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Torvalds Hasn't Given Up On Linux Desktop Domination, Will 'Wear Them Down' (cio.com)
Reader itwbennett writes: Linus Torvalds told attendees at the Embedded Linux Conference that although Linux hasn't dominated the desktop like it 'has in many other areas,' he isn't particularly disappointed and also hasn't given up on that goal. "I actually am very happy with the Linux desktop, and I started the project for my own needs, and my needs are very much fulfilled," Torvalds said. "That's why, to me, it's not a failure. I would obviously love for Linux to take over that world too, but it turns out it's a really hard area to enter. I'm still working on it. It's been 25 years. I can do this for another 25. I'll wear them down."
Miscreations like the Unity and Gnome 3 desktop aside, the Linux desktop has been comparable if not better in user friendliness than Windows since the late 90s.
What it lacks is a team of rabid marketing people ready to cram it down the throats of unsuspecting users who do not yet know that they need it.
Now of course there is the temptation of pandering to the masses by trying to be more like OS X or Metro, but this leads to power users leaving and average users still not using it because they do not even know that it exists.
Sorry Torvalds
But in 25 years, you and every other programmer out there will be obsolete. The days of humans coding computers are coming to an end. The dark ages of computing will cease a few months to a year after the first strong AI's are built. I expect that should easily happen before the next 25 years are up.
Bullshit. I've been programming professionally for over 30 years. Time and time again we were told "secretaries will be taking your jobs" and other crap like that with new technologies. Good programmers / software engineers will always be needed, with an emphasis on Good. Cut and paste Script-Kiddies might need to be worried.
It's funny (but not haha funny) how the same old crap / propaganda keeps coming around and a bunch of people keep buying into it. Kind of like the "this is the year of the Linux Desktop." Or, this year is the year the World really, Really, REALLY Ends. We promise!
Same old crap, different year.
In the many years I have used Linux on the desktop, I have never once had to compile a driver.
Any chance of adoption is killed the first time new user gets RTFMed. Until this changes, there won't be desktop linux.
Except a tattered community full of distros that aim high but accomplish nothing.
And maybe he should take a lesson from Apple. You don't have to have 90 percent of the market to be successful.
I suspect that by the time we have an actual year of Linux on the desktop, the desktop will stop being relevant anyways.
And no, I'm not bad mouthing linux, I use it all the time.
There are a number of distributions that are pretty user friendly now. I toyed with linux ages ago but went back to windows because most of the software I use is windows specific.
My girlfriend got sick of the WINDOWS 10 UPGRADE NOW! shit on her laptop and asked me to install linux, after explaining there were a billion different distros and some other technical explanations, she picked out Mint.
I was really surprised at how much easier it was compared to last time I messed around with it. There were no missing drivers, everything worked perfectly right after installing, lots of helpful explanations and popup windows for "normal" users. It was apple-tier hand holding in some areas. She loves it.
Linux is now fabulous at "install, set a wallpaper, start a browser, type a letter."
That 90% of general use is totally and completely conquered.
The problem is that basically anyone who is still using a desktop or a laptop needs one or two unique thing more than this, or they'd just go to a tablet like so many others have done.
Everyone has their one or two "unique use cases." Very often this unique use case involves one peripheral and one piece of supporting software or application.
This is where Linux falls down. Everyone can get 90% of their needs met with Linux. But for that extra 10%, Linux either does not support the hardware/application or does so in a way that results in an inferior experience compared to other platforms (Mac, Windows).
This can't be done centrally; that's been the Linux model for 25 years (add another driver to the kernel or another userspace daemon that has to be downloaded/compiled/customized/whatever). It has to be done by third party hardware and application makers, and to date the chicken-and-egg problem remains: it's tough to get out-of-the-box Linux support when the market share is so tiny. Third parties just can't recoup their costs.
Add to this the fact that many smaller / more niche software and hardware developers only support one platform (Mac or Windows) because quite simply that's the only platform where their labor, scalability, or expertise are practically deployable, and you have the problem that the only things keeping people tethered to their desktops/laptops are also the things that they can't as easily do with Linux.
