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Linus Torvalds: 'I Still Want the Desktop'

Posted by Soulskill on from the go-big-or-go-home dept.

darthcamaro writes: Linux has clawed its way into lots of places these days. But at the LinuxCon conference in Chicago today Linus Torvalds was asked where Linux should go next. Torvalds didn't hesitate with his reply. "I still want the desktop," Torvalds said, as the audience erupted into boisterous applause. Torvalds doesn't see the desktop as being a kernel problem at this point, either, but rather one about infrastructure. While not ready to declare a "Year of the Linux Desktop" he still expects that to happen — one day.

48 of 727 comments (clear)

  1. Nobody else seems to want it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    If he waits a little longer, he can probably just take it without anybody noticing.

    1. Re:Nobody else seems to want it by Skarjak · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm always puzzled to see these kinds of posts. Do you do your work on a tablet? "Desktop is dead!" is a lame cliche the media came up with that everyone can parrot to show how "knowledgeable" they are about the industry, when a simple inspection of the facts shows desktops aren't going away any time soon. I'm writing this from a desktop, with a confortable mechanical keyboard, a good mouse and a widescreen monitor, cause that's what you need if you want to get shit done.

    2. Re:Nobody else seems to want it by bADlOGIN · · Score: 5, Interesting

      As a monopoly, Microsoft gets to hold the proverbial "gun" to device vendors heads and say, "support our OS on our schedule exactly how we say we'll fucking destroy your market and feed you to your competitors". Thus, Windows drivers get support from device manufacturers. Linux device drivers come from begging, pleading, and sometimes reverse engineering and all volunteer efforts of the open source community. Sometimes this happens despite hostile responses and legal threats from device vendors. My hope is that some day Linux will get to wield that gun...

      --
      *** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
    3. Re:Nobody else seems to want it by Iniamyen · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This doesn't sound like a design decision, though. At least not directly. Still wondering what the parent is talking about.

    4. Re:Nobody else seems to want it by Ost99 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The desktop IS dead, at least in one sense.
      If you buy one now, you might never have to buy one again.

      Acknowledging that I might be pulling a "640k ought to be enough for everybody", I predict that a current generation mainline i7 and i5 will be sufficient for any "desktop" task more or less for ever (or until we move away from a physical interface like keyboard / mouse and touchscreens).

      My 5 1/2 year old desktop is still a solid workhorse and significantly faster than my new $3000 ultrabook.

      --
      ---- Sig. gone.
    5. Re:Nobody else seems to want it by cmdr_tofu · · Score: 3, Informative

      So what you are saying is that NVIDIA and ATI don't release closed source binary-only drivers? I wonder what this whole tainted kernel thing is about then?

      I wrote a FUSE driver for a toy fs in Linux a VFS driver to do the same thing in kernel-space, and it's funny, I don't remember getting cooperation "from the " whole "Linux kernel team". Apparently Basil Brush and hairyfeet are involved in anti-Linux FUD.

    6. Re:Nobody else seems to want it by Skarjak · · Score: 3, Funny

      I am getting shit done! Correcting people who are wrong on the internet is a noble and worthy endeavour. :p

    7. Re:Nobody else seems to want it by Skarjak · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I disagree. Fridges haven't really been getting any better for a while, but no one claims that industry is dead. You'll have to buy new desktops because like everything else, they'll eventually stop working. And I wouldn't be so quick to say extra power will never be needed. The average computer has been fully capable of doing all tasks the average user needs to get done for a quite a few years now, but they keep getting stronger anyway. That's because you can find new things to do with that power. And of course, work computers or gaming computers can absolutely make use of extra power. Finally, companies can still work to make computers more silent or power efficient. I think there's still room. What we'ere seeing is a diversification of ways to interact with technology, which inevitably means a reduction of market share for the older products, but as long as these products are still needed, the industry will be in good shape.

    8. Re:Nobody else seems to want it by whoever57 · · Score: 3, Informative

      In Linux, there is no ABI. Drivers have to be accepted and included in the kernel source tree. Yes really. It's that fucked up.

      This is complete BS. Drivers can be delivered as source and built on the target machine or as binaries with the appropriate packageing. For example, drivers can be delivered like the ElRepo kABI-tracking kmods (this includes such things as the Nvidia drivers), or installed via DKMS.

