Developers in Proprietary software
Users -> Developers in FOSS
Casteism
Lol, it was meant to be exactly "master control program" and I only discovered afterwards that usernames are truncated to 20 characters.
/. to its knees...
Because of course, letting all the usernames registered to date take a total of a few extra MB of disk space by letting it be 30 or 40 max would've brought
See the story: if a desktop environment uses a poorly chosen programming language for most of its code, its developers will eventually call it quits because it becomes too hard to maintain. In addition, I also want to write code for the desktop environment myself, and there the primary programming language used for libraries and most apps also matters, and KDE's C++ doesn't cut it.
No, what is "idiotic" is writing a desktop environment in C++. What's even more idiotic is wondering down the road why the developers are quitting.
Since I don't rely on either and don't plan on writing GUI apps for them, I don't give a rat's ass what they are written in, and if all their developers were to quit, I'd be happy. But unlike KDE, both Microsoft and Apple saw the light, which is why they have been trying to move away from C++ to other languages (C#, Objective-C), languages that are considerably easier to live with for GUI development than C++.
Please ignore, posting to undo moderation.
Linux is not going to merge. It ain't gonna happen. The desktops are getting further apart not closer together in the last decade. Linux offers choice not consistency.
That isn't true, I can do a fresh install of Ubuntu for my desktop machine in a few hours which has everything I need.
A fresh Windows install takes days to get everything where it should be and to install all the applications and settings.
New things are always on the horizon
Unity isn't for me, but I'm on gnome-session-fallback on the same Ubuntu release. As it's an LTS, I think I'm gonna stay there for a while.
New things are always on the horizon
I don't understood why people call Mac OS X aesthetically-pleasing and well-designed UI.
It might have been designed in the past, but it isn't anymore.
They keep adding more and more inconsistencies and other crap that doesn't seem to fit in.
New things are always on the horizon