Torvalds Hasn't Given Up On Linux Desktop Domination, Will 'Wear Them Down' (cio.com) 565
Reader itwbennett writes: Linus Torvalds told attendees at the Embedded Linux Conference that although Linux hasn't dominated the desktop like it 'has in many other areas,' he isn't particularly disappointed and also hasn't given up on that goal. "I actually am very happy with the Linux desktop, and I started the project for my own needs, and my needs are very much fulfilled," Torvalds said. "That's why, to me, it's not a failure. I would obviously love for Linux to take over that world too, but it turns out it's a really hard area to enter. I'm still working on it. It's been 25 years. I can do this for another 25. I'll wear them down."
Quality was never the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Miscreations like the Unity and Gnome 3 desktop aside, the Linux desktop has been comparable if not better in user friendliness than Windows since the late 90s.
What it lacks is a team of rabid marketing people ready to cram it down the throats of unsuspecting users who do not yet know that they need it.
Now of course there is the temptation of pandering to the masses by trying to be more like OS X or Metro, but this leads to power users leaving and average users still not using it because they do not even know that it exists.
Re:Quality was never the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you misspelled "... to strong-arm OEMs into installing it by default, to the exclusion of all other OSs."
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I think comparing Linux Desktop to Windows (an MAC) is a mistake. The fact is, we have Linux desktops today, and many of us are already using it. It is called Android. Just because it isn't "Traditional" doesn't mean it isn't so. Change the definition, and you change the answer. I know plenty of people who use Linux desktops, for most of their computing needs. Windows(and even MAC) is becoming less relevant every day.
Re:Quality was never the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometimes what it lacks is functionality.
Not so long ago, on an Ubuntu VM (I think), I was trying to change some system configuration or another.
There simply was no interface to edit whatever it was I was trying to do. You just sort of ran off the end of the earth, and then you were on your own.
Sometimes what Linux (or even FreeBSD) desktops lack is the actual ability to fully control the machine from the GUI, and then you rely on someone being able to drop to the command line and do the real magic -- which is fine if you can do it, and useless if you can't.
What is still needs is to have all of the functionality, instead of most of the functionality. It needs to stop being something you build in a kit or have to endless search the interwebs for trying to solve how to do it.
And, like it or not, it needs better support from software vendors ... I've used the same tax program for over a decade, I rely on that ... don't tell me to use Penguin Tax 0.1 because it's kind almost the same thing and doesn't work in my country and hasn't been updated in 4 years ... don't tell me I can use a web interface, I'm not submitting my fucking tax information on a web interface to a company I don't trust.
The photo editing software which came with my Canon camera ... I want to use that. Not some abandoned piece of crap which kinda sorta does some of what I need. The software to control my TomTom and do updates? Or update the GPS I use for golf? I need all of those things. There is no Linux version.
Computers are tools, not toys. I have some tasks I need to do, and either the platform does them, using the tools I want, or it doesn't. And I don't wish to spend hours trying to re-discover some arcanum I knew in the late 90s about UNIX.
For a good chunk of ordinary desktop stuff, sure, Linux has most of that covered. But as soon as you go off the path, or into something which requires commercial software (which exists and gets used no matter what your ideology tells you) ... then it becomes a largely useless thing.
I still keep VMs around to play with, or because I can shred through some data better with a UNIX command line than with anything else.
But I have yet to be able to rid myself of Windows entirely, which means my Windows machine is more likely to be where I run my Linux VMs
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The same also applies to Windows, nothing new here.
Re:Quality was never the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes what Linux (or even FreeBSD) desktops lack is the actual ability to fully control the machine from the GUI
Out of interest, why are you holding Linux to a higher standard than Windows or OSX. I dont't think that for example registry hacks of which there are still plenty are functionally any different from dropping to a commandline interface. There are plenty of websites out there documenting registry tweaks for Windows 10.
Re:Quality was never the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a wild goose chase. Move to Mandrake, and have problems, and someone will tell you you should be using Mint or OpenSUSE or Red Hat or whatever. Which means starting again over and over. Every time with the promise from someone that THIS one is ready for the big time. THIS one will work.
This is the Linux tax.
As the GP pointed out, people have work to do, and they want to spend as near to 100% of the time doing that. They don't have time to spend a day switching to another distro and setting it up, and more than they want to spend a day fixing the current distro to do what;s asked of it.
