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Is The Linux Desktop In Trouble? (zdnet.com)
"I believe that, as Microsoft keeps moving Windows to a Desktop-as-a-Service model, Linux will be the last traditional PC desktop operating system standing," writes ZDNet contributing editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols.
"But that doesn't mean I'm blind to its problems." First, even Linus Torvalds is tired of the fragmentation in the Linux desktop. In a recent [December 2018] TFiR interview with Swapnil Bhartiya, Torvalds said, "Chromebooks and Android are the path toward the desktop." Why? Because we don't have a standardized Linux desktop. For example, better Linux desktops, such as Linux Mint, provide an easy way to install applications, but under the surface, there are half-a-dozen different ways to install programs. That makes life harder for developers. Torvalds wishes "we were better at having a standardized desktop that goes across the distributions."
Torvalds thinks there's been some progress. For software installation, he likes Flatpak. This software program, like its rival Snap, lets you install and maintain programs across different Linux distros. At the same time, this rivalry between Red Hat (which supports Flatpak) and Canonical (which backs Snap) bugs Torvalds. He's annoyed at how the "fragmentation of the different vendors have held the desktop back." None of the major Linux distributors -- Canonical, Red Hat, SUSE -- are really all that interested in supporting the Linux desktop. They all have them, but they're focused on servers, containers, the cloud, and the Internet of Things (IoT). That's, after all, is where the money is.
Linux desktop distros "tend to last for five or six years and then real life gets in the way of what's almost always a volunteer effort..." the article argues. "It is not easy building and supporting a Linux desktop. It comes with a lot of wear and tear on its developers with far too little reward."
His solution? Having a foundation create a common desktop for all Linux distros, so the Linux world could finally reap the benefits of standardization. "This would mean that many more Linux desktop developers could make a living from their work. That would improve the Linux desktop overall quality.
"It's a virtuous cycle, which would help everyone."
"But that doesn't mean I'm blind to its problems." First, even Linus Torvalds is tired of the fragmentation in the Linux desktop. In a recent [December 2018] TFiR interview with Swapnil Bhartiya, Torvalds said, "Chromebooks and Android are the path toward the desktop." Why? Because we don't have a standardized Linux desktop. For example, better Linux desktops, such as Linux Mint, provide an easy way to install applications, but under the surface, there are half-a-dozen different ways to install programs. That makes life harder for developers. Torvalds wishes "we were better at having a standardized desktop that goes across the distributions."
Torvalds thinks there's been some progress. For software installation, he likes Flatpak. This software program, like its rival Snap, lets you install and maintain programs across different Linux distros. At the same time, this rivalry between Red Hat (which supports Flatpak) and Canonical (which backs Snap) bugs Torvalds. He's annoyed at how the "fragmentation of the different vendors have held the desktop back." None of the major Linux distributors -- Canonical, Red Hat, SUSE -- are really all that interested in supporting the Linux desktop. They all have them, but they're focused on servers, containers, the cloud, and the Internet of Things (IoT). That's, after all, is where the money is.
Linux desktop distros "tend to last for five or six years and then real life gets in the way of what's almost always a volunteer effort..." the article argues. "It is not easy building and supporting a Linux desktop. It comes with a lot of wear and tear on its developers with far too little reward."
His solution? Having a foundation create a common desktop for all Linux distros, so the Linux world could finally reap the benefits of standardization. "This would mean that many more Linux desktop developers could make a living from their work. That would improve the Linux desktop overall quality.
"It's a virtuous cycle, which would help everyone."
Standardizing the user interface is what makes a desktop useable.
... again (the guy is just an computer nerd: he's views on the real life are, mostly, laughable)
... then says "Android are the path toward the desktop" because Linux desktop environments are fragmented? It's a derp. Android is just as fucking fragmented if not worse, and it's almost device locked-in.
Instead of small slices of a huge pie.
Well, that's what we get when corporations lead the development.
I literally only check email, browse, watch some media and use terminal.
Then I have Plex, sonarr, radarr, lidarr and Sabnzbd for my locally running instance.
I have no idea what this article is talking about.
Android is literally designed for retards and Microsoft is just a spyware os
Haiku is a completely separately developed desktop OS, that rose from the ashes of BeOS after MS killed it, it wouldn't take much to make it compete directly on the same level as Linux and Windows.... mainly graphics driver porting.
It has a Posix layer and supports QT pretty decently in addition to it's very nice BeAPI framework.
And one thing that is *very* clear there is that it is a standardized desktop OS with sane defaults.
I think the potential for doing some really cool stuff there will open up once they release R1 in a few years most likely.
Let computer people make great computer code again.
New CPU and GPU designs need the most advanced new code. Code that is tested.
Let the smartest people write code and more code.
Time on the politics and virtue signalling of a CoC is not time used for new code.
It adds noting to code and takes time away from ver smart people who could be doing actual code related work.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I think we should have a VM microkernel. Then a few drivers OSVM's under that. Then software OSVM's.
One VM is a dedicated desktop VM with realtime prioritization. It combines framebuffers from all other apps. Simplicity. That desktop VM does not need to be updated unless you actually want to. You can indeed run several desktop VM's. The video driver itself is in another VM.
I frankly am not sure about the actual answer. Kernel seems to be potentially more "difficult" and "open to catastrophe" one of the two, to me at the least. However Linux kernel performs incredibly well, it is the most reliable kernel I have worked with, maybe with the exception of BSD kernel. While Torvalds is just one person he manages a very big, distributed, diverse team of serious programmers. So they as a team can produce a software that can hadle lots of various setups, different outside factors and perform brilliantly. I wonder why a similar situation/environment cannot be established on the Desktop front.
In my personal history, using Linux since 1993 or more likely 94, having started with Slackware (yes I am old..) I gave up trying to use Linux in my desktops a long while ago. I can define my professional positions with several different aspects however each and every one of them requires three main features. Any Linux I know of, tried to use as desktop, lacks one or two of them. These are stability, high performance and controllability/configurability.
I am truly sorry to see that the OS running my servers and I rely on deeply, cannot run my desktops.
And your solution is? If you say Windows I have a bridge to sell you.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/LInux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.
There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.
No.
What is it with these cluess articles recently?
Everyone who got into Linux*, knows that it is how it is, because it's *supposed* to be that way! It's a workhorse of an OS! That expects and is designed for *competent* users! For computer users!
A large Hilti that *will* drill through you head if you put it on your ear! Not an iKEA $10 drill!
It and BSD are the last of their kind left for US! Not for consumers!
So if you are a consumer, and expect colorful clickables, a padded prison cell, and being told what you "want", then please go use one of the many other consumer/toy OS es out there!
Don't come here, ruining our OS too!
You already ruined the Internet, since that Eternal September!
_ _ _
* and I mean writing shell scripts, editing config files, configuring the kernel amd init system, setting up packages, etc.
When you never had anything to lose in the first place.
Get bent.
Wow, you have just *proven* yourself incompetent, unknowledgeable. And retarded.
Linux desktop distros "tend to last for five or six years and then real life gets in the way of what's almost always a volunteer effort..." the article argues. "It is not easy building and supporting a Linux desktop. It comes with a lot of wear and tear on its developers with far too little reward.
Sounds like he remembers what happened when Gnome tried to make the desktop better.
There is not a single Linux "desktop". That is restricted, authoritarian Windows lore. For example, I use FVWM as "desktop" (properly called a "window manager") and that is not even tied to Linux, but available generally on UNIX and UNIX-like OSes. Hence the connection between a Linux "desktop" and a Linux distro the author is trying to make is pretty much meaningless.
In actual reality, Linux on servers and workstations will be around as long as there is hardware to run it. And that is not going away, especially as Linux is not limited to AMD64 in the first place and runs pretty well on slower hardware. And there will always be people that mistrust the cloud with good reason and that hence want their local, independent computing capabilities.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
MS didn't kill it. It's CEOs inability to get adopted by Apple killed it. They went with Steve Job's Nextstep, remember.
Unix is about the most, and nowadays only reasonable OS you poor kid have ever met!
Well-honed, and perfected over decades, to suit the actual computer user! (Aka.somebody who automates his work away. Not somebody watching cat videos in a [web] app *inside* am app [the browser]. Not somebody afraid of the black window with the blinking cursor.)
Look at Windows and macOS copying all its ancient features like they are innovations.
