PC-BSD: Set For Serious Growth?

Artem Tashkinov writes: Luke Wolf, a KDE developer, argues that PC-BSD might become a serious desktop OS contender by year 2020, since Linux so far has failed to grasp any serious market share. He writes, "Consider this: In the past 10 years has the distribution you run changed significantly in what it offers over other distributions? I think you'll find the answer is largely no. I do have to give a shout out to openSUSE for the OBS, but otherwise I've used my desktop in the same exact way that I have always used it within the continuity of distribution X,Y, or Z since I started using them. Distributions simply aren't focused on desktop features, they're leaving it up to the DEs to do so." He continues, "PC-BSD on the other hand in fitting with the BSD mindset of holistic solutions is focused on developing desktop features and is moving rapidly to implement them." What do you think?

Comments

That clinches it.

[CohibaVancouver]

Well, that clinches it for me. 2020 is *definitely* the year of the Linux desktop.

Re:That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid joke aside, the year of the Linux desktop is the year that you choose to run Linux on your desktop. The end. People have been running Linux on desktop machines long before it was convenient or even sensible (Red Hat's early releases and broken GCC's come to mind)...now you can download something like Linux Mint and be up and running, fully patched, faster than you can with most Windows systems.

So yeah, the year of the Linux desktop? Whatever year you want it to be. All I can say is that I hope you're not as old and tired as your sense of humour because if you are, I doubt you'll live to see 2020 anyway.

Re:That clinches it.

[murdocj]

In that sense, every year is the year of the DOS command line desktop.

Re:That clinches it.

[binarylarry]

You see, the reason Linux has failed to make inroads on the desktop is the lack of non-GPL compiler toolchains...

SAID NO ONE EVER

Re:That clinches it.

[GerryGilmore]

Depending on your definition, the "Year Of The Linux Desktop" could be any year from, oh, about 2003 or so to now and into the future. If your definition means: " the year that Linux has greater marketshare than Windows", well that's not likely to be aytime soon at all. OTOH, Apple is the most valuable company in the world by current market valuations - hardware, software, oil, you-name-it, by relying on non-Microsoft OSes, and they are obviously pretty successful. Me? I've been dual-booting for several years and last year took the plunge to pure Linux. No MS or Apple, and I'm hanging in there just fine.

Re:That clinches it.

[TWX]

In that sense, every year is the year of the DOS command line desktop.

Which is actually partially why it doesn't really matter to me what my distribution does, when I primarily use it as a vehicle for a shitload of terminal windows to SSH to the equipment and servers that I have to maintain. I need decent fonts (which there are tons of them out there now), a good window manager (and they all have the same window managers basically), good web browsers (plural, since I need to keep some mutually-incompatible things open in separate programs; they all have some variant of Firefox and of Chrome and of unbranded Chromium plus other browsers), and I need functionally good package management to keep the box up-to-date easily, which many, but not all have.

This is part why I'm disappointed with Debian-based distros with Network Manager, and now Systemd, when what they've had for ever and ever worked just fine for my needs.

Re: That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

At this rate it seems that 2020 will be the year of the browser. As in everything is in the cloud so the OS is irrelevant.

Re:That clinches it.

[Squiddie]

I don't get why people keep bringing that old meme up. The year of the Linux desktop was a good while ago. I'm using Linux, on a desktop, right now, and I can use it just fine. There is nothing that's really missing. I even have games running on it. What more do you want? It does everything 99% of what people need to do. I really don't understand why people keep bitching that only 1% of the market uses this kind of system. It's all about free choice. If you want more people to use Linux on the desktop, just tell them about it. Already people are more than open to using libre alternatives to proprietary software, the only thing missing is just migrating from one OS to another, just to run the same programs. Do I think it could be better? Yes. Is it good enough now? Definitely.

Re:That clinches it.

[ShanghaiBill]

If your definition means: " the year that Linux has greater marketshare than Windows", well that's not likely to be anytime soon at all.

Since Android is Linux, that has already happened in some markets. Chrome OS is also Linux, and over one million Chromebooks ship every quarter.

Re:That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in a similar situation with similar requirements, which is why I use OSX.

Re:That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

"SAID NO ONE EVER"

I think I saw this on reddit once. Was that you?

Re:That clinches it.

[PopeRatzo]

Well, that clinches it for me. 2020 is *definitely* the year of the Linux desktop.

Even if it's not "on my desktop" it'll be in my router, my server and the box over in the corner that I use to offload effects-processing and rendering chores for my digital audio workstation.

I may not run Linux on my "desktop", but it still seems to have surrounded me.

Re: That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. In 2014 I actually sent my mom a laptop running Ubuntu and Skype. She doesn't love it but she's less flustered than with windowsXP, the last one.

Re:That clinches it.

[Joosy]

now you can download something like Linux Mint and be up and running ... faster than you can with most Windows systems

I can't count how many times I've read this same comment. And it is true, but do you really think the reason someone picks an operating system is because they can save a few minutes when they first install it? What I think would be most frustrating for end users is installing and updating software. For some apps that can be a nightmare.

Re:That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

In that case even Windows with stack of PuTTY instances or a bunch of Cygwin windows running SSH program would work.

Re:That clinches it.

[TWX]

I like that my native command shell has everything local too, not just for network access. I sometimes have to serial-console into devices. I also like that I have immediate access to my entire filesystem from the terminal window, unlike when cygwin runs in its own separate thing.

I have a Windows machine for field work, I installed a modified port of the cygwin SSH client that runs from the command prompt, but it has a problem in that it doesn't understand the Microsoft/Windows home directory structure so every time I ssh to another server I'm prompted to type "yes" and it never caches keys.

Re:That clinches it.

[jones_supa]

PuTTY allows you to make serial connections and Cygwin allows you to change directory to your native filesystem.

Re:That clinches it.

[hairyfeet]

Insightful? Really mods? All the Anon did was use the classic fallacy moving the goal posts to change the criteria for a "win" to be ANYTHING the poster wants!

By this logic this is "the year of the OS/2 desktop" because I'm sure you can find one guy out there that has switched to using an OS/2 box somewhere on the planet this year. Does this actually mean fuck all? Does this fit what has been commonly considered by the public and the main stream media when they read or write "year of X"? Nope but that is why moving the goal posts should always be translated to "I have no leg to stand on" because you can "prove" any single premises if you move the goal posts far enough!

Re:That clinches it.

[aardvarkjoe]

There is no standard for what the "year of Linux on the desktop" means, so it's not possible to move the goalposts. The fallacy that you reference cannot apply.

Linux-based OSs have had reasonably advanced desktop functionality for well over a decade now. Millions of people are using one of them as their primary OS today. The AC is right. Your "year of Linux on the desktop" is the year that you decide to use it.

Re:That clinches it.

[amalcolm]

ROFLMAO

Re:That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no standard for what the "year of Linux on the desktop" means, so it's not possible to move the goalposts. The fallacy that you reference cannot apply.

Linux-based OSs have had reasonably advanced desktop functionality for well over a decade now. Millions of people are using one of them as their primary OS today. The AC is right. Your "year of Linux on the desktop" is the year that you decide to use it.

The statement has always been used to signal belief in mass adoption being imminent (eg. significant desktop market share, at the expense of Windows). That is why it has become a joke. Because this prediction has been repeated again and again for a decade and a half (first reference I can find to this being proclaimed is 1999). Most measurements currently have Linux at between 1% and 1.5% desktop market share, and afaik this has been in decline over the last years due to OSX.

Re: That clinches it.

[Barsteward]

please, no. my browser is just for viewing pages

Re:That clinches it.

[donaldm]

I've been using Linux (Fedora to be precise) for over sixteen years and for the last seven years have been using it as my primary desktop. As for dual booting, I found that if you really want a Linux desktop then forget it, since unless you are really serious you usually end up back on MS Windows. Of course if you are a gamer and play "Games for Windows" then you may as well stick with a Microsoft OS. Oh sure you could run Wine and/or Play for Sure but it is really simpler to just stick with a Microsoft OS. As for me I have no interest in PC gaming preferring console gaming instead.

If you work for a company that insists you need a PC with a Microsoft OS then you are pretty well stuck. Fortunately I was senior Electrical Engineer and could dictate what OS I wanted to run, however most people don't have that power and as for working with people in co-operative projects who used Microsoft apps I had no problems. For those apps that really did require Microsoft centric applications I could always fire up a virtual machine but in the majority of cases my Linux centric applications worked just fine. Did this annoy some managers? Yes it did but there was nothing they could do about it since I could always do what was required of me.

To recap, the year of the Linux desktop has been around for many years now, it is just that most people are normally stuck with the Microsoft Tax when they purchase a new machine and even at work most managers insist that people use a Microsoft OS so basically the ordinary person is pretty much convinced that MS Windows is the only OS for PC's that is available. Of course once you start to look at smart phones the shoe is on the other foot since Linux followed by IOS (based on BSD) dominate there. Are most people aware of this? Well no they are not and in the majority of cases they don't care as long as the "magic" :-) machine will do everything that is required of it.

Re:That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

just because you are used to the bugs in windows and how to work around it's general brokenness, doesn't mean they don't exist, or that "Linux" (what distribution, what desktop environment, totally unqualified statement), is any worse.

Re:That clinches it.

[donaldm]

The QA is missing. I don't use Linux because it is more buggy than Windows. Pretty simple really.

In what way is Linux more buggy than Windows? Sorry I call troll on that until you can come up with an explanation for that statement. Pretty simple really.

Re:That clinches it.

[Simon Brooke]

It was 1993 for me. And I moved to Linux from, guess what, BSD. I've never gone back and I don't plan to.

Yes, I really have been using Linux as my main operating system for more than twenty years, and I still haven't found anything better. And Linux, in 1993, was just a reimplementation of UNIX, which is forty years old. Software evolves so bloody slowly!

Re:That clinches it.

[jones_supa]

Here we go again...

Well, use this comment as a starting point. Or this one from this very PC-BSD discussion.

Re:That clinches it.

[ravenlord_hun]

I have installed openSUSE onto my laptop. Then I removed my secondary HDD, and voila, fstab thusly broke. Which made systemd throw a fit, constantly forcing an emergency mode - which was, in turn, bugged (systemd launches two shells on the same terminal, so everything becomes garbled). I was left with no option but to boot from a fricking rescue DVD.

At that point, I have deduced that the logical conclusion was popping my Win7 DVD back in.

Interestingly enough, server-grade Linux OSes we use (SLES, SUSE) don't seem to exhibit this behaviour. Still, that matters little for when I can't use them.

Re:That clinches it.

[jones_supa]

For starters, on laptops the brightness goes in multiple steps under Debian-based distros. This can be easily pointed out and no one is doing anything about it. Now, show me a similar, repeatable showstopper bug from Windows. I'm waiting for your reply, sir.

Re:That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hardly. The "year of Linux on the desktop" is indeed understood to mean some form of market dominance. It has nothing, and never has had anything, to do with personal preferences.

There may be a year of Linux on the desktop. The potential is there, but pretending it means something else is silly. It doesn't.

Re:That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used Linux for 20 years. I'd love to see it as a dominant tech.

However, Android is not a "desktop". You can't (right now) use Android for many, many things. As in, most corporate environments, and many home-user cases.

It's too much of a divergence from "year of Linux on the desktop" to mention Android. Or, a fridge. Or car.

Re:That clinches it.

[CronoCloud]

when I primarily use it as a vehicle for a shitload of terminal windows to SSH to the equipment and servers that I have to maintain.

Cue the suspender wearing Unix graybeards: "What, you don't use GNU screen on console?"

Cue the tabbed terminal users: "What, you don't use a tabbed terminal? Who needs multiple terminal windows cluttering things up.

Re:That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Quality or usability has nothing to do with acceptance. The year of Linux on the Desktop has to do with just.

Not if you like it. Or I. If it's a dominant player. Well accepted by many users.

And no, Linux is not that. Not yet.

Re:That clinches it.

[CronoCloud]

I have installed openSUSE onto my laptop. Then I removed my secondary HDD, and voila, fstab thusly broke.

Of course it broke, when you installed it probably set up LLVM to use both your drives effectively as ONE filesystem. If you only wanted it to use ONE drive, you would have had to configure it to do so at install time.

This is also why you shouldn't install Linux with any USB storage (other than any install media) plugged in.

Re:That clinches it.

[r_a_trip]

What I think would be most frustrating for end users is installing and updating software. For some apps that can be a nightmare.

Are we talking about a Linux distro or Windows here?

A distro has everything neatly managed in the repository. Click, install and it updates automatically with the rest of the system...

Re:That clinches it.

[goarilla]

C'mon let's be fair. OSS GUI apps are pretty buggy.
For instance on KDE 4.10.5 the clock/calendar still clobbers the system tray frequently.
Applications started with krunner sometimes just won't start while the sandtimer keeps spinning until a timeout is passed.

Re:That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

That should not be default behaviour, hence it is buggy.

I've personally had no end of troubles with video drivers, network drivers, wifi drivers, bluetooth drivers, audio drivers, etc *every* single time I come back to try out Linux and every single time I end up going right back to Windows because it just works. I don't have time to screw around with tracking down hundreds of files all dependent upon each other, or reading hundreds of threads to figure out something that should just work, or manually edit endless configuration files. I can't gamble with running an OS that actually breaks itself like some Linux distros I've tried.

I have a life and I have real shit I need to do. Windows works with everything out of the box, it's stable, it's fast and it runs all of the best software

Re:That clinches it.

[hairyfeet]

Are you REALLY buying your own BS, or are you just trolling? As one Linux friendly site easily defines "a year of the desktop where Linux desktop market share suddenly rises in relatively dramatic fashion."

And NO Virginia that does NOT mean going from the current lousy 1.34% which just FYI is sooo low that they officially now lump Linux in the "other" category to a 2%, that means a real significant rise as in double digits?

But lets face reality, its been...what? 24 years now? And you've NEVER even cracked 2%? I'm sorry but you have less of a chance at having a year of the Linux desktop than RMS has of becoming the POTUS. Its not gonna happen, it didn't happen when Shuttleworth was blowing millions plugging Ubuntu, didn't happen when Wally World was trying to hawk gOS desktops for $199, and its certainly not gonna happen now that Ballmer has been replaced by a guy with a functional brain, its just not gonna happen. We have already seen the future, and its a proprietary Android, a proprietary OSX/iOS, and a proprietary Windows....THAT is the future. Pretending the "year of a Linux desktop" is anything but a punchline? I'm sorry but you really shouldn't be hitting the pipe THAT hard buddy.

Re:That clinches it.

[visualight]

wtf did you just characterize this as user error? And then go on to proclaim that you shouldn't install Linux with a USB drive plugged in? As if this broken stupid idiotic default install is somehow a standard that everyone should know about? W.T.F.

Seriously I haven't used sles or opensuse for a few years so I'm only going by these comments, but if this is in fact the default behavior opensuse is cracked.

Re:That clinches it.

[jedidiah]

> I'm in a similar situation with similar requirements, which is why I use OSX.

Unfortunately, that means that you have to use Mac hardware. That's not really a good tradeoff at all. That's especially true if you are ignoring the parts that are most often used by anyone else.

Re: That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Warning to those browsing at -1, parent is goatse link

Re:That clinches it.

[jedidiah]

> Hardly. The "year of Linux on the desktop" is indeed understood to mean some form of market dominance.

So? Apple managed fine without this.

It's a DOS centric mindset that demands that a successful consumer microcomputing product must WIPE OUT all of the other options. Although it does nicely frame the problem that any alternative faces.

Re:That clinches it.

[wulfhere]

SuperPuTTY is a very nice tabbed window extension for PuTTY. I use it extensively.

Re:That clinches it.

[jedidiah]

That's funny because any time I install Linux from scratch it "just works". Whenever I try this with Windows, it NEVER does.

I can't imagine a normal consumer going through all of that trouble on their own.

The only reason that Windows "works" for anyone (or MacOS for that matter) is that it's already preloaded and ready to go.

Re:That clinches it.

[Larryish]

Year of the beer fridge on the desktop.

Sounds good.

Re:That clinches it.

[jellomizer]

I want 2020 to be year of the *n?x Workstation.
We don't need a Desktop OS. We need a good Workstation OS.
The PC role is changing from the Personal computer and towards a more professional tool. Something not everyone will need.

I would like to see UI advancements going towards Workstation productivity, not towards Desktop user friendly, or worse Desktop/Tablet hybrid.

UI designed for Big high resolution screens, where users can manage and maintain multiple apps easily without hunting for windows. When resizing a Window or frame, we should be able to either shrink the content, or realign. Improved hot key integration. It will combine a lot of new methodologies and dig up some of the old ones we haven't used in a while.

Re:That clinches it.

[jones_supa]

That's funny because any time I install Linux from scratch it "just works". Whenever I try this with Windows, it NEVER does.

Can you describe more specifically what you mean with that?

Re:That clinches it.

[ravenlord_hun]

Ad hominem much? I manage servers, I know what I'm doing, thank you.

I used LLVM but I've used my primary drive for system and the secondary on /mnt/data (it's a hotpluggable SATA drive). Removing the inconsequential data drive still breaks the whole system, which is patently hilarious.

Re:That clinches it.

[aardvarkjoe]

Are you REALLY buying your own BS, or are you just trolling? As one Linux friendly site easily defines "a year of the desktop where Linux desktop market share suddenly rises in relatively dramatic fashion."

That's their definition. It's by no means a universally-accepted one.

If you want to argue about whether or not particular goals have been met, then you're going to have to define what those goals are and who is trying to achieve them. The phrase "year of linux on the desktop" doesn't do so.

Re:That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that systemd just does whatever you (or more likely your distro) has configured it to do in this situation, right?

Seems more likely to be a distro bug than a systemd bug.

Re:That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, I run the 'Yosemite' BSD distro and it works pretty much just like that...

Re:That clinches it.

[unixisc]

Well, that clinches it for me. 2020 is *definitely* the year of the Linux desktop.

Risk a whoosh moment, but BSD != Linux

Re:That clinches it.

[unixisc]

Android is not Linux, and OS-X/iOS is not BSD. I'm talking USER EXPERIENCE, not kernels

Re:That clinches it.

[14erCleaner]

For me, the years of the Linux desktop were roughly 1998-2001. Once Windows XP and Cygwin became available, the Linux thing became more trouble that it was worth for most purposes. Nowadays, of course, a huge majority of computers are running Unix hidden under the covers (Android and iOS), so this discussion is kind of moot.

Re:That clinches it.

[CronoCloud]

Thanks for the heads up on that, I haven't used putty in a while and I didn't know putty had a tab extension.

Re:That clinches it.

[CronoCloud]

wtf did you just characterize this as user error?

Technically it is.

And then go on to proclaim that you shouldn't install Linux with a USB drive plugged in?

Easier to not make a mistake, for example messing up an external media drive's table, if you disconnect it.

As if this broken stupid idiotic default install is somehow a standard that everyone should know about?

Yes, the broken behavior was the default/standard behavior on some distros that people should know about. The default was to use ALL attached storage in a manner the installer thinks is best. Unless of course you manually change it.

It's been a while since I did an install instead of an upgrade so they might have fixed/changed the behavior and/or made it more clear what it was going to be doing.

Re:That clinches it.

[dkman]

You left out Valve. If (and that may be a big IF, but one can hope), if they are able to get enough game developers supporting Linux as a real option then I think a double digit shift in market share is certainly possible. The biggest problem then is the legacy games. My main system has been running Linux for a while now (though I had dual boot there to play some games). Now I have a secondary system that runs windows for those games (with a dual boot to Linux, just because), but they generally stay in their primary OS in suspend mode.

Ideally I always wanted to have something like a hypervisor that runs on the bare metal where I could install both OS to run at the same time and some key combination to switch between the two. I don't care about dedicating a core to an OS I'm not looking at right now - I've got 8 after hyperthreading. I'd happily give 1/2 the cores and 1/2 the ram to each. But I want the full video performance for gaming in whichever I'm looking at. I don't know if anything (vmware, etc) does that..and they probably wouldn't be at a price point I'm willing to pay. Hell, having two systems is probably cheaper.

Re:That clinches it.

[Reziac]

And having done about an equal number of installs of each across nearly two decades, I've found it's exactly the other way around. The Windows installer pretty much does everything for itself and then the desktop comes up and Just Works. At most I might have to install a driver to get some more-newfangled hardware to work right. And it's never once totally failed to install. Conversely, I've yet to see a linux install work flawlessly out of the box (including Ubuntu, which has annoyed me into giving up on it entirely), and some wouldn't install at all in the first place -- on the exact same hardware that runs any random version of Windows just fine.

I no longer have the patience to twiddle the OS into working right, or working consistently -- frex, I like Puppy, and had it on my laptop for a couple years, but the wireless only worked half the time even with everything being exactly the same from one session to the next (and our entire LUG couldn't figure out why), and I've never gotten sound to work at all. -- And I liked Mandrake 7.2, but there again some things never worked (sound, for one).

And I detest the Mac desktop. So -- I use Windows.

I would LOVE to see linux/BSD do well. We need the alternatives. But my experience has been discouraging.

Re:That clinches it.

[cwsumner]

That's funny because any time I install Linux from scratch it "just works". Whenever I try this with Windows, it NEVER does.

I can't imagine a normal consumer going through all of that trouble on their own.

The only reason that Windows "works" for anyone (or MacOS for that matter) is that it's already preloaded and ready to go.