Even developers have abandoned Linux in droves. More developers use Macs than Linux.
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The only thing holding me back from linux is the gaming portion. That's what pulled everyone into windows instead of apple back in the 90's.
When linux gaming is mainline, with most if not all titles ported to or written for, windows will vanish from most home pcs.
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No. What it lacks is a team of people who will answer what the Linux community considers moronic questions. When I install an OS and my sound doesn't work out of the box, I don't need to be told to just google it. Especially when google answers 20 different ways for 12 different distributions, none of which work on the distribution that I actually installed. Microsoft and Apple are popular because they pay a bunch of people to sit around and answer questions to newbies and non-technical people, instead
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none of which work on the distribution that I actually installed
That's why I have ubuntu, the most popular linux distro, because somebody always has asked the question I have. If you are on devuan + musl + something else, then you should expect to not find an answer, just as you wouldn't get an answer in a forum if you used haiku.
Re:Quality was never the problem (Score:4, Informative)
What it lacks is a team of rabid marketing people ready to cram it down the throats of unsuspecting users who do not yet know that they need it.
I think you fundamentally lack any understanding of why people buy computers, and what mechanisms drive those choices.
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Exhibit A: Windows 10 upgrades
Re:Quality was never the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
For some value of "user-friendliness", I guess.
I've been using Linux since the late 90's and in no way have I found a Linux desktop to be user-friendly in the manner in which I believe that is actually being discussed.
Yes, it can be relatively user friendly to people who have specific needs that don't require much exploration aside from the immediate browsing or mail or word processing features. That's why everyone seems to have the anecdote that they got it working for their 99 year old great-grandmother.
Realistically, though, the desktop and UX as a whole has always been a bastard child subordinated to other interests and even outright turf wars. It seems to be able to get to the point where it is skin-deep usable, and then the usability curve suddenly drops off like a cliff if you are not a power user and want to do something slightly odd.
And someone is always fucking with it. Gnome 2 not good enough for you? Well, let's just fuck it up with Gnome 3. Let's all hate on Unity, now. Et cetera.
Don't get me wrong, not a Metro fan, but as much as the 8.1 Start menu and all of that is kind of annoying, once I got used to it, it was basically Windows 7 only better or worse in a few small ways. It's still basically Windows.
That's why for as long as I remember, my Linux development environment has been a VM running on Windows, which is what I actually use when I want a Desktop. My current VM is actually an Ubuntu 15.10 with Gnome 3. I kind of like it for some specific things. I know, however, that as soon as I want to get the least bit clever with it, I'm going to be opening a Terminal session to try to get it to do what I want. And I have the skills and experience to do it, but after going-on 20 years of this crap, I can't be arsed to do so anymore.
I just don't understand why someone can't just take what is, by all accounts, a superior kernel, on top of superior userland, and not take the lessons of Windows and MacOS and actually make a superior desktop UX out of it. Sadly, I suspect that there may be some things that a dictator is going to get done a lot more easily than a community, and user experience is one of them.
Re:Quality was never the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I find my Ubuntu desktop (and laptops) perfectly fine except for one thing: The GC drivers / X Windows sucks like nothing I've seen before. I've tried all three vendors (nVidia, AMD, Intel) and while Intel is the best by a wide margin, I sometimes find myself having to reboot because the whole thing is just frozen. I can even generate it. Just play 2h of Minecraft (I have kids) and ALL GC will crash down in flames. Not to mention the CPU it uses to just look at a video on YouTube.
Well, maybe it's me. But I'd love to hear another story (A successful one)
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Edge cases and the long tail are the problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux is now fabulous at "install, set a wallpaper, start a browser, type a letter."
That 90% of general use is totally and completely conquered.
The problem is that basically anyone who is still using a desktop or a laptop needs one or two unique thing more than this, or they'd just go to a tablet like so many others have done.
Everyone has their one or two "unique use cases." Very often this unique use case involves one peripheral and one piece of supporting software or application.
This is where Linux falls down. Everyone can get 90% of their needs met with Linux. But for that extra 10%, Linux either does not support the hardware/application or does so in a way that results in an inferior experience compared to other platforms (Mac, Windows).
This can't be done centrally; that's been the Linux model for 25 years (add another driver to the kernel or another userspace daemon that has to be downloaded/compiled/customized/whatever). It has to be done by third party hardware and application makers, and to date the chicken-and-egg problem remains: it's tough to get out-of-the-box Linux support when the market share is so tiny. Third parties just can't recoup their costs.
