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Is It Finally the Year of 'Linux on the Desktop' ? (pcworld.com) 406

Posted by EditorDavid from the wait-wait-hear-me-out dept.
"2019 is truly, finally shaping up to be the year of Linux on the desktop," writes PC World's senior editor, adding "Laptops, too!" But most people won't know it. That's because the bones of the open-source operating system kernel will soon be baked into Windows 10 and Chrome OS, as Microsoft and Google revealed at their respective developer conferences this week... Between lurking in Windows 10 and Chrome OS, and the tiny portion of actual Linux distro installs, pretty much any PC you pick up will run a Linux kernel and Linux software. Macs won't, but it's based on a Unix-like BSD system that already runs many Linux apps with relative ease (hence Apple's popularity with developers).

You have to wonder where that leaves proper Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Linux Mint, though. They already suffer from a minuscule user share, and developers may shift toward Windows and Chrome if the Linux kernels in those operating systems get the same job done. Could this fruit wind up poisonous over the long term? We'll have to see. That said, Linux is healthier than ever. The major distros are far more polished than they used to be, with far fewer hardware woes than installs of yesteryear. You can even get your game on relatively well thanks to Valve's Proton technology, which gets many (but not all) Steam games working on Linux systems. And hey, Linux is free.

Normal users may never be aware of it, but 2019 may finally be the year of Linux on the desktop -- just not Linux operating systems on the desktop.
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Is It Finally the Year of 'Linux on the Desktop' ? More

Is It Finally the Year of 'Linux on the Desktop' ?

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  • No (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 13, 2019 @03:37AM (#58581608)

    Just like every year.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by h33t l4x0r ( 4107715 )
      B-but I can choose from 300 different window managers. Surely that's what mainstream users value? Wrong. Because 299 of them suck and I don't have time to find the one that doesn't.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • If your Android phone is lying on your desktop then yes.

    • quit asking already (Score:5, Funny)

      by mschaffer ( 97223 ) on Monday May 13, 2019 @08:37AM (#58582688)

      No, we aren't there yet. It's like driving with a bunch of kids in the back seat.

    • Windows is now incorporating Linux...so Linux/Unix is on all new hardware now...it's more of a joke.
  • No further comment

  • Stupid level: Over 9000 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by war4peace ( 1628283 ) on Monday May 13, 2019 @03:41AM (#58581630)

    In other words, everybody is a star (astronomically speaking) because we all contain atoms which were created inside stars.
    I refuse to believe the Linux community is THAT desperate.

    • Re:Stupid level: Over 9000 (Score:5, Informative)

      by The Cynical Critic ( 1294574 ) on Monday May 13, 2019 @07:48AM (#58582466)
      The Linux community really isn't that desperate... Whenever anyone talks about this or that year being the "Year of the Linux Desktop" it's usually a Windows user mocking Linux for it's small desktop market share and this may qualify as just that depending on your attitude.

      In case you're not familiar with the origins of the expression, it's from the 90s (1997 IIRC) when they talked about how Linux is finally in a good state to be used as an everyday desktop operating system, not that it was about to take over the desktop market. It obviously didn't take long for Windows fanboys, who probably felt threatened by competition in the generic PC market, to misinterpret the expression and have been using this misinterpretation to mock Linux and it's users ever since.

      • This story is completely moot.
        No on knows or can measure what percentage the "Linux Desktop Market" is.
        I have a linux VM on my Mac, I use it nice or twice a week.
        When I'm at a client side, I use it daily. So ... who know s who am I and what I do?

      • Windows Fanboys ca 1997? Christ.

        I knew one back in 92 or 93 who said "I live in Windows" And he was talking about Windows 3.1. Probably died there too.

      • Re:Stupid level: Over 9000 (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Monday May 13, 2019 @10:36AM (#58583394) Homepage

        You have a very selective memory. I remember many, many posts here around the turn of the century that in full seriousness was saying this is it, this is the year we crack open Microsoft's monopoly. Even as it grew stale [slashdot.org] you can find lots of people claiming it's already here or already passed:

        1 Killer products: [slashdot.org]

        2008 was the year of Linux on the desktop. Does anyone really think Microsoft would have kept XP alive without netbooks? Does anyone really think Microsoft isn't shitting itself at 30% of netbooks running Linux?

        2 Taking the work market: [slashdot.org]

        I think the year of the Linux Desktop has passed already. (...) Linux desktop machines sold alongside Windows Machines, Linux Laptops sold by at least one top 3 Online vendor, an area where Linux competes on an equal footing with Windows products (netbooks) and common adoption of Linux desktops by large corporations and government agencies.