Please go consume another cat video on Reddit. Your tablet is not made for input anyway
BeOS is just the follow up to Amiga.
Pretty. Technically superior to the competition in many ways. Serves no market of any note.
Also see VHS vs Beta or laser disk. Or lcd vs 2nd gen plasma tv. Cassette tapes vs almost anything.
BeOS was DOA. I installed it. The last GA version not early crap. Useless.
Haiku? Inheritor of useless. It is dead. Get over it.
Your desktop choices are windows, Mac or Linux if youâ(TM)re nuts or have endless spare time to fuck around. And I say this as a Linux admin for 20 years.
Great for servers. But Linux will NEVER be a desktop platform without a real company commercializing it.
I disagree. You can now claim I am not "sane" and I can simply ignore you for the moron you are.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
SUSE supports the Desktop.
They even use superior KDE5 as the default DE.
Instead of following all the retards providing brainless Gnome by default and not caring about any standards (freedesktop, etc.) or user experience (which Gnome developers officially said they do not care about either).
All code should be released under Affero GPLv3, so that you cry your eyes out like the alt-shite baby that you are.
AC many skilled people only have so many hours in the week to work on complex and advanced code for free.
They can work on code like they did in the past.
They can keep up with changes in a CoC and respond to virtue signalling comments about code.
The CPU and GPU work has to be done so an OS can work.
Time used on a political CoC takes hours away.
Over years and decades a project slips further behind rapid tech advancements.
For politics? To allow for better virtue signalling? Thats not going to support an advanced OS.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Despite being a regular user of Xubuntu, I agree with Linus about preferring Flatpak over Snap for this reason: Flatpak docs refer to repositories, plural. A publisher could run its own repository. Snap docs, by contrast, refer to "the Snap Store", singular, and it is considered --dangerous to install a snap from any source other than Canonical Ltd.
But surely 2019 is the year of the Linux Desktop!
"There are too many different and diverse desktops."
"What should we do to solve the problem?"
"Create another one!"
It means you have a choice!
Eww, how disgusting, amirite? A single featureless lowest-common-denominator golden cage is much better for that average moron-by-choice (his only choice ever) out there who's afraid he could become an idividual! Like a real person!
I used to use KDE 3 with Compiz (for the window management power) and a self-written fullscreen launcher. So eat your heart out.
But it was mostly just sitting there, while I did the real work in terminal windows, using shell scripts, a shitload of small programs from many many independent sources, and plain text files.
On a kernel with my own patch set. (Since I needed the RT patches and a special musician's device supported.)
It’s called twm. Still works the same after 30 years.
He has become an old fuck and is clueless about the damn point he himself wrote his OS kernel for!
He basiclly opposes all the Unix principles that make computing nice and efficient, and supports all the idiotic cumbersome Eternal September moron stuff that got shoved in, that nobody but the Eternal September iDiots likes, who don't like Unix in the first place because they are not computer users but app users.
Most people use Gnome / KDE, but I use XFCE / LXDE / Icewm. WHY STANDARDIZE? We already have several killer desktops. This "holy grail" of standardization of the desktop is not going to win converts. Why? Because people want Outlook and Quick(en|books). They buy the special app they need and the app (mostly) dictates the platform. The "killer app" is going to be .. the apps!
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
Just curious: What can you not do with a - say - ubuntu desktop? I see no problems with stability, performance or configurability.
no taxation without representation!
It's not easy to use Linux desktop.
For example I need a firewall for Linux desktop which works similar to "Comodo Firewall". I'm not advertising it, so continue reading.
In Comodo FW, you can do:
block ARP snooping
allow/disallow each software
e.g.
block incoming if dest.ip is 192.168.200.1(self ip)
if software is firefox:
allow from 192.168.200.1 to outside, if dest.port is 443
deny all
fi
if software is thunderbird
allow from 127.0.0.1 to 127.0.0.1 port 9150
deny all
fi
block all else.
If you want to do that on Linux, you have to create user for each software and use 'iptables' for them. That's too hard for normal Windows user.
Until there are user-friendly software for Linux, no Windows user will move to Linux desktop.
I'll probably continue using Windows 8.
btw what do you recommend for Windows technical user like me, for Linux desktop?
Renting your OS has to be the barmiest idea ever... window as a service ... what a joke... (or should I say con...)
Needs to go where exactly?
You probably don't realize that the Unix philosophy powers all of the top supercomputers. And the majority of the servers that drive the internet. Spawning things like containers. And Android, the most prolific mobile operating system. So the PC desktop has been elusive to the majority. But that is really OK, because Linux and the philosophy behind it is bigger than the desktop. Much bigger.
P.S. Chrome OS is based on Linux too ... so when Linus talks about Chromebooks and Android as the path to the desktop, he's actually referring to just another offshoot of Linux.
Dumbass.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Hahhahahaha. Truth. Gas the idiots
I just want OS/2 back.
I want to solve fragmentation, so I propose a new option that no one uses now.
Why are we listening to Torvalds still? He is not the CEO of linux corp (thou he probably would) and does not represent the linux community. We are listening because of his name. Sooner or later, he will reveal himself as the egocentric selloff he is.
If you want to standardize on ONE and ONLY ONE way to install programs on Linux, that way MUST be to compile from source. Full stop.
C'mon, we all know that's what a Linux 'Desktop' needs.
Userland sucks anyway, the kernel is where it's all at right? Shove the desktop into the kernel where it belongs and it's game over!
In other news, my xfce desktop has remain the same for over a decade. I can install stuff, it shows up, I remove it, it goes away. No special 'installer' on top of the desktop, just the regular one the OS provides on the bottom.
I have been using Linux since I got a copy of TAMU Linux version 1.something in 1993 (mainly because it had X-windows). As I recall, despite much optimism, Linux on the desktop has always been in trouble.
Entire family haven't left the Chrome browser in months for work, home, entertainment, or education needs. This whole OS thing is a relic of an ancient religion. :)
Translation: I like tinkering, maybe you should like tinkering.
The actual fact is, only nerds like tinkering to squeeze some extra performance out of their system, or to make a system last longer than it should.
Linux and FreeBSD's biggest strengths are that they still work on 10 year old computers.
It will all be part of systemd soon.
After that the only thinking the user has to do is find the GUI they want and use the classic text editor they like.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
It is only power users and people who think they are smarter than they are that have a problem with Linux desktops. Mint Mate or XFCE is the best choice for most users. Works out of the box for any hardware I have thrown at it. Recent versions of Gnome, cinnamon, or anything else I have tried have driver issues or only work with new hardware configurations. Stick with the basics and linux desktops are great and as good or better than any Windows version. The problem is that power users or gamers always on the cutting edge are going to have problems no matter the os or hardware. I am an old fart using linux as a desktop since mid 90s with very few problems. 90% of people just need email and web and have no issues with linux using out of the box distro configuration. For me personally gnome 3 is unusable but probably fine for average user.
Are people still fighting that battle for having a Linux Desktop? Jeez.
Mint is actually good. Stop all this half assed duplication of effort and stand behind a superior distro to standardize desktop on.
Do one thing. Do it right. For a traditional graphical desktop user interface that usually means a mouse controlled window based system with menus, icons and dialogue boxes but the key design element is still text. The main reasons that Microsoft and Apple are more successful with their desktops likely include the usability of a consistent design theme for major functions and beautiful default system fonts. Aesthetically pleasing as well as functional outputs from minimal simple inputs. Accessibility is also important but function and form are intrinsically linked attributes.
This thread perfectly illustrates the point by the OP. Everyone immediately turned on each other claiming that "THEIR WAY was the ONLY way" and "all other opinions were shit." Everyone immediately went to discussing the underlying technology of their preferences vs the point that THAT is the problem. Nobody gives a flying **** if you've been compiling your own desktop environment and workflow for the past 30 years. Nobody cares that YOU like x package manager over y. Its irrelevant. You aren't more or less linux than anyone else. The Linux community is virtually without equal in its ability to cannibalize itself with infighting and elitism. The major survivors, Ubuntu, RedHat among a few others quickly realized that trying to unify the rabid base into any cohesive strategy was pointless and worthless. Too much vitriol. I'm not the biggest fan of Linus at times but he is on point here. Of course the opposing point of view that Linux doesn't need a standard desktop is just as valid. There are plenty of "easy button" Linux desktop solutions in the marketplace and a little bit of research will show that basically everyone can get almost anything working on nearly any flavor. Rant over
The discussion isn't about what you see on the desktop but how programs interact with it. Windows can be customized quite a bit but all the programs still work because all default functionality they expect is there. I can easily download and install programs. Android can look radically different on different platforms but my parents can go to the playstore and add apps and they always work. I can't say the same about any linux desktops. They are all a pain. Canonical made some huge strides here but it's still fragmented.