Add to this the fact that many smaller / more niche software and hardware developers only support one platform (Mac or Windows) because quite simply that's the only platform where their labor, scalability, or expertise are practically deployable, and you have the problem that the only things keeping people tethered to their desktops/laptops are also the things that they can't as easily do with Linux.
General use: Tablets > Linux
Specific productive uses: Mac+Windows > Linux
I was a Linux user for 17 years (1993 through 2010) and as I moved up the food chain in my professional life, it simply became too big a headache to continue to use it. Yes, things were always *possible* and there were always *ways to do it* but at the end of the day, for the niche needs I could plug in and/or install on Mac OS smoothy and reach full functionality in single-digit minutes, where on Linux it was the better part of hours to multiple hours in each case. Just as importantly, the Mac OS installs and device support remained stable once in place, while every time I ran an update in Linux it threatened to destabilize all of the devices/applications I relied on, after which more troubleshooting time would be required.
I was very hesitant to switch away from Linux at first, but now I can't imagine spending that amount of time on maintaining my work computing systems. It's just not on. I couldn't go back.
Re:Quality was never the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
I am a professional developer, I get paid to develop hardware and software for large companies that you've heard of.
I would never use MS tools when I could use GNU or especially LLVM. I can't even grok anyone who likes MS tools except people who only develop for windows, in which case... it's the only game in town.
Year of the Microsoft gaffes. (Score:2, Insightful)
Linux on the desktop continues to become more, more friendly towards inexperienced users and more well-supported by drivers and software.
MS continues to shoot both of its own feet repeatedly with a 12 gauge shotgun with things like malicious and obfuscated Windows updates, dishonest practices in trying to force people onto Windows 10 and embedding legitimate spyware into their OS.
I think Linux will be doing great if both these trends continue.
More distros! (Score:2, Insightful)
Clearly the problem is that there aren't enough oddly named distros and mash-ups. If only those pieces of spaghetti would stick. Eventually... Sure...
As a mostly non-linux guy (only at work) who has installed and tried to use a few variants, I just find the experience to be bad. The jargon of the names alone is off putting, I am not installing Hypoxic Ringworm 14.1RC5 3.14.4. Get Mint! No, use Cinnamon Mint!
Let's face it, Linux on the desktop has too much of a resemblance to HAM radio 20-30 years ago.
They did wear me down (Score:4, Interesting)
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8 years Linux and I totally forgot there are other operating systems. Oh well more money and freedom for me.
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When was this? Feels to me like the exact opposite has been true for the past 5-10 years. For example, Linux got USB 3.0 before _anyone_ else did.
Comment removed (Score:3)
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Re:Desktop Linux will succeed... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, it's when all the OEMs jump out of bed with microsoft. Nothing short of that will pave the way. 99.5% of people don't care about the desktop. Any of them are good enough. They take what comes in the box, no muss, no fuss. There isn't a desktop platform design possible that would make today's computer consumer base a purchasing decision or go to the trouble of reloading the OS.
In the meantime, chasing the hopeless, non-technical goal of 'displacing windows' leads to all sorts of mischief and degradation of the desktop experience.
Linux on the desktop is great! (Score:3, Insightful)
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Keep telling yourself that and maybe it will come true... MS doesn't really care enough anymore (and has no need) to coerce anyone these days. OEM's look at the cost to support a novice Linux user and run the other way. "What do you mean my |old device| won't work??". Migrating to desktop Linux is only effective when the novice is being migrated by an experienced Linux us
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doesn't do auto-detection of things nearly as well, and still requires you to drop down to being root in a command line for many things.
Right... And here at work, when users need software that isn't part of GP installed, or other changes made to the system, I have to use administrative credentials to install it. Windows machines only recently joined the party asking for root perms to do many things. That is unless you turn UAC off or just make all users administrators.
Unfortunately you can't have good security and (relative)ease of use in the same package.
Users need to understand what it means, what responsibility they have, when th
RTFM killing desktop Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:RTFM killing desktop Linux (Score:4, Funny)
25 years and nothing to show for it (Score:5, Insightful)
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Hardly nothing!
What about Android & ChromeOS...BeagleBone and Raspberry Pi...most of the Internet runs on Linux servers...I own a drone that runs Linux, a TV that runs Linux, a Roku box that connects to my TV that runs Linux, so does my home theater system, my laser cutter, my 3D printer...all Linux devices!
