Has the Desktop Linux Bubble Burst? 677
El Lobo writes "For the Linux desktop, 2002 was an important year. Since then, we have continuously been fed point releases which added bits of functionality and speed improvements, but no major revision has yet seen the light of day. What's going on?
A big problem with GNOME is that it lacks any form of a vision, a goal, for the next big revision. GNOME 3.0 is just that- a name. All GNOME 3.0 has are some random ideas by random people in random places.
KDE developers are indeed planning big things for KDE4 — but that is what they are stuck at. Show me where the results are.KDE's biggest problem is a lack of manpower and financial backing by big companies.
In the meantime, the competition has not exactly been standing still. Apple has continuously been improving its Mac OS X operating system. Microsoft has not been resting on its laurels either. Windows Vista is already available. Many anti-MS fanboys complain that Vista is nothing more than XP with a new coat, but anyone with an open mind realizes this is absolutely not the case."
Lord, I hope it hasn't... (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, I'm guessing they won't even have 'net connections unless they can leach off their neighbors- doubtful- so who knows for certain how much they'll use it for. Even if I have a winmodem that will still function after 8 years of idle sitting (static bags, yes...) I hear there aren't any drivers for them.
So yes, I hope the linux desktop growing somewhat- there's definately room to improve on Windows and a little competition never hurt anybody.
GNOME less random than it appears (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes! And I love it! (Score:3, Interesting)
I disagree (Score:3, Interesting)
While the author of the article feels Linux hasn't grown, I believe it has. It is not only fully on par with Windows, but I feel considerably more feature-rich, easier to install (for some distros), easier to maintain, has better performance, and has gained in two major areas.
1 - Windows app compatibility
2 - Gaming
Linux is very much a viable and reasonable desktop alternative to pretty much anyone on the planet today, where as that hasn't always been the case.
If that isn't significant growth, I'm not sure what is.
And let us not forget the strides that are being made in desktop search (programs like Beagle) and the 3D Desktop like Compwiz. Linux is beginning to innovate, and the big boys are trying to follow suit.
What do Linus and his lieutenants say? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hey here's another example - what if I want a fricking kernel dump when my system crashes? What, I can't dump it to disk like Solaris and every other enterprise UNIX does? I have to send it over the network (which comes to a host of problems which I won't go into here)? Yes, yes, I know about the problems of doing this for a variety of hardware, but this is the sort of thing I'm talking about
Linux is not there yet for high-end enterprise, although it is getting there. Linux should concentrate on that, which it has been doing, which is good. Trying to crack Microsoft's desktop monopoly while the high-end is up for grabs is dumb. Take the high-end and then go for the low end. Of course, people are free to work on the Linux desktop if they wish. But I'm glad the core team is concentrating on making Linux a real enterprise UNIX system.
Re:Wishful Thing (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, KDE's "only" developing as fast as MS (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.cuug.ab.ca/past-meetings/meetings.06-0
Assuming KDE 4 does come out in 2007, that'll be exactly 5 years behind KDE 3, about the same time from XP to Vista. They're developing as fast as a $100 Billion corporation, exactly how much more do you want?
The headline on this article is certainly senseless - in a "market" overwhelmed by a monopoly provider, there can be no bubbles to start with, at best you can incrementally develop a market share in small fringe areas where the monopoly's hold is weak. Mostly meaning non-US regions concerned about a lock-in by a foreign provider, especially governments. Also, particularly poor customers that can't avoid the $50 MS "tax" by piracy, because they have to play honestly, like educational institutions.
And in those areas at least, there's been slow but encouraging growth through 2006 and prospects for more. That's only a "bubble bursting" if you were deluded into imagining some take-off point of explosive growth was coming.
the future, not the past (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Gnome: Plenty of money, few developers
2) KDE: Plenty of developers, little money
He also argues that because we're only seeing point releases from Gnome, progress there is slowing down, while in KDE, we no longer have significant point releases because everyone's focused on KDE 4, though there hasn't been any visual results yet out of the Plasma project.
In my opinion, this article is a lot of worry-worting. Sure, Gnome and KDE could *always* use more cash and developers, duh. But are the projects hitting some sort of dead end or breaking point where they'll cease to be effective? Hardly. Will they be able to surpass Vista and/or OSX in functionality? Depends on what you're looking for. Even now, some people prefer Windows, others OSX, and others Linux. Most people just put up with Windows, actually.