This is going to be a impossible. Look systemd
Fragmentation is the virtue that allows new developers to show up and scratch their own itch. Once upon a time, that was vaunted as the defining virtue of unpaid collaboration. When you start tilting the landscape towards "one size fits all" the surface area of viable itch-scratching decreases immensely.
These values live in fundamental tension.
Consolidation brings you economy of scale, diversity brings you new ideas, and satisfies the edge cases without loading every possible complication onto the consolidated effort. All the good times in open source happened when the community was large enough to support consolidation and diversity at the same time.
There are no easy solutions here.
I have been experimenting with a concept for some time now that I think could hold the solution to this (and many other problems).
Overview from the outside looking in: You can put together applications by attaching services, like Spell Checking, Web View, bitmap editor, RTF editor, CD burner, etc. Each service is provided as its own agent in the mesh. They can be run locally and/or remotely. Each agent may advertise through the mesh what is has to offer and what it seeks. The mesh matches these.
When you make local resources available (hardware and/or the services of agents that run on your hardware), you get paid in "promise" (a kind of digital currency for the mesh) for it. When you use others, you pay in promise. So, this also acts a kind of universal basic income for you.
With KDE or GNOME, you have applications with very non-intuitive names... some without features you need and others with. Why can't you just put together the kinds of services you want to do whatever you do based on what they provide? You don't need a strange name and a mascot. You probably don't need 90% of its bloated features. And you aren't using your computer's resources 90% of the time but sometimes you need more than you have.
I call this mesh concept "Solinova" (latin for "new sun"). The currency is always given in equal amounts of cash and debt. Half of your income goes first to any debt (automatically). I did many simulated tests on this and find that economy produces the best wealth distribution for all. It's not a crypto-currency so it's efficient but it's secure because every connection between "map" agents is differently encrypted (and keys regularly change.. and map agents sporadically move). The geography of the mesh is based on a virtual latitude and longitude (perfect for building a virtual landscape over with VR, too).
Also -- Is uses a Reputation Service to account for the quality of service agents. After using one, you may rank it. You also receive a ranking and your ranking of others is measured by how others rank you. This is to ensure fairness and no cheating.
And the services can actually be anything.. So not just software API-like services. It could also be accounting, counseling, tutoring, delivery of a physical product, etc.. anything.
Still working on it. I struggled a lot with security model. It's tricky when code is running on untrusted machines. I am using a mix of web services, web sockets, and UDP sockets.
Cheers,
Matthew C. Tedder
Adapting it to YOUR needs is *the whole point*
For 99% of desktop users, their needs are for it to just work, and work consistently, and when they want to install something they just click on the installer.
And most importantly, when they want to use a piece of software, it's available and doesn't require a bunch of fucking around to make it work.
Well incidentally, Ubuntu is the last Linux desktop I use. I had two occasions during which X environment caused serious problems, costing time and money. In one of the events display got frozen to death with no TTY fallback, one of the libraries in the system got corrupted, I somehow could recover the environment, reinstall system over itself etc. Data partitions in that time was healthy, so that event consumed probably two or three work days only. Naturally reinstalling Ubuntu itself does not take that long, but I needed to install several other software to setup my work environment, I needed to check if everything that seems to be OK is really OK...
In another event, after a short freeze and following crash with some desktop related logs in the system, details of which I do not remember, system rebooted properly, but one of the data partitions got corrupted with 100+ GB data on it. Fortunately data was several public databases that I can get from Internet, but as they require local processing as well, not just downloading, it took several weeks, probably more than a month, to get the system synced back to networks again.
So in short, Ubuntu's issue with me is not ability to do something, my servers are all Ubuntu for the last (probably) five years. But the stability issues in the desktop environment. If I "must" to use Linux on desktop, I would choose Ubuntu probably, but preferably I would not use any Linux for a graphic environment after two events I described above.
Problems with SuSe and Mandriva in the past was either more dramatic than those in some cases like sudden reboot and losing several hours of work in Eclipse twice in a day, or just terrible system performance because of background desktop indexer that OS updates keep reinstalling despite all my efforts to remove it from the system in one case.
See, I am a system manager by profession, although I worked in several positions in the past including network management, commercial management of IT and even as a Scrum Master, a few days ago I have realised that my old coworkers still consult me related to system management issues. So while assuming I know one or two things about managemet I do not think a "desktop" should need a system manager's professional experience in order to be kept alive and kicking.
Linux is now everywhere. From people wanting to save money to corporations using it. It may never hit 70% desktop share, but it has hit a point where a Linux Desktop will always be a viable solution for those that want it and it fits their needs.
I finally spent the time to learn tiling window managers and get comments that my desktop (awesome) looks like something from the 90s, but it works for me. There are enough awesome-wm users that there's a FreeBSD port and it's available for every popular Linux. If I search google for how to add a widget there are enough online resources to figure out the solution. And I'm a very small fraction of a fraction of Linux users.
I recently switched to pop!OS. Which is pretty well put together by Systems76. It's built on Ubuntu and has a LTS (18.04) that will be supported for a good while. (So it's "binary compatible".
Most major companies release a .deb of their software, even if it's proprietary. Nvidia releases drivers for both FreeBSD AND Linux. (Although CUDA is Linux / Windows only).
Arguing over desktop share is pointless at this point.
It's almost to the point where the *BSD desktop is the same way. Project Trident (https://project-trident.org/) is about where Linux was ~15 years ago.
hehe "professional"
"Old man yells at systemd"
Well systemd slightly reminds me SMIT in AIX which I did not love but need to admit it was useful back when I managed AIX. I am old school, started in Ultrix 4 series, so my habits are a hybrid of serious BSD plus some System V. I like to use kill and use some obscure scripts to launch each and every daemon in its own way. However after my initial negative reaction I now must admit that systemd seems to have the potential to bring much needed standardisation to Linux and is successful so far.. Hopefully you turn out to be right and Desktop also got stabilised and standardised, probably with systemd support. Meanwhile I am not holding my breath.
It is rumored the animated film, The Point (1971), informed Microsoft's Linux strategy. Further, I have it on good authority Microsoft has secretly contributed to at least half the Linux desktops. "A point in every direction is the same as no point at all." -The Pointless Man, speaking to Oblio around 15:30 in the film. "The Pointless man did have a point...he had hundreds of them, all pointing in different directions." https://www.youtube.com/watch?... If you think this is incredible, may I suggest it's more credible than believing the Linux community did this to itself? The Linux desktop fiasco reminds me of the takeaway lesson from the animated classic The Point (1971):
those are offshoots that are not GNU/Linux, Linus not a dumbass at all.
However I agree with you [sfcat] that the proposed solution of greater standardization of the user interface is misdirected.
I think it would be better to look at alternative financial models. For example, I think the main problems with Windows and OS X are both due to the focus on profit maximization and cost minimization, resulting in, among other flaws, an actual fear of innovations that might reduce profits. Ubuntu Linux is crippled by its big-donor financial model, making it too dependent on one donor's imperfect decisions.
My own favored solution approach would involve a different financial model focused on cost recovery and fair compensation for work performed. If a particular user interface attracts enough small-donor support to cover it's costs, then that's fine. If not, then the people who want to use that interface will have to look at alternatives, such as a different interface or trying to encourage more people to support the interface to cover the costs.
Mostly for time but also because I've said all of this before at excessive length, for now I'm just going to big you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Some aspects of running Ubuntu can get "interesting". I went through that valley some 11 years ago and was kindly directed in a forum to explore the next valley over, labelled "Mint". Well, 11 years and a dozen computers or more later, I am still with Mint. Give it a spin before you write off "Linux."
As for the main article - Linus is tiring of his child? The diversity is good - especially in desktop managers. Realistically this applies less so to the myriad install methods. The survival of the best rule is prevented from working out as corporates get behind their favourite homebrew installer method. Developers avoid Linux for this alone, and this I agree should get thinned out to one or two packaging types, maybe .deb and flatpak. But the second I say that, all the other disto families spew their coffee and raise their homebase flags. And that is the Achilles Heel of Linux.
