Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: How Would You Fix the Linux Desktop?
itwbennett writes "Slashdot readers are familiar with the Torvalds/de Icaza slugfest over 'the lack of development in Linux desktop initiatives.' The problem with the Linux desktop boils down to this: We need more applications, and that means making it easier for developers to build them, says Brian Proffitt. 'It's easy to point at solutions like the Linux Standard Base, but that dog won't hunt, possibly because it's not in the commercial vendors' interests to create true cross-distro compatibility. United Linux or a similar consortium probably won't work, for the same reasons,' says Proffitt. So, we put it to the Slashdot community: How would you fix the Linux desktop?"
I've been using Linux on my desktop for 13 years now. It works just fine for me.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I would shut linux down and give the money back to its shareholders.
Put Linus in charge of everything.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
Fix all the drivers for basic stuff like WiFi and graphics cards FIRST. I'd rather have a desktop with little bugs and more basic features than a laptop with only partially-functioning WiFi and reduced battery life due to a poor graphics driver (as I do now).
By adopting the Android desktop.
will fix the desktop.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
how would you fix the Linux user?
Someone who understands things like "less is more", "restriction leads to freedom", "one shall rule them all", and "human factors design matters".
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Here's how to fix the Linux desktop:
Those are just some minor suggestions.
What, that's not the right answer?
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
There is absolutely no need for any OS to have drivers. Move them to UEFI and expose standard APIs that are completely OS independent.
The Linux desktop is far better than Windows used to be.
But we already know ways to make every desktop, including OS X, far better than what we have today.
The Humane Interface by Jef Raskin gives good ways to start:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface
I don't see why anyone would want it. I would rather lag behind with open source application support and have security knowing that my apps are not working against me. I want to know that my softwares motives are my motives. So much commercial software now is about artificial limits and openly working against the owner of the PC. Either to sell functionality piecemill or because they are under the thumb of some watchdog like the RIAA or MPAA. I'm not a programmer, but I would hazard a guess that 50% of the coding done in todays software is to LIMIT you in some way, not to enable you to do all you can do even/and especially if it wasn't planned for by the author of the software.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
I know I'll get flamed for this since it goes against the Linux philosophy, but how about getting rid of competing Gnome and KDE (and now Unity) desktops and agree on one standard desktop with a single API for everyone to write to. And maintain backwards compatibility for the API so an application written for GnoKDE 2.0 still still run unaltered on GnoKDE 3.0.
I know that having multiple desktops gives users choice, but there are many talented developers on the KDE, Gnome and Unity teams, and it seems like they could make a much more polished and usable product if they worked together instead of coming out with separate products. Oh, and stop pushing out alpha releases (I'm talking about you, Ubuntu/Unity) as the default desktop and telling users that it's for their own good.
But hey, don't trust me, I use Xfce since it does everything I need in a desktop.
I really like using linux for day to day things, or would like to more, if the things (read: games) I want to play were supported better on it. Maybe with Steam taking an interest in it we'll see that shift in the years to come, but for now I dual boot it with Windows.
Normal people don't care about the OS, the "desktop environment," the openness of the kernel or its ABI stability. They don't even know what those things mean. People don't use computers for the sake of computers, only nerds do that. People use computers because they do things like write documents or fix vacation photos. If Facebook only worked with Linux, then everyone would use Linux. Writing some killer app and only ever releasing it on Linux is the only way a programmer can get people to switch. Otherwise your best bet is a businessman like Steve Jobs to come along. Look at all the people using iOS. Do you think people are buying iPhones because OMG iOS!!! No.
I have been using linux ubuntu/gentoo/redhat/centos for years as my main os. Heres one thing I always see with entry level users they cant simple connect their network drive and access it easily. My parents have a network drive for all their photos and of course they can find it on the network but cant have it mount at boot without scripting/editing and once its connected they mainly use firefox so attachements and downloads cant save from firefox to the network drive if you simply connect to it, it has to be properly mounted. This isnt a issue for me but for them they dont know how and want to know how to just in case.
Braaaaaaaaaains!
I love my linux world. The only part which I would appreciate is more polish in the software. Most software has a great set of features but it seems that all these suites are always missing the last 5% of development (e.g. making the application feel very polished).
To me it seems that the only way we can fix the desktop is to throw money at it. The last 5% of development work is usually boring (finding and fixing all the corner cases, etc...). I think that the only true consumer ready desktop right now is Ubuntu (yes, with the Unity interface). It has become a very polished and stable package with a lot of focus (maybe a bit too much?) on the right things. Don't get me wrong, I am a huge KDE fan (I contributed code), but to me it seems that it is missing the last 5% of development work (e.g. Kwin crashes occasionally, the panel wont stick to the top and will sometimes be in the center of the screen, Kwin seems to be slower than compiz...).
Canonical has the resources to provide a really solid desktop experience (and it already does) for most average users. For the rest of us, there is still Arch, Mint, Fedora, etc which allows for more customization. The problem is, that most people want their machine to just "work" and not tinker with the OS to just get it perfect.
Good job Canonical!
How about trying something that other people are not really doing? Let's get radial menus (there was one WM that had this, but I forget the name) instead of continuing to cling to inefficient linear menus. Let's find a way to make arbitrary compositions of GUI applications, the way we can arbitrarily compose applications in our terminal (KDE3 was a step towards this, but we could have done a whole lot more).
In other words, let's take a risk and try being innovative. What is the point of copying Apple? Let's do something that Apple will want to copy.
Palm trees and 8
It is not "We need more applications" -- that is easy enough.
Getting people to create hundreds of (cr)applications for Linux is trivial and is not a solution and may in part be one aspect of the problem.
A somewhat more accurate strawman would be "We need more *good* or *compelling* applications" -- that's challenging. Still only a part of the answer, but closer. It requires answering "What does 'good' or 'compelling' mean in this context?", etc.
The one thing Linux does not need is more applications - how many DVD rippers or MP3 players does one desktop O/S need (BTW, the answer is: just 1. But it needs to work intuitively, simply and flawlessly - not attributes Linux apps are known for).
What Linux needs is professionally designed and written apps. Ones that preserve a "look", a common and familiar set of controls and deep, deep integration. It would also be nice if there was documentation, starting with an idiot's guide and going all the way up to "this is how to modify the automated test suite" (and to actually HAVE an automated test, and acceptance suite).
However, we'll never get to that level while the distributions are reliant on hobbyists writing code because they like to, then tossing it over "the wall" and calling it a Linux application. That's what distinguishes Linux and the apps it comes distributed with from commercial operating systems and the apps people are willing (and, admitttedly, have to) pay for. The old excuse of: hey, don't complain, it's free! is no help whatsoever when the time-cost of getting some downloaded junk to work is far higher than the price of a piece of commercial quality software.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I have everything I need in LInux now. Openoffice (or libre office is you prefer) is mature enough to handle all my word processing / spreadsheet / presentation needs. GIMP and Inkscape do all my graphics. Flash finally works (and even better might finally go away).
The times I need Windows are so rare as to be almost unimportant. It has been so long since I booted windows I might need to do a password recovery next time just to log in to my own system.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Fix the damn audio and stop shoving a new sound daemon/system down our throat every year.
Android (or more likely some variant) on the desktop in a big way ftw by 2020.
expandfairuse.org
Goat bollocks.
Visual Studio is OK. XCode is better, but nonetheless, tooling is not the main focus for the stated problem. Eclipse and others (Anjuta, KDevelop, Kommodo, emacs, etc.) do just fine.
When you talk about "the whole Linux API" you refer to something that not only doesn't exist in the context referenced, it is also nonsense. The user-space application APIs work. There are so many working one's from which to choose!
If anybody - such as yourself - comes forward with authoritative pronouncements, then misunderstands kernel API and userspace, followed by the laughable assertion of a "simple and elegant" Win32 API? Hah!
As they say, "Pull the other one, it has bells on it."
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
...but apps, apps, apps: imagine wanting to do something like video processing, where there are tons of good tools for Windows there are only a handful for Linux and most of them well... do not meet expectations. I am using a Linux desktop for several years now, and I am very happy with it, but there are times I need to run Wine or VMWare just to do certain stuff in a way that is more simple and more productive than if I had to do the same on my Ubuntu installation.
It can be improved, but I think it will not be only a question of looking at the community (although that is my biggest wish: community driven FOSS software for all our needs), but also at the large corporations providing software for e.g. Windows. Once competition comes in from that side (large corporations), I think there will be more community projects taking up the same quality level of software, simply because the demand is there at that point. Now the demand somehow is not big enough to raise the quality level of the community driven software to the level that is seen on Windows, where it pertains to these apps for things like video editing (and perhaps also the same for games, but Steam could change all that nicely).
Office, web, mail: already covered by Linux very well, as well as a decent UI (although people may disagree). Now it's ready for the next level.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Also, some developer writing oodles of Python code is not going to write drivers. The kernel people is doing a bang-up job; it is not perfect, but it is good. The UI people are not doing a bang-up job, and in fact, they seem to be doing worse and worse with each passing year, trying harder and hard to copy Apple and Microsoft. We do not need copies, we need innovations -- not just new ways to display grids and linear menus, but new approaches entirely.
Palm trees and 8
The problem here is the assumption that something is broken.
Generally, the Linux desktop is fine. There is a choice of UIs, sure - and recent developments in KDE then Gnome haven't helped much. Big changes made people say it was broken - but over time, it seems to settle down.
And with the competition (Apple and Microsoft) also making changes to their desktops, Linux is hardly unique here. We seem to be in a time of change, where people have been challenging the old paradigms. Apple are being the most conservative, Microsoft the most radical, Linux is somewhere in between.
Hardware support? Not necessarily a desktop job, but I'll address is anyway. Linux can't do jack here without more support from manufacturers. When I installed Windows 7 on a (then) new Sandy Bridge motherboard, it found NOTHING. It literally booted into a low res desktop with no sound or network. Only the large collection of driver CDs saved the machine - Windows had nothing to do with it.
Support of Windows from the manufacturers was the key factor.
So let's not bitch about Linux's support of hardware - let's get it right, and bitch about hardware manufacturer's support of Linux.
Apps? We've got plenty, and are getting more. Some commercial apps (Corel Aftershot Pro, Sublime Text 2, VMware are ones I personally use) support Linux as well as Mac/Windows. It gets better every month, when it used to get better every year.
And I guess that's my key message. "You've never had it so good". You may not feel that way, but Linux is on a roll right now, and the question is not whether or not it becomes a 'usable second option'. It's already usable.
The question is whether or not it becomes a SUPPORTED second option - by OEMs, hardware manufacturers, and software companies.
And the signs are getting more positive as time goes on.
By which I mean, instead of the sort projects have now, that say "I am a ux expert, and I like [insert totally unintuitive feature in the name of "prettiness", or "looking like [Apple|chrome|a phone|whatever]", so that is what it has to look like"... instead the real kind, that goes and does useability tests with a wide range of its potential userbase, and then designs based on that.
Once you have a great product that people actually want to use (and yes, I know Linux is technically the kernel, not its window/file managers/etc., but the UI is what people actually -see-), more people might actually want to use it (I am aware that this is a tautological statement, but shut up.) More people using it = more desire for programs = more better. At least assuming some of those application developers also go the route of doing proper useability testing.
Not strictly (well, at all) GUI related, but I'd love to see something more like Windows Powershell in Linux.
I love the Linux pipeline and being able to pipe text streams between tools is very powerful, but the more I get into Windows Powershell, the more I like it. The ability to pass objects through the pipeline and operate on those objects can be much more powerful than processing text streams.
Try XFCE
That's frankly the biggest load of crap I've heard all day. You're comparing a professional development tools to Anjuta and KDevelop? For fuck's sake.
The attitude that these half-baked, ancient development tools are as slick as what MS and Apple are offering sums up the problem with the Linux desktop: a steadfast refusal to stay competitive and serious delusion about why the Linux desktop hasn't caught on.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Redmond has gone absolutely insane in attempting to push Metro on their user base for the sake of innovation and gaining tablet market share. I don't understand how so many Linux devs are following in their footsteps i.e. Unity, Gnome Shell. My primary Linux desktop will never be a tablet and I refuse to allow anyone to turn it into one. I used to tolerate instances where the Gnome devs removed configuration options and features from Gnome 2 siting simplicity because most things just worked. Gnome Shell is an absolute disaster mainly because if I am simply unable to configure it to work for me. My hat is off to the developers from Linux Mint (Cinnamon) and the Mate devs for working to correct this.
I can still recall when it was described as being the graphical environment for GNU software.... lost a lot of interest when that went away.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I have been installing linux on the desktop for the last 12 years and some things are just as broken now as they were then. For example: I have never, and I mean never, in the last 12 years had the mic work after initial install of any distribution on a laptop. This wan't such a big deal 10 years ago but these days it is a deal breaker. I should never have to edit my xorg.conf file in order to get my desktop working properly. The number of times I have updated a Linux OS and it broke what ever graphics driver I had installed and I am dumped at a command prompt on reboot. The graphical desktop needs to always work.
Calling the Windows API simple and elegant is the funniest thing I've heard all day.
You either need cross-distro compatibility or you need the number of "distros important enough to care about" to shrink to one or two. Then you just develop and test on those one/two.
For it to take off you need the masses to accept it. Windows has that through usability, brand recognition, and being everywhere. You are familiar with it. Apple, in its comeback, did it by becoming the chic OS. In other words, Windows is the four door coup and wood paneled van. Mac is polished corvette. Linux, however, prides itself on being usable anywhere and workable on everyone. In other words, that thing built on weekend in the garage.
Now it might work great, and does work great. There is one key problem to it. There is a guy I know who is really gung ho linux and open source. Was bashing M$ left and right in how inferior their product was. He needed a keyboard and mouse because in his rush he forget his behind. I offered him what I had on hand as a spare, a wireless keyboard and mouse with a fob. I had used it just fine on Macs and various windows machines from XP to Win 8 preview. He froze for a moment with dread/fear in his eyes.
"You don't have a wired keyboard and mouse?"
"Somewhere maybe, this won't work? You don't even want to try?"
"It will eventually, but it's Linux. Unless I have the driver's on hand it might take longer to check and double check, find, and finally get that working than to do what I need to do."
That's the problem. The people you need to get to use a Linux Desktop for it to take off are the people who are an anathema to what Linux stands for. Linux by design is meant to be fragmented, tinkered with, altered, improved. You need to hook people who barely want to be bothered taking a car to get an oil change, let alone changing oil period.
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
The lack of Visual Studios on Linux isn't something that is wrong with Linux so much as it is something that is wrong with Visual Studios. But I think it is definitely a valid point that the lack of some specific software is a deal breaker for many people.
For me, Adobe Creative Suite is the main thing stopping me from making the switch to Linux permanently, and I imagine I'm not alone. Sorry, GIMP is just not a replacement for Photoshop/Fireworks/Illustrator/Acrobat/Flash and the other dozen programs of varying usefulness.
The chance that Microsoft would ever consider porting Visual Studios is probably zero, and even then I imagine it's probably just not possible. I'm not holding my breath for Adobe either, but I have a small amount of hope that someday they may see the light.
Have a universal installer format that will install and run on everything. On all Linux, all BSD, all Windows. A single install file that will go anywhere means developers only need to code once. For a new version of windows you just re-install. Done with full compatibility. If you support all versions of Windows fully then developers will love you.
How about whatever the fancy desktop UI you make you have an option to have a gold old Applications/Places Menu. No search, no frequently used apps display, just a list of whats there where you can select it. After that would be a user configurable bar where they could put in what they want.
I find most of the grief in the new UIs that have come out is you cant get to what you want quickly. Sure floating lists and poofing icons are cool but when I wan to get to synaptic package manager, or qavimator, I don't want to search for it. I just want to quickly launch it - most people have the same thoughts.
Should not have a fancy search up-front for installed apps, that is only useful for the first time you are looking for something, once you are there and decise to use it, all you want is to quickly launch it. The fancy searches should be part of help not the major application launching component of a UI.
Lastly I want user configurable boot animations and startup sounds like the computers hackers - that would be awesome!
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
1) It needs to support the common hardware people have
I know this is mainly an issue with manufacturers not providing linux drivers, but there really needs to be a crack team of developers ready and willing to make things work with Linux in a seamless way, ensuring drivers are baked into the distros as soon as possible.
This is especially important for connectivity devices. Broadband suppliers, Mobile phone companies etc. like to supply various USB dongles to let you access your wireless connection, my overwhelming experience is that linux has no plug-and-play support for these which alone is enough to put most people off, if they can't get online it's a complete non-starter, they can't even begin to look for help with their other problems. On windows it's easy, because the devices often act as virtual drives, on which there is the setup program to install the drivers *easy* Of course linux can't benefit from this so you end up stuck in a loop of not being able to get drivers (if they exist) because you're not online. Dare I suggest the Linux desktop needs some sort of compatibility layer with Windows drivers for such devices? I can hear people cringe already but if you want normal people to be able to use it then it's going to have to work with such things with minimal issues.
2) Easier side-by-side installs, adapt it so it can install and work on an NTFS partition, alongside Windows. If it feels just just another program, rather than something which requires you to allocate large chunks of your drive to, with what a regular user would see as a risky procedure of repartitioning a drive then less people are going to be inclined to try it in the first place
3) 64-bit/32-bit issues. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems 64-bit distros can't run 32-bit applications, so if there is no 64-bit application you either have to compile your own (not always possible) or you're SOL. I noticed this with Firefox, the 64-bit distros come with a 64-bit FF build, except most of the plugins didn't work with this, and it seemed impossible to install a 32-bit build.
4) Dependencies. They're enough to make a regular user's head spin. when X won't work without Y, but Z won't work with Y because of various dependency issues you have a problem, a real problem, a problem big enough to drive users away and back to Windows where for the most part they just click 'yes' and everything works. Sometimes self-contained applications are better, especially for non-technical users.
5) Standardization. Too many distros, too many desktop environments, too much incompatibility between them. Choice is good, but at the point where it just looks like fragmentation it becomes bewildering. With Windows you really don't have to care, most stuff that runs on XP will run on 7 and vice versa, no issues, even a lot of 95 / 98 stuff will work just fine. With Linux you have so many different distros, builds, incompatibilities that you lose that and to your average user it's more like having to care if you have a Dell, Acer, Sony or whatever else Windows box, rather than just a Windows box which you know is going to run any Windows software at the double click of a setup program.
Now you might want to mark me down as a troll for this, but this is all based on genuine feedback from users who have tried to use linux, but given up in disgust. It has the potential to be a great desktop environment, but with so many people pulling in different directions and ignoring the basic issues which are keeping so many people out at the gates I don't think it ever will be one for the masses.
Sean
IMHO, I've not seen a better desktop for my needs than Ubuntu with gnome-shell 2 (not Unity). There's always room for improvement for certain kinds of apps (like compatibility with MS Office apps - and even those have improved by leaps and bounds in the past 5 years), but I'm certain I'm in the minority who feel that UIs have become too complicated and involved. Everything's automatic now, there's a widget for everything - the last thing I want is Desktop integration with Twitter and Facebook. No thanks, I'll take a nice clean desktop that works well, open source, and reliable.
... I use a surprisingly small number of applications. In the last decade the types of applications I always run on my computer are one each of the following:
Having tried this with Windows, Linux, and MacOS I can say the solution that works out-of-the box for me is MacOS. I'd rather use open source software because I like donating money to software I use rather than paying for a silly license that puts a smile on the face of an attorney somewhere.
When I tried this with Linux I have to do a lot research to make sure the phone works with the OS and the software available for the OS. I've tried using Songbird and Lightning/Sunbird as well as the full suite of Mozilla-based applications. Inevitably something I use a computer for is not available in a single Linux distribution. If the phone works the calendar is crappy or Songbird doesn't sync with that phone.
So for me it does boil down not just to the software that's available but to device compatibility. I'm sure it's possible but computers are less hobby and more appliance for me. On an odd notes I was able to do all of this on an older MacBook I didn't know what to use for. So with the exception of the OS, obviously, I had all my music in open source applications: OpenOffice, Songbird, Thunderbird, Instantbird, Inform 7, Sunbird and a small handful of text editors. I couldn't find the right Linux counterparts.
The Luddites were ahead of their time.
First of all, for myself there is no linux desktop problem. I always have used a lightwight desktop manager (blackbox) which has everything I even need. What would be nice for the general public is a desktop manager which is flexible enough so that it can be tuned so that it behaves exactly like OSX or be tune so that it emulates exactly windows. Such a desktop might also not be vulnerable to patent claims because it is essentially the user who tunes the parameters. There just happen to be parameter files around which make the desktop look and feel like other operating systems. Somebody might even build a parameter set so that it looks like unity.