Thom is really into OS development, but I'm not sure how technical he is, so I think he may be more interested in what happens in the visual department. KDE 4 has little to show there, but a lot in the libraries that Plasma will sit on top of. I'm especially excited about Kross, which rivals MS's (as yet unreleased) Monad/Powershell.
What's unique about KDE4 (and why we really need it in addition to Gnome) is that it's going to be installable on Linux and BSD as well as Windows and OSX. That's pretty innovative if you ask me.
I don't think Plasma in KDE4 is going to bring about the radical changes some may be hoping for. There have been some interesting posts in discussion boards for both Gnome 3 (Topaz) and KDE4 for radical shifts, but usually these people are directed to look at Symphony OS, since most suggestions seem to revolve around creating a task-oriented desktop or else merging the desktop and browser into one environment.
All in all, I see nothing wrong with Gnome and KDE taking a more evolutionary approach. This is natural for any software so mature. The OSS kernels aren't going to see HUGE gains, just incremental improvements, but over the course of a year, you can see a lot of new innovations, just as you will with Gnome and KDE. An evolutionary approach to software development might not be as exciting for journalists and fans, but it sure makes more sense from a technical perspective: release early, small, and often.
Re:Overreacting some? (Score:3, Interesting)
Comparing 6 years ago to today, Linux has made just about zero progress on improving user experience when it comes to hardware configuration, software installation, and system maintenance. (You know, the stuff that people who are honestly evaluating Linux as a desktop OS always complain about.) The only thing I've really seen move forward is the desktop environments, and even then the only one I've seen make what I'd personally call a whole lot of valuable progress is Xfce. Every time I take another look at GNOME or KDE my first thought is "Meh, I already have a Windows box."
I can't help but think that the past several years of Linux-on-the-desktop development are best described as "cargo cult OS design." Great strides have been made in making the whole mess look similar to the two most popular OSes, but nobody has grasped the real nature of the problem: It still behaves like Unix.
Re:A Stinging Indictment Of Desktop Linux (Score:4, Interesting)
In the hands of a techie or Joe Blow user?
Re:What do Linus and his lieutenants say? (Score:1, Interesting)
How ridiculously expensive is it to administer machines and maintain licenses in places like that, where all they need is a good email client, browser and connection to a mainframe? A good linux admin, standardized hardware and a caching netboot option _has_ to be drastically cheaper, which is all businesses ultimately care about.
Re:Overreacting some? (Score:1, Interesting)
I would think Linux is easier to transition to than OS X. At least with Gnome and KDE, things are very similar to Windows: the way the "windows" works (menu placement, minimize/maximize, taskbar), the right-click menus, keyboard shortcuts, start menu, etc. On OS X, all these things are very different.
I recently talked to a non-techie about her recent attempt to switch from Windows to Mac. She was having a hard time because it was so different. She cited things that she knew how to do in Windows weren't obvious in OS X. Simple things like copy/paste, the right-click menu, etc she couldn't understand why it was so complicated to in OS X. She said she thought that "Mac's are made for smart people" and that she needed to take classes to learn how to use it. That was surprising considering all the hype that Macs get for being easy to use for non-techies. Not easy for non-techies with a Windows background. I wondered how she would do with Linux desktop running Gnome or KDE. Probably much better than with OS X.
Re:I want to mod the article flamebait... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Desktops? (Score:2, Interesting)
Some users want email, the web browser, maybe access to a spreadsheet and word processor.
You can install a base system with just X and the standard X11 binaries, and edit up a nice 'Tab Window Manager' menu for them, and add shortcuts to
This will all comfortably run on a castoff PII or PIII system that can be had for free or a few dollars at a surplus auction.
Other people need tweakyness, multimedia features, etc.
Just because you insist on a 'themeable' GUI desktop with spinning three-dee whizzywhoos does not mean that everybody else is even interested in it. If you told many users 'this system will be so stable that it will NEVER screw up on you and nobody will EVER install spyware or viruses without your permission' they would snap it up.
Re:What bubble? (Score:2, Interesting)
OTOH, I once heard a business professor say that competing on price alone is not a sound business strategy. If the Linux install base grows enough, MS is going to counter by giving away Windows in certain situations.