Easy. He'll walk right in. Then, after taunting Comey, the Clintons, Podestas, Avenatti, Omar and their treasonous ilk behind bars where they belong, he'll walk out.
Probably stop at a McDonalds for a Big Mac, and tweet how great it is that he's draining the scum from the swamp on his kinda-linux-not-really-GNU android phone.
[F]fragmentation of the different vendors have held the desktop back."
and suse does not have GUI SUDO asks for root and by default needs root to use some wifi networks.
There's a new linux distro born everyday
It's where the money is, until it isn't. If there was a great desktop that everyone used, the money would follow... that's how "where the money is" works.
Therefore having Firefox and Chrome simply covers 100 percent of their needs, because corporate drones have to use either g suite or office 360.
A desktop that's oriented toward people with a brain, rather than chasing after the swipe-and-wipe infotainment suckers.
Myself, I expect to keep living inside emacs using the icewm window manager for some time to come-- whenever I look at a newer window manager I find they've completely ignored keyboard commands--
(And the idea that we're going to simplify the package manager landscape by adding new ones is pretty funny...)
My home setup is a Macbook, a windows surface, and an Ubuntu laptop. All of them have their uses, mostly as different terminals for cloud services. My phone is almost as useful. Very little reason to care about desktop OS anymore.
How can something that has never been a thing be in trouble? Slashdot has been saying for decades that Linux on the desktop was going to arrive. It has never arrived and never will arrive. Windows is the primary desktop OS, MacOS is a distant second and Linux is a even more distant 3rd.
Serious, unless you've used Plasma, this article means nothing
Not that I disagree with Linus, but this is not a job for him. Ensuring interoperability is basically what it means to call GNU an operating system, rather than a just a bunch of unaffiliated software. It's the FSF who should really be taking the lead here, or... maybe it's everyone else who should finally start listening to them.
How does Stallman feel about standardization anyway? I'd like his take on this.
You're such a whiny moron doing laps in your own cesspool.
LXDE is in my rear view mirror after their latest update. XFCE suits me fine. I don't know what Linus's problem is with the Linux desktop. Each one to his own. However, I can't agree with him more, that a separate foundation from the Linux Foundation should establish standards for a GUI desktop/workstation environment and interface.
Two important issues that Linus should rail more against are the horrific hybridization of the Linux Kernel. It's far too complex, even for Linus to understand. And the excessive bloat in the Linux desktop. Every time I add a new application, it loads a slough of libraries that I never wanted in the first place. Notorious for this are Gnome and KDE. Each application should be stand alone. If I get one application, I should not be forced to accept a whole environment that is redundant with what I already have. Linus, are you listening?
The main advantage of the Linux desktop is the main reason why it shall never go away. It's advantage is that it is local and that it is easy to develop applications for it and on it, compared to Microsoft Windows, Android, MacOS, OSX, and a myriad of other operating systems, including successors to IBM's System 390.
I searched all posts. Not one mention of the Mac OS Desktop, which is imo a much better desktop than Windows, is the 2nd desktop by worldwide market share behind Windows and has 4X the market share of all Linux desktops combined.
Windows is far and away the OS of choice for consumers and businesses. Why? Because anybody whose uses Windows at home knows how to use it at work. Repeat after me. The Linux user interface blows because itâ(TM)s not consistent.
And we have that, in spades. Gnome, MATE, KDE.
True, that is technically standardizing but I think the real point is there should be one standard. Linux's desktop adoption is a small fraction of that of Windows and it is further fragmented by multiple desktop standards. This is further complicated by the fact that apps will follow one of the standards so even if you use Gnome the chances are you will still run some apps that were designed for KDE or vice versa.
Having a singular standard would fix a lot of this. You would still have the version issue like Windows does but this is far less of an issue because then an old app is still using a standard that you were used to using even if it is not well suited for the current version.
Faggots use Linux. Real men use BSD.
https://xkcd.com/927/
I've been hearing about containerized Apps, basically everything needed to run an app all standalone.
I have admittedly not toyed with this technology first hand, but from a purely theoretical standpoint, this feels like the direction to go. It sounds promising at least.
I think asking the core Linux community to standardize something that inherently rejects standardization beyond the very basic foundations of the kernel and system tools is a non-starter.
A solution like containers seems like a good way to have the best of both worlds. Linux can stay fragmented, which is just part of what Linux is, for better or for worse. But containerized Apps can rely on very basic core system functionality that should already be standardized.
Add a lot more systemd.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I assume SJW actually exist(?)
SJWs are people like Gandhi, AoC, Siddhartha, Mother Teresa, Moses, Rosa Parks, MLK.
Personally, I hate most things SysV.
But that said, I do have some old init scripts.
If I'm doing something new, systemd is a huge improvement. You have to use CI anyways, so there is no possible benefit from not compiling in a modern workflow.
But I really like the way distros are implementing it. First all the new startup stuff runs, then the old scripts run. Perfect. I don't have to change anything that already exists.
It was always a huge weakness that you had to leave a process running to listen for every rare connection that you want to support. Now you can start things up when the first connection comes in, totally smooth. Some change at the core interface between the OS and userspace was needed, but hopefully now that portion will be stable for decades.
"That's, after all, is where the money is."
Does no one edit anymore? We used to see a little (sic) every now and then, or a ...[word]... here and there. Now, nothing.
*sigh*
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
I mean the classical WIMP scheme does everything people want and designs have been refined fairly well on essentially every GUI out there. It's just that recent developments from all GUI makers (from Gnome to Windows) derive from that, putting design over usability.
I don't think it's worth chasing the "mobile user" as they will have Android (or IOS) anyhow. Getting rid of useful features in order to chase people who won't look at your product anyhow isn't worth it.
Yes mate there aren't thousands of Windows only applications, you can do everything with just those two.
that could start this work. Hmm.
I was an ardent supporter and user of Desktop Linux for over 10 years, before finally throwing in the towel and using MacOS.
Every other year, back when magazines were still popular, you'd have a 'headline' "Is this the year for Linux on the Desktop?".
Then, just like now, the problem is not so much the desktop itself - there's a plethora of high quality options.
The problem is 'big software' and, to a lesser extent, but still a problem, hardware driver support.
I worked in a software department that was a 50/50 mix of Linux and MacOs, but the company was still mainly Windows based, so all the corporate software was mainly windows based - Microsoft Office, Webex etc.
On MacOS, this worked just fine, but the Linux Desktop users were constantly having issues with corporate communications.
The various Web Based offerings for the corporate software were all feature poor.
Couple that with a lack of knowledge in the IT department responsible for maintenance and problem solving and it was pretty much down to the developer to maintain their own computer.
Over 5 years, I witnessed all but the most diehard Linux Desktop users switch over to MacOs.
Then we get to the lesser, but still important issue of hardware drivers.
I have some fond memories of kernel hacking to get things working back in the day, but mostly it was sheer frustration.
Things did improve substantially over the years, thanks to the help of countless developers donating their time and skills to make things work.
This issue was once a numbers game - the amount of Linux Desktop users was not substantial enough to warrant support.
It's gone beyond that now, as mobile operating systems dominate home usage and browser based webapps gain wider adoption and become more sophisticated.
Sadly, this will lead to a lack of control, even though, ironically, the software Linux Desktop users were once locked out of (whether they cared or not), starts to become available through the browser.
This is the direction all Desktop computers seem to be heading in, with the ultimate price being a monoculture where everything the end user does is SaaS and all their data is 'in the cloud'.
Sad times.
Why are people getting wound up with Linus.
He appears to be suggesting a common desktop, agreed and developed to a standard agreed to my the main distos; letâ(TM)s face it, the top 4 will cover more than 95% of typical desktop users.
The other DE and WM can be installed by any non noob.
I suspect heâ(TM)s after an install option in Anaconda, Ubiquity etc with âoeStandard Linux Destop for new users from Windows or macOSâ as option 1
Option 2 âAdvancedâ(TM) for everyone else.... like the Debian installer is now....
Iâ(TM)d vote XFCE for option 1... have put a dozen Linux virgins in front of my Thinkpad with it, said nothing to them and watched them get to work
https://xkcd.com/927/
John_Chalisque
This could be the year..
Desktop Linux is like Marxism utopia. Most likely my comment will be downvoted by some zealot with unstable psyche, so I decided to not reveal myself. Like it or not, head burial similar to ostriches won't change the reality. Desktop Linux was, is and will always be a niche with 1.5-2% market share
Summary of desktop Linux problems
Now I'm waiting with popcorn to random neckbeards proving that water is not wet.