Actually, the Zorin distribution already has a very nice Windows 7 like interface, with Wine, pre-installed.
The real problem is the Linux community attitude. Linux users like to solve problems and know how things work. Everyone else wants to think about their computer in the same way they think about their toasters (i.e. Not much as long as they work). They want it to turn on immediately without a log-in, work, connect to the internet reliably, not shove message dialogs in their face, run everything, including their Windows programs and shut down immediately.
Linux tends to serve its own user community at the expense of regular (i.e. nontechnical) users. Many Linux users have contempt for non-technical users and/or people who do not have an "always on" internet connection.
So Apple wins, in the long run. They serve users, not themselves. Jobs enforced that maturity on the Apple ecosystem and it paid off. I doubt that anything comparable will happen with Linux.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
A successful computer needs SUPPORT from the manufacturer.
The users NEED a place where they can get their problems fixed.
This is why Apple succeeds, despite their prices. They provide clear avenues for help and assistance, both hardware and software.
Linux has no such support from manufacturers. If you put Linux on your computer, they will void your warranty and/or find reasons to avoid dealing with you, if you've installed Linux on their hardware. Their tech support people are not trained to deal with you. You are a total money sink as far as they are concerned, because every support call must be escalated.
OSX is stealing away the desktop by nothing more than basic competence.
When I fire up my Mac and run software updates, I am confident that my system will keep running. When I have Linux on my desktop, software updates are always frightening. Will my wi-fi adapter still work afterward? Will the VMware drivers compile? I've lost many hours of work, backing out linux software updates that trashed my ability to get work done.
For another, every single terminal program on Linux is just crapola compared to OSX terminal. Really even the old-fashioned shell users are much happier on OSX. Try developing on OSX for a few weeks, gnome-terminal seems little better than xterm.
Until these problems are fixed, linux on the desktop is doomed.
I would do what I did since long before "desktop" was a concept people spoke about in the *nix world. I would install a decent window manager, and leave it at that.
The desktop nonsense only makes things more complicated, and harder to understand.
My choice is dwm, but there are dozens.
May we live long and die out
If a company could do a vendor-supported version of Parallels for Linux that let Windows apps run seamlessly with nothing more than having to buy a Windows license and of course buy Parallels itself, that would go a long way.
Why? Because it would open the Linux desktop up to vendor-supported applications that many people already know how to use and it would greatly lower the risk that next year's hot desktop-pc app - which will likely be a Windows app - won't run on in the OS/Desktop environment that is pre-installed on the computer you buy today.
Bonus points if their product let you do the "triple play" of Linux, MacOS X, and Windows apps in a seamless, vendor-supported environment. Of course, that would require not only buying a legal copy of MacOS X but likely Apple re-doing their business model to allow MacOS X to be sold for use on non-Apple hardware. I'm not holding my breath on that one.
BTW, it would be nice if a Parallels-like tool was available as FOSS, but the question is "How would you fix the Linux Desktop" with the implication of making it more attractive, not "How would you fix the Linux Desktop without compromising ideological purity."
Disclaimer and a true-life story:
Many years ago I worked for a store that sold computers to the masses. Almost all were Windows, some were Macs, and we had a few low-end, bargain-basement Linux machines. We had a high rate of returns on the Linux boxes. Why? Because most buyers didn't see past the price-tag and didn't realize they were NOT buying a computer that had Windows on it. When they discovered that the apps they bought or downloaded from the Internet wouldn't run, they returned the computer.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Is this a good or bad thing? It depends on who you are. If you are one of the people who dreams of everyone happily using Linux on their desktop, it's horrible behavior. If on the other hand, you're a Linux desktop user who just wishes a specific set of features would be implemented, or bugs to be fixed, then yeah, it's probably no big deal if you dismiss them as a troll or idiot, or shill, or whatever.
1. Ban all commercial vendors. Force them to support their own shit.
2. Get real community UI/IDE development going, and make goddamned sure they can STAY committed to the project.
3. Ignore Microsoft and Apple. Start from scratch and THINK about what you want your future desktop to look like, as that is going to inevitably set the standard.
4. For the love of god tell nVidia and AMD to either step up with the drivers or go the hell away. Their driver crap is another thing fucking up the 'Linux Desktop.'
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
And check all the config files.
... and then I erased it, because I don't feel like having this same discussion that I've been having since 1998 again.
Short version: make refinements--not drastic changes--every year. But that's boring, so no one will do it.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
The problem with Linux on the desktop is seen in a microcosim with the question asked. The post suggests that we need more apps and that we should make it easier to build them. That is only half right. Sure, more apps would help a lot. Sure, making them easier to build would be nice. However, even if they are enormously hard to build, developers will flock to Linx in droves if it is PROFITABLE to build apps for it.
So, does making it hard to build apps cut into profit? Sure. But what really cuts into profit is the fact that there are so many different versions of Linux out there. Think back to the bad old days of CP/M. There where lots of flavors. Then along comes MS and creates DOS, of which there was essentially one flavor. The functionality of MS-DOS was not a lot greater than CP/M, but it sure garnered a lot of interest from developers.
So, to make people write apps for Linux, thereby driving the adoption of the Linux for the desktop, you must solve the economic problem. Making it easier is a small component of the economic problem, but making Linux uniform is the bigger issue. If you make Linux simple to install, and uniform from a developers point of view, then it has a chance. If you have a million different libraries, you are dead in the water.
If you can't write a decent app with Eclipse? VS ain't gonna help you.
Hell - that probably goes for vi, as much as Eclipse.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
You need to be asking this on some other board. Slashdot users are power users and thus cannot bring themselves to get into the 'everyday' user experience. I know they use systems other than Linux, but it's the mindset that is different. I teach this very thing at a University and it is extremely difficult for developers to get into the 'user' experience. That's not a bad thing, it's just a different animal - most users don't understand the things that most Slashdot users will take as common knowledge. If you really want to know then take a survey on a more general site.
They're the only ones significantly investing in Linux desktop development. Even if it's just games for now, it will set a lot of groundwork to build on top of.
Linux Bob
Mod parent up, now.
I'd love to see PCs sold with the option to have Linux installed. Of course, it'd need to be supported which is probably where being open-source could pose some difficulties (e.g. where's the motivation to support an OS a developer doesn't make money on). I think Linux has been mature enough for everyday use for years now, it just needs better support and a push into retail outlets. Right now it's a hobbyist and server OS.
How do I mark this article as trolling?
I'm sick of all these bogus FUD articles targeted at Linux and the Linux desktop. I've been using Linux and work and at home for over 7 years and it works perfectly. All these "Year of the Linux Desktop" articles are just FUD and trolling.
How would you fix the Linux desktop?
That depends on what you mean by 'fixing the Linux desktop'.
If you mean turning Linux into a serious competitor to Windows and OS X on the consumer desktop market then I can really only see one way to do that. Hand it to Google and ask them to do for Desktop /Laptop linux what they did with Android. That's probably the best way to get a commercially competitive Linux desktop OS that you can hand to an average consumer without him having any more problems than he would on OS X or Windows.
If you mean simply ironing out the gazillion minor bumps, scratches, bugs and general annoyances that I have to iron out every time I install linux for desktop use and usually also whenever I upgrade to a new version of my chosen distribution (Ubuntu and variants) then the answer is even simpler. Dig up somewhere a whole bunch of SQA people and convince the FOSS community that 'untested==unfinished'. I have not tested every distribution in existence but the people who administrate the distributions I have tested extensively: Ubuntu, Suse and Fedora don't seem to have gotten this message. The reason Windows and OS X have a superior user experience than Desktop Linux does has a lot to do with the amount of usability research/testing and SQA Microsoft and Apple pour into their OSes.
It's possible to turn a Linux box into a pretty decent desktop box that might even be consumer proof if you are willing to pour way more time into it than you have to with OS X or Windows.
Just my 0,02€
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Holy crap I'm tired of seeing this crap on the front page. The Linux desktop isn't broken. I type this on my work machine (a Thinkpad), running the full KDE4 suite.
I'm currently connected to our webserver by SFTP, our Windows network share by SMB, a remote Windows server by RDP and our SQL Server using SQL Studio in a Win 7 VM running on VirtualBox, and our AS400 using Squirrel. This is all through VPN that I connect to using the same single widget I use to adjust Wifi & Ethernet settings.
I've not typed my root password in once all day, because KDE provides connectivity to all of these services through the very slickly integrated file explorer.
Linux desktop isn't broken and I'm sick of hearing from anyone who says otherwise.
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..
As someone who used Visual Studio for years and has recently switched to Eclipse, I have to say that I'm not seeing the major difference. For actual programming, and not drag and drop, VB style 'programming', Eclipse does everything you need it to do.
Also, XCode is an unintuitive pile of crap.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
Make it so that any windows user wouldn't know they weren't on Windows other than the missing Windows icon in the start button. Integrate Wine so it is seemless.
Make it so if I know how to use Windows, I can know how to use a Linux desktop.
There will need to be a classic mode for those like me who prefer the clean classic Windows 98 desktop, as well as one for those that like the Aero Glass or whatever that pretty mode is. (I don't like pretty mode, when I want to see the window behind my primary, I'll give it focus! I don't need to watch my window minimize, just get it out of my way!)
If you want to switch a desktop user, make it so the user doesn't have to know they switched.
IMarv
Trusting software vendors is no smarter than trus
Stop copying Apple and get back to being creative and innovative. Why make a (polished) copy of a (polished) copy? Let's do our own thing, let's do it well, and let's stand on the merits of our own ideas.
Of course, we have a lot of people in the user and developer communities that surround GNU/Linux who grew up thinking that the goal was to get away from Windows. Now everyone is seeing Windows in its decline...but the users are switching to Mac OS X and iOS, and so naturally, we need to give users something like OS X and iOS. We built a movement on the wrong premise (that the enemy was Microsoft) and now we are suffering for it.
Palm trees and 8
I'd hate to be the one to tell you this, but outside of media player apps, the RIAA and MPAA don't give a shit about what's running on your computer. They're extremely tiny organizations representing relatively tiny business interests.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I've installed debian squeeze on some of my mates laptops, they are mostly happy. Main downside is that there is no photoshop - see, we Russians are mostly unaware that photoshop is not free. Debian is great because it does not update much so it does not break with the updates, downside is the same - squeeze is outdated. So I guess what most users need are something like debian, but with optional full system update once a year to a fresh version, and with MATE or similar familiar and easy to use desktop. And without empasis on free as in freedom - i.e. firefox, not iceweasel, all codecs installed, etc. And contary to local beliefs - by my experience most people don’t care much about eyecandy.
How would you fix the Linux desktop?
Write the desktop environment to not only look and act as much like Windows as possible (offer a choice between classic, XP, and Win7 appearances), but also have the desktop environment natively use and support the Win32 API via an embedded installation of Wine. Focus obsessively on fixing the API compatibility issues, so that as much Windows commercial software as possible runs on it. Encourage the deprecation of custom toolkits (especially those of very poor quality, like GTK) and instead try to get developers to target everything towards the Win32 API and test against both Wine and Windows. Like it or not, without binary compatibility, Linux isn't going anywhere.
Also, throw away X11 and run the window manager right on top of OpenGL or DirectFB.
I wouldn't. It's not broken. Seriously.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Unless you define success as having happy users, in which case Linux is doing quite fine already, having success means getting MacOSX and Windows users to switch.
Absolutely nothing that would make Linux "as good as" would work, as if there people would care about freedom, they would have switched already (maybe keeping a guilty "gaming machine"), so they will only switch if they see that Linux users are doing things they care for and cannot do on their own machine.
So what Linux needs is one or maybe two "killer apps" that absolutely blow the competition out of the playground.
It could even only be useful for a specific "niche", visicalc pushed the Apple II, paint kept the mac alive and word+excel sold the "PC".
It could be a "presentation tool" that would help you bind together heuristic trees and presentations, and provide an easy way to make "brillant" presentations that are also flexible and interactive, where you can "move" in your presentation in real time depending on your public's feedback.
Or a desktop tool to grock huge amount of data and find some trends in them.
Or a "curl wizard" that enables you to become spam kind on all dating sites without getting found out (ok that would be real evil, but kind of cool).
Or .... you find it.
But in a nutshell, the issue is that about anything you can do with Linux you can do on a Windows platform, and unfortunately unless you care about freedom it's easy to "just not change"....
Linux on the desktop will be successful when "though leaders" will tell others, well I use "foo", so if you can't it's your problem.
Till then I'll go on happily hacking on my Linux laptop, and tell myself: Of course it's again the year of the Linux Desktop (for smart freedom loving people, wish there where more of them....).
Now get of my lawn :-)
It does winnow out the clueless from the start if you're doing Java though, you need to edit the .ini to find the right path to the JDK.
GNOME vs KDE. They were needed at one point (were they really?) Xfce? Nevermind you can install all of them and run all the apps from each.
Then the toolkits were crazy. Tk, Qt, GTK, and other.
The competing platforms Windows, and maybe OSX (but only recently) all had defacto standards for development. For windows it was the Win32 API, MFC (wrapping the API), then .NET. Developers want to know their stuff will run on everything. Adding to this, they aren't in control of the libraries and there is no central authority. So if they make a GTK app, then someone changes the library, they are potentially on a course for disaster. There's no guarantee they'll get the outcome they need. They either need to patch the library or patch the application. MS would provide a central authority, but there is none for linux and it's many libraries.
Consider this: Adobe has Qt apps, but has not ported Photoshop to Linux. So Linux got GIMP, which is jarring for people who know photoshop. Linux has enough "me too" apps but they all are inferior copies. Which is its own chicken and egg.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
An airplane looks all sleek and shiny, but when you open it up, it's damn near as gross as a surgeon wrestling with intestines.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
You know what they say, Write Once and Run Everywhere (meaning Gnome, KDE, XFace, etc).
I know Slashdot hive mind thinks M$ is evil (i think it too), but even Microsoft knows it's not about the OS, it's about developer tools (developers, developers, developers).
Unix API is nice. Sockets? include sys/socket.h plus a couple of other headers and you are fine. Graphics? include opengl/gl*.h. But how about other things? Playing sound? Choose between OSS, ALSA, JACK or dozens of sound servers. KDE x GNOME war? Both lost.
I love linux, but it's truly is a PITA using and programming for it's desktop environment.
how to get linux widely adopted as a desktop solution.
i have been using both windows and linux for some time and i have to say im not ready to switch 100% because of the lack of quality apps but also that linux just can't match some of the things in windows that are very handy and very easy: such as remote desktop. its so easy to use and so handy. with linux, i still struggle getting a vnc connection run smooth, stable and easily. also, linux just isn't as convivial. windows and linux are exact opposite: windows is a gui first and a patchwork command line second. linux is a solid command line first and gui second. so long as people still HAVE to know about manually editing the configuration file and such you know that linux won't be going mainstream. its getting better though. so, how to fix the desktop? well, to begin with, make the desktop itself a managed experience that doesn't require the least bit of command line.
second, in my opinion, the way to fix the linux desktop is by making people want to switch to linux, use whatever mcguffin that works... gaming is one of them, get good games on linux and not thru wine! once people (young first) starts spending $$$ on linux games, the rest of the industry will follow, they just go where there is good money to be made after all. facebook and smartphones have this in common that they benefited from games to expand. perhaps linux could have a unique twist on its app store?
Third, make it clear that not all software on linux needs to be open sourced. Free (and more importantly, open) just isn't a model that works for most private companies yet, so if they cannot sell their software on the linux platform, they just won't go. Most people associate linux to free and open source, so if they want to develop a software they intend to sell, linux is not the obvious choice.
Fourth and not least, stop the elitism. Granted, Linux communities have evolved but it is at least still composed of 50-50 between genuinely helpful people and those thinks newbs are simply intruding on their turf, are clueless and stupid - even on help communities. Because, again, not everyone has an interest in getting up close and personal with sudo, nano, ls and chmod many help request end up with very common replies such as "Search the forums" or "man up".
On a closing note, given all this, i think the linux community needs to answer this question: do you really want to be mainstream? Is it in Linux's best interest to become even more popular /user friendly, going this road obviously leads to a heavier OS, more complex, more bug-prone... I think linux's popularity to those that can handle it is the level of control it provides and inherent's security model. As linux works toward mainstream acceptance, its going to have to let go of some control precisely, to the detriment of its original user base. is this what linux wants?
If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
Eh...
Follow that logically, and what you see is that the RIAA and MPAA really do care about everything that runs on your computer, from the moment you boot up. Yes, at the end of the day, they only care about their specific copyrights; but to enforce those copyrights on your computer, they need to ensure that your kernel won't allow some program to read another program's memory, and they need to ensure that your bootloader won't allow you to run a modified kernel, and they need to ensure that your BIOS won't load a modified bootloader...
Essentially, they want to rewrite the rules, so that PCs are just fancy televisions, devices that are useful only for consuming entertainment but not for creating it. Sure, you can run whatever you want...as long as it is approved by someone who will make sure that your software is not going to violate the RIAA/MPAA/etc. copyright rules and edicts.
Claiming that someone only wants to ensure that some particular class of software is not run on a computer is just a complicated way to say that they want to control all software that runs on the computer.
Palm trees and 8
make the Linux distributions come out slower* with less version changes but still have big updates that are SP like.
also maybe have just the core system under that system with other apps are part of faster update system.
It's done! With any fresh user friendly distro you install apps with GUI app from repository - easier than in Windows, X performs OK under the load, all power management functions works out the box on most laptops, configuration changes are as easy as in Windows - same control panel. basically.
I'm sorry I accused you of being a troll. If I looked closer at your first post I would have seen that your post is not in the same format as the traditional shill/troll that happens here.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Funny, because I still HAVE to use it to get somethings done in Windows and OS X....
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Seriously, you need to work to either 1) get Visual Studio working and fully supported in Linux or 2) develop as good IDE as Visual Studio.
Try KDevelop.
For that matter the whole Linux API needs work. It's simple and elegant under Windows and Mac OS X, but not under Linux.
Use Qt. I have never seen a better designed and documented API.
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
The real question should've been "What would you do to IMPROVE the Linux desktop". The original question just starts a flamewar while the latter, revised question would foster innovative thinking and insightful contributions.
...because Gnome 3 sucks. Seriously. What were they thinking?
rgb
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
This will be done after Agenda Item #1: Unifying Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism. They've all preliminarily agreed Scientology has got to go, so the rest will be smooth sailing.
Different user interface configurations such as the standard Unity, Gnome, or KDE desktops, should be relegated to some sort of theme file that describes what assets to load and where to put them. Plugins should be used to supply the various functions. That way if you want a lightweight desktop that loads fast like XFCE, you can have one. If you want a more full featured desktop, or one designed to make the best use of screen real-estate for touch devices, you can have that too. I think E17 actually covers most of this, and it is highly optimized, and doesn't rely on 3D for fancy effects but can still take advantage of it.
But the important part is there will be one environment to target, and eccentricities/nuances won't vary like they do between the desktops we have now. The same should go for the file manager/Open dialog/etc that is used, it should be standardized and support plugins/theme descriptions as well. If I start typing a folder name in the window, and then enter a folder and back out of it, will I still be highlighting the folder name I started typing or will I be brought back to the top of the list again? As the directory is read, will the window dynamically display as it is loading in, and jump around when I am typing said folder/file name, or will I stay focused on that area?
I just want this to be the same on every desktop I use, so that I don't have to second guess myself if I'm using a QT or GTK or whatever else app. There can still be different toolkits, but if they are all targeting the same environment, they will behave the same and it will only be the developers that see the difference. If I want to open files with a single click, everything should pay attention to that preference, etc.
Maybe the solution is to extend the reach of the free desktop initiative. But we should be able to mix and match any desktop component, and every toolkit should pay attention to the preferences we set and be able to behave the same if it is specified.
Twinstiq, game news
Preinstallation, preinstallation, preinstallation. That's all that matters. Preinstallation with icons already on the desktop. Why do you think Microsoft fought so hard and long to keep anybody else's browser icons off their precious desktop? Why is the stupid desktop icon worth any price to companies who want their commercial crapware pre-installed?
People will use whatever is in front of their faces. Linux is never in front of their faces. It's not commercial, there are no kickbacks, so it's never going to be in front of their faces. Business IT departments want an 800 number they can call and scream at when things go wrong. Linux has no 800 number. Business IT depts aren't going to demand it, no matter how much sense it makes for the business.
So is it all hopeless? I don't think so. The only thing we can do, you and me, is hold installfests. Help people over that initial hurdle. I've gotten about ten people moved over to Linux (ubuntu) in the last four-five years purely by doing installations for them. And they're thrilled. No more virus problems. Everything works. They're not worrying about the artwork or whether it's a "modern" interface. If we could propagate the get one - install one meme, you can calculate how long it would take for every desktop and laptop to run linux.