If that were true "in general", there would be several hundred thousand people screaming on line. It doesn't, and they aren't.
At least not about that, specifically...
One advantage of Windows is that they have a -really- big group of "Beta testers". 8-)

Re:That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

And, since this thread is equating BSD with Linux, lets throw in OS X and IOS just for giggles.

For those still basking in the Microsoft Glory days when Windows owned the market, forget it. Desktop sales are dropping off sharply, while Android, Chromebook, IOS, etc are skyrocketing. Meanwhile, Microsoft only appears to have serious uptake on about one out of every three versions while the competition keeps rolling out new versions with ease. If not for corporate IT, Windows would have been an "also ran" long ago.

Face it, Windows has already lost.

Re:That clinches it.

[cwsumner]

Well, that clinches it for me. 2020 is *definitely* the year of the Linux desktop.

Risk a whoosh moment, but BSD != Linux

It's ok, a lot of people don't know that.
Including me, up to a couple of years ago... 8-)

Re:That clinches it.

[davydagger]

I've been long done with this "year of the linux desktop", and I don't see why I'd even want such a thing.

The only thing that matters to me is attracting enough developers to Free software to keep it maintained. So like everything else, target audience is key. The person in mainstream society right now does not add anything, and may serve to cause problems, and perhaps even disrupt the ecosystem. The more of them, and less of us, the even less developers are going to care about the tinkerers, geeks, and hackers.

Microsoft is releasing .NET as FOSS, hopefully we can use that to improve mono, and if we can get them to release their APIs (win32/64, DirectX, microsoft office document formats), so we can interact fully with windows users, it would be enough.

I run Linux on all my desktops and laptops. I don't think its an imperative that everyone else do so. In fact, I don't think it will ever happen because people associated the term "Linux" with "Nerd" with "undesirable". No matter how well it runs, or how well its supported, people just won't do it, because they'll be affraid of being labeled as a Linux User. People who run macs do so because they like the notorority of being diffrent, along with a company that purposefully sculps its image to be hipster friendly.

For linux to have a brand makeover, we'd have to let the yuppie brand management PR goons in who will ruin everything, and disrupt the type of communities we have. All for what? A materialist yuppie who'd only believes in ethics and virtue as a conversation piece of impress their friends? Someone who'd do minimum amoung of work, wanting maximum amount of credit? What would they really add?

Re:That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

> I'm in a similar situation with similar requirements, which is why I use OSX.

Unfortunately, that means that you have to use Mac hardware. That's not really a good tradeoff at all. That's especially true if you are ignoring the parts that are most often used by anyone else.

What is wrong with Apple Hardware? the iMac uses pretty much top-of-the-shelf standard hardware.. apart from the slightly modified gfx-adapter, but even that you get linux drivers for... and Redmond drivers as well, if you are that kind of a pervert.

Only thing I've noticed with the gfx-card in my iMac mid-2011 (which I got for my 40th from the mrs) is that it seems faster than the nVidia 460 512MB card that I bought for my mrs' computer

Now... she got my old computer when I got the iMac... she has 4GB RAM, AMD Phenom 4Core 3GHz, 750GB SATA HD, and the aforementioned nVidia card.
My iMac has been upgraded to 10GB RAM, but even bogstandard (4GB) the intel Core i5 QuadCore running at 2.5, and the integrated AMD-gfx, feels faster. I know World of Warcraft is not something to brag about, but the iMac runs steadily at around 75FPS, the PC right beside it chugs at a lowly 30.

So... again... what is wrong with Apples' hardware?

Re:That clinches it.

[david_thornley]

It depends on the direction of application development. The reason Windows stays on top is that it's compatible with Windows-compatible software. People have returned Linux-based computers because they won't run Windows software (no, in this case Wine is not a satisfactory answer).

If everything moves to the web, then the operating system really doesn't matter, and Linux then becomes a better choice. The popularity of tablets and smart phones does make cloud storage more attractive, and the desirability of editing the same document on your tablet and your laptop makes web applications more attractive.

Re:That clinches it.

[rtb61]

The year of Linux on the desktop has come and gone and most people didn't even notice (M$ certainly did). That was the year when the majority of people put their Android smart phone down on their desk after using it. M$ didn't buy Nokia for nothing, they certainly managed to buy it on the cheap though, after it was crippled by an ex(nudge, nudge, wink, wink) M$ employee. It sort of all tied in with the change in nature of what roles computer fill and how they fill it.

Re:That clinches it.

[TWX]

I regularly use many of the keys that Apple either leaves off of their keyboards or requires the use of a meta-key to access, which becomes a problem of that key is supposed to be used in key-combinations which don't work well with meta-keys.

I'm also sitting at a computer with five USB ports, four of which are in use for console cables. This is a problem if I don't want to use a USB hub.

Re:That clinches it.

[TWX]

Working on one terminal. Monitoring pings or other stats on another terminal. Documenting (*gasp!*) on another terminal. I usually have four 132x44 terminal windows open in a quad-layout on each screen in my window manager. Works fine that way.

Though I do admit that when I use the dumb-terminal on my desk (yes, I actually have a Wyse VT52 terminal in-service on my desk) I end up using screen.

Re:That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

A distro has everything neatly managed in the repository. Click, install and it updates automatically with the rest of the system...

If a distro has everything in the repository then why do you have Linux download links for anything? It would be redundant. The reality is no, not everything is in the repository.

Re:That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest problem with Mac hardware is it's overpriced. For the same cost I could get vastly superior PC hardware.

Re:That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now you're just spouting FUD. You might have conned a more naive person, but not me.

Fact: Windows "just works" far more often than any Linux distro.

Re:That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, technically it is a FLAW in the operating system.

Re:That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Over priced... at the time I got the iMac, I had a very good look at the specs... the "same" computer in off-the-shelf parts (approximated) would be only be about £25 to £50 less.... sorry, but I don't really agree with your statement.

The (approximately) same hardware NOW is cheaper than the iMac of mine was THEN. But compare the hardware for what it is at the time it comes out, and the money you save on hardware to build a similar spec PC, will be used to buy the Redmond license (unless you go to a fairly known .torrent site and download it), and that license will bring the cost of the PC with an OS on it up above the cost of the iMac....

Sorry.

Unless, of course, the top-of-the-shelf hardware has fallen drastically in price since I looked into it 2-3 years ago when I made the comparisons myself. And I mean "latest and greatest, and also comparatively equally powerful" ;)

Re:That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

> For starters, on laptops the brightness goes in multiple steps under Debian-based distros.

How is this a bug? What if someone wants to adjust brightness to how strong the Sun is shining?

I happen to use both Linux (in several places) and Windows (at work, when unable to avoit it). The kind of bugs that Windows shows always make me go "WTF?". They're certainly repeatable and some aren't even described as bugs anymore... they've conquered a life of their own and are now considered "features".

One of these days we might see one of these bugs become a spin-off as a new product by M$.

Re:That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

> The biggest problem with Mac hardware is it's overpriced.

It's not overpriced if you use your computer as a tool to make money.

If you just use your computer to dick around, then Macs are spendy.

Re:That clinches it.

[hairyfeet]

So why don't you proclaim "the year of the OS/2 desktop" while you are at it since by your bullshit it can mean any fucking thing in the world?

Or better yet why not just accept the fact YOU FUCKING LOST and quit being a butthurt sore loser,mmmkay? Your devs were too busy having pissing contests over DEs to get their shit together, Torvalds was too busy acting like Linux is still his class project to get off his dusty ass and come up with a functional driver model,and all this circle jerking left the field wide open for MSFT to waltz right on in and take the trophy.

The most hilarious part? You and the rest of the community are still so stuck in the past worrying about "the big bad M$" and refusing to admit you lost the desktop wars you aren't even seeing the train fucking Google is about to give you. Google is about to pull a EEE on Linux and nobody is gonna see it coming, that is a knee slapper IMHO.

So go ahead and pretend that year of doesn't mean what it actually means, hey maybe when they say malware they really means puppies, right?

Re:That clinches it.

[aardvarkjoe]

You're arguing from a misconception, and looking like an idiot doing it. I haven't "lost" anything, because I'm not in a competition with anyone. This war that you think I'm fighting against Microsoft exists only in your own mind.

It is undeniable reality that millions of people, many of them non-technical, use a Linux desktop every day. You can make up your own definition for "year of the Linux desktop" if you like, but good luck getting everybody else to follow your lead.

I won't even throw a temper tantrum if you dare to present an alternative definition.

Re:That clinches it.

[Zontar The Mindless]

Not an issue for those of us running distros not stemming from Debian.

Re:That clinches it.

[Zontar The Mindless]

That's odd--I run Linux because I have a life and sometimes just want/need to get shit done, and I don't like putting up with day-long installations, hours of thumb twiddling as I wait for Windows update to do its thing, and having to jump through hoops to get basic info about what the OS is up to and/or make simple config changes... when MS even deigns to make it possible. And let's not forget drivers--more than once I've tried to install a 64-bit version of Windows only to find that there is no 64-bit version of a crucial driver and no way to obtain one. I've had one occasion when something similar happened with 64-bit Linux, and I solved the problem in less than 10 minutes by downloading the driver source and running "make install". (I think I posted here on /. about this not long after it happened.) And did I mention that I don't run my machine only by the grace of some faceless corporation?

Re:That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's odd--I run OS X instead of Linux because I have a life and sometimes just want/need to get shit done, and I don't like putting up with day-long make installs, hours of thumb twiddling as I wait for dependencies to get resolved, and having to jump through hoops to get all the correct versions and fiddly build parameters right just to get a package to compile...

There, FTFMe.

It's SO nice to download an app, open the .dmg and drag the icon to Applications. Done and done.

Re:That clinches it.

[Zontar The Mindless]

Not my problem if you're stuck in the '90s.

Two words: "Package manager".

But I'm thinking you already knew that but couldn't resist making that hoary old troll in lieu of expressing an original thought. Much less having one.

Re:That clinches it.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Not my problem if you're stuck in the '90s.
> Two words: "Package manager".

Not everything has a package you can just install. Some things absolutely need to be compiled from source. But I'm thinking you already knew that.

Seriously, I have wasted more time trying to get stuff to compile because dependency xyz was a newer version than I EVER wasted in DLL hell on Windows.

Re:That clinches it.

[Zontar The Mindless]

I use OpenSUSE. The few things I've not been able to find in their stock repos (most notably a non-braindead version of VLC) have always been available in the alternative repos which can be located simply by searching http://software.opensuse.org/ (Packman rocks, BTW). The only stuff I ever *have* to compile on anything like a regular basis is for work.

It'll grow when FreeBSD does.

[Anonymous Coward]

Currently PC-BSD only supports ZFS as the file-system...which is great...except for that ZFS on root doesn't work in FreeBSD proper yet for many UEFI/GPT-based systems (including my own). The only option is to install FreeBSD with UFS (if you can get that to work, I certainly haven't been able to yet...HP Pavilion P6-2142 if anyone can offer me advice on how to get it to boot), then install PC-BSD's stuff on top of that.

I just don't have the experience or the know-how to get that working, whereas Ubuntu or what have you, I can install that, get it up and running without much fuss, usually with much less fuss than re-installing Windows 8.1 on the same system really. What I'm mentioning isn't a failing of PC-BSD or FreeBSD necessarily, moreso with UEFI/GPT configurations and how badly they seem to mess with anything that's not Windows...but until FreeBSD supports ZFS on root PC-BSD won't support it, and since ZFS is the only available option in PC-BSD, I can't run it on my current system. It's a few years old and out of warranty so I don't have the option of just bringing it back to the store. The install runs fine, it's easy to set up, but I just can't get it to boot. If I could, I'd be running it now because it looks and feels excellent.

Re:It'll grow when FreeBSD does.

[Celarent Darii]

The first thing you need to insure is that there is a MBR compatibility mode for your motherboard, which for your machine should be IPISB-CU (Carmel2), so this is possible. Once you have that, you can probably figure the rest out in the wiki, or better to ask in the forums. I could give you some help but maybe slashdot is not the place for that. I hang out often in #freebsd so you might catch me there, and in general there are many helpful people there.

You will notice that I put the links for FreeBSD for the PC-BSD. The only real difference between the two is the software repositories. In fact you can easily convert a standard FreeBSD to PC-BSD simply by changing a few configs. You might try that route if you want a quick desktop install. I prefer to 'roll my own' but the PC-BSD guys have really done a lot of good work putting in good defaults.

Re:It'll grow when FreeBSD does.

[Celarent Darii]

Sorry that link was eaten by slashdot. Here is a shortened one: http://goo.gl/VsOSS7

Re:It'll grow when FreeBSD does.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for replying at least, I'm guessing people thought I was trolling and didn't actually read the entire post. I actually would like to run PC-BSD and if I can figure out how to do it (or FreeBSD for that matter), I'd be happy to give them a try. :) I've just not had much luck with it in the past and that's probably because I'm not too technically inclined/am rather new to the free operating system "scene." I'll have to poke around and see if I can get it working with MBR...in the meantime, I think in the future any new PC I buy, I'm immediately going to flatten and install the OS I like, if it doesn't work I'm bringing the machine back. Can't do that at this point, unfortunately, but in the future anyway :(

Re:It'll grow when FreeBSD does.

[unixisc]

While iXsystems does own both OSs, I think PC-BSD has a number of things that should be quite independent of what's happening on the FreeBSD side. For starters, device drivers. I've written here in the past about shoddy support for WiFi - INTEL'S. The other day, I tried doing a GoToMeeting session, and it didn't work, despite having both Chromium & FireFox on the box. FreeBSD has no reason to support WiFi or webcams, but my usage was one of the rare but critical instances that causes people to have a second Windows laptop/tablet for precisely that.

If PC-BSD waits for FreeBSD, it'll wait forever, since FreeBSD does NOT have the same priorities that PC-BSD should have. FreeBSD does well as a server OS already deployed by many companies, such as Yahoo!, DuckDuckGo, as well as a router OS for companies like Juniper. On top of that, it's the basis of free Router/Networking OSs such as pFsense, and have a good backing from Apple. So FreeBSD is already a success in its own realm. PC-BSD so far has not managed to go beyond that: it's currently little more than FreeBSD w/ an X11 installer (incidentally, if the BSDs add Wayland support, that too should be a PC-BSD, rather than a FreeBSD project), smooth and admirable package managers (PBI w/ portsng) and a stripped down version of PC-BSD w/o the X11 called TrueOS. This won't do! PC-BSD needs to define its own goals, like being an acceptable alternative to both Windows & Linux on laptops and tablets not made by Apple.

A good list of projects for PC-BSD to have would be

1. 1. Driver support: No, I'm not talking about supporting the greatest cards from NVIDIA or AMD. I'm talking about supporting off the shelf consumer items, in addition to things already found on a laptop. In addition to WiFi, they could support the webcams that come built in. Also, in the consumer marketplace, there are a lot of things, like label makers, which the project could add support for. The best thing about it is that since PC-BSD has already gone fully 64-bit and ZFS, they are unlikely to find themselves in a situation in the future where their added support for newer devices gets lost in an upgrade
2. 2. OS-X compatibility: PC-BSD already has jails for both Debian and Gentoo. Since a lot of the OS-X and iOS underpinnings are FreeBSD, and since LLVM/Clang is official for both Apple and PC-BSD, the project could have a jails system for OS-X. It could also either work w/ Apple directly on allowing the Apple store to be available on PC-BSD (maybe for a price paid by the end users) or w/ developers on making their OS-X applications available on PC-BSD as well
3. 3. Since OS-X is native to the Core series and iOS to the A-series, PC-BSD could port it to ARM and develop a version for tablets that runs iOS apps, using the same approach above. It can then even consider having its own tablet to be a low end alternative to iPads, and raise a bit of cash that way, like Mint does w/ its own box.
4. 4. At some point, consider supporting Wayland, and make it a PC-BSD project: FreeBSD has no reason to add Wayland any more than they work on Lumina

So far, PC-BSD has done an impressive job in making most applications behave the same way, whether run under KDE, Lumina or LXDE. An exception is GTK3 apps, which run fine under GNOME, but misbehave under other DEs, often going fullscreen (not maximized).

Bud BSD is dying ?

[Anonymous Coward]

So a zombie desktop ?

I doubt it

[Anonymous Coward]

If any operating system ends up rising to become important, it'll be probably one that has some company in particular backing it, otherwise there won't be any way to get relationships serious enough to make others take it truly seriously. Now, what company would be it, or with what intentions, that's up to debate.

Re: I doubt it

[Anonymous Coward]

Canonical seems to have the best shot at innovating in this area, but so far I haven't seen anything that suggests they are making strides. Maybe I'm just naive.

Re:I doubt it

[Celarent Darii]

Actually the fellows who work on PC-BSD, or most of them, work for a company called iX Systems that provides servers and storage.

Re:I doubt it

[goarilla]

So the people of FreeNAS also work on PC-BSD ?

Re:I doubt it

[Celarent Darii]

You can see who works on PC-BSD by checking out the commit history on the official github repo Kris Moore is one of the main contributors and is a really nice guy. He works for iXsystems.

FreeNAS is a different beastie. Here is the github. As you can see there is actually very little overlap, but a lot of cross pollination between the various BSDs.

Re:I doubt it

[goarilla]

Well ... https://github.com/freenas/fre... here we've got iXsystems as COMPANY :D.

Re:I doubt it

[Celarent Darii]

Yes, he joined them in 2013. He is their CTO I believe now. But PC-BSD is quite a bit older than that.

Time to start porting apps

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll have my stuff ready for it.

-- Lennart Poettering

Re:Time to start porting apps

[dAzED1]

you shut your mouth.

Re:Time to start porting apps

[ilotgov]

And don't forget systemd ! No desktop be without systemd.
With the added bonus of enlivening the community.

Re:Time to start porting apps

[Anonymous Coward]

He's talking about systemd

Only if they...

[Anonymous Coward]

Stay away from tablet ui cr@p, semantic desktop shÂt, systemd...

Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Daemonik]

The war was fought decades ago, a winner was declared and for some reason the Unix/Linux neckbeards still sit around railing about how they'll take that hill someday..

The desktop is increasingly unimportant, or mostly an adjunct to where people do their primary computing which is portables. Give up on the desktop and accept that you have a niche, hold onto that niche and nurture it instead of constantly beating your heads against the desktop, it's not going to happen. Even Apple kind of half-asses their desktops now and focuses on their phones, and they have a development budget bigger than some countries.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[chromaexcursion]

Only too true.
and Apple's desktop OS is based on BSD.
funny that

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Grishnakh]

Lemme see if I understand your logic here:

Linux on the desktop isn't sufficiently popular yet with mainstream users, so Linux users should just give it up and go out and buy brand-new Apple or MS computers running half-assed desktop OSes, as you put it.

Huh?

I've been using KDE for over 15 years now, and it works just fine, quite well in fact. Why would I want to give that up and switched to a "half-assed" (you said it, not me) desktop OS like MacOSX or Windows? KDE isn't half-assed at all, and has only been getting better and better, while staying quite stable and not removing any useful features the way those two proprietary OSes have. So why exactly should I switch?

If you're just saying we should stop trying to convince everyone else to change (it's a little vague), why? Sure, most people are dumb and are going to continue to buy into the big corps' crap, but Linux on the desktop has only been getting better and easier to use, so why not? Lots of people have switched their family members over to great effect (my wife gets along just fine with KDE on Linux Mint). Who cares if Linux never gets to 95% marketshare? As long as it's popular enough to not be as completely unknown as, say, PC-BSD (my wife and my elderly mother both know what Linux is, though to different degrees,, but if I ask either of them about BSD I'm just going to get a blank stare), and users are able to use it without a lot of roadblocks throw in the way like back around 2000, that's good enough. It doesn't need to become a monopoly-of-sorts, it only needs to be strong enough to be a viable alternative, not just for techies but for anyone who has enough technical ability to plug a USB drive in and follow some simple on-screen instructions. And as far as I'm concerned, it already is.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux on the desktop isn't sufficiently popular yet with mainstream users, so Linux users should just give it up and go out and buy brand-new Apple or MS computers running half-assed desktop OSes, as you put it.

No what he means is stop trying to conquer the desktop, it's been decades and Linux is still no closer to that goal. Instead focus on the servicing the niche and/or looking to the future of computing rather than limping along trying to copy everybody else and taking decades to become usable. Who knows when/if we will ever get fully free smartphones or tablets or whatever. At this rate we should be hailing the advent of the free smartphone somewhere around 2030 and then spending another decade and a half predicting its moderate success.

If you're just saying we should stop trying to convince everyone else to change (it's a little vague), why? Sure, most people are dumb and are going to continue to buy into the big corps' crap, but Linux on the desktop has only been getting better and easier to use, so why not?

Keep pushing shit uphill if you want, the desktop is becoming less and less relevant. Great that Linux has finally become usable on the desktop thanks in part to people writing open versions of drivers for different hardware but the fact remains that most end-user software doesn't run on it and all the software that does also runs on Windows or OSX.

Linux desktops have no innovation, no killer features that attract users (and thus developers) to the platform.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Grishnakh]

it's been decades and Linux is still no closer to that goal.

First, it's only been about 15 years at the most, and second, yes it is. Back in the late 90s, installing Linux was not really an easy process and took some expertise and a lot of screwing around. Now, you just put a Linux Mint .iso on a thumb drive, pop it into your PC, reboot, and follow some prompts, and after a half-hour, viola! you have Linux installed. It's easy as pie. It's quite easy to use these days too, as long as you don't use stupid Gnome3. KDE works wonderfully for both advanced users and users coming from Windows.

