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Could 2018 Be The Year of the Linux Desktop? (gnome.org)
Suren Enfiajyan writes: Red Hat worker and GNOME blogger Christian F.K. Schaller wrote why GNU/Linux failed to become a mainstream desktop OS... "My thesis is that there really isn't one reason, but rather a range of issues that all have contributed to holding the Linux Desktop back from reaching a bigger market. Also to put this into context, success here in my mind would be having something like 10% market share of desktop systems. That to me means we reached critical mass."
He named the following reasons:
- A fragmented market
- Lack of special applications
- Lack of big name applications
- Lack of API and ABI stability
- Apple's resurgence
- Microsoft's aggressive response
- Windows piracy
- Red Hat mostly stayed away
- Canonical's business model not working out
- Lack of original device manufacturer support
Then he ended with some optimism:
"So anyone who has read my blog posts probably knows I am an optimist by nature. This isn't just some kind of genetic disposition towards optimism, but also a philosophical belief that optimism breeds opportunity while pessimism breeds failure. So just because we haven't gotten the Linux Desktop to 10% marketshare so far doesn't mean it will not happen going forward. It just means we haven't achieved it so far.
"One of the key identifiers of open source is that it is incredibly hard to kill, because unlike proprietary software, just because a company goes out of business or decides to shut down a part of its business, the software doesn't go away or stop getting developed. As long as there is a strong community interested in pushing it forward it remains and evolves, and thus when opportunity comes knocking again it is ready to try again."
The essay concludes desktop Linux has evolved and is ready to try again, since from a technical perspective it's better than ever. "The level of polish is higher than ever before, the level of hardware support is better than ever before and the range of software available is better than ever before...
"There is also the chance that it will come in a shape we don't appreciate today. For instance maybe ChromeOS evolves into a more full fledged operating system as it grows in popularity and thus ends up being the Linux on the Desktop end game? Or maybe Valve decides to relaunch their SteamOS effort and it provides the foundation for a major general desktop growth? Or maybe market opportunities arise that will cause us at Red Hat to decide to go after the desktop market in a wider sense than we do today? Or maybe Endless succeeds with their vision for a Linux desktop operating system...."
He named the following reasons:
- A fragmented market
- Lack of special applications
- Lack of big name applications
- Lack of API and ABI stability
- Apple's resurgence
- Microsoft's aggressive response
- Windows piracy
- Red Hat mostly stayed away
- Canonical's business model not working out
- Lack of original device manufacturer support
Then he ended with some optimism:
"So anyone who has read my blog posts probably knows I am an optimist by nature. This isn't just some kind of genetic disposition towards optimism, but also a philosophical belief that optimism breeds opportunity while pessimism breeds failure. So just because we haven't gotten the Linux Desktop to 10% marketshare so far doesn't mean it will not happen going forward. It just means we haven't achieved it so far.
"One of the key identifiers of open source is that it is incredibly hard to kill, because unlike proprietary software, just because a company goes out of business or decides to shut down a part of its business, the software doesn't go away or stop getting developed. As long as there is a strong community interested in pushing it forward it remains and evolves, and thus when opportunity comes knocking again it is ready to try again."
The essay concludes desktop Linux has evolved and is ready to try again, since from a technical perspective it's better than ever. "The level of polish is higher than ever before, the level of hardware support is better than ever before and the range of software available is better than ever before...
"There is also the chance that it will come in a shape we don't appreciate today. For instance maybe ChromeOS evolves into a more full fledged operating system as it grows in popularity and thus ends up being the Linux on the Desktop end game? Or maybe Valve decides to relaunch their SteamOS effort and it provides the foundation for a major general desktop growth? Or maybe market opportunities arise that will cause us at Red Hat to decide to go after the desktop market in a wider sense than we do today? Or maybe Endless succeeds with their vision for a Linux desktop operating system...."
No.
Will 2019 be the year of the buggy whip?
Linux on the desktop is there already. Buy from System76 or buy a Dell XPS-13 pre-installed and you get a perfectly fine business or even consumer experience. There are a few people who still need Microsoft Excel because it's so deeply wired into their business. There are a few people who have some proprietary monster (photoshop?) that they need some special set up for. Most normal people could survive fine with ChromeOS and so having local files and LibreOffice to work offline is just a bonus.
The only thing missing is a big push to make it the default install on most people's PCs and I don't see where that's coming from. What might make a real difference is if the PC manufacturers realise that Microsoft is coming for their lunch. Every penny Dell gives to Microsoft is a penny more to dig their own grave. As long as they pay the Microsoft tax, they will never be able to compete on price.
As long as there is a battle between KDE, gnome and others, as long as every distribution thinks they can do the user interface design themselves (ending up with 10 half-finished system configuration interfaces), as long as Puttering is still allowed anywhere near the Linux code base, the answer is NO.
Its people who have no clue and are massively unqualified to use computers (including phones) that are the majority market. They have little appreciation for security, development ethos, walled gardens, lockin etc... As long as its shiny shiny then go for it.
Linux distros are a complete unknown to this market and when it has to be explained results in geek dismissal or gladdy-eyed ignorance. Google understood this and until company or companies promote Linux in the same way, ie. Look shiny!, then the Year of the linux desktop will elude us.
Gnome3 and systemd created most disinterest in Linux world. Look within to see the root cause behind when Linux adoption is not accelerating as it deserves to be before blaming everything and everyone else.
Everything you said was wrong.
I used Linux as desktop for about seven years but switched to macOS. Why? I got tired about Linux fragmentation (Gnome, XFCE, KDE, etc. etc.), reinventing the wheel (for this new OS release we have a new text editor, package system and new File Manager, again).
I understand that the alternatives are the strength of Open Source but fragmentation keeps it away from mainstream.
I find that unlikely. Linux will se more adoption, though, I guess.
I'm also slightly amused when that kind of think comes from Gnome blogs. Is Schalller an actual Gnome dev?
Linux desktop may very well become the only desktop in the future. Not because it won. It's because the other desktops died.
The only real use for a desktop now is for business use. Personal use of desktops is crashing. Mobile devices have effectively taken over personal use.
The browser has taken over as the OS on desktops. The applications are provided mostly by website interfaces. I have desktop machines that no longer have office suites installed, or graphical manipulation programs.
We will still see beefed up machines. But only for the purpose of running online application via the browser.
Personally I run Linux on basically every device attached to a monitor or TV as well as all my server gear. I have token windows and apple devices / vm's. But even a Linux fan boy like myself knows Linux desktop will never have it's big year. Simply because the desktop is dead.
At this point it's a meme.
...it won't. But if you ask enough, maybe it'll come true.
The problem, is that Linux appeals to people who are computer enthusiasts-- people who LOVE computers, because they are simply amazing things, and they want to get the most out of that purchase.
Most people are not like that. They want a computer to do a very short list of things, and want one that will never slow down, break, or get infected with something. For most people, that thing is "I need the internet, facebook, and stuff for work/school." The less they have to actually know about computers, or how computers work (EG, the more "Magic box" like they are) the happier these people are.
Linux dares to expose its internals, and worse yet, DEMANDS that you learn about how it works underneath in order to use it effectively. That is why it has never, and likely will never, take off as a mainstream desktop.
Apple and Microsoft have created the "Shiny plastic experience", and people love it. Linux might as well say "Batteries not included, setup time 6 hours, major assembly required" on the box.
Asking why Linux is not a mainstream desktop environment is like asking why McCalls clothing patterns are not the dominant source of apparel in the market. Sure, you can customize the clothing however you want, and you can modify the patterns to your hearts content--- But dammit, you gotta get the cloth, cut it, sew it together, and all that shit. Why bother when you just want a fashionable new sport top, eh? People would rather spend the money on something somebody else already put together-- VIOLA-- OSX and pals. Shiny plastic. No work.
Linux needs to stop chasing this fantasy where everyone stops being lazy gits and becomes excited computer enthusiasts. They need to understand that they are a niche market, and do that niche very well. Last I checked, that was the Unix philosophy anyway.
For this reason I am opposed to the efforts of Poettering and Pals. Dont dumb down Linux for the masses. There are plenty of shiny plastic offerings out there. There aren't a lot of highly mature offerings for enthusiasts.
It is a fantastic operating system.
Having trouble being passionate about a tool, its like trying to get my dander up over a screw driver.
this will be the year that no one cares what you use as a computing platform.
I know I don't care what anyone else uses as their computing platform of choice, just like I don't care what their choice of socks is. It make no difference to my life.
I have used OS's from CPM 2.2, TRS-DOS and a lot of others in between all the way up to IOS, OSX, Win10 and even a little Linux.
So, please please please let this be the year where people grow the F&CK up and stop worrying about what everyone else is using and simply be happy with their own choice.
(i.e. leading up to, and the year after, windows 7's end-of-life) it won't ever have a 'year of the desktop'.
but there's too much bickering and in-fighting and needless forks and other bullshit for that to ever happen.. so, "NO" not next year, not any year, not unless there's a seismic shift in the attitudes of developers.
And Linux only has monospace fonts. Ordinary people don't like that; they want variably spaced fonts.
It will be the year of the Artificial Intelligence doing all those 'desktop' jobs on a server somewhere in the sticks.
The shinier Linux gets, the more trouble I have trying to maintain my jergoff Ubuntu/Mint box. Since 1996, the other day is
the first time I think I've ever had Linux not boot and in a way that I couldn't see why not. Some goddamn update killed me I
think? I could've chrooted from a live environment and tried to roll back or trouble shoot but I'm sufficiently backed up so
that a reinstall is the path of least resistance. And that is a goddamn shame in and of itself. With any luck, Devuan will
never be "ready for the desktop". Fucking weasel words anyway.
thanks to webassembly, cloud and other technologies, this will be year of web desktop. It doesn't really metter what OS you are running*, all you need is browser, which is new desktop. *except in case when some weird HW with specialized closed drivers need to be connected to your computer.
839*929
Every year is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop until it actually rolls around.
Well at peak Steam has 14 million concurrent users, 33 million active daily and 67 million active monthly. Plus every non-Steam game like Overwatch, Destiny, various MMORPGs, old games that don't register anywhere etc. that may or may not overlap. That's a non-trivial user segment that's not going away any time soon. I'm sure there's quite a few other use cases too, you say you don't need graphical manipulation tools but I really don't see photographers working with 50MB RAWs online in the near future. Maybe you'll ship billions of smartphones, but you'll still ship hundreds of millions of PCs too.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didnâ(TM)t stop to think if they should"
I like most of where Linux has gone since the mid 90s when I started using it, but I was never looking for a Windows replacement and I abhor the dumbing down and obfuscation of major components (systemd, for example) in the name of 'MORE USERS OMG!!!'.