The content of his post is actually irrelevant.
Here is a first time poster posting at the same exact time as the story is posted posting a very pro-microsoft comment in a story about linux.
The person who posted did not do so to further his own ideas. The person posted to have an effect.
Now is that effect to try to get the linux users here to go pro-microsoft? Unlikely, but if he is getting paid then perhaps.
Is this person attempting to get more page views for this story because he is getting paid by /. to? Perhaps, a bit tinfoil hatish, but considering other things that have happened it is possible.
Is this person just a troll? That is probably the most likely answer especially considering this websites past history with organized trolling.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
All modern desktops are more or less equivalent. What matters more is software compatibility (can I run app Y and game X on my OS?), hardware compatibility, and support/user experience (bring your Mac into the Apple Store and get a replacement the same day). Even if you made the Holy Grail of desktop UI/UX perfection, no one would care, because your Linux OS won't run Call of Duty 5 (or whatever they're up to now) and doesn't have an associated store in the mall.
Stop alienating power users. We're not the problem. We're the beginning.
If I and hundreds or thousands of others tell you that your desktop doesn't provide the configuration capabilities we need then listen and provide the configurability we're asking for. If we tell you your crazy bloated akonadi/nepomuck/whatevertheflip is too big (a mysql instance in my home directory??) then listen and rethink your design. When we complain that your latest major release is a fabulously buggy mess (KDE 4.0) then listen and don't do that to us again. When you hear from people that want a regular orthodox file manager then listen, provide one and don't deprecate it in favor of some granny-safe photo album browser.
It's not hard, really. It just isn't a lot of fun. Which is why it doesn't happen.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
What we need is software with as few bugs as possible. I have tried out everything from Slackware to Mint/Ubuntu and KDE/Gnome/Cinnamon/Xfce in the DE section. The more popular the distribution, the fewer bugs. But I am yet to find one where I can install the distro and a DE and everything actually works. Often I find myself googling or creating forum threads to find workarounds/fixes for this annoying bug or another one. And instead of fixing the existing bugs and making truly stable and good to use software, the focus is on development of new features. This applies pretty much to all categories of Linux software.
There are four things at issue that need to be dealt with:
1. A Linux distribution that is a doddle to set up and manage and comes with tools to manage everything from a single PC to ten thousand assorted PCs and laptops. "Boot everything off the network" fails horribly when you're dealing with laptops that are only sporadically connected to the network; cfengine and puppet are noble ideas but they're designed by people who only have the vaguest idea of how GPOs in Active Directory are used (clue: virtually every conceivable thing you could ever want to configure in Windows can be set up by ticking the appropriate box and assigning the result of this to a group of users or PCs. Whether you like it or not, there's an entire army of Windows admins out there who can't or won't deal with anything drastically different from this and "I can set this up for your company and the licensing is cheaper. But if I get run over by a bus, there's probably only about two other people in this town who can help you." is an incredibly poor selling point).
2. A means of dealing with existing Windows-only software. Virtualising this onto a genuine Windows system is clearly the way to go; the only question is do you run it on the host PC or from a server in a datacenter somewhere?
3. A sensible way to deal with the enormous number of organisations that provide solutions to narrowly defined problems that assume a Windows-based PC sits on the person's desk. There's an enormous number of these out there, they mostly deal with relatively small things and each on their own is probably of little consequence - but you add it all up and it's a death by a thousand cuts.
4. A whacking great dose of humility. Nobody buys a computer because they want a big box on their desk that churns out indecipherable error messages, they buy it to carry out a task. It's a tool. And every time it gets in the way of carrying out their task and instead churns out an indecipherable error message - or worse, doesn't churn out any error message but just sits there not doing the task - it's a Problem and must be seen as such.
Here are some more ideas:
From Android's side:
Android has great apps, but suffers from an OS problem (limited hardware, OSS compatability, Dalvik-only ecosystem) that others (Ubuntu) cover. Make Android work on Wayland & use a good sound server that offers ALSA APIs (at-least), V4L2, standardize other hardware APIs similarly. Upgrade Ubuntu notifications to full Android notifications. Result: Ubuntu runs Android's apps. Android runs Ubuntu's apps.
To HW Vendors:
- Go Pre-installs! Microsoft's picking winners in the Laptop vendor front with Windows 8. Lets sell them on freedom from being left out.
- Hardware will soon lock-out Linux entirely if they've never heard of us. Send brochures around introducing ourselves: kernel code compatibility written helps work out bugs, Linux as fallback to Microsoft lock-in. Encourage Linux verification to get a Linux sticker on their box.
Unify: (you have not read this one elsewhere)
- Easy way to jump in: Give me 2-3 steps to get a good IDE running with the latest code. Give me a 1-button way to suggest my code changes to the author via his preferred method (git, cvs, bazaar, email list), and an IRC client to the team that informs me of their typical schedule. This means standards & development, but make it public because Apple & Microsoft can't follow this one!
- It's hard to make an RPM or DEB, but easy to make an APK. Lets get IDEs that spit out RPMs & DEBs. Use Android's strengths too.
- Lets get a common, easy, unified filesystem: 1 bin folder, 1 lib folder. Metadata to present it as your menu & link it to man pages
- More Weston developments that connect it with above new standards.
- LXC to switch between Ubuntu, Android, and more today
Image:
Linux is the Apple alternative for the safety-minded, the price-conscious, freedom enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those browsing software (repos). It excels in Android compatibility and built-in free, safe apps. It excels in the web. For Windows software, some works. Like a library OSS is a public resource. It's what you make of it, so hit the button to jump into the IRC for some app & have true freedom to improve.
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
Beginner should use forums and search engine while advance users shall reporting bugs at bugs.debian.org and self research, wait for next release and self compiling. I had battery icon display problem (resolved my self), clamped polygon display problem (not resolved), session restore after suspend in gnome shell (not resolved), low fps in glxgears (resolved), no desktop environment after fresh installation in debain (resolved), out dated packages in debian cut (not resolved) and license issues of canonical for unity (resolved after shifting to debian).I want to make linux the system of choice for engineers. I found and compiled many engineering packages for cad, gis, project planning, and cae. There are many preloaded cae and gis distro but I want engineering packages right on debian main sources to be part of great community.
Hit it with strategic nukes from space...
1. There's a really old (10 year) bug:
If you set single-click behavior in the file browser (Nautilus), the File Open dialogs don't also go to single click. They're still on double click.
The reason? One is provided by Gnome, the other by GTK, supposedly. Somehow, Windows and KDE manage to get this right.
2. Network fileshares in File Open dialogs.
In every organization with more than 2 people, you've got network file shares. So, let's say you want to save a file to the network. OK, File Save. Oh, wait, there are no network file shares in that dialog.
Actually, it varies from application to application. Real nice.
What are you supposed to tell people? Save locally and then use the file manager to copy stuff over?
3. They should also have a Recent section in Nautilus.
4. That said, some things that Linux does right:
-Unity is miles ahead of Windows8.
-It's nice that in the latest Gnome, they also include recently used folders in the Recent list. Sometimes it doesn't work, so they should look at that.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
The main thing linux needs to do is pretty much across the board get rid of the GPL and go to an anyone-can-use, any-way-they-like, without-having-to-give-up-own-source code license. Next, it needs a *common* set of routines that are the same on all platforms, and KNOWN to be the same so that making an app run on distro X when it was built for distro Y doesn't require a recompile, assuming only that it's the usual Intel CPU architecture, in which case, if the developer wants to support another binary, *they* do the recompile. Once.
If that was done -- you'd have a landscape at least nominally attractive to commercial applications, leaving aside concerns about piracy.
Without these things, it's geek heaven and it will stay geek heaven, which may be fine with linux folk. Personally, I'd like to see it become competitive in the general commercial space; otherwise, again speaking only for myself, it's a non-starter for anything other than use as a server platform.
To be frank, I think your dependence on something as "slick"as VS or Xcode is mostly why you feel that way. People have been getting along just fine (and often far more productively) without these environments, yet you are wont to blame the failure of something as trivial as the Linux desktop on the lack of such systems, rather than recognizing that they aren't necessary in an ecosystem that isn't built with them.
Linux suffers from diversity... Seriously - it's a bad thing sometimes. If you want Linux to succeed on the desktop then take one distro and kill the others. It won't matter which - just so long as there's one. People will bitch and complain but it would simplify *everything* (package management, sound systems, GUI layout and functionality, etc.).
When sound isn't working you shouldn't first have to figure out which of the myriad sound systems you're using. When you want to install an application from a site you shouldn't need to figure out how to convert RPMs to .DEB or tgz's.
The community can't consolidate around a single path forward. This is what happens when there is no clear leadership. And this is exactly the way the community likes and it and why it will continue to be third-rate as a desktop platform.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Beginner should use forums and search engine while advance users shall reporting bugs at bugs.debian.org and self research, wait for next release and self compiling. I had battery icon display problem (resolved my self), clamped polygon display problem (not resolved), session restore after suspend in gnome shell (not resolved), low fps in glxgears (resolved), no desktop environment after fresh installation in debain (resolved), out dated packages in debian cut (not resolved) and license issues of canonical for unity (resolved after shifting to debian).I want to make linux the system of choice for engineers. I found and compiled many engineering packages for cad, gis, project planning, and cae. There are many preloaded cae and gis distro but I want engineering packages right on debian main sources to be part of great community.
A friend of mine uses Ubuntu & his wife has a Windows machine (just married). She bought an all-in-one for its scanner. After hours of both of them fighting Windows drivers, they were out of time so the plugged it into Ubuntu, opened "Simple Scan" and hit scan. It worked of-course.
Plug-in a new mouse while you're in a game on Windows 7? It won't work. Works fine in Linux (for any game ran in any way).
WinTV card? I have my choice of apps to use it with in Linux that cut commercials, reencode, etc. In Windows it's WinTV.exe (worthless) or nothing. (and most of those cards work despite being obscure hardware).
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
OEMs hold the keys here. They'll sell anything they think people will buy. But the problem is that Microsoft basically owns the OEMs. At least for now. Looks like Ms is working incredibly hard to alienate everyone.
This signature intentionally left blank.
His point isn't about being able to write a decent app with Eclipse. It's that the attitude of "it's fine" isn't exactly the kind of attitude that drives innovation. There's a reason Linux is stuck in late 90's desktop design, and it's because everything is apparently fine the way it has always been.
Like it or not, innovation is the only thing that will "fix" the Linux desktop.
(Sigh) I guess I'll just have to rewrite the whole thing from the ground up. I'll just avoid making any bugs or bad design decisions, and make sure everything loves all aspects of everything I code. I'll just write a new bootloader, kernel, drivers, utilities, compiler toolchain, windowing system, desktop productivity software, and some cute cat apps.
Should take a week or two.
The license you speak of exists on *BSD. Still waiting for commercial apps there.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
Volunteers view their time as hobby-time, which means they want to work on what interests them.
Paid employees do that, and also the un-interesting stuff, like documentation, drivers, non-critical bug-fixes, interface standardization and so forth.
If you want to fix Linux on the desktop, imitate those who are succeeding (Microsoft and Apple): be customer-driven, not developer-driven.
Work on what the customers need. To do that, you may need to make the volunteer community a paid one, or at least one where there are consequences for not doing what is necessary, and leaders to implement those strategies.
Heresy, I know. But heresy that works, and would have avoided the absence of market share that Linux desktop solutions now experience.
For a little bit of background:
Futurist Traditionalism
Somebody has to do this.
1. Torvalds
2. de Icaza
3. ???
4. Proffitt
Changing things for the sake of changing them is just idiotic though. If you have an *actual* problem that needs fixing and *actual* ideas about how to solve it, suggest them.
As for me, I think Eclipse is easily 90% of what I want in an IDE ... the other 10% being integrated vim.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
By 'it' do you mean Eclipse or VS? Because it looks like Eclipse, but I've used Eclipse quite a lot and I've never touched any kind of .ini file -- the path to the JDK can be set within the options window, but I've never had to do that either unless I've got multiple JDKs installed and need to use a specific one....
The computing world needs an easy to use - quick and not so dirty gui to automate so many things that just takes too much time. Too much hassle with the incompatible, incomplete gui systems for the programming languages out there. Hypercard fit the bill, and its amazing how nothing better has come along since. Thanks Steve Jobs for killing what was one of the simplest programming innovations in history.
An open source version for Linux would be of great benefit, along with LESS desktop windowing choices.
I found out yesterday, install xubuntu 12.04.1.
every five years, freeze a set of "extremely important libraries" and "critical interfaces" and what have you (stuff named like libc, glibc and any libgrujdsrfr01 that 0.01% people know they exist but are needed for common applications ; and whatever kernel features). maybe some toolkit version and stuff. support them forever, even if that needs some kind of chroot or wrappers or something.
that way commercial software, unmaintained or dead software, and software made by a single person, often good games and unique or nice freeware, can be run on linux. the show can go on for high profile maintained open source and server stuff, these things can still chase the permanent upgrade treadmill if they can afford to.
one of my first experiences with tinkering under linux was trying to get ttyquake running. needless to say I was pissed when I found out it was totally incompatible because it was 7 or 8 year old. try running a Loki game, those games were a classic argument to make people believe you can game on linux : every single one of them is probably dead, forever incompatible.
a good example is console emulators. there are some under linux, mainly zsnes. 95% other ones are for windows and are small program made in 2004, 2007, 2002 or more recent. most linux versions have sound glitches or no GUI.
My argument is that a toolchain problem is NOT the issue.
It's a distraction - which is why his troll worked.
If the ORIGINAL article references efforts like LSB, then the issue being addressed is dependency tracking, library management and versioning and distribution/packaging normalization.
This is not an area which I am saying "it's fine". :-)
Disk is cheap. That's why Macs can have OSX binaries delivered as folder structures containing resources and dependencies - with an executable stub and manifest. It's the opposite of .deb+dpkg. You get redundancies, and they are inexpensive tradeoffs for having a working application on all OS versions and patch levels.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
the same set of things I suggested above. Kudos to you.
I started using Linux in '93 but stopped in 2009 because, frankly, I was exhausted. I had forgotten that in 1993 I started using Linux because it let me do the things that I wanted to do at a cost (free) that significantly beat ($thousands) what was on offer in the Unix world at the time.
In 2009 when KDE took a shit on everyone and news that GNOME was about to do it, too, hit the netwaves, I suddenly realized that the situation had become inverted. Now being a Linux user kept me from doing the things that I wanted to do—not in theory (in theory, everything is possible—hell, you can design and fab out your own damned CPU and architecture and create a platform port for it if you want), but in practice. I was spending 10 percent of my time re-learning every major subsystem in Linux that changed every 6 months to 1 year, and another 20 percent of my time constantly fighting to get apps installed, keep them installed across distro releases, support my slowly evolving hardware (which required upgrading to new distro releases or doing backports by hand), and getting those apps to do the things that commercial apps could do easily.
Linux was no longer saving me many $thousands, since consumer-level OSes were now adequate to my needs and the applications I needed to use were only in the $hundreds camp. The capabilities that I wanted—working multimedia, powerful apps that shared file formats with the rest of the world, set it and forget it tools that I didn't need to build myself and that could manage my data—were right there, on the shelf at affordable prices, in every way that they weren't in 1993.
It was like a light bulb went on over my head—and I suddenly realized that Linux was holding my real career back, rather than enabling it as it had done in the early '90s. Bye-bye, Linux.
The culture of Linux remains the culture of 1993 mid-range computing—but we no longer live in a world in which CS students can't afford the hardware/software they use at school and mainstream OSes can't do the fun stuff. Quite the opposite. It's funny to think back at how thrilled I was to have X11 on the desktop (compared to Windows 3.1) versus how I feel now, twenty years on, comparing KDE or GNOME on Fedora or Ubuntu to OS X 10.8. The tables have been exactly turned. Linux is still essentially the same in architecture and philosophy, while the rest of the world has moved to a completely different paradigm in which computing is essentially appliance-driven. In 1993 Linux was ahead of its time. In 2013 Linux is a decade behind.
These days, I want an complete, polished, turnkey appliance at low cost and with no labor time investment, not a set of building block. Today's appliances are fast, intuitive, stable, durable, powerful, and integrated like the iPad (which I do, yes, use for serious work about 5-6 hours a day). For most users (which is where I have always ultimately fallen), Linux is solution in search of a problem that no longer exists.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
With a learning curve like that, why would anyone want to run Windows?
Because most users don't install Windows themselves?
And here we have it: the simple answer.
The way to have more people using the Linux desktop is to HAVE IT PREINSTALLED by vendors, because most people are unwilling to install an OS themselves from scratch, no matter how incredible it is. Of course, this is much easier said than done, but I think that blaming GNOME/KDE/Unity for Linux's 1% market share is missing the point by a mile.
Buying pre-installed linux is possible already, especially in the US. I just bought one of these: https://www.system76.com/laptops/model/lemu4. Everything pretty much just works, and they support future releases of ubuntu as well. Another old laptop I have is a dell inspiron 1501. It didn't come with linux pre-installed in the market I bought it in, but I knew the hardware was supported because the same model was sold with linux on it in some markets. A linux install is actually quite painless nowadays if all the hardware is supported. If you like an ultrabook you can try the Dell XPS 13: does not come with linux preinstalled yet, but they will in the future so everything should be well supported.
Stop naming it after hotdogs.
When did /. get so, um, like, emo about "linux"?
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
Use Qt. I have never seen a better designed and documented API.
Seconded. Qt seems to address most of the issues raised here.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Wine.
Get Wine (and a distro tailored specifically for it) up to a point where you can take any windows program, stick the CD in the computer, and get it to install properly and run.
You accomplish that and you'll have Linux on the desktop. But probably nothing short of that is going to make it happen.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Really? What late 90's desktop looked like unity, gnome3 or kde4.x?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
http://wiki.eclipse.org/Eclipse.ini#Specifying_the_JVM
that Windows does: run Windows software. So it was, in fact, completely different.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Vim "integration" is pretty nice with the vrapper plugin.
// "If human beings don't keep exercising their lips,
// their brains start working." -- Ford Prefect
There are a lot of good IDE's for Linux. Netbeans, Eclipse... That isn't the problem. Developers won't develop for what wont be used.
Here is what I think Linux needs for desktop. Besides my normal rant we shouldn't try to make Linux for the desktop.
1. DRIVERS!!!! Let closed source drivers be added to Linux. The simple fact the hardware makers may not want to release their drivers for good or bad reasons... But in this ideological war of purity the causalities are end users a system that they cannot fully trust will operate hardware they they have paid money for.
2. Stop the stupid names. No more Gbla Kbla. You should know what the app you have does what.
3. More Advance GUI Configuration. Linux has a gap between the Grandma and the Experts. The GUI often doesn't allow us to do Advanced configuration but we need to go to the text .conf file to do the configurations and then not all the options are black and white, after you do a Google search you find in the config file you add this word in a different language will do the trick.
4. Don't copy Windows or Mac OS, make your own interface... Otherwise you will just look like a cheap ripoff.
5. Consistency - Copy and Paste needs to work across all apps. One single sound system that doesn't fight with each other, Multi-screen support works the same no matter what driver. You need to configure your printer once...
6. Celibate compatibility tools don't hide them. Be proud that you can connect to a windows domain network. have that feature available to the end users, an those other tools that work with other Systems. Ok fine SMB sucks compared to whatever, just because you hate Microsoft it doesn't mean the end users do, and if they feel comfortable that they can still work in an Microsoft environment they will be more likely adopt the system.
7.Configure it for fasting display speed. If you are doing a big cpu intensive job, graphics shouldn't skip a beat, but the background task will need to take its time. A fast OS for average joe is boot up speed, shutdown speed, and how smooth everything runs.
8. Be smart with eye candy. Too much makes it look like a toy, too little makes it look old and dated. Eye candy needs to be more then just cute but have a purpose. The Genie effect in OS X for example shows the people where that window went. Semi-Transparency shows that there is stuff behind the window but translucent enough to not distract you from the active window.
9. Take minor nitpicks seriously. If someone says something is hard or looks off then it is a problem that needs to be addressed,
10. Keep your ego aside. It is tough to do, but it is the only way to really make Linux work for the desktop.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
1. There is no singular "Linux Desktop" as posted by many others already, there are multiple competing desktop environments, package managers and distributions.
2. Desktop computers have now been surpassed by mobile devices in usage for things like Facebook (http://allthingsd.com/20120508/average-facebook-mobile-use-beats-desktop-access/) and email (http://www.returnpath.net/blog/intheknow/2012/05/email-in-motion-how-mobile-is-leading-the-email-revolution/). You know, those things that most people use the Internet for.
3. Android is the successful Linux Desktop with nearly 40% market share on mobile devices - almost twice its nearest competitor (http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/gadgetbox/android-market-share-surpass-40-percent-year-122857).