      What is true however is that, without an open-source shim layer, drivers have to be delivered as source, which some closed-source bigots hate.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    9. Re:Nobody else seems to want it by NotSanguine · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Now you got Windows 8 because desktops aren't as important a market as mobile phones and tablets.

      Uhh, no. Don't run that garbage except for testing (and laughing at its craptastic-ness) on a VM. I'm sure that Satya Nadella does *all* his work on his Windows phone. Please.

      Is your data in the cloud yet?

      Uhh, no. why do I want my private data hosted on "someone else's servers?" (that's the phrase you should substitute when anyone *ever* says "the cloud")

      Is your email client a web app?

      No. And it won't be anytime soon. Why should I? Standalone mail clients have *enormously* richer feature sets.

      Still sure about the future of the desktop?

      Eventually, "the desktop" will be commodity monitors and user input devices which you plug your mobile device which contain all your data, applications and other stuff. As long as there are people who need to crunch numbers, write code, write prose, etc, etc, etc, there will always be a market for equipment to allow people to use computing power in a stationary location. The equipment, software, form factors and input devices may change, but there will always be equipment which provides "desktop" like functionality.

      --
      No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
    10. Re:Nobody else seems to want it by visualight · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In Linux, there is no ABI. Drivers have to be accepted and included in the kernel source tree. Yes really. It's that well thought out.

      This means that you have to have code review from the Linux kernel team. And you have to divulge any amateur or buggy code embodied in the source. Which may compromise the imaginary advantage your marketdroids think they have on other platforms.

      FTFY

      --
      Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
    11. Re:Nobody else seems to want it by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 3, Funny

      BTW what Torvalds SHOULD have said was "I want the desktop....but not enough to give up my shitty 1970s throwback driver model" because you look at the forums and a good 90% of what the problems in linux get boiled down to is that shitstorm of a driver model,

      You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. the 70's are gone, but your idea that Linux is still in the 70's shows ye know nought.

      Next up, why don't you tell us all about those stupid 1 button mice that apple is still using....

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    12. Re:Nobody else seems to want it by serviscope_minor · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This means that you have to have code review from the Linux kernel team. And you have to divulge any amateur or buggy code embodied in the source. Which may compromise the imaginary advantage your marketdroids think they have on other platforms.

      God yes this. 1000 times this.

      One particular example I remember well was TV capture cards in the early/mid 2000s.

      Basically the chipset was the Brooktree BT878, which was actually pretty good though remarably cheap. I ended up with a few capture cards what people gave to me because "they didn't work".

      That meant they didn't work on Windows. Every manufacturer wrote their own buggy, unstable, system crashy drivers and put effort into some god-awful shiny TV program which made heavy use of gradients and nonstandard TV controls.

      On Linux, they all. just. worked. There was one BT878 driver that was well written and well debugged and "shitty" capture cards that "didn't work" gave years of stable, flawless performance.

      The same thing cycled around with webcams. It was a wild-west of chipsets. They'd all work after a fashion on Windows. On Linux, they either worked perfectly or not at all due to lack of drivers. The ones that did work were invariable more stable and more featureful because the driver would be written to expose the full functionality of the chipset.

      These days the situation is better on all platforms since the standards people have realised that having standard driver interface makes for a much better experience. xHCI means that any random USB chipset works. Same for bluetooth now too. UVC means any camer works and so on and so forth. It's like magic. You can buy a cheap-ass piece of crap from any random vendor and it will just work, no drivers, no hassle on Windows, Linux and OSX.

      The thing is vendors are almost uniformly bad at writing drivers. On Linux this means they don't bother. On Windows the drivers are a pile of crap. Having centrally maintained drivers is in fact a large improvement on BOTH operating systems.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
  2. Why focus on the desktop? by timrod · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Linux has so much going for it in the device market that I don't see why Linus doesn't just double down on it. The future of Linux seems to make more sense as a kernel used for other things (like Android) rather than trying to break into the standalone desktop OS market.

    1. Re:Why focus on the desktop? by Your.Master · · Score: 3, Informative

      What's he doubling down though? That term implies some stakes are being allocated.