It's okay if everyone doesn't know how to use a tool. Imagine if a nail gun were dumbed down so far that nobody could possibly hurt themselves with it, and it were accessible to everyone. It would be a nail gun in name only. This is how you get things like the iPhone.
I've never understood the push to be accepted by everybody, isn't it enough to be the most popular OS in the world? (Android, TVs, servers, IoT, etc)
Just because you disagree doesn't mean it's not true.
Many years ago I worked for a computer manufacturer. We wanted an industry-leading product ported to our range(s) of machines. We worked hard with the software company and they required that for maintenance purposes, we had to supply 1 model of each computer that their software products would be sold for. They had a large room full of systems from various manufacturers.
This is the state of Linux - but multiplied several times over. Not only does each "flavour" vary from each other (otherwise they wouldn't be different), but the too-frequent releases and updates of vital components: kernels, libraries, sub-systems, make it too expensive for software suppliers to keep the whole spectrum up to date with changes, debugged, and to test their own software products thoroughly on each variant.
That puts a tremendous cost on the suppliers. And in a Linux market which expects software to be zero-cost or cheap ("I'm not spending $$$$-thousands on software for an operating system I downloaded for free"), it simply isn't worth anyone's while.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
If the "breakthrough" ever happens, Linux will be ruled by the one great unifying system services interface that does everything I don't need or already have something else for, because that's what the "big names" think of as compatibility. I mean systemd of course, or "Central Services" for those who watched Brazil. The result would be a limitation in choices (of desktops e.g.) and an increase in well-hidden complexity, causing security problems. That would be ok for non-technical users, because they don't want choice that comes with effort and responsibility and they have surrendered to the dangers of uncontrollable complexity anyway. To play well with them, Linux would have to become a slightly less invasive Windows or a slightly more awkward pro-bono MacOS.
I don't want that. I want to control what my machine does and that means only installing what I need and keeping it simple. That's why I'm migrating to Void Linux now.
I have recently moved my main desktop operating system from Windows to Linux and I am quite happy with the change. On the other hand, I have to continue relying on Windows for quite a few things like developing Windows-based software. Similar multi-OS setups are likely to be increasingly common among developers and more technical people. OS manufacturers, software tools and infrastructure seem to also be going in this more practical lets-take-the-best-bit-from-everyone direction. Even the incompatibilities desktop/web/mobile/etc. are likely to keep decreasing.
IMO, a big proportion of (desktop) users voluntarily moving to Linux seems a quite unlikely scenario. A different story is Linux-based systems becoming more relevant everywhere and to everyone, regardless of final users being fully aware about that fact.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
you cannot drop a Linux desktop into a corporate environment (this usually means a Microsoft environment) and have it just work. This is the biggest problem. Unlike the readership here most people cannot care less about computers and don't want to work hard to understand them. They have to use a MS Windows machine at work and so will have the same at home - learning something else is just too hard & boring.
Yes you can have *nix on the desktop, I have only run *nix on my desktops for 25+ years, but I am self employed so I run what I want, I do not need to interact with lots of other people within my company. I am also a techie: I have the interest & motivation to do this. But getting millions of individual Linux desktops will not result in 'the year of Linux desktop', for that the corporate environment must be cracked.
A fully open source 100% replacement for the MS server environment would also help a lot. Yes: you can easily replace a lot of it, but the server components are just that, islands that are not joined up. Email to most people includes group-ware (calendering, etc), people do not want to have to separate the 2: they want to just continue the way that they are. The SME (Small and medium-sized enterprises) sector would be most likely to move first if such a FLOSS solution was available and easy to install/maintain.
The SME sector is also able to do its thing without attracting Microsoft's big we-play-dirty marketing guns: think Munich.
However: much software also seen as essential in a corporate environment only runs on MS Windows - eg accounting software. Vendors would only consider porting to Linux if there was a large market - it is much easier from their perspective to just require a MS Windows machine to run their software. Very much chicken and eggs.
Can this be done ? Yes: but it needs the likes of Red Hat to make this happen. Those who work on the individual components (eg Exim/Postfix) have little interest in doing this - they are focussed on making good MTAs (in this example). Work to stitch them together needs to be done by a software integrator - which is exactly what Red Hat is.
Red Hat has the money & technical ability to do this; once done it also has plenty of corporate customers, a few of which might try it as early adopters ... and when it works others will follow.
Summary: what is needed is 100% client & server interoperability in the server environment. This is what Red Hat needs to achieve.
It is what it is.
No. Linux desktop popularity will only ruin it. Look at Firefox.
You need a support system. Redhat could do that but it has to be affordable. What do most home users use? Figure that out make it work across Windows, Apple and Linux. The install cost is low, the help subscriber fee has to just be enough to get the market going. The Iphone, thousand dollars, give me a break. It is a status symbol. Windows 10 ... ick.
Look Linux is not going to take off on the desktop! We hard about this for year after year after year after year since I have been on here back in 1998. 19 years have gone by and I am still waiting.
We got into computers because they were new, trendy, hip, and were cool and could make some money using them. Linux appeal for me was it was more stable than DOS based Windows 98 and had a TON of stuff that you didn't have to pay $$$$ for
Guess what? It ain't the 20th century anymore. Computers are not cool. Phones are. No one wants nor cares about operating system on legacy expensive big old desktops. The kids today want to learn a new JavaScript framework and all the money is making phone apps. The only relevance is if you know cloud and server stuff to host your mobile apps if you want to become a millionaire.
No longer is knowing Excel === instant job. Or knowing how to do a cout
This is like a cult at this point. WIndows no longer is based on DOS where rebooting twice a day is the norm anymore. No one wants to be liberated nor cares. PCs are for boring work running boring win32 apps. Any cool new app or framework will be mobile based for now on. Linux will be used for servers and that is it in some niche computer room somewhere until Amazon or MS take the PC and your sys admin job away in the cloud.
The OS doesn't matter anymore as the world has moved on.
http://saveie6.com/
Linux desktop may very well become the only desktop in the future. Not because it won. It's because the other desktops died.
The only real use for a desktop now is for business use. Personal use of desktops is crashing. Mobile devices have effectively taken over personal use.
The browser has taken over as the OS on desktops. The applications are provided mostly by website interfaces. I have desktop machines that no longer have office suites installed, or graphical manipulation programs.
We will still see beefed up machines. But only for the purpose of running online application via the browser.
Personally I run Linux on basically every device attached to a monitor or TV as well as all my server gear. I have token windows and apple devices / vm's. But even a Linux fan boy like myself knows Linux desktop will never have it's big year. Simply because the desktop is dead.
I predict that Linux will become the sole unchallenged hegemon of the desktop the same year that broccoli flavoured ice cream overtakes chocolate in popularity.
You're forgetting a few other categories: gaming and creators. Smartphone or tablets really aren't a good substitute for these, as you really can't do equivalent things. The desktop PC is "dead" in the same way pickup trucks or full sized vans are "dead". Just because a typical consumer doesn't need one doesn't mean there isn't still a significant market, and a valid reason for that market to exist.
PC sales will bottom out as they find their niche (work, gaming, creators), and then stabilize. At the moment, we're seeing a massive slowdown in the PC market for three reasons. First, obviously, smartphones, tablets, and notebooks are the large-scale market consumer devices of choice these days. Second, the PC market is largely saturated. And third, even for those of us to need PCs, those PCs are actually lasting FAR longer than they used to now that we've hit a "fast enough" hardware threshold.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I've been using it as a desktop for the last ten years. The 'lack of special applications' one leaves me with a Windows 7 computer for Logic Pro and music though.
I've done quite a lot of non-profit sector work in the UK, recently, as I'm semi-retired. One of the other big 'blockers' is clearly Access, people love it and it's easy. The other is brand recognition. For example, we built a computer suite for older people with Linux Mint, they were fine because they hadn't absorbed all the spin about the various operating systems, it was 'just a desktop' and a 'thing to use'.
That's my 2c of a Euro, Happy Christmukkah and all other end of year holidays.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
The only real use for a desktop now is for business use.
You say this as if this is some tiny remnant of the PC market rather than the largest portion of it.
... and 2018 will be another year of Linux, on both the server and the desktop, after finally moving away from OS/2 aka eComStation (even though a new, refreshed version named ArcaOS has just been released) which still ran on one server and after the final decision that I'll refuse to move to any Windows version higher than 7 on my desktop.
Yes, I'm keeping a few Windows applications installed in Wine (e.g. Adobe Digital Editions and Amazon Kindle so I can still buy and read DRM-protected e-books, now that my library has smoothly moved to Linux thanks to Calibre) and on a Windows 7 in a virtual machine (two or three photography-related apps which don't run with Wine), but that'll be about it.
We'll have to see whether I'll be staying with the Linux flavor I chose (Ubuntu Mate on most desktops, Ubuntu Server on the servers) in the long run, but so far I'm quite happy with everything.
By the way, I find it funny that, contrary to the preconception that Linux was only for nerds, more and more non-nerds in my vicinity turn to Linux and get along with it quite well. The change is, of course, easiest for people who already had been using applications on Windows which are available on Linux, too.
Cheers
d. d.
Please explain how the availability of games is NOT one of the driving forces for people staying with Windows.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Didn't people switch to the console 15 years ago. I remember people wailing on here as all the cool new games came out on the console first around that time and the PC ports sucked and didn't well with a keyboard and mouse.
http://saveie6.com/
I guess GNU Linux will climb in desktop market share in 2018. I've been pondering switching to Linux for quite some time, trying various Linux distributions and disliking them for more than a decade by now. However, I finally took the plunge in the middle of this year and installed some LTS flavoured Ubuntu. I'm amazed how far the Linux desktop has come in all these years, especially in comparison to the alternatives.
First, hardware: Among my stuff, there are no peripherals that don't work reasonably out-of-the-box. This includes various scanners, printers, sound cards, MIDI devices, MCU debuggers, and smartcard readers. This is pretty amazing in itself. I can also still read and write to my NTFS-formatted disks without any problem.
Second, software: I've been using a lot of open-source programs on Windows, and most of them will also run on Linux. Basically, end of story here. However, suffice to say that for many of these tools, their quality has only recently reached a standard that's completely fine for hobbyist-grade or even semi-professional work. (Others, however, are in the process of destroying the market for their commercial brethren.) One of the great advantages of Apple getting some market share with the crowd that wants to throw lots of money at everything is the need for platform-independent development. Thus, we're also seeing GAMES that run on Linux. There is little incentive to develop games that specifically target Linux, but if your game development environment du jour supports it, there is some extra money to be gained. Granted, I play very few video games these days, but many of the more interesting ones are available for Linux, most of them even through Steam.