4. Supporting Windows and Android apps natively in Linux distributions is an important way for distro projects to remain relevant for those who prefer to use Linux, but who need to interact with the rest of the world or share experiences with them.
5. This whole conversation is beginning to sound like a greybeard echo chamber. I must be one of the greybeards, because I'm posting from a Linux desktop...
I dunno about everyone else posting above but I agree with you on this point. I don't think *anyone* who has succeeded in using both Linux and Windows for gaming and multimedia would disagree that the hardware vendors have been holding out on us. The problem is that the average newcomer to Linux isn't going to have the patience to even sympathize with this plight, even if they can understand it - which most won't. Most people will just see it crash when they try to install or start it the first time on their brand new shiny shit and just go straight back to Windows, resting assured that Microsoft was right all along about open source not being a viable approach to software production.
And the sad truth is, for them it effectively does suck, regardless of whose faul it is. For them, its effectively true. From their point of view there's no distinction between the outcomes regardless of where the blame lies. The question is: How do we fix that?
What is fundamentally wrong is that there are many toolkits, many APIs, and no consistency. There are several ways to do sound. There are several ways to remap the keyboard. Video drivers don't work reliably. Multimedia doesn't work reliably. Key bindings don't work reliably.
If you are willing to give up functionality and soldier through, it works well enough, but if you are at all a tweaker, or of you need cross-toolkit functionality, you are going to have to be very accepting of brokenness. Not everyone is willing to tolerate that. Because both Windows and Mac have a single UI, and a single set of APIs, many of the problems that you see on Linux simply don't happen on Mac or Windows.
This is actually why I favor switching to an Android desktop. It's sufficiently different, and has a sufficiently large application ecosphere, that the cross-UI problem can probably be eliminated.
Users, clients, consumers, whatever you want to call them, do not buy features.
The only ones that do so are the geek 1% of the population we belong to do.
This is why we will be the only ones to adopt a linux desktop platform.
Users buy benefits.
To a user, there is no benefit to using a Linux desktop.
The benefit to using windows is that it's the least-brainfuck frugal way to get started using a computer, and it's the same set of computer skills they usually need at work.
The benefit to using OSX is that it's the least-brainfuck way to use apple hardware.
To the non-geek, Linux has no benefit. There is *NOTHING* that that desktop will do for them that Windows, OSX, or OSX with Windows in fusion/parallels won't do equally well, with less effort, upfront and ongoing, capex and opex.
And no, in the case of most people, the brainfuck, time & opportunity cost of learning a new OS far outstrips the $100 of OEM Windows 7 license fees it has the potential to save (and in the case of macs, the 2-figure OS cost is silently lumped into the 4-figure cost of what is essentially a luxury computer).
The Linux desktop is not broken per-se. It's simply an also-ran that didn't reach escape velocity with the large market, and has no benefit-driven propulsion system to ever help it reach that. No, I can't think of what benefits it would bring. I can only think of a lot of features that any lean-startup-driven process that looks at what's been happening there over the past 10 years would identify as waste (e.g. stuff that fails to get more people to use the platform) in 20 minutes flat.
It's like "Ever since the invention of the car, we use less horses, and therefore need less whips. Quick, everyone. Think of ways to get everyone to buy whips again! What can we do to 'fix the whip'?"
In the absence of benefits, you can't "fix" it.
Benefits, people. Either think up of some, or stop wasting everyone's time with this stuff.
All the talent that is going into this /dev/null would better benefit us all if it went to solving real problems, bring people real benefits, and help the universe go forward, not back for the sake of some anachronistic religious goal (which this is, to some). We've gone from 10% of the world consuming like Americans to nearly 50%. Every natural resource in the world is under supply stress. India, China, SE Asia and Brazil gave birth to middle classes. There are so many real problems out there to fix.
-
If you're using legit adobe software that costs hundreds or in some case thousands of dollars, what the fuck do you care if you spend 100$ more on windows ?
Because both Windows and OS X, the two platforms on which Creative Suite is available, have multiple issues surrounding effective ownership and control of the computer. The future of both operating systems seems to be a both a dumbing down and locking up of the computer hardware and software. Many people would love to have a Linux version of CS to escape from having to deal with those issues. Adobe is bad enough by themselves, thank you very much.
However, I don't see this as a likely development in the near term.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
it needs more desktop applications that have well designed UIs and that WORK RIGHT.
All the apps in the world won't matter if Microsoft Office and Adobe Pagemaker aren't included in the list. While there are good open source alternatives available, nobody is going to risk their company's future without access to what is considered industry standard applications.
Want Linux to be more acceptable on the desktop, first I would work on Libre/Open Office. User's don't care whose fault it is that documents don't convert perfectly, they want the documents to convert perfectly (nor does it matter that there are imperfections between various versions of MS Office). While it is nice that Ubuntu provided some development time to get a patch into LibreOffice that will use the unified Unity menu, that time would have been better spent making powerpoint transitions function the same way as under Windows.
Pagemaker is another must have for businesses. Yes Gimp does wonderful things as does Inkscape, but neither help Pagemaker users transition to Linux. How many Windows only companies allow Macs in for the marketing department? They do it because they few the Mac as the specific tool needed. Likewise, even if there are alternatives, Pagemaker is the tool needed and if it isn't supported under Linux, it is a show stopper.
Finally, there needs to be good general ledger accounting software. Businesses aren't going to install linux everywhere but in the finance office and the finance office isn't going to offer a go-ahead opinion if their stuff won't work.
If all of this sounds business-centric, well, it is. As much as home users may adopt or want to use linux, it is business users that will drive the desktop. It is also business users that will be able to pay support fees, etc. that would keep open source companies in business. That is why companies like Redhat focus on the data center and not the desktop. The data center already has the model of paying for support and therefore Redhat can build a sustainable business model.
It isn't that desktop linux is dying. It hasn't been born yet. For linux to be successful on the desktop, the first thing to realize is that it has nothing to do with window manager or desktop environment. It has everything to do with applications. If you don't have the applications that people need to do their work, it won't be adopted.
Linux is fabulous as a sever OS at almost every scale.
But most desktop users don't care about running their own servers, and those that do can generally get the few services that they want in a set-it-and-forget-it appliance from the Best Buy or the Apple Store. And even Windows and Mac OS offer much easier-to-manage implementations of (for example) Windows file sharing and web services. Why would I want to install and configure Samba by hand when I can just check a box to enable file sharing in OS X? Even better, why do either when I can get a router with a USB port and a file server inside it for just a few dollars, stick it in the corner, and forget about it.
Back in the day I had a Linux box running (I forget which) minimal Linux distro as a file server, print server, DHCP server, and NAT/firewall box on my LAN. It was diskless and sat behind my couch and did its job very well for years. Now I just have an Airport Extreme. Uses less power, was infinitely easier to set up, and makes no noise.
You can see where Linux is great by looking at where its marketshare is. You can see where Linux is lousy (e.g. the desktop/laptop everyday applications user space) in the same way. People aren't dumb—they do actually tend to use the right tool for the right job. Right now if you want to set up a departmental server, Linux is a prime choice. If you want to equip your college freshman with a general purpose homework computer for school, it's not even on the radar.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Add real package management to Mac OS-X.
macports doesn't cut it, neither does brew. yum or apt-get based would be the way to go. Plainly put, the distance to perfect desktop (A decent package manger for the Unixy bits) is closer in Mac OS-X than it is on Linux (Adding a, usable, consistent desktop with usable office apps)
One thing I will give credit to Microsoft about is their software development tools. It is also useful to remember that Microsoft started out as a compiler developer that happened to end up in the operating system game due to (for them) a fortunate series of events.
I've been using Microsoft products since 1979 in one degree or another, even though I do think they are an evil company sucking the life out of the American computer industry. Still, your comments about the quality of their development tools seems to be pretty spot on with my own experience as well. They use these same tools (Visual Studio) to write MS-Windows, so they get a whole lot of internal attention within the company where it is co-workers complaining about nasty bugs and not just outside customers.
I fell in love with C# because the design team for C# is a bunch of guys that I like and are some of the best compiler/language developers in the world. They were the original developers for Borland Delphi, and if you are familiar with both Delphi and C#, you can find a whole lot of similarities in the language design including underlying philosophies for how they work with data structures. The chief architect of both languages was Anders Hejlsberg, somebody who I have come to admire. What I also like is that Microsoft pretty much let him do what he wanted, and C# has become a pretty successful language on its own merits.
If you're using legit adobe software that costs hundreds or in some case thousands of dollars, what the fuck do you care if you spend 100$ more on windows ?
Precisely. Which is why Linux isn't as popular as it could be since Adobe doesn't really care about the operating system other than which OS has the largest market share.
I agree. What additional apps are lacking?
- huge behemoth office suite that interoperates w/the defacto standard? libre office. check.
- popular, familiar browser? firefox, check.
- cross platform gui toolkits? QT, others, check.
- *stable* API? I dunno what people are complaining about. The standard c library and POSIX OS API have been stable for ages. check.
I think the bigger problem is *too many* apps included by default--no defacto standard across distros. (But this is what *choice* brings us.)
Users cannot sit down at any linux machine and expect the same experience. They can't expect to always find:
- IE
- office
- outlook
- msn
- notepad
- ms paint
- solitaire (seriously--it's one of the most commonly used apps in the world)
in the same place and working the same way.
There's no IE browser, but there could be konqueror, firefox, chrome, opera.
There's no MS Office, but they might find kofifce, libre office, abiword, etc.
There's a dozen possible IM clients.
There's a dozen possible text editors.
There's no IE GUI file explorer--but there could be konqueror, nautilus, dolphin, or other
There's a half dozen paint programs that might be there.
There's no outlook, but there could be kmail, thunderbird, or a few others.
And that's just the common apps.
They want to install something else, they immediately find:
- there is *no* consistency between distros
- the app they want is probably not ported to Linux in the first place (guess that answers my question--"what apps?"--well we just don't know, but can't expect every dev to make every app cross platform for our favorite platform)
This doesn't even consider what developers have to do to target different distros. RPM, dpk. portage, etc.
Linux is certainly for the most part *source* compatible with a stable c library and POSIX API. But any number of combinations of library versions could be found on a target system--which is why any time I've ever got a commercial app, it usually came w/static linkage so that it would just work.
I see no difference between linux distros and the developers behind them--they are all cats and you cannot herd them.
It's a problem, that by the nature of it's participants cannot be solved.
Desktop Linux will largely remain for developers, by developers--or for people closely related to developers/admins that will install and maintain it for them, or for tinkerers. But not average-day Joe and Susie--it's not consistent enough.
Users no longer anticipate sitting down to a computer system and having to learn it/figure it out.
They expect uniformity to the commodity systems in existence.
*Unless*, they *know* it's some new system and are expecting to figure it out--but in that case, they *expect* it to be the same everywhere they go.
Thus "Linux" is not the best name to use. Really, you'd have to distinguish by saying the distro name. Eg, "Android"--everyone knows what to expect--there are small variations, but they all work essentially the same--no worse than differences in version of Windows.
Thus, "Linux on the Desktop" is a misnomer. It really should be "Ubuntu on the desktop" or "Suse on the desktop" or "Debian on the desktop". So really, it's two problems:
1) which distro is defacto standard (there will never be one--intractable problem)
2) for said distro, what keeps it from becoming a good desktop alternative to Windows and Mac? (see problem #1, and issues above)
How would you 'fix' it?
Well, start with some simple things. GFX and Driver API layers need fixing. And by fixing I mean make it easy for Intel, Nvidia and ATI (and others) to make drivers and offer support while cutting ALL the crap that ends up as a firefight because they are blobs or none free. Linux neds these people, and their tech
Talk to Steam and others and discuss a Direct X alike layer, perhaps really getting to the core of providing OpenCL, CUDA, OpenGL, Maybe Direct X emulation layers, or perhaps a new layer that does the same. Heavily invite the players, steam, Nvidia, AMD, others to be part of it.
Sound API. Fix it. Properly.
Gnome was a shitty limited desktop. The Compiz bunch / crew created a layer on top that allowed *fun* and *customisation* - and resulted in a true surge of YouTube Videos and interest globally in the Linux desktop. It become fun, cool, and interesting. If you could bottle it, wasn't that what you wanted to get hold of?
Since then, every window manager, and distro, has seemingly wanted to move away from that, kill that, do touch, or make Gnome 3 or Unity.
*Hint to the gnome people, Compiz saved your ass and made your desktop interesting. Maybe you need to understand what it was that was good. It was not your tired, 2d, boring, unconfigurable, tedious, limited desktop, broken desktop.
Having screwed up the desktop via Unity and Gnome 3 - I hear people saying 'Linux on the desktop is dead, its dead man!'. Little wonder why. The desktop stuff I see is tried, limited and in most cases unconfigurable. Only throwiung compiz (for example) adds a layer of personalisation and life. And even that is years old and needs a refresh really.
For anyone saying 'I've used my linux desktop for the past 18 years, man, and I love it' - Yeah. You might, but the part you are missing here is it needs work.
Anyway, the nearest I see is Cinnamon, but while its nice, its pretty lacking in customisation.
We`re all equal
While touch IS coming to desktops, it's not here now and it won't be on the majority of desktop systems - perhaps ever.
Don't design for a tablet if you're designing for a desktop.
That's particularly aimed at Gnome and Unity, who seem to be ignoring desktops when it comes to new designs.
Apple and Microsoft say that the PC is dead or on its way out. There's no way to make the Linux desktop a better Windows tablet than windows 8 or a better iPad than an iPad, but there will be a large number of people who *don't* want to give up the PC/Dekstop. Be it for the input devices, higher display resolution or because people want general purpose computing, there will be a large need for exactly what Linux currently is. It would be good to have more applications, and a better, all-encompassing API would be nice, but there's no crisis like the summary makes it out to be. Also , it would be like the xkcd about standards, unless it's a beautiful wonder of an API.
1 - Focus on *usability*. This means *simplicity* You don't have to drop skins/theme support, but get one looking *really* clean and sharp, and make that the default. If other people want to add more, fine, but get one default skin looking really clean and simple. For reference, the plastik theme for KDE is pretty darn close. This also means there shouldn't be a dozen icons on the taskbar - the default should be clock, wifi status (only if using wifi) and sound.
2 - You need really good UI building tools that are well documented and well supported. Stop cramming features into the desktop, get the basics rock solid and support the crap out of them on the builder.
3 - You should be able to make the desktop work just like Windows or MacOS - it's what people are familiar with. It doesn't matter how much better you think your desktop is. It might be lightyears easier to use than MacOS or Windows, but if it's too alien-feeling people won't want to switch to it.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
I'd like to replace the desktop metaphor with a notebook/binder/planner metaphor: eg, tabs for different projects. Being able to mix spreadsheets and photos and word processing functions all on the same page; kind of like MS-Onenote, but with more active content, and more convenient features. For example, why can't I set an appointment or an alarm when I click on the clock?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
People who care more about "effective ownership and control of the computer' than user experience tend to produce applications and environments that are vastly more configurable, but have much worse UX than those produced by developers who focus on user experience.
That's the underlying problem with Linux on the Desktop.
if you want a 800 number to call and yell at because your Linux computer is not working you could go with any of a number of commercial distro's (redhat, suse,oracle) or any of a number of other firms that will provide support for non commercial distros (canonical). In fact debain keeps a page devoted to paid consultancy firms around the world that will let you scream at them for a set rate $ per hour. http://www.debian.org/consultants/
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
My advice has been the same from the 1995-ish days of RH... you need a solid foundation that is close to static and stable to build on. Just like the kernel, there cannot just be chaos. Linux needs to be not just the kernel but the basic framework and a single set of core apps. Instead of 15 terminal apps, window managers, editors, etc. There needs to be one, and the very best/stable/simple one from each category. This would get people interested in working on that one project since it would bring the most fame and notice, it would make the base system close to a standard, and it would eliminate a lot of complexity. From there people can be free to add whatever they want in any of those categories or specialized apps but the foundational base would still be standard. That alone would be huge.
After that my opinion is that there should be self-contained applications. All the files and dependencies should be in the apps package and directory. With disk being cheap and huge the redundancy and extra space would be completely worth it to give up. It would make the dependency hell go away and it would simplify so many aspects.
After 17 years though, I'm not holding my breath... the usual crew will just continue to say how it isn't necessary and go about their business with no regard for reality.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
Seriously, looks at the most successful *nix distros, OS X, Android, you know damn well that these are not "community" driven projects.
The biggest problem with Linux has always been is fragmentation. Having 1000 distro's all thinking they can make a better desktop platform, better development system, better server, better UI, etc weakens the whole community source code initiative. A lot of great developers are all working on different variations of essentially the same thing, which waters down the whiskey.
I think the ONLY thing that could fix Linux is to create one-Uber distro, make is a real community project and put all the collective innovation and interest into creating one desktop version of Linux.
However, the big problem now is that the Desktop is dying, so I think any effort into making Linux for the Desktop is moot. Even if a super-uber fantastic Desktop Linux is created today, the platform it runs on is dying.
Linux has to move into Mobile platforms if it wants to survive, but then that will introduce a whole new generation of groups thinking they know how to build a better iOS/Android killer, and failing miserably at it.
I think fundamentally open source OS'es fail, period. The only successful versions of Linux/*nix have been relatively closed projects from big companies with deep pockets. About the only hope for Linux is to wrap it into some hardware platform like a game console, tablet, phone, etc which effectively closes it down. Linux is like Utopia, everybody wants it but it is fundamentally unattainable because it is a flawed concept unless you compromise.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I find this particularly interesting.
This discussion happens over and over ad infinitum on Slashdot and elsewhere, and indeed the KDE 3->4 and GNOME 2->3 "revolutions" are giant meditations-in-code on the problem of Linux on the desktop/Linux for regular users, yet the Linux community never seems to get their head around the problem, despite dozens of comments from users giving simple directions and despite very successful examples in Windows and Mac OS.
I suspect that the self-selection of the Linux community with respect to Linux's political goals and characteristics (which have been the most consistent dimension of Linux since the beginning) leaves the Linux world culturally and ideologically blind when it comes to being "good on the desktop" or "good for regular users."
Witness the way in which so many complaint posts from regular users are shouted/modded down, here and elsewhere.
They're giving the Linux community plain, simple, honest directions about what would encourage them to select Linux as a tool, but I think that what you're hinting at is right—Linux as a social project (not a technical one) is incompatible with the consumer marketplace at a broad scale. This has basically left the "Linux on the desktop" question as a waste of time for many years now—witness all of the wasted development hours in KDE/GNOME since their respective beginnings. Sure, lots of people here will post and suggest that "KDE 4 is great" and "GNOME 3 is the best ever," but in terms of the actual number of real-world users being served by these codebases vs. the amount of time and resources invested in them, they're much more expensive at the social/labor level than most commercial software, and with poorer ultimate results when measured in the same way (though that's something of a tautological calculation).
What I wonder about is whether this will ever die off—or, on the other hand, will we continue to see questions like this in another 10 years, with Linux still at the same marketshare and with the same public perception, and with a lot of code churn and invested labor hours over that time?
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
For my IMHO why desktop Linux lags, watch this video.
Linux has no infrastructure to support desktop developers. There is no Linux as a development environment. And it all changes too fast and too often - and diversity of distros is a separate bag of hurt. On top of that there are still piles of gaps. Classical one is the multimedia. Another one is the DB interface. Basically, you need a big-sized well-coordinated community to have a concerted development and maintenance of a Linux as a development platform.
Most importantly, one shouldn't forget: most desktop developers are ex-users and ex-power-users.
Windows and Mac OS make it very easy to transition from a user to a developer (VB and VBA, AppleScript and Automator). They also provide moderate guarantees that experience and skill will not expire too fast so that the time invested into coding something up will not be wasted and can be reused after the OS update. (Linux version: user starts with shell scripting ... but that's direction rather opposite of the desktop.)
I can name only Qt as something what came close. But then it does not completely cover everything. KDE - yes. But there is no dumb abomination like VB which allows to build something useful in very short time or from copy-pasted samples gathered on google.
GNOME's Vala comes closer (at least from my initial impression of it), but unfortunately, it is bound to rather unpredictable GNOME project.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
If you want "professional" you can buy Rational Application Developer for Linux from IBM for USD $2,280.00. It is basically Eclipse anointed by IBM for corporate dolts like you. Guess what even people at Microsoft working on the really hard problems like OS development use Emacs and Vim. You may continue to delude yourself.
and that was the lindows goal. integrated wine, where the user could just run 95% of the windows software. It even worked quite fine for the software, which was the primary goal. But Lindows was not successful, because when it looks like windows and runs windows software as primary goal ... you can just use windows, as it came preinstalled with your pc.