Instead focus on the servicing the niche and/or looking to the future of computing

What future of computing? Are you one of those morons who thinks we're all going to abandon desktops (/laptops) and do all our programming, graphics design, word processing, spreadsheets, etc. on our cellphones and tablets?

The future of computing is desktop PCs. They aren't going anywhere, for doing serious work. For some tasks, like watching videos or reading e-books, other devices are taking those roles over to some extent. People are doing more things with computing devices, so the market is expanding, and mobile devices are enabling usage that was either impractical or impossible before. This doesn't mean that desktops are dying, it just means they're a mature market.

Keep pushing shit uphill if you want, the desktop is becoming less and less relevant.

So you are one of those morons. Did you type this post on a phone?

the fact remains that most end-user software doesn't run on it

What software? Steam runs fine on it, and lots of other software has moved to running in web browsers. People are using less and less proprietary software, and desktops are becoming more confined to being used for specific apps: web browsers mainly, plus office apps.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

The war was fought decades ago, a winner was declared and for some reason the Unix/Linux neckbeards still sit around railing about how they'll take that hill someday..

The desktop is increasingly unimportant, or mostly an adjunct to where people do their primary computing which is portables. Give up on the desktop and accept that you have a niche, hold onto that niche and nurture it instead of constantly beating your heads against the desktop, it's not going to happen. Even Apple kind of half-asses their desktops now and focuses on their phones, and they have a development budget bigger than some countries.

+5 insightful? lol because I'm going to do work on my phone...

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[chispito]

The desktop is increasingly unimportant, or mostly an adjunct to where people do their primary computing which is portables.

Sure, if by "computing" you mean consumption. All the great things people buy and consume weren't created on portables or the OSes they run. There are still important markets in which to make gains.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[purplie]

Man, now I feel so stupid for sitting at my desk all day using my desktop with its two 30" monitors. I could just do all my work on my mobile! And thanks for setting me straight on that 5K Retina IMac. I don't want to make a mistake and buy something "half-assed".

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

What future of computing? Are you one of those morons who thinks we're all going to abandon desktops (/laptops) and do all our programming, graphics design, word processing, spreadsheets, etc. on our cellphones and tablets?

This characterization is exactly why the Linux desktop is relegated to the niche of low single digit percentage usage. Creative thinking is simply lambasted with personal attacks. The more imaginative can easily see there is no technological reason you can't hook a keyboard, mouse and monitor to a smartphone or tablet and do everything a desktop can do.

What software?

Serious work software, like image editing, audio editing, professional NLE, post production effects, CAD, CAM, process engineering, manufacturing process simulation, BIM tools, architectural and product design/visualization software, simulation pre and post processing tools, etc, etc.

and desktops are becoming more confined to being used for specific apps: web browsers mainly, plus office apps.

Some applications are being moved into web browsers (including office suits) and leveraging the computing power of data centers so that you can have cross platform applications that run on everything from PCs to smartphones.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

First, it's only been about 15 years at the most, and second, yes it is. Back in the late 90s, installing Linux was not really an easy process and took some expertise and a lot of screwing around. Now, you just put a Linux Mint .iso on a thumb drive, pop it into your PC, reboot, and follow some prompts, and after a half-hour, viola! you have Linux installed. It's easy as pie. It's quite easy to use these days too, as long as you don't use stupid Gnome3. KDE works wonderfully for both advanced users and users coming from Windows.

Again you missed the point. Yes it's easier, but I look around and what do I see? Homes, shops, businesses - everyone is using Windows or OS X; NOBODY is using Linux as the user-facing system. It simply hasn't made any impact on the desktop despite its improvements, because what a lot of Linux zealots seem to not notice is that while Linux was improving, Windows was improving as well. Any advantages Linux had over Windows in terms of stability were eliminated by the time Windows XP (and definitely by the time Windows 7) arrived. You might argue that Linux is still more stable (I wouldn't), but Window is now so much more stable than it used to be that it doesn't matter, plus people can run the tools they prefer to use, such as MS Office, instead of dealing with its absence on Linux.

Put simply, there's very little motivation to move to Linux because it doesn't smash the competition out of the park in any appreciable way to justify the time and effort of learning its nuances. Fuck it, I shouldn't have to explain this, it should be obvious by now.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

There is of course a variety of technical reasons, so I'll start with the most important two to me. Heat dissipation, and runtime. Most all smartphones and tablets are battery operated, and as such, tend to have issues being left attached to a wall wart continuously. It kills the already rather pathetic battery life. And heat dissipation is the big kicker. I have heat sinks on single components larger that even your "phablet" crap. You cannot manage to beat the desktop in performance, ever. You simply don't have the space or thermal margin.

As for software, Image manipulation programs work fine on linux. Or did you not know about the GIMP. Seriously, not everything is photoshop. CAD/CAM software also typically works on linux systems in my experience, and CAD/CAM is my current area of study. Audio and video editing also work brilliantly on linux, partially because of how many options there are in linux, such as the ability to have dmix in the kernal space for low latency work, which i learned about today. The rest of those, i have no personal experience with, and so won't comment on. But don't pretend that smart-phones are the answer to everything. Or that linux isn't winning. After all, it runs many of those data-centers.

And as for connecting a keyboard, mouse and monitor to a smartphone or tablet, most smartphones lack anything like the connection facilities (and wireless video is a sucky option), as do many tablets. This could be changed of course, but then you lack the thin-ness and sleek looks that are oh so important. Quite honestly, as long as tablets and smartphones continue to chase the thin and light goal, they will continue to suck, and for as long as they predominantly run on a different architecture than PCs and real computers, they will also suck.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Grishnakh]

Serious work software, like image editing, audio editing, professional NLE, post production effects, CAD, CAM, process engineering, manufacturing process simulation, BIM tools, architectural and product design/visualization software, simulation pre and post processing tools, etc, etc.

Last I checked, Hollywood effects companies were all running their serious FX software on Linux desktops. Engineering software has been much more recalcitrant.

Anyhow, home users don't use any of that stuff, they just need a web browser mostly. Office users are largely the same: they need a browser and an office suite (which as you point out has been moving to web browsers).

The more imaginative can easily see there is no technological reason you can't hook a keyboard, mouse and monitor to a smartphone or tablet and do everything a desktop can do.

Except for two problems: 1) you can't fit PC hardware into a phone. Phones are still nowhere near as powerful as PCs or laptops, and as long as CPUs make as much heat as they do, that's not likely to change for a while. You can't get the heat out of a phone efficiently. And 2) even when that does change, no one wants to use Android or iOS as a desktop environment. Perhaps KDE et al will run on phones later; they're already working on running Linux (not Android) on phones, so there's no reason you won't be able to run Linux/KDE on your phone soon, and give you the full desktop experience when you plug that phone into a docking station with a full-size monitor and keyboard (though, as I noted, with lesser performance than laptops/desktops). The move to smaller computing devices isn't going to remove the need for a desktop environment that enables you to do real work instead of texting people and playing Angry Birds.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Grishnakh]

MacOSX doesn't offer much more than Linux either, yet enough people have moved to that (partly out of annoyance with MS, partly out of Apple's marketing and image) to make it a viable platform, even though its marketshare is likely single-digits. Apple seems to be doing just fine with single-digit marketshare.

Windows is going to enjoy inertia for a long time thanks to the Win32 API and all the software built on that, as well as MS Office. There is almost nothing Linux can do to change that, except perhaps to keep chugging away at WINE so people can run Windows applications on Linux. WINE actually works pretty well for a lot of things these days, but of course it's not 100% and likely never will be. Apple, for all their money, hasn't figured out how to unseat MS's dominance, so acting like Linux has "failed" because they haven't done the same is ridiculous. Linux doesn't need to completely take over the desktop market, it only needs to gain enough of a following to be a viable alternative. Macbooks are a viable alternative and they only have single-digit marketshare, so why is Linux somehow a "failure" even though, by many accounts, it has just as much marketshare as MacOSX?

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Daemonik]

You shoot yourself in the foot with your own arguments.

First you say people only need a browser and an office suite to do business work, then you claim people need PC hardware because phones aren't powerful enough. Powerful enough for what, running a web browser? Working on a spreadsheet and some word documents? Please. Forget that the average consumer phone outclasses any computer I had access to 10 years ago, which were perfectly fine for doing "real business tasks" on until the OS & Application bloat caused us to move on.

As for people not wanting to use Android or iOS as a desktop environment, you mean Administrator/Power Users maybe, most general people are fine with the simplistic App button and not worrying about file directories or control panels.

People already do plenty of real work on tablets & phones. Like recording albums, shooting movies, and more.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite well in fact?

I installed Kubuntu 14.04 on a Dell Optiplex a few days ago, wifi didn't work, sound didn't work, my firepro graphics barely worked and trying to use more than 2 monitors (of my 6) ended up kernel panicing.

And this was a VERY simple case, PCM audio output - not more traditional (but complicated) office scenarios like N HDMI/DisplayPort's running N+ monitors, but with just ONE of those providing audio (in the display port case, it's more fun - because not all monitors in the stream play audio, you typically want just one to).

Can't get basic 2D graphics right, can't get audio right, I didn't even look at 3D acceleration, and can't get networking right... don't get me started on connecting to our wifi office printer.

I know you 'can' get these things working, by manually configuring config files and/or downloading out of source kernel modules and changing modprobe priorities/etc - but seriously, what average office drone is going to do that? and what IT department is going to allow them, or have the patience to do it themselves either?

Yeah, "linux is ready for the desktop"... right...

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Daemonik]

First, it's only been about 15 years at the most, and second, yes it is. Back in the late 90s, installing Linux was not really an easy process and took some expertise and a lot of screwing around. Now, you just put a Linux Mint .iso on a thumb drive, pop it into your PC, reboot, and follow some prompts, and after a half-hour, viola! you have Linux installed. It's easy as pie. It's quite easy to use these days too, as long as you don't use stupid Gnome3. KDE works wonderfully for both advanced users and users coming from Windows.

Oh, ONLY 15 years.. and they STILL don't have even a quarter of Apple's desktop marketshare. And really, you can make Linux as easy to install as you want, average people will never install it! They won't even download it. If it doesn't come on their new PC they picked up at Cost-Mart, they'll never bother, because people just want to turn it on and use it, not spend all day configuring this and that obscure option. Because most users are not computer enthusiasts. Most users are not programmers or graphics designers, and I know for sure that most graphics designers don't want to mess with their computers which is why they all typically use Apple. I take that back, the graphics designers do love to tweak their themes.

What future of computing? Are you one of those morons who thinks we're all going to abandon desktops (/laptops) and do all our programming, graphics design, word processing, spreadsheets, etc. on our cellphones and tablets?

The future of computing is desktop PCs. They aren't going anywhere, for doing serious work. For some tasks, like watching videos or reading e-books, other devices are taking those roles over to some extent. People are doing more things with computing devices, so the market is expanding, and mobile devices are enabling usage that was either impractical or impossible before. This doesn't mean that desktops are dying, it just means they're a mature market.

The future of computing is back to the old server/thin client models. Streaming services out to users on tablets and phones because if the phone's hardware can't handle your "serious work" then they can stream from a custom VM over the network. The future of computing is the millions of low wage workers in Africa, China and the like who don't have the money or the infrastructure to support a PC but everyone has a damn smart phone.

Also the idea of a "mature market" for PC's is exactly why Linux on the desktop has no hope! The market is mature! It's settled in with Windows and OS X and there is no room to disrupt that with a Linux desktop no matter how damn amazing it is. The only, ONLY 3rd option that has made any kinds of inroads has been the Chromebook, which completely throws out the desktop concept.

So you are one of those morons. Did you type this post on a phone?

No, I didn't post it from my phone. I didn't post it from Linux either, jerk. I did post it from my Asus Transformer tablet running Windows 8.1 though.

What software? Steam runs fine on it, and lots of other software has moved to running in web browsers. People are using less and less proprietary software, and desktops are becoming more confined to being used for specific apps: web browsers mainly, plus office apps.

And why exactly, if in your own words desktop software is being funneled more and more through the web browser, do we need big honking desktop machines then? An iPad with HDMI to a bigger monitor and a bluetooth mouse/keyboard can run all those web applications just as well, and with a lot less electricity being wasted, as your desktop machine.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Sir_Substance]

The desktop is increasingly unimportant, or mostly an adjunct to where people do their primary computing which is portables.

Maybe my viewpoint is skewed by overexposure to the real world where people need to get stuff done, but when people have work to do, they use laptops or desktops.

Right now is the perfect time for linux (or BSD) to attack desktop exactly because everyone else is attacking portable. Apple is a side case, having never taken the desktop world either, but Microsoft is making a strategic blunder that we've sadly already need from another actor in the last decade: Blackberry.

Microsoft owns business. They don't own server, they don't own portable, they don't own entertainment, but they damn sure own productivity.

That's not new, or jazzy, or flashy. However, it is profitable. Businesses have pockets. The last time I needed a license for visual studio, my employer said "as long as you're going through the acquisition process, get three copies so we have some spares and don't have to do this next time we want one". Business, people. It's where the money is.

Blackberry had that, once. They owned the phone you use when you're on a deadline. They used to be the only phone company whos devices had certification to be used by the USDoD, because although they lacked myspace integration, they did have strong disk encryption.

But then do you know what they did? They lost it. To Apple, of all people. Apple got the encryption certification, and now only iPhones can be used by the USDoD, no Blackberrys allowed. Blackberry spent so much time trying to be a competitor to Apple and Android in the "phone you use all the time" field, they neglected a key business feature that gave them total monopoly over a department with nearly bottomless pockets, and now they have nothing because newsflash, Blackberry isn't apple and never will be.

Microsoft is now busy doing the same thing. Turns out that voice recognition software that listens to and uploads everything in case you talk to it and file uploading software that syncs everything in your my documents folder without asking aren't features that the business world wants. I'm sure consumers want them, but consumers have never been the mainstay of Microsofts income.

If Microsoft had any brains, they'd take a leaf from Adobes book. They'd return to boring and invisible, but comfortable and indispensable, totally ignore piracy by individuals (or better yet, free for non-commercial & non-educational use) for all their software, and aim to sell exclusively to businesses. Photoshop is the premiere editing suite because everyone knows how to use it because it's freely available on torrent website and Adobe never bothers to crack down on it, so all the tutorials are for Photoshop. BAM, lock-in.

As it stands, it's looking increasingly likely that businesses will start moving to Apple, because Linux is still too hard for most people, but Microsoft is compromising business needs. I'm already beginning to see the transition happening.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

What software?

Serious work software, like image editing, audio editing, professional NLE, post production effects, CAD, CAM, process engineering, manufacturing process simulation, BIM tools, architectural and product design/visualization software, simulation pre and post processing tools, etc, etc.

Just because you are not aware of the software does not mean that is does not exist or that people are not making a lot of money using Linux tools to do those jobs.

I used to tech for a medium sized media company - admin ran Windows, but all of their video editing was on Linux machines. They seemed to be doing OK and saved a ton of money on licences. I also occasionally help out a pro toolmaker with a CNC mill the size of a truck - that runs from a Linux workstation too. So does the CAD/CAM/Visualisation software he makes the dies and parts on.

Pro Audio editing and production? Lots of first class tools. Harrison would not put their name on rubbish - their consoles are worth more than your house. Ex SSL engineers are making Linux only processing plugins. Sometimes I boot back into my old OSX dedicated mixing machine and it feels empty - the Linux tools are just better.

This is not about price - some of these Linux programs are not free, and in some cases the pro level ones are not even cheaper than the Windows or Mac equivalents. They are just more reliable and more fit for purpose.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I checked, Hollywood effects companies were all running their serious FX software on Linux desktops.

No. For NLE most of the industry uses Avid (Windows or OSX) or Final Cut (OSX) and also products like After Effects (Windows or OSX). Of course you missed out on a *lot* of the other categories I mentioned.

Anyhow, home users don't use any of that stuff, they just need a web browser mostly. Office users are largely the same: they need a browser and an office suite (which as you point out has been moving to web browsers).

Right and you can do it all on your phone or tablet, you can even attach a keyboard, mouse and larger display.

Except for two problems: 1) you can't fit PC hardware into a phone. Phones are still nowhere near as powerful as PCs or laptops, and as long as CPUs make as much heat as they do, that's not likely to change for a while.

Most people don't need to and with this move to "cloud computing" it becomes even less necessary even for the more demanding workloads.

And 2) even when that does change, no one wants to use Android or iOS as a desktop environment.

Hey for the most part all they need is a browser ;)

The desktop will always have its uses, but it is becoming less and less necessary and most of its key uses are around applications that gain no advantage by running on a Linux system.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you are not aware of the software does not mean that is does not exist

Hence the question "What software?"

So far the response has just been "lots" or suggestions like "the GIMP" or that "CAD/CAM software runs great on linux". Seriously what software is going to (for example) switch an autocad or solidworks or ptc parametric or protools or logic or avid or revit or moldex user to abandon their existing tools and workflow to change their operating system to Linux and why?

Perhaps there are genuine superior alternatives with really compelling reasons but nobody seems to be able to provide anything specific at all.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, OS X does offer much more than Linux in one very key area. IT JUST WORKS(TM).

Let me clarify.

First, a machine that has OS X, like Windows, installed on it saves hours of not needed to install and find the correct drivers.
Second, the design of the setup of a new Mac speaks to you in a voice is human. It is a finishing touch of polish on a simplistic design that extolls the Unix philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well. You feel WELCOME after going through the welcome process.

Third, you have all the power of Unix/Linux/BSD with a unified design language that you don't have to think about. The computer is a tool that should enable us to spend more time accomplishing what we want, not configuring a window manager to use the full resolution of my display, or figuring out that Gnome looks horrible while KDE feels slow on my system, or my trackpad isn't working. (These are all actual experiences I have had installing different versions of Ubuntu on one system, thanks to its poor support.)

Fourth, I should not have to research to make sure that my particular hardware works with $Distribution_of_choice. I should be able to make one purchase with something that is cutting edge if I want.

Fifth, I should be able to run the software I want on the system, whether open source, free or paid, at my discretion, and not have to type in arcane commands to get this version of some paid software to work just because it isn't included in your distribution center.

Sixth, speaking of distribution centers, Linux and the BSDs pioneered the App Store model, and only now are they decrying it as restrictive. Yet they serve the exact same purpose, with the added benefit that no one is forced to be in an App Store. (This is not true for iOS and Windows Metro/Phone(kinda) but I am specifically talking about Mac and Desktops for this discussion.)

Now, before you call me an Apple fanboy, I should let you know that I have been a Linux advocate since 98' at the tender age of 16. I have used Caldera, Mandriva, Red Hat (the old Red Hat), Debian, Slackware, FreeBSD, Ubuntu and the list goes on. I know how far it has come, and I wish it had more market share.

But, I finally had to decide my time is valuable to me. And I don't want to keep solving the same problems over and over again, just to support Distributions that won't learn from making the same mistakes.

BTW, I actually really like the ElementaryOS distro, as well as Chromixium. And I am excited about Wayland. But, I have better things to do than keep with my insanity.

Captch = aboard

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[LesFerg]

Its a while since I had to use one of them, but I recall some odd driver requirements.

It would be interesting if you had also posted your experience of trying to install Windows 7 or 8 from a generic Windows install disc, and not the modified version provided with the Optiplex.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say you're being overly defencive. The post looks like it he's saying it doesn't matter any more. Linux is in everything, it is the most popular OS on the planet by a massive margin. But it doesn't matter. People use devices to do whatever they want to do these days, including PCs. As long as they have a browser, just about every home user can use any OS. Gamers are stuck with windows as Steam only has ancient and 16 bit style games for Linux, OSX buy the PCs to be in-the-crowd fashion accessory and live in the browser if they even manage to turn it on. Everyone else can use anything, the kernel, system tools, UI are complete irrelevant when you can find a few icons.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

What does it prove anything if the generic outdated Windows install disc does not give good experience?

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

it's been decades and Linux is still no closer to that goal.

First, it's only been about 15 years at the most

Nope. Decades. Kernel 1.0.0 was released in 1994. The first RedHat was 1994 also. Those are both more than 20 years ago, making it "decades."

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

> Asus Transformer tablet running Windows 8.1 though

Ha, good luck ever even hoping to get a quarter of Android's marketshare - and for that matter Apple ever getting back to a quarter.

Silly also-ran OSes ... nobodyu will ever take them seriously /s

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

If Kontact (kdepim) wasn't SO bad and broke so often and plasma activities weren't so TERRIBAD, KDE would be THE desktop. Sadly, they aren't.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[r_a_trip]

The more imaginative can easily see there is no technological reason you can't hook a keyboard, mouse and monitor to a smartphone or tablet and do everything a desktop can do.

It is not that imaginative. It is also not that smart. By hooking up that smartphone to all that stationary stuff, you essentially turn that smartphone into... (drum roll please) a desktop machine. Which negates the very thing that makes the smartphone so successful, the incredible portability of the device.

A smartphone, used as a smartphone, is a marvel of independence. It is light, reasonably powerful in what it can do and it is exceptionally autonomous. All it needs and can do, is baked into that little oblong.

The moment you promote (or is that demote) the smartphone into the central processing unit of a desktop setup, it suddenly becomes a cumbersome affair. Suddenly, you need to haul more peripherals with you to be able to turn that smartphone into a desktop or you need to worry that the other location has everything you need in place (including the right connectors and protocols).