      It goes on to say he doesn't think the desktop is a kernel problem. Well, that kind of means he's not spending specific resources on desktop, which means that wanting the desktop doesn't contradict "doubling down" on the device market.

      The actual part of the article that talks about investing is when he talked about shrinking Linux and about addressing the embedded market.

    2. Re:Why focus on the desktop? by bird · · Score: 3, Insightful

      We need a free desktop OS. Linux is the only contender.

    3. Re:Why focus on the desktop? by Kjella · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well first of all Linus has never been overly concerned with market share, just building a technically damn good kernel so I doubt this will have much practical influence on his work. It's got to be frustrating though, Linux works on massively huge and complex servers. It works on the smallest mobile and embedded devices. But a regular desktop that from the kernel's side is rather simple, one CPU and usually one GPU and pretty much no exotic devices (from the kernel side all USB devices look the same, for example) and no absurd limits being pushed in any direction.

      I think the last real significant desktop feature was when they increased interactivity by changing the default time slice from 100 Hz to 1000 Hz and that was in 2004 or so. Heck, I would say it was at least as ready as the BSD kernel was when Apple created OS X in 2001. It's quite telling that the one thing Google did not want to rewrite when they made Android was the kernel. All else they ripped out and replaced with Apache licensed code, but not that. Well that and a bunch of Google proprietary APIs, but that's another flame war. I think I'd feel just the same in his shoes.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    4. Re:Why focus on the desktop? by worf_mo · · Score: 4, Informative

      We need a free desktop OS. Linux is the only contender.

      Is that so?

  3. Oh, the timing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Working out of a coffee shop - just hit the slashdot page when one of the passer-bys looked over my shoulder and said "Slashdot? Is that site still around? Are they still talking about the Year of Linux on the Desktop?" ... and then we noticed the first story simultaneously...

    1. Re:Oh, the timing... by namgge · · Score: 5, Funny

      And a techie's definition of 'working', i.e. drinking coffee and reading slashdot is still the same too.

  4. Linux could own the desktop... by WaywardGeek · · Score: 4, Interesting

    All Google has to do is dump that stupid steaming pile called ChromeOS, and admit that Android wins. A desktop customized version of Android (complete with a real desktop) is still based on Linux (at least Google's fork of it), already has hundreds of thousands of apps, and could be better in nearly every way than Windows or Mac OS-X in 2 years, IMO.

    The other broken OS, GNU/Linux, needs a major overhaul before it will ever be popular among anyone but geeks who are willing to accept that their OS is hostile to sharing new apps, or too blinded by fan-boy-ism to notice. I write this from my Ubuntu laptop, where my code contributions are far lower than Android or even Windows, even though I put in most of my effort here. It's just easier to publish an Android app. It's even easier to publish software for Windows. If Mark Shuttleworth were just a bit smarter, I think he'd realize he needs to abandon managing .deb packages and start this whole mess over based on a more git-like aproach. He's done a lot in that direction - user PPAs for example, but it's still not there. No RPM or .deb based Linux OS will ever become the basis for the Year of the Linux Desktop.

    --
    Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
    1. Re:Linux could own the desktop... by jcdr · · Score: 3, Informative

      Packaging is a very big achievement. Even Android use packaging with APK file. Really, packaging is not the problem. I remember systems before packaging, this was a nightmare. Never return to this hell...

      The problem is to have popular tools able to build and publish proper *.deb package as easy as for *.apk packages. For example a good IDE where you find a "new C++ Debian package" button (and others language option of course), fill a simple form and start coding your application from a functional template. Then a "build" button should create the *.deb package and you should be able to debug it. The IDE should have a "Add Debian repository" button with a simple form to create a remote Debian repository using FTP or SSH. Finally the IDE should be able to publish your packages in your remote repository. Like for Android, the IDE should be able to build package compatible with a choice of releases.

      From my point of view, the packaging is not the problem. The lack of competitive developers tools advancement in the Linux distribution compared to Android is in my opinion far more the root cause if the problem. While structured very differently, *.deb and *.apk packages target almost the same goals from the system and user point of view.

      The situation in creating and publishing *.deb package is actually like if you create and publish *.apk packages all by hand using a lot of command line, instead of a easy and shiny IDE.