Between your post and mine, the dichotomy/disagreement has been made clear.
There are two views of users, computing, what computing is for, and what useful computing actually is at work in this discussion. Another way to say what I was saying is that broader Linux community's ideas of what computing is for and what a user is like are very different from the ideas that are in the economic mainstream.
Rather than respond to your points, I'd like to draw them into relief and point to them. You've made good points with respect to a particular set of goals and a particular value system. But the continuous questions about Linux on the desktop that we see on Slashdot suggest that there is some ambivalence in the Linux world about the ways in which meeting these goals and these values does not seem to lead to widespread adoption.
The stalemate (a decade-old, at least, one) is crystallized by the way in which the Linux community does not want to change its goals and values, yet wants somehow to enjoy widespread adoption. The two are not compatible; to enjoy widespread adoption, Linux must share the goals of the people walking around Best Buy right now. If the broader community wants to distance themselves from these people and these goals, it is destined to fight windmills for a long time when it comes to widespread adoption.
Better, to my eye at least, to simply concede on that point and enjoy the system that exists, understanding that for the limited userbase that it has, it is probably currently the best choice.
Or: You can have users that are not developers or you can have users that are also developers, but there is a distinct limit on the degree to which you can have both groups with the same product.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
All of those are fine and dandy, in theory. Except that the Linux community seems to *hate* them with a passion, claiming to switch over to xfce for a more standard desktop environment.
In fact, unity, gnome3 and kde4 are great examples of just how much the Linux community prefers "good enough" over anything that's trying to move forward.
Everything 'broken' about Linux is already solved by Windows. Paying the MS tax is far easier than getting Linux OS developers to all agree on common standards that would make life easy for Linux App developers. It's easier than getting hardware manufacturers to start supporting Linux. It's easier than getting game developers to support Linux.
If you want Linux, use Linux. If you want an OS to do the things Windows does, use Windows. If you want both, dual boot.
the latest versions of Office, Adobe products, corporate infrastructure products, games, etc.
In short, to get to the 95% figure, you have to count every last shareware and freeware app for doing not much of anything in particular as a part of the "Windows software" ecosystem. There's a reason Obscure Shareware App X 1.0 is obscure, and it's because not many users care about it.
Most users do care very much about Office, Photoshop, games, and a few other essential apps, which is why Wine has never fulfilled its promise.
In short, your post is willfully obtuse. Or perhaps my post was. Let me change it:
"Only it didn't do the most critical things that Windows does: run the latest versions of MS Office, Adobe products, retail PC games, and Windows enterprise connectivity applications. So it was, in fact, completely different."
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Did you expect an OS built by programmers for programmers to have lousy programming tools? If you want to use the hip closed source editor your can get Sublime Text. The fact is the major problem with development in Linux is languages and APIs. Perhaps I should rephrase that that: the problem is Java sucks which is why Google had to bother with developing things like Dalvik and Go. The problem is Go also sucks. Sorry Rob Pike.
Try actually involving people who know something about user interface design, usability, etc. Not a bunch of hackers who like to make pretty displays. Develop common and stable APIs, a common UI toolkit, and common IPC protocols. Strive towards uniformity in user interface appearance. Stop "skinning" and develop a standard UI appearance based on actual research.
There is many decades of HCI research that applies to this. You could spend ages leafing through journal and conference proceedings on this stuff. Much of what applies to fixing the Linux desktop was solved long ago. People just need to implement it, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel or assuming that the academics are idiots. Be willing to implement something you disagree with because you MIGHT BE WRONG, or (more likely) what works for you may not work for more typical users or novices or even power users.
Get rid of X11 and switch to Wayland. Yeah, I know. Everyone will cry about the loss of network transparency. You know what? Windows and MacOS do not have network transparency. They use other solutions like VNC. And those other operating systems are successful on the desktop, while Linux is not.
Linux on the desktop is a failure for several reasons. They include:
- Unstable APIs and driver ABIs
- Too many choices about UI toolkits
- Too many inconsistencies between applications, even those part of the same "desktop environment"
- Lack of educated and informed leadership
- Unwillingness to work on the "boring parts" of software development
- Too much infighting among contributors
- Etc. etc.
Another thing we need is more open source graphics drivers. The Open Graphics Project started working on solving that problem once and for all, but it didn't get enough financial support. The OGP started before Kickstarter, so perhaps that would have helped. In any case, the graphics card and driver problem needs to be FIXED.
Btw, if you need a great programming IDE, then download Visual Studio 2012 [microsoft.com]. It's just released now and it's free! MAKE SOMETHING SIMILAR!
Eclipse? NetBeans? IDEA? Qt Creator?
I'm one of the people who wrote VS 2012, and frankly I still find your post misleading, trollish and offensive.
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the Linux desktop, there are icons, you click on them and they make programs start, it's not rocket science, it doesn't need to. But there are tons of small issues and interoperability problems. Just fix them one by one instead of constantly reinventing the wheel.
No, the replacement for Illustrator is Inkscape. GIMP is the replacement for Photoshop.
Yep, and in turn: Give every GUI tool a meaningful command line interface. The CLI isn't the enemy, but you should you be forced to use it. But neither should you be forced to use the GUI for tasks that could be easily done from CLI (e.g. batch conversion of documents).
Some of your points are well-taken. Yet there are alternatives that fight a huge uphill battle against the entrenched set of Microsoft apps. To wit:
* LibreOffice will do 99% of what most Office users would like.
* Thunderbird isn't so wonderful, but Zimbra is a great Outlook replacement
* Pidgin is an easy to use IM platform that works with most IM transports.
* text editors? Linux? OMG-- there are more Linux text editors than you can imagine; whether coder, web page hack, whatever, there are tons.
* Every single phylum of desktop Linux has some sort of file manager; finding files with them sometimes takes luck, I'll grant you.
* MS Paint is goofy. There are better apps; plentiful-- but they don't work like MS apps.
And therein is the rub. Expecting Linux desktop apps to behave like Microsoft apps is useful if you come from the Windows world. You desire stuff you know. It takes time to move your mind over to a different Window manager.
If you want Windows, stick with Windows. Windows is a paid model. Some software is free/shareware, but it's not really the open model. Linux is the name of the operating system kernel; the apps are GNU as a foundation, and plentiful other origins based on lots of fun and sweat.
Android is a fork, IMHO, controlled by Google. There are consistent models coming; Rome wasn't built in a day.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Linux on the desktop works fine. There's nothing wrong with it; I can use it, anybody can use it. As long as you don't have craphardware, that is. However, there's one thing you can be 100% certain about. Within a year, an upgrade will come around that will totally fuck shit up. All your settings will be gone, your desktop environment probably won't even start and compiz will start behaving horrible. All your gnome panel applets will behave oddly and right-clicking on the gnome panel won't work anymore. I cannot explain this kind of bullshit to end-users.
If it weren't for this kind of crap, it'd be totally awesome. I'd have the total noobs that I help with their PC migrated to Linux a long time ago. It'd be so much better without the virusscanner crap, without all kinds of odd applications nagging about updates and running crap in the background etc. But I can't. Because I can be 100 percent sure they'll all call me right after the first update because it fucked them in the ass.
0x or or snor perron?!
So first you install Windows, then you need to find more disks or google around for drivers for some of your hardware. Hardware compatibility is a bit more of an issue for Linux, but less so than Apple products. But if you have hardware that Linux supports (vendors don't support linux, linux supports hardware) then there is usually no issue. Just install from the media of your choice, set up a user and go - everything works out of the box for me.
I use LXDE because it is light on the resources. I really do not see why a desktop environment has to use several hundred megabytes of RAM. But even LXDE takes a lot. Needs about 100M. It makes them sluggish. The Firefox developers embarked on a "memshrink" program, and it's yielded excellent dividends. That effort made Firefox faster and more reliable. Seems Linux desktops could benefit from a similar hard look at memory usage.
LXDE has other problems. The file manager, pcmanfm, is still buggy and prone to crashes. Move lots of files around with it, and its stability goes to pot. It'll quit handling commands when it doesn't just crash. I've had to close it and start it up again to get it to work properly. I've not had good experiences with KDE or Gnome's file managers either. The file manager is a core part of any desktop environment, and the ones available in Linux are not good enough. Then there's the window manager, Openbox. Openbox works fine, but it isn't easy to configure. It has unusual commands (Shade/Roll up/down, and Un/decorate) that only serve to confuse the casual user, and which cannot be removed. If I switch to, say jwm, which doesn't have such extraneous features, then I have to deal with lxpanel and jwm's dueling task bars.
The UIs of all these desktop environments are full of holes and missing functionality. Still difficult to do it all and not at some point drag out the old text editor. For an example of a hole in the functionality, in LXDE if you right click on the desktop, a window pops up. Fine so far. Then if you click on the main menu (aka Start) button, that popup window does not go away, and the menu does not come up. You have to click somewhere on the desktop to make that popup window go away, then you can access the menu by clicking on the magic button. Why does it work that way? It's kludgy, that's why. The Linux desktop is still a messy collection of independent apps that don't play nice with each other. It lacks polish.
Peripherals are another weak spot. What happens if you try to print something, but you forgot to turn the printer on first? Depends how CUPS is configured. That job could hang around in the queue forever, and you will not be able to print until it is cleared. And it can't be cleared by any action that makes sense to a casual user. Canceling the job is the way to get printing working again, but this is not so easy. Turning the printer on doesn't work. Even rebooting doesn't work. But first, the user may not know any of this is happening, and will try to print again. Might end up with multiple copies. There may not be a printer dialog in which the user can cancel a job, instead the user has to pull up a browser and navigate to localhost:631. Or bring up ye olde command line prompt and do "lprm *". How many casual users know to do that? Evidently HAL was a wrong turn, and now it's all dbus.
One other thing: games. For games, must have hardware accelerated 3D graphics on commodity low end graphics cards. The open source drivers still can't do it. The proprietary drivers can, but cause other problems.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Use Qt. I have never seen a better designed and documented API.
Could have been true were it not for moc. Even GTK+ is a better object oriented toolkit despite being written in C. But yeah if I was writing a multiplatform C++ app with an UI I would probably use Qt.
Linux is exactly the right product for those in the self-selected Linux community.
But there seems to be a deep ambivalence about the limited size of this community (witness the endless discussions on Slashdot about desktop Linux and what it needs/what's wrong with it/why it hasn't taken off) in the Linux world.
I doubt it will go away—Linux users want Linux to continue to be what it is, but they have also shown a long-term desire to find more fellows, to grow the userbase, and to engage in advocacy. I suspect the deeper wish here is that much of the world was more computer literate and/or that much more of the world was OSS. Of course, both of these scenarios are unlikely to happen, for reasons that have been discussed here for years now.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
God no, Eclipse is quite painful to use. The damn automatic addition of braces annoys me no end for starters.... It riles me just thinking about it!
Blatant Advert: Android Apps!
um.. how is this not about Microsoft too? I mean seriously, linux on the desktop and we are to ignore what is already on the desktop to pass your filter?
This story is about replacing what is out there and if Microsoft is out there, then it is just as valid to bring up them as it is anything else because it is relevant.
Make a .exe standard across Linux versions. This .exe cannot escape its install directory or access root privledges. You might allow them to access other directories by assigning privledges, say if one application needs to play with another application.
The reason I quit Linux is that not everything installs via C++ that well. Last I tried was back in 2003 when you needed to install every program you added via a compiler.
God spoke to me
You can turn that off.
If I have to touch another fucking server that this pile of shit software has decimated, I'm going to scream.
But the big attraction of LInux is that it's free. Once you add support costs, it's going to lose that edge.
Lubuntu provides all the usability I need ... two years totally Windows free and going .. and I've got a version running on a USB device for system backup/restore ...
AccountKiller
Most insightful thing I've read on /. in ages. Well done!
I find it interesting how much what you're promoting mirrors Android development. I don't think that should be surprising.
I would like to reiterate:
1. Users are not developers. Don't act like they are.
2. Users do not want to be developers. You can't convince them that they do.
3. Users are not less important than developers. A developer without users is little more than a hobbyist.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
Of course, still damn annoying though.
Blatant Advert: Android Apps!
This. Times a thousand. Seriously... an app built against one version of many of the common shared libraries frequently won't link at runtime to another version. Recompiling the app from source on your own system fixes this issue, but frankly, the requirement to release source code is going to discourage a lot of commercial development.
This might theoretically be worked around by standardizing on installers for binary-only applications which do not contain the executable, but instead contain an object file that can then be linked against whatever shared libraries the user might have on their system, and produce the exe from that. A subset of gcc would be necessary for this to work (they would need gcc's linker, and its dependancies), but this could even theoretically be part of the installer package (and it would not make any attempt to install the linker itself... only the application and its resources).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Not trying to bait anyone but I run a small business. We have Microsoft and Apple desktops along with iPhone and Blackberries. These are all TOOLS that we use in our business to generate revenue. They are a means to an end (back to the money theme). We are definitely more technically conversant that the average consumer and I have yet to see an argument that would make me consider a Linux desktop. God help anyone trying to sell Linux to the general public.
I think what many Linux fans don't know about is a formidable market entry rule called "Good Enough". It's a killer. It's inertia squared. It's the challenge that you face when people don't feel enough pain. It's the devil you know challenge.
Unless Linux and it's advocates are able to address this challenge or Apple/Microsoft make it easier (which is highly unlikely) then the Linux desktop is a great forum discussion, but not much more than that.
Also, much of the community effort seems to be in wasted providing workarounds, and writing long bash scripts to address gaps in functionality. I bet much more effort is spent on writing those forum replies and scripts rather than what would be involved in actually fixing the issue or functionality gap.
Linux forums are FULL of posts like this:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=11926504
http://kyleabaker.com/2010/07/11/how-to-fix-your-ubuntu-boot-screen/
And then we have people pointing out the issues with the scripts and trying to fix them. So in the end you have very poorly discoverable forum posts with workarounds that may or may not work for your configuration.
I guess this is because projects do not welcome contributors, and actively drive them away even if they want to contribute("Works for me!".
Huh, it's broken? Damn I wish you'd told me sooner! What part? I'll fix it!
Mine appears to be ok. It's precisely how I designed it to be and that's what I love about it. I pieced it together about 4 years ago and it's still running strong. (IBM think pad t42 / 1.6ghz single / 1gb ram / 80gb HDD. And yes I do have a powerhouse).
Doubt mac or windows 7 would run anywhere near as nice. GIMP, music, 40 FF tabs, FileZilla, and more it's all happening here!!!
On an informative note: I think the statements are pretty null talking about desktops like that. Sure, Gnome was a bit of a flop but it's being revised. It makes a damn better impression than Unity to first time users I'm sure.
KDE is another big player and they just got investment to continue on their project as it may be entering an enterprise environment soon. How exciting :D
But relative to the topic, how would I *fix* it?
Well it could be made better by making a really noob friendly distro, which is with a DE that's fresh in looks, intuitive and makes the migration for technophobes from windows to Linux much easier. We could call it CoughGnome.
Couple that desktop environment with such a distro which has a large application database, with easy one click installs, support for PPA, and support for 4+ years and recent developer backing from a huge games vendor with a keen interest in Linux... We could call it CoughUbuntu.
Damn if only such a thing existed.
Get them n00bs on board and using it the corps will follow.
For those who are adept they're probably having fun on Archy or Sabayon or at least a Debian derivative.
Admittedly I understand some whine about shared packages with gnome when all u want to do is have GIMP and not have gnome but tbfh if your enthusiastic about Linux you probably arent habing issues and you probably aren't saying its broken.
--
13 years Linux user.
-- David
My point is, regardless of that guy's motives, plenty of people out there genuinely feel this way, and the open source community just makes fun of them for being inflexible.
Linus is free. Support isn't necessarily. It hasn't lost that edge just ask redhat.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
You are going to get a lot of people saying "There is no problem."
You are going to get a lot of people saying "Fix this problem with my favorite distro"
You are going to get a lot of people saying "Fix this hardware problem that gives people problems"
In other words, you are going to get denial or narrow and self-serving answers.
The people that should be asked are people who don't use Linux. Get a bunch of people who have never used Linux, find out what applications they use, load up machines with Linux and their apps or the FLOSS equivalents, and have them use those computer. Then, ask them how to make Linux better on the desktop.
It is called market research.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Here is how I would recommending making the Linux desktop better:
1) Improve the Control Panel applications so you can make practically all OS configuration changes without having run a command or hand edit a configuration file. If I have to open a command prompt or a text editor to fix a problem, you've made configuration more difficult than what 90% of computer users are willing to put up with?
(And if you don't believe the statement above, consider yourself lucky. You obviously haven't been doing much tech support for "regular" computers lately. The command line scares the hell out of them.)
2) Standardize on a single method of packaging and installing applications. .RPM's, .DEB's, yum, apt-get... It's too many choices for the average computer user.
3) Get some of the major PC game developers like EA and Blizzard to start making their products Linux native. Make those versions available for $5 less than the Windows versions. That will get you some market-share growth quickly!
You have left the land of sense make. You are too emotionally committed to what you beleive to be true to pay attention large pieces of evidence that contradict your beliefs.
How many windows users are protesting Windows 8's interface and clamouring for the more traditional desktop? Does that mean that the windows community prefers good enough over anything thats trying to move forward?
How many Mac users complain about the Ios-ification of OSX? Does that mean that the Mac community prefers good enough oer anything thats trying to move forward?
There is a large amount of innovation and experimentation all across the linux desktop landscape. That is not a real problem. The real problem is much, much, much more boring: a lack of committed qa and testing to perfect and refine that wildness. RHEL desktop works great and provides a stable platform for application developers, its just years behind the upstream desktop projects as it takes them that long to refine the associated technologies.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Maybe because for my workflow (lots of windows running vim or shells, all open at once, on the same huge screen along with at least one web browser), the new shiny isn't actually moving forward.
I agree 100% on all of it, I wanted to pat your back on a few other things.
- Stop "shipping early and often." Ship late (i.e. once bugs have been fixed/stabilized) and rarely (no more than once every couple of years).
I SO agree with this. I'm sick of Mozilla's updating Firefox every 2 weeks. FOLKS IT DOESNT NEED AN UPDATE EXCEPT FOR SECURITY OR BUG FIXES! (ahem)
This is why I love Debian. It's updated when it needs it I don't need the latest/greatest KDE. After v4.2 it got rid of the buggy, laggy code. It works fine! And I've seen the latest. - BIG DEAL! Reminds me of what XP was compaired to Win2k. Win2k with a bit of polish.
The biggest thing I want to add to this.
I'm a linux user from early Slackware. I actually installed Slack by just reading the instructions. So what - 15 years? I can't remember. But I remember spending hours trying to track down one oddball piece of code to get program x running. Know what? I'm now 46, I don't want to do that anymore. I don't want to be on the computer for hours on end. I've got a suspection that's what's happening to everyone else. Yes, we want smart phones, and tablets. But we don't want to be tied up behind a desktop anymore.
We don't want an OS that we have to fiddle with, and tinker. We want a secure, lean OS that works out of the box. The security fixes come as fast as possible, and just works.
Give us something that can be installed as easy as Windows. A universal installer would be great, but at least CHECK the installers before you ship. I went though 5 popular distros 2 years ago, and only 1 (OpenSuse12.1) worked on a 4 year old system. All the others just froze up, or crashed. Debian 6 (my last one) has an installer that is even more of a pain in the tail. I personally left because of that installer.
Fix it so we can install drivers from company web sites (cough nVIDIA Choke) instead of having to use the buggy, and SLOW noveau (Debian, you listening?) Don't force us to use something that people don't want.
There is dangerous stuff in linux. Why is GRUB automatically installed? I've had more problems with it ruining my systems than anything I ever used. It seems there's a lot of code for something that's used only briefly. Why do we need backgrounds? GUI versions? Etc? It's just suppose to be a way to boot into another OS, (or kernal) But yet, it's so complex, and so dangerously written, one screw up can lock you out of your OS. There's very few tools to fix it, and work with it, and they don't work half the time. The command line interface is almost useless too. Lets just go back to a simple thing that's installed if necessary.
-- Kevin C. Redden kcredden@ gmail 392992
1 every X releases have some sort of LTS release and then fix everything DON'T EXPERIMENT WITH NEW BETA STUFF
and have it work as much as possible (so no switching to some new version unless EVERYTHING is working in that version)
then use the run up to the next LTS to get everything ready
2 if you are in the Thou Shalt Not Use the Root Login EVER camp then eliminate every time something needs ROOT you can
(set automount to mount portable drives READ WRITE WORLD not Read Only Root Owned (unless that is set in the drives meta data))
3 even if its a Python clicky shell eliminate the need to go to the Command Line Shell as much as possible
4 have the desktop "control panel" slurp any generic control panels it can
5 God help me for this one: Have in the Help system some sort of Clippy type Agent that you can use to invoke "wizard" type things for the times you have to do stuff across multiple control panel items
6 any person that uses JFGI in your distro forum WITHOUT GIVING A CORRECT SEARCH PHRASE should be banned and if an employee does so that person should be fired.
