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Ask Slashdot: Whatever Happened To the 'Year of Linux on Desktop'?

Posted by msmash on from the curious-case dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Investors, enthusiasts, and Linux distro makers have for more than a decade projected that the upcoming year will be the year of Linux on the desktop platform. But we just can't seem to get to that year for some reason. Windows continues to dominate the consumer market. Apple's macOS X is quickly gaining ground among business customers and designers, and is already ahead of Linux. Do you see Linux getting a significant boost in the desktop market in the coming years?

21 of 417 comments (clear)

  1. D'oh! by Aighearach · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What happened was, we'd already been using it for years so it sounded really stupid and it was only ever a joke where people laughed at anybody who had repeated the phrase.

    It was already a great desktop, and it still is.

    New users are not really useful to us, either. Please don't switch.

    1. Re: D'oh! by SuseLover · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Steep learning curve? What steep learning curve, everyone I have set up one for has been using it as easily as windows and they only call me for help a couple times a year

    2. Re: D'oh! by p4nther2004 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Linux is fundamentally a good idea, but between the dozens of distros, the rather steep learning curve for new users, and the bi-polar nature of the community, it's pretty off-putting to most people.

      You say this like it's a bad thing.

      No seriously. I mean that. I've done the fanboy bit before. OS/2. There. BeOS. Yep. Lots of others.

      I do NOT recommend Linux to people. In fact, I say to NOT use it. Why? Cause most people want to play games, browse the web, do their email and watch NetFlix.

      For them - use Windows.

      If I tell them no....and then they ask what I use....and why. Only THEN do I begin the conversation with them. What do they want to do on their computer? Oh, you need programming languages? A database? Source code control? Then yes, you should start looking at Linux. It's got a hell of a learning curve but damn it's worth it.

      Don't get me wrong. Linux has won. Windows has Ubuntu shell. Docker is linux.

      But I'll be damned before I spend time trying to convince someone who doesn't want to use Linux and doesn't need it that they should be using it.

      Either Linux sells itself or it doesn't. (And it has...)

    3. Re: D'oh! by SeriousTube · · Score: 3, Informative

      It can be easy until you want to do anything remotely out of the ordinary. I wanted to play my java scrabble game. First the sound wouldn't work because no usb sound worked. Then I fixed it and the sound from java didn't work. It always is like that with linux. There's a million things to hunt down and fix the minute you aren't just using a browser to view the web.

    4. Re: D'oh! by chipschap · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Exactly this -- although I don't necessarily recommend Windows. I recommend whichever operating system they are already most familiar with.

      That's eminently sensible. However, if the needs are basic and the prospective user is not a "computer type" --- I might just install Linux for them.

      I did that for my wife, who uses Linux and doesn't know it's Linux, and doesn't care, because she can do her browser-based stuff and maybe view some photos or documents off-line, and maybe play a simple game or two.

      For basic needs, Linux is certainly no harder to use than Windows.

      And when problems pop up (quite infrequent), then this "basic user" wouldn't be able to fix them whether it was Linux or Windows or Mac.

    5. Re: D'oh! by jedidiah · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What moronic nonsense. There is not ONE thing in that post that warranted your reply. The fact that shit just works for a lot of people is just something trolls can't handle.

      It's not 1995 any more. The "steep learning curve" is overblown. It's really no worse than it would be for anything. That includes strange new versions of Windows.

      When things go wrong, they are equally ugly on all three platforms.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    6. Re: D'oh! by jedidiah · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yet you present no real argument. You just engage in a lot of unsupported claims and insults. Linux desktops and applications use a lot of the same GUI basic elements. ALL of the desktop platforms use "easy to discover" interfaces.

      The biggest problem many people may have is that they are simply used to something in particular.

      Ribbon pissed a lot of people off. So did Windows 8. Some of the peculiarities in MacOS alienate Windows users.

      This isn't about some strange caricature that exists mainly in your head.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  2. Duplicate post by Latent+Heat · · Score: 4, Funny

    From 2016, 2015, 2014 . . .

    1. Re:Duplicate post by zifn4b · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I used to work with a guy who was in the IT Industry for about 30 years. He used to joke around about reading magazines in the 90's about Linux. He said in the beginning of the year an article would be published with a title like "This is the year of Linux!" and then later on in the year it would be followed up with "What happened to Linux?" and it did that ever year like clockwork to your point.

      --
      We'll make great pets
  3. What's a desktop? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Posted from my iPhone

  4. I hope not by JohnFen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't see Linux gaining a significant part of the desktop market in the foreseeable future. And, as an avid Linux user, I think that's a great thing.

    I don't want Linux to get so popular. Getting that popular brings two really terrible things with it: more attention from hackers, and a more rapid degradation of the operating system as it tries harder to cater to everybody.

    1. Re:I hope not by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 5, Interesting

      That's the thing: everyone thinks their pet project is going to be super-popular for some reason, without considering the stakeholders. If you want the whole world to use it, then the whole world is your stakeholders.