Re:The bubble was never there. (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me paint you this very real picture (someone I know): you own a computer store. You do have Linux on some machines. Customers come in, they look at it. They're curious. Oh, so this is "Linux" (notice? they've heard of it; they might even know it's open source - the term free software, in English, I'm not so sure is a good one - it sounds unprofessional.). They want to know if they can still have MS Office. Can their kids play games? Windows games?
But here's where things start to go wrong: you are not allowed, for instance, to install CodeWeavers http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxoffice/ [codeweavers.com] for them to see MS Office inside Linux, or Transgaming's Cedega http://www.transgaming.com/index.php?module=Conte
There's no way you can prove to Joe Dad that he doesn't need Windows, but that he can still have the Windows software he needs. That he will save money, by not having to pay for the expensive MS OS, and that he will gain in security, and save in antivirus software. In fact, your deal with Microsoft may even specify that if you even suggest that, you'll be in breach of contract.
To make matters worse, Microsoft (and Intel, BTW), will shove you a lot of money to promote your store (as long as you flash their brand names), even give you money for advertising.
So, you see, this is not such a simple world where "the best technology wins" or "as long as we have standards." This is much more than that, it's a marketing game. Linux, PC-BSD, etc, will have to start with the corporate desktop, where money matters. Unfortunately, Windows users are in a deadlock, because the FLOSS community has not been able to come up with competitive Office solutions (please, do not say OpenOffice.org is that solution - people who say that have no idea what they're talking about), including integration with the said hypothetical suite.
Re:What do Linus and his lieutenants say? (Score:3, Interesting)
Just a guess, but I believe that you use the diskdumputils package to set up dumping to disk when the system crashes.
# man diskdumpctl
NAME
diskdumpctl - diskdump controller
SYNOPSIS
diskdumpctl [ -u ] device
diskdumpctl -V
DESCRIPTION
diskdumpctl is a program to register or unregister a dump partition with the system. The device argument must be either a
block device file or a partition device. If the -u option is specified, the device is unregistered. If the -V option is
specified, diskdumpctl version information is shown. diskdumpctl returns 1 if it fails due to an error. Otherwise it returns
0.
OPTIONS
-u Unregister the device.
-V Show version information and exit.
FILES
For kernel-2.4, the
For kernel-2.6, the
SEE ALSO
diskdumpfmt(8), savecore(8)
Just say no to dumbing down the UI. (Score:2, Interesting)
For companies that want to spend their own money dumbing things down I guess it's fine but I'd rather not see all their stupidity forced on the rest of us. If their customers really want their dumbed down product then they'll have no trouble selling it. If they can't then maybe they need to figure out that their market niche isn't significant enough.
Windows and Mac OS have created a curse in computing. Instead of actually making it easier to do complex work, interfaces are now designed so that complete idiots with no experience can sit down and play Minesweeper and look at porn. It's all about eye candy and not about usability or managing complex workflow and processes. It's incredibly stupid to emphasis keeping users trapped at a newbie level.
If anything, Linux needs a complete new direction in the desktop - one that doesn't copy every stupid idea from Windows and Mac OS but instead places the emphasis on making experienced users more productive. Why is it that experienced users still need to drop to the command-line to do real work? Because nobody has innovated in accomplishing complex tasks in a graphical enviroment since the creation of the stupid desktop metaphor. Instead of spending time cloning other environments I'd suggest spending more time on the parts of Linux that can be really annoying - make devices and services work better. These are usually better than their Windows counterparts already but they are still the most frustrating aspect of using the computer.
If you build something different but better THEN you have a killer app people will switch to Linux for. You think people are dumb but in my experience this is a lie people have been convinced of by Microsoft and Apple. I know many people that easily used DOS or even older, and harder systems, like punch cards or typing in cryptic commands on their C64. These people are now confussed by their desktop and no longer think they can manage to use their computer for anything more than the web, email, and games. They could use their computer just fine except they've been convinced otherwise and everything has been dumbed down so much that none of it has any meaning. Stop being so condescending - most people are smart enough to use a real computer.
Re:The bubble was never there. (Score:3, Interesting)
That's not necessarily true. Granted, given training and a cheat sheet, the CLI may be better, but if I take someone's grandma and put them in front of blinking cursor and keyboard, they are not going to know where to begin. You put that same grandma in front of a GUI with a mouse, or better yet, touchscreen, in about 10 minutes, she will have completed something, even if it is something as mundane as clicking "START" or "HELP". Even if you take an DOS expert and put him in front of a *NIX box, he's going to be clueless because he does not know any of the commands except the once common to both OS's, like cd.