7 and finally INSTALL A LOCAL COPY OF THE HELP FILE WITH ALL APPLICATIONS never assume that your user currently has a network connection
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
The best way to get more people to use desktop Linux is to ignore anything said on Slashdot, including this.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
*Linux damn spell check
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
I'm all for continually making desktop Linux better, and anyone that is trying to do that I wish them great success! As for myself however, I find Linux, including the desktop, great. It was around 2006 or so that Ubuntu really started having success, and with each year they make the Linux desktop more capable, intuitive, and streamlined. Just because it doesn't have the majority doesn't mean it's necessarily broken - maybe it's just not for everyone. I use OS X as my main desktop, and there's nothing 'broken' about it just because it's not the majority. Same goes for Linux.
I would get GNUStep finished, throw in the whole kitchen sink, get all the video decoder/encoder features implemented, get gnustep's web browser completed, and get the desktop components super polished and complete. Finish the System Preferences.app for gnustep etc. It's the best desktop system noone uses and the only real option linux has to take massive market/mindshare away from Microsoft.
... is the only way I'd switch. Right now I use windows primarily for games, if games would run faster on linux I would switch in a heartbeat.
The Start menu is just another UI choice. It's the one that you are used to because MS debuted the idea in Windows 95, but it's not the only possible choice. Nor is it necessarily the best... Computing has changed since 1995, and the UI should be appropriate to and work well with the form-factor, and we are in a phase where form factor is changing; the new computer is the tablet, the mobile phone, your glasses and your wallscreen. In ten years time your desktop and laptop will seem a bit like one of those pictures you see of mainframes.
Change is the one certainty in our industry. Go with it. Find better things, even if that means some wrong turnings and deadends along the way. But if we don't experiment we won't find something better.
This is a classic crossing-a-chasm problem: the next set of users are not like the previous set of users. If you listen to the existing base, then you never make the leap to the next stage, you become pigeonholed and marginalised. When you hit that chasm breakpoint, you can't take all the old users with you - they aren't your future userbase.
* LibreOffice will do 99% of what most Office users would like.
The vast majority of people I know who use Office products (and I've really tried to pry them off it) are using an older Windows with an older Office, but the thing that they do is use them for their embeddable components and integration with Microsoft SQL Server.
All of these are SMB - small and medium business owners (read: usually 50 people or less), and they have either a consultant or one or two in house people, depending on size, who glues everything together into a vertical market application for the business using Visual Basic, or more recently, C#.
The real win here is the API contracts in user space for shared object modules (read DLLs) that have common functionality, and then also use the IUnknown interface to the class factory to pick up components from other DLLs. So long as the top level interface doesn't change, the internal contracts can go whatever way they want, but are usually versioned.
Microsoft didn't include the SQL functionality or the scriptability in the Office for Mac because this is their bread and butter: tools, certifications, captive market for replacement machines, or new machines, if someone new gets hired, escalating storage over time, etc.. They get one "my computer guy" who they pass around between them and their other SMB friends, and that hooks them on the Microsoft crack.
But realize: there's no capability for that type of ecosystem in Linux because of the lack of top end and intermediate contracts. You don't need something as complicated as DCOM/CORBA to implement this, they are all (effectively) COM components, which is effectively OLE stuff. When they need some third party package to handle the sales tax calculations in their point of sale systems, etc., they buy it, and just use the interfaces.
It's unfortunate that no one has stepped into this type of area for Linux (or BSD), but there really isn't much in the way of interchangeable components. You can't really replace Microsoft's components, either, but that's not the point: they've left enough space for niche component vendors to sell bar code scanner interfaces and so on, and it doesn't matter if they come from one vendor or another, so long as (A) each vendor gets enough to stay alive, (B) enough profit to keep them engaged and therefore keep the ecosystem running, and (C) they all come back to the Microsoft mothership to pay their union dues.
Please run the queries
and
and let us know the earliest mention.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
All the old terminals are buried now.
We have page-up and page down, and home, and arrow keys, and insert, and home...
We have standardized keys for cut copy and paste, too.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
1. 100% binary compatibility with Windows binaries. Many people have some "killer app" that they need to run which is Windows and/or Mac only.
As it stands, I need to boot into Windows to run Sketchup.
2. 100% binary compatibility with Windows device drivers.
My Linux wifi driver often flakes out talking to one access point with a panic which requires manual intervention. The last Fedora I tried progressively increased my fan speed running X until I had a jet engine until the next reboot. My Windows drivers don't do that.
3. 100% binary compatibility with Linux, including 32 bit binaries on 64 bit systems.
It's a pain in the butt as a company to deal with multiple Linux versions in terms of builds, test, and support. It's a pain as user where the software you want has the wrong flavor.
I have 32 bit Firefox (with 32 bit only plugins that I need for reliability) mostly working on a 64 bit Debian, although some of the libraries have hard-coded paths in them which produce frightening error messages and I never got the Java plugin to work which I'd need to use my company VPN.
The (non) viability of this (as a hobbyist I don't want to waste my life reverse engineering Microsoft APIs, and as a business I don't care whether my servers run desktop applications) is a separate issue.
Reading through many of these comments I think I see the problem you don't: Linux sucks to use unless you are skilled in using it. The market share of Linux/BSD/etc. is less than 1% because it is too hard to use for 99% of the computing public. Compile their own applications? Seriously? Write a shell script- what's that, a play written for mollusks? Try to find a driver for their printer? Sync their iPhone or iPad or Android phone? If it's not plug and play most computer users cannot operate it. Thee folks want to bring their new computer home, turn it on and be able to use it. They don't want to configure stuff. They don't want to read a manual. They don't want to learn about it. They don't give a baboon's ass crack about the differences between the GPLs. They just want to use it and look at Facebook and Pinterest and send Aunt Martha an e-mail with a LOLcat they found. Why do you think the Web browser is the only application most computer users run? They've figured out how it works. That's why people buy Macs and Windows- those companies have spent time figuring out how to make software usable and make the interface work. Linux geeks tend to wear unusability like a badge of honor. They like having 400 ways to make their interface unique to their needs. That scares off everybody else. You want to make Linux catch on? Figure out an interface that is as simple and elegant and attractive as the Mac, not the 20 year old quasi medieval look that most Linux interfaces sport. Too much of it still looks like Windows95.
Because the underlying toolkit libraries are in a constant state of flux, with each version being incompatible with the previous, applications are all subject to bit-rot. An app that worked in 2008 will very likely not work today unless the author went to the trouble of porting it to the new toolkits. This is true for both gtk and qt. And don't even talk about motif and olit.
Oh, certainly. Experimental UI designs are certainly essential to progress, and I'm sure that the existing Windows UI (by which I mean the one from win2k, before they started crapping it up with junk) isn't the best thing that could ever exist.
It's just that real UX people of the sort likely to come up with new crazy ideas that'll revolutionize all of UX... are probably off in academia, coming up with crazy ideas (most of which will suck), and then testing them scientifically with prototypes in a lab. Rather than, say, coming up with a crazy idea (which will probably suck), stating that it's the best thing ever without any proof, then forcing it on actual users who just want to be left alone to do what they know.
So you are worried about "effective ownership and control of the computer" issues with Windows and OSX but you some how are OK being completely dependent on Adobe and Creative Suite and they can completely screw you at any moment just like Microsoft and Apple. Interesting. . . .
The chance of Adobe doing native Linux ports of any major part of CS are vanishingly small so why do people even keep suggesting it.
Ask all the people that bet the farm on Flash how they fell about letting Adobe control their destiny since Adobe pretty much botched their Flash strategy and have now pretty much thrown in the towel.
@de_machina
Please, don't. I am a huge fan of GnuStep and I would like nothing better than to see a solid GUI OS built around it and become successful. But dont ruin it by copying recent Apple crap, please. We can do much better than that.
I want a NeXT clone updated to take advantage of modern hardware, not a Mac clone that requires modern hardware just to generate pointless visual effects.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Then try Qt, Gtk, OpenGL, Python, TK or any of the VAST numbers of alternatives to Java. Python files will run on any operating system, Qt/Gtk/etc basically need a recompile.
Also, If there is anyone doing the linux desktop "right", my vote would be for Mint. They actually have a simple vision and are very responsive to community. I hope they continue to kick ass.
Linux is not broken. It's just that popular distros default to things like GNOME3 and Unity. No problemo. Just get LXDE, KDE, XFCE, etc. Please, stop complaining. KDE might be too shiny by default, and LXDE and XFCE might be a bit incomplete, but they work better than you think. I promise.
What is broken is how difficult it is to find hardware that was purposefully made to be supported by the kernel. The other problem is that ATI and NVidea have closed-source drivers that they (especially ATI from my experience) don't update soon enough, or support long enough. I really don't understand why they think that they HAVE to do all of the work, and then whine and complain that there is too much to be done.
1. DRIVERS!!!! Let closed source drivers be added to Linux. The simple fact the hardware makers may not want to release their drivers for good or bad reasons... But in this ideological war of purity the causalities are end users a system that they cannot fully trust will operate hardware they they have paid money for.
After seeing first hand the bullshit that is finding the right windows driver for your particular version of Windows, I'm not so sure that's such a good idea.
2. Stop the stupid names. No more Gbla Kbla. You should know what the app you have does what.
This problem is NOT restricted Linux in the slightest. If it was a real issue, nobody would be using Excel, Flash, Google, PowerPoint or Visual Studio.
3. More Advance GUI Configuration. Linux has a gap between the Grandma and the Experts. The GUI often doesn't allow us to do Advanced configuration but we need to go to the text .conf file to do the configurations and then not all the options are black and white, after you do a Google search you find in the config file you add this word in a different language will do the trick.
Ever tried to change the colour of the Windows Task bar without installing 3rd party tools? You'd be LUCKY to find a text file that you could edit!!!
4. Don't copy Windows or Mac OS, make your own interface... Otherwise you will just look like a cheap ripoff.
Name ONE window manager that could be mistaken for Windows without seriously modifying it first.
5. Consistency - Copy and Paste needs to work across all apps. One single sound system that doesn't fight with each other, Multi-screen support works the same no matter what driver. You need to configure your printer once...
Linux support Copy/Paste to a much higher degree than windows. Windows won't even let you copy the value out of a number-select box and the only way to copy/paste in the terminal is through the edit menu with a fucking mouse!
Good point on sound, I'll give you that one. Keep in mind though, 90% of Linux distros (which covers 99% of the users) use Alsa and usually drop PulseAudio on top.
Funny, the last usb printer I plugged in didn't need ANY configuring, I just got a notification saying it was ready. I've also set up 3 network printers just by spamming the "next" button. Or are you talking about "set up once and all the computers in your house magically see it"? Because only large businesses actually use that.
6. Celibate compatibility tools don't hide them. Be proud that you can connect to a windows domain network. have that feature available to the end users, an those other tools that work with other Systems. Ok fine SMB sucks compared to whatever, just because you hate Microsoft it doesn't mean the end users do, and if they feel comfortable that they can still work in an Microsoft environment they will be more likely adopt the system.
Funny, SMB shares show up right inside the "network" category in my file manager.
I'm one of the people who wrote VS 2012
I usually applaud honesty, but I think you just incurred the wrath of every CS student that was ever forced to use that piece of crap for their win32 classes. Better watch your back for a while...
Actually, you can even do that too using Winelib. Might require a certain tendency to masochism.
Here's how to fix the Linux desktop:
Make it polished and reliable.
Enforce a single GUI environment.
Have it run real productivity applications (e.g. MS Office, Adobe Photoshop, Mathworks Matlab).
Make it certified under Single Unix Specification [wikipedia.org].
Make it support smooth trackpad gestures.
Those are just some minor suggestions.
There, fixed it for you :)
I can't call that English
I don't think they're that technically competent or organized.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Python is great for scripts. It's piss poor for GUI applications.
I know! That damned radio constantly blares rap music every time I use my car! How annoying!
Some woodworkers get along just fine with a cupboard full of handsaws, chisels and hand-planes. They've worked great for centuries. They can produce great results, and are the mark of a true craftsman.
But the woodworker with a bunch of modern power tools will be far more productive.
With Linux development I get the impression that developers are hanging on to decades old tools because it makes them feel clever, rather than because it makes them productive.
Because I think that is the issue with the Linux Desktop - Acceptability.
,I'm just going to go with an amalgum of experiences over the *nix collection excluding Darwin/OSX, I've probably made multiple symmantec errors where things have been fixed)
From what I can see of my time as an OSX admin (on and off, someone always has one of these bastards hanging off a server rack) as well as with end users, the operating system just goes, is obvious.
(before I commit failure, please note
Now, I think Ubuntu gets fairly close, from what I have used (one or two distros) but it suffers the old 'we can also do' problem, which extends from the windowing system down to the windowing applications including the terminal representation with confusing names on top of everything! I know, once you've used everything for a while you get your head around it.
Firstly KDE and GNOME. I'm a new user, why am I even being asked to make this decision already? How do swap it later? Why isn't there just a batch file that does that already, why do I have to edit config files.
Next, whats with this application menu? Why can't anything have a normal bloody name? Notepad, Calculator, stuff I can easily comprehend. Not Kompressor or whatever they call these things. Place program name is brackets or something and make sure the generic name is available as the sortable option. This could even just be done via Windowing aliases that are set up on install and can be turned off. Obviously clients are not going to approach something that goes out of its way to be alien considering every other Windowing methaphor uses these basic office analogies. If the analogies are insufficient, create a better analogy system, but don't waste our time working out what these bloody programs do.
Then after all this you end up with one of the most spartan / ugly desktops available. I would be adding on the two desktop 3D features that let you jelly folders and cube around desktops. Thats neat eye-candy. Eye-candy makes people play. Playing is a key part of acceptability. Its far easier to teach someone to use a computer if they have an interest for games because they will practice without being asked.
And then, you will probably need to diminish this 'jack of all trades' mentality Linux often has. Yes, we know, it can be scaled to anything. Thats why we end up with embedded version (or some minimal linux), eyecandy desktop version, server version.
Oh, and the settings wizards in the gnome 2 were crap in as much as they did allow control and configuration of the Windowing system, but not the computer itself. To do that, you go editing files as Root. Does Linux need a better architecture for script files that allow it to be easily represented in a dynamic dialog?
Finally, I don't like the implementation of the terminal - too much Inception - at least in the last version of GNOME I was running. Terminal boxes are represented as windows, but I think the metaphor is a little mistaken for an OS that prides itself on being all about 'Windows' with a command box shell added on. They almost demand their own management GUI in Linux due to their necessity though. Maybe ALT+~ will cycled your open terminals and ALT+TAB will eventually let you select the consoles group tab which takes you back to last active console with the other sessions grouped to the status of that. There may be some use-cases where this idea is stupid, but as of the last time I used Linux as a desktop/server I swear 80% of the time was in terminal, with another 10% was in GEDIT modifying files opened via the terminal. Makes you wonder why the 'Start' menu on the keyboard doesn't just launch a friggin terminal window.
So, this is how Linux needs to reinvent itself. Automation and more stuff out of the box presented in a generic fashion (fewer crazy names).
Sorry if is seems as though I have a low opinion of Linux, because that is certainly not the case. On the contrary, I have a low opinion of MS Windows from an operational stand point, I just don't think that technologies are as meshed and concise as they should be with Linux.
Ditch X11 and start over. This should be something that is assumed to only run local and will have direct access to hardware. while compositing window managers take a step in this direction, jump in all the way.
While it is impressive that you can direct an application to use a remote display, even an underpowered PC can host a native GUI that runs locally and is accessed remotely via VNC or RDP.
Combine it with a standard UI widget toolkit that is constant and don't waver. Do not allow co-mingling of various widget technologies, the current state of X11 allows such a diverse assortment of UI toolkits (KDE / GTK / etc.) that you are destined to get apps that look and behave differently.
Users don't need to theme their desktop, it is usually more important to them that it looks and behaves the same on every computer it gets installed to. The last thing a user wants is to sit down in front of an app and find that it looks completely different.
Finally, build a killer visual IDE that is as easy to use as VB.NET and use this to construct all of the apps your new desktop. That should just about do it... It wouldn't hurt to OEM bundle it with a few large PC vendors.
Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com
There's always a lot of fussing about how the command line scares people, how if you have to do something on the command line then something is horribly wrong. This attitude has resulted in the dumbing down of the various GUIs for Linux, as if Linux will ever be able to compete with Windows or OSX for the content consumption market, or as if it would be a *GOOD* thing to turn Linux into the crappy knock-off cheap alternative to a real OS. I don't see how anyone with the intelligence to engineer an OS or a UI could be motivated by such a dumb goal.
I don't want to say what Linux should or shouldn't be, but occasionally I have flashes, glimpses of something awesome that it *COULD* be, and I wish I had the skills to make it or even articulate clearly what I'm seeing. I'll try here.
In selling Linux to newbies we're always afraid to show them the command line, and so no one has worked on developing a better shell. As a result, the shell is some monster out of the 1980s. What if all the expertise in user interfaces was turned on developing a better command line? (The fish shell is a step in the right direction; the OS X Terminal also has some nice features, such as drag-dropping files into it.) Where you interact with your computer by typing commands, rather than by pressing buttons? It isn't so unnatural. As I read in some post here a while ago, people have been talking to each other to get things done for millenia, but we've only been pressing on things that look like candy to get things done for a few years. On Star Trek, they instruct their computer verbally. And yet UI designers insist that our interfaces have to be entirely visual, because the CLI has been done in such a user-unfriendly way in the past.
The command line is powerful because it is a language; in languages you can build an infinity of possible sentences by combining words according to grammar. In Unix, you can make your computer do pretty much any complex task by chaining together other small programs. There is no comfortable visual metaphor I am aware of that enables this infinity of possible tasks. In a GUI, you have a finite amount of space on the screen, a finite number of buttons to press. In a CLI, you have an infinity of options that you can build up if you know the language. In my work, I do a lot of text processing; I make up new pipelines every day and I can't imagine any way of doing that in a GUI.
But the command line is still a dinosaur. It doesn't have to be that way.
This is my as-yet-fragmentary, inarticulate dream. Imagine if you type "ls" at the command line, and instead of a bunch of color-coded names of files (wow! color! on a monitor!?!?!? how high-tech!) you get thumbnails, so you don't have to open things individually to see what they are. And maybe those thumbnails stay at the top of the terminal, in some unobtrusive form, as you do your complicated renamings or whatever, so you don't have to keep typing "ls". What if you had the option of clicking cool.pdf OR typing evince cool.pdf? Or, if you don't remember that your pdf reader is evince, what if you could just type "open cool.pdf" and it would use $DEFAULT_PDF_THING? What if every program had a little terminal on the bottom where you could tell it what to do, in case you prefer to talk to your computer instead of press predefined buttons?
I don't know if I've articulated this clearly--I think about it quite a bit, in my spare time. The last thing I want to see is the command line wrecked by trendy UX crap. Rather I want to see the real work on usability brought to bear. Linux doesn't have to be the next OS that limits you. Linux can be the OS that makes it easy to build new things, to do things no one has done before. Steve Jobs said that computers should be like a bicycle for the mind: it enhances what you can do, it lets you go farther to places you hadn't thought of before. And he seemed to fulfill that idea in things like HyperCard before dumping it in favor of turning people into content-grazing animals with stuff l
It's the developer tools stupid. Efforts need to focus there. They need to be designed and Engineered. Not just coded.
What an epic failure of a post. Your first point has been done by Nvidia for many years and if you were not aware of it you really know very little about this subject. If you were are of it and are trying to make the point anyway you are an evil lying prick.
To the poor readers sujcected to the above - I've got no idea why the above poster wasted so much time and occupied so much space with such drivel. Could we please hear from somebody that actually has some points instead of either ignorance or lies?
I'm not the one to pretend that it doesn't have flaws - heck, since I dogfood it, I probably know more about those new to this release than most people out there.
However, even here on Slashdot, I see far more comments praising VS than those calling it a piece of crap - and that even coming from people for whom Linux is a primary OS. To me, that tells a lot. More, in fact, than glowing reviews in "professional" journals and such.
Besides, I've had that same info publicly visible in my /. profile for several years now, and all I've got for my efforts is one poorly written hate mail, and even that was ages ago. Apparently, bashing Apple is more fashionable hereabouts these days, or so I've heard. ~
With apologies to those who do love XFCE, I don't know that most people like XFCE and really think that it is good enough. Most people are switching to XFCE not because it is good enough but because it is better than the abominations that are GNOME 3 and KDE 4.