Third, software again: The push for more and more web-based software shifts the definition of "platform." For a web app, the platform is the browser engine it's running on. Suffice to say, except for Microsoft's foray into browsers yet again, both major engines are available in browsers for Linux. With the phasing-out of Flash, there's even less incentive to use a particular browser on a particular operating system.
Fourth, Windows: I don't dislike Windows, I've been using it for many years, but it has been annoying me quite a bit recently. Required security mitigation makes it slow. Windows 10 installs updates that don't just fix bugs, but also change the system behaviour. It's also beginning to collect way too much data for my taste. Maybe this is a fundamental difference in what I feel my OS should do: It shouldn't be extra-flashy and awe me with new features all the time, but should provide a stable platform that runs the software I want to use without me constantly tweaking it. I fear that Windows is departing more and more from this, and Linux is getting closer and closer.
Fifth, Ubuntu: I am completely aware that Ubuntu is the Windows 10 of Linuxes, with questionable design choices et cetera. However, it works very well immediately after installation and is reasonably configurable.
Sixths, Virtualization. For the few instances where I need to run Windows software, I just start my VM. Using Virtualbox, performance is almost on-par with the real thing, which means the VM can run CAD just as sluggishly as Windows on my slightly underpowered machine. USB peripherals work, and it even boots my old Windows installation from disk, which allows me to still access all my Windows stuff seamlessly.
I don't see any impediments for the Linux Desktop. It works just fine. Finally, we have come to a point where all three major Operating Systems (Linux, Mac OS, Windows) are comparably horrible, each with its own annoying features, advantages and drawbacks.
Yeah, the "remnant" of the desktop PC market.
Every time I see statements like the OP's I ask "what about the people who use {photoshop/premierepro/equivalents} as their income-producing software?
Laptops and tablets don't do large-scale video rendering.
Browsers don't do rendering at all, except perhaps as a limited example of what workatations or render farms can do.
Browsers are internet-dependent - which is great when you've got reliable internet.
And independent musicians and video producers don't use browser-based software to render their work.
So the OP is full of shit. There may be a shift away from desktop OS for some parts of the market, but until there's a viable replacement for the rest, desktops and workstations have a market.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
I don't understand why "user-hostility" isn't in that list of reasons. To me, that's the primary thing above all else. I could deal with crap as long as it was generally easy to learn to use and then mostly stayed out of my way to let me get stuff done. Instead, the CLI is probably one of the worst mechanisms in history in terms of being able to figure it out and it's the most important thing for getting into Linux. The only people that scoff at the learning curve are people that have already powered through it.
The CLI is powerful once you know the incantations, yes, but figuring out what incantations you need and how it relates to other incantations and what the expected behavior and results are? It's hard to know what to search when you start from 0 because you don't know what you might need or how subtle differences in what you're doing/what you want contribute to different ways of going about it. The way GNU programs handle errors is also significantly different from what I, as a user, would personally understand as an error. They say things like "error" but frequently they're close to "warning" and figuring out whether I need to deal with those and if so, how, is another matter entirely. Even basic things like getting and updating basic packages usually encounters "errors" for some definitions of errors. Or at least that's been my experience every time I've tried to use a GNU/Linux.
It's almost as if all of the programs in the system are designed to be inscrutable to a newcomer. That's not to mention the usability quirks of the myriad UIs that you can choose from. A couple years back, I tried out a KDE distro again and I don't know if it was my mouse, some drivers (for the simple and basic Microsoft Intellimouse), how I was performing actions, or the software itself, but I literally could not understand how clicking performed one of 3 or 4 different actions seemingly at random. Sometimes it would select files, sometimes it would pop open a menu, sometimes it would try to open it up, and I think sometimes it even seemed to do nothing whatsoever. When something as basic as clicking is this unintuitive in your UI, you have some serious problems. As a user, I don't care why it is this way. But that it is unacceptable to me.
Windows 8 screwed the pooch and I'm never accepting Windows 10, so I'll have to grit my teeth and bare the user-hostile system of GNU/Linux, but I will not enjoy it. That nothing is better speaks to a significant gap in the market for people that don't give a shit about things that aren't getting stuff done. Man, I hate modern software. In any case, my point is that this is *not* a trivial reason. It should be in that list.
The one problem holding desktop Linux over most of the last twenty years is that a bunch of idiots have simply failed to grasp that Gnome is just not a good enough desktop environment, particularly from a development point-of-view. It was, and still is, a mess along with all the faffing around with Mono that was supposed to solve all that. The politics surrounding that nonsense, and ironically this includes people exactly like Schaller, is where most of the wasted energy has gone.
Where Unix desktops like CDE were used before they have long since moved to Linux. Those developing server software for Linux as a platform many will be on a Linux desktop of some description, and this will have accounted for some of the increase in usage and interest, but a Linux desktop to replace Windows, the Mac or even Android? Nope.
well the joke is KDE and GNOME, two different desktop environments, even more, they look somehow nice, but not really polished (gnome a little better polished, but ugly, KDE has more interesting features, but the dialogs look terrible (padding/ alignments) ). Not even talking about Enlightment, Mate, Unity, etc... If they had one desktop behind which everyone was standing, maybe. But everyone stood behind Android, being a GUI on top of Linux. And now nobody cares anymore... Unfortunately... It has become a nice.... Same can be said with the lots of distributions and different packaging (deb/rpm/etc) etc, some would argue that's the strength of linux, but I would say it's also its weakness....
That a RH and Gnome guy would dismiss the API stability issue so quickly, as he works on one of the major sources of such instability daily...
It has been 10 years since I gave up on Linux (full time) on the desktop (I still use it on a server/build/database etc.) machine but not on my primary desktop machines (laptop or desktop). There was always something that did not work with the latest and greatest laptop hardware. There was always some thing that would fail because you tried adding something new. There was the issues of sometimes when you just wanted on update done and it failing because dependencies etc. There is always something that just does not work, and takes a lot of time to config (at that time it was things like multiple network cards or multiple monitors or video card drivers that were less than they should have been). I have no problem if it is not my primary goto computer (like my server which I can shelve for a while if I have problems - and have time or feel like tinkering). The configuration, the feel of the user interface never seems quite polished. I am sure a number of these applications default - work independently well, but together there is just something not quite right. The desktop always seems sort of spungy or sluggish or halting at times. There is no visionary that seems to be able to bring it together and make it work like a well tuned orchestra. 10 years now and the interface has not really improved in many cases - it might get a little better, then worse, then better but it is 1 step forward, 1 step backwards.
... NO. Because the underlying reasons still have not been addressed for your average user. Now given windows or Linux - I would chose Linux... but the only way Linux does take off is if all other desktop OSs mess up big time.
These irritations (especially on the laptop) made me take a look at macOS which had somewhat matured and underneath was still a UNIX variant (very important to me) -- in 2007. After all these years it is still -- maybe this year the desktop will take off.... well
In the end the success of anything is marketing. Convincing people that its worth trying. Even something free that does not get people's attention won't be popular. Word of mouth by way of tech geeks and OS hobbyists doesn't sell average PC users on Linux. You have to have a Chromebook type ability with backing of a Google, Microsoft or some other name people already know. Then you also have to have something other then no name unfamiliar applications that attract and reassure users that moving to Linux won't be such a learning curve. In the end the biggest obstacle for Linux was its open source obscurity that never attracted many mainstream PC users.
Linux will have the same problems as before: installing 3rd-party software will still be next to impossible unless it has been specially blessed by a "package maintainer". Despite its many flaws, this is one area that Windows managed to democratize (accidentally, and to Microsofts obvous chagrin): everyone can write software for Windows, and that software will run on every Windows OS. Compare that to Linux: I'd like to use GPIB drivers (yes, it's a specialist thing) but it is only available for Red Hat. But maybe I'd also like to use Oracle and that is only available on Oracle Linux. Oh, and I would like to use a special card driver that's not on every Linux either. And if at the end of the day I want to kick back and play some games... Oh, I need Steam OS. My own Windows computer fills all of those roles simultaneously, and it doesn't even have to reboot to switch from one role to another.
All of this is specialist software. All of it can be installed on Windows by clicking next-next-next-finish, and it just works. Sure, if you can get apt-get something from the appity app store, great for you. But that's not a democracy; that's the communist party blessing specific software and selecting what they consider to be useful to their perceived customers. All the software that's not blessed effectively doesn't exist, as far as Linux is concerned. And maybe with a _lot_ of tinkering you can get it to work... or maybe not. Again, on Windows it just works.
This being slashdot I can predict the course moderation will take for this message, but this is what I consider to be Linux' greatest weakness. Ignore it at your peril.
For instance maybe ChromeOS evolves into a more full fledged operating system as it grows in popularity and thus ends up being the Linux on the Desktop end game?
Meh, I've never really liked this way of thinking. What does Linux represent to you? To me it represents a culture of freedom to tinker, exploration, and self-development. None of those are compatible with ChromeOS. At that point, all we're really caring about is the label, that we can technically call what's underneath "Linux", and that's not really productive. At least with OS X, you can tap into those things, even if it's difficult and unwieldy (I got my start on OS X 10.6).
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
Reading through comments it seems some people believe Linux should be about a certain kind of tech head who glories in obscurity and chasing functions. I used to be a software developer (who was also and is a user) and am now a high class escort. These are two very different worlds but the kind of guy who can't develop well rounded software and the kind of guy who doesn't have the first clue about sex don't strike me as being too different in principle.
It's not all about functions. It's not all about technique.
Waaah. We are building tools. Waaah. We don't care how long you too to look pretty.
Who cares if it's an expensive timesink? Waaah. I want GFE for the price of a handjob.
Every fuckin year some douchebag says some stupid shit about next year being the âoeYear of the Linux Desktopâ. Just shut the fuck up already. The answer is No.
I especially love how this RedHat tool says 2018 will be different because in the past Red Hat didnâ(TM)t try and now they are, so of course the entire world will be like âoeOh shit! RedHat wants me to use a Linux desktop! Fuck my Windows 10 PC and MacOS laptop and sign me up for some red hat desktop goodness!â
For fucks sake. Geeez.