        3 Doing everything a normal user needs: [slashdot.org]:

        I think 2008 already was the year of the Linux desktop. It wasn't as big and flashy as everyone hoped, but for the first time I've seen a non-computer geek running Linux on their laptop-- not for any political or ideological issues, but because it was cheap and easy and did everything they needed.

        It was always something, it was WinME, XP activation, Slammer, OLPC, Vista, ARM netbooks... this was the death blow that would send Windows spiraling into irrelevance. Of course not in a year, but like Mozilla cracked IE6's monopoly so too would they fall. I think I was part of the choir seeing it an inevitability for a while. The mockery came when it turned into a running joke, a prediction made year after year without ever coming closer to becoming a reality. Saying it started as a pun is nothing but a retcon.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday May 13, 2019 @03:47AM (#58581644)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:The problem is that, do you want it? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 13, 2019 @05:20AM (#58581924)
      The Linux on Windows is a Linux without systemd and pulseaudio.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dnaumov ( 453672 )

      Remember that the main function of a computer is to "do things fast", not "do things in a fancy way".

      The vast majority of computer users have made it abundantly clear they completely disagree with this notion and whether you like it or not, the masses decide where the market goes.

    • Re: The problem is that, do you want it? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That's why after 10 years of using Linux exclusively I'm going back to Windows. Might as well, Red Hat and Canonical have ignored users and forced crap on us that we don't want. The Linux Foundation sold us out to corporate interests. So why not? There's no bazaar anymore, just our corporate masters in their cathedral towers dictating the direction we all have to go. The revolution has failed. We the people lost, again. The dream has died.

      • Use debian, Ive been on SID/buster for a few months now because I wanted newer drivers for a few things I own. Wonderfully stable. And new KDE is awesome and stable.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jwhyche ( 6192 )

        An you expected anything different? Most of us saw this coming from a mile away, 1.6km for those you that use sane measurements in your country. I knew 20 years ago that linux was going to replace unix as the dominate server OS.

  • No, because ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 13, 2019 @03:50AM (#58581650)

    I updated Ubuntu 18.04 LTS a few weeks ago and I wasn't able to reach the GUI desktop after the GUI login, the logs showed that malformed JavaScript code throws an error and takes down my GNOME desktop . . . . yes, JavaScript code crushes my desktop. I switched back to Unity (the community continued branch), and I was able to reach the desktop again.

    Since 20+ years I use Linux . . . and believe me, unless IBM/RedHat/Google band together to push the quality and reliability, Linux desktop will not reach the quality to be widely adapted. The Open Source community is too unsteady and lacks leadership, something the Kernel development has with Linus, and all the different distributions have their groups (Mint, etc), but the desktop GUI/window-manager/overall integration, there is no leadership but mediocre skilled developers reinventing the wheel every few years and then drop the ball, or worse, like GNOME, reduce functionality and stability with every new release.

    Linux Desktop is the bad example of Open Source: fragmentation ("many options") at its worst: nothing really mature and lasting.

    • Re:No, because ... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jawtheshark ( 198669 ) * <{moc.krahsehtwaj} {ta} {todhsals}> on Monday May 13, 2019 @04:30AM (#58581796) Homepage Journal

      takes down my GNOME desktop . . . . yes, JavaScript code crushes my desktop.

      That is because GNOME shell is written in JavaScript and C. The whole "plugin" infrastructure is JavaScript. Yes, I also was horrified when I found out.

      I switched back to Unity

      Hey! Hello. So did I! While my GNOME worked after the upgrade to 18.04, it is so wasteful with space that is becomes hard to use on a 1366x786 laptop. I did this only to one laptop, which made me decide to stick to 16.04 on my existing machines and new installations get Debian/testing with MATE. MATE still is more wasteful than Unity, but it's workable. There currently is no Debian package for Unity in the repos, but I'd use that if it were available.

      The Linux landscape was much better 10 years ago. A lot of projects went seriously down in quality and annoying decisions were made. I still use Linux exclusively on the desktop, and I will continue to do so. Microsoft embracing Linux into Windows 10 is not going to lure me back after over a decade of Freedom.

      That said, for me "Linux on the Desktop" is a reality and has been for ages. So it is for quite a few people in my family where I set up their machines. Granted, I took the choices, and I support them. They were never confronted with fragmentation, because of my choices.