  5. Oh it'll happen... by MikeRT · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The day that the various desktop environments decide to cut out the middlemen. When I can go grab an official KDE install disk that gives me a polished KDE experience with the latest kernel and Wayland from kde.org, that's the day Windows will start really hurting. Then I can say to my relatives "Linux? Just go get KDE" and there'll be no confusion anymore. If it's KDE compatible, it's KDE compatible. Load the binary, off you go. Just like OS X and Windows.

    1. Re:Oh it'll happen... by armanox · · Score: 4, Interesting

      They used to have a link to an OpenSuSE live CD to do just that (well, with XFree86/X.Org. Wayland isn't a priority for KDE). It would appear that is no longer present on the site. Also, KDE doesn't really care to be Linux - they target UNIX compatible systems (AIX, FreeBSD). GNOME, on the other hand, wants to be just Linux, and is largely in bed with the Fedora Project.

      --
      I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
    2. Re:Oh it'll happen... by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "The day that the various desktop environments decide to cut out the middlemen."

      Right. Because a Window Manager is the OS. All that threading, management of processes, filesystems and the like are just uneeded cruft!

      "Then I can say to my relatives "Linux? Just go get KDE" and there'll be no confusion anymore. If it's KDE compatible, it's KDE compatible."

      You have what you are asking for available today. You just don't know which distribution to recommend. Your recommendation to relatives should be: "Find someone with a clue and they can help you." Your problem is that you are pretending to have when, when you actually don't

      Give your relatives a computer sans OS and try recommending : "Just go get Windows!" and see how far they get before they ask Which version? Home? Premium? 7? What is this Server 2008? Or should I get Server 2012? Maybe I want MS-SQL? What's the difference between 32 bit and 64 bit? How many Gigabytes should be CPU be? The Hard Drive is the box with all the cables coming out, right?

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    3. Re:Oh it'll happen... by Dimwit · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This is a much bigger deal than people seem to think. I tried getting my father set up on Linux not that long ago.

      "I need help, this says GNOME needs updating, I thought I was running Linux?"
      "You are, Linux is the kernel, but GNOME is the desktop environment."
      "Well, what's Debian? It says Debian needs updating."
      "You're running the Debian distribution of Linux."
      "I thought it was GNOME?"

      --
      ...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
  6. careful what you wish for by slashdice · · Score: 5, Funny

    Linux "won" mobile in the same way Michael Moore "won" the war on anorexia.

    --
    Copyright (c) 1990 - 2014 Dice. All rights reserved. Use of this comment is subject to certain Terms and Conditions.
  7. Re:Infrastructure? by TWX · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well, to an extent he's right; the kernel does what kernels do, and that is, talk to the hardware at the lowest level. It does that just fine.

    Unfortunately the stuff piled on top of it is either not keeping up with trends (X and the way modern video changes on the fly), or not really good at handling what a user would want automagically.

    I attempted to use the most integrated desktop with vanilla Ubuntu 14.04, but I found its window manager to be so restrictive as to be useless to me. It handled a lot automagically, but not what I wanted, and it was also very unclear how to go about getting to what I needed to change. It wasn't even intuitive on how to bring up a terminal window, for example, which is basically the bulk of what I use Linux for.

    The lack of documentation is also hurting, badly. I'm working on building a multiseat box at home and LightDM was redone sometime between Ubuntu 12.04 and 14.04, and there wasn't any good support documentation explaining how the configuration files now work. I ended up switching to kdm even though I'm not using KDE, just so that I could configure a display manager that would actually work right.

    I think that the golden age of FOSS documentation is over. For a long time Linux and other FOSS docs were based on how commercial UNIX documentation was written, but slowly more and more developers aren't creating volumes of use or configuration docs in the UNIX model anymore, and as few UNIX-era developers work on Linux and other FOSS, there are less people who remember how those documents were made and why. I think that is what will hurt FOSS the most, simply being unable to figure out how to do the things that one wants to do because the docs don't exist.

    --
    Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
  8. It's not a kernel problem by 91degrees · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Successful desktop operating systems have been based on various kernels. Apple used a pretty crummy one before switching to a BSD derived one. The Atari ST and Commodore Amiga each used their own, and they had certain success in their niches.

