Is The Linux Desktop In Trouble? (zdnet.com) 467
"I believe that, as Microsoft keeps moving Windows to a Desktop-as-a-Service model, Linux will be the last traditional PC desktop operating system standing," writes ZDNet contributing editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols.
"But that doesn't mean I'm blind to its problems." First, even Linus Torvalds is tired of the fragmentation in the Linux desktop. In a recent [December 2018] TFiR interview with Swapnil Bhartiya, Torvalds said, "Chromebooks and Android are the path toward the desktop." Why? Because we don't have a standardized Linux desktop. For example, better Linux desktops, such as Linux Mint, provide an easy way to install applications, but under the surface, there are half-a-dozen different ways to install programs. That makes life harder for developers. Torvalds wishes "we were better at having a standardized desktop that goes across the distributions."
Torvalds thinks there's been some progress. For software installation, he likes Flatpak. This software program, like its rival Snap, lets you install and maintain programs across different Linux distros. At the same time, this rivalry between Red Hat (which supports Flatpak) and Canonical (which backs Snap) bugs Torvalds. He's annoyed at how the "fragmentation of the different vendors have held the desktop back." None of the major Linux distributors -- Canonical, Red Hat, SUSE -- are really all that interested in supporting the Linux desktop. They all have them, but they're focused on servers, containers, the cloud, and the Internet of Things (IoT). That's, after all, is where the money is.
Linux desktop distros "tend to last for five or six years and then real life gets in the way of what's almost always a volunteer effort..." the article argues. "It is not easy building and supporting a Linux desktop. It comes with a lot of wear and tear on its developers with far too little reward."
His solution? Having a foundation create a common desktop for all Linux distros, so the Linux world could finally reap the benefits of standardization. "This would mean that many more Linux desktop developers could make a living from their work. That would improve the Linux desktop overall quality.
"It's a virtuous cycle, which would help everyone."
"But that doesn't mean I'm blind to its problems." First, even Linus Torvalds is tired of the fragmentation in the Linux desktop. In a recent [December 2018] TFiR interview with Swapnil Bhartiya, Torvalds said, "Chromebooks and Android are the path toward the desktop." Why? Because we don't have a standardized Linux desktop. For example, better Linux desktops, such as Linux Mint, provide an easy way to install applications, but under the surface, there are half-a-dozen different ways to install programs. That makes life harder for developers. Torvalds wishes "we were better at having a standardized desktop that goes across the distributions."
Torvalds thinks there's been some progress. For software installation, he likes Flatpak. This software program, like its rival Snap, lets you install and maintain programs across different Linux distros. At the same time, this rivalry between Red Hat (which supports Flatpak) and Canonical (which backs Snap) bugs Torvalds. He's annoyed at how the "fragmentation of the different vendors have held the desktop back." None of the major Linux distributors -- Canonical, Red Hat, SUSE -- are really all that interested in supporting the Linux desktop. They all have them, but they're focused on servers, containers, the cloud, and the Internet of Things (IoT). That's, after all, is where the money is.
Linux desktop distros "tend to last for five or six years and then real life gets in the way of what's almost always a volunteer effort..." the article argues. "It is not easy building and supporting a Linux desktop. It comes with a lot of wear and tear on its developers with far too little reward."
His solution? Having a foundation create a common desktop for all Linux distros, so the Linux world could finally reap the benefits of standardization. "This would mean that many more Linux desktop developers could make a living from their work. That would improve the Linux desktop overall quality.
"It's a virtuous cycle, which would help everyone."
Standards (Score:5, Funny)
Standardizing the user interface is what makes a desktop useable.
Re:Standards (Score:5, Interesting)
And we have that, in spades. Gnome, MATE, KDE. Sure, they have variations, but Windows had variations between releases. Concepts stay the same - menu button or ribbon with launchers in it or combination thereof. It isn't a software usability issue per se. Personally, I prefer MATE, and I prefer it the way Mint ships/configures it.