    • The zealots aren't going to like you questioning their religion on here.

    • Slackware is still around and kicking. Its wonderful, its the Linux I remember. Barebones with good documentation.

    • Anonymous Troll wrote [slashdot.org]: “I updated Ubuntu 18.04 LTS a few weeks ago and I wasn't able to reach the GUI desktop after the GUI login” ..

      Why didn't you restore from the backup you made before running the update?

      “Since 20+ years I use Linux .. Linux desktop will not reach the quality to be widely adapted” ..

      You're obviously trolling here. Tell us why it is virtually impossible to enter a high-street computer shop and walk out with a pre-install linux desktop computer?

      “Th

    • Linux Desktop is the bad example of Open Source: fragmentation ("many options") at its worst: nothing really mature and lasting.

      That's only the part of it. Fragmentation, lack of maturity, add in general user unfriendliness, expectation that either the user knows all of the hundreds of "options" presented to them or can whip out vi and work their way through a bunch of /etc/ files, sit down at another Linux machine and you don't have a clue how to use it because someone else set it up, lack of basic functionality expected of the desktop.

      Best of all this won't be fixed because the community is absolutely toxic to the development of a

  • already exist - Android (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pereric ( 528017 ) on Monday May 13, 2019 @03:52AM (#58581656) Homepage

    If you by "Linux" mean any OS using the kernel (instead of GNU/Linux), many of us probably already have a Linux computer on the desktop: an Android phone or other device. Arguable in some way more "Linux" than running in a container; the kernel run at the top level, and there is at least some resemblance to UNIX userland.

  • It depends on the definition of Linux (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Suren Enfiajyan ( 4600031 ) on Monday May 13, 2019 @04:05AM (#58581698)
    The word Linux is used in different contexts. The 2 most common ones are Linux kernel and some GNU/Linux distro. It's much less commonly used for Android and Chrome OS. If we consider Android and Chrome OS as Linux distro then "the year of Linux on desktop/laptop/phones" has some sense. But keep in mind that almost the only thing common in these 2 OSes and a GNU/Linux distro is the kernel. That's it, the kernel is like a car engine, most people don't care how good it is especially when the whole car is lousy.

  • What are exactly the "bones of an OS kernel"? AFAIK, Win10 does NOT implement the Linux kernel -- only its API. ChromeOS, by contrast, actually runs the linux kernel.

    • Re:Bones of a kernel (Score:4, Informative)

      by Zarhan ( 415465 ) on Monday May 13, 2019 @04:58AM (#58581856)

      Starting with WSL 2 they *are* running the actual Linux kernel.

      See for yourself at https://devblogs.microsoft.com... [microsoft.com] - "WSL 2 uses an entirely new architecture that uses a real Linux kernel."

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        Don't care, as long as it says MS on the outside, I'm not touching it. They'll only screw it up.

    • WSL2 (Score:2)

      by DrYak ( 748999 )

      AFAIK, Win10 does NOT implement the Linux kernel -- only its API.

      That was indeed the case up until the previous WSL included.
      It was an absolutely tiny subset of the Linux kernel API, barely enough to test some programs, and lacking all the sexy interesting bits of the real deal.

      Microsoft realised that and decided to drop the ball (again. If you've paid attention at their older attempt at android app compatibility for Windows 10 mobile, which was their first drop of the same ball and which they salvaged into the previous WSL)

      Now, starting from WSL2, Microsoft decided to i

      • Serous question here: What then is the difference between WSL and a VM, like HyperV or VMWare? Is WSL something else?

        • Serous question here: What then is the difference between WSL and a VM, like HyperV or VMWare? Is WSL something else?

          TL;DR: WSL1 - absolutely not at all. WSL2 - kindof but with more integration. CoLinux would be something closer.

          Keep in mind that there two different generations of WSL.

          WSL 1 [microsoft.com] (the thing introduced a couple of years ago) :

          It relies on a peculiarity of the NT kernel: it can "speak" completely different APIs (called "subsystems")
          In addition to Win32 API for most windows application, in the past this has been used to also provide some POSIX-ish APIs (the old "Microsoft POSIX subsystem") or OS/2 API back when

  • No. However... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by YuppieScum ( 1096 ) on Monday May 13, 2019 @04:29AM (#58581794) Journal

    ... if someone comes up with a distro that looks and behaves enough like Windows 7, that requires minimal to no "fucking about" to work - for example, includes pre-configured Office-alike, Wine, native video drivers, etc - then next year, when Windows 7 goes EoL and unsupported, there's a big chance it will.

