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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."
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.
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.
I usually don't find Linus to be a sage either, but I think he is right here. Too many applications fail in obvious ways that tech users overlook. Things like: does it install a shortcut for the user after installing? Too often basic things like this are missing. Of course, this comes up on Slashdot often, and there was excellent discussion quite recently on the limitations of desktop Linux.
And we have that, in spades. Gnome, MATE, KDE. Sure, they have variations, but Windows had variations between releases. Concepts stay the same - menu button or ribbon with launchers in it or combination thereof. It isn't a software usability issue per se. Personally, I prefer MATE, and I prefer it the way Mint ships/configures it.
Not that it is my place to put words in Linus' mouth, etc. but it seems that what he is really complaining about is the package management landscape, the variations in libraries and versions and compile options, etc from distribution to distribution. Even starting with one of the Big Distros like Debian, you never know when/what Ubuntu (and therefore Mint, etc) will grab when they pull from -testing or -unstable to start their next release. The only real place you have cross-distro compatibility somewhat guaranteed is with true parent/child distros like Mint and its matching Ubuntu release that it shares package repos with.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
My "desktop" has been standardized for around 30 years now. I use fvwm with my own configuration. Of course, I have this barely usable gaming system, were some morons force changes I do not want all the time, but since I use it for gaming (the only thing it is halfway fit to support), I do not mind too much. Oh, and the same assholes will also spy on me when I have to go to version 10. At that time, I probably will stop doing anything on that system except gaming.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It's what makes it usable, and what makes it easy for someone to switch.
Why don't people adopt Linux?
Answer me this: How do I download, install and run Autocad 2019?
How do I download, install and run Photoshop? (Not an alternative like the Gimp)
How do I download, install and run Microsoft Outlook?
If you can not do all three of these things, then you will not get 90% of business users to switch. Damn near everyone uses Office, but they only use office because it comes with the OS and the enterprise license model works that way. Same with Adobe and Autodesk products. These SaaS models are horrible for small business and individual users, but they're a godsend to large enterprise customers because it takes the entire software auditing struggle out by ensuring that these products and only these products are installed that they have the license for.
Now throw GPLv3 in and you throw a monkey wrench in. You only see GPL software on techies machines because they know what the consequences are. The only OSS software installed on enterprise users desktops is 7zip/bandizip (because people are hopeless when they're sent anything that isn't a zip file) and Tracker software's PDF Exchange (because everyone deals with PDF's but not everyone needs the full Acrobat program and all the other cruft that comes along with it.)
Despite that most users that I've seen use Acrobat, hate it. They want Acrobat IX Pro (the one that requires a serial number) not creative cloud.
Most users I've encountered also hate Outlook if they're not reception/secretarial work. Users that know how to use Outlook outnumber those that know how to use anything else on the computer. Outlook 365 (the web stuff) makes it so you can use it on anything, but you have to give Microsoft your blessing to have access to your data.
The other half of this problem is accessibility. Linux has none.
How do I print? How do I dictate a document? How do I send a photo of my cat to my sister? There is no standardization of anything.
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.
I think you're approaching this from an end-user perspective, as though Linux desktops are equivalent to products being sold to consumers, want to compete on market-share, etc. That's missing the point of what drives the Free Software ecosystem. Since people can produce their own software, they will. The desktops themselves are down-stream of different toolkits, and then set-ups for those desktops in various distros are downstream from there.
The GTK was developed for the GNU Image Manipulation Program, and then developers said "hey, we can use this to make a desktop with!" and they produced Gnome. Qt was developed, and then developers said "hey, we can use this to make a desktop with!" and they produced KDE. Others looked at GTK and said "hey! we can produce a desktop which is more lightweight than Gnome!" and developed Xfce. Since lots of people find programming fun, and they love sharing stuff, lots of stuff gets made.
This is a good thing. This isn't a competition, because this isn't a market. Individual installations aren't commodities. The only way to have a "standard" would be to go around telling everyone they're bad people for creating and installing and releasing new stuff. Just because Apple and Microsoft have end-users brainwashed into being terrified of knowing what's under the hood of their computer doesn't mean Linux has to go hide all the gory details from you.
Silicon & Charybdis McLuhan Kildall Papert Kay
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.
Okay, let's have that chat. What should the standard be? Let's say that we need to make Linux look and act like Windows. Which one?
Of course that is just bait, because the whole concept of Linux not being adopted by the masses because it doesn't have one ring to rull them all and in the darkness bind them, is that the closest thing to a standard is....... MacOS, which will cause a riot in here, and I might have to go into the witness protection system now. But You could take a person from the early 1990's on an early SystemXX OS, transport him to today, and set him in front of Mojave, and in a few minutes he could figure it out.
Now take a person who is using the old standard Windows from W95, and set him down at a Vista or W8 or W10 machine, and it's going to take a bit.
Point is, if one UI to rule them all was the mark and cause of the largest Installed User Base, it would not be Windows at all. So we need to bury that idea.
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.
I kinda seriously disagree. Linux has a smaller user base because of Ford versus Chevy Syndrome, people thinking that you have to configure systems like it is 1999, meticulously searching the internet for every driver. A lot of people who simply use whatever OS comes on the computer they bought, And the fact that people think that even if there is software for what thedy want, they might need that MS-Dos program from days of yore, seriously - I use a radio that the manufacturers insist that they can only write for Windows because of the installed user base. Yeah, because a person who is into Software defined Radio buys one because they just so happen to have a windows machine. And another fellow is making a lot of money by offering a Mac Version, because the windows version is bollixed after updates - a lot.
. Having a singular standard would fix a lot of this.
Which one? The different versions of Windows are so radically different from each other that the idea that Linux is a failure because each version is not 100 percent identical is kinda amusing. The different distros are a lot more alike than Windows.
Do people who ever use linux even come up with this stuff?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.