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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.
I can't imagine developing software directly on a phone or tablet.
I prefer a comfortable and ergonomic workspace with three monitors, a Model M, good lighting and my Herman Miller chair.
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.
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.
Computers are a passing fad. They will be gone within a few years.
The real problem is that each time you upgrade:
If ALL of these were fixed, and the settings were all in one place called settings, and not in "Gnome tweeks", "software centre", "systems administration", "gay tweeking place", and "Other places carefully hidden so you won't find them" Linux would have 200% of the Windows market, However, I agree fixing the video drivers so they actually work might help too. I suspect gaming probably accounts for less than 0.5% of the Windows market. Most people use their phones or a console to game.
As it is, I am moving to wvfm95 on NetBSD.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
"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
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.
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.
Vast majority of people use computers for utterly menial tasks for which they simply do not actually need a computer. Most people are not âcomputing creatorsâ, creators that can appreciate what a full computer offers are a tiny minority.
Your argument supports the assertion that Linux will take a bigger share of the desktop, because Linux users are more likely to need a desktop. Sure, the overall desktop market is declining, that's Microsoft's problem. Linux's share is growing, including in absolute numbers.
Hey, have you noticed how motherboard makers often mention Linux on their sites now? Not at all uncommon to find explicit Linux items in bios configuration now. Hardware vendors with Linux source code posted on their sites, or funding Linux driver developers. My how times have changed!
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
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 what was the Size(I mean physical)/prize/ power requirement for computers at that time? But yes with the benefit of hindsight, IBM should have qualified that a bit, Maybe something like "We estimate a world-wide demand of approximately five computers, within the next 10 years". I The context in which thís was said may also be important "After all, when IBM's Thomas Watson said "computer," he meant "vacuum-tube-powered adding machine that's as big as a house." It's fair to say that few people ever wanted one of those, regardless of the size of their desk." Source. In that context I would personally agree with mr Watson, at least he seems a lot less off the mark
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
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.
I've seen them. Old banks had them, and oil companies still do.
Some of the big and old industries spent billions on them. Sure, they pay $1M a year for a mainframe lease to run software that someone could write in a weekend for a PC, but they spent billions on it, doing it when it was hard. They don't want to throw that away. And $1M a year is a small price to pay for the risk reduction. For some.
Learn to love Alaska
And a year later we know the answer is "No". For me, core reason is not the desktop as such, but interoperability with other systems. Why is setting up Samba such a pain in the you know where and the very few GUI tools for Samba, well, all suck? Add to that the driver issues that are about as bad as those on Win 10 and the rapid dropping of support for older hardware. Oh, and as worse is documentation and decent GUI tool availability. Yea, I want step by step guides and a GUI. It's 2017! The time of manually editing config files in some editor and being told to change a dozen rows of code and the recompile are to be over.
I do enjoy using desktop Linux on my 35$ Pi. As capable as a big PC for light office work and web use.
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.
Yeah, in a way Linux (and if you want to lump Apple in there, UNIX in general) has already won. Almost every tablet, every smartphone, every smart TV, and every car system runs unix. Windows owns the desktop/laptop space - but so what? Even there, Chromebooks account for 50% of education sales - how long before certain businesses realize that most of their workers don't need more than a Chromebook, and all the kids coming in already know how to use them?
If, on the other hand, you mean that people will suddenly start using Ubuntu/KDE/Gnome or what have you, then yeah I think you are probably delusional :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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.
Yet another copy of the famous list of major Linux problems - too bad with many crucial omissions.