    • Lindows (Score:4, Informative)

      by DrYak ( 748999 ) on Monday May 13, 2019 @08:05AM (#58582540) Homepage

      Lindows exactly attempted back in the days.
      (a windows-look-a-like skin + wine for app compatibility)

      and got at the receiving end of the obviously expected law suits.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Lawsuits which MS was losing (it was in danger of having Windows nullified as a trademark for being too generic), so it actually *paid* a considerable sum to buy the Lindows trademark and Lindows was renamed to Linspire.

  • Linux on the desktop didn't work, but desktop on the Linux did work! I have the Autoexec.bat files to prove it! =)

  • Did everyone forget 2004 ? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Laxator2 ( 973549 ) on Monday May 13, 2019 @05:04AM (#58581874)

    I keep repeating this, the first time I heard talk of the "Year of hte Linux Desktop" was 2004.
    And it was true. Starting with that year I did not have to go to any forum, read any documenntation or do any tweaks to use Linux on on the desktop. What I got out-of-the-box worked fine.
    The reasons for not using Linux on the desktop moved from technical to politiical.

    If you need proof:
    1 - SCO's attack on Linux started in 2003.
    2 - The Munich Linux migration project was announced and Ballmer's visit to Munich followed shortlly after.
    3 - Ken Brown's Samizdat was annoounced also in 2004.
    4 - Darl McBride's talk at MIT where he took along an armed bodygard (MIT students are murderers, so he needed amed protection) also took place in 2004.

    Nobody seems to remember that lots of companies were preparing to switch to Linux on the desktop, but the SCO threat (bankrolled by Microsoft) to sue everyone running Linux and demanding 700 USD per CPU per year in licensing fees has spooked almost all corporations.
    Linux was used everywhere, but only on the servers where it was not viisible.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MrKaos ( 858439 )

      I remember. The linux desktop is clean and functional. I gave up on windows because the upgrade process is a nightmare from one version to another. With Linux a copy of your home directory on the upgraded system is enough and you're good to go.

  • Who wrote this vapid puff piece... is that you, Miguel?

  • Is the desktop still relevant? I saw last week that most gaming is now performed on mobile devices. That was already the case for web browsing a few years ago. I don't think the desktop is a relevant platform anymore in terms of market. It's like wondering if alloy X will finally be number one for horseshoes this year, nobody cares.

  • I'm old enough to remember the 3E's of Microsoft

    Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

    for reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    some things never change

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jon3k ( 691256 )
      Exactly. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Microsoft is not a friend of open source. I can't believe I actually have to say that, on Slashdot, of all places.

  • No. And the reason is games. (Score:3)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Monday May 13, 2019 @06:31AM (#58582086)

    Let's face it, everything else a "normal" user could possibly need or want runs on Linux. Browsing the web, doing email, using online messaging services, writing documents, watching and editing graphics, you name it, it's there.

    What isn't there is gaming. This is admittedly only partly the fault of Linux (and its makers), much more of the blame lies on the shoulders of those companies that make those games.

    First and foremost, DRM. A lot of DRM relies on runtime behaviour of the WinAPI that is of course very different in Wine, simply because it is not exactly the same. But that's only the tip of the ice cube. Even if the game runs, it usually takes quite a bit of configuration (and no, PlayonLinux is not a panacea, quite far from it) that is virtually impossible to understand, let alone do, for the average user. It seems to be more like a proof of concept at this stage rather than something you'd hand to Joe Randomuser als a tool to get his games to work on Linux.

    Then there's the driver issue. While by now there's plenty of support from the major GPU suppliers, that's also pretty much where it ends. Sound is still far from on par with Windows (even if you get it to work, getting that "virtual 7.1" support you enjoy on Windows is usually out of reach, let alone various sound effects), and we better not start on gaming mice and keyboards, you're usually already lucky if you get them to work at all, let alone getting their special keys and gimmicks to work. And pretty much any input device that has "programmable" in its name is not at all programmable in Linux because, you guessed it, the programming tool is only available as a Windows executable that somehow refuses to run in Wine (or if it does, it can't upload anything to the devices... again, if you're lucky and it doesn't just kill the device when you try).

    So no. The year of the Linux desktop will, at least in consumer areas, only come if there is some noticeable support from third party hardware and software. And it doesn't seem to be forthcoming in the foreseeable future.

