How Apple Killed the Linux Desktop

An anonymous reader writes "Klint Finley discusses Miguel de Icaza's thoughts on how OS X killed Linux on the desktop: 'de Icaza says the desktop wars were already lost to OS X by the time the latest shakeups started happening. And he thinks the real reason Linux lost is that developers started defecting to OS X because the developers behind the toolkits used to build graphical Linux applications didn’t do a good enough job ensuring backward compatibility between different versions of their APIs. "For many years, we broke people’s code," he says. "OS X did a much better job of ensuring backward compatibility."' This, he says, led developers to use OS X as a desktop for server programming. It didn't help that development was 'shifting to the web,' with the need for native applications on the decline."

Comments

Miguel is a scumbag

[Anonymous Coward]

Miguel is a Microsoft cheerleader, a corporate tool and a genuinely nasty human being. Take nothing he says as anything but sour grapes over his failure to contaminate and destroy gnu-linux with that turdbomb called Mono, which has mercifully been a total failure.

Re:It's too bad

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Package management is part of the problem. You can smear as much lipstick as you want on that pig, it has no place on a desktop OS. The only reason Linux needs it at all is because every developer out there is absolutely determined to include the most obscure libraries he can find and include them in his app (incidentally also negating the reuse advantage libraries were originally built for.) When installing a simple app requires you to download hundreds of megs worth of libraries and upgrade half your GUI environment something's amiss.

Re:Apple didn't kill it, Microsoft did.

[Chrisq]

Don't speak too soon, Windows 8 is a-comin'.

Also known as "Vista II"

Re:It's too bad

[jellomizer]

Linux doesn't do well as a Desktop OS.
It is a great Server OS,
It is also a great Workstation OS.
Now Android is a great Mobile OS but I think the topic of this conversation in on GNU/Linux not other Linux Kernel Based OS's

The Personal Desktop/Laptop OS needs to do the following very well.
1. Support 3rd party hardware. Apple and Microsoft are willing to let companies make drivers for their hardware and put their own license on them, Linux often demands GNU compatible licensed. Not everyone agrees with the GNU (Get over it) so they will want to keep their current business model. There are still too many hardware that will not work well on Linux. If you want Linux to run well on your system you need to build a system that Linux will work well on.

2. Consistent UI. People get stuck, they try to find instructions the instructions need to be consistent with their system. With Linux you need to get the Linux Part the Distribution part and the Version part. Then your default configs may be different based on the chooses you choose.

3. The little features matter too. Time to put your system to sleep and wake up. Does that keyboard light work, How quickly can you connect to a wireless network. Does your screen leave artifacts floating around, consistent Copy and Paste.

I have heard tones of times people say Linux works with not problems, I have had Linux work fine, but I have also had it work like crap, Sometimes it is the drivers and sometimes I need to do a particular task that Linux Developers never really agreed on an approach for. OS X and Windows works a lot better as a Desktop OS. They don't work as well for a server.