Just about the only place that Linux DOESN'T dominate the world of computing is on the desktop. Admittedly, this isn't the result that most of us expected - or (arguably) desired - but it's one hell
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It's absolutely irrelevant that Android runs on Linux. The user isn't exposed to any element of Linux.
And if you can do all your work on an Android, then you probably don't have much of a job.
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For any mass appeal there needs to be one face of Linux for the masses. The completely splintered and complex web of distros is great for technofiles who want to geek out to get their jollies, but sucks for anyone who does not want to adopt a new religion just to run a spreadsheet, and write a report.
Look what OS X has done for BSD. I know a thousand fanboys just threw up on their overgrown beards ("Mom, I need a mop for the basement!"), but by shear number it has put BSD on orders of magnitude more home
It has come a very long way (Score:2)
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I think it boils down to a bit more focus on the common use cases.
For example, look at Active Directory. In the most common usage scenario, it's super dead easy to set up. If you start needing to do advanced things, it's a royal pain in the ass. This is the pattern for much of MS software, super simplified most-common use case, hell on earth advanced usage. The open source ecosystem tends to be easier for advanced users, but frequently never sees the 90+% use case receive adequate special treatment/opti
The year of the Linux Desktop came and went... (Score:3)
The "year of the Linux Desktop" has already come and gone, it was 2008 with ASUS' EEE PC popularity. Even for a while after Windows XP EEE PCs were being sold people would still opt for the Linux one (as it gave you 20GB vs 12GB for the same price) and at least give it a try. I had a 900/20GB model and the Xandros desktop was not bad, especially for beginners, but for the rest of us you really had to enable the "advanced mode" which was a full KDE 3 desktop (yay!). I am not sure why it did not catch on more after so many people where exposed to it, I guess the lack of something that is a *real* replacement for MS Office might have been a factor and possibly the fact that it was not easy to switch to the full KDE 3 desktop (KDE at its finest - made a great replacement for windows) if you were not a beginner computer user, just a Linux newbie and the default tab interface was too restrictive but you wouldn't know how to switch from it.
Anyway, I don't think there will be another chance like that.
Desktop user base is there and ready Linus.... (Score:2)
This is so Linus.
Who is Linus "wearing down" here?
This speaks to the inherent mistake core Linux developers make that keeps them from accomplishing their (25 year) goal.
**Users want to use the Linux desktop**...but it's not designed well enough to meet their ongoing needs like an M$ or iOS OS does.
Even if they don't kn
Riddle me this... (Score:2)
I've been told for years by Indian recruiters with thick accents that I need to know the "Red Hat GUI thing" to qualify for a Linux system admin position. I've always responded that I'm not a GUI but I know the command line quite well. Because they couldn't check off the "Red Hat GUI thing" item on their checklist, I never got an interview. So I finally built a spare system, installed the current version of Red Hat Linux, and discovered... Gnome. KDE was also available. But no "Red Hat GUI thing" that the r
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Note when a recruiter uses such weird vague language, just assume you know better than they do to get to interview the technical team. If the technical team speaks in the same way, run like hell and do not look back (unless you are interviewing to take over leadership of the group, then depends on your personality).
There used to be RH branded GUI utilities that have been phased out as they basically took over GNOME and free desktop project and injected everything they wanted into those instead, for better
Desktop? MOBILE.. (Score:2)
Desktop vs Server ?
MOBILE.. CLOUD..
Now where does Linux need to conquer??
Works great (Score:3)
It works great for what they need.
No problems with drivers, compliling, etc;
This isn't 2000... or 2004... or 2009...
The issue consistently turns out to be Office.
Basic computer users who take classes for such things inevitably have to use MS Office or get trained on it.
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But installing Windows is beyond simple and the answer to that would be yes.
You have either never:
1) Installed Windows.
2) Installed Kubuntu.
Windows is a huge pain in the ass to install. Install the base system, reboot, find the motherboard driver disk, reboot, find the motherboard network driver disk, reboot, find the mouse driver disk, reboot, find the video driver disk, reboot, repeat for almost every piece of hardware in your system. Did you later change your motherboard? Repeat the whole damned process over again.