1. If you want more Windows users to switch to Linux, make Linux look and feel just like Windows. Users can switch without having to relearn how to use the OS.
Look at the backlash with the Windows 8 Metro UI; people don't want to relearn how to use even a new version of Windows.
2. Have AAA games for Linux. Games are the primary reason many people use Windows. Any OS (Linux, Android, etc) can let a user browse the Internet.
If a "killer app" came out exclusively for Linux, it would drive many people to switch to Linux. Right now, except for using a Windows emulator, you can't play many AAA games on Linux.
That's an example of a data format being badly broken. I'm in an industry where we read in files from as early as the 1960s, and we can do it with software released in 2012 because the data format is a known standard. Don't blame other software providers for a game played by one. MS Office compatibility or lack thereof is a Microsoft problem, and it's an ongoing one since they shift their obfiscated formats with time and even prevent it being read by their older products. Their compatibility patches have been failures, so if you want to use their current format you need to use their current software on their current platform - they fail to provide an effective fancy typewriter unless you stay on the upgrade treadmill.
I agree that Anders has done an admirable job with C#. It started out as a language that wanted to be Java after then Microsoft/Sun java debacle. For quite a while it was the student following the master's (java) every move. Then the master got lazy. Stopped developing. The Java designers started doing some really stupid stuff (don't get me started on the retarded auto-boxing) and quickly C# jumped ahead. Today C# is what Java could have been if it was not for Death By Committee. Java is just another COBOL. Wanting to die, but is too stubborn to actually accomplish that.
Oh, and as a disclaimer, I was part of a small team that delivered excellent Java software back in the late 1990's. Java was great back then. It is the same today, and that isn't quite so great.
It's time to stop the command-line/GUI factionalism and come up with a true hybrid desktop that implements the best of both worlds. Even Microsoft have been unable to kill off the command-line, someone was showing windows 8 at work today and in response to someone who didn't like it told them, "You can always hit the windows key and start typing". Let's allow things to be centered around tasks too. directories and virtual desktops lean this way but let's make it a fundamental part of operations.
Also, let's lose the application-centric model and go to a true document-centric model. It looked like Windows was starting to go that way as far back as 3.1 and maybe earlier but then it stalled out. Unix's "everything is a file" metaphor is a good step in that direction too but never really got explored. Mac's resource forks probably would have been something to feed into that too (Though you'd probably get sued for that these days). This is more of a top-down OS change than a desktop change, however.
Let's lose annoying focus grabbing pop-up dialog boxes and per-window menus. One menu at the top, per the old Mac style and some kind of docked dialog/tool area. Remember, document/task, not application centric. Think something like the Visual Studio IDE but designed better and as the actual desktop.
Oh, and ponies.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Good lord UI on many apps is horrible. Not just Linux, but it's the biggest offender.
I used linux as a desktop OS when RH was still 6.2, and 7.0 and didn't have 'enterprise' in it.
Then I gave up, got a Max because it's core was unix-based and never looked back. I'm sure many people like the roll your own of linux and I learned a ton using it and apply it at work every day, but when I get home and want to goof off shit just need to work and other than clicking a few times to install something I don't want to watch something compile.
I'm sure it's gotten better, but still, to this day, if a GUi starts on Linux I'm lost as to what to do in it, and open a command prompt and do everything from there.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
For me, Adobe Creative Suite is the main thing stopping me from making the switch to Linux permanently, and I imagine I'm not alone. Sorry, GIMP is just not a replacement for Photoshop/Fireworks/Illustrator/Acrobat/Flash and the other dozen programs of varying usefulness.
This has been my basic argument for years now. Essentially, I've supported loads of businesses where the applications they need at Adobe CS and Microsoft Office, including Outlook/Exchange. If you can get a Linux distro to replicate all of that functionality as smoothly and easily as Adobe CS and Microsoft Office in Windows, then you can grab a big chunk of the SMB office market.
Add in support for games on top of that, and you have the home market. Hit a critical mass on home/SMB, and you'll see enterprise support.
(1) is just stupid in the fullest extent. Microsoft will never port VS to Linux, and VS running under WINE still cranks out Windows code, so you'll need an emulation/simulation/compatibility layer such as WINE or Mono no matter what. Considering one of the huge draws to VS is the form builder, which is entirely based around Windows Forms, it just doesn't work for Linux.
That said, a nice, native code IDE that supports multiple languages commonly used for Linux development (C, C++, Java, Python, and maybe C#/VB/other MS languages with Mono) with proper GUI builder for GTK (and its C++/Python/Java/whatever ports) and QT windows would be epic. Being able to build GTK applications with a proper GUI builder would be nice, as Glade (and the XML loading system) sucks compared to a proper GUI builder that writes real code. I've been using GTKmm for several personal projects and overall I love it, but you basically have to draw your layouts on paper, determine hierarchy, and then code them up manually.
Support for commonly used libraries would also be nice (OpenGL, SDL, OpenAL, OpenCV, etc. etc. etc).
That said, a lot of Linux developers still seem to be using vim/emacs and haven't even switched to non-GUI-builder IDE's (though with customization those apps can do a lot). It would certainly help the VS users migrate, but I don't know how many existing devs actually care about getting a better IDE for the platform. I started using Code::Blocks only because it allowed me to have Windows and Linux build configurations that were easy to switch between when testing my app on the different OS'es.
Additionally, you mention "Linux API" - there in lies a problem...there is no one-and-only Linux API like there is for Windows/Mac. There is KDE, there is GTK/Gnome, there is QT (which KDE uses a lot of), there is SDL, there is OpenGL, etc. The core "Linux API" is basically UNIX compliant, but the majority of the desktop features come from various desktop projects and libraries that aren't part of the Linux core. Windows and Mac are both fully integrated OS'es, with one API from bottom to top (Mac has a bit of Unix, Windows a bit of DOS, but still). Linux doesn't, Linux has a Unix-like core, some system management stuff (not consistent between distros), some desktop stuff (again, many different ones exist), several toolkit/widget libraries, several audio/graphics libraries, and a bunch of other mixed libraries. Being an open and diverse platform, you just can't have the unified integration that you get from Windows/Mac. Instead, one of the nice things about Linux coding is having a ton of different API's to choose from (you can see it as a good or bad thing, personally I think it's a great thing, but if you're used to one-size-fits-all packages from Windows/Mac then you might think otherwise).
In short, you can't ever get the unified integration or single API set integration that you get out of Windows or Mac because Linux is much more diverse and is not all under one roof like the other platforms are. I think this is the main benefit of Linux, but programmers used to the integration these OS'es provide may find Linux's system messy.
And / or missing. So many media things just don't work as advertised out of the box. I've been using Linux since it was available, and before that Solaris and Unix. What I see wrong with Linux are all the damn customizations and different versions. Berkeley or AT&T. This distribution or that. The bloody millions of cute or differently coloured interfaces. Etc. Awhile ago, I decided on Arch Linux, and to build all my experiences into one. This is happening well and is an example of Linux goodness, which cannot be had without the badness, I guess. But why zillions of distributions include, for instance, pulseaudio, and insist on newer and ever newer booting procedures is dumb, IMNSHO. It's a system designed originally by brilliant minds, now handed out in distributions like Halloween concoctions, one by one, by creative idiots. On the other hand. I won't live without it, and until someone proves to me that the new MS secure boot cannot be easily overcome, it is in danger.
Personally I don't see the point of a 10GB version of Notepad that costs $500+ per seat. Yeah, VS has a nice GUI editor for supported languages, and it tracks through code pretty well, but it has a ton of features I'll never use even at work (which I do use VS2008 at work and barely even skim the surface of what it has to offer). For my personal projects, I've taken a liking to Code::Blocks, it's a lightweight C/C++ IDE that has all the build configuration management stuff I wanted for cross-platform work and not much else besides code highlighting and project organization. I like that, as it means less bloat and lag, more writing code and running it. I haven't tried debugging, I think it has debugging as well, but it's not a feature I use often in my personal projects (use it at work, but VS isn't the only IDE with a debugger).
I'd never write a Windows Forms based GUI for my personal stuff anyways, as I like to stay cross-platform, so that feature set is worthless to me. I also don't like VB/C# much and prefer C/C++. Therefore VS is mostly a waste. If you're a C#/VB/MS Database programmer, you probably do it as a career, and thus you're dependent on what your company uses anyways.
> If the kernel drivers can't be written because of trade secrets, patents and copyrights, then it's hardly
> the fault of Linux that the hardware manufacturers are being arseholes.
Yes it is, because this isn't a new problem, IP laws aren't about to change, and everybody involved with kernel development knows the big hardware manufacturers have no intention of giving an inch of compromise. The kernel developers blame Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Broadcom for not being open. Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Broadcom blame the kernel developers for being pedantic. End users, fucked at both ends, throw in the towel and install Windows.
It might not be desirable to bend over backwards to maintain eternal compatibility with 20 year old peripherals, but it's ENTIRELY reasonable for end users to feel entitled to have binary drivers that work today still work with the next kernel or two unless some horrible bug or vulnerability of the most urgent kind is discovered in the meantime.
This problem has been coming to a head for more than 15 years, and probably won't get solved until Google puts its foot down and gets a few of their employees to come up with some kind of thunking and abstraction layer that can be used to enable slightly old loadable kernel modules to keep working with at least one or two future kernels.
I don't want linux to be widely adopted. Simple as that. I'm an arch user, and there's a high percentage of fellow users that don't want arch to go the way of ubuntu either. It's simply picking the right tool for the right job. Distro's like ubuntu are geared towards the noobs. Fine. But they still won't learn how to fix xorg settings when unity goes fubar. Frankly, I don't want people switching to linux just to switch to it. It's a choice you make if you feel it can benefit you. Just as I feel I don't want newer ubuntu users to switch to arch. Driver's are tricky. Most of it is OEM related. The rest is kernel related. But as previously espoused from previous posters, try seeing how many drivers you need to hunt down on a clean windows install VS. a current linux distro. The bigger issue is a meta user mindset. Computing & computers(non-commercial) have gone from a hobby to a device that should just work out of the box. PC's have been nearly reduced to the level of a kitchen appliance. I guess thats why linux will run on a toaster :p
For the sake of argument; To get linux mainstreamed to anywhere near the level of windows...It would have to not be linux as we know it. OR at the very least, condense it down to a single sort of distro with options burried cryptically to modify it back to the way we power users find it useful.
The major question we need to answer: Should Linux focus on wide-spread adaption? If the answer is YES then this what needs to be done.
Step #1: A major poll or survey. We must develop a website that allows people to voice their opinion on what they want their desktop environment to do for them. Linux has become a developer’s playground. Most developers are simply experimenting with different ideas or features that they want. We need the input of both users and developers on what features and applications must exist for them to adopt Linux as their primary desktop operating system. Target other major OS users and get their input, figure out why they are not using Linux. Adapt a model of direct democracy with people voting for the things that they want created or fixed in Linux.
Step #2: A source of funding. We need to figure out a way to provide incentives for developers to work on user requests. A service similar to Kickstart but exclusively focused on developing for Linux needs to be established, this is the only way to force developers to stop experimenting and start making a Linux desktop for the users. Generate millions of dollars and focus all the money on the primary issues that must be resolved. Developers of niche or obscure projects will flock. Provide monetary incentives and recognition to developers who solve specific problems or create wanted applications. A separate fund can be set aside to provide monetary incentives for computer companies to sell Linux pre-installed systems for the first x amount of systems. Many users and organizations will be interested, and with this many people we might be able to generate enough revenue to jumpstart a new revolution in Linux development.
Step #3: Standardization. We need to focus on creating a standard model for the Linux desktop. By providing funding to developers, many will pause creating obscure software and help in this process. Furthermore a general plea to distributions and developers to help in the creation of a major set of standard applications should be requested by the community. Take popular projects and advance them to be standardized, fork if necessary. Create a desktop environment that is not an experiment, but exactly what most average users want. Create applications that are polished and provide identical or superior features and usability to their competing counterparts. Provide support for longer periods and interfaces that do not change every few months.
Step #4: The Killer Application. We need Linux exclusive software that is not available anywhere else. 1 or 2 projects that can outperform, provide functionality or experience that cannot be found on any other major desktop environment. Maybe it’s a game, maybe it’s some type of an image or 3d software or a business application. Whatever it might be we need to figure out how to secure it for Linux. This may be very difficult, but it will get a ton of users for Linux. The server side of Linux is already on top of this, we need to do it for the desktop.
Step #5: Media attention. Use generated funding to launch a major media campaign, create a huge buzz. Commercials, billboards, events, etc. Tell users why they want Linux and not something else, explain why Linux is better. When people walk into a Best Buy or Walmart, they should be asking for Linux systems. Major retailers and hardware vendors will follow.
I believe if these steps are followed, Linux may have a chance to become a significant if not the prime force on the desktop. Of course the path ahead is uphill, but Linux has many advantages. If the cause it worthy, we need to band together and achieve it.
If the answer is no to the original question, well then there is no point to this discussion.
There is nothing wrong with the (?) Linux Desktop. Use it, or don't; I don't fscking care. That I can use it is all that matters (to me). I'd be happy to tutor you if you wish, but that's as far as I'll go. I don't much care what you want. That's primarily your problem (which I would be happy to help you with, but I'm only volunteering ...).
I really hate that so many people fixate on this so much. It's a non-issue. If you don't want it, stay with what you're presently using (gasp!). It's no skin off my nose (gasp; not really).
Hi Linus. :-) Hug your wife and kids for me, please.
[I was going to say a lot of even more insightful things here, but thought better of it. "Quit while you're ahead!!!" is always a smart plan, I think.]
Linus, keep on keepin' on. :-)
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
The best chance Linux had to make real inroads on the desktop was 5-8 years ago. The XP/Vista era. XP, before SP3, was a horrible mess. It was a magnet for viruses. Vista had a lot of promises but all it really delivered was a new GUI. The driver support was terrible. OSX was in it's early years and not as stable as it is now.
So what did the Linux camps do? What they always do...bicker and argue and fork to yet another distribution. I like Linux and I use it often but I'm willing to fiddle with it, unlike the average user. If you have the right combination of hardware then Linux works great. If you don't then you'll either spend lots of time trying to fix the problem (typically video, sound or wireless) or simply give up on it and go back to Windows.
For the record here is what I think Linux could do to expand their market:
1) The groups need to come to an agreement on what the default GUI is. Sure, it's cool to have so many choices but the average person will get confused.
2) Allow for more administration using GUI rather than CLI. I know, I know, the CLI is more powerful. But guess what? The average person doesn't care. They want an easy to use GUI.
3) Come preloaded with a few nice themes. Let's face it, many of the Linux distributions are pretty bland out of the box. Yes, you can jazz it up with themes but they are not all that straight forward to install for people that are used to Windows or Mac. Aunt Bessy does not want to deal with tar files, trust me on that.
4) Don't put Linus in charge of the desktop. That guy is about as hard core geek as they come and I'm sure he could care less what the desktop looks like. He is all about function over form. Well...to the average person form is just as important as function. They want something that looks cool and works right. Witness the success of Windows 7 and Mac OSX. Both of them are polished, beautiful GUI's that look cool and work great.
Now I have to say that Linux has come a long way in terms of driver support. Installation is far easier than it once was - easier that Windows actually.
At the end of the day, none of this really matters though. The war is over. Microsoft has a stranglehold on the desktop market. Apple has, what, 7-8% of the desktop market? It might grow a bit but they seem more interested in selling iThingies than desktop computers. Linux has a few percent spread over umpteen distributions with a passionate, albeit small, following.
Linux on the desktop is for the hobbyist, the person that likes to tinker, the person that likes to have complete control of their PC, the person that doesn't necessarily follow the crowd. And you know what...there's nothing wrong with that.
3 things: 1. Games, 2. Games 3. Games I dont mean games like Duke Nukem 3D or Doom2 ported to Linux. Im talking new - state of the art games. Once that is sorted, the little penguin will grow wings and fly.
Just like nobody wanted:
1. The raping of google search results to allegedly reduce link farm sites (instead: gives shopping sites priority!). Google was better before.
2. The revamping of /. (instead: makes it nearly impossible to find comments posted as AC). No-one actually wanted the new site design, the old one wasn't any worse.
3. Unified tablet and PC interfaces. These were never meant to look and work the same. So many webpages are now full of wasteful white space up the sides to accomodate tablets.
Gnome3 is a case in point with its much-maligned designer/developer-driven "innovations". Face it: Win7 (XP really), Gnome2 and OSX are about as good as the UI design will ever get as far as 99.999% of users are concerned. Various attempts to create linux-based 'minimalist' desktop interfaces for Joe Public's non-mobile use have failed miserably.
No-body likes learning curves that they don't feel they need and which do not offer any payoff versus the status quo. Kids grow up with Windows and Mac.
As someone once said, the only truly "intuitive" interface is the nipple. All others are learned. Kids grow up with Win and Mac interfaces so for them that is "intuitive". Perhaps people need to STFU about so-called "intuitive" interfaces. "Intuitive" is meaningless and is code for "what the designer wants". There are clean, easy-to-use interfaces with sensible, logical flow, good error handling and minimized clicks per task.
Recently I was watching some non-english speaking kids grapple with a ps2 game with an English setup (no memory cards in slots). They couldn't read any text on screen. The blasted "no memory card" handling was so badly designed it had them going around in circles for 15 minutes to get out and just play without saving state, as if it was a deliberate tactic to encourage buying memory cards.
Want to see if the UI graphic design and flow are really good? Test it out with all the text unreadable eg lorem ipsum and see if the graphic indicators of usual default setup are so strong that the user doesn't have to read the associated text.
Fine, pick any one of the others then! And for the record, I'll take python over win32 any day (as a user AND a developer).
To fix it for new generation installations:
1. Make it possible to have packages with non-free proprietary software for sale (Ubuntu finally did that)
2. Make sure there is one standard for major distributions (Ubuntu is trying that hard).
3. Merge KDE and Gnome together tightly, so KDE software won't look like alien crap on Gnome and vice-versa.
4. Make sure LibreOffice opens MS Excel and MS Word documents flawlessly, so you can print-out Word document from MS Office and LibreOffice, put two papers on a window and see they're not different a milimeter (they do this in Japan, JFYI).
5. Fuck free-only ideology to slurp all sources into repository and build everything from sources only. Allow proprietary closed-source software.
6. Keep LSB as a fucking Holy Cow and never fucking violate it!
7. Make sure developers can make money from it. They want eat as well.
Oh, but that above will never happen, because everyone wants to have a choice and be free. And choice = chaos and shitload of knobs that a regular user never needs... Too bad, this is mostly geeks-only. Only Ubuntu makes some limited sense on a desktop so non-geeks can use it for a regular daily e-mail/web-browsing/music-playing box.
Linux desktop is too little for too late.
(Warning, long ass post, I will try to put a tl;dr if I can)
I face the same bullshit in my country's politics, oh it's not us, it's the foreign secret agencies, our unfriendly neighbour countries that want to occupy us, the evil western countries whose aid we will still take, the global jewish conspiracy, it's everything else EXCEPT us that's wrong...yeah right.
Seriously, the day we admit this is the day we can start fixing it. (Admitting is the first step to recovery....)
First of all, my background. As my sig says, I am a student of accountancy, so as far away from the typical linux and computer sciences/programming as you can get. When I was in highschool, I was browsing the interwebz randomly one day, and came across this product called "Ubuntu" that was all in rage over the forums for some reason.
I googled for their website, and came across this product called "Hoary Hedgehog" (5.04, incase you are wondering). I said weird name, never mind I have windows, these crazy computer geeks and their crazy Finnish OS. I would have ignored it except for a link that said they would send linux CDs, for *free!*, to me. ( I am in a 3rd world country, and dialup was what I had back then, so the concept of downloading and testing couldn't possibly have crossed my mind) I said, what the heck, wouldn't hurt, and applied. Surprise Surprise, when Canonical actually send me five of those things! (and for which I am deeply grateful to Canonical)
Actually ten CDs, five installers and five "live-cds", I kept one setand passed the rest to my friends and the computer science teacher in my school. I don't know about the teacher, but I know none of my friends actually ever used them.
But I did. You see, I was insanely curious. I tried this "live CD" thingie, and despite the fact that the modem didn't work, the sound didn't work, a zillion things didn't work, I was still impressed by it to actually go ahead and install it! I didn't for the life of me know how drives worked in linux, and had never partitioned a drive in my life, but googling around, I understood how the SDA system works, and actually installed the damn thing! (oh and this was in the days before the graphical installer, I had to face this crazy command prompt interface, but damn it, come hell or high water, I was going to install the darn thing, and I did!)
That day and this day, I have never had a computer in which there wasn't a linux dual-boot of some kind.