For power users "Fast enough" is not the reason people are not upgrading, I used to do a 3 year replacement cycle and each time get a machine at least twice as fast as my previous one. My current machine is well over five years old and other than for tasks that can take advantage of a large number of cores any upgrade will get me around a 50% performance increase, which makes its just not worth it.
Christian forgot the main reason. X Windows. It's old and insecure, and mostly slow. It was the main reason I eventually reverted back to Windows. Even though nowadays rendering is done using the GPU and the sluggishness is hardly noticable anymore, displays drivers for Linux are still not on par with Windows or OSX.
Apple got one thing right: dump X windows and get it right. Wayland looks promising, but even though it has been under development for years it is still in its early stages for some reason. 2018 won't be the year of the Linux desktop. Neither will 2019. Sad but true.
... someone like AMD or Intel operating systems an application you can switch to without rebooting the machine. The reality is I've had the idea that the only possible way Linux will gain ground is if you can run multiple OS's at the same time the same way we run applications at the same time. It has to be as easy as switching apps on a windows 8 taskbar. That would require a company like AMD to build it into the hardware/bios. So that you could run windows 7/10 side by side with Linux. Until running an OS can be switched and run at the same time like any other app in windows, there's no reason to ever transition because there's just too much legacy code for windows.
You have to learn from what microsoft did. Microsoft was smart in that they know legacy code is what gave them their OS monopoly, no one wants to rewrite anything. We're lazy as a species, we take the path of least resistance so the only way to make any kind of linux headway on the desktop.
For me, 2013 was the year of the Linux desktop. While I've been using Linux on the desktop since at least 2004 (Red Hat, Mandrake, Fedora, Gentoo, Ubuntu) in a dual-boot capacity, in 2013 I endeavored to make Arch Linux my daily driver, and I only boot back to Windows on rare occasions. With a relatively recent purchase of a System76 laptop, I am also now on Linux instead of Mac OS X on my laptop. That being said, the real trojan horse for Linux is Android -- many people use phones as their primary computer nowadays.
"All it takes to fly is to hurl yourself at the ground... and miss." - Douglas Adams
Open source projects are like plants. If there is sun and water they will grow.
Linux GUIs never been close to overtake windows. The objective is to provide the alternative.
For many years there were no decent games in Linux. Now Steam releases most games for all Isso.
Linux Desktop will never die. Because it's free to use, free to alter and free to maintain.
Lump of coal for the Linux desktop stocking.
GNOME is exactly a major example of the fragmentation our GNOME contributing poster talks about.
If the "community" had gathered around KDE which was already in good shape at the time instead of going off in a huff and starting a competing GNOME then focus on the Linux desktop would have been much sharper these past two decades.
Oh, and GNOME is still terrible.
moron
Do you really want to be the first choice of all the grannies who just want to see pictures of their grandkids?
Or the soccer moms who are buying the desktops for grandma to see pictures of the grandkids?
The success of Linux and the Linux Desktop is not measured in how many soccer moms are using it.
It's true that speeds aren't increasing nearly as fast as they used to, which reduces motivation to upgrade. However, for most typical use, even an older PC like mine is has more than enough power for day to day use. My primary development machine is eight years old, which is sort of astonishing to me. It feels just as snappy today as when it was brand new. Even if a new machine was five times faster, I can't imagine how it would make me significantly more productive. CPU speed or lack of memory is simply not getting in the way of my productivity, so I don't upgrade.
That being said, I certainly recognize that there are some specialized use cases (other than games, of course) where you can never have enough computing horsepower. One of my machines is a digital audio workstation, custom designed for music composition. That's one case where you can never have too much CPU speed, RAM, and disk space. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
If the application is client side, then a smartphone isn't enough. If the heavy lifting is server side it is, apart from the interface, but you can potentially connect mouse, keyboard and monitor to a smartphone, depending on model, at which point a smartphone is enough.
Be careful what you wish for. Linux is generally used by the most technically savvy. Is there a benefit for the great unwashed, the deplorables if you will, to start using Linux? Will it benefit the community in any way? Did it benefit Slashdot? Did it benefit the election?
People get what they deserve. If someone willingly chooses Windows over Linux then good luck to them and may Zeus have mercy on their soul.
I got what I deserved when I decided to update my Windows 7 gaming rig to Windows 10 using the free update tool, motivated only by the fear of having to pay cash money for a legit Windows 10 license some time in the future when the bastards stop supporting 7. Microsoft Support must be doing gangbusters because poor old nanna wouldn't have stood a chance of getting through that update unassisted.
Linux by comparison has been a breeze on every major distribution to install and upgrade for at least a decade.
The catch 22 with Linux (and every other alternate OS) is that a lot of software companies don't want to put the resources into producing ports, which discourages adoption, which leads to software companies not wanting to put the resources into producing ports.
Linux, its maskot, desktop systems and their silly names, etc. have always had really poor branding. They are Linux systems strictly for Linux users, and they don't speak of enough competency and seriousness for other users to approach them.
Branding matters, period.
I clearly would love to see Linux being used as a desktop and not in another damn server, phone (except Librem 5), if you want to call Android "Linux," but the hardware to make owning a traditional desktop/laptop as a brand new, young owner is too expensive. You absolutely have to target a younger audience if you want to make this work. You're not going to get a 13 year old to use Arch or care about systemd or libre kernels and you're not going to get an experienced 50 year old to use Ubuntu. If it's not peer pressured on a Facefarm/Instacrap ad, give it up. If the Linux Foundation actually cared about desktops, they wouldn't focus on servers, allowed Micro$oft to join, or use MacOS for presentations. LF and Ubuntu only care about money and M$ will cut the chord and patent troll eventually. When you have a system as versatile as Linux but Window$ 10, iPhones, and Xbox's are everywhere, we would have to completely focus all of our attention towards marketing rather than developing and hoping our awesome FOSS software speaks for themselves. The closest we've come to actively informing the public about Linux is IBM's Linux commercial in 2001. If we could raise $5 million, we could make a 30 second ad during the Super Bowl. Just saying. Not exactly our "clientele," but it would be more than what we're doing now. The main hurdle right now is HARD INSTALL. Stop using VirtualBox and WSL people; you're making Linux look like an "fun little emulator" or an adult Atari/Vtech computer for when you're bored.
And a year later we know the answer is "No". For me, core reason is not the desktop as such, but interoperability with other systems. Why is setting up Samba such a pain in the you know where and the very few GUI tools for Samba, well, all suck? Add to that the driver issues that are about as bad as those on Win 10 and the rapid dropping of support for older hardware. Oh, and as worse is documentation and decent GUI tool availability. Yea, I want step by step guides and a GUI. It's 2017! The time of manually editing config files in some editor and being told to change a dozen rows of code and the recompile are to be over.
I do enjoy using desktop Linux on my 35$ Pi. As capable as a big PC for light office work and web use.
...most people are just not going to switch or even try Linux for that matter. It will never be the year of the desktop. Sadly. People are creatures of habit. Try getting a young person to stop using facebook for instance. It's never going to happen. The people that just moved in next door to me don't even have a computer, their face is stuck into their "smart" phones every 2 minutes of their day. It's pathetic really.
Gnome hasn't handled multiple X sessions on the some home directory for 6+ YEARS. /tmp and set XAUTHORITY breaking X11 across the network.
Latest Gnome needs much hoop jumping to work without a 3d video card.
KDE got clever,. copied the xauth files to
XFCE now barfs on multiple X sessions on the same home directory.
There is something fucky when the Linux/X windows desktop can no longer handle a role it's filled for the past 30 years.
This means that desktops are going to be more expensive, doesn't it?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
These were reasonable enough, you can expect binary compatibility for most apps across various versions of libraries, there are very few cases where compatibility is broken, and then the OS keeps older versions (.so.2 etc). The kernel is the only case where this breaks down.
no. Open Source can not create a well integrated product. Only base technology.
A Desktop OS requires backward compatibility, and a single decision point for User Experience. Not a cacophony of voices and coder primadonnas.
Stop talking and make software that works. Merry christmas.
Had GNUStep been used for GNOME (it was the GNU project's official toolkit in 1996) and the work put in to complete it:
1) Linux vendors' resources wouldn't have been wasted in all the work of developing three major versions of GTK plus Bonobo, rather than delivering a better user experience.
2) The API instability for application developers caused by the three major versions wouldn't have happened.
3) The Apple resurgence would have helped by creating a bunch of desktop software reasonably practical to move to Linux, what with Linux providing the same OpenStep-and-POSIX APIs as the Mac.
4) Gnome UI designs would have been constrained by expectations evolved around the developed-for-Macintosh apps, preventing unusable idiocy from UI "innovation".
I'm at a different machine right now, but mine is an i7 or i9, 8 cores at 3.something G. Even throttled back below 2G due to heat issues[1] it rarely slows down and if it does it's usually IO bound[2] - even running SAP. Exception is transcoding videos, but even then it can do four in parallel easily.
[1] Stock Intel coolers wank cats for a hobby. January sales coming soon...
[2] OS is on an SSD already. I suppose I could get some extra disks in a RAID if it gets really bad.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Is it possible that fight for Linux to to take over the desktop is the wrong fight, or at least not the fight that should be fought first. Maybe the fight should be "open source applications". Windows comes on the most PCs, and most PCs are packed with a bunch of shitty applications no one uses. Why not try to start to convince users in a major way that open source on Windows is a good alternative. If the end users start to fall in love open source applications on the desktop and were educated on why it is good they were open source you could then begin to explain Linux vs Windows to them. It's like trying to sell them an engine. Car dealers tell you how great the radio is, the safety features, the built in nav system. The dealers sell you on the "applications" of the car, not the engine. Who cares where the engine was made if the car has the "applications" you want. I'm not saying I want Windows around, I'm saying that we can't just walk up to people and say "Linux is great, it has a (example application)". Windows has a (example application) too, every OS has lots of applications. Let's talk about what is open source and what is not.
Sent from my TARDIS
I abhor the dumbing down and obfuscation of major components (systemd, for example) in the name of 'MORE USERS OMG!!!'.
systemd is about controlling linux distributions, NOT about dumbing down linux. I have been using it exclusively since the late 90s, and it doesn't make things easier. It makes them harder and less simple. I've used lots of distros, and settled on Mint XFCE. I was quite content with it until systemd came around. Now I can't cleanly shutdown my machine, ever. It hangs for minutes at a time. Try explaining THAT to the average user. If it just worked, then there could be an argument for dumbing it down.. but I do agree with the obfuscation part. Maddening. I think systemd can lead to a better linux desktop, in the same way Trump can lead to a better America - by showing exactly how bad it can get so we do the opposite.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Most Linux DEs are extremely limited and expect you to google a terminal command for a lot of settings. It's not uncommon for the GUI to omit some pretty basic settings such as monitor refresh rate or mouse acceleration.
https://linux.slashdot.org/sto...