    The problem is the GUI. People don't like X, and Linux people have no desire to give us anything else. Engineers and enthusiasts may well argue that it's better from various objective reasons but the end user doesn't care. They use it and they think it sucks. Perhaps the problem is that it still pretty much needs the shell. Perhaps it's large, slow and clunky. Perhaps it's the poor support for games.

    Android doesn't have these problems because the developers didn't cripple themselves with X. TiVos and Tomtoms (before switching to Android) used Linux without X and people were quite happy with them.

    Give us a nice, simple, standard GUI without a bazillion customisations, and with the ability to to just install an app from the GUI and run it from the GUI, and Linux might actually work on the desktop.

    1. Re:It's not a kernel problem by jedidiah · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > The problem is the GUI. People don't like X

      A stupid noisy minority of techno-hipsters don't like X. For the rest of us it's invisible and no more bothersome than the graphics subsystem on any other platform.

      The problem with your rant is that the still marginal market share of Apple refutes it. Linux in other forms was able to gain traction because of lack of an entrenched monopoly (or being the monopoly).

      Apple demonstrates that applying the "one true way" approach to the desktop won't help you get away from Microsoft.

      So there's no real point in sabotaging Linux just to suit some delusion that ignores reality on the ground.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  9. Re:Torvalds is true to form.... by WaywardGeek · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's GNU/Linux's fault. Android, still based on Linux, could likely win the desktop if Google got their act together and stopped pushing ChromeOS. Notice how my binary applications run on *very* many Android devices without recompilation, even when I write in C using the NDK. Notice how Android does not introduce bugs in my applications by swapping in a buggy shared library which I never tested. Notice how nearly impossible it is to publish a GNU/Linux app in comparison. In one case, you just publish your app to Google and wait a day or so. Notice how my app simply installs in a comparitavely secure jailed directory rather than having to disperse crap all over the file system. For Linux, you need to write and test different and binary incompatible installatoin packages for RedHat, Arch, Debian, Suse, then wait a few years for your package to be accepted and migrate from unstable to testing to stable, and even then you don't run everywhere.

    Just freaking stupid.... year of the GNU/Linux Desktop my butt!

    On a completely unrelated note, WTF is up with the new slashdot site? I had the newly dumbed-down ads disabled with a check-box. The check box is gone, and the ads are back, and dumber than ever! I miss the days of Barracuda ads that made sense on slashdot. The new ones aren't targeted at geeks at all.

    --
    Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
  10. Apple as a model by LessThanObvious · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Apple's success is an interesting model for what it would take to make Linux mainstream on the desktop. The average non-techie Apple user doesn't know or care that there is BSD running beneath the GUI or that a UNIX command line even exists on their Mac. Granted there is a legacy there where people are already comfortable with the idea of a Mac being a legitimate alternative to the Windows PC, but it is the seamless user friendly GUI and fully developed application ecosystem that make it desirable. The argument can be made that Ubuntu and maybe others are pretty usable and are getting close to mainstream useability, but we aren't quite there yet. Until there is a GUI that is so fully featured and bulletproof that the user never needs to do anything at the command line to achieve reasonable efficiency at all common tasks and the application ecosystem is developed to have decent parity with current mainstream OS in use, Linux doesn't stand a chance in the desktop. I'm not sure that the financial payoff is there for any business to undertake the investment needed, but I certainly hope we get there someday.

  11. Re:Infrastructure? by SQLGuru · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think the main problem is that Linux is *TOO* configurable. "Normals" don't want hundreds of options. They want people to tell them which of a limited number of options will work for them.

    Which distro should I pick? Which window manager should I pick? How do I configure my computer to be optimal for *ME*? I'm a techie and I can't tell you which distro is really the best for most people. I can tell you which ones are more stable.....but it isn't just ONE.

    With Windows....and even Apple.....those choices are more or less made for you. All a "normal" needs to do is decide which apps they need to run and whether their OS supports those apps.

  12. Re:Well, you have mine. by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yes. Without never shutting down or rebooting.

    --
    Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
  13. Re:Chrome OS or Android by jcdr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Actually Chrome OS or Android are toys compared to a full desktop experience. Gnome 3 and Unity has go into the direction of toys for simple applications resulting in the frustration if so much users that projects like XFCE and Mate get attention like never before.