But I have never kept any *one* linux install for more than an year either. And neither have I have I moved to linux completely even for my casual work.
Clearly something must be wrong. It's not like I don't like linux, or I wouldn't be installing it to every computer my family has, nor I would always be keeping a live-usb by me at all times.
I never blamed linux when I couldn't play mp3, or the sound didn't work for some weird reason, or the modems didn't work, or flash didn't work... I never blamed for problems that were caused by others not sharing code, drivers whatever.
I also never blamed linux for *not* having a feature in the first place, after all, you are giving me this gift free of charge, it's not my place to look a gift horse in the mouth.
I don't mind it asking to use the console, I understand that command prompt is a good way to effortless get data or implement instructions *exactly* as they should happen, and that GUIs can become cumbersome whilst troubleshooting. I perfectly understand, and this has made me learn quite a few commands and appreciate a lot of console-only programs, some of which have become my favourite (htop and bmon come to mind as my install-first-before-anything-else tools)
I don't mind linux is not flashy, given that I purposely go to "windows classic" mode on any windows I use, I prefer function over form anyways. I am also forgiving of the hodgepodge of GTK and QT based GUIs, if it can give me the certain functionality, I couldn't give a damn whether it looks like a duck or a swan.
And I realise t
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
I have come to really like almost everything about Unity (in Ubuntu 12.04). Almost. Unity's support for multiple monitors blows. When alt-tabbing between windows, the window switcher appears on whichever monitor one last used - it really needs to be (at least optionally) on the primary monitor. Drives me out of my mind so much I leave the second monitor shut off 98% of the time.
I have been using linux since RedHat 4.1. Finding a desktop that is usable is not the problem.
.doc and .ppt files correctly. Shortly after OpenOffice got good enough at it, Microsoft introduced .docx and .pptx files. The question of who is responsible for this, or why it happens, is irrelevant. What matters is that I have to ask my colleagues to convert their files from THEIR default format to something I can read. Personally, I like poking my colleagues a bit. But when I tell a friend to use linux, and they can't read the files that everyone is sending them, they don't poke, they just return to Windows.
The problem is that there is no way to seamlessly run Microsoft products. (Yes, I know, it's not even possible to do that on a Windows box, but that's beside the point.)
It took a long time before I could read
At work, I use scientific instruments that are controlled by Windows software. Some manufacturers are gradually providing other options, but for the most part, it's Windows, and it's got to be REAL Windows, not Windows inside VirtualBox. As much as I would like to make linux the operating system in the lab, it's not going to happen until linux can run Windows applications.
Users can adjust to a new desktop, and will if there is a reason, or if it's interesting. But you can't adjust to a system that won't read what you need to read or run what you need to run.
LOL.. what version of eclipse are you using? -0.1? I'm using a three-year-old version, and I can add a jdk through the GUI.
Do not try to 'spread' the Linux desktop. There is no point in trying to convince perfectly happy Windows or OSX users into installing an alternative operating system that, most probably, will not hold any practical advantages for them.
I have been a (desktop) Linux user for ten years or so now. Like (I think) most of us, no one ever pushed me into installing whatever flavour of Linux distro. I learned about Linux by myself, started reading about it and finally found it so interesting - both technically and ethically - that one day I decided to give it a try. The switch was painful at times. I've had pieces of unsupported hardware that used to simply work in Windows. I've had (and still have) trouble exchanging data with Microsoft Office users. It took me a long time to see the superiority of the Unix directory structure compared to the Windows registry. Every new Linux user will sooner or later face such problems. The motivation to surpass those problems needs to come from whithin. Out of technical interest, political enthusiasm, or both. But certainly none of them can be solved by whatever changes to the 'Linux' desktop environment(s).
Today, I am perfectly happy with my Linux desktop which is installed on three different machines, both at home and at work. It is based on Ubuntu 12.04 and KDE 4.8.5. The KDE look-and-feel is changed considerably with respect to the standard Oxygen color scheme and font size. QtCurve delivers a consistent look for both Qt and GTK applications (OK, it could not integrate GTK 3.0 apps, but I don't have any). Friends using one of my PCs are generally positively suprised about how well my Linux desktop works (the efficiency of apt-get compared to Windows Update routinely amazes them, btw. ...) and how polished it looks. However neither would I ever think that my setup is ideal for everyone and to be pushed on every single Linux user in the world as the Standard Linux Desktop Environment (tm), nor would I ever try to convince anyone into abandoning his Windows 7 setup in favour of a Linux desktop he's simply not ready for.
If they ask you: "Hey, I did some reading about that 'Linux' thing you have got on your PC. It sounds fascinating. Do you think I could try that on my machine?", first tell them that, yes, it is fascinating. Then be honest and also warn them that It took you years to become the proficient Linux user you are today. If then they still want to try it out, help them wherever you can. Be a happy user, not a missionary.
This was the most recent (Java dev) version I installed last week. The problem was the Java specific version wasn't installing full stop until the .ini was adjusted. The C++ version went in fine first time.
First: have a very small minimum install base. One singel CD (CD, not DVD) should be enough. Not sure about that, regarding support for the huge hardware range we have in our days. However it makes no sense imho to install an über system with hundreds of X-Applications etc. a ordinary user never needs.
Second: get rid of the attitude that everything worthwhile has to be written in C. Seriously, oo (scripting) languages are much better suited for ordinary programmers and power users than C or FORTRAN.
Third: to make my second point happen, you need a simple Application framework. Make a case for Qt e.g. Having GUI libs like GTK wont cut it.
There is ofc huge progress done in this direction, with Mono and Java and Python (but which GUI binding to use with Python?) but the (so called) "geek community" frowns on them.
On my Mac I can do simple stuff by using automator, applescript and system services: select a date in a browser, right click and automatically create an event in my calendar, including the times headline of page and url to the page in the event. If I choose as target calendar my web dav mounted google calendar I so update my published calendars for my friends.
How would you do that under X/Linux?
Copying windows is not enough either. Windows was usable around Win 95/Win 98, perhaps if you liked it at the Win XP stage. Well, talking about windows means talking abut the office suit and the browser as well. IE never was a real useful working thing, compared to firefox, safari or chrome. The current office with its ribbons is a mess. I fear it is just a matter of days and Open/Libre Office will copy that mess.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Business IT depts aren't going to demand it, no matter how much sense it makes for the business.
You would be surprised how many business departments actually use linux.
However your other points are exactly right!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Try to live by the Unix philosophy.
Remove dbus, remove pulseaudio and you are slowly getting towards it. Then try to get rid of any "low speed" interface (i.e. changing status of an IM-client) which require linking to libraries.
In the long run, I would make it file system based. You get a virtual file system representing GUI elements. Each of those elements would have a text based interface to make it easy to be used by shell scripts. Things that do need to be fast would use an additional binary interface. Network transparency will be done via NFS. Locally this works via shared memory.
Whenever you need to link a library to interface to something else, rethink that interface. Linking 2 C programs is very unstable. Even a slight change in the Interface makes it incompatible. Some form of text based interface will be much more stable.
Binary formats are necessary for certain types of high speed data transfer and processing, like video for example. However the rest can be done by simple column based text files or XML if you need complex structures.
Is it broken? I didn't know that. I have been using Linux since 2000 and things are better than ever before. However, if you ever find something broken please just fill the appropriated bug report.
Ease of use is the key to the mass market.
Installing software:
Windows: run the installer - ready.
Linux: If I am lucky, I can use the packet manager. Id the desired software is not in te packet manager, I have to first decide which Linux I want the software for. RPM or a DEB package?
The installation will the tyoicall tell me that some library is missing or outdated.
Hardware drivers: Windows drivers come with pretty much any
product. Linux drivers ????
long term OS support: XP has been running for 10 years. Unless I chaned machines, I did SP's and patches but all my softeare stayed installed.
Linux: every 6 months or so I need to re-install. Ubunti LTS veresions give me 2 years - lately even 5. As said - XP had 10.
long term Application support:
Windows: When I changed from XP to 7 2 yrears ago, I could re-install all my trusted applications - no new expsense.
Linux: commercial packages typical wont run any more
So why on earth would I use Linux on my desktop ?
Don' t getme wrong - I like Linux - my server runs Linux and for special projects I use Linux as well - By for everyday work it's windows. I just works and causes me less pain.
Honestly I do not understand all these stories about unstable Windows. I have OS autoupdate and Secunia PSI autoupdate- Never had crashes - - its rock stable work horse
If you want to attract more 3rd party developers and desktop users, the ABIs need to stabilize. Developers should be able to provide generic application binaries that will run unmodified on a majority of distros released over the past ~5 years. Drivers too (yes I know that's a tall order); it is irksome that I need to manually rebuild the drivers for my motherboard's audio codec and fan speed monitoring chip from source every time there's a kernel patch.
IMO the Linux desktop isn't going to gain more traction as long as it continues to require that users either A) use only the versions of apps/drivers that are available from their distro's repository; or B) build from source (dealing with the library version dependency hell this often entails, and drivers that break every time there's a kernel patch). True believers are willing to deal with these irritants, but we shouldn't need to.
entertainment is a multi-billion dollar industry. not tiny
Kind of like how adobe used to make its software for unix workstations?
No - the problem is market share and $$ - nothing more.
You could write adobe CS for linux, with full functionality, and the same binary-only
dial-in-for-license-verification kinds of copy protection (not sure if adobe does this,, but anyhow)
but - they dont want to do it, because of the percieved market share. chicken and egg.
Matlab / Maple / Mathematica, various circuit design software, etc, are all similar 'high end professional software tools'
which sell many licenses on linux, period, because they percieve that there is a market share and are willing
to support it.
so there is NOTHING limiting the platform, other than these companies marketing / development / etc. plans.
http://www.myvisajobs.com/H1B-Visa-045-2009-SO.htm
Casteism
Sounds likt it's time to try Trinity again.
I forget exactly why I decided to remove SUSE... Next time I do a disk partition, maybe I should reserve some space for them.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Eugenics?
how about "market research" - find people who:
1)Have switched to Linux but switched back - and find out why and fix those reasons
2)Have not considered Linux and what keeps them from doing so
3)Have switched to Linux but also use Windows (games and applications come to mind)
I think the move to live filesystem distros off of USB/optical media helped removed a major roadblock for transitioning.
Assuming the "economic man" model of human behavior that we are guided by rational cost benefit analysis (something which I doubt, but let's pretend) a driving force in these mixed economic times would certainly be cost. However many people savvy enough to use Linux simply pirate their version of Windows. Many people struggle to use their Win/Mac machines and perhaps the support experience seems daunting.
Assuming, at a minimum, people could be migrated to switch based solely on economic reasons how can they be made to switch and not switch back?
Gamers are a curious market and if they're willing to spend $400 on a graphics card and $40+ on a game (or $120/year on monthly subscriptions) it seems likely they're going to spend money on the OS. So maybe gamers are out.
Pre-installation is the mechanism by which many things are maneuvered into the hands of the buyer and getting Linux pre-installed is fairly hard (I've never seen it in person retail and on-line retailers are few and oddly expensive). Maybe it's as simple as getting people to get it preinstalled and assuming they have some windows background, or catching them at the time they're about to upgrade and spend money on commercial products when free ones would do as well or better.
Unfortunately, you are in the vast vast minority. Most of us only care that we can get a days work done so we aren't fired, or fix 200 photos from a shoot without having to retune our drivers. Our security and privacy is a secondary concern at best, because having a job is more important than digital security for us. That's why we want commercial Linux, because of people in the open source community whose motivation is very very different from most of us. Commercial companies interesting in selling product will implement what the majority of its customers need, or they go out of business. Put simply, that is usable product, digital security and freedoms be damned. Is this a short-term view, is this wrong-headed thinking? Maybe it is, but, it is the status quo, and it takes very big things to happen to change the status quo. Modern America taking time to stop and think would be a pretty radical shift from the status quo.
Everyone is living in a personal delusion, just some are more delusional than others.
Unity, Gnome3, XFCE, KDE - and each distribution swears on its own combination of Desktop and default apps.
A user who is not already a Linux expert is lost and unable to see why this plentitude even exists. Visiting any of the distro web pages will not help at all and asking in a forum will start a flame war between supporters of Unity and supporters of XFCE.
I personally like that there is competition and that there are different developments taking place for different preferences and different groups of users.
But there is nothing to communicate those differences, nothing to help users to choose and to make it easy for them to choose. Distributions do not communicate any of whay they think are their advantages and disadvantages in comparison to other distros and they do not tell the user what his choices are when it comes to desktops.
Even long-time Linux users are pissed off about this.
Do not make the desktop to a battlefield of religious wars. Make it into a friendly store of choices and make the different choices work together.
Just try to stick to making updates that DO NOT (and I mean it!) break old features. Then each new desktop will be slightly better than the previous one by simple continuity, no need for rocket science...
Alt-Space is your friend.
I try out different distros from time to time and the only thing that doesn't usually work out of the box is the wireless networking... Tried 2 different laptops recently, no wireless, but wired worked fine. I had installed Windows from scratch on one of them a few years ago and the WiFi came up without incident or further setup aside from providing the WPA key. Still, compared to 5 or 10 years ago, Linux installs have some a long way.
I don't think that's a big differentiator though. I don't think most people have even tried Linux in the first place. That is the bigger issue... Most people don't even know what it is or that it exists.
If $LANGUAGE_OF_THE_WEEK didn't keep getting bundled into Linux, it wouldn't be quite such a bloated mess.
Yes, the "if you're not drinking the Kool Aid, you're a corporate whore" is totally the kind of attitude that leads to excellent software.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Instead of thinking globally, I want to share why I didn't try to push for the Linux desktop anymore, after being a Linux zealot for a long time.
With Linux you had the excitement of doing something new and radical, helping the community with LUGs, pushing the boundaries, etc, etc. Once that became old, you were left with trying to make it work for real for people around you. At my LUG, we had success at our college lab and even with a couple of teachers who started teaching C programming in Linux instead of Windows as well as computer graphics programming (POV ray stuff, OpenGL/Mesa). Then came the problems, the multiple support issues with hardware drivers, either faulty or complete lack of drivers for some stuff. The major selling point back then was stability, and that got eroded real fast with some of the "easy" distros, only this time you had to learn each particular distro and surf the net for that hard to find answer. Lately I was even installing Ubuntu to a complete office with several computers and to my boss in another office. That was the climax I guess.
Then the boss computer Ubuntu's presented a major issue with the chipset where it would totally lock the computer. Lack of certain applications made it hard to convince people using things like AutoCAD to join the fray. There were some issues with printer drivers. Samba acting funny with Windows Vista when it came out and lack of documentation that left me in the dust. After hearing so many complaints, that the file format of openoffice is not the same, the lockups, the ugly fonts, etc, etc. I kind of had it. Left people to their own devices, and in my case I could explore other platforms that were truly awesome, like OS X. I still have a Gentoo box since I love tinkering with stuff but in general I would consider myself an Apple guy, Objective-C and all. Looking back I would never have imagined I would go from hippy open source to a totally closed source monopolistic company. That's life I guess and that is the state of the Linux Desktop for me.
What is the objective of wider adoption?
"You have to be careful if you are not sure where you are going because you might not get there."
-Yogi Berra
Every since I could dual-boot I have always used both Windows and Linux. Now using both Windows and Linux is much easier with VMs.
Tools are tools and I use Linux and Windows where they most benefit me. To that end I've never used Apple because there is nothing compelling for me on Apple. There have been only two applications I'm aware of on Apple that might convince me to run the Apple OS:
1. Pro Tools
2. Final Cut
Adoption of Linux desktop is lacking a clear objective. I use Linux when it benefits me and Windows the same. Running both is trivial for those who are tech savvy. If you are not tech savvy you probably don't need Linux. Given the advent of smart phones and touch pads then the real question is not the future adoption of Linux Desktop but the future of the desktop in general.
Might be something with the installer. The three pcs I used it in, I tried the portable version. Didn't need to edit any inis. Indigo and Juno detected Java on my Linux box fine, and on Windows using the GUI (with Ganymede, Indigo and Juno) worked fine. But then again, I have trouble getting Juno to look half-decent in my laptop even after editing CSS. Indigo worked fine, though.
You know what my computer is to me, aside from the app I am using> It' s my mouse, my kb and my screens. That's it. How much of that stuff just doesn't work on Linux? A lot. Any decent mouse or trackball, one that I can use to get real work done, one beyond left / right/ middle button doesn't support Linux. For me, start there. I hit that snafu, and I just gave up.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, but the Windows user community seems very upset with the Windows 8 UI. When I attended a group demo where a Microsoftie was showing it off, there was a positive reaction to the fixes in the new version (faster boot and shutdown, for instance) but nobody liked the UI. Consensus is that this is the next Bob/ME/Vista (flops), not the next 98/XP/7 (hits).
Linux, though, is not really prepared to take advantage of the opportunity. It is at heart a server OS, with programmers as its key desktop audience. The problem isn't the desktop per se, but the overall experience. If you can get it all to run (drivers are always a problem), it is still a mix of aimed at super-geeks and (the Ubuntu problem) geeks talking down at "lusers". Neither approach feels right to Windows users, many of whom are not idiots..
The best way to fix the Linux desktop is to stop breaking it. No, really.
Some examples? Look at what the gnomes (sic) did with Gnome 3 after Gnome 2 finally became mature. And even worse, look what Ubuntu did, not only abandoning it, but choosing a not-yet-ready-for-prime-time replacement for a long-term release. Seriously, a long-term release with a choice of two Desktops both not ready for prime time? What is the average corporate or small-business evaluator to think?
KDE is actually worse, because it runs Nepomuk and other such software which doesn't run on a majority of machines, and then when you search for fixes, the answer is to turn it off. And when you turn it off desktop search, file search and even email search sto working, not to mention auto-complete
Apple isn't any better of course, moving towards an iStore model, and Microsoft threatens to move in the same direction (and even worse design) moving towards W8.
As a Linux desktop user since 1999, I'm about ready to buy some W7 licenses to use until someone/anyone reaches their senses.
KDE is much easier to comprehend if you come from a Windows environment, therefore it would be easier to get people to switch OS. Gnome has turned into a complete mess. It doesn't really cater to any target audience any more and as such it should really be abandoned and developers should focus on a saner solution (such as KDE).
Looks interesting, I'd have to test out whether it behaves enough like real VIM to be usable for me.
As it stands, I still often edit my sources in vim externally and refresh the project in Eclipse after the fact.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Yes, I believe this is a large part of why.
Still, we lack solid data on the particulars of this. I might see if I can get my local LUG to give collecting data on this a half-assed try and submit it to Slashdot and get criticised for our methodology. Hopefully this will encourage others to do it a lot better. ;) Actually, is there any data already out there? Perhaps someone should create a slashdot poll... anyone?
one major release back. It doesn't work.
Office 2007 gets released. You had better upgrade with the rest of your enterprise or you won't manage to open files correctly and without error. Wine doesn't run it yet at Gold level. It will be 2-3 years until it runs it at that level, and there will still be issues. By then, the enterprise will be on the next major release.
Wine is practically worthless in corporate work, and incomplete/unstable to boot.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Lubuntu is awsome on my ten year old laptop. Thanks Mark Canonical.
Linux distros are way too fluid, Ubuntu in particular. I know people like to talk about Linux being under constant, rapid development and what not, and that things are always changing and improving. This is considered a pro rather than a con when compared to the mostly static Windows platform which only has a new revision every few years.
People like stability. People like the fact that they don't have to relearn how to use Windows again for another 3-4 years, or whenever the next version comes out. But they hate it when they DO eventually need to - oh how they hate it, as Microsoft will no doubt discover with Windows 8. So why do people get surprised if people don't want to complicate matters by using distros where the front and back-ends tend to change even MORE rapidly?
Most people on Slashdot are fucking idiots.
Like someone else before me said, the install base is too fragmented to have any meaningful inroads made into the consumer desktop market. You have different installer types, package types, desktop window environments, cryptic command line commands, etc, etc, etc. Yes I realize these things represent choice, which can be overwhelming for "the average user". I tried a few different distros for home use and the best I found were Fedora and Ubuntu, but even they have their shortcomings. Ubuntu is probably the closest thing to a unified consumer distribution I have seen. I honestly base a consumer distro on how easy it is to set up printing. Long story short, got tired of fighting with everything or finding some obscure forum post on how to enable something for fix something and switched to a Mac.
I hate sigs.
It is unrealistic to assume new desktop applications in meaningful amounts for Linux. If it were possible, they should exist already. But majority of native Windows applications can be run on Linux deskto, by using WINE & Crossover. Linux GUI desktops in cloud environment is a realistic scenario.
Why not simply build the DE that's in Avengers/Iron-Man? Instant recognition and inertia.