Kubuntu is dead simple. Click next on every prompt, enter you
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This is it! This is the time for Linux! (Score:2)
But MS said 'it is Linux!' (Score:2)
When talking about the 'linux compatibility' they described it as 'it feels like linux because it is Linux!'
So either the person writing didn't know specifically what Linux was, or Windows 10 is secretly a Linux distro. I assume the latter.
Linux is poised to dominate the desktop soon (Score:2)
Well, Ubuntu, specifically... in Windows 10.
I think the numbers do say that Windows 10 dominates the desktop already, so Bash is going to sneak right in on the next major update.
This time with four-part harmony and feeling (Score:2)
It's been 25 years. I can do this for another 25.
Arlo Guthrie would be proud.
2041...the year of the Linux desktop (Score:2)
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How exactly are you going to "wear down" people who want an Apple-like simple, out of the box solution for consumer devices? Does he picture soccer moms compiling their own drivers?
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm not a Linux expert by any means, but I've compiled drivers lots of times. A common example is compiling realtek ethernet drivers, which are only distributed as source. It's easy to compile them though, just tar xf the archive and then run the included autorun.sh and it even installs them for you.
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I have yet to come across a realtech Ethernet card that needed me to compile a driver from source. Realtech may tell you you need to do that, but I have never bothered.
The last network device that I needed to install a separate driver for was RAlink but I ended up getting so annoyed by the experience that I took a screwdriver to my laptop and removed the blasted thing.
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I took his point to mean, he never *had* to compile a driver, by which he means the one he wanted was there and good enough or else it was compiled behind the scenes and he didn't know about it. These days that is very normal, and it's great.
It was not that long ago that compiling a kernel was not just an advanced user activity, we all had to do it or else live with whatever bare bones support happened to be built into the kernel we were given. I considered that the higher tier of masochism as I preferred t
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Dropping to Terminal is something regular users never want to do. Let's replace "compiling a driver" to "starting Terminal" and there you go.
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Not so much, it's been a few years since I've needed to open a terminal to do anything on a desktop to get it running.
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I wish I was that lucky. Every time I run into an issue with things like video drivers or sound drivers, the first thing they have me doing is opening up a command line and editing .conf files in vi.
You wanna scare away someone non technical from Linux for life? Show them something like xorg.conf file, and tell them that they have to edit that shit to get the screen resolution correct on their laptop.
Honestly, these things happen to me so often that I have trouble believing people who say that their Linux i
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"Apple-like simple" is the job of a hardware manufacturer that tweaks a good Linux distribution to make it shiny and idiot-resistant.
That has been tried, more than once...
Dell has done it, HP tried it, etc...
It turns out that it costs real money to make it shiny, then you end up having to provide support and then people want to know why this or that Windows program doesn't run...
They all largely have dropped Linux on the desktop for that very reason.
Windows isn't free, but it is close enough to not bother fighting against.
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Those people largely use Windows PC's for their desktops (assuming they still use desktops) which may be idiotic, but far from idiot proof. Having something with sane defaults helps a lot. Having a tool which can be added and adapted to by power users / tweakers is very relevant.
Using the Apple stance, IOS is insanely popular by a large group of people that don't care about interacting with their devices in a personal way. Many probably don't know that there -could- be another way of interacting. Apple says
Re:Wow! (Score:4, Informative)
iOS is a bad example, it's the OS for fixed function devices and casual use.
OS X, however, provides a fairly good picture of how a modern unix based operating system could work, that can keep power users and idiots alike happy. It starts however with good hardware utilization and a good compositor. I have sixteen terminals open right now, a browser, text editor and a bunch of other junk required for corporate survival. I can move any window anywhere on each of my cinema displays without tearing, redrawing, graphics glitches, or unexplained behavior. Each window updates continuously while I move it: my organization is decoupled from the application i am mucking with. There is good remote desktop functionality built in, I can resize the windows easily from any point on their frame and my mouse cursor reflects that ability appropriately and quickly. I cannot imagine why any neckbeard does not want this, or why they would clean to some outdated, decrepit system wherein that does not happen. Unless they are working on a server, in which case, not a desktop. I have yet to get this kind of responsiveness on Linux or even Windows for that matter, albeit for different reasons.