Also, if it is not a smartphone but a desktop replacement, it suddenly needs to do more diverse and more heavy tasks than a smartphone. So the ultra-portable nature of the hardware becomes a problem. You either end up with a "desktop replacement" that has the oomph of the pre-Pentium 4 era machine or you need to buy ($$$) server-based processing capabilities from a third party (read SaaS and PaaS).

The only shaky advantages that "smartphone as a desktop" has, is that it doesn't need to sync local files as you carry them around at all times and you can make phone calls from the "desktop".

For the same amount of money I can buy marvelously small but more powerful, stationary machines and hook those permanently up to all that stationary peripheral equipment and use that smartphone as a true mobile device, without being negatively affected by the need to do stuff on it that is better done on equipment specifically designed for it.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

Window has more than 1.5 billion users worldwide. That dwarfs every other operating system's userbase combined.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[r_a_trip]

The computer is a tool that should enable us to spend more time accomplishing what we want, not configuring a window manager to use the full resolution of my display, or figuring out that Gnome looks horrible while KDE feels slow on my system, or my trackpad isn't working. (These are all actual experiences I have had installing different versions of Ubuntu on one system, thanks to its poor support.)

You are comparing preloaded machines to a home install. Apples (no pun intended) and oranges.

I should be able to make one purchase with something that is cutting edge if I want.

What is stopping you? Several Linux shops sell high-end machines with linux preloaded and supported. (No, it is easier to abuse the comparison of a home install, on hardware not specifically selected to be supported in kernel by Linux, to preloaded OEM machines.)

Now, before you call me an Apple fanboy, I should let you know that I have been a Linux advocate since 98' at the tender age of 16.

What you did in the past is irrelevant. Currently you are cherry picking points to paint the picture you want and in the process you shit all over Linux.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[r_a_trip]

Those are both more than 20 years ago, making it "decades."

Bzzt. Wrong! the first serious desktop systems were started in 1999 (NOFI WM users). So a mere 15 years.

Pre-KDE and pre-Gnome systems were more akin MS-DOS with Windows 3.11, feature wise.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

Certain Blackberies are allowed.

As are a number of other phones from other vendors.

https://aplits.disa.mil/

Select APL from right hand menu -> Select Multifunction Mobile Device (MMD) from Device type

Do you actually know what you're talking about?

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Grishnakh]

Oh, ONLY 15 years.. and they STILL don't have even a quarter of Apple's desktop marketshare.

Wrong, there's more Linux users than Mac users. Your numbers are faulty because they're based on purchased computers. No one buys a computer running Linux, they repurpose other computers.

Also the idea of a "mature market" for PC's is exactly why Linux on the desktop has no hope! The market is mature! It's settled in with Windows and OS X and there is no room to disrupt that with a Linux desktop no matter how damn amazing it is.

People can't keep running Windows XP forever; the hardware will fail and the OS is already out of support. The same will happen with 7 before long, and probably already has happened to Vista. So people need to either upgrade to a new PC, or install an alternative OS, or become part of a botnet. OSX costs a fortune because Macbooks are expensive as hell. There's already more people running Linux on the desktop than OSX, the number will only increase.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

But not on mobile ...

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[temcat]

Ex SSL engineers are making Linux only processing plugins.

I guess not anymore, if you mean LinuxDSP. Linux only didn't work out for them. But I got a nice Linux plugin bundle on sale from them for only $10.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

The moment you promote (or is that demote) the smartphone into the central processing unit of a desktop setup, it suddenly becomes a cumbersome affair.

How? It just runs programs, where it displays them to and how I interact with them is irrelevant to the central processing unit.

Suddenly, you need to haul more peripherals with you to be able to turn that smartphone into a desktop or you need to worry that the other location has everything you need in place (including the right connectors and protocols).

Why? I don't haul my desktop around, it stays in one place. If I have to "worry that the other location has everything [I] need" then I would already have to worry that the other location has my desktop, which it obviously won't.

Im not saying the smartphone setup is a replacement for all desktops but that most desktops are used for web browsing, office and watching videos so the smartphone can easily replace the desktop for all that functionality and also for all of the SaaS applications. The desktop remains for other work however it is not growing, it has stagnated so unless there is some advantage to be gained by companies porting their software to Linux then they obviously wont do it.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong, there's more Linux users than Mac users. Your numbers are faulty because they're based on purchased computers.

So show us your numbers. Oh right, they dont exist.

No one buys a computer running Linux, they repurpose other computers.

Actually according to this guy they do.

So people need to either upgrade to a new PC, or install an alternative OS, or become part of a botnet. OSX costs a fortune because Macbooks are expensive as hell.

Macbooks arent expensive, that's just another baseless argument and a horrible one at that given the proposal is "use linux because its cheap" rather than it actually being "good", the same argument comes up with Windows but that ships with most PCs. The ~$50 OEM license cost is part of the system and even if I only keep my PC for 3 years it's $17 a year! Linux is free and it is still not worth it. Most people will continue to run Windows or OSX because there is no reason whatsoever for vendors to port to Linux nor is there any Linux-compatible replacement for programs like solidworks, revit, autocad, photoshop, after effects, protools, logic, moldex, etc.

There's already more people running Linux on the desktop than OSX

I doubt that. Show some proof.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Grishnakh]

You're a fucking moron. It's well known that most Linux installs are on computers sold with other OSes. There's no numbers because no one can possibly run around and figure out who has what installed on their computers, they only go off of sales figures. The vast majority of Linux users do NOT buy their computers with it pre-installed.

Fuck off, idiot.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

The desktop computer as we know it is predicted to go into the grave a few years from now. I guess Microsoft believes that and are looking for other markets.

We'll see in the future if that prediction is right or not. I personally think desktop computers are here to stay quite a while.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

It's well known that most Linux installs are on computers sold with other OSes.

Of course and nobody is disputing that, perhaps in your fit of rage you failed to notice that.

There's no numbers because no one can possibly run around and figure out who has what installed on their computers, they only go off of sales figures.

But you just told me "There's already more people running Linux on the desktop than OSX", what makes you say that? I can see that if you have no evidence then when challenged on your assertion that would make you very angry (as it evidently has) but getting all worked up and trying to bully people with foul language doesnt make your claims true.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

Rubbish. We are talking about an operating system for desktop computers not an operating system with a window manager that employs the desktop paradigm.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong, there's more Linux users than Mac users. Your numbers are faulty because they're based on purchased computers. No one buys a computer running Linux, they repurpose other computers.

Firstly he didnt post any numbers, how can you say his numbers are faulty when you dont know what they are?

So we can take a look at NetMarketShare and see usage share numbers which desktop Linux at 1.34%, you can also see a history on statista which shows desktop Linux usage share at between ~0.8% and ~1.6%. Compare those numbers to the OSX numbers on those sites. I cant find anything to suggest that there are more Linux users than Mac users, could you please point me to the information that you are using to come to your conclusion?

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

>Microsoft owns business. They don't own server, they don't own portable, they don't own entertainment, but they damn sure own productivity.

Depends on what you are using the server for. Web server? Then yeah Linux dominates. But what about about directory server? I would take Active Directory over LDAP any day of the week, and I am pretty sure 99% of sys admins feel the same way.

Re:Like hearing grandpa talk about WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

Great points in here except for Adobe, which has is getting its ass handed to it, deservedly, by far better engineered upstart products like Sketch. Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, and even After Effects are threatened by cheaper, better, and more flexible products, and they're not long for this world unless they reinvent their core products.

Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Blame systemd

Re:Yes

[TheReaperD]

You seemed to have missed the anti-systemd rant article and thought this was one by mistake. Here's the link to the article you want: Removing Libsystemd0 From a Live-running Debian System.

Like the systemd argument itself, most of the world has moved on.

Re:Yes

[Celarent Darii]

Systemd doesn't even have a stable feature set yet, and yet you say the world has moved on? Maybe you are on a different world?

It also has a bug list that is huge, and the number of critical bugs embarrassing.

Re:Yes

[dAzED1]

this. I was a Linux guy starting in 94 (I actually still have my infomagick cd set that has the mother's day release on it), and yeah...stopped using it because of systemd. Call me whacky. Moved to FreeBSD. I know, I'm a whiner or something.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think freedesktop.org is the correct site for systemd bugs. I've opened several bugs there, and they've all been deleted. Apparently they've modified their version of Bugtraq to add deletes, because all of the bugs I've opened and all of the ones I was tracking have been deleted. Linus is right that they ignore bugs.

PS: the CAPCHTA was nonzero! systemd ignores nonzero exit statuses.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Like the systemd argument itself, most of the world has moved on.

You're absolutely right. Those of us who have already had our Linux systems ruined by systemd, or are even just facing the future risk of them being infected with systemd at some point, have moved on. We've moved on to FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly BSD or PC-BSD. We're done with Linux, and we couldn't be happier. The *BSDs just work. In many ways they're technologically and philosophically much better than today's Linux distros. Our workstations are running FreeBSD and PC-BSD, our servers are running OpenBSD, and we aren't looking back. Linux is dead to most of us.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

> is huge

And that's after they've deleted most legitimate bugs! As Linux pointed out, they ignore bugs rather than fixing them.

Re:Yes

[MrBingoBoingo]

Loving OpenBSD on a laptop. 15 minutes of futzing with configs and a beautiful desktop environment of your choice. I haven't loved this much since Solaris 8. (Oh and that Android is linux bsbs... Google doesn't use glibc for android, they use OpenBSD's libc)

Re:Yes

[jones_supa]

Which instructions did you use to get the desktop going?

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't blame them, at least if the bug is along the line of "OMG systemd is broken by design, please stop developing it" and something nasty about Poettering.

Re:Yes

[MrBingoBoingo]

Mostly the guide on ribalinux.blogspot.com did it. I didn't follow it exactly because who really wants/needs Dbus. If you google around there's plenty of workable guides, just make sure they point to more recent versions of OpenBSD. Installing XFCE now is as simple as pkg_add XFCE and editing a couple files to get it to automatically fire up by default. The most time consuming part of the affair was getting a new wifi card that OpenBSD supports (~20 dollars) and reflashing my BIOS to remove the Wifi whitelist.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

> Linux is dead to most of us.

Netcraft confirms it..?

Re:Yes

[Barsteward]

how strange, software has bugs. no-one never knew or expected that. There doesn't seem to be any bugs marked critical in that list

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a whacky whiner. Now shut up.

Re:Yes

[Celarent Darii]

YES

THERE

ARE

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Example of a deleted legitimate bug?

Most things I've heard called systemd bugs are just configuration errors. If your distro's unit for some daemon is missing a dependency that is hardly a systemd bug, etc.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Stable feature set? Is that some kind of euphemism for abandonware?

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

If only you would adopt someone else's position on it, where that other position is how amazing SystemD is, and that you should just love it because of how awesome it is.

Frankly, I'm with you. I'm on Ubuntu until SystemD is forced upon me then I'll either move to OSX or FreeBSD.

I moved away from Microsoft because of their morals or lack thereof. Now I'm being forced into something I don't want to use, so I'm off.

Nobody forces me to use something on my computer that I don't want to.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a bit of meta-analysis to be done here, and that's where I think poettering and friends are wrong to summarily dismiss your criticism as "whining". Software is an artifact of culture in a way that writing in literature and journalism never was, in that it must compile to be culturally relevant. You'll always have people who have preferences and move toward or away from certain things because of that, but you have to understand that change - or lack of change - will result in gaining or losing parts of your culture. In this case the community built around linux development and linux users is losing something really big when people like you leave, whatever your reason is, it's relevant, even if that reason doesn't make sense to others. This is what it means to live in a society and work with other people. Meritocracies are ideal but must operate within the boundaries of what motivates large enough subsets of people to be of usefulness to your own furthering of culture. Otherwise we'd be using emacs on plan-9 or hurd to sign PKI certified email to each other in esperanto using about how great lisp and big endian are.

But forget all that, because perl exists, and it's like, enough already. http://xkcd.com/224/

Re:As soon as it gets popular

[Anonymous Coward]

None of what you said makes any sense and is a load of crap.

As KDE developer, he's missing the obvious solutio

[MikeRT]

Make KDE into a full OS. Fork Kubuntu, tell all other distributions that KDE will provide them access to the sources and patches, but KDE intends to become a full competing desktop and tablet OS. Ubuntu vs Mint vs Fedora makes no sense to the casual users I know. If I could hand them a copy of KDE and say "run this" that would improve things tremendously.

Yes, my distro does offer significant things

[iggymanz]

My distro is not jumping on the systemD bandwagon for the next year at least; and they have two far superior alternatives to that GNOME rubbish.

Re:Yes, my distro does offer significant things

[armanox]

You're using Slackware?

Re:Yes, my distro does offer significant things

[Grishnakh]

No, he's most likely using Mint. And he miscounted: there's 4 far superior alternatives with Mint: KDE, Cinnamon, MATE, and XCFE. Mint isn't yet using systemd, but is planning to move to it in a future release; hopefully by that time the furor will have died down and it'll have been proven stable and reliable.

Re:Yes, my distro does offer significant things

[MrBingoBoingo]

That and it's more than two years out before they consider systemd. And yet many systemd fans point to Mint as an example of modern linux that just works.

Fragmentation

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll take two or three really good distros over a hundred mediocre ones. The market share for desktop Linux just doesn't justify it.

Yeah... I don't think so

[l0ungeb0y]

Looking at it's Desktop environment (lumina), there is no way in hell PC-BSD will ever become widely adopted. It's a jarring shitfest of Windows-95 wanna-be hell designed by amateurs. If any OSS *nix has a shot at becoming mainstream by 2020, that would be Ubuntu. While they have their own issues, at least they understand how to put together a good looking UI, and their installer works quite well on consumer grade gear unlike most OSS *nix distros.

Re:Yeah... I don't think so

[armanox]

I don't know, Slackware's installer always worked well for me :). The old Anaconda on Red Hat worked pretty well too.

I've not tried any BSD on a laptop. I have, however run Solaris/OpenSolaris on my laptops in the past, and that handled surprisingly well.

Re:Yeah... I don't think so

[norpy]

This is based on FreeBSD, so are they using it's installer?
It's been a while since I've installed freebsd from scratch (freebsd-update from release to release is pretty seamless*) but isn't it still a horrible curses nightmare?

* except for that time that for whatever reason my network driver didn't work after the kernel update until I'd updated the userland libs, forcing me to go find the physical box and dig up a keyboard/monitor for it.

Re:Yeah... I don't think so

[Pinhedd]

PC-BSD has its own installer. It's really quite nice and should be very familiar to anyone who is used to Ubuntu/Fedora/RHEL/CentOS

Re:Yeah... I don't think so

[theVarangian]

Looking at it's Desktop environment (lumina), there is no way in hell PC-BSD will ever become widely adopted. It's a jarring shitfest of Windows-95 wanna-be hell designed by amateurs. If any OSS *nix has a shot at becoming mainstream by 2020, that would be Ubuntu. While they have their own issues, at least they understand how to put together a good looking UI, and their installer works quite well on consumer grade gear unlike most OSS *nix distros.

Looking at the PC-BSD reviews on Youtube I'd have to agree. I moved to OS X partly to escape the Windows 98 UI and while Aqua isn't perfect it is IMHO (your milage may vary) a helluvalot better than any iteration of Windows up to and including version 7. I'm always interested in new ways to interact with computers and the thing that continually disappoints me about many attempts by the FOSS community to come up with desktop environments is that so many fall into the trap of copying Windows. Ubuntu with Unity deserves some credit for at least knocking off OS X's Aqua rather than Windows but they didn't do a good job. The most recent efforts at improving the desktop that I have tried are Gnome 3 and Windows 8 with Gnome 3 being IMHO the clear winner and one of the best takes on re-inventing the traditional desktop that I have seen recently (an opinion that inspires near religious indignation in some people) although Microsoft deserves some respect for at lest trying to come up with something different (again, an opinion that inspires near religious indignation in some people).

Re:Yeah... I don't think so

[MrBingoBoingo]

PC-BSD started Lumina very recently and haven't taken it out of Beta yet. Probably best to give it a little more time.

Re:Yeah... I don't think so

[Marillion]

OpenSolaris and its decedents: OpenIndiana, OmniOS, SmartOS have been all been great for me. I measure the uptime in years. I'm currently looking at 387 days since the last reboot.

Re:Yeah... I don't think so

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL! Anyone who claims that Ubuntu has a professional looking UI doesn't have taste, nor artistic talent. The Ubuntu desktop, with its gaudy, amateur-looking gradients, was obviously designed by a programmer, not an artist. Gradients can look good in a UI, but anyone who has ever done graphics work professionally would laugh if they saw Ubuntu.

Lumina looks amateurish too, but not nearly to the same extent. At least it's clean looking.

Re:Yeah... I don't think so

[unixisc]

Looking at it's Desktop environment (lumina), there is no way in hell PC-BSD will ever become widely adopted. It's a jarring shitfest of Windows-95 wanna-be hell designed by amateurs. If any OSS *nix has a shot at becoming mainstream by 2020, that would be Ubuntu. While they have their own issues, at least they understand how to put together a good looking UI, and their installer works quite well on consumer grade gear unlike most OSS *nix distros.

Lumina is just ONE of the available desktop environments for PC-BSD, and that too, not the default. The default is still KDE. I've used Lumina - had some rough edges previously, but is currently much improved.

Unlikely

[Peter H.S.]

It would require a radical shift among BSD developers and the companies that sponsor them to make any serious inroad into the desktop. AFAIK, there are almost no BSD developers contributing to DE's like KDE or Gnome.

This is probably because the focus for BSD's are servers; their sponsors pay for making server software that may be close sourced. All the major DE's are using GPL toolkits, so BSD developers are unlikely to make any contributions besides the minimal required work to make the DE's work on BSD.

In case that eg. Wayland support don't materialize on BSD, then I find it much more likely that DE's like KDE and Gnome will split their code, leaving it up to BSD developers to maintain whatever they need to make those DE's run, in the same way OpenBSD does with OpenSSH.

Re:Unlikely

[MrBingoBoingo]

LibreSSL attracted that Cook fellow to OpenBSD who has contributed substantially to a portability layer for it and he's now branching out last I hear to other OpenBSd derived tools portability efforts. It isn't much different that porting a Linux first program to a BSD except if it was born on a BSD first tytpically less porting effort is required.

Re:Unlikely

[koinu]

Take a look at FreeBSD Gnome, for example. I am sure that their patches to make Gnome portable again flow back upstream.

When someone develops an desktop environment that does not restrict users to Linux, you should expect from them to make the system portable. The work to make it run should be minimal.

Wayland is being ported to FreeBSD, too. It is a bit useless though, because of Linuxisms in libinput and Weston.

OpenSSH is portable. This is the difference between Linux and BSD developers. BSD developers stick to the Unix concepts and portability has a high value here. Linux developers invent (mostly already existing) solutions by themselves, multiple times, multiple times in a wrong way and mostly for themselves, because... most Unices/BSDs already have the solutions for the problems and why should they accept something that has to be ported with a lot of effort? It is only being done with things that are worth to port.

Re:Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the strongest case of the pot calling the kettle black I've seen in a while. How much software out there is loaded up with Linuxisms, often with NO other valid reason other than to deny portability? "Those assholes" you say? You petty little tin soldier, clean your own house first before you bitch about others, especially when things like OpenSSH, from the BSD world, was designed with system portability in mind.

Re:Unlikely

[Peter H.S.]

Take a look at FreeBSD Gnome, for example. I am sure that their patches to make Gnome portable again flow back upstream.

Perhaps, but this is exactly what I said; only the minimal effort to make the DE's run on BSD is made by BSD developers; when it comes to making the actual DE there seems to be no BSD developers helping out. In short, BSD developers aren't pulling their share of the load when it comes to DE development.

OpenSSH is portable. This is the difference between Linux and BSD developers. [snip: the usual anti-Linux ranting]. most Unices/BSDs already have the solutions for the problems and why should they accept something that has to be ported with a lot of effort? It is only being done with things that are worth to port.

Exactly, this is why DE's like KDE and Gnome shouldn't accept BSD patches anymore, but just make the BSD developers maintain the DE's in their own source trees, just like OpenSSH. If it is worth for BSD to maintain them, then they can do it, if not, then why bother Linux developers to make it BSD compatible.

As it is now, BSD is simply dragging Linux DE development down without the BSD developers contributing anything instead. At some point this has to stop; either the BSD community starts contributing, or the Linux community will stop working for free.

Sorry, but no.

[Anonymous Coward]

If the article is right, 2020 will still not be the year of the linux desktop. Instead it would be the year of the BSD desktop.
Bit of a difference.

Re:Sorry, but no.

[wellsdm]

Will we still have desktops by then? Seriously doesn't anyone think they will eventually get these silly glasses to work and we can carry our computer around in our pocket? I've been trying to find ways to short companies that sell office furniture and desk chairs. Hope I'm not wrong on this.

Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

What does PC-BSD do that Linux didn't do 10 years ago? If you want "new hotness" Linux, run Arch or Ubuntu, so far Ubuntu has done more to increase market share than any distribution prior and is currently the only one suitable for the unwashed masses.

Really?

[sk999]

"Consider this: In the past 10 years has the distribution you run changed significantly in what it offers over other distributions? I think you'll find the answer is largely no."

