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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.
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.
... again (the guy is just an computer nerd: he's views on the real life are, mostly, laughable)
Yes, because the average user wants their desktop to break when they update their OS because their nvidia driver didn't compile correctly because someone thought it was a good idea to rev the GCC version and they GCC folks thought it would be a good idea to enable some weird compiler check from 1997 that nobody in the C/C++ world knows about because this the first time it was implemented. Sigh, any little amount of customization on your desktop and you likely run into a bunch of weird problems that pop up because nobody tested this specific set of of hardware and software configurations. Standards help with those issues but nothing can fix everything and these are all just patched for the core problem. Most distros just don't have the (QA) resources to test and maintain a complex software stack in a modern OS. And when some dumb 25 yro kid decides the problem is in how packages are installed (clearly indicating that they know nothing about the core problems caused by complexity) all they do is increase the workload of the developers. The core problem is that there isn't enough developer time put into bug fixing and testing. Thus the solution only makes the problem worse.
Your comment illustrates the core problem here. You seem to think you have some sort of insight into the problem when there is no real reason for you to believe this. You so overestimate your understanding as to propose and implement "solutions" that do nothing to fix the problem (in this case even making it worse) but you got to put that you work on an opensource project on your CV so who cares. The fact that the world would be a better place without your efforts never enters your mind. Either help out (by learning about how hard it is to keep a distro working it the face of a shifting set software projects that are rarely working together) or fuck off. Linus has likely done more to help others in the last 24 hours than you will do in your entire life and your sad little attempt to tear him down says more about you than Linus.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
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.
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.
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.
It's been a good 10 years since you explored Linux, right? I've had none of these troubles with Debian, Ubuntu, or their many flavors.
And I disagree with Linus. The strength of linux is the different flavors. If you want an easy to use disro, there are many out there. If you want one where you have more control, there are some out there as well.
It's been a good 10 years since you explored Linux, right? I've had none of these troubles with Debian, Ubuntu, or their many flavors.
And I disagree with Linus. The strength of linux is the different flavors. If you want an easy to use disro, there are many out there. If you want one where you have more control, there are some out there as well.
All the examples I gave were from the last year on an older but still maintained Ubuntu distro.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
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!
The OP was probably referring to the fact that Microsoft required any vendor who sold DOS/Windows to pay them for every PC sold no matter if it had Microsoft software on it or not. That makes it tough to enter the market.
IBM was able to get OS/2 pre-loaded on PCs in Germany without those restrictions and gained 25% marketshare in the few months the vendors were doing it. Even IBM had to give up trying to get an alternative OS on PC hardware and their OS also ran Windows applications...
I ran BeOS on a machine for a short period and was stunned at how well it handled tough tasks.Playing multiple videos on different side of a 3D cube for example and the system was still very responsive.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I just want OS/2 back.
The special sauce is Google Play Store. It gets, installs and updates apps for you, and updates automatically. Linux does have package managers but they work differently and independently depending on the distro, and Ubuntu variants have a dedicated update manager that does similar things but they're not consistent, just look at the list of package managers: dpkg apt pacman flatpak snappy rpm and they're not compatible or interchangeable except maybe flatpak and snappy, which usually works on most systems fine. Steam, snappy and flatpak work more like Google Play and Steam's ease of use would make it more like Google Play, and ease of use is the main issue here: if you have to go to the command line people will balk at it.
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
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.
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.
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"
Yes, because the average user wants their desktop to break when they update their OS because their nvidia driver didn't compile correctly...
Ubuntu (and therefore everything based on it) has the http://ppa.launchpad.net/graph... repositories with the latest precompiled Nvidia drivers. Compiling an Nvidia driver hasn't been necessary in years. And Nvidia has really gotten its Linux act together recently, as their newer drivers integrate into the desktop seamlessly. This obviates all of the GCC stuff. There are legitimate problems, but having to manually compile anything isn't one of them.
My KDE desktop settings have mostly carried over for the last few rolling Kubuntu distribution upgrades. The sole exceptions have all been in the KDEPIN suite, which has gotten so bad that I stopped using every single application in the suite. It went from being a very respectable collection of integrated software to being an unpredictable, data-destroying nightmare that I can't stand anymore.
I have a small list of issues that I think would hold back the average person from being completely self-sufficient with Kubuntu, but none of them are show-stoppers.
Ummm. MacOS is Unix. Certified Unix
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Diversity in the Linux desktop world is a good thing, not a bad thing. I really don't get what these two are blathering on about.
Kind of disgusting that some idiot modded you troll for pointing out that Linus is wrong. It would be far from the first time, the Bitkeeper fiasco iss a marquee example. You are 100% right, Linus has not got much useful to say about the Linux desktop. Vaughan-Nichols has got it wrong too with this troll article: the more Microsoft pushes its users to do what they don't want, that is, rent PCs from Microsoft, the more Linux converts we will get. I do agree that Linux is likely to be the last usable desktop standing.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
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...)
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.
The Google Play Store as originally envisioned would be a good basis. The Play Store as it exists now, as a storefront for flashy entertaining junk is really disappointing. It's a horrendous multicolored ugly mess compared to a few years ago.
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.
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.
Sounds similar to IBM MVS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... I always though the IBM ecosystem was boring because of its business orientated stance but they did lots of amazing development in hardware and operating systems.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Begging for volunteers is bad enough, but don't tell people to stop doing other things so they can come help you out. Yikes.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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 :(.
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.
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.
"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.)
"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
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