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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.
It's going to be the year of Linux on the desktop... any year now!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
"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.
+1 A teachable moment.
The real reason if you RTFA is "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." -- So basically this guy has a life. He was willing to volunteer one day per week, but nothing beyond that, so he's decided to stop participating.
Also: "As user I always had the impression that I can do my regular tasks..... in a more efficient and comfortable way than on the other desktop-environments. But at least for my regular tasks as user this has changed during the last couple of years." -- I suspect it's because both Apple and Microsoft have improved their user friendliness over the last half-decade (well except for "where's the damn command?" Ribbon interface). Maybe he should try LXDE (lubuntu) which is not only lightweight on memory, but also nice and friendly.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
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.
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..
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!
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.
It has been the Year of the Linux Desktop since I started using Linux primarily. Everyone else I attribute to measurement errors.
Don't tell me I don't understand statistics!
Great Intellect...
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?
Desktop environments in general are losing ground aren't they?
In favor of cloud-clients and tablet-specific os's, no?
Ironically some Linux interfaces are more simple because they don't have a lot of this upgrade treadmill driven cruft.
Those interfaces would have previously been eviscerated for not having a "rich set of features".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
And how many of you Linux guys just chuck the UI and go for the command line because it's actually easier?
A keyboard is an immensely higher bandwidth user interface.
10 fingers, 104 keys on a IBM type M, at 100 wpm vs a mouse with "a" button on a mac or maybe two on a PC and maybe a scroll wheel is no contest.
Computers are supposed to be FOR people who have no patience, not a challenge for impatient people.
Also I can't understand GUIs. Too hard to use. Something to do with eye focus. I can read and write text about 2 to 4 times faster than the fastest speaker, but I can't figure out icons, like little standardized test puzzles. Click on the mating centipedes to configure. No wait the Fing centipedes means paste. Where's my gmail, ah a red letter M how .. incredibly unobvious. Ah click on the folder on the desktop to open outlook, no wait thats a directory, click on the yellow folder, no the other yellow folder, no the yellow folder with a round thing on it to open outlook. I don't know what that's even supposed to symbolize. Why do I have to solve symbolic graphic arts puzzles to imperiously give commands? Julius Caesar never held up cryptograms to invade Gaul, although I'm sure there's some fool UI designer working on it now for .mil. Google chome icon thats a saw blade on lsd, right? So not obvious. Why can't I just type "chrome" to run chrome or "configure" to configure stuff or "outlook" to run outlook or something simple like that? I want to stop so I click the start button, just like when I want my car to slow down I press the accelerator, right? F GUIs. CLI forever. Just too freaking easy to learn and use.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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.
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.
Actually, I like both KDE and Windows 7, but when Windows goes Metro w/ 8, then KDE will have the edge (since GNOME3.4 and Unily still haven't won back their users). But for those who think KDE is overkill, there is Razor-qt as well. In fact, there is a whole host of FOS desktops out there.
Maybe the other aspect to consider is whether having the system not run on X, as OS-X does, is an advantage. The ones that don't run on X are doing fine - Windows, OS-X, Android. Maybe something to be learned here?
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
IMHO Most people could care less about a desktop's work flow. If it works in *some way* you learn that and get over it. The reason people have computers is to run programs in it.
For one, loads of people need MS Word. Not OpenOffice (or whatever is the new name for it). My sister (pro-photograph) needs Photoshop, not the fscking Gimp. You can argue they /truly need/ it. But one way or another, why should they run an OS that lacks they prefered applications, when they run one that has?
If Linux doesn't have the programs you need or programs which are `good enough for your needs`, and Windows7 or OSX have them. Linux has great browsers, but great applications are really far and few in between.
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.
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.
Although there a few points in your rant I would like to make comments about, I'm going to limit myself to this one.
Julius Caesar never held up cryptograms to invade Gaul, although I'm sure there's some fool UI designer working on it now for .mil.
Julius Caeser may not have used them, but yes they have been used by the military for many years. Surprised wiki doesn't have a history portion for this entry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_semaphore
This is a bit closer to the cryptogram comment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_maritime_signal_flags
And this is just for fun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_Flag_Signaling_System
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
It's also in perpetual beta. They've been bragging about E17 since the 90's. Enlightenment is going nowhere fast.
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
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.
[Citation needed], I've been looking for a USB-powered Twizzler for ages!!
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.
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.
Should an editor who headlines an article with a question mark be impaled with a pine cone?
Just asking a question.
--
BMO
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.