Windows is far and away the OS of choice for consumers and businesses. Why? Because anybody whose uses Windows at home knows how to use it at work. Repeat after me. The Linux user interface blows because itâ(TM)s not consistent.
Windows dominates because of technological lock-in. At one point it managed to grab by far the largest slice of the desktop market when it was young. The Linux desktop wasn't that much of a thing back then, it was too young and undeveloped to offer serious competition. Now everybody is used to Windows, and often has software that works only under Windows, hardware that works only under Windows, etc. It's a positive feedback loop, the fact that Linux desktops exist and actually work quite well on a variety of hardware (typing from a Linux distro right now) is a testament to the platform's resilience and capability.
The only OS seriously taking on Windows and thriving is one whose roots go further back than Windows, and which is made by a hardware manufacturer. Even that is a niche market and tied to only one hardware platform.
Meanwhile Linux has, via Android, become the Windows of the smartphone world. Due to the consistency of the user interface? Well, no, look at the differences between stock Android and the various manufacturer's flavours (Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei LG, etc.), as well as the differences between Android versions (my phone recently upgraded to a new Android version and I flipped after realizing they moved around really important stuff, like where some settings I check and change often are, etc.). It's because Android grabbed the market while it was young. Windows too has changed its interface, Office at one point changed everything, yet Microsoft still dominates these markets...due to lock-in.
Or just take away everything else. I'm sure they're working on it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Outside of high performance professional use and gaming (meaning less than 20% of total userbase), the desktop as a whole already died 2-3 years ago. To ask whether Linux desktop is âin troubleâ sounds humorous.
Every other "OS" will be a dumb terminal, an ad ridden portal to a walled garden.
Linux is going to win on the desktop. It's the stalwart, the last man standing. The remaining OS for power users.
And we don't need a 'standardized' desktop. The status quo is _great_. Everyone can have their ideal Linux desktop, and still run almost any program.
Even ice skating in hell is supported (GNOME without systemd, on Gentoo).
It doesn't matter if I'm using Debian with XFCE and systemd, or Gentoo with KDE and OpenRC, they both do it all.
I program 90s engine computers, use peripherals too old to have win 7 drivers, run 'cloud' apps like WhatsApp without a smartphone, cross compile for ARM, play Windows and native games on Steam, do my taxes, host my website...
Monocultures suck.
Windows is far and away the OS of choice for consumers and businesses. Why? Because anybody whose uses Windows at home knows how to use it at work. Repeat after me. The Linux user interface blows because itâ(TM)s not consistent.
Amen to that. In Windows CTRL-C and CTRL-P does Copy and Paste in everything. In Linux CTRL-C and CTRL-P does Copy and Paste in the desktop but switch to say CLI and you have to remember to use CTRL-SHIFT-C and CTRL-SHIFT-P and despite plenty of complaints about that over the years they still refuse to change it. Its little inconsistencies like that which get really annoying after a while.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
The point is to make the one fits-all distribution start out with a common desktop style, a common browser and common way to install and uninstall stuff. Or perhaps two ways to install stuff, an online package manager and one for offline installers, equivalent to Microsoft's .msi packages. Then everyone who is used to that distribution can install their preferred applications and at least do basic office work from the start.
Now all of the above already exist, it is a matter of choosing default software that most people will be comfortable with and distributors will agree upon. That is the difficult problem. But if you can solve it, I think acceptance of Linux on the desktop would greatly increase.
Except for that, have as many customization options as you like. Not like Apple with its "walled garden". Even removing the desktop and replacing it with your own. Non-standard varieties of the distribution would be OK, as long as they are relegated to a "special" sections of the download options at the provider. Where the average user who is not interested in experimenting won't pick them by accident.
And just for the record, my own ideas of what I would pick and which alternatives I consider suitable as well.
-Desktop style: Similar to old style Windows, up to Windows 7.
-Package manager/ format online: RPM or dpkg, no real preference. Just the front end for the end user has to be easy to use.
-Package format offline: Flatpack or Snap, no real preference either.
-Browser: Firefox. But I guess something Chromium-based would be OK as long as we can get rid of its tendencies to be spyware.
C - the footgun of programming languages
linux is about choice, something MS and Apple do not allow
besides, a "standard desktop" would be something like gnome 3 which is an unusable ui disaster to me or kde5, which was so unstable after a year that i switched to xfce - do not want either as a standard
Look at Fedora, the distro.
They produce upgrades too often while neglecting support on the existing version.
Their choices are poor: a few KBs in scripts are too hard too maintain versus megabytes in coded in C and thus packages are without support.
Also 'supported' packages do not have support: it can take a long time, even until bugzilla closes your bug due your Fedora version being too old, before something happens.
Yes, I know it is al volunteer effort, etc, but still...
It's called the fallacists fallacy. Having done so, has your point been disproved? No. Not that you MADE a point in the first place, either, mind.
Most people I encounter want to use their applications. Among them, the majority just needs a browser. They only start to care when the small business software they bought isn't running, and this usually happens with prople that switched to Mac because they look cooler. Nobody of that type of user switches to Linux
Actually CTRL-P on Windows brings up the Print Menu, to paste you use CTRL-V. But to address the comments, one of the reasons Windows is the predominate OS in corporations is because Windows can be totally centrally managed, security policies can be forced onto the machines that prevent everything from changing the screen saver to ignoring USB drives. Where I work it is mix of Macs and Windows and the help desk has a harder time locking down the Macs but they keep trying. Locking down Linux desktops is not something they're wanting to have to figure out.
Truth is truth and the issue isn't the UI, hell Linux has had nice easy to use UIs for ages...the problem is what a clusterfuck Linux is when something goes wrong.
Lets say your laptop boots up and the Wifi doesn't work. In Windows a good 90% of the time you just go "clicky clicky" on system restore and tada! Its all fixed, user didn't need to know shit about the hardware or software, just clicky clicky. Now how do you do the same in Linux? Fuck if I know as apparently every distro has a different procedure, most of which requires CLI and a knowledge of the hardware in question. What about printers? MSFT keeps a billion printer drivers so the user has to do precisely jack squat as the OS calls home and does all the work, Linux? Yeah GLWT as if it isn't a corp laser printer your ass had better know enough to find the website, download the LPD file, know how to install said file, and get that shit up and running. Which BTW can be finicky as hell, couldn't get Linux lite to see a Brother wireless printer even after following the instructions for setting up the LDP file, didn't matter in the end as the next update shat on the wireless so I ended up going back to Windows....and THAT is the problem.
You see Linux users just because YOU can do something or enjoy futzing with CLI or spending lord knows how long Googling fixes when shit goes wrong? Does NOT mean Joe and Jane average will do it, or even have the capability. If you want to gain all those desktop users (which just FYI there has NEVER been a better time as win 10 is a buggy POS) here is what you need to do....
1.- Make something as butt simple as system restore/rollback drivers so that the OS can instantly be rolled back to a previous snapshot if shit breaks, 2.- Make a central driver repo which ALL DISTROS USE which will contain ALL THE DRIVERS THERE IS, period the end. I don't care if its a 10 year old printer or a brand new sound card, if there is a Linux driver? That shit needs to be in there with some sort of standard ABI so there is none of this "requires kernel X, GCC Y" nonsense, just a simple automatic driver install for any and all hardware the user has. 3.- Work with hardware vendors to put a penguin on the box. A user shouldn't have to be Columbo to try to figure out when they go shopping what works and what don't, after all the Apple users just look for an Apple on the box, Windows users the Winflag, you need to have just as many mainstream devices with penguins on boxes (and again it needs to be standard, none of this "requires distro X" BS) so that its just as easy to buy everything from a USB Wifi dongle to a AIO printer as it is with Windows and Apple.
Do these things? Linux could easily grab share as Windows 10 is about as loved as anal cancer, but as long as Linux is a CLI heavy royal PITA when anything goes wrong? Ordinary users just aren't gonna bother, its not worth the hassle.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
And how would that counter or support his point that the “concept” of Linux and Unix is flawed.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Lol. 20 plus years ago the nerds were on here saying they love the power and freedom to make their GUI fit their needs. And every screenshot of their Desktop I saw looked like the most unusable matrix inspired shit ever created.