Enough already! Let this idea just die. There will never be a year of Linux desktop unless a company like Google or Microsoft decides to bring "accessible to masses" Linux desktop.
OS makers have realized that their OS will also run on mobile devices so they can't endlessly take advantage of the higher cpu speeds and massive amounts of memory that are out there but not universally available. Look how Windows 10 runs on pretty modest hardware, as an example.
I have few linux desktops and all I can say is that graphics and wifi drivers have bugs and just these two are no-go for any serious desktopping.
I cant download movies over bittorrent because of wifi bugs and I have proper intel wifi.
I cant use desktop for more than a day because graphics becomes fuzzy and I have standard intel graphics.
I have 3 laptops and all of them have intel wifi and graphics and all of them have these issues.
Just to put this discussion in some perspective:
ChomeOS has a 3.3 % usage share compared to Linux's 1.47.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Yup, it was 5 years since I last built a machine.
But the Ryzen CPUs were compelling.
The 1600X is a sweet spot, all the single core speed of a top of the line 18900X, But with 75% the cores and only 50% the price, it is a real value.
!2 threads, I love watching squashfs take 1100% CPU on top !
2017: https://www.datamation.com/open-source/is-2017-the-year-of-the-linux-desktop.html
2016: http://beerendlauwers.be/posts/2016-08-14-year-of-linux-desktop.html
2015: https://www.infoworld.com/article/2844225/will-2015-finally-be-the-year-of-the-linux-desktop.html
2014: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=164133
I've gotten fairly comfortable with Linux over the last year because of my work. From an end user perspective, it's just awful. This is Ubuntu, so insert your preferred linux distro and tell me why it doesn't suffer from all these problems because you compile your own kerenl, yada yada.
* I've had the GUI file system crash on me multiple times. FAR more than Windows ever did. .deb, a .run, or a .sh file to install it, and which do I want? Or should I use apt-get? (Yes, I know the difference, but for a first time user it is bewildering)
* If I view a folder with more than a few hundred pictures, the file system just freezes for a while waiting for all the files to be recursed.
* Many times you need a terminal open for whatever you are doing, so if you have multiple windows active, you likely need a terminal for each of them (granted this is more development centric, but why they haven't found a generic way to dock a terminal to a GUI window natively is beyond me)
* Copying to USB will claim to be finished, but don't dare take out the USB - you must use "Eject", because the OS isn't really done writing yet.
* Installing video drivers that aren't part of the current apt-get is an interesting experience, sometimes requiring you to exit the GUI completely. Also, why is there a
And kids are really going to type up their book reports on a fucking phone, righto.
The, "HURR PEE SEE IS DYING" crowd are fucking morons. End of story. The PC isn't going anywhere - it's been fully adopted.
People aren't "giving up" PCs for phones/etc., they're merely buying phones. They already have a PC sitting in the house.
I love Linux and I've been using it on my person servers since 1998, when I was first introduced to it. I tried this year to fully switch to Linux on the desktop and I just couldn't. I end up spending an extraordinary amount of time and effort to get things running correctly. Most of what this blog states is true, I believe, except that Apple is a detriment to Linux. In fact, I believe it's a positive. There are people that moved to Linux because while they bought into the anti-Microsoft sentiment that is driving Apple sales, they don't want to buy expensive hardware just to get OSX.
... before being a desktop OS becomes strategically irrelevant?
I would argue that most modern desktops are overdesigned. They are conceived as a kind of central information switchboard for digital life, which made sense in 2000. But today all that handy-dandy crap is in your phone, which makes more sense.
What you need on your desktop is haven from all that crap. A distraction-free place to concentrate on things. That's why I use i3.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
That one of the individuals behind the abomination that is Gnome 3.* is wondering about it. This aside, 2018 is not going to be the year in the desktop for Linux. It will never be, all the more so since the powers-that-be in the community keep pushing the Gnome and (to a lesser extent) KDE monstrosities. But, that is a good thing, at list for many of us. We can still use alternative desktop systems that do everything that we want or need. And, by maintaining the status quo, the bad guys will carry on focusing on the Windows desktop. For me, and many like me, this is an ideal state of affairs. In this light, let me be the first to encourage the Gnome and KDE people to keep up the good work, and to give my thanks to MS.
I suspect the market will stay large enough to keep prices at commodity levels for some time to come. We're still probably talking about a potential market of hundreds of millions of PCs worldwide, just not every human on earth like the smartphone market. It's more likely that the number of PC manufacturers and sellers will shrink.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
This year I did my first linux install for home use in about six-eight years. I was Lubuntu on an Acer laptop. OOB the trackpad wouldn't work without a change to grub and I still can't get it to suspend/wake properly.
Linux is not ready. It needs manufacturer support.
If they are like my kids, they have Chromebooks. You can call them PCs if you like, but they are very locked-down (and thus the appeal to resource-starved school IT departments). They have school accounts that they can log into from home. When my daughter broke her Chromebook, she simply logged in to my son's and did her assignment.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
i lost count of how many non-technical friends bought cheap ($100-150) linux-based netbooks and then quickly stuffed them in their closets when when the novelty of 'cheap' failed to overcome the paucity of applications they were familiar with.
What killed the Linux netbook was Microsoft making windows (eventually) free for netbook hardware (based on screen size, included memory, etc).
Nowadays, Windows 10 is free (as in beer) for any computer user with a valid windows 7 or greater license, I find it very hard to imagine less-useful Linux hitting even the seemingly easily-achieved level of 10% desktop market share.
Ken
Gnome 3 is going to scare newbies away from linux
We need to convince people to give up gaming.
https://gamequitters.com/
Been hearing this for 20 years and it's the same answer: not enough applications, especially specialized apps like AutoCAD, and no one wants to update 30 foundation packages to install a simple application. You install something on Windows and it just installs (or installs what foundation libraries it needs first). You install an application on Linux and you better have an afternoon free. Unfortunately, too many people in the Linux world are hobbyists and don;t get it that the rest of us have work to do and just need something that works.
Chromebooks are Linux.
So are TiVo DVRs. What they have in common is that their userland locks the user out of doing several classes of task.
Now that virtually all apps are moving to the Linux-powered cloud
I ride the city bus to and from my day job, and buses in my city do not provide Wi-Fi to riders. Let me know when I can run apps that have "mov[ed] to the Linux-powered cloud" during the commute without having to spend hundreds of dollars per year on a cellular Internet plan on top of what I'm already paying for Internet access at home.
Also let me know when specialized apps, such as machine-level debuggers for NES ROMs, have "mov[ed] to the Linux-powered cloud". I currently use FCEUX in Wine to step through instructions in the video games that I program for my second job.
Developer mode? More like "by turning on the device and pressing two keys as prompted, someone can erase all your unpushed work" mode.
When Hurd or Genode reaches a state where it boots and supports more than 50% of all hardware (probably by sucking in drivers from Linux), either of them will take over the desktop, and fix security, all in one fell swoop. It'll shock everyone when it happens, including me, if I'm still alive by then.
Capability based security is something everyone desperately wants, but doesn't know about existence of. Years remain for the veil to be lifted.
So the prophecy is written, yet again.
I am not sure its true. Desktop sales may be dwindling, but that is what you expect when the useful life of a machine is extending from three to ten years*, and the market was already saturated. If you want a desktop, you probably already have one. Even in the third world. However, that might well be 20 billion desktops, and in ten years time, may well be 22 billion desktops.
A desktop is NOT a tablet. Just like an SUV is NOT a motorbike. They solve different problems.
And really, the problem is not KDE is different from Gnome, any more than there is a problem that Ford is not Nissan. There may be a problem that granny can't tell a Ford from a Nissan, but my 90 year old Mum refused to use a Windows machine. She wanted a Mac. My sister in law said "My computer is all messed up -can you fix it?" and I looked at it. It had installed Windows 10 while she was asleep, and was having a booting frenzy as it installed a million "updates". I said No. "I cant fix that. If you like, I can install Linux like I use". She said "I thought your machine was much more expensive than mine. I said "No, it was much cheaper". She agreed to have Linux on it, and has used it happily ever since. If she wants to print something, she emails it to me, like she always did. She has her own printer, but the ink dried up from lack of use in 2014.
*The last place I worked had quite a number of machines that were approaching their 11th birthday. We joked that they were now old enough for secondary school. I think the company gave then all 10/100 Ethernet cards as birthday presents.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
It's not going to be some massive switch in some year. It's going to be a slow adoption over time. Linux was my preferred desktop over 10+ years ago, but I've never been a big Windows user. But it's not like someone is going to go into BestBuy and say "Hey, that's a nice Linux system there!" and walk out with it. It's going to happen because users like us are going to promote it. One user at a time.
First, I use Linux on several machines, but they aren't desktops. I have my RPi3 devices, I have a re-purposed laptop. Each do specific things. Second, I will not adopt Linux desktop for a number of reasons that might seem trivial but really aren't: - XBox One streams to Windows 10. When I'm sitting in my living room with my wife and she's watching TV, I will stream a game to my laptop. - More games. I've experimented with Linux on my primary machine and have yet get any of my games to work on Linux/Wine/PlayOnLinux. I've followed every guide for getting them to work and run into too many issues. Linux Steam (and the SteamOS) are so limited to be laughable. - Online clients that don't work on Linux. I have 2 online services that are critical to me and there are no Linux clients for the services. No, they do not work with Wine. - My employer uses MS Office. Believe it or not, no matter how close you get, the boss still doesn't like Libre Office docs and presentations that have been converted. In fact, using the office templates, documents created at home on Libre then sent to work required such a heavy amount of work, the time saved doing it at home was wiped out. Now, I do keep a very specific security distro on a USB stick. I use this while traveling. It allows me to reach very specific web services that would not be reachable unless I was hauling a work laptop along with me. Linux, while easy to use, will NEVER reach the desktop until these issues are cleared up.
First, let me say, Linux is not now, nor will it ever be “Ready for the Desktop” as we understand it today. I have excepted this fact and so should everyone else. Second, it does not really matter, nor has it ever mattered. Linux is not at its core a Desktop operating system, Linux is a development platform. Linux is used to build things, Desktop computers are just one of the things it is used to build. It does not happen to make a particularly good Desktop, and so what.