General use: Tablets > Linux
Specific productive uses: Mac+Windows > Linux
I was a Linux user for 17 years (1993 through 2010) and as I moved up the food chain in my professional life, it simply became too big a headache to continue to use it. Yes, things were always *possible* and there were always *ways to do it* but at the end of the day, for the niche needs I could plug in and/or install on Mac OS smoothy and reach full functionality in single-digit minutes, where on Linux it was the better part of hours to multiple hours in each case. Just as importantly, the Mac OS installs and device support remained stable once in place, while every time I ran an update in Linux it threatened to destabilize all of the devices/applications I relied on, after which more troubleshooting time would be required.
I was very hesitant to switch away from Linux at first, but now I can't imagine spending that amount of time on maintaining my work computing systems. It's just not on. I couldn't go back.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I think most of you miss the essential points of personal computing entirely when debating this issue. Apple and MS represent the defacto standards that define that market, but those companies aren't going to spell out for FOSS hobbyists a laundry list of what draws non-technical users to a platform.
People who have paid attention to PCs over the decades realize that:
1. Users will ignore complexity they don't need, as long as the UI is _consistent_ and recognizable. Even OS X UI can be fairly complex, and Apple configures it in a way that complexity is tucked away under 'Advanced' buttons or ingeniously in the filesystem (think: plist editor).
As for consistency -- look at how Windows users are willing to rebel against MS upgrade paths if the changes are too severe. It can be argued that MS waits a very long time before springing unfamiliar paradigms on its users who may still reject the changes.
2. Real platforms are a comfort zone for both users and app developers, because the platform must bring those two groups together. Lack of defined reference hardware and OEM partnerships hurt. Lack of feature stability is very painful. In the PC desktop space, Linux is an _unstable_ platform, which is not the kind of place a developer uses to court potential customers.
2a. Real PC platforms aim to _convert_ their users into developers. They offer standard IDEs that are both rich and easy to get started in. They treat the issue of tool choice as one for more advanced developers, instead of burdening beginners with a whirlwind of confusion. There is always a preferred high level language on offer, as well.
Beginners will also go elsewhere when they realize that their first efforts at useful programming don't stand a snowball's chance in hell of running on another person's "Linux" machine without a lot of extra pain. Not being able to easily share/show their work to teachers, classmates, friends, family, bosses, etc. is a dealbreaker (more accurately, it breaks the _spirit_ and ambition of pursuing ideas on that quasi-platform).
2c. Real platforms draw sharp distinctions between app developers and system developers. Saddling app devs with the expectations of system devs leads to a pecking order where the concerns of focused app devs aren't taken seriously.
3. People will not get excited for your OS if most of your announced plans revolve around making things more (and more) _modular_ so that more and more projects can plug their own implementations of whatever component you can imagine into the system. This is sacrificing vertical integration of concrete hardware (or even software) features in favor of horizontal integration which demands unachievably perfect abstraction and usually results in slipshod appearance and performance. Desktop Environments should not be the disembodied, interchangeable "heads" of PC; the OS vendor needs to "own it".
TL;DR, when you're missing any outward appearance of recognizability and feature stability, and most of the features and developer efforts are for the benefit of fourth-party system devs wanting to plug in or replace commonly used features, and no one knows quite the right way to install independently-produced software nor how to get started writing it, and there isn't even a logo-licensing program for compatible hardware, and no one even knows what the minimum hardware feature set should be nor where they can look at a reference implementation.... I'll just leave it there.
Is there any hope? I think Canonical has some of the right ideas. (So does Google, except their offerings are really mainframe terminals not PCs.)
Can anybody see "I'll wear them down" as a joke and not a profession of a strategy?
His stated position "Works for me, so I'm happy" is clear enough - maybe another 25 years of open development will create something competitive with the commercial desktop software market, maybe it won't - I don't think that Linus personally cares.
Me, personally, I think that for Linux to conquer the desktop would require an infusion of cash - developers who can grow up, leave their mothers' basements and feed a family while developing the desktop software - perhaps 30 guys dedicated for 5 years earnestly working for the single goal of taking what's best from Unity/KDE/Gnome and synthesizing a competitive desktop for the market place - maybe $15M in total over 5 years for the development and another $5M or so to do the most minimal of promotional work. Now, show me any entity that thinks they want to spend $20M and 5 years to create a great OSS desktop.... what's in it for them? Who wants the PR headache of coordinating this kind of project with the rest of the open source community? Noone that I know of.