The CLI is good for newbies when they are being supported over the phone. It's hard to screw up on the CLI. You either type it right or you don't. Not typing it right usually ends up in a syntax error and no damage is done. A GUI, on the other hand, is very easy to screw up. I had a clueless IT admin come up to frantic because she had lost the company's only NT installation files. She told me "I was moving the upside exclamation point 386 directory and it disappeared". A quick search found it. She was trying to copy it to a networked drive and her finger slipped off the mouse, moving it to another directory. That type of screw up is hard to do on the CLI.
Re:The bubble was never there. (Score:2, Interesting)
Desktop is meaningless to new user addoption (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:The bubble was never there. (Score:3, Interesting)
Now I have an external hard drive backing up EVERYTHING to make recovery from such a mishap possible.
Back to the topic, after I moved from Windows on the desktop to Linux (Gnome) full time, I've actually had less "Honey, make it work!" from my wife. She got a new scanner/printer, hooked it up, went to "Add a printer" and it worked. She asked how to scan stuff and I pointed her to xsane. Opened xsane, it found it. When she needed them in the Windows install we have running in VMWare, she had so much trouble. Not because she had to add the removable devices to the VM, but from the hassle of finding drivers, installing them, but being prompted along the way to install 10 extra programs, etc.
The "Honey, make it work!" tally:
Linux - 1
Windows - at least 5
I always find MSFT posts humorus (Score:2, Interesting)
Desktops are dead (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Just say no to dumbing down the UI. (Score:3, Interesting)
The research companies like Apple does are based more on making things easier for newbies, and easier to sell to newbies, and not for experts. Apple doesn't even use a consistant interface between it's different applications. So much for all their research into user interfaces. Can't make up their mind can they? Most people spend a very short part of their entire life of using a product as a newbie and quite a bit of time as a progressingly advanced user. Making it difficult for advanced users to use the system any more effectively than a newbie isn't very smart. That would be a large part as to why companies find that moving their workplace to be more computerized doesn't greatly benefit employee effeciency and that effeciency doesn't greatly improve with time.
I'm not to cool to use an Aqua interface and in fact I use it quite often - I just have to much work to get done to leave myself trapped in Mac OS. Keep your cutsie toy interface that doesn't even make it easy to get to more than a few applications let alone files. Nor does it make it easy to manage more than a few windows. It's like trying to work with your hands tied behind your back. Aqua is a horrible interface for working and when the shit really hits the fan you can't even fix your problems without dropping to the good old command-line. So much for making everything easy enough that even an idiot can do it.
The one thing Apple has right is that simplicity is a good thing. The major thing that they have wrong is that they try to simplify tasks to such a degree that you can often no longer do the task without figuring out how to jump through hoops. Sure a 10-key phone pad is a simpler interface for entering data than a full-sized keyboard - but it isn't an easier interface except for very targeted uses. If you send very many text messages from your phone you'll understand what I mean. An interface should neither be complicated or simple - it should be elegant. An elegant interface is one that keeps things as simple as possible but no simpler. It needs to be reasonably easy to get started in and easy to figure out how to do more complex tasks in. It needs to adapt neatly so that as tasks grow more complex they don't grow exponentially harder to do.
I'm sure I'm very condescending - people who give other people credit for being intelligent are often considered that way. As opposed to people that think everyone else is stupid and therefore need to be protected from thinking or being able to get work done.
As I've Said Before (Score:3, Interesting)
I've had trouble with installing, updating and KDE services on THREE distros - and not some lame one-man distros, either, but Mandriva 2007, SUSE 10.1, and Kubuntu 6.06 - in the last month or so. This made Linux on the desktop for me as bad as Windows - maybe more so. This is NOT what I switched to Linux FOR. I switched to Linux for security, reliability and freedom. Currently I'm getting the first and the last, but NOT the second. The Linux kernel doesn't appear to be a problem - it's the desktop, installation and update software that is the problem. Applications, of course, vary as to quality - but if a distro is including an app as its main app for an application class, such as media, that app needs to WORK RELIABLY.
There needs to be a "feature freeze" on ALL the major distros and a system software cleanup and tweaking period. I suggest ALL of 2007 be devoted to this, since Vista isn't going anywhere for a long time anyway.