Linux has been used to build a lot of useful things, Servers, Phones, Tablets, DVRs, Cars. Windows is a good Desktop operating system, but it is a very poor development platform. This is why Windows Phones have not done particularly well and you don’t see much in the way of Windows driven anything, besides desktops. It is true, Windows Servers make up roughly a third of servers on the internet, but that is true of Linux as well and when you start talking about big iron mainframes, that is 98% Linux. In fact, I would say the world runs on Linux and it has for a very long time. Pretty much no one living in a first world country** can go a full day without coming in contact with a Linux driven device.
So, no Linux is not ready for the Desktop, but so what, it is extremely useful for many other things. A friend of mine, has said many times, pick the proper tool for the job. If your primary use for a Desktop is playing AAA games, Linux is not the system for you. If you have been using Windows for longer than 20 minutes and have no particular need or drive to learn Linux, then don’t bother. If on the other hand you are interested in doing something new or you got a Raspberry Pi for Christmas and you are looking to build something, then by all means grab a Ubuntu ISO and knock yourself out. I recommend starting with a virtual machine rather than blowing away your hard drive and living to regret it.
It's never going to be "the year of Linux on the desktop" until there are some applications that can do the work of things like Photoshop, Reaper, Logic Audio, AutoCAD etc. etc. etc.
All that seems to ever happen in Linux land is the devs spend all their time continually reinventing the desktop metaphor - and usually making a pigs ear of it by losing useful functionality, hiding options and generally making things crappier and more "simplified" (i.e. pandering to idiots)
Seriously nobody who uses the computer to do actual work gives a shit about the dekstop. The only things I care about are:
1 Can I manage my files easily using the file manager ?
2 Can I launch the programs I want to launch using either desktop shortcuts or a sane menu system ?
If the answer to those two questions is yes I could not give a shit what the desktop looks like. Get it out of the way and let me get on with using my programs thanks
Next week, the Gnome devs move the window buttons to the bottom left of the window. Ho hum. Next week they'll be back at the top right... then the top left... then back to the bottom left.
This is why it will NEVER be "the year of Linux on the desktop. No top quality programs for doing actual work.
/typing on my ipad
Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
Here comes the yearly "will 20xx be the year of Linux desktop?" :P
One would think that 10+ years of this would've been enough...
"going forward"
I stopped reading there, as that stupid phrase is a hallmark of a true bullshitter.
And third, even for those of us to need PCs, those PCs are actually lasting FAR longer than they used to now that we've hit a "fast enough" hardware threshold.
Exactly this. I used to do a wholesale upgrade about every 2-3 years with a couple major component (video card) upgrades in between. There is just no reason now. I'm on a Haswell i5 from 2013 and it's doing just fine. It's not just that PC speed is progressing more slowly, but software demand is also progressing more slowly. There are few things my computer doesn't do essentially virtually instantly, and then the difference between something taking 150ms or 300ms is trivial.
The only real use for a desktop now is for business use. Personal use of desktops is crashing.
You're forgetting a few other categories: gaming and creators. Smartphone or tablets really aren't a good substitute for these, as you really can't do equivalent things.
For the former, a PlayStation 4 console can "do equivalent things" so long as you are content with vanilla versions of games (that is, without mods). The latter are probably subsumed in "business use".
Nobody cares about everyday apps in Linux vs X.
[...]
Now that Windows 10 comes with a Linux subsystem for devs, there's even less incentive to not pick it over Linux.
Speaking of X, Windows 10's Windows Subsystem for Linux lacks an X server. Which third-party X server for Windows is any good?
Android is Linux on the Desktop. It's just palmtop instead. Android is winning/has already won.
"Could 20xx Be The Year of the Linux Desktop?"
Most people use cellphones for net access, but as people here (I hope) should know, using cell phones ensure everybody sees everything you are doing, no privacy
The death of the desktop = death of general computing, and I would not be surprised if that direction is being pushed by various companies. This means people will be using locked down devices where you have no freedom and are watched by all large companies and gov.
Loosing "General Computing" is even worse then losing Network Neutrality, that makes the NN struggle we are having irrelevant.
News of the death of the desktop have been largely exaggerated since the first affordable laptops came out... then when netbooks came out, then when ultrabooks came out, then when tablets came out, etc etc etc.
Here's the truth of the matter: Desktops are still a little bit less than half the market. And that's putting it against smartphones, laptops, tablets and all other computing devices, which adds up to a whole ton.
Yeah, try to get people to write their letters or school papers or university homework submissions on their tablet or mobile phone, see how well that works.
Also, no, the browser has not taken over the OS. Perhaps some fashionable bay area start-ups would like to think so, but that's really not the case.
The desktop is neither dead nor dying; at worst you could say laptop computers are being used more for desktop work. And Linux-vs-Win-vs-Mac-vs-others continues to be an important question on the laptop "desktops" just as on the desktop-proper.
all you need is browser, which is new desktop.
Let me know when the vast majority of web applications other than chat work offline. Otherwise, you end up needing two ISP subscriptions: a cellular ISP for mobile use of a laptop and a wired ISP for high-volume uploads and downloads without having to worry about data transfer metering.
And let me know when I can run tools for all responsibilities of my job through a browser. These include a pixel art editor, pixel art conversion to 8x8 character format, assembly language code editor, and assembly, linking, and step debugging of code for an 8-bit microprocessor.
This is absolutely true, their will be no "Year of the Linux Desktop" for the next ten years at least! I have been using Linux for over 25 years, it's not for most people, it doesn't have the manufacturer support, and quite frankly, manufacturers want it to go away so the few that support it don't have to anymore.
My wife uses Linux at home and doesn't even know what it is, she reads email, browses the web and uses Libre Office for office type stuff. If I asked her what Linux is she wouldn't know or care. Without me to set it up for her, she wouldn't be using it.
Any article which mentions "Year of the Linux Desktop" is just click bait. There is no possibility at this time or in the next ten years.
I've been an OSS user and advocate since, well, RMS's GNU EMACS in the early '80's, when I was booting BSD from floppies (struth!). When the tsunami that was Windows 3.1 arrived and I got my first hard drive, I was multi-booting using LILO. When KVM arrived, I shoved Windows into a VM and ran Linux natively (which made Windows run with much more stability). When I did have to run Windows natively (at work and on hardware lacking Linux drivers), I always had Cygwin installed.
Then Windows 10 arrived, with many significant cleanups and fixes, but also with WSL, the Windows Subsystem for Linux. The initial minimal implementation has expanded to become truly useful. I especially like being able to easily launch Windows and Linux programs from a common desktop. The performance hit was much smaller than I expected.
I removed my unused Linux VMs and Cygwin to free up space when migrating my main home system to SSD.
I haven't abandoned Linux! But it's mainly Raspbian and Ubuntu Core these days.
the only possible way Linux will gain ground is if you can run multiple OS's at the same time the same way we run applications at the same time. It has to be as easy as switching apps on a windows 8 taskbar. That would require a company like AMD to build it into the hardware/bios.
Would it be anything like Intel VT?
And if so, Microsoft would probably add a restriction forbidding virtualization of OEM licensed Windows. Oh wait: it already does. Pony up $119.99 if you want to run Windows other than on the metal.
I tried desperately to switch over to Linux Mint after Windows 10.
While tech savvy, yada yada, the continued nonsense of simple program installation is an EPIC FAIL.
Apps needs to be a one click, select settings and use format.
No desktop productivity user wants to command line a host of opaque just to read and edit a PDF.
Until this gets solved you might as well be using an Altair 8800.
Any progress getting os x software to rum on linux? Wine works very well for windows, i would think os x would be simpler. Imagine getting some big brands on board like adobe creative suite would push some users towards linux.
Still No
Yet another copy of the famous list of major Linux problems - too bad with many crucial omissions.
Hint: it doesn't matter. Oh yes, and unlimited growth for its own sake is the philosophy of a cancer cell.
For the vast majority of people, if they have a personal computer it's their phone -- and it's already running Linux (Android)! Normal lifetime due to forced obsolescence is 2-3 years, and the users really don't care what's in it as long as it handles calls, texts, email, and apps adequately.
Many others have a tablet, which is about the only computer type that's competitive among operating systems. Even there, it's mostly Linux (Android) and Apple; Windows is a bit player. Working lifetime may be longer than a phone, but not by much.
Stepping down the line, an even smaller number (but still large) of people have a need for a Real Computer running some kind of software for working or gaming (or, usually, both). The standard computer for that these days is a laptop, with an expected working lifetime of 4-5 years even though the hardware can usually go much longer. This is the point where Windows takes over, mainly due to the need (as mentioned by others) to be compatible with what's used at work and sometimes because a particular game simply doesn't work on any other o/s. Linux could make inroads in this part of the market if it could somehow stop fighting itself and make something that's as easy to install and use as Windows, and also run Windows software ... wait a sec, there's Mint with WINE ... but even that still needs to use the Terminal for some tasks (when was the last time that a "normal user" was required to use the command line in Windows or Mac?). But in effect this is only really active part of the "desktop" market these days.
Finally, there's the old-fashioned real desktop. A very small part of the current market, and arguably better used at home as a server in a closet for your home video/audio/home automation/etc. Yes, people still use them for ordinary personal computing (I still have one, well over 10 years old and still working fine, decently snappy with Win10 and (in a VM) Mint. Frankly, Linux can take over this entire market and it would make hardly a blip in unit count. It won't, because they turn over so seldom (viz my ancient beast) and, when replaced, commonly go laptop.
Didn't people switch to the console 15 years ago.
This may be true of vanilla versions of AAA games. But mods and indie games typically come to consoles later if at all.
and didn't well with a keyboard and mouse
USB game controllers work with a PC, be they generic HID controllers or XInput controllers (Xbox 360 and Xbox One).
Why are you trying to use a GUI anyway? Hell, at the very least, try a tiling window manager.
Real life isn't mentally engaging enough. I wonder what they're take is for people addicted to learning and thinking is. This is why video games attracted me in the first place. Video games are a "sport" that is not limited by my physical ability, but my mental ability. It took many years, but once I felt I reached my peak, I went from 8+ hours of video games per day to 0-2 hours per day. During my transition, I felt "lost" in that I needed something new to challenge me.
My new addiction is much more metacognitive. I've always been quite reflective of the way I thought as a means to quickly enhance my ability to game without the grueling task of lots of practice. Instead of just a means to an end, it has become my main focus. I've never much liked practice. Muscle memory can only be learned through practice, but mental challenges can be surpassed much more quickly by thinking on the subject than the haphazard experience of practice.
The presumption that everyone who installs it has years of linux technical experience coupled with never being able to get a straight answer about something on a support site.