  14. Linus does not understand the size of the effort by sproketboy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Microsoft probably has somewhere between 6 and 20 thousand engineers working on device drivers for various windows versions out there making about 80k a pop. Sorry but Linux simply does not have these kinds of resources. It would be nice but I don't see it happening.

  15. Re:Linus does not understand the size of the effor by geek · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Microsoft probably has somewhere between 6 and 20 thousand engineers working on device drivers for various windows versions out there making about 80k a pop. Sorry but Linux simply does not have these kinds of resources. It would be nice but I don't see it happening.

    Try 500-600. Most of those are "project managers" too who farm the work out to Indian contractors. Microsoft doesn't have the development force you think they do.

  16. Re:Infrastructure? by RabidReindeer · · Score: 3, Informative

    The difference is that Linux desktop comes running out of the box.

    I had to use Windows 7 the other day for the first time in 6 months, repairing someone's failed Windows Update.

    After the system was all cleaned up, I clicked the login button. And waited. And waited. And waited. And watched the disk drive light flicker like nobody's business. And waited. All those "essential" accessories starting up, disk scans, mysterious machine-eating magic, all shouldering themselves between me and being able to do anything.

    I'm not in love with the current crop of Linux desktops, but at least I can begin using the bloody things within a few seconds of logging on.

  17. It no longer matters. by Rob_Bryerton · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Total non-issue; the majority of computing consumers have moved on; they're using phones and tablets. Corporate users will use what they're given.

    The days of paying hundreds of dollars for an operating system and compiler are (thankfully) gone. The OS is irrelevant anyways; you go to where the applications are; anything else is just silly...

  18. Re:Well, you have mine. by BringsApples · · Score: 3

    Same here, Slackware (14.0 now) at that, running KDE (installed by default). I work with many clients using this as well. I can connect to their windows servers via remote desktop (KRDC) (installed by default) if need be. I haven't had any issue conversing with, and/or sharing notes with any microsoft office users, (calligra suite) (installed by default). I'm browsing with firefox (installed by default), run my own email server (sendmail) (installed by default) and view mail with thunderbird (installed by default). Sometimes if I leave k3b (DVD burning software installed by default) open for to long, it causes KDE to go full-on rahtard, and has been known to require a reboot. Other than that, once you get used to it, and learn a way to do things that produce the results that you're looking for, it's quite nice.

    Every time I upgrade to the latest version of slackware, I'm able to simply copy data and I'm right back in business. This matter of having the same data for 10+ years is extremely important to so many people. I wonder how many windows users can say that they have data (and I'm talking about personal files as well as other files, like config files for programs to run as you like them to run - not music, movies etc...) that's 10+ years old. I ran windows for 15+ years prior switching completely to slackware. I ran slackware for more than 6 years before I ever typed 'startx' at a prompt.

    I'd also like to point out that fixes for security issues and/or any other update that's required, are almost always released prior to any microsoft fix. Pretty important stuff, especially if you're running any type of server out of your home.

    I point all of this out, not out of egoism, but to really say that even running slackware, probably the clunkiest way to run the linux kernel, the X environment is pretty damn stable, and very adapted to the rest of the world. Of course, slackware IS known for it's stability...

    --
    Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
  19. Re:Infrastructure? by 0123456 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Superior by what definition? Stability? sure, I'll give you that. ease of use?

    1. Take a random Windows XP user.
    2. Sit them in front of two machines, one running Window 8, one running Linux MATE.
    3. Ask them to start a text editor on both machines.
    4. See which one takes longer, and results in more bitching and swearing.

    I mean, seriously, if I didn't know about Windows+R, I wouldn't have been able to start freaking Notepad on the Window 8 machine I played with in a local computer store.

  20. How Linux wins the Desktop by Pathway · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How Linux wins the Desktop

    1. We need a "Default". Not necessarily a default Distro, but a set of standards that all distros can follow. Of course, other options will be allowed, even encouraged. Rationale: We need the "fragmentation" problem to be addressed, and I would suggest that a good start would to have a standard interface that is common across all of "Linux".