Not that it is my place to put words in Linus' mouth, etc. but it seems that what he is really complaining about is the package management landscape, the variations in libraries and versions and compile options, etc from distribution to distribution. Even starting with one of the Big Distros like Debian, you never know when/what Ubuntu (and therefore Mint, etc) will grab when they pull from -testing or -unstable to start their next release. The only real place you have cross-distro compatibility somewhat guaranteed is with true parent/child distros like Mint and its matching Ubuntu release that it shares package repos with.
Singular Standard needed (Score:4, Insightful)
And we have that, in spades. Gnome, MATE, KDE.
True, that is technically standardizing but I think the real point is there should be one standard. Linux's desktop adoption is a small fraction of that of Windows and it is further fragmented by multiple desktop standards. This is further complicated by the fact that apps will follow one of the standards so even if you use Gnome the chances are you will still run some apps that were designed for KDE or vice versa.
Having a singular standard would fix a lot of this. You would still have the version issue like Windows does but this is far less of an issue because then an old app is still using a standard that you were used to using even if it is not well suited for the current version.
Re:Singular Standard needed (Score:4, Interesting)
And we have that, in spades. Gnome, MATE, KDE.
True, that is technically standardizing but I think the real point is there should be one standard.
Okay, let's have that chat. What should the standard be? Let's say that we need to make Linux look and act like Windows. Which one?
Of course that is just bait, because the whole concept of Linux not being adopted by the masses because it doesn't have one ring to rull them all and in the darkness bind them, is that the closest thing to a standard is....... MacOS, which will cause a riot in here, and I might have to go into the witness protection system now. But You could take a person from the early 1990's on an early SystemXX OS, transport him to today, and set him in front of Mojave, and in a few minutes he could figure it out.
Now take a person who is using the old standard Windows from W95, and set him down at a Vista or W8 or W10 machine, and it's going to take a bit.
Point is, if one UI to rule them all was the mark and cause of the largest Installed User Base, it would not be Windows at all. So we need to bury that idea.
Linux's desktop adoption is a small fraction of that of Windows and it is further fragmented by multiple desktop standards. This is further complicated by the fact that apps will follow one of the standards so even if you use Gnome the chances are you will still run some apps that were designed for KDE or vice versa.
I kinda seriously disagree. Linux has a smaller user base because of Ford versus Chevy Syndrome, people thinking that you have to configure systems like it is 1999, meticulously searching the internet for every driver. A lot of people who simply use whatever OS comes on the computer they bought, And the fact that people think that even if there is software for what thedy want, they might need that MS-Dos program from days of yore, seriously - I use a radio that the manufacturers insist that they can only write for Windows because of the installed user base. Yeah, because a person who is into Software defined Radio buys one because they just so happen to have a windows machine. And another fellow is making a lot of money by offering a Mac Version, because the windows version is bollixed after updates - a lot.
. Having a singular standard would fix a lot of this.
Which one? The different versions of Windows are so radically different from each other that the idea that Linux is a failure because each version is not 100 percent identical is kinda amusing. The different distros are a lot more alike than Windows.
Do people who ever use linux even come up with this stuff?
Re:Standards (Score:5, Insightful)
OP says "we need a standardized user interface".
Your reply is "we have three of those standardized user interfaces". Looking in Wikipedia, I found this:
On desktop systems, the most popular user interfaces are the GUI shells, packaged together with extensive desktop environments, such as KDE Plasma, GNOME, MATE, Cinnamon, Unity, LXDE, Pantheon and Xfce, though a variety of additional user interfaces exist.
A standard is a standard. One single thing. Not eight. Certainly not eight over umpteen distros.
I have an old ASUS Eee PC 1005HA which came with Windows 7 Start or something like that. In time, that ugly-ass sticker with the license key has faded away so I installed a Linux Mint distro on it. We plan to use that Eee PC in the kitchen, to look up recipe instructions while cooking, and my girlfriend was asking me about its OS. She's a Windows user and so am I (most of the time). I was telling her it has Linux installed and if she doesn't like the interface, there are others around. She asked "so which is better?" - hell, I don't know.