    • And it's a catch-22. They will only support Linux if its popular and Linux can't be popular for gaming if it isn't supported.

      Furthermore than infantile debating and fragmentation of the ecosystem makes it pretty much impossible for a game dev to support "Linux". They have to pick a popular distro family and go with that. When Red Hat land uses rpm and flatpack and Debian land uses deb and snaps there is no "we support linux". To get arbitrary Linux support for any application of real complexity essentiall

  • Betteridges law of Linux on the desktop. I'm in my 30s now, been waiting for Linux on the desktop since I was a teenager. Linux won on the phone, server and embedded. Spydows 10 is so shit but still more usable than Linux so Microsoft can get away with it.

  • Linux must be the best desktop OS (Score:3)

    by sad_ ( 7868 ) on Monday May 13, 2019 @06:42AM (#58582134) Homepage

    Linux must be the best desktop OS since everybody wants to have it and makes big announcements about being able to run linux applications on their OS.

  • Crap battery life (Score:3)

    by pablo_max ( 626328 ) on Monday May 13, 2019 @07:19AM (#58582298)

    Last week, I installed Linux Mint Cinnamon on my Yoga Pro 2 notebook. Core i7, 512GB SSD and 16 GB RAM.
    So far, it is certainly not better than Windows 10, but that really leaves a bad impression for me is the battery life. It is literally less than 50% of what I get when running my windows partition.
    Videos on youtube are also pretty choppy most of the time. Overall I would say that the performance is significantly worse than Win 10. I will try to some optimizations, but likely I will delete the installation and just go back to Windows 10.
     

    • The weird thing is, I'm running Mint Cinnamon on my old X230, 3rd gen i5, 12 gigs of ram and 256GB SSD. It runs great. Battery life is around 5 hours with my normal load and Youtube videos play smoothly. You would think that your newer and objectively better hardware would do better. Its probably a driver or optimization issue. ThinkPads tend to be very well supported, the non-think Lenovo products, not so much.

  • The old issues remain (Score:3)

    by Artem S. Tashkinov ( 764309 ) on Monday May 13, 2019 @07:26AM (#58582346) Homepage
    Seems highly unlikely [altervista.org].

  • Assuming your goal is to make desktop linux more popular:

    Linux on the desktop is going nowhere fast [statcounter.com]. We could keep relying on "proper linux distros" (whatever that means), and spend another 10 years and maybe gain another 0.5% market share. Or we can admit that the linux distros have thoroughly failed on he desktop and embrace new strategies such as adding linux kernel and apps to windows and chrome os.

    • Integrating Linux functionality doesn't achieve the goal though. Unless things have changed I thought it was supposed to be a FOSS OS becoming dominant. What needs to happen is for the devs in all of these projects to lay down their egos and realize that 300 window managers, 500 package managers etc etc is counter productive. Linux needs a standard. There is freedom and then there is reinventing the wheel. We are very much at reinventing the wheel. On a high level there is no difference between Snap and Fla

  • Linux on the desktop has been a thing for ages now. Back in '95 I still found it too tedious (writing modelines by hand etc.), but from about 1998 I preferred a Linux distro to, say, OS/2 (and certainly over any Windows version).

    Having decent hardware has always helped, and choosing the desktop environment (or simple window manager) wisely also helped.

    All in all, Linux has been very user-friendly... just a bit picky over who it would consider a friend (a wise choice, IMHO).

    That being said, there's still thi

  • No and I hope it will never be. Can we keep something that is more "power user friendly"? Let's be honest, most Linux desktop users are IT people like me who want/need this kind of interface. I don't want it to be dumbed down to a touchscreen-like interface. If you need a toy/gaming OS, install Windows (or buy a console).

  • But, then again, so it has been every year for the past two decades. In truth, since the insistence is in shoving the monstrosity that is, and has always been, Gnome 3.* as the Linux flagship, that Linux so represented will carry on spinning its wheels in the desktop is all but a certainty,

  • I will only use Linux Mint on it... And update the windows 10 partition just in case it will works.

  • So we are now defining 'The Year of Linux on the Desktop' to be when Microsoft includes the Linux kernel in Windows 10 as a novelty for edge-use applications?

    I'm pretty certain that when Linus put up his infamous 'World Domination' presentation slide he was totally imagining his kernel being folded into Windows decades later...

  • Why would I take the nice, reliable implementation of Linux Mint that runs on my laptop and surround it with the disaster that is Windows 10 and Microsoft's abhorrent QA?

    .
    Why?

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