Unfortunately, the answer is yes, and in a negative way. Distros got better for a while, but then they maxed out around 2001, and it's been a gradual decline ever since. Luke may have the best of intentions, but his solution is no solution.

Frederick Brooks had it right - there are no silver bullets.

Can't Get 1 Year Predictions Right

[thebes]

You have a computer prediction (and a software one at that) that is attempting to look 5 years into the future. Yeah, good luck with that. Any article talking about the future in such a way is simply a marketing ploy. Nothing more. Nothing less.

A reasonable road map demonstrating how this could possibly be achieved on the other hand would have some credibility.

Compared to this article, the Mars folks look a little less crazy.

Does the OS really matter?

[QuietLagoon]

I've been playing with various GNU/Linux distributions lately. Since I'm looking to run KDE, I can settle on a reasonable feature set that needs to work.

.

On a lark, I happened to install FreeBSD with KDE. It worked just as well as any of the GNU/Linux distributions. I wanted to look at PC-BSD, but my test notebook is 32-bit only, So I'll have to save that test for another day.

So now I'm wondering, since everything I need to do is available so long as I am able to run KDE, why does the underlying OS matter at all?

Re:Does the OS really matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

So now I'm wondering, since everything I need to do is available so long as I am able to run KDE, why does the underlying OS matter at all?

Because systemD.

Re:Does the OS really matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux has historically been less secure and less stable than FreeBSD.
Linux focuses on getting features in at the expense of the former qualities. That is the Linux culture.
Windows is a complete security joke. But it has a GUI the idiot masses (most of the readers here) love.
MAC? They use BSD under the hood and just add their GUI to it. But it is NOT an open platform.
So the underlying OS does matter.
You could choose Ubuntu/RHAT/etc if you want to be 0wn3d like MAC.
You could choose LFS or Arch if you wanted to get closer to the bone.
You could choose FreeBSD which is, frankly, a better choice than those two if what you want is a good bone.
And you could choose PC-BSD if you want something similar to an all_in_one like Ubuntu/MAC, but without the proprietary bits and cobbled together feel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_BSD_operating_systems

Re:Does the OS really matter?

[QuietLagoon]

Not ready to agree or disagree with your points at this time, but I will say that my test of FreeBSD was originally done just for grins. But it worked so well (as well as any of the GNU/Linux versions I tested) that it is now at the top of the short list.

Re:Does the OS really matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

OS matters at least from the hardware support point of view. Linux has much more drivers and they are often provided by the HW companies themselves. I bet for a normal workstation workloads both kernels perform otherwise the same. If one could use the Linux kernel and BSD userland, then one could get the best of both world; almost universal HW support and the systemd-less userland, where stability is the number one priority.

Re:Does the OS really matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Drivers. Can you use your video card properly with a BSD that doesn't have drivers? Likewise with ethernet cards that need binary blobs loaded at boot.

Re:Does the OS really matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

On a lark, I happened to install FreeBSD

I bet the lark wasn't too happy about that.

Re:Does the OS really matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could try Haiku. BeOS was a great operating system and I'm glad someone has created a successor.

What key problems does it solve?

[Tablizer]

Linux failed to catch on at the desktop because of too many distros creating confusion and lack of standardization, and not enough device support from vendors etc.

How will PC-BSD change those issues?

Re:What key problems does it solve?

[Grishnakh]

It won't.

As far as standardization goes, sure, there's only one PC-BSD, but at least with Linux there's various commercial and open-source software available for it. For instance, if I want to run the official Google Chrome (so I can watch Netflix videos without a lot of trouble), on my Linux computer I can just go to Google's Chrome web page and download the Linux version, conveniently packaged in a Debian .deb file, and install it. Can I do that with PC-BSD? Of course not; I'm stuck with whatever PC-BSD has available in its repos. Linux may not be completely standardized, but there are only a few really popular distros, and it's usually possible to get things in either .rpm or .deb.

And as for device support, Linux has pretty good support; it lacks a bit for a few select things (winprinters namely, WiFi is still sometimes problematic but not much, high-end video has been a bit problematic though proprietary drivers are available), but overall you can usually install Ubuntu or similar with no trouble and everything "just works" on reasonable hardware. PC-BSD isn't going to top this any time soon.

Re:What key problems does it solve?

[MrBingoBoingo]

Actually you can do exactly this in PC-BSD, which is one of my dislikes of this desktop BSD effort. Its repository leans heavily on the linux compatibility layer instead of ported software.

Re:What key problems does it solve?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe PC-BSD fully supports the FreeBSD ports system. So if there isn't a package available for it, you can always do a "cd /usr/ports/www/chromium; make all install clean"

And if the port didn't exist, you could create one. In the case of a large complex piece of software like chromium this would probably be fairly complex, and what I see in it's port supports that. However simpler programs are trivial to make ports for: https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/porters-handbook/quick-porting.html#porting-makefile

With over 24,000 ports, you will rarely need to make one for something unless it's obscure.

Plus you don't NEED a port to install a program, just run the standard ./configure && make in the tarball if you prefer.

Re:What key problems does it solve?

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux did that for a long time with projects like WINE. You have to remember there are a lot more developers who get paid to work on Linux. People on this thread seem to get angry about the lack of feature X or software Y in BSD, but they don't step up and work on it nor do they fund someone who will.

We have to pick our battles.

FreeBSD has branded Firefox, Chromium, LibreOffice and OpenJDK ports. Those are all huge efforts. Most of this software is written for Linux and it is getting quite different from UNIX. You try to port Firefox to a new OS and tell me how that goes. I've done it.

Re:What key problems does it solve?

[unixisc]

There are a few derivative distros of FreeBSD, but none of PC-BSD. All those distros are generally either exclusively for servers, or have some special features (DragonFly's SMP, NAS for network storage and pFsense for Firewalls/Routing). So if the BSDs want a single OS to target laptops, PC-BSD it is. They now support a variety of DEs, and have done an excellent job in making most applications behave well under most DEs (exceptions being the GTK3 apps running under anything other than GNOME3)

Shock might follow...

[kuzb]

...if something other than OS X or Windows managed to make its way on to mainstream desktops. Despite all the improvements, it still seems to be a half-assed solution to a largely solved problem.

It's more usable than it used to be, but still nowhere near where it needs to be.

Re:Shock might follow...

[Anonymous Coward]

By the time they (Linux/BSD) improve again by moving an inch forward, OS X and Windows will have added an extra mile ahead of them.

But they are blinded by love...

Re:Shock might follow...

[unixisc]

I quite agree. That 'window' of opportunity (in a manner of speaking) existed during the entire Windows 8.x fiasco, but neither Linux nor the BSDs seized the initiative. Now, Microsoft is in a comeback mode w/ Windows 10, and it's unlikely that that opportunity will come again anytime soon. Unless another Ballmer replaces Nadella anytime soon.

Oh, yes... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Luke Wolf, a KDE developer, argues that PC-BSD might become a serious desktop OS contender by year 2020, since Linux so far has failed to grasp any serious market share.

Huh? OK, but... PC-BSD?!? WTF?

> "Consider this: In the past 10 years has the distribution you run changed significantly in what it offers over other distributions? I think you'll find the answer is largely no."

Just a reminder from KDE history:

quote> 4.0 Alpha 1 was released on May 11th, 2007

Here we go: KDE 4, Unity (Ubuntu DE), Enlightenment finally becoming usable/used, Gnome 3 and the Eye of Sauron, Cinammon / Mate, etc. Repositories, software centers, forking, portable distros, mobile distros, TV distros, wearable distros... the list could go on, but I think it's enough. Desktop is just one area, though.

> ... otherwise I've used my desktop in the same exact way that I have always used it within the continuity of distribution X,Y, or Z since I started using them.

Me, too, and that's a pity, because KDE is so much more capable. In recent years, I started to use Ctrl+F8 (remapped to Win+space) and Ctrl+F12 (remapped to Alt+space) to respectively access all desktops and show desktop widgets. But other activities are accessible insanely fast with Win+Tab (Win+Q to create a new one)... I just haven't felt the need to use these features... it could work just like any Android tablet on a touch enabled monitor -- and there are "all-in-one" PCs with such capability. In fact, they're starting to get attractive prices over here. Maybe it's time to testdrive KDE in one of these beauties...

> Distributions simply aren't focused on desktop features, they're leaving it up to the DEs to do so."

That's not true! Red Hat quit the desktop and went for the server, OpenSuSE also has an eye on data centers and Canonical is after a convergent singularity, but many others are dedicated to the desktop -- some even to old desktops, like Puppy.

Actually, from our point-of-view, it can be argued M$ abandoned the desktop, too, with Weight. Let's see whether they make a return with W10...

> "PC-BSD on the other hand in fitting with the BSD mindset of holistic solutions is focused on developing desktop features and is moving rapidly to implement them."

Well, let's try that PC-BSD thing, but not being GPL is a huge turn-off. If *BSD could produce anything remotely viable at the right time, Linus would never started Linux (IIRC he said that).

> What do you think?

I think Luke should use the source. And he might find some part of the source is hidden by the Empire -- and that's legal as per the BSD license... there's nothing he can do. Except, perhaps, using Linux.

Re: Oh, yes... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I plan on running Windows 7 64bit and PCBsd on top in a virtual machine. On a brand new motherboard with I assume UEFI, would there be a problem?

Re: Oh, yes... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have the slightest idea. Sorry not to be able to help. Since PC-BSD would be running on W7, the whole thing might rely on proprietary libraries... and work.

From this:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgyODk

I think you might be in luck, if that really works.

Re:Oh, yes... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

If *BSD could produce anything remotely viable at the right time, Linus would never started Linux (IIRC he said that).

You sir, are an idiot.

Re:Oh, yes... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

>> If *BSD could produce anything remotely viable at the right time, Linus would never started Linux (IIRC he said that).

> You sir, are an idiot.

You're using the wrong hemisphere.

From Wikipedia, "History of Linux", I quote:

"These factors and the lack of a widely adopted, free kernel provided the impetus for Torvalds's starting his project. He has stated that if either the GNU or 386BSD kernels were available at the time, he likely would not have written his own.[8][9]"

From reference [9], I quote again:

" Meta: What is your opinion of 386BSD?

Linus: Actually, I have never even checked 386BSD out; when I started on Linux it wast available (although Bill Jolitz series on it in Dr. Dobbs Journal had started and were interesting), and when 386BSD finally came out, Linux was already in a state where it was so usable that I never really thought about switching. If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened."

This is tiresome. People call me idiot a lot. If I use Linux, it's just another jerk. If I use *BSD, it will probably be some CS hotshot with a post-doctoral degree.

I think I'm better off with Linux, thanks.

i think

[Anonymous Coward]

pcbsd is looking to be to OSX what reactOS is to windows. and we all know how many users reactOS has. also pcbsd needs a new more hipster name otherwise no it will definitely never catch on

Re:i think

[oneeyed2]

Sigh... Your comparison doesn't make sense at all.

ReactOS is at best in an alpha state and will probably stay this way for a long time. So there's no way it could have that many users... It doesn't work decently for any application.

PC-BSD is simply a branch of FreeBSD which has been around for much longer and is definitely in a much better state. It is productive.

Re:i think

[jones_supa]

pcbsd is looking to be to OSX what reactOS is to windows. and we all know how many users reactOS has. also pcbsd needs a new more hipster name otherwise no it will definitely never catch on

Even OSX's name is just three random letters and it is doing just fine. PC-BSD has a cool name. The "PC" in the front signifies that it is something for the PCs.

Re:i think

[Anonymous Coward]

But it doesn't have an X in it. X is what makes things cool.

Re:i think

[jones_supa]

Very true.

Re:i think

[Anonymous Coward]

And if the Wayland guys get their way, soon the only OS with an X will be OSX.

Re:i think

[Anonymous Coward]

Even OSX's name is just three random letters

Is it? Is it really?

Re:i think

[Anonymous Coward]

Even OSX's name is just three random letters

Do you actually believe that? Macintosh System [number<8] became Mac OS [8|9|X] where X is 10 in Roman numerals.

Linux desktop could have never been mainstream OS

[guacamole]

I came to this conclusion back in the year 1999 or so, when I saw the emergence of two major GUI systems for Linux, Gnome and KDE. Since then, the Linux desktop was an always changing hydra consisting of numerous GUIs, fast changing APIs, etc. Linux distributions fill pretty nice the nice of a power desktop user's OS. The kinds you run into academia, engineering, etc. But I don't see how it could become a mainstream OS. The only way for Linux distro to become mainstream is to have some kind of benevolent dictator in the form of a large company (like google) to create a working GUI and make all hardware vendors to ship it (e.g. Android).

Re:As KDE developer, he's missing the obvious solu

[thebes]

This. The interface is what defines the OS from a desktop user standpoint. Not only does it define ways of doing things, but also defines a great deal of UI driven software packages that a desktop user needs.

Re:As soon as it gets popular

[Anonymous Coward]

Say what you will about Stallman and his GPL, but one thing's for sure is that it's hostile to this type of siphoning off of users over to the new shiny thing marketed by large preexisting corporations.

Users wouldn't be siphoned off if GPL'd software wasn't a dull attempt at copying other software. RMS is all bummed about Clang/LLVM being more innovative and not being encumbered by his restrictive license, he's against the export of the AST from gcc in case a gcc user wants to use that output as input to a non-copyleft compiler backend, he sees non-copyleft open source software as an "attack" on free software, he's just getting more bitter that "free software" isn't what people want. People want "good software" and if that happens to also be "free software" then that is purely by coincidence, but "good software" is the primary concern so if there is no cohesive effort toward that then inevitably the GCC will be abandoned (by most) in favor of Clang/LLVM and Linux will be abandoned (by most) in favor of BSD.

In the early days the gcc succeeded because it was a good, free-of-charge, open source compiler that also happened to be copyleft. Now a better, free-of-charge, open source, non-copyleft compiler has come along in the form of Clang/LLVM showing that copyleft is not a defining characteristic for most peoples' choices. Even Linux is not about free software, it simply leverages copyleft for Linus' ideological view of "tit-for-tat" contribution, hence the reason he doesn't care about Tivoization, in fact he sees Tivoization as a good thing because it's more people contributing code!

It solves the systemd problem

[Anonymous Coward]

And for a server, that is a huge plus. Considering systemd doesn't grok exit status, swallows stderr, and ignores higher priorty syslog messages, PC-BSD has a huge advantage over most Linux distributions when it comes to troubleshooting servers. Maybe it doesn't help that much for the average desktop, but for a desktop used for development, it is also a huge advantage.

Will it run my databases and dev tools?

[msobkow]

Will it run my databases and dev tools? If not, it's a user environment and I could care less about that.

Re:Will it run my databases and dev tools?

[Celarent Darii]

The answer is yes.

Re:Will it run my databases and dev tools?

[msobkow]

DB/2 LUW?

Oracle?

Sybase ASE?

I don't care about source-portable databases. I care about vendor databases that I have to support which I have no control over.

Re:Will it run my databases and dev tools?

[koinu]

Just because you are some software vendors' bitch, it does not mean that other systems not running it are not professional.

When you have your dumb Windows-based utilities, use Windows. What problem do you have with it? I also use Windows XP (32 bit) in Virtualbox, because I need some crappy old software bundled to an old USB hardware, that is all not supported anymore, but my main system is still FreeBSD/amd64.

Re:Will it run my databases and dev tools?

[msobkow]

Go ahead and try to tell your employer or customers that, dumb ass!

Re:Will it run my databases and dev tools?

[msobkow]

"Sorry, I can't work on the payroll, HR, accounting, inventory, or manufacturing systems because my toy operating system doesn't support those databases."

Yeah. That'll fly -- right out the door along with your ass.

Re:Will it run my databases and dev tools?

[Celarent Darii]

I am by no means an expert in those databases, but I am fairly certain they can be run with very little difficulties on FreeBSD.

Here is an install of Oracle in a Debian jail on FreeBSD. I do not know if Oracle would support such an installation however.

The DB/2 client certainly works.

Sybase ASE for FreeBSD is available on this download page.

Whether it would be advantageous to you or not is a different question.

Re:Will it run my databases and dev tools?

[rl117]

I set up PostgreSQL in a FreeBSD jail last week. Total setup time, just a few minutes to create the jail and pkg install the latest PostgreSQL, and set up the db cluster. Added to DNS, and it's been working ever since without a hitch, all on top of ZFS. If you're not a slave to proprietary databases, it can be very simple and straightforward to migrate to FreeBSD.

Re:As soon as it gets popular

[Anonymous Coward]

How about explaining what you mean? Apple has already taken BSD and used it as their operating system. It's one reason you could say that the open source BSD's aren't as popular and why Linux took off. The license encourages proprietary forking.

Re:As KDE developer, he's missing the obvious solu

[Grishnakh]

That's utterly ridiculous. There's a lot more to an OS than just the desktop environment (DE): there's the kernel, the init system and other low-level daemons, the display subsystem, the package manager, and of course lots of apps (beyond just what KDE (or Gnome) include in their software collections). The KDE team has enough work to do, they certainly don't want to become their own distro, when there's already several distros that feature KDE as a prominent DE (Mint, Debian, OpenSUSE for starters).

Year of Linux on the desktop arrived for me

[Harlequin80]

About 4 years ago. I now use a Mint install at work and a mint install at home. So does my wife, MIL and my parents. Open Office does what I need it to for work and steam for linux has given me most of the games I want to play. What's more is steams streaming capability meant I swapped to a laptop for my primary machine and stuck my old desktop into the garage for when I want to play windows only games.

Is it perfect? God no. Is it better than Windows for what I or anyone I know uses it for? Absolutely! I also don't have to do much in the way of configuration when I give mint to someone who has never used it before. Install and run. The cinnamon desktop is intuitive, it has pre-installed most of the main programs people want and it is basically bullet proof. All I have to do is show someone how to use the app manager and off they run.

Re:Year of Linux on the desktop arrived for me

[Anonymous Coward]

steam for linux has given me most of the games I want to play.

Steam for Windows has given me ALL of the games I want to play.

Re:Year of Linux on the desktop arrived for me

[Anonymous Coward]

...So does my wife, MIL ...

a. You left off the F.
b. That's not a very nice way to refer to your spouse in public.

Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[mozumder]

It already has about 13.4% US desktop market share already.

I have no idea why Mac OS X isn't called out for being the MOST UNIX operating system out there.

Why bother making a Linux desktop, when you ALREADY have a top-notch Unix desktop environment, with origins in BSD Unix (via NextStep), a proper Unix-shell, and every other command-line tool, with the ability to run real commercial software from Adobe and Autodesk.

Additionally, it seems like Mac OS X has officially won all the developers. I don't recall seeing any developer using anything BUT Mac OS X over the last couple of years.

Unix won the desktop.. it's just called Mac OS X.

Re:Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[steveg]

I tried using OSX to replace my Linux desktop. Some parts were pretty usable, but inability to set a useful focus policy and the really cumbersome way that cut and paste works made it ultimately too hard to get anything done.

I like being able to copy text from a window that is *not* on top and paste it into a window that may or may not be on top -- without them re-arranging their order. With MacOS each copy and paste involved multiple clicks, all of which invlved the Z-order flipping all around. Slowed me down enormously.

Re:Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[gl4ss]

13.4% is winning now?
using OSX is a WIN? what does it matter at all that it has unix roots? seriously, since you can get all those commandline and shell apps for windows as well.

fuck no, fuck no.

move out, plenty of devs use other computers than macs, using operating systems legal to use on other computers than macs.

Re:Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[jones_supa]

Why bother making a Linux desktop, when you ALREADY have a top-notch Unix desktop environment, with origins in BSD Unix (via NextStep), a proper Unix-shell, and every other command-line tool, with the ability to run real commercial software from Adobe and Autodesk.

So that we could download it for free. If you got most people to mumble out the truth, that would be it.

Re:Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[aliquis]

Unix won the desktop.. it's just called Mac OS X.

And the server market, and likely embedded by now including smartphones and tablets, TVs, possibly gaming consoles, ..

Re: Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[phoenix_rizzen]

Sony bases the PlayStation 3 and 4 OSes on FreeBSD. And the Xbox runs a variant of Windows.

Other than some Android-based handhelds and micro-consoles, there's next to no Linux in gaming consoles.

Re:Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[Bugamn]

So that we can download it for free, install wherever I want (not just approved hardware) and tinker with the pieces as much as I want. Why would I want to use OSX if it doesn't do any of that?

Re:Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[CurryCamel]

I don't recall seeing any developer using Mac OS X over the last couple of years.

FTFY.
Ok, I lie. I know two but they run linux in a virtual machine on the Mac, so I guess that doesn't count?

Last time I was maintaining a cross-platform project it felt like every single non-trivial commit broke the CI, and always on the Mac. Many times because Mac doesn't yet support POSIX 2001 fully.

Ignoring its quirks, I do agree that OSX is a great operating system, but it could use a decent desktop environment. On Linux, I can change it so it suites me, not you.

I just realized I probably got trolled. 13.4% share, and you win the desktop war?

Re:Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[Anonymous Coward]

If you like the way X works, why don't you just run XQuartz?

Re: Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[aliquis]

I know Sony used FreeBSD in the Playstation 4.

And it outsell Xbox One.

I don't know what Nintendo uses.

Re: Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[donaldm]

Sony bases the PlayStation 3 and 4 OSes on FreeBSD. And the Xbox runs a variant of Windows.

Other than some Android-based handhelds and micro-consoles, there's next to no Linux in gaming consoles.