The Linux user interface blows because it's not consistent.
Tell that to Windows 10, Windows RT, ...
Having one dominate player is not the same as having a consistent interface. You like Windows because you only have to worry about one brand, Microsoft's. Fine. Then say that.
Linux is a kernel that is packaged up into 100 different distributions. There is no single dominate player when it comes to distributions. There is not even a single organization controlling the widget toolkit ecosystem. It's a truly democratic operating system, and it is also messy like a democracy.
If you've ever traveled and has a chance to visit a chaotic open market then compare it to an American department store, you'd see that neither is strictly better than the other. Many people prefer paying at a single point in the store, having clean floors, and attractive displays. But open markets are what you get when capitalism isn't totally out of control.
Your problem is that you're switching to CLI and expecting the same interface. I'm more of a Ctrl-Insert to copy and Shift-Insert kind of guy, and that works most of the time in both Windows and Linux.
Also it's trivial to configure XTerm or whatever terminal you like to use whatever key combination you want for cut and paste. Not that the end user should have to have to do this themselves.
Standardized interfaces are overrated. As a lefty even everyday tools like scissors and chainsaws made bad design choices for user experience.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I've been saying this for many years. The diversity philosophy is misguided and counter productive. To achieve true success one need only standardize, conform and keep out all outliers, oddballs and square pegs from the marketplaces of ideas and labor. We have been lied to by our would be puppet masters.
We already have a standard desktop. It's called Windows 10. Meanwhile, geeks, programmers, etc, are using Linux, because "the standard" does not fit their workflow.
If Linus wants to throw away the current Linux user base (to FreeBSD?) to cater to people in no understanding of computers in an effort to compete with Microsoft on advertising budget, he'll have less success than Mozilla when they decided to get rid of power user features to compete with Google on advertising budget.
Besides, we already tried the standardising thing... We had a standard browser. It was called Internet Explorer 4.
Another example, one country tried a standard car. Unlike a desktop, which is something personal like your clothing style, a car is mainly a way to get from A to B. Creating a standard car thus is much more likely to be a success than a desktop. For some reason that idea never spread to the rest of the world, and even the country that came up with the idea dropped it years ago. The car in question was called the Lada.
Desktop Linux has been useable ( in my opinion) for at least 20 years.. and âoeeasyâ since Ubuntu came around. I ran Mint as my main OS on my laptop for years and recently put Windows 10 on it since Iâ(TM)m selling it. Windows 10 is ugly and setup for an idiot who consumes social media and web crap. It puts the control of the computer in the background. I personally think OSX leopard is the gold standard of OS. Attractive , stable , fast , easy to use , and not cramming cloud and services down your throat. In summary though there is nothing wrong with the Linux desktop on a modern distribution. Maybe he is trolling or missed April 1st.
There are already standard bodies for the linux desktop, that's freedesktop.org
From their website:
"We also host discussion and development of specifications for interoperability. A full list is available at our specifications page.
These specifications mostly cover low-level desktop issues, such as identifying file types, launching applications, and exchanging data between applications and desktops. They are often called 'XDG' specifications, as an acronym for the Cross-Desktop Group."
the big DE's all follow these specifications.
I found this from the summary rather funny;
"Linus Torvalds is tired of the fragmentation in the Linux desktop. In a recent [December 2018] TFiR interview with Swapnil Bhartiya, Torvalds said, "Chromebooks and Android are the path toward the desktop.""
Chromebooks & Android are possibly even more fragmented then KDE vs Gnome!
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Mother Teresa. That woman never once stopped reminding her charges what wretches they were. That's why they believed her. That's how Leftist politics works. That's why the Walk Away movement has traction; there's a few who are beginning to see through the lies. Now, if the Republican moderates could orphan themselves from the hyper-religious, hateful, pseudo-confederates, we'd have a constitutional centrist party big enough to kick ass and get this country back on track. But it will have to destroy the Democrats and Republicans both because those two gollums will do anything to stay in power.
https://xkcd.com/927/
"Ubuntu"
Linux desktop distros "tend to last for five or six years and then real life gets in the way of what's almost always a volunteer effort...
You see, this is the sort of clueless click baity bullshit that this hack spews all the time.
Maybe the desktop du jour that this ass-hat invariably proclaims to be the one, the new hotness... maybe those desktops only last 6 years.
But, I've been using SuSE since 1999 and it's still going. I've got Ubuntu desktops as well. Ubuntu has been a bit of a thing for ~15 years. And then there is Red Hat/Fedora. I moved from them years ago, but they are still going very strong. I confess to not really using Debian desktops, though I use Debian servers extensively. But, without Debian, there is no Ubuntu desktop or it's further derivative Mint.
The Linux desktop is in greater jeopardy than ever before. But Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols is one of the worst sources of good guidance on the matter. I'd rather drive a spike in my ear, or listen to RMS about the GNU Linux desktop's future.
Two choices: keep up the arrogant elitist crap like "only idiots and losers refuse to ..." and leave Linux on the outside looking in
or
take a lesson from MS and Apple, and build a flavour of Linux for "idiots and losers", the same 80 to 90 percent of computer owners
who just want a simple reliable appliance. That's your goal.
Needs: software: simple one-stop shopping, and a very easy reliable way to install and remove. Desktop icon option is a must.
Same for peripherals - one-stop driver shopping, one way to install and remove.
I strongly agree with the suggestion to add an easy roll back to a previous healthy OS.
One desktop. A newbie does not need 8 or 10 desktop options. Give them one, but, make it easy to change
desktops if/when they want.
Leave the fragmentation to the purists. Having dozens of flavors, each with their own militant cohort of enthusiasts is great,
but, it confuses the newcomer and turns people off.
The Linux community would be much better served if everyone committed to promoting a purpose designed
LinuxNewbie OS instead of their personal favorite.
Make it easier to move to a new version of Linux. Be great if software and data were saved to the new OS.
Funding: need to be able to pay people for critical OS work. Having volunteers brings enthusiasm, drive and vision,
but, people need to eat.
All the others suck. On an old computer you can run twm. It's still available in redhat.
This reminds me of the SYSV/BSD crap. Most of us realized how broken and behind bsd is and moved onto linux. We keep splitting. Ubuntu using debian was another disaster. There is no reason to use debian any more. There are not problems with RPM. Getting rid of things like gnome would help a lot.
I keep trying the other distros, like Ubuntu. They last for about 10 minutes and I want something more mature. A real desktop. Linux could take over the desktop if we'd just unify on something.
Just like SYSV/BSD. Don't care which one - pick one and everyone unite. That's why Windows is so popular. There is one GUI for windows. Don't like it - TOUGH.
It sounds like he's seen the success of Blender as something to follow. The tool is massive and arguably more complex than a full operating system, but it's a very successful open source project. What makes it powerful is that it is completely usable, arguably more stable than the competition and has everything one needs to work with 3D right out the box. Users, technical artists and programmers can add functionality if they wish, but can even completely remodel the software to their needs... and it's very easy to do because the source code is visible and maintained. This makes it a solid tool with the freedom that comes with open source. Apply that to the Linux desktop, make sure red hat, canonical etc. Make their desktop united in the underbelly to avoid fragmented coding, and you have yourself a desktop which could go much further than where it is currently.
Lol, windows 8 literally made people Google to find the shutdown button. I really don't think all the old "next" clones were that bad.
It used to be worse - you'd have some Motif application - could only copy and paste to other Motif applications. Same with any UI toolkit.
These are simply problems the Mac and Windows have never had :(.
We have witnessed Linux in desktop or laptop computers in the shape of Asus netbooks, the OLPC laptop, and the Google Chromebook.
There is now a 'desktop' Linux distritution called Ubuntu. Sony Playstation and Raspberrry Pi don;'t count in this category. All that needs to be done is somebody who will make desktop computers and put an OS into it. ARM, Loongson, or RIISC-V could be suitable processors for desktop computing, as POWER9 is overkill for typical desktop work.
My wife is almost offended when she sees me using XFCE rather than Win 10 on my laptop. But but but the speeeeeed!
in the market (by adoption numbers) is Android.
If wide adoption is what you want, you need a SINGLE, UNIFORM thing with a strong "design opinion", user experience simplicity, aimed at mass market user, yet evolving, but with principled change management, as lessons are learned etc. etc.