Seriously, I've been a systems programmer since the 1970's and worked with at&t's 3b and vaxen with ultrix. Yet whenever I've installed a modern linux variant like mint or ubuntu, there's always a device that doesn't work right. Try asking how to get that to work on the relevant support sites and you're snobbishly asked to read 300 twelve page threads to learn for yourself. All that was needed was a different driver or edits to a file to make it work. The "If you don't know everything or can't figure it out on your own, f-you" is quite common and persistent.
Also, nobody who knows linux can explain anything to anyone else that doesn't have similar skills. I routinely go through a 'guide' to do something and find missing stuff. "Oh yeah, everyone knows that you have to do x, y and z. Its implied!"
I can get mature, reasoned responses for windows and max os questions. Guides for those tend to include ALL of the steps.
I'd have adopted linux for several machines in the home where the app demands are straightforward. However I found the opposite direction of chrome os to be perfectly satisfying.
They install what everyone else around them seems to install. That the explanation.
Don't underestimate business owners' propensity to waste resources mindlessly.
Personal use of desktops is crashing.
I am not sure its true. Desktop sales may be dwindling, but that is what you expect when the useful life of a machine is extending from three to ten years*, and the market was already saturated. If you want a desktop, you probably already have one. Even in the third world. However, that might well be 20 billion desktops, and in ten years time, may well be 22 billion desktops.
A desktop is NOT a tablet. Just like an SUV is NOT a motorbike. They solve different problems.
And really, the problem is not KDE is different from Gnome, any more than there is a problem that Ford is not Nissan. There may be a problem that granny can't tell a Ford from a Nissan, but my 90 year old Mum refused to use a Windows machine. She wanted a Mac. My sister in law said "My computer is all messed up -can you fix it?" and I looked at it. It had installed Windows 10 while she was asleep, and was having a booting frenzy as it installed a million "updates". I said No. "I cant fix that. If you like, I can install Linux like I use". She said "I thought your machine was much more expensive than mine. I said "No, it was much cheaper". She agreed to have Linux on it, and has used it happily ever since. If she wants to print something, she emails it to me, like she always did. She has her own printer, but the ink dried up from lack of use in 2014.
*The last place I worked had quite a number of machines that were approaching their 11th birthday. We joked that they were now old enough for secondary school. I think the company gave then all 10/100 Ethernet cards as birthday presents.
I upgraded my Dad's computer to Windows 10 and installed Start10. It looks the same as Windows 7. He doesn't notice the difference and can print off his own stuff... grin
Can I open a PDF and fill it it and save it? A tax form for instance.
Those who arrange Linux have apparently never heard of cooperation. (What did you say? Co-what??? Is that an English word?)
This story about Linux makes me laugh: The number of Linux distributions is declining. AMAZING QUOTE from that story of 2 years ago: "In 2011, the Distrowatch database of active Linux distributions peaked at 323. Currently, however, it lists only 285."
285 different ways to do one thing!!! "Only" 285? Quote from the parent comment: "You know Linux Desktop is a junk OS from the fact an app may require version 2.5 of a library and another one might require no more than 2.4, and Desktop Linux offers no way around the problem."
Linux has VERY poor documentation. A friend of mine said this perhaps 20 years ago: "It's free but you will spend at least a week getting it to work." So, Linux is NOT free. It is VERY expensive!!! VERY! If you are a teenager and like tinkering, and have nothing else to do besides play video games, the cost may be acceptable. Or maybe you are installing Linux on 50 computers. Otherwise probably not.
Windows is "spyware" and the documentation is often poor. But at least there is only 1 current version. Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. It's an OS that shows you ads while you are trying to work. But, at least at present, you can stop the advertising: 7 ways Windows 10 pushes ads at you, and how to stop them.
Could you go to prison for recommending Windows, a "spyware" OS? Oh well, there's that. You need a signed contract that the customer understands that Microsoft has control at all times. Or, you can deliver the "Enterprise" version, which Microsoft doesn't allow most customers to have; maybe that isn't spyware. Or, maybe it is: For real Windows 10 privacy, you need the China Government Edition.
But at least, with Windows, you won't be involved with the ENORMOUS complexity of Linux. One example: The Debian Family Tree. That's just one of the "family trees"! If you have a son, tell him not to make 200 women pregnant.
Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu Linux said: "many members of the free software community are just deeply anti-social types".
That comment by Shuttleworth on Google Plus is an example of Google being insufficiently managed. It apparently isn't possible to link directly to Mark Shuttleworth's comment. It's necessary to click on "View 173 previous comments" and search for "muppets". (Wow! Google Plus is an example of people liking to use a huge amount of Javascript. Why so much Javascript? Are they teaching themselves about Javascript?)
A long time ago, at a convention, I got into a long discussion with Mark Shuttleworth. I gave him a manual I had written about dealing with the social issues of technology. The only result? Shuttleworth criticized me for giving him a paper copy. He was flying home after the convention; I
Guys, it's been 18 years since we started this. We've held out hope, used the Linux Desktop through thick and thin. Through bizarre Redhat/Fedora, and Ubuntu updates that fuck everything. We've learned how to manage settings without ui's, dealt with poor and non-integration of essential services, compiled and hacked drivers, learned how to do our own kernel patches, become experts in virtualization. As Linux users, we possess a level of knowledge about the inner workings of computers that Windows users, even skilled ones couldn't hope for. In short, we've gradually learned to do absolutely everything the hard way, out of a devotion and dedication to the idea that one day, Linux might become the platform everyone else uses. All the while, there has been no large-scale adoption among software companies, or by normal users, with only a few notable exceptions. At scale, this just isn't happening. Nobody other than our moms and grandparents is going to adopt Linux as their Desktop OS, and it's probably better that way. It's time to move on, put our collective energy into something else. This bus isn't coming.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Enough time and money has been wasted on Linux, no one's ever going to use it. Let the die the same death as beos.
Can the same .deb file or the same .rpm file install on Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora? If so, what steps does the developer need to take to ensure this?
Chrome is also available on Linux for developing Chromebook applications.
I thought Google announced in August 2016 that Chrome for desktop Linux would no longer install or run Chromebook applications.
The Linux desktop is here, and it has been for a long time. Since about 2000, Linux is a useful desktop operating system, with a rich set of general purpose applications.
Unfortunately, Linux has progressed very little since 2000. In 2000, we had two credible office suites, and now, many splits and forkes later, we have about 10 - one as incomplete as the next.
Meanwhile MS Office has improved massively, and the 2016 version (office 365) is just brilliant for collaborative work. Anything on Linux seems at least 10 years behind in this respect. Windows even has a Linux subsystem!
But Linux offers more choice and more freedom, at no cost. So by all means use it if you value those.
As well as the vast majority of the internet and other servers use Linux. It might be deadish on the desktop but not on servers.
The main reason Linux doesn't get more traction is that the user experience and HI design flat out sucks compared to either Windows or macOS. And whenever someone complains about it, the response from the community is either to tell the complainer that it's not important, or to go write some code to fix it.
I don't even know how anybody could come up with such a dilemma.
It would be nice to see host-OS agnostic containers take off in a big way. It shouldn't really matter what OS you run on the bare metal of your system so long as provides paravirtualization services to allow containers to run with decent hardware acceleration and security.
With the daily work that I do, I used Windows 7 as my primary desktop OS with an array of Linux VMs to handle various tasks that I needed (mainly GCC access, because it works a fuckton better on Linux than through cygwin)
Now that Windows 10 has the Windows Subsystem for Linux, I have a perfect code compilation environment on my Windows box. I can do all of my programming on Windows and then use the WSL to cross-compile the code for the non-x86 platforms I'm targeting. I was seriously quite surprised that literally every single Linux utility that I use installed and ran without a hiccup at all under WSL. I really only started to do it as an experiment to laugh at Microsoft's attempt to integrate and thus fuckup Linux... but... It actually is decent, and works really well!
Proprietary Video Drivers.
where are the business apps? Where is SolidWorks? Autocad? Quickbooks? etc? I know of many many small businesses for instance that would switch if Quickbooks was available but it's not so there's that.
By the time it's true, desktops will be irrelevant.
So you didn't upgrade because your PC is fast enough and you think that is why others don't upgrade?
The year of Linux on the desktop is like the dawning of a new day. Some say it already happened because they already can see shadows, others will deny it, because they want to feel some kind of warmth which still hasn't arrived.
Right now, Linux has some flaws, but not all are an impediment for desktop use. And other OSes have flaws, too.
Also, the year of Linux will come for what? And for who?
It's obvious that the Linux desktop is a reality for people with higher technical prowess; even power users can use it somewhat easily. For them, it is more configurable than Windows or a Mac. It is enough for most work -- technical or not.
For others, there will never be a day when they need Linux. Their needs are so low that Windows is more than enough. Also, who will support them? Because that will suck. Eventually they'll perceive the Linux landscape is way more ample and will start asking about things which are way above their level -- specially because their level was kept low because Windows offers less opportunities for personal growth. Of course, Microsoft might go fully to the cloud and Office might start being offered on the Linux desktop, who knows?
In between are those who cannot accept a new OS -- there were people like that when the last paradigm changed (text screens to GUIs). People who could use Linux but will refuse until they're forced to. The reasons will be varied: beliefs about Linux not being ready, favorite applications not running (games, office etc.) or even just personal preference. We won't be able to argue with these guys, nor even tell which are sincere and which are paid trolls.
What we can do is keep using Linux on the desktop. This is our best contribution: to report the problems and solutions we find along the way.
For the first task, Linux is tremendously better than Windows/OSX/ChromeOS. For the second, it's still not relevant. Everything else is done in a web browser and underlying OS only gets in the way. The sad part is death of non-developer power users for whom OS would actually matter. Like on OSX, you used to be able to take a folder of photos, automatically apply same effects to each by driving normally UI app with Javascript, have the results encoded into a DVD slideshow and then burn the disc that will be waiting and ready when you come back from lunch break. Nowadays people just do things manually and sacrifice quality or waste time. Even with word processing, Latex can better ensure uniform, error-free formatting over hundreds of pages than manual menu choices in Word. But, intelligence seldom wins over apathy.
Most people now do their computing on mobile devices (laptops, phones, tablets). Outside of gaming and corporate use, desktops are becoming rare. And thus the phrase "Linux on the desktop" doesn't mean what it used to.
