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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.

10 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...

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      *** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
    3. 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.

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      SJW n. One who posts facts.
  2. 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.

  3. careful what you wish for by slashdice · · Score: 5, Funny

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

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    Copyright (c) 1990 - 2014 Dice. All rights reserved. Use of this comment is subject to certain Terms and Conditions.
  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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.