Mass-market user interfaces are about mass-market users. Their purpose is not to serve the tinkering needs of geeks. The geeks can keep playing to their heart's content on alt-UIs, but there needs to be a benevelent-dictator-controlled single-themed mass-market UI, if mass-market desktop UI is one of the goals.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Me too ...
I have been using XFCE for a some years, having dumped KDE, the desktop I used for over a decade, for it.
I like its minimalist approach, its low overhead and that it stays out of the way.
KDE had more features but one release went against what KDE stood for: customizability. I was no longer able to control for how long a notification is visible. Then, it was missing certain crucial features (e.g. a weather widget, was it the 14.04 or 16.04? Can't remember).
So, I decided to move to XFCE, and has been on it ever since.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
what fragmentation? there is only Debian.
Bring back 3 button mouse. Highlight text automatically into copy buffer, middle click pastes. Or even in putty terminal right click paste is great.
Having a foundation would be a great idea. But, on the other side, there has been no better time than the present to be a Linux desktop user.
$ sudo apt install kde-standard
$ sudo apt install lxqt
Free as in speech is a nice idea that can lead to better, safer. more reliable software...if it's done in a way that doesn't block profit.
It's the free as in beer mindset that will prevent linux from ever being successful with the average user. It limits you to mostly volunteer developers who will only do what they feel like. That's why you end up with poorly supported hardware, no documentation, bugs and incompatibilities that linger for decades, and burnout that leaves projects to wither and die leaving users in the lurch.
The linux community has always been very harsh on its users expecting them to be knowledgable enough to resolve all those issues on their own. If my NVidia card doesn't work after an upgrade I'm supposed to know how to modify the driver. It's a ridiculous expectation and eliminates linux as an option for most users.
No volunteer is going to do hundreds of hours of tedious grunt work for nothing. But the average user will pay $5, $10, or even $50 for a well supported linux desktop that they have some assurance will just work with good support and updates for 5-10 years down the road and not require a computer engineering degree to use and maintain. But that whole concept is the very antithesis of Linux and so linux will always be a minor niche for young tech people until they grow up and get tired of the BS.
I have a CS degree from a top tier school, and I ran a Linux desktop for about 5 years (1997-2002). Switching to Windows.XP was a huge relief. It was like getting out of prison and finally being able to enjoy life. Everything just worked so easily, it looked better, had decent fonts, my network card worked without hours of frustration. I'm well aware a lot has changed in 17 years, but the core philosophy of free volunteers delivering half-baked products that nobody can be bothered polishing with the attitude the user is getting it for free they can do the work to make it into what they need is still the prime principle of the linux desktop. I will never install a linux desktop again, I would pay $500 for windows to avoid free linux.
... that idea?
The Linux desktop is alive and well and its target audience is totally fine and dandy with it. I switched to Manjaro i3 a year ago and it's really good. And really really fast. Kde looks amazing and gnome send to be doing really well. Unity is dead, but it's not that we have a lack of desktops.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
FYI, CTRL-V is Paste. CTRL-P is the shortcut to "Print".
You might have better luck using CTRL-V to paste. Or just go manage someone.
...Said the righteous neckbeard.
Exactly. Other GUIs keep trying to reinvent themselves every time they discover a 'better' way of doing things, but there is no best way. There are many different ways that suit different workflows and different tasks and different mindsets.
This is where the "do one thing and do it right" approach helps too. We have many different applications and tools, and people can tie them together in whatever way they want to suit them.
Different distros help package things together to suit particular tastes, and you can pick whatever starting point is best for you.
That's the strength of the Linux desktop.
Twinstiq, game news
ZDNet, the piad Windows fluff outlet
Guess what. You don't have to use it. Drive through.
The article is not wrong. I have a simple test: would I be willing to give this to my parents to use? Linux is most definitely a no. They are currently on Macs. When I moved them from Windows my support calls dropped from multiple a week to quarterly. Windows is a convoluted and confusing mess, and that's before we get into the malware situation. Linux is an order of magnitude more convoluted.
Linux needs a standardized desktop. More importantly, it needs a *boring* standardized desktop.
* It needs to be at least roughly similar to existing systems
* It needs to have a predictable, consistent interface
* Minimal customization options. The average person doesn't need or care about changing their window styles for example.
* Anything that is vaguely important for a user to do, must be doable from the gui.
* Full and proper accessibility support, including support for assistive input devices.
I've been using KDE but its complicated and buggy. I can deal with it fine, but there's no way I'd give it to my parents. Its way too easy to do the wrong thing and make your computer unusable.
Gnome is a god forsaken POS. It's stabler than KDE. It's simpler. In fact, it's too simple, and in the worst ways. Gnome devs are arrogant asshats who think its reasonable to remove the min/max buttons because 'there is already another way to do it'. If you have to retrain people to use the single most fundamental functionality of your DE, then YOU are wrong, not the user. Even "Courageous" Apple wasn't stupid enough to do that, so what does that say? Have these people never even heard of UAT testing?
Gnome is just full of that kind of brain damaged decision-making, to the point where I cannot fathom why it's the default DE on so many distros. Probably because a stupid DE is better than a buggy complex one.
XFCE would be a possible option if it got a little more polish. Out of all the DEs around, IMO OSX is the best. Yes it has some issues and inconsistencies (and don't get me started on the hardware...) , but taken as a whole package it has the most polish and stability. Mostly cause Apple doesn't screw around with it every release, and they made sure that the more common the operation was, the easier it was to perform.
He is right. But the community will never go for it.
I'm not sure why this is even really a discussion that "Linux should be standardised", the strengths of Linux are that you can pick whatever it is that you would like to use based on your requirements, and you can run with it.
If you're a new user you can use something like Mint / Ubuntu / Fedora etc. and if you're an advanced user you can go for Gentoo / Arch etc. and there are many in between. That being said, even though I am an advanced Linux user I prefer the "just works" aspect of Ubuntu so I use that, that being said I have used Arch before and also really like it too (I guess I am a victim of overchoice I suppose), but if it came down to it I don't think the solution is homogenisation, I think the solution is what the strength of Linux is, freedom and choice!
What would enable more adoption of Linux is a change of direction for hardware / game vendors as this windows 'lock-in' is the reason there is no major Linux adoption. Hell, I don't even think that the differing package managers are a problem with the fragmentation as pretty much all of them these days are able to accomplish the same task with minimal fuss, so I don't think there is a case for the "standardisation of Linux".
Linux is as Linux does, and what it does is what is expected of it, if people like Linus want to put their "eggs in 1 basket" and pick a distro to become the "new windows" then by all means do that, but that's the strength of Linux, YOU CAN DO THAT! So go do it then...
"Standardized interfaces are overrated." I have to disagree. Unfortunately, that doesn't make Windows any better, because it's going in the direction of non-standardized. Take the scroll wheel on a mouse; for some applications, if the mouse cursor is over the window, it will scroll regardless of whether the window is in focus. For other applications, it will only scroll if the window has focus. And for others (I'm looking at you, Windows Explorer), the scroll wheel doesn't seem to work no matter what. Or take the Ribbon. Please, take it! All the applications I use every day have menus; Office is the only application that doesn't (which is why I only use it when forced to, i.e. at the office). Of course, some applications have real menus (jEdit, my favorite editor), others have cheesy "hamburger" menus, which you can't get to without standing on your head. (Some, like Firefox, at least give you a choice. That's one reason I prefer Firefox to Chrome: Chrome is all about taking away your choices.) Some applications have a title bar, some have a title bar + status bar, and some have neither. Some applications change the color of the title bar when their window has focus (that's the way all Windows applications used to be), others force you to guess whether they have focus: if there's a visual distinction, I can't see it (Office is the worst offender).
I think the last time Windows and Windows applications were more or less consistent among themselves was around 2007. Since then it's been every application for itself, and it's becoming a mess to figure out how things work in each application (I have nine open on my desktop at the moment). I don't use Linux desktops (I do a lot of command line stuff in Linux), so I don't know how that compares with the situation in Windows. (Or the MacOS.)
Wait, that wasn't the headline this time???
"Standardized interfaces are overrated." I have to disagree.
Go ahead and disagree all you want. I didn't say they have no value. I said they value is stressed more than I think can be justified.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
No argument that Apple didn't invent everything about GUI. Although the behavior of overlapping windows was pioneered by Apple on the Lisa due to a misunderstanding they had of the original draw model used by Xerox Alto.