If you take it to mean Linux as the OS used most by the general public, that's pretty much already happened, though not in the way most Linux advocates wanted. Android is based on the Linux kernel (and you can add get most of the familiar Unix tools with BusyBox) If some of the open source compilers were ported over so you could compile traditional Linux apps, that would pretty much be it (my phone is more powerful and has more memory and storage than my PC from the 1990s when I began using Linux). But the idea of porting to a platform controlled by Google seems to stick in the craw of open source advocates.
forget "linux" on the desktop and focus on gnome and kde repeatedly throwing themselves off a cliff like suicidal lemmings (and unity which managed to actually kill itself) - they're terrible interfaces that don't let you get work done
No. It will never be.
For funk sake, why don't you urge /. to support unicode instead?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The general public already uses Linux every day on their mobile phones. Forget the desktop, Linux is already leading the way on the next frontier - mobile.
Leave the Desktop to Microsoft and Apple and concentrate on improving the experience on mobile devices. Many non-technical users today don't even have a desktop, they access the internet via mobile platforms.
Lesser one, Windows so I can play a game I've been playing since 2003. The other System 76 Meerkat. i5 7260U 8G Ram running Pop!OS.
I like the Gnome Desktop. Tweaks should now be needed. Keeping extensions, yes.
I've been able to convert people to ChromeOS, but the one time (a few years ago) I got someone to use Linux for a while, I had to convert them back to Windows to access the stupid printer they bought. Things are better now, but most people I know with computers spend 99% of their time in whatever web browser they use. Might as well be on a Chromebook.
My 2 cents.
The irony of this gnome blog post is that gnome3 just sucked so hard it killed the momentum of the successful Ubuntu distro who moved to Unity in response.
Why are you even still *asking* this?
that broccoli flavoured ice cream overtakes chocolate in popularity
Dont underestimate hipsters and/or millenials.
Hillary though.
Business and govt. keep using MS windows just because AD and Office.
I think govt. should push the ODT format for every document they handle, and then non MS office suites will arise.
You guys are such kidders
i7 has 4 cores.
i9 doesn't have a stock cooler.
However, you claim to have 8 cores and a stock cooler. You are a liar.
The problem is with all of the GNU crap that sits on top of it.
I explicitly said I was away from the machine and wasn't sure. If you say you're unsure, you're not lying - you're speculating. I don't memorise the specs of every machine I own or every CPU on the market because *I* 'm not an assbooger.
$ cat
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 26
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 950 @ 3.07GHz
stepping : 5
microcode : 25
cpu MHz : 1600.000
cache size : 8192 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 8
core id : 0
cpu cores : 4
apicid : 0
initial apicid : 0
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 11
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt lahf_lm ida dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid
bogomips : 6147.68
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
[...]
Satisfied? I mean really, don't you have children to molest or animals to torture, you waste of a good wank?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If Windows 8 or the spyware known as Windows 10 did not cause people to switch to a Linux desktop, what will?
As more applications move to the web that may help in that you will just need a browser.
In the corporate side windows does have great management tools, but they are crippling those as well.
One thing that isn't being considered is that a flagship smartphone can be run as a desktop replacement ( for basic tasks, email, basic spreadsheet, word processing, etc.) There are some Kita to connect a keyboard etc. If this takes off with Android then a version of Linux will have won.
If you want to see the issues look at Android, the problems with it are a good analog for the problems with Linux.
And you're just now catching up.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I think I am a very competent IT guy. I am a Linux / Cisco / Windows / Sun guy. I've been working with GUIs and CLIs forever (I am 37, so I've asked MSDOS to edit the config.sys and autoexec.bat as much asI have used pre-systemd Linux boxes.
Now that Windows 10 is here with its load of spycrapware, I've escaped from this espionage world by installing CentOS on my ASUS laptop. It's been working pretty fine for a long time (like 10 months), but now, trying to update the OS leads me to strange errors not even known by the CentOS guys themselves, and any software I'm trying to install give me some dependencies problems right when installimg.
So the reason why the LINUX DESKTOP is not happening is easy to understand: You need high paid folks for the simple task of updating the OS, and if you dare going the unsupported way, you're screwed since no one will support your crappy old OS. The update / dependency resolving system is as bad as it can be.....
Because Slashdot will support unicode at the precisely the same time as Linux will take over desktop: Never.
I first used an early version of slack back in the day, and ran some sort of Linux up until systems was forced on us. That's when I called it quits on Linux.
Red Hat worker and GNOME blogger Christian F.K. Schaller wrote why GNU/Linux failed to become a mainstream desktop OS...
The short answer to this bloggers question is: GNOME, but since he's one of those responsible, he can't see the obvious.
But that's also beside the point, that being that it doesn't matter at all whether a year is the "Linux on the Desktop Year". It's a perceived war that was never really fought and no one really cared about. Linux today runs on almost everything and is dominant in supercomputing, servers, embedded and mobile/phones. Those who want to use it on the desktop can and do.
I feel so sig.
I'd buy an Android desktop / laptop. Millions of apps to choose from and I already use every day.
Only boring people are ever bored.
I used one or another Linux distro as my desktop from 2000 until 2013 when a team I was on insisted on using some Mac collaboration software. So I got a Macbook Air. I just gave the Air to my daughter and an back using a Linux distro for my laptop.
In that time it has never had significant market share. Yet, somehow, all the apps I needed and all the interfaces with which I needed to interact were friendly enough to my distro that I could work without any problems.
So, if I've got everything I need and the developers are sufficiently motivated to keep it that way, why should I give a shit how much market share my OS has?
Every rule has more than one consequence.
Just like practical fusion power, popular desktop Linux is almost here.
And unlike practical fusion power, it's less than a year off, not a couple of decades away.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
So long as no-one is in control of the whole desktop stack you can't get a coherent experience and direction. Apple controls the whole stack they use. OSS runs around like headless chickens in all directions - it sorely lacks a Linus who can jump up and shout "eff you" when someone gets too creative.
Take something like the Datatypes from AmigaOS (assuming a more modern and updated take on what they can do): Who would institute this framework and enforce it upon all and sundry desktops around the globe? Where does it enter the software stack - at the X level or further up like KDE/Gnome or even further out (possibly like a server in X style)?
As a former manager I can give you four reasons that Linux won't become the mainstream desktop. Word, Excel, Outlook, Active Directory.
I too have tried to use Linux as a desktop for extended periods. But when I try to share documents with the vast bulk of people (who are of course using MS Office), pain ensues. Formatting, fonts etc all break. LibreOffice is NOT an adequate replacement for Word - the lack of an outline mode alone is enough to have me fork out money for Office.
Now talk to your accounting staff - see how many want to try to reimplement 50-60 or more spreadsheets in a new language....and see how quickly you' shown the door.
Outlook may be a piece of crap, but it does bring all that functionality together into a useable, if aggravating, bundle. Gmail is the closest I've found to a replacement, and even phones are moving up in that space, but Outlook still has its place.
And then there's Active Directory. I'm a (now-lapsed) RHCE, I've implemented 3 different LDAP systems, and AC is the ONLY one that was worth the pain. There's a reason RedHat offer Ad integration. It just works.
The reality (as Munich found out) is that the upfromt cost is the least of the problem. If I use MS Office, I can virtually walk out ont he street, grab the nearest person. and have someone half-functional in 30 minutes. If I use Open Office, Libre Office,.... I will have to search for someone barely capable, pay them more, and have and pay for the interoperability issues when I deal with clients. This is the real cost. (No, WINE is not an adequate solution - try installing a .NET application)
Quote from a comment to another story: "GNOME 3 and systemd have managed to destroy even Debian GNU/Linux."
You're forgetting a few other categories: gaming and creators.
I love how the Desktops are dead crowd seems to think that new and awesom apps for them to consume on their wave of the future smartphones just show up like manna from the heavens.
Sorry consumers, someone actually has to make the things you think just happen.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
As long as upgrading a browser or copying a file to a USB requires a degree in computer science, Linux will never make it to the mainstream. Now let us define "mainstream"... :)
Yeah, the "remnant" of the desktop PC market.
Every time I see statements like the OP's I ask "what about the people who use {photoshop/premierepro/equivalents} as their income-producing software?
People have a tendency to think that what they are using a device for is the only thing devices are used for. They even think that whatever they are using just somehow popped into existence, perhaps like Zero Point Energy Fermions.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
There term "Unix" implies a certain set of tools, and indeed a certain set of design principles. Android had neither those tools nor those design principles.
Hell, Mac OS X also lacks them increasingly, as Apple is slowly abandoning or forsaking it's Unix roots.
Using Men-with-Guns to coerce people is the solution of an incompetent, uncivilized person.
Next Year: The Year of the Linux Desktop since 1997.
The only reason Linux hasn't dominated has to do with marketing. People buy things all the time not because they are better, or have killer features, but because someone convinced them that is what they really wanted. Just look at some of those things that people think are a weakness of Linux, the diversity of desktop environments for instance,e and turn that around and make that a strength, the customization of the desktop environment.
After getting outsourced from a job where Windows was mandatory in 2013 I chose a career in Drupal back-end development. The first 2 companies I worked for gave me a Macbook Air and Mac Mini, but most of the applications were cloudbased and on the second job I worked 4 days per week from home on my Linux Mint PC.
In 2016 I got a job at a company where all employees were allowed to choose their own machines as long as they were Mac or from one brand of locally built (or rather configured) laptops. As I hate laptops for their unproductive design choices I also noticed the tiny NUC PC they offered, so I choose an NUC with Core i3 and 16 GB memory, and put Linux Mint on it. Unfortunately the job only lasted a few months, but the NUC held its ground against the Windows and Mac laptops, never overheating or even turning on the fan unlike the older MacBook Pro's.
A few weeks ago I found another job at an all-Mac startup. I was offered a top-of-the-line MacBookPro, but said I wanted something costing only one-third. Pleasantly surprised by the low price, they bought me exactly what I asked: a NUC with Core i3, 16 GB memory, 256 GB SSD, wireless keyboard and mouse and a 43" 4K monitor. Especially the 4K monitor is hugely productive as it offers something 2 side-by-side monitors don't have: vertical space. Long database tables, tall web pages, seeing a lot of code lines, it saves me so much time on scrolling. And at 43" there is no need to zoom in.
Linux Desktop lost its chance. It's easier to appear an Android PC for the desk than Linux take its place. Oops, already did: http://www.jide.com/mini (I just quickly googled something, this was the first result). No matter how nice, beautiful and functional, people do not want Linux Desktop in their desk. It's a great OS, I worked and played a lot with it, and also with Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and so on, but Linux won't be in people desks at homes.
More reasons:
- Too many distributions confusing possible users
- Poor office solutions to replace Microsoft Offfice