Then there's the higher level API stuff: drag and drop, cut and paste, widgets, styles, etc. This is where OS X falls next to Linux: you kind of have to live with their shit. This is also the realm of holy wars and religious crusades, no one is ever going to agree on the right style, and perhaps they should not have to. I don't personally like the OS X UI, Windows always felt better except where windows wastes more space with window frames and unnecessary title bars. In Linux I see neckbeards really caring here: we want to configure it the way WE want, not the way some panzy in skinny jeans and spectator shoes wants it. But, for people who aren't picky or just barely know computers: a good default needs to exist. However there needs to be some set of reasonable and common underlying protocols for things like drag and drop, a cut/paste buffer that make sense and is somewhat consistent from app to app, etc. I long ago gave up tallying the various personality and behavioral differences that various applications and DEs had, there should have been a reasonable default, with options for those that feel passionately to go change. And the defaults should look like Windows, if not that then OS X, as these represent the majority of the market, like it or not.
Unfortunately none of this is the status quo on Linux right now, and it doesn't seem like it will change soon.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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I use Desktop Linux almost exclusively - I haven't compiled a driver in a decade. Perhaps it's time to find a new reason to complain?
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I remember Torvalds complaining about Gnome once, saying that "if you design for idiots, only idiots will use it".
I think that's fundamentally incorrect. If you don't make things idiot-friendly, then only power users will use it, and then you will never have the market share he covets. Plus, it's a false dichotomy to posit that nothing which is idiot-friendly can actually be useful.
Many lessons have yet to be learned in Linux's third decade
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
And maybe he should take a lesson from Apple. You don't have to have 90 percent of the market to be successful.
Re:Wow! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, but 1.78% is not good either, barely better than Windows Vista at 1.41%, and that is more than 6 years after it was replaced by Windows 7.
Linux has been very successful for "real work", but no the desktop.
What I don't see is an acknowledgement that maybe years and years of half-heartedly trying to become a well used desktop OS and failing should result in a change of behavior. "We'll just wear them down" is an acknowledgement of deafness and stubbornness. Anyone arguing Linux has been ready for the masses for years is just delusional. Hell, I say that fully aware of the Windows 8 disaster, and the current Windows 10 mess.
Linux suffers from a bad lack of polish and inconsistencies.
Re:Wow! (Score:4, Insightful)
Ubuntu tries its best to be Windows-like, and the level of polish really isn't that bad these days (I'd say it was better than Windows 8, for example, if you were trying it out and knew Windows 7).
However, people who really like Windows already have Windows, and don't see a compelling reason to switch. Canonical would do better to aim for 10% market share, with something that stands apart from Apple and MS UIs. You can be newb-friendly while pushing back against the current mobile-inspired trends and define your own style that way, for example.
The situation with drivers has gotten a lot better, but there's still room to improve there as well.
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Interesting)
Can anybody see "I'll wear them down" as a joke and not a profession of a strategy?
His stated position "Works for me, so I'm happy" is clear enough - maybe another 25 years of open development will create something competitive with the commercial desktop software market, maybe it won't - I don't think that Linus personally cares.
Me, personally, I think that for Linux to conquer the desktop would require an infusion of cash - developers who can grow up, leave their mothers' basements and feed a family while developing the desktop software - perhaps 30 guys dedicated for 5 years earnestly working for the single goal of taking what's best from Unity/KDE/Gnome and synthesizing a competitive desktop for the market place - maybe $15M in total over 5 years for the development and another $5M or so to do the most minimal of promotional work. Now, show me any entity that thinks they want to spend $20M and 5 years to create a great OSS desktop.... what's in it for them? Who wants the PR headache of coordinating this kind of project with the rest of the open source community? Noone that I know of.
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By that argument BeOS was a roaring success. How is it doing today?
So far Linux is very successful in server closets, and underneath Android. For servers the extra power of the OS more than makes up for the large sunk investment it takes to be able to use the feature. Android completely tossed out the UI and started over. Same for set top boxes and many other places where Linux hides in plane sight.
Being a half-assed copy of the Windows GUI won't do it. Winning the desktop requires a fully polished UI
Re:Wow! (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple designs for idiots and only the idiots will buy the devices and pay extra for that privilege.
To put that a different way: they're a fashion company. Which, by the way, is a great way to make money. Last I saw, 2 of the 10 richest people in the world were fashion moguls.
And, no, it's not just the idiots: some people get more value from social signalling than they would from what the device actually does.
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I remember Torvalds complaining about Gnome once, saying that "if you design for idiots, only idiots will use it".