      Occasionally you see this mentality leak when people mention end users being too stupid to know what's good for them and so sticking to Windows (check out RMS). You also see people try to factor the stakeholders in with things like Wine, XPDE, Steam for Linux, and even the installers that boot from Windows instead of repartitioning your disk (low-risk). Nobody's trying to get buy-in in general.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    2. Re:I hope not by Billly+Gates · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It seemed to improve WIndows quality tremendously though over the past 20 years. Windows 7/10 is not WIndows 98/ME by a longshot in terms of BSOD, security, or crashes.

      Linux kind of oddly is degrading with SystemD, gnome3, pulse audio, wayland, and so many dependencies that not everyone knows what they are trying to make Linux be the end all be all.

      For servers the idea of running FreeBSD is becoming quite popular for this reason.

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    3. Re:I hope not by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Which distro is best for: Developers
      Video Editing
      Games
      etc.

      The problem here is that most distros are great for Developers, but there are none that are great for video editing, games, music editing, etc.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  5. Re:Yeh baby by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    > every android phone runs on a Google-modified linux kernel with Google userland and spyware its fair to say that Google rules the world

    There, I fixed that for you.

  6. maybe a more interesting question... by gosand · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When was YOUR year of the Linux desktop?

    Mine was 1998. I installed Redhat 5.2 and Linux has been on my desktop ever since.

    --

    My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

  7. Integration by KidSock · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have used Linux as my primary desktop since ~1997. As a software developer it is a power platform. The shell is critical. However, as a conventional desktop it is just not competitive with Windows. And OSX isn't either. Both Linux and OSX are below 4% market share. Vertical integration is very weak. Windows has an identity management system that allows transparent filesharing, advanced group based access control, sophisticated business applications. Getting stuff like that to work on Linux is too difficult or simply not possible. So software venders focus on the Windows platform. And rightly so. I just tried and application that recently released a Beta for Linux and it was a total fail. I occasionally dabble in engineering related stuff and I have to have a Windows machine for all of the various programs for cad, PCB design, simulation. Yeah, programs like that exist for Linux but they're just not good. And I know people agree with me that the GNOME desktop has actually regressed. It used to be much more usable. But they dumbed it down for reasons that where not entirely clear. My guess would be that when new developers come along, they have a tendency to want to re-write everything from scratch. I'm not diametrically opposed to this strategy but you better come up with something that was at least as good as what you're dumping. And that didn't happen. There are other integration related issues as well. For example, for as long as I can recall there has always been a fight between X and the desktop over who should remember the positions of windows. X says applications should save that information and recall it when re-launching an app. Desktop people think it should be handled by lower level facilities. Now, whenever logout and back in, all of my terminal windows have to be re-launced and repositioned (I run 6-8 terms on 4-5 workspaces). That is something that actually used to work somewhat in GNOME. It worked in WindowMaker IIRC. The Linux desktop has been dumbed way down to the point where it's not nearly as useful as it used to be. At least not for people doing more than surfing the web and email. Might as well just get a Chomebook for that.

  8. Android is a bad example of Linux being "popular"! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Android is a horrible example to use of Linux being popular. In fact, it shows the complete opposite: Linux can only become a widely used consumer OS kernel when users and developers have absolutely no idea it's there, and it's thoroughly hidden under many layers of abstraction.

    Google could silently replace the Linux kernel with some other kernel, and Android users and developers would have no idea it had even happened. That just goes to show how irrelevant Linux is within the Android ecosystem. Yeah, it's present, but nobody cares that it's present.

    We may actually see a kernel replacement along those lines happen, with Google Fuchsia being in the works.

    Linux contributes almost nothing to Android's success. Android could have been just as much of a success if they had used the NetBSD kernel or some other kernel instead. The success of Android is in its application framework and its userland apps, which have nothing to do with Linux at all.

    Android shows exactly what needs to happen if Linux does want to be successful on desktops and laptops. Almost all of the GNU utilities, X, Wayland, GNOME, GTK+, systemd, PulseAudio, and other open source software will need to be thrown out and replaced with a far more cohesive and sane userland stack.

  9. Re:Already here by jwhyche · · Score: 3

    If your "non technical mother" was running a recent copy of windows and complaining about it crashing all the time. Make me wonder what porn sites your dear old mother was visiting.

    No, strike that. It doesn't make me wonder. Images of senior donkey porn .com are now filling my head.

    --
    I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
  10. Re: No std GUI - a commercial minefield by chipschap · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Go read Qt's commercial terms,

    Maybe YOU should read them. You need a commercial license if you want to produce closed-source proprietary products. You can still sell your product / offer support, etc., without a commercial license, you just have to provide source.

    And Qt is not the only game in town.

  11. Re: No std GUI - a commercial minefield by simula · · Score: 3, Informative

    Qt is licensed under the LGPL.

    If you dynamically link to the Qt libraries, you can sell your closed-source proprietary products without having to pay for a commercial license or share your source.

    If you statically link to the Qt libraries, then you are required to either pay for a commercial license or share your source.