Innovations in usability that are outside of establishing training process are not innovations at all. Adding new kinds of controls and changing the metaphors is the enemy of usability. The less programmers monkey with your GUI architecture, the better it is.
System 8 and 9 were a real mess compared to 7. Anything before 7 was painful when interacting with multiple applications (the Lisa and Xerox Alto sucked too)
Pretty much so. There are no windows only applications that do anything useful. All the Visual Basic crap should go anyways.
There are no windows only applications that do anything useful.
Tell you what sport, why not go down to your local hospital and ask them to remove any machine that either runs or requires a Windows-only application.
I eagerly await your link to an open source MRI machine.
Ken
Uhh.. Dude, open cmd.exe in windows and press Ctrl+c
It didn't copy, did it? No, it did exactly the same shit it does on Linux CLI.
Bad troll is bad at trolling.
Linux isn't everywhere. In the last 25 years it has risen from 1.5% to 1.7% of the desktop market and any sensible person has concluded that that isn't going to change. Linux has done very well as a free unix replacement for servers on lots of different AMD64 systems though, but they don't have desktops.
Linux was created as a replacement for Unix on the i386, so that Unix sources could be ported to it, because Unix licences were restricted. This also forced Microsoft to create the NT kernel and Tannenbaum restricted Minix (2000 ) to sell his textbook and course to universities. Linux was created open source, so it inherited Unix's philosophy, and Unix, both commercial and open source, has had no problem fragmenting long before Linux. Hobbyists have tried to turn Linux into a Windows replacement but that hasn't worked. The cheapest and easiest way to get a standardised desktop and operating system is to buy a PC, from someone other than Apple, and just don't uninstall Windows.
If you want a standardised Linux then just install Ubuntu. Canonical only completely changes the desktop every year or so and Ubuntu has only fragmented into a dozen different distributions so far! It conforms to the Linux Standard Base and the freedesktop standards, for what that is worth.
Windows didn't get a head start on Linux. Before Windows 95, and its NT core, Windows was just a bad desktop running on top of MSDOS. And it wasn't really stable till XP. What Windows did was succeed in the commercial and home markets gaining scale, where as Linux was created by hobbyists and remains for hobbyists.
For most people a desktop is the icons on their phone or tablet. For people who use Linux to produce stuff, then they have plenty of Linux desktops to play with. It would probably be more productive if they didn't have to spend time sorting that out, but they like doing it. This seems to be people shocked than Linux hasn't sent Microsoft out of business yet. Microsoft may do that to itself, with their high licence fees for Windows and Office in a world where people are used to free and cheap apps.
I've had at least one Linux-based system at all times since 1996, and I'm typing this on a Mint system. In my opinion, fragmentation isn't the issue - it's applications. Gaming is a lot better lately, with Steam pushing pretty hard, but it's not even close to the state on Windows. Office and creativity applications exist, but are lacking compared to Windows and MacOS. The lack of strong entities pushing excellent applications hurts usability.
I'd love to be able to put Linux or FreeBSD on my main system and just leave it at that, but unless you're working on the web or within Linux, it's hard to make the jump away from Windows or MacOS. If applications start becoming purely web-based, it may render the base operating systems less relevant.
The 'dumbass' comment was for the poster, not Linus. Those offshoots use modified versions of the Linux kernel.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Exactly! When Microsoft got rid of the Start menu in Windows 8/RT, there was a user revolt that was swift and vicious. So much so, that they quickly put out an update (8.1) to bring back the Start menu, and pushed up the release of Windows 10 which returned the Start menu desktop to the default state and made the tablet-style RT menu just a bad memory. A big corporation hasn't reversed course that fast since New Coke. The lesson here is that for typical users, a consistent user interface is one of the most important things an OS provides.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Try literally something like 90% of software made for engineering.
Particularly CAD/CAM. Let me know when Linux gets Solidworks or Creo.
No year is going to be "the year of the Linux desktop" precisely because of the nature of how Linux is used.
This speaks nothing about the quality of the operating system as a whole- Linux is still the gold standard for server applications, for moderately computer-savvy people who have junk computers and no desire to buy a license of Windows it's a perfectly fine desktop.
The bevvy of options you have to decide on for Linux is just not worth the effort for most normal people. Even people who just need a web-browser and email, going beyond "yeah just install ubuntu" will have their eyes gloss over the instant you try to explain the concept of other distros/window managers/etc. And the first time their hardware/software doesn't work for whatever reason, they're fucked because the community on the whole isn't welcoming and the solutions to their problems (while almost certainly being well documented by someone else and having bullet-proof instructions) will confuse/spook people into not even trying recommended fixes. The instant a normal human trying Linux has to break into the commandline and learn Linux they're out- that's not what they signed up for and I don't blame them.
Ya right
Just try CTRL-C and CTRL-V in cmd.exe for fun
Ctrl-c doesn't copy at the windows command line. maybe in powershell, not sure, but in cmd.exe it does the same thing it does in bash
www.opensourceimaging.org
The entire history of linux is about blowing up previous "standards" and pushing forward. It's a blessing and a curse. Things like systemd alienate users but also push things forward. Linux develops won everything but the desktop. They can't see that things have to play out differently there. Backward compatibility matters. Consistency matters. Planning matters.
My opinion is that a BSD has a better shot at the desktop, but I don't think that can happen without an influx of developers working on hardware support which won't happen. The consistency and stability of the BSDs is why it could work.
Someone mentioned Haiku. Like MacOS, they also use some code from FreeBSD. In Haiku's case it's mostly network drivers.
I read :
" Even starting with one of the Big Distros like Debian, you never know when/what Ubuntu (and therefore Mint, etc) will grab..."
me, I abandoned Ubuntu, Mint & al, and just got back (or up) to pure Debian.
OK, that was not in a quest for Desktop purity : rather to evade big monopolies, Ubuntu, IBM/redhat.
But then I get this extra benefit...
Herve S.
you have to remember to use CTRL-SHIFT-C and CTRL-SHIFT-P and despite plenty of complaints about that over the years
As others have pointed out, you're wrong on a few levels. CTRL-P is not the combination to paste, and CTRL-C / CTRL-V do NOT copy and paste in cmd.exe.
But you say "despite plenty of complaints"... what? Complaints, by who? I suspect that if there are any complaints, it is by persons who really have no business working on a command line. Those complaints are ignored, because CTRL-C and CTRL-V have specific meanings in terminals, and they have had those meanings before terminals were even displayed in a window within a GUI.
And also, in many terminal emulators, keys can be rebound. You can do that, and leave the correct defaults alone for the rest of us. Most Linux users have specific expectations for CTRL-C and CTRL-V in terminals, and changing that would be madness -- which is why cmd.exe conformed to those expectations!
I'm piling this response onto others to make it absolutely clear that this idea of people wanting the keybindings "corrected" is a myth and should be considered a terrible idea.
Linus should do what he does best: crank out some good software and then wait for the world to adopt it. He did it with Linux, he did it with Git. He should make (or at least officially endorse) an official Linux desktop and watch as nerds treat it as such.
No. The Alto was a great invention that was way ahead of its time. The Lisa made computing easier than what folks were "trained for" at the time -- but it was not innovative.
Why do you insist on worshiping some ancient platform without ever having used it? I've used Star mostly and a bit of the Alto. The document oriented rather than application oriented way of things made for some confusing navigation. And the way rendering worked on Alto made a real mess of things in the case of overlapping windows, Apple at least was kind enough to do scissor and mask tests when updating underneath windows.
Not about tinkering, just different workflow, I use a tilling window system, no desktop will make my needs, I want to have the option to use it. Also, standardising is ok as long you don't have a punk from gnome project deciding they'll break long term understanding with half baked crappy gnome 3.
In Windows CLI, you also don't have CTRL+C/V
I like it. Needs further definition though, there are already various open source foundations. What would its scope be exactly? If you make a desktop, you are just another org like KDE, etc. If you make an installer, you are still dependent on Redhat or Canonical to include you. And so on.
A play on Clinton's famous phrase of course, not actually calling you stupid, but the only problem with Linux Desktop has been the only problem with Linux Desktop for decades: programs. People don't care about operating systems, they care about programs.
So how do you get developers to develop for Linux? That's the million dollar question. The Linux community has always assumed that the mountain has to come to Mohammed, as it were, when really the opposite is true. Focusing more work on Linux compatibility with Windows has always been the answer.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Let me guess, on your computer the P key is next to X and C? And Ctrl-V does Vrint?