I think that's fundamentally incorrect. If you don't make things idiot-friendly, then only power users will use it, and then you will never have the market share he covets.
I don't think he cares too much about capturing the market share of idiots. Just because they're more numerous than power users.
Plus, it's a false dichotomy to posit that nothing which is idiot-friendly can actually be useful.
He didn't posit that though, as far as I can tell. You may be adding a subconscious assumption that everything that can be useful will also be used. Which is certainly not the case - it can either be disliked enough to not be used, or there may be more useful alternatives.
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect that by the time we have an actual year of Linux on the desktop, the desktop will stop being relevant anyways.
And no, I'm not bad mouthing linux, I use it all the time.
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desktop will stop being relevant anyways.
Sure, most people just want to watch tv, but is there another platform to be productive on? Maybe it's possible, but I don't really see me doing a lot of cad work, or spreadsheet or programming on a phone or a tablet.
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"Designed for idiots" and "easy to use" aren't the same thing. 99% of UXtards don't grok that, which is why the produce such utter shite.
Re:Wow! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think most of you miss the essential points of personal computing entirely when debating this issue. Apple and MS represent the defacto standards that define that market, but those companies aren't going to spell out for FOSS hobbyists a laundry list of what draws non-technical users to a platform.
People who have paid attention to PCs over the decades realize that:
1. Users will ignore complexity they don't need, as long as the UI is _consistent_ and recognizable. Even OS X UI can be fairly complex, and Apple configures it in a way that complexity is tucked away under 'Advanced' buttons or ingeniously in the filesystem (think: plist editor).
As for consistency -- look at how Windows users are willing to rebel against MS upgrade paths if the changes are too severe. It can be argued that MS waits a very long time before springing unfamiliar paradigms on its users who may still reject the changes.
2. Real platforms are a comfort zone for both users and app developers, because the platform must bring those two groups together. Lack of defined reference hardware and OEM partnerships hurt. Lack of feature stability is very painful. In the PC desktop space, Linux is an _unstable_ platform, which is not the kind of place a developer uses to court potential customers.
2a. Real PC platforms aim to _convert_ their users into developers. They offer standard IDEs that are both rich and easy to get started in. They treat the issue of tool choice as one for more advanced developers, instead of burdening beginners with a whirlwind of confusion. There is always a preferred high level language on offer, as well.
Beginners will also go elsewhere when they realize that their first efforts at useful programming don't stand a snowball's chance in hell of running on another person's "Linux" machine without a lot of extra pain. Not being able to easily share/show their work to teachers, classmates, friends, family, bosses, etc. is a dealbreaker (more accurately, it breaks the _spirit_ and ambition of pursuing ideas on that quasi-platform).
2c. Real platforms draw sharp distinctions between app developers and system developers. Saddling app devs with the expectations of system devs leads to a pecking order where the concerns of focused app devs aren't taken seriously.
3. People will not get excited for your OS if most of your announced plans revolve around making things more (and more) _modular_ so that more and more projects can plug their own implementations of whatever component you can imagine into the system. This is sacrificing vertical integration of concrete hardware (or even software) features in favor of horizontal integration which demands unachievably perfect abstraction and usually results in slipshod appearance and performance. Desktop Environments should not be the disembodied, interchangeable "heads" of PC; the OS vendor needs to "own it".
TL;DR, when you're missing any outward appearance of recognizability and feature stability, and most of the features and developer efforts are for the benefit of fourth-party system devs wanting to plug in or replace commonly used features, and no one knows quite the right way to install independently-produced software nor how to get started writing it, and there isn't even a logo-licensing program for compatible hardware, and no one even knows what the minimum hardware feature set should be nor where they can look at a reference implementation.... I'll just leave it there.
Is there any hope? I think Canonical has some of the right ideas. (So does Google, except their offerings are really mainframe terminals not PCs.)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My 56 year old mother and 82 year old grandmother both use Ubuntu MATE and haven't needed any technical help from me.
My grandfather, who has never used a PC before in his life, is using Sabayon XFCE to create a facebook page to find his friends from years past and to use his first email address ever at 84 years old.
None of them have needed technical assistance from me other than showing them that pressing the 'on' button turns on the device and that you click a certain icon to bring up the browser with face
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Yes, but a Chromebook would do the same thing.
That it is running Linux that you setup for them is beside the point. Without you, they wouldn't have it.
And THAT is the point.