Both BSD and Linux are free however their licenses are different. The main reason that BSD is used in the PlayStation is it's license is very permissive and open while the license (GNU) for Linux is much more restrictive.

No Linux in gaming consoles? Ok I will agree with you if you are only considering Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo consoles and/or hand-helds, however there are huge number of games for Android and IOS devices. Of course for consoles, hand-helds and smart phones/tablets there are some good games, not so good games and some that putting it politely "stink", however that is in the eyes of the gamer since a game that is liked by one group may not be liked by another group.

I would even go as far as saying that at any given time world wide there are more people playing games on Android and IOS devices than they are playing games on a console or PC. This is not to say I think console or PC games gaming is bad it is just that it is so much easier to play a game (simple or otherwise) on a portable than on a laptop or console handheld when you are commuting or even just waiting for something while you are away from your home or work.

Don't believe me get on a train or bus some time, if you don't do that then go to a food hall or restaurant or any place people are waiting and look at what they are doing with their Android or IOS devices. Ok you may find a few "talkers" or "rabid texters" but the majority will be playing a game of some sort.

Re:Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[Simon Brooke]

Those of us who actually worked on NeXT will never touch MacOS X with a barge pole. I still have nightmares about that steaming pile of shit.

Re:Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[Cenan]

I'm a developer. I use Windows 7 at work and at home. Nothing fanatical or religious about it, I just do.

Nice to meet you.

Re:Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[Anonymous Coward]

OSX isn't BSD. Any more than BSD is Linux, because they often share much of the same userland.

OSX is heavily modifed, extremely controlled, and closed source. Try to get a copy of the kernel sources, or any other sources, will you? It isn't BSD licensed for example.

I'd suspect, that after all these years, that a significant portion (20% 40% more?) of the code has been modified, and in no way resembles the original sources.

So stop. OSX != BSD.

Re: Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[CronoCloud]

there's next to no Linux in gaming consoles.

Well there "was" Linux "on" gaming consoles, though that wasn't those consoles primary OS.

Re: Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Try again Mac OS x u kernel source is available here http://www.opensource.apple.com

Re:Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[r_a_trip]

Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

It [OS X] already has about 13.4% US desktop market share already.

But it is not BSD. It is OS X and it is certainly isn't licensed with a two or three clause BSD license. Also, OS X is an amalgam of different systems. It contains pieces of BSD, of MACH and Apple OSes.

If OS X is BSD, then VMS won, as Windows NT is a distant VMS derivative.

(Tongue in cheek:) Linux is just a terminal emulator with scope creep.

Re:Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[Anonymous Coward]

> the MOST UNIX operating system out there.

It's a *really* bad Unix. "/Library/Framework/OpenGL/2.0/Framework/lib/OpenGL/2.0/lib/Framework/lib/GL/libGL.so" ...on top of all the same stuff that's un-Unixy about Linux: It's a Unix, but it also keeps stuff from Unix which should have been replaced twenty years ago. Who wants this?

Re:Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bother making a Linux desktop, when you ALREADY have a top-notch Unix desktop environment, with origins in BSD Unix (via NextStep), a proper Unix-shell, and every other command-line tool, with the ability to run real commercial software from Adobe and Autodesk.

because some of us don't want to piss away a tonne of money on apple hardware because its shinny.

Additionally, it seems like Mac OS X has officially won all the developers. I don't recall seeing any developer using anything BUT Mac OS X over the last couple of years.

ummm yeah are they all developing crappy phone apps? because every developer in my industry uses a windows or linux desktop usually both one being in a vm.

Re:Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[Anonymous Coward]

That's like saying you wouldn't touch Linux if you had a bad time using Minix. Don't be so precious.

Re:Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with that. It's because NeXT was focused around business, just like UNIX and BSD are focused around business needs. You used it to build things. It was a serious tool. OS X became "listen to music, make movies, look at pictures, consume, consume, consume" and it's just such a totally different thing.

Re:Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[unixisc]

It already has about 13.4% US desktop market share already.

I have no idea why Mac OS X isn't called out for being the MOST UNIX operating system out there.

Why bother making a Linux desktop, when you ALREADY have a top-notch Unix desktop environment, with origins in BSD Unix (via NextStep), a proper Unix-shell, and every other command-line tool, with the ability to run real commercial software from Adobe and Autodesk.

Additionally, it seems like Mac OS X has officially won all the developers. I don't recall seeing any developer using anything BUT Mac OS X over the last couple of years.

Unix won the desktop.. it's just called Mac OS X.

Sorry, OS-X may be UNIX in terms of certification, but that doesn't make it BSD in the sense that we normally discuss it. The real competition within the FOSS segment is b/w the Linuxes (Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, Debian, et al) and the BSDs (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, et al). And while I am a PC-BSD user, the BSDs do have a lot of catching up to do even for Linux.

A good start would be if the BSDs could develop a group of jails to run OS-X and iOS binaries. PC-BSD would certainly do well in doing that, and also being ported to ARM, so that ARM based 2-in-1s can be an inexpensive alternative to i3 based 2-in-1s

Re:Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Unix won the desktop.. it's just called Mac OS X.

Unix won the desktop like Dewey defeated Truman.

Talk about distortion fields. Have you even casually glanced at market share? You do know how numbers work, don't you?

Re:Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[Reziac]

Maybe because some of us can't stand the Mac desktop's way of doing things, no matter how wonderful the underpinnings are.

Re:Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[cwsumner]

I'm a developer. I use Windows 7 at work and at home. Nothing fanatical or religious about it, I just do.

Nice to meet you.

Ha! Me too. What the clients use, is what I use.
Not that I don't cuss at it frequently...
But once a version gets patched up a bit, it is not bad. And I have heard that Win V8.1 is actually usable! 8-)

Re:Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[steveg]

I hadn't been aware of XQuartz. However, looking at what I've found about it, I get the impression it only gives those benefits to X apps. In other words, native apps would still behave in their normal manner. Is that correct?

Since what I'm primarily using is a text editor and a web browser (I grade student homework in the browser and paste in my boilerplate "correct" answers from the text file) I'm not sure that XQuartz would do me any good. The apps I would be using would still not get the focus and cut and paste goodness of X.

Re:Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[Anonymous Coward]

> In other words, native apps would still behave in their normal manner. Is that correct?

That's correct, Mac apps are written to be "Mac-like," which means they use the standard Aqua behavior and look and feel.

I know you'd rather all users and developers shared your preference for X, but if you're waiting for Apple to change Aqua/Quartz to be more X-like (forcing everyone to re-write their apps), well... you've got a long wait! :)

Re:Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[steveg]

Not really. I don't especially care what other people do. But it does mean that a Linux desktop will continue to be more useful to me than MacOS. It was suggested that a Mac made a good replacement for my Linux desktop since it was so Unixy. But the part that matters to me really isn't.

Now, if Wayland comes along and eliminates those benefits on Linux, and if X itself ends up going away... Well, I guess I'm just going to have to start kicking people off my lawn.

Re:Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[Anonymous Coward]

It was suggested that a Mac made a good replacement for my Linux desktop since it was so Unixy. But the part that matters to me really isn't.

Hmmm. I'm not sure what they meant by, "Unixy," but the Mac OS X interface never struck me as particularly Unixy (nor did NeXT before it). It has always been Mac-like, even if the Great Leap to Aqua meant accepting certain un-Mac-like things like filename extensions. X has always been kind of a different mindset from other GUIs, but I agree it would be nice for the GUI to be customizable to fit whatever you're used to.

Incidentally, did you ever use A/UX? Its GUI always seemed a bit schizophrenic to me in how it somewhat arbitrarily melded certain Mac features with certain Unix features, but in many ways I think it was a better integration of Mac & Unix than OS X is.

Re:Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[jwhitener]

"I don't recall seeing any developer using anything BUT Mac OS X over the last couple of years."

Not sure what type of developers you work with (web?) but I read an article about Google Devs. Most of them get macs for the nice hardware/sleek design and then load Linux on it.

Re:Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[steveg]

No, never did. I've never really had much contact with the Apple world -- I have the one Powerbook available to me, but it's mainly set on the shelf since its fit with what I need to do wasn't as good as my Lenovo running Linux.

I'll wait

[michaelmalak]

I'll wait for MS-BSD.

Re:I'll wait

[iggymanz]

That happened, you missed it. When Microsoft went to the Interix subsystem for Windows Services for Unix, much of the code was jacked from OpenBSD

Re:I'll wait

[Anonymous Coward]

So far all we've gotten is MS-BS

Re:I'll wait

[unixisc]

Wasn't that called Xenix?

Re:As KDE developer, he's missing the obvious solu

[guacamole]

To make this work, some big company, like google or Intel, would have to throw its weight behind this idea (basically, like what happened with Android).

Re:Linux desktop could have never been mainstream

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course Linux would and has failed on the desktop. There are simply too many *meeetoooosss* out there claiming to be different when they're not. They call themselves "distros". Their sole purpose is to fragment the community into hundreds of supposedly happy bits of sharing goodness.
Well I have news for you... that model does NOT work. They even need a "distrowatch" to keep track of all their useless incarnations.
What a fucking waste of effort.
If they had bothered to get along and actually debate and agree and choose a correct path,
they're be where FreeBSD is.... slapping them ALL upside the face with a wet tuna at number TWENTY in their distrowatch rankings.
That's a massive success and validation for BSD up against the behemoth marketing and fanboyism of Linux/GNU Torvalds/Stallman.
The BSD's just work.
You figure out how to use them. It's not that hard :) In fact, it's rather beautiful. You should try it.

The OS is irrelevant.

[Anonymous Coward]

OSs do the grunt work of abstracting the hardware interfaces. This means drivers. Linux has finally got some GPU MFGs working on FLOSS drivers and releasing drivers as opens source.

My application framework provides an OS abstraction layer to normalize away the fact that OSs won't standardize on an API. Some of my software even sports a virtual file system and virtual machine so as to abstract the data storage, asset management / loading, and in-application scripting. This is true even for games.

I write my code to my cross platform OS abstraction layer, and it is infinitely more important that the bullshit anti-compatibilty API systems that OSs provide. I love ZFS, but it is shit. I need binary uniformity for true cross platform systems (leave the destop, resume on mobile, etc), so I accept that my proprietary solutions will be less performant. A faster and larger hard drive, twice as fast CPU, and hardware with more RAM and GPU power will be here in another 18 months, making 18 months of optimization to get 2x the speed not worth the time.

The OS is not important. It is completely irrelevant. People do not use OSs, they use applications, and today my applications run atop every OS.

PC-BSD is not important. Linux is good enough (the best in FLOSS OSs wrt to what matters: Drivers), and Windows is shit but available. Think about JavaScript. Some of my code compiles down to ASM.js to provide browser interfaces (yes, my apps can even run in a browser now, they have full OS feature sets including local file storage, audio, graphics, input, etc). We don't use JavaScript because it is great. We use it because it is there. We don't use Windows becaues it is great, we use it because it is there. We don't use Linux because it is great, we use it because it is there. People concerned with having an open source OS have one. I see no compelling reason to change platforms, Android is Linux, and is kicking the ass of BSD, OSX, WIN, (every other OS). Honestly, I think BSDs missed the boat, even if I like them better.

However, it WILL NOT MATTER if PC-BSD takes Windows place tomorrow. We will just recompile our applications atop whatever the dominant OS API is, and carry on. Most people don't give a fuck about what's between the application an the metal. I care if my drivers and OS are open source, but no one else I know does, so long as the apps are.

Fuck POSIX. There, I've said it. If we want to advance in OS design, we're going to have to change the OS design. Anyone who wants to dethrone Linux or Windows will have to create a MUCH better mouse trap, not just one that's pretty much the same.

In my spare time I've been building a next generation OS that is also a compiler. All programs are compiled into intermediate bytecode which is the "native" distribution format. This way untrusted programs can be interpreted in a VM (unlike LLVM "bytecode"), or (if trusted) translated into machine code (once) at install time (like LLVM "bytecode" could do if one of the POSIX OSs incorporated it instead of fighting to provide the same feature set). Each program could be running on the same chip, on a different core, a different machine on the other side of the world, and it wouldn't matter to the application because the OS transparently maps the remote procedure calls and IPC to the underlying transport, be it DMA, UDP, USB or a Null modem. This is an OS designed for the modern internet and hardware ecosystem. The program memory models are standardized; Multiprocessing can be done transparently across the network, not just across the local system cores. This means you can easily enlist the otherwise idle CPU power of the phone in your pocket, or the spare desktop in the other room, or the network of things in your house to crunch numbers. Got a bunch of visitors? Why not add power to your backend systems with their browsers? Eliminate bottlenecks: The more users, the more availability exists. Doesn't that seem like something worth while to work on instead of PC-BSD? Yeah

Re:The OS is irrelevant.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good for you. Your few applications work for you and run wherever you want. Unfortunately you are not the majority of computer users out there.

And you are wrong. The OS is VERY relevant when the applications being used only work on 1 or 2 OSes.

Re:Linux desktop could have never been mainstream

[Anonymous Coward]

Another reason why BSD is on a growth curve that will surpass Linux sometime in 2020's...
The BSD license. It allows companies to use the BSD OS in their commercial products so they can sell them without having to 100% give up the changes they invested in. If you look at FreeBSD (freebsdfoundation.org) this is now paying off bigtime, to the tune of $millions of dollars of corporate donations every year. And these days, many of these companies are very happy to give back the code they wrote.

The GPL license offers absolutely NO direct benefit to companies that need a Unix-like OS to put in their products.

Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

> there are almost no BSD developers contributing to DE's like KDE or Gnome

There are almost no BSD developers contributing to ANYTHING other than BSD. Any of their more useful tools like ssh and libressl require third parties to create and maintain non-BSD ports because those assholes cannot be bothered to support anything other than whats running on their servers (they almost all use OS X as desktops).

BSD++~=MacOS

[Anonymous Coward]

MacOS is largely based off BSD.

The desktop market is shrinking

[Trongy]

The desktop market is shrinking. Market share != user share. By market, I mean the amount of money that's spent on desktops.
There's the trend to use mobile devices (iOS and Android) over desktops for many functions. It's not necessarily that people are getting rid of their desktops, but they are relying on them less and it's no longer seen as essential to have the latest and greatest on the desktop because the emphasis is now on phones.

Even Microsoft will giving free upgrades to Windows 10 for home users of windows 7 and 8. Formerly desktop OS upgrades were a lucrative source of income. I suspect that it's worth more to them to sacrifice the dwindling income from selling upgrades in order to be able to drop support for the older versions sooner.

Commercial distributions focus on the server as that's what most of their customers are playing them for. Also, server support is somewhat simpler than desktop support as there are fewer varieties of enterprise server hardware than desktop hardware and it changes less often. The typical scenario is that rookie user buys a new notebook and tries to install Linux, eventually giving up in disgust as there's no driver support for a key piece of hardware. The hardware support will probably come in six months, but it's too late by then for the rookie. Old hands know this and carefully research what they buy to ensure that the drivers are available.

There's never been much of a Linux desktop market. Home users rarely pay for Linux support and business users generally choose Linux or BSD for specialized fields or as a cheaper alternative to Windows/Mac for limited function locked down desktops.

Re: The desktop market is shrinking

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is done with systemd. Linux s place was as a cheap open Unix. Now it has abandoned that and thus should itself be abandoned.

Irrelevant

[jbmartin6]

I don't use "desktop features" I use applications. The only features I am interested in as far as a "desktop" are features that keep it out of my way.

Re:As soon as it gets popular

[exomondo]

What he means is that they in fact used some parts of the FreeBSD kernel combined with the Mach kernel to create the open source XNU kernel that is used in their operating systems.

Give me XFCE4, then leave me alone

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a developer. I love FreeBSD and Gentoo and say simply this.

No matter what has happened over the years. I honestly just need to get into an XFCE4 desktop, then left alone. Whether that's BSD/Linux/VM/etc. At one point it was even an ubuntu desktop before Unity came along and ruined everything. I was fine to avoid it and select a fallback window manager, then they removed *that* option so I left.

It all comes down to simply knowing what I want and not volunteering to try out someone else's new beta with my hard-work-on-the-computer time. That time is when I'm making my money, when I'm expecting to not spend time configuring things because I'm on the clock and billing. Why can't anyone figure that out. Whatever was wrong with my window manager isn't as bad as being 100% down because something new was shoved down my throat. And *I'm* a developer who can change all these things but lately just have gotten "lazy" and tired of doing it over and over and over, I just need something to work now.

Do that and I'll try it out......

Only f'tards think the Linux desktop doesn't exist

[Anonymous Coward]

The Linux desktop happened years ago despite nutjobs like this think. All the way back in 2009 the Linux desktop had a 20% market share which is significantly greater than Apples market share. That was the result of the netbook. Essentially near everybody uses the Linux kernel these days and what exactly constitutes the "desktop" is up for debate, but Chromebooks, Android phones, etc all utilize the Linux kernel. Of the traditional desktops (GNU/Linux, ie Ubuntu, Linux Mint, etc) there are more companies shipping than most people realize. Just because it's mostly online sales and under the radar as far as garner and others are concerned doesn't mean it doesn't exist (including dell, system76, thinkpenguin, and hundreds of others around the world). Dell for a while was the #1 PC retailer and yet had no retail distribution except internet, catalog, TV, radio, and phone. Divide the Linux desktop up among many smaller players and its easy to see how the sales aren't being counted properly.

It could cannibalize Linux desktop, that's it.

[Sarusa]

You could cannibalize some Linux desktop installs.

But it will never be The Year of the *nix on Everyone's Desktop until you get devs and UI people who actually have any idea how normal clueless users work (or even care) and completely shelter them from the *nix underneath. That's anathema to normal *nix devs, so it would take someone like Apple to do it again. But even there almost no OSX users have any clue they're using BSD, and the giving is all one way -> BSD to Apple. Is it really The Year of BSD on the Desktop when nobody knows or cares? If so, it's already here.

It's a pride thing. You want to think that because your OS is so superior under the covers that everyone should be using it and it'll get more of the press it deserves. So you want everyone using it as their desktop and knowing they're doing so, even Mom or your teen kids. But swca dislike that Mom or the kids just want to /use/ it and not RTFM (YMomMV), so we're incapable of making a GUI/application suite that's so amazing they'll feel they have to convert. Even the desperate 'but it's free!' hasn't made a big difference.

So if you want to make a great *nix desktop for yourself, that's great! But thinking you're going to get a random person who thinks the big box is 'the cpu' to use it is just expensive vanity, and has been for almost 20 years. It just leads you to things like Unity.

Besides, even now, five years from 2020, casual users can get everything they need from mobile or web already.

Too many acronyms here.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I'll go find a simpler solution.

The basic problem that linux and the BSDs have

[m.dillon]

Linux and the BSDs have been chasing desktop usability for ages. Hell, I've been chasing desktop usability for ages.

Microsoft has it easy. The produce windows and all the laptop, desktop, and server vendors spend hundreds of millions of dollars making sure their designs work with it.

Apple makes their own PCs, they don't have to chase hardware.

And us? Every time a new machine comes out (which is often). A new model, a new chipset, a different combination of on-board devices, whatever.. every single time that happens we developers have to write new drivers or modify existing drivers. We have to work out the kinks, the broken mobo hardware, the broken ACPI implementations, the broken sound hardware that doesn't follow vendor specs or has major exceptions because vendors are lazy. We have to glue the whole mess together not just once. Not just twice. But 20 or 30 times a year. Every year. Forever.

Until that equation changes, the general population simply can't depend on any of our open source code to work on whatever new cool computer they want to buy. And that puts us in the backseat in terms of adoption. Every time.

We can make our stuff work with specific machines, at least if the stars align (that is, if we have the chip specs for the chipsets that have changed and we can write drivers for them fast enough). Making our stuff work with everything, out of the box... it just doesn't happen on a macro scale.

In some small way the collapse of the external chip vendors into a much smaller set of companies has helped. Only two major video companies that we have to worry about now, plus whatever Intel is doing (which they at least provide some specs on now, finally). Only two WIFI chipsets that really matter, maybe three. Only a half dozen ethernet chipset families really matter now. Only two cpu vendors really matter. It's getting better but not because the companies are altruistic. Simply because there are fewer of them and we don't have to write as many drivers or make as many driver mods whenever new hardware comes out. But it isn't enough. Not nearly enough to make us competitive.

That's the #1 problem.

The #2 problem we face is that there is no suitable desktop that works as well as either Windows or Mac desktops. I've tried them all. In linux even. They ALL SUCK. They all break in one way or another and it's just as bad in the linux community as it is in the BSD community due to rampant N.I.H. syndrome. The desktops fail on many levels. Apple doesn't have this problem because Apple enforces a unified ABI for accessing major media subsystems such as audio and video. Microsoft doesn't have this problem either, for the same reason. Linux and the BSDs have no unified ABI, essentially forcing application writers to target their apps to specific user interfaces or hardware subsystems.

It annoys the hell out of me but I don't see anything on the horizon that can really solve the problem.

-Matt

Re:The basic problem that linux and the BSDs have

[Neo-Rio-101]

It's *never* been about the OS, but the *applications* and the support surrounding them.
OS wars are a complete waste of time when you consider that most people need to get work done - not monkey around with technology. You use the best tool for the job, and if the tool you want is supported on OS X, you run OS X and not OS Y, or OS W. Simple as that.

Find me something that competes with the features and enterprise support of Exchange, Office, Lync, Sharepoint, Outlook ... that runs on Linux.