    2. We need an easy way to manage a large group of computers. Large or small, businesses and schools want to make the configuration of their computers easy. Examples: Mass deploy Chrome. Setup a lab of computers to use a single printer. Setup logins with permissions and shared home folders. Rationale: These features are easy to configure on Windows and Mac OS X, but not so easy on Linux.

    3. Easy Deployment. There needs to be a scriptable deployment that can mass install Linux onto multiple computers easily, including initial setup and joining of whatever management system is being used. While "image based" deployment can work, native installation deployment with configuration would be better. Rationale: If it is going to compete against Windows and Mac OS X, it has to be as easy to deploy.

    I'm sure there are some projects that already fill some of these needs... but it's not there yet.

  21. Neither do some geeks by John+Bokma · · Score: 3, Informative

    Neither do some geeks. I prefer my OS working reasonable well out of the box without the need (!) to have to reconfigure things. I don't want a Lego set for each and everything in my life; thank you!

    --

    Perl Programmer for hire
  22. Ugh by Greyfox · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I just started maintaining an old Linux X11 app. A REALLY old app. Some of the function declarations still use K&R. It's all Motif and XT. Looking at it with an eye to modernizing it, well... I guess QT won. Problem is, if I go QT, I pretty much have to drink all the QT kool-aid, since they seem to have tried to re-implement the entire C standard library under their API. Other than that, the field's pretty much right where I left it back in the mid '90's, last time I really looked at X11 programming in a big way. Actually back then GTK and gtkmm were at least looking like promising competitors to QT. Looking around at an even lower level, I can find a rant from Rasterman about imlib being faster than Xrender, and pretty much everyone deciding that OpenGL was a better way to go than Xrender anyway. That's pretty much everything, since 1995.

    I think if you want the desktop it's going to take another linux-kernel-level effort around the GUI. The question is do we keep trying to put more band-aids on X11 or do we design something from the ground up that everyone can agree on?

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

  23. Re: Would be awesome by tepples · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Try opening some of the larger, more complex Pages and Numbers docs and seeing what Word and Excel do with them. Or try opening Word and Excel, saving your complex documents in ODF, and opening them in LibreOffice for Windows. Let me know if that works any better.

  24. Linus wants the Desktop? by Lisias · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So I recommend him to start his own Desktop project. :-)

    Seriously, I don't know of, now, any other Open Source leader capable of doing a decent Desktop. Torvalds finishes what he starts, and he finishes it vrey well (see git).

    We had very good Desktops in the past, but nowadays things are just too shiny and too new and... too dumbed down to be useful to me: who knows me from other /. posts about this matter knows why I migrated to MacOS two years ago, and don't plan to migrate back in the short run.

    I still love Linux - all my non desktop machines are Linux, no questions asked. But I just can't handle any of the present mainstream Desktops to use Linux again on my working box.

    --
    Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
  25. Re:Infrastructure? by exomondo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    People who purport to know about computers need to stop asking stupid questions like "When will Linux be ready for the desktop ?", and start asking intelligent questions like "When will the general populace get a clue ?"

    No, no they don't. What they need to ask is "Why do Linux desktop distros not appeal to end users?". The answer has always been clear, it is that they don't offer any significant advantage over the incumbents, they are not disruptive and thus will not disrupt the market.

    Look at iOS and Android, they stole the smartphone - and much of the wider cell phone - market from the incumbents by being innovative and disruptive, users didn't care that they were different or incompatible because they offered features that were better! Desktop Linux distros do not do this, they are me-too products scrambling to do whatever OS X and Windows do and thus people don't want to abandon familiarity and compatibility for dubious benefit.

    You can provide all the anecdotes you want about your hardships with OS X or Windows and I'm sure they'll be matched with anecdotes about people's hardships with Linux so that gets you nowhere. You can blame Microsoft or blame the user (which is what you're doing) but that doesn't make desktop Linux distros any more disruptive or innovative and thus no more appealing to users.

    Offer real, tangible, innovation that is disruptive to the market and the ISVs and OEMs will be climbing over eachother to support it just as they did with Android.

  26. Re:Infrastructure? by Yunzil · · Score: 5, Funny

    Um, if you're on the Metro screen you type "notepad" and press enter. Gosh Windows is complex.