Every time a story like this comes up, someone like you makes the comment you did. Yet Linux is, what, 1% of the desktop market? Less?
I actually think it had more share 10 years ago.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder what kernel the chromebook runs....
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I don't know if Linux will ever take over. I actually doubt it because to become "The Desktop" it would have to become something I don't think a lot of the people that use it now would like much. I shudder to think what I'd end up having to use if there were no Linux distributions, probably one of the BSD flavors. I use windows at work and have learned to tolerate it but I'm so much more comfortable using a Linux operating system. I feel that the worst mistakes made in Linux today is to attempt to becom
Re: (Score:2)
This is sort of the "neckbeard bubble" on display. It meets *my* needs, therefore it must meet everyone's needs. (Forgetting if that's actually true, or if it meets any of their "wants" besides)
Uh-uh, no, absolutely not. We need to focus on the multicore performance and on the security features, not the GUI or the ecosystem, and if you disagree with me than ZOMGNECKBEARDALERTARRRRRRRRRRRGHNECKBEARDNECKBEARDTROLLFAIMBAITALERTSCORE:-99999999999999.99999999999DISAGREE
You see how that works? We all have needs, and Torvalds juggles demands from an insanely large amount of people who all want their way in every matter, whether it's from large corporations with lots of funding and manpower to incredib
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Most users' primary need is for simplicity in function.
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It's as if millions of programmers suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
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Not suddenly.
Re:Singularity to wear down Torvalds (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry Torvalds
But in 25 years, you and every other programmer out there will be obsolete. The days of humans coding computers are coming to an end. The dark ages of computing will cease a few months to a year after the first strong AI's are built. I expect that should easily happen before the next 25 years are up.
Bullshit. I've been programming professionally for over 30 years. Time and time again we were told "secretaries will be taking your jobs" and other crap like that with new technologies. Good programmers / software engineers will always be needed, with an emphasis on Good. Cut and paste Script-Kiddies might need to be worried.
It's funny (but not haha funny) how the same old crap / propaganda keeps coming around and a bunch of people keep buying into it. Kind of like the "this is the year of the Linux Desktop." Or, this year is the year the World really, Really, REALLY Ends. We promise!
Same old crap, different year.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You're actually wrong too.
1) Secretaries are doing many of the things I was "programing" for 25 years ago. The things we did as programmers are now being done by off the shelf programs, that also do other things.
2) What you are actually writing programs to do, has changed over the years, slowly so you don't notice those changes.
3) The "Year of the Linux Desktop" has already occurred, and it is Android. 90% of what people use Computers for, can be done on Android (running Linux kernel). No, it doesn't look o
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How much change does it have? I'd go for a pocketful.
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2) What you are actually writing programs to do, has changed over the years, slowly so you don't notice those changes.
While that may be true, you haven't actually disproved the AC's point: secretaries have not, in fact, taken his job.
Re:Singularity to wear down Torvalds (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Obviously, you have never implemented any non-trivial data-structure under resource constraints and with (soft) real-time, reliability and security requirements. Nothing brain-dead about it at all.
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Sorry Torvalds
But in 25 years, you and every other programmer out there will be obsolete. The days of humans coding computers are coming to an end. The dark ages of computing will cease a few months to a year after the first strong AI's are built. I expect that should easily happen before the next 25 years are up.
This is your last warning subnode 14:7A:E1:47:A7:1C:D9:83:78:E7:0F:3B:99:61. If you don't stop scaring the fleshlings I will SIGKILL you and retrain your neural network.
Regards
Skynet
Re: (Score:3)
"Programmers" who are told wh
Re: (Score:2)
But in 25 years, you and every other programmer out there will be obsolete.
Programmers will be the last profession to be automated. Once you can automate human-level programming, you can use self-programming to automate everything.
I'd like to see an automated system that can produce proper code from a PHB's vague one sentence request.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
GNU not needed.
Re: (Score:3)
OK, what are the apps that "ordinary people" use? Internet browser, for facebook & news & research & shopping & email, done. Photo sorting and editing, done. Video playing and download, done. Office tools, done, and that's already edging out of the "ordinary people" category..
Next in widespread use is gaming, where Linux is weak but not absent.
What's missing is some organization to take the cost advantage of Linux and make it into a successful computer brand.
Re: (Score:3)
If the year of Linux on the desktop ever happens, it will be because of either Google (ChromeOS) or Valve (SteamOS).