Go on.... I'll wait.

If you can't, then don't complain about Linux/BSDs on the desktop in the enterprise. Without that crucial software, large multinational companies can't even function these days. They're going to run Windows for these applications. End of Story.

Same thing with Windows gamers, by and large.
Same thing with many financial trading platforms (all windows AFAIK)
Same with other niche software that doesn't interest geeks, but interests many other varied fields of endeavor.

If one day some killer app that every enterprise must have is only ever released on Linux, then maybe we can revisit this conversation.
So far, that's mostly been Oracle stuff on Linux in enterprises, and some of that has been so poor that most people have ditched Linux for Windows - not because the Windows kernel is better or because it uses a "better" filesystem *ahem*... but because that's where the supported apps were.

Most commerical software is written for the largest platforms, to make the most money. The don't write them for Minix and eschew Windows because they like microkernels.

Re:The basic problem that linux and the BSDs have

[koinu]

Find me something that competes with the features and enterprise support of Exchange, Office, Lync, Sharepoint, Outlook ... that runs on Linux.

Unfortunately, I don't know any of these utilties except "Office" which is easily replaced by LibreOffice. The fact that I don't know them lies in the nature that don't solve anything of value for me. Maybe I am working differently from others. Instead of telling me product names, tell me what you do (I also don't want to know what you do with the products; it is wrong to describe your problems by providing me wrong approaches for solutions). There are plenty of solutions that can be used and you can also develop some for yourself for your special purpose.

What I need more is a reasonable terminal application, Xmonad as a desktop (UTF-8 support), easy integration of gnupg into a mailclient, I need ssh, tmux, text-based vim, a text-based IRC client, a full compiler suite which is ready-to-use. I also need inspection tools for all my system components. And I need a reasonable way to manage time (UTC), so when I travel around the world, I just setup the timezone and not the time itself.

And now tell me, I should install CygWin, because I don't know this poorly emulated Windows crapability layer.

Re:The basic problem that linux and the BSDs have

[Anonymous Coward]

No. The BSDs have NOT been chasing the desktop and thank god they're not and instead concentrating on making BSD what it is: solid, reliable, dependable, professional.

Yeah, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, 2019 will be then end of all intelligent life on Earth. So PC-BSD would be next on the agenda.

Oh, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

And PC-BSD is going to solve the problem of porting the applications that people want to run... how, exactly?

I've been involved with Linux since the early days, and it still amazes me how few people "in the community" understand that the two main hurdles Linux or any other alternate OS has to get over before it can achieve significant desktop usage are: [1] It has to just work with basically anything a customer can buy at Staples. And no, hand-editing some config file and tweaking settings doesn't count. [2] It has to run the programs people want to run, because in the real world they don't want to run some MS Office knockoff, they want to run MS Office. Ditto for Photoshop and the dozens of programs they rely on, some very big name products, some very obscure, to do work, have fun, etc.

The fundamental point that the Linux faithful have almost universally missed is that for mainstream computer users the OS is nothing more than a necessary evil. They want to interact with and know as little about the OS as possible. They want to surf and do e-mail and chat and play music and who knows what else. Linux, as it has always existed and as it exists today is a freaking huge roadblock for such users, because it either won't let them do what they want or it makes it much harder.

Re:Oh, really?

[packrat0x]

[2] It has to run the programs people want to run, because in the real world they don't want to run some MS Office knockoff, they want to run MS Office. Ditto for Photoshop and the dozens of programs they rely on, some very big name products, some very obscure, to do work, have fun, etc.

What I want to run is Office 2003. But that is becoming less and less of an option thanks to Microsoft.

it's not the kernel, it's the desktop!

[lophophore]

It's not the kernel that the source of the problem. It's the desktop. Changing the kernel away from Linux is not going to do diddly squat if we are still saddled with KDE or Mate or Cinnamon or Gnome or Xfce or blasted Unity.

Linux has not won the desktop because the the Linux desktops all blow. I use Xfce, I like it the best because it stays out of my way more than the rest.

Why do so many hackers prefer Mac? It's not for the overpriced hardware. Is it because the suspend works so well? It cannot be for the GUI because the OS X GUI really blows.

Then there's Windows 8, an utterly unusable abomination...

Re:it's not the kernel, it's the desktop!

[Anonymous Coward]

The OS X gui is different, and customization and finding a workflow that works for you takes time. I switched to OS X from Linux on the desktop in 2008, after about 3-4 rough weeks I didn't look back. If you expect it to behave just like an X11 desktop or a classic MS Windows desktop you'll have a bad time.

Comparing the wrong things.

[thegarbz]

What a strange question to ask in the summary. Have distributions changed compared to each other? Of course not. Have they changed significantly as a group over the past 10 years? Of course and in big ways. I not to fondly remember digging through text based config files to make the basic desktop work. Not anymore. Networks seen to work reasonably well. The interfaces are no longer confusing, package management from a graphical interface is now useable by grandma, and for the most part I'm finding more and more that everything just works.

To claim there's been no change and therefore BSD suddenly has a chance is simply absurd.

Claiming that distributions don't focus on the desktop ignores the likes of those tiny contenders like oh.... Say.... Ubuntu who was often criticised as focusing too much on the desktop experience and neglecting the rest of what Linux is. They made it usable for the common man, those bastards.

os x IS certified official Unix

[raymorris]

That is a good point. OS X is indeed Unix, officially certified. I've run all Linux for many years. When someone handed me a Mac Pro I thought I'd dislike it, based on my experience with iOS. I was surprised how comfortable it was to use, just like my familiar Linux for day-to-day work at a bash shell. For coordinating with my coworkers, I also have all the Microsoft Office, all of the Adobe developer products, etc. Not bad at all.

Whenever I mention I'm a Linux guy who actually likes OS X, someone goes "no true Scotsman" on me. Open the Linux kernel changelog. See my name, Ray Morris. Look around at some of the Linux storage stack. You'll notice I'm the maintainer for Linux::LVM, for example. So yeah, I'm a real Linux guy - perhaps more so than any other regular commenter on Slashdot.

Re:os x IS certified official Unix

[jazzis]

Mod up as Informative.

Re:os x IS certified official Unix

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got to admit, it is a bit sad/disappointing the number of people who are invested in Linux but actually like (and often prefer) OS X. What does that say for the rest of us who are wondering if expending the time and effort to learn Linux is worth it if many people who are influential in its development prefer OS X?

And yes I know, you didn't actually say outright that you prefer OS X, you merely said you liked it. I wonder how long it'll be before that changes though...

Re:os x IS certified official Unix

[ToasterMonkey]

You've got to admit, it is a bit sad/disappointing the number of people who are invested in Linux but actually like (and often prefer) OS X. What does that say for the rest of us who are wondering if expending the time and effort to learn Linux is worth it if many people who are influential in its development prefer OS X?

And yes I know, you didn't actually say outright that you prefer OS X, you merely said you liked it. I wonder how long it'll be before that changes though...

You don't marry an operating system, you can date all of them. How would anyone know what they really like if they limit themselves?

If you can't say five good things about an operating system, then you probably don't know it well enough to judge. Take that as a challenge to learn more. If you have fun doing that kind of thing.. otherwise go by whatever shows up on monster the most for all I care.

Re:os x IS certified official Unix

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is a lot of things that OS X is not, so it's not a really fair comparison.

Yes modern linux is the server in the datacenter or for home users the headless box in the closet. And also the invisible unreachable embedded operating system in some device / appliance.

Re:os x IS certified official Unix

[perpenso]

Have you attended any Linux conferences in recent years. I'm told that Mac laptops are a pretty common thing. There is no shortage of less than true Scotsman.

Re:os x IS certified official Unix

[jellomizer]

It isn't sad. People don't have to be mad Linux zealots. Linux makes a good server OS.
OS X is a good desktop OS.

Re:os x IS certified official Unix

[Simon Brooke]

I can't say five good things about Windows, and I've worked on every version since Windows 2.0.

Dammit, I don't think I can say one good thing about Windows.

Re:os x IS certified official Unix

[Megol]

. A huge amount of software supports it including things there are _no_ open source software for
. Superb support for games including Direct* which most times have been superior to OpenGL/AL
. The standard user interface - almost everyone can use it
. Good keyboard support for GUI applications
. Developer friendly

Re: os x IS certified official Unix

[Anonymous Coward]

Software supports it takes up two of your slots. Games support windows, not the other way around. Many engines are supporting cross platform deployment because wnidows 8 store is NOT dev friendly, ask the devs if it's friendly to pay MS a significant cut they never needed before. I could pick apart the other shit you mention, but its not wort it since you think "vendor lockin" is a benefit.

Re: os x IS certified official Unix

[Anonymous Coward]

Work gave me an iMac. Couldn't take it. Very expensive Ubuntu desktop now. Though it has a stupid shiny screen and sound card issues. :(

Re:os x IS certified official Unix

[Skater]

I'm with you. I bought a Macbook Pro in 2009 because I didn't like any of the Linux laptop offerings, and I didn't want another Windows machine. I figured if I didn't like OS X, I could run Linux on it. Well, here we are over 5 years later and I'm still running OS X it. It's pretty nice, and I still have the command line.

That said, I'm typing this on a Kubuntu 14.04 desktop, and it's pretty nice too. My one gripe is that it seems a bit flaky compared to my prior Slackware installs - weird things like the login box showing on different monitors when I boot up (today it was on the second monitor; yesterday it was on the primary). Things like that make me a bit nervous, but aside from those it does work well. I just wish I'd installed Kubuntu 64 bit instead of 32 bit...I'm not sure why I did that, probably because of issues I had with libraries under Slackware64. (I still use Slackware on my server, but it's due for a software upgrade...I haven't decided what route to go with it.)

Re:os x IS certified official Unix

[Anonymous Coward]

Not an uncommon story.

I maintain a whole lot of systems for a living. I build servers and desktop systems for my own use.

Phone and laptop of choice - Iphone and macbook pro. Simple, functional. But most of all predictable. The two things in my very computer saturated life that always work, always work the same way, and don't require a lot of attention going forward. ESPECIALLY when migrating to a new device.

- Have you ever upgraded to a new Mac before? It's so easy it's downright fucking scary. Just plug in your backup (time machine) drive at first power on and with two clicks everything comes over. Applications, files, accounts, preferences, passwords. Everything. Iphones are the same, only with your icloud account.

I get shit from some of my co-workers for using an iphone. Man did I have a ten mile wide shit-eating-grin the day I helped two of them get malware off of their S5s.

Re:os x IS certified official Unix

[Reziac]

Good points. To add a few:

--Contrary to popular japes, it's actually pretty damn stable, given even the basic maintenance you'd give your car (and even when neglected for years on end -- just bloody defrag occasionally, people! Would you let your car go forever without an oil change??)
--It supports all manner of random, substandard, and outdated hardware, meaning it will run widely anywhere
--It supports all manner of random, substandard, and outdated software, thus not irritating people who still need such stuff
--it doesn't make me tear my hair out trying to configure (or figure out how to configure) the basics

That said, I'd love to see PC-BSD become something I want to use. But when I attempted to try it a couple years ago, it refused to even install on my test box... which runs Windows bloody damn fine with no issues whatever.

Re:os x IS certified official Unix

[ClayDowling]

1. It has excellent support for supporting large scale installations, including centralized management for those users who don't really want to think about that stuff.

2. Really great developer support from the vendor, including free high quality IDEs and code examples to solve pretty much any systems programming problem you'll have.

3. A large developer community, making it relatively easy to get bespoke software.

4. Fairly painless printer setup (I'm looking at you Linux).

5. A large pool of ready made software to choose from.

Re:os x IS certified official Unix

[david_thornley]

Odd; I've had troubles with getting Windows to recognize printers that my Linux box just found without my intervention.

Re:os x IS certified official Unix

[Anonymous Coward]

Phone and laptop of choice - Iphone and macbook pro. Simple, functional. But most of all predictable. The two things in my very computer saturated life that always work, always work the same way, and don't require a lot of attention going forward. ESPECIALLY when migrating to a new device.

I was very happy with the way my iPhone 4s worked, and would happily keep using it-- except iOS 8 came along. I tried it at the Apple store and hated it. My next phone will be an Android phone, which is too bad, really. There's no need to fix things that aren't broken. If Apple at least gave me the option of keeping the old interface in iOS 8, it wouldn't be such a deal-breaker. :-P

Re:os x IS certified official Unix

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to name some brands and models of printers that you had problems with?

Re: os x IS certified official Unix

[Megol]

Hmmm.... No.
Software benefits are listed twice because they touch different things.
Direct X and things like proper joystick support since forever (Windows 3.1 IIRC) plus the fact that MS actually have produced some games themselves means that Windows simply was the best platform for gaming. This may have changed slightly lately but is still generally true.
And frankly I don't give a shit about the Windows 8 store - there's no need to target it.

But you, as an anonymous person posting without any reasoning or support at all is surely a more reliable source... *sigh*

Linux equivalent to BSD UEFI MBR Compat process

[billstewart]

Put the CD or DVD into the cup-holder slot. Reboot the machine. Answer the simple questions (which are "What language and time zone do you want?" kind of simple, not "What's your BIOS version and disk geometry?" kind of simple.)

If I wanted to run Gentoo or Linux From Scratch or A Really Old Slackware Version, I know where to find them. I'm running Linux to get some work done, not to tweak compatibility settings.

Re:Linux equivalent to BSD UEFI MBR Compat process

[Celarent Darii]

Well, if you really want to "get some work done" you could always run Windows or the operating system that came installed on your computer. And I might ask - what work are you doing that doesn't need to adjust some settings on your computer?

You're absolutely right. The desktop is over.

[aussersterne]

I have no idea why people are arguing with you about this. The evidence (not least from the desktop computing industry) is everywhere, with catastrophically declining sales over the long term, offset by increases in mobiles and tablets—which, incidentally, Linux has already won, though in large part by leaving the distro community behind.

Linux could actually conquer the desktop in the end—a few years down the road when desktop computing is a specialized, professionals-only computing space. The users of other desktop operating systems are slowly bleeding off to mobile and tablet.

But this can only happen, ironically, if distros and devs stop trying to conquer the desktop in the present. If they continue down the path they're on, the long-term desktop community, which would be a natural fit for the Linux of yore, will probably be on some other OS. (MacOS? Surely not Windows at this point.)

Re:You're absolutely right. The desktop is over.

[Gavagai80]

The fact that people buy a new phone every year and only buy a desktop every 7 years does not imply that they use their desktop less than they used to or even less than their phone. While there has been a mild decline in desktop use, mobile use has been largely supplementary not a replacement.

Re:You're absolutely right. The desktop is over.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Linux could actually conquer the desktop in the end"

Saying Linux is focused on conquering the desktop is like say cats are all going to band together and conquer the world. Otherwise, Linux, or its offspring like Android and cousins like OS X/IOS all well on the way to taking over the next generation of end user computing devices.

Let the meme continue that Linux will conquer the desktop, gives Microsoft something to focus on while attempting to fight for the ever decreasing roll of end user desktops. The *nix community is certainly big enough to support desktops, servers, tablets, phones, embedded devices, etc.

Meanwhile, for specialized applications, as mentioned Linux has been preferred choice for years in some of these areas. However, if there is a specialized app that is Windows only, ie MS Office specific functionality, by all means buy a dedicated workstation for that purpose. On the other hand, if the bulk of your users can get along with googledocs, why bother with MS Office for all.

Sounds Like

[hduff]

Sounds like marketing bullsh^H^H puffery to me.

Re:As KDE developer, he's missing the obvious solu

[Anonymous Coward]

You lose all credibility for framing your statement in obnoxious "Agile" format.

Re:As soon as it gets popular

[Anonymous Coward]

People want "good software" and if that happens to also be "free software" then that is purely by coincidence, but "good software" is the primary concern so if there is no cohesive effort toward that then inevitably the GCC will be abandoned (by most) in favor of Clang/LLVM and Linux will be abandoned (by most) in favor of BSD.

If I may expand on that, I've long held a "survival of the fittest" view that the software that can survive and reproduce in the largest number of environments ultimately will win the evolutionary race. From an environmental point of view, the BSD license provides a much larger environment (that is, fewer restrictions) than the GPL license. (BTW, the term "Free Software" is a wonderful bit of deceptive marketing when you consider how much freer several competing licenses are, such as the BSD and MIT licenses - and even the LGPL.) So, software licensed with the least restrictions will win in the long run.

(Like everyone else in this thread, I'm posting as AC so that my karmic head doesn't get chopped off as I reveal myself to be the infidel that I actually am.)

Re: As soon as it gets popular

[Anonymous Coward]

Good points. On a non-compiler note, other examples of software along those lines include Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop. People have work to get done, and certain tools cut it while certain tools don't. Can Open and/or Libre Office accomplish similar tasks as the proprietary option? Sure. But when it comes to launching thousands of Excel files from the company file share, which software suite offers the best compatibility with formulas and features such as PowerPivot? When the graphic design team needs to edit some drawings, is the learning curve and change in workflow required of using Gimp justified?

Does the free price tag of these solutions pay off in the end? I can't make the case to my co-workers or even friends, let alone C-levels. We get great non-profit discounts on the aforementioned products, so any gains that might be realized over time aren't worth the time investment in testing or training.

I think the one place where FOSS can and will show its better value is in web-based services. For example, Drupal can be configured to solve many if not all of the problems solved by our SharePoint farm. An organization still needs to hire a web/Drupal/CMS administrator, just like it would need to hire a SharePoint administrator. With the shift to cloud- and web-based solutions, most organizations that don't harness the functionality and integration benefits of certain proprietary, expensive solutions could save large amounts of money in licensing costs, while still receiving support (i.e., from Acquia).

Re: As soon as it gets popular

[Anonymous Coward]

A kernel is not an operating system.

Betteridge's Law

[Anonymous Coward]

No (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)

Re: As soon as it gets popular

[exomondo]

A kernel is not an operating system.

Obviously. Apple also didn't take "BSD and used it as their operating system", they did however use parts of the BSD kernel in their open source XNU kernel. There may also be BSD parts used in their open source operating system called Darwin. But there was no "proprietary forking", you can freely get and use the source code.

Re:As soon as it gets popular

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because Apple never went near or touched and BSD to craft their lastest operating systems. *cough*

Re:As KDE developer, he's missing the obvious solu

[Anonymous Coward]

Make KDE into a full OS. Fork Kubuntu, tell all other distributions that KDE will provide them access to the sources and patches, but KDE intends to become a full competing desktop and tablet OS

So, you're suggesting KDE envelop the entire OS and leave everyone else behind with a "my way or the highway" mentality? Interesting idea, but what would they call it?

Maybe "SystemK", it has a certain ring to it. :)

Re: As soon as it gets popular

[Anonymous Coward]

I may have misunderstood your post, but without licenses like the GPL the people using the Linux kernel in proprietary devices would simply never make their code available. I'm not sure you made a point, or that the one you made is valid.

What did he smoke...

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone can type the ~3 pkg instructions from the FreeBSD manual to install X11+desktop, why would someone install this bloated operating system instead?

Also: FreeBSD is technologically behind Linux for about 5-10 years: drivers depending on hal? Initsystem so much much slower than any non-systemd Linux? Can't resolve package dependencies on update because their SAT solver cannot take it, so the user must uninstall several packages until it works and reinstall the rest? Don't try any X11 stuff with intel graphics before 10.1. The driver did not compile and needed heavy patching because they are porting the Linux driver and have their port in some sort of beta state.
And the worst thing: they also want to use systemd, so if you think you can escape by using BSD, you're wrong.

FreeBSD can be an alternative to a Linux server but not to a Linux desktop system. PC-BSD is no alternative unless you want to simulate the feeling of Linux with KDE 4.0 and a thousand apps, fonts and settings you don't want. They even "beautyfied" the boot phase - srsly dudes, what gives?

Re:As KDE developer, he's missing the obvious solu

[angel'o'sphere]

KDE is as ugly as windows.

For me, beauty is part of useability.

Might be interesting...

[Skylinux]

I am currently investigating alternative operating systems because I don't want systemd on my boxes. Not looking forward to any dependency issues if I decided to "unfuck" a modern Linux distro.

*BSD is looking more and more attractive.
It won't be PC-BSD on my servers but running it as my main OS should teach me a lot in no time.

Guess "the old guys" where right after all. Linux has been and always will be a bit of a toy.

Re:Might be interesting...

[donaldm]

I am currently investigating alternative operating systems because I don't want systemd on my boxes.

I have been running Fedora for years and basically have no issue with "systemd" since there is a GUI and command line for control. Unless you can explain why systemd is bad what you have said would be a cause for ridicule in a decision making meeting.

As an "old guy" I don't have any issue with Unix in general or Linux for that matter, I learn what is appropriate and change accordingly. I don't think the server market considers Linux a toy either since it is very popular.

Re:Might be interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, in a sensible decision making meeting, you're more likely to have to explain why systemd is good and worth the risk and expenditure of switching.

And before you say it, "the servers running our critical infrastructure which we reboot once every 5 years or so will boot slightly faster" won't cut it.

Re:Might be interesting...

[Ol Olsoc]

I am currently investigating alternative operating systems because I don't want systemd on my boxes. Not looking forward to any dependency issues if I decided to "unfuck" a modern Linux distro.

*BSD is looking more and more attractive.

Sheesh, will you just switch over already? This systemd BS is getting about as old as the "women in STEM careers" bullshit.

Re:Might be interesting...

[Ol Olsoc]

I have been running Fedora for years and basically have no issue with "systemd" since there is a GUI and command line for control. Unless you can explain why systemd is bad what you have said would be a cause for ridicule in a decision making meeting.

My honest idea of the issue is that it's like politics. Someone somewhere didn't like the infighting in the inclusion of systemd, and like good little politicos, some people line up to oppose it. I truly suspect that most people who hate it with a passion don't even know why. I can never get good answers as to why it sucks so bad either, merely vague generalizations that read like a Sarah Palin speech at the Iowa freedom caucus.

I've no issues with systemd myself, use the dreaded pulse audio, and have had success, haven't had any computers explode or quit working.

no sigificant linux market share

[paul mafinga]

Android is based on Linux.

Prediction suffers validity illusion

[DrTJ]

If you're familiar with Daniel Kahneman's works, you'll immediately recognize that this prediction suffers from the "validity illusion". Kahneman and associates have identified under which circumstances you can trust the predictions of an expert . They've found out that in order to create an expert with some kind of credibility when it comes to prediction, the feedback loop of the system of study must be short and quick. This makes it possible for the entity in the mind called "system 1", to actually be trained to the to a sufficient level to make experience-based predictions with some kind of actual validity. Examples of these kind of experts are doctors, firefighters and athletes; they've dealt with the same types of situations hundreds and thousands times forming a vast, intuitive base of experience. Financial and political experts do not have that kind of feedback and therefore their predictions are naturally much less valid. How many times have the author experienced the "break through" of an alternative desktop? His prediction shall be viewed in that light....

Re:As KDE developer, he's missing the obvious solu

[Anonymous Coward]

there is to *you*, not to normal people. And that's only because you want to argue about it. How many people, supposedly smart people, screamed and whined on about the metro interface in windows 8. Was that all windows 8 was about? No, of course not, but to listen to the complaints it was all that mattered and that shows the point that the interface *IS* the OS.

Sure it will!

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll be a serious desktop contender all right, they just need to port systemd first.

Re:As KDE developer, he's missing the obvious solu

[dargaud]

To me beauty is an hindrance and gets in the way. I don't want bouncing icon or transparent windows or hidden menu bars or hidden keyboard shortcuts. It's distracting and make things hard to read. Keep things clear and functional, and yes, I agree with GP, KDE is currently the best for that. For instance [F4] in Dolphin beats any plurely graphical file manager all the way and then some.

Most Linux users want *nix not Linux itself ...

[perpenso]

Last I checked, Hollywood effects companies were all running their serious FX software on Linux desktops.

A lot of industrial grade engineering, scientific, graphics, etc code is *nix based. These users may be running Linux on PC hardware but they don't really want or care about Linux. They want a convenient working *nix to get their work done. Linux is just a convenient option. These people don't really care about the politics, the gpl, etc. If a BSD provided a more convenient option many would migrate.

Re:Linux desktop could have never been mainstream

[donaldm]

The GPL license offers absolutely NO direct benefit to companies that need a Unix-like OS to put in their products

Yet many companies produce Android devices and some of those devices are HDTV's.

Linux is there as far as I'm concerned

[loufoque]

Different demographics use different things.
I'm a software engineer, with a focus on low-level programming and performance, and as far as I'm concerned, all competent people in my field use Linux daily, be it for work or leisure.

I've tried using Windows or Mac OS X, and even with the various extras you need to install to make those on par, they are still light years behind in terms of usability and productivity.
I don't expect Windows or Mac OS X users to understand. From my experience, when I'm forced to use OS X for example and that I ask an OS X user how to do any simple basic thing, he just answers "I don't know. I just don't do that. Maybe you can purchase a third-party app for it.". People that are satisfied with those operating systems are people with simple needs that follow standard one-size-fits-all workflows, they don't even realize you can do so much more with a real operating system you're in control of, where huge capabilities are just at the touch of your fingertips.

Re:Linux is there as far as I'm concerned

[Ol Olsoc]

.

I've tried using Windows or Mac OS X, and even with the various extras you need to install to make those on par, they are still light years behind in terms of usability and productivity.

You are sort of trying to equate your experience with everyone's

I don't expect Windows or Mac OS X users to understand.

Pretty tough working with the mentally impaired, eh?

From my experience, when I'm forced to use OS X for example and that I ask an OS X user how to do any simple basic thing, he just answers "I don't know. I just don't do that. Maybe you can purchase a third-party app for it.".

You do realize that OSX is just the shiniest Unix-like operating system out there, don't you? I just use Terminal just like I use Bash. Your post is full of self congratulation - so why would you need to "ask" these users you detest so much how to do basic things in the first place? If you are competent, you should know already.

People that are satisfied with those operating systems are people with simple needs that follow standard one-size-fits-all workflows, they don't even realize you can do so much more with a real operating system you're in control of, where huge capabilities are just at the touch of your fingertips.

Since you chose OSX to Illustrate the stupidity of others, allow me to get in on that loop. I use Final Cut Pro suite in OS X, and have looked at the Linux offerings. Despite your assertions of superiority in all things Linux, there isn't anything even close in that OS. On the PC side, I will use Premiere - if I have to, but even the free include iMovie is nice for many small and quick projects. I use whatever tool is best for the job, and some times that is a Mac. Some times Linux.

Then if I need to do a lot of file work, I just open Terminal and there I am, full of command line goodness, pretty much like Bash, because OSX is just one more Unix-like OS. I like Linux, I like OS X. If you don't understand the similarities, you need to learn them.

Maybe these idiots you are dealing with are just trying to get you out of the room as quickly as possible?

Re:Linux is there as far as I'm concerned

[loufoque]

I'm sorry if you felt hurt by my comment, it wasn't my attention. I never said that I detest anyone.
I am a software engineer in a specific field, and I have specific needs, different than yours.

Like I said, I don't expect people working in different fields to understand, because they don't really know what I need to do, just like I don't really know what they need to do.

My point was that for a segment of the population, Linux is already the best desktop and workstation operating system.

Re:Linux desktop could have never been mainstream

[guacamole]

Yep. That's what I was talking about. "Linux" is an unwieldy mess of various "metoo" distributions, "metoo" desktop environments, unstable and always changing APIs (starting down at the kernel, whose developers refuse to support a stable API for binary drivers all the way to desktop APIs who break all APIs with each major release), etc. Why would a mainstream desktop user want to track this mess? Nothing has really changed in the Linux world since the 90s. It's a great OS for the tinkerers and tweakers. I you're one of them, just shut up and enjoy this great OS instead of trying to show it down the throats of the mainstream. It never worked and will never work.

Re:As KDE developer, he's missing the obvious solu

[Lisias]

there is to *you*, not to normal people.

However, KDE isn't maintained by normal people.

There's no single free software entity, nowadays, that can handle EVERY SINGLE ASPECT of an Operating System alone.

Desktops are hard enough.

Re:As KDE developer, he's missing the obvious solu

[Lisias]

So, you're suggesting KDE envelop the entire OS and leave everyone else behind with a "my way or the highway" mentality? Interesting idea, but what would they call it?

Windows 8 OEM Service Release 2. :-)

We don't need new features.

[Anonymous Coward]

We need an OS that works reliably, and does what we want. No stupidity on thumbdrives or SMB networking or sound drivers or audio files. Linux still isn't there. We don't need more desktop features, we need fewer ones. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Indeed, BSD is already a popular desktop OS

[Anonymous Coward]

It didn't win because Windows still rule. One day when Apple is done being a gadget company and decouples it's OS from it's overpriced hardware what you said will actually be true. Toady, Apple is only affordable to the upper middle class of the western world which is hardly significant globally.

Re:As KDE developer, he's missing the obvious solu

[guruevi]

And what's the difference there to running Ubuntu or Fedora? I can give Ubuntu to someone and say "run this" and if they are not technically adept, they are none the wiser. Gnome or KDE is the default for most desktop Linux distro. Same would go for your KDE distro, except you'd have one more distro to contend with the others.

Wants and Wantnots

[SemperOSS]

What I want in an operating system is (not necessarily in order of importance):

• * Reliability
• * Security
• * Continuity
• * Consistency
• * Maintainability
• * Transparency
• * Adaptability
• * Flexibility

I want a reliable system that I can depend on at any time. It must be secure so I do not have to be too concerned about exploitable flaws; it must maintain continuity, be consistent and not change in ways that take long to adapt to; it must be maintainable by me, which means transparent in the setup, configuration and execution; and it must be adaptable (again by me) to my changing needs and platforms. Lastly, the system must be flexible, which, in my opinion, is what defines *NIX systems, i.e. small tools that can be combined in numerous ways to solve complex problems.

What I do not want is:

• * Ever-changing paradigms (think MS Office)
• * Obscure configurations that cannot easily be hand-tweeked (think Windows Registry)
• * Upgrade and pray (think early versions of some Linux distributions)
• * Multifunctional tools (especially with a bloat of facilities)
• * ...

If I had more time, I could probably expand more on these.

To return to systemd: It seems to break quite a few of my wants and wantnots and (at least for me) does not solve any problems I have encountered but forces me into choices I would rather have avoided.

Re: As soon as it gets popular

[Marginal Coward]

I may have misunderstood your post, but without licenses like the GPL the people using the Linux kernel in proprietary devices would simply never make their code available. I'm not sure you made a point, or that the one you made is valid.

Which makes me wonder: would Google leave Android as open source if they didn't have to due to key components being GPL'ed? I think the answer is yes, because there's a clear business case for them doing so. The ability of phone makers to customize Android is necessary to commoditize the Android phones themselves so that Google can profit from related services.

With that website? No, definitely not.

[Qbertino]

These guys don't know the first thing about marketing. Their logo doesn't look quite as shitty as other FOSS project logos, but that's about it. I couldn't even find screenshots.

Want to have some obscure half-assed unfinished FOSS project to become the most hyped and famous?
Here, this is how you do it. (Note: That site is outdated, but it was the best for a FOSS project back then)

Re:As soon as it gets popular

[jedidiah]

The only advantage that BSD has is the ability to piss off developers. People describe the GPL as some sort of communist crusade but it really came about because of rather practical considerations.

Most charitable people don't want to feel they have been taken advantage of.

Beyond that, the Toddler's Dilemma really impacts very few people. Most people (and even companies) don't see the need to pretend that someone else's work is their exclusive property.

Re:As KDE developer, he's missing the obvious solu

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, dancing icons, unsubtle gradients, and translucent (like a half-sucked Glacier mint) window borders are painful to look at. But what has that got to do with beauty?

I don't think you should refer to that stuff as beautiful. If even the people who don't like it think of it as beautiful, then of course the people who do like it will feel even more justified in calling it that.

What it is is *eye candy*. It's bad for you.

Re:As KDE developer, he's missing the obvious solu

[Anonymous Coward]

Also: the guy before you said "ugly as Windows", which suggests he thinks the same way I do here.

Re:As KDE developer, he's missing the obvious solu

[TemporalBeing]

That's utterly ridiculous. There's a lot more to an OS than just the desktop environment (DE): there's the kernel, the init system and other low-level daemons, the display subsystem, the package manager, and of course lots of apps (beyond just what KDE (or Gnome) include in their software collections). The KDE team has enough work to do, they certainly don't want to become their own distro, when there's already several distros that feature KDE as a prominent DE (Mint, Debian, OpenSUSE for starters).

You do realize that KDE is maintained on more than just Linux - including BSDs, Unix, Mac, and even *gasp* Windows. Some ports (like the Windows port) are not as far along as the others - well, pretty much just the Windows port last I checked, and that's primarily because of Windows not having some of the requisite functionality yet.

BSD needs WiFi drivers like some BAD!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I really wanted to try BSD (Free or PC) but they don't have a driver for the Intel 7260 chipset, or for Centrino if I'm not mistaken. The 7260 is ubiquitous, and I don't want to use an external WiFi adapter when all of my notebook computers have built in WiFi. So the answer is NO, BSD is not set for world domination.

Re:BSD needs WiFi drivers like some BAD!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I forgot to post the proof: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/intel-dual-band-wireless-n-7260.42515/

Re:Linux desktop could have never been mainstream

[Anonymous Coward]

...or indeed ChromeOS, which is also a Linux distribution available out-of-the-box on hardware from various manufacturers.

Re: As soon as it gets popular

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously. Apple also didn't take "BSD and used it as their operating system", they did however use parts of the BSD kernel in their open source XNU kernel. There may also be BSD parts used in their open source operating system called Darwin.

Sort of. They based OS X on NEXTSTEP, which was based on MACH, which was derived from BSD. The Mach kernel replaced the VM, IPC, and process scheduling mechanisms in the BSD kernel, and Apple replaced the driver model with IO Kit, but XNU is a drop-in replacement for the BSD kernel. It walks like a duck and quacks like a duck.

Apple also added Carbon, Cocoa, QuickTime, Core Foundation, Quartz, etc. and modified the boot process extensively, so while Darwin is not FreeBSD (or any other modern variant), it IS very much a member of the BSD family, tracing its roots back to Berkeley and AT&T. In fact, NeXT bought a Unix license from AT&T because BSD was not yet legally unencumbered!

Re:As KDE developer, he's missing the obvious solu

[Grishnakh]

Actually, I do realize that, which is why MikeRT's suggestion is even more ridiculous. Why would the KDE team want to restrict themselves to making their own OS when they already are used on multiple different OSes? The whole thing makes no sense.

Re: As soon as it gets popular

[exomondo]

which was based on MACH, which was derived from BSD

Mach was developed as a replacement kernel for the existing kernel in BSD operating systems. But that's neither here nor there, of course it has many BSD components but the idea that it was "proprietary forking" is nonsense, the parts derived from BSD and Mach exist in Darwin which is open source.

Re:As KDE developer, he's missing the obvious solu

[angel'o'sphere]

Dancing icons or what ever you mention has nothing to do with beauty.

Re: As soon as it gets popular

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, I know. As I said-- it walks like a duck. Darwin on its own is a semi-useful OS. It's not like Apple/NeXT took some "useful parts" from BSD like the network stack, and stuck them in something else. They used a BSD variant to build an entire system that does what BSD does... and more.

The thing is, most of the parts people use to develop Apps on the Mac (Cocoa, Foundation Core Audio, Quartz, Aqua) are proprietary Apple technology. You can't build Mac apps on Darwin alone, which is why it makes sense to say that "Darwin is open source" but OS X is not.

The other BSDs have a long way to go to catch up, they're not viable substitutes.

What? Desktop? that is a joke

[kentsin]

No phone no future

My PC-BSD experience

[unixisc]

When I bought a new laptop last year, it came w/ Windows 8.1, which was unusable, due to the hot corners and all that. I had visited a Linux Expo and met the FreeBSD guys, and got a PC-BSD DVD from them. Initially, the laptop had trouble recognizing it, but once I went into BIOS and changed the bootup settings, that got fixed. This was during 10.0, before the current version that includes UEFI support (and which needs to be installed from scratch - that part can't be an upgrade). I made a conscious decision to wipe out Windows 8.1 and not look back (which I couldn't have anyway, since the laptop didn't come w/ a Windows 8.1 DVD - another brilliant decision by MS)

My setup has worked well, w/ a few exceptions. It doesn't recognize the Intel WiFi, so I have to run an Ethernet cable from the router to the laptop, making it effectively a desktop. Last week, somebody needed to have a GoToMeeting session w/ me, and since the webcam is not recognized, that didn't happen. I also have a Brother P-touch label maker that has its own driver internally, and so obviously, that only works w/ Windows and nothing else. But other than this, I have had no issues, since all my usage is either in browsers (I use both Chromium and FireFox) or Thunderbird. For the Office application, I tend to use Calligra, but I guess others will prefer Libre-Office. I've created multiple users in the system for different roles that I play - one account for my office, one for my personal things like banking and other services, one for the various blogs including /., one for games and so on. For each of them, I use different DEs to experiment w/ them and get used to them. I use Lumina (primarily), KDE, LXDE and both GNOME3 classic shell and GNOME3.

One thing that happened a couple of months ago to my surprise. I had to change my router from a Belkin to a Linksys, which changes the gateway address from 192.168.2.1 to 192.168.1.1. I tried going into various text terminals and changing it, but wouldn't work. Ultimately, I found out, by trial & error, that I was supposed to go into the Control Panel and change it from there. Once I did, it worked like a charm. The PC-BSD handbook does a good job in telling you how to do things, but falls flat on its face if something doesn't work as it should.

While it could be a lot better, my PC-BSD experience has been satisfactory.

Re: As soon as it gets popular

[exomondo]

You can't build Mac apps on Darwin alone, which is why it makes sense to say that "Darwin is open source" but OS X is not.

I would certainly agree with that. I was only disputing that the parts of BSD that Apple did fork have become proprietary - because they haven't - they have formed the open source basis upon which Apple's proprietary frameworks are built.

Re:As KDE developer, he's missing the obvious solu

[unixisc]

Make KDE into a full OS. Fork Kubuntu, tell all other distributions that KDE will provide them access to the sources and patches, but KDE intends to become a full competing desktop and tablet OS. Ubuntu vs Mint vs Fedora makes no sense to the casual users I know. If I could hand them a copy of KDE and say "run this" that would improve things tremendously.

It almost is. Consider all those applications that would previously be prefaced by K - KMail, Kontacts, Krita, KOffice, et al. In fact, KOffice has become Calligra, which is reasonably good, but could be better. And they've dealt w/ the multiple platform issue a lot better than Microsoft did: they have KDE Plasma Desktop for desktops, Plasma Netbooks for laptops & netbooks, and Plasma Active for tablets, phones & phablets.

In fact, for a while, PC-BSD, and previously, another BSD called DesktopBSD, was KDE only. It was only in version 9 that they added support for some 8 different window managers.

Re: As soon as it gets popular

[Anonymous Coward]

True, I think Apple deserves credit for keeping BSD-licensed source open when they weren't legally required to.

OTOH, they made pretty sure that you couldn't simply fork their whole OS and give it away for free. Their open-source contributions have always seemed to me to be letter-of-the-law vs. spirit-of-the-law.

Re:As KDE developer, he's missing the obvious solu

[dargaud]

Exactly

PC-BSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

I never heard of "PC-BSD" (only OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, DragonflyBSD and BSD/OS). But then I've never heard anything sensible from a KDE developer yet, so I guess that's not really unexpected.

Re:As KDE developer, he's missing the obvious solu

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE is ugiler than Windows, but only by default. At least you can make KDE less ugly. With Windows you're stuck with what you've got (unless you want to install some dodgy third party theming software that doesn't quite work for everything.

Re: As soon as it gets popular

[exomondo]

Their open-source contributions have always seemed to me to be letter-of-the-law vs. spirit-of-the-law.

Their open source contributions seem to be in the spirit of open source rather than the letter-of-the-law, as you say they aren't legally required to release their contributions but they do anyway. Sure they aren't releasing the source to everything that the code is linked with like restrictive free software licensing enforces but that's the great thing about permissive open source, it allows free and proprietary authors to work together and leaves the choice of what contributions to make up to the author and not restrict other authors. Whereas restrictive open source licensing is a "my way or the highway" approach.

Re: As soon as it gets popular

[Anonymous Coward]

The spirit of open source isn't just about sharing your code, it's also about helping the community to do things they want to do.

For example, Alan Cox wrote in his notes on porting Linux to 68k (after the "Thanks" section):

No Thanks
Steve Jobs - For refusing to provide any Mac68K documentation
Steve Jobs - For refusing to let anyone else pass on Mac 68K documentation
Steve Jobs - For refusing to provide NeXT documentation to the NeXT project
Steve Jobs - For refusing to let anyone else pass on NeXT cube documentation
Steve Jobs - For killing the Newton
Steve Jobs - For refusing to provide any documentation about the Newton to the Linux ARM project

Re:As KDE developer, he's missing the obvious solu

[rdnetto]

That's a terrible idea. It's not Ubuntu vs Mint vs Fedora, it's Ubuntu vs Debian vs Gentoo vs Arch - there's a massive spectrum of distros in terms of ease of use, stability, customizability, etc. There is no one size fits all solution - a rock solid production system is going to be completely different to a bleeding edge development system.

Separating distros from upstream projects is also important because the upstream projects rely on distros adopting their latest software at different times to maintain stability. Users of bleeding edge distros like Arch effectively test the software for users of more conservative distros like Debian.

It's also worth noting that Kubuntu is probably one of the worst KDE-based distros - IIRC, the 4.0 release mess was exacerbated by their maintainers configuring things poorly. And let's not forget that KDE is leaning towards using systemd internally... (I use systemd myself, but I think the idea of forcing it upon users is ludicrous.)

The year of the Linux/BSD desktop is now 2020?

[MoarSauce123]

I have to see it to believe it. I am sure there are many efforts taken to bring FOSS to the masses, but until Outlook and Word run seamlessly on BSD the revolution is purely imaginary. We see it with the Firefox, Windows, and Fire Phones, the app gap (and partially craptastic hardware) turn these into total flops. Will BSD run the latest computer games? Will BSD be easy to install, maintain, and secure for anyone with even the smallest skill set? Will it run all apps seamlessly across desktop/server/tablet/phone/TV/fridge/whateverelse ? And above all, when I walk up to a BSD desktop will it just work every single time? Will there be a more than compelling case to use PC BSD in corporate offices? If the PC BSD masterminds can answer all these questions with "yes" then I think they are on the right track. I doubt it and 5 years until 2020 is not enough time to fix all this.