Now, if you have a normal PC user, who knows just enough about an OS UI to be able to configure the OS and use it without asking for help, how would you present these user interfaces and the difference between them? When faced with a choice between multiple software solutions I tend to construct a table having the solutions in columns and their features in rows, with each cell marked on or off showing whether A certain solution has a certain feature, compared to the rest. In this case I realized I don't know what the difference is. I'm not sure I should care, either. So why, then, do these competing solutions even exist? They don't compete commercially, because they are free to use. They don't compete from a functionality perspective, because (and I make an assumption here) top 30 UI features for any modern interface are present in all of them. So why have all those solutions, if the top reason to use one over the other is personal preference? Which, by the way, needs to be developed, and a new user (or a converted one) doesn't have.
Last thing I need when switching to Linux Desktop is a consultant to help me decide which user interface better suits me. I would very much like to install a distro and have a way to choose between the eight user interfaces above, on the fly, by choosing from a menu or something, much like themes work on an Android phone. Then yes, it would indeed be a matter of preference.
I remember when Windows 8 was released, with their new Tile-based desktop and their horrible choice of redesigning Settings, a half-assed implementation which destroyed usability. Even today, with Windows 10 v.1809, Settings are a mess. Half of them are present in the "new" UI, and half are still in the classic UI (which was way more functional, if you ask me). I, the ever-desktop-click-and-OK user, had to rely on PowerShell or Command Prompt a lot more to change settings, because the UI way was more frustrating and slower. So, yes, there is ample opportunity for Linux-based desktop UIs to replace Windows-based UI from that regard, but fragmentation is one of the big hurdles.
Re:Standards (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you're approaching this from an end-user perspective, as though Linux desktops are equivalent to products being sold to consumers, want to compete on market-share, etc. That's missing the point of what drives the Free Software ecosystem. Since people can produce their own software, they will. The desktops themselves are down-stream of different toolkits, and then set-ups for those desktops in various distros are downstream from there.
The GTK was developed for the GNU Image Manipulation Program, and then developers said "hey, we can use this to make a desktop with!" and they produced Gnome. Qt was developed, and then developers said "hey, we can use this to make a desktop with!" and they produced KDE. Others looked at GTK and said "hey! we can produce a desktop which is more lightweight than Gnome!" and developed Xfce. Since lots of people find programming fun, and they love sharing stuff, lots of stuff gets made.
This is a good thing. This isn't a competition, because this isn't a market. Individual installations aren't commodities. The only way to have a "standard" would be to go around telling everyone they're bad people for creating and installing and releasing new stuff. Just because Apple and Microsoft have end-users brainwashed into being terrified of knowing what's under the hood of their computer doesn't mean Linux has to go hide all the gory details from you.
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Android has multiple desktops too. You have a choice of launchers, and a choice of skins.
Yet Android is more consistent and predictable.
Take mouse wheel sensitivity on Linux. There is no agreed standard for it. Each app decides how far to scroll per wheel notch. There are hacks to accelerate it but they don't work the same way in every app, if they work at all. In Android scrolling is extremely predictable and consistent, and in Windows there is a single place to configure it that works with every app.
The s
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Agreed - it's not the user interface that needs to be standardized, it's the developer interface.
If I write a piece of software for Windows, I know it will almost certainly install and run on any contemporary or newer version of Windows, especially if I rigorously honor reasonable access restraints. I have plenty of old software from the Windows 95 days that still runs fine, though some requires a little permission tweaking.
If I write software for Linux though... I can't. I have to write it for a specific
Re:Standards (Score:4, Interesting)
My "desktop" has been standardized for around 30 years now. I use fvwm with my own configuration. Of course, I have this barely usable gaming system, were some morons force changes I do not want all the time, but since I use it for gaming (the only thing it is halfway fit to support), I do not mind too much. Oh, and the same assholes will also spy on me when I have to go to version 10. At that time, I probably will stop doing anything on that system except gaming.
Re:Standards (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: Standards (Score:3)
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Gnome 3 drove me away from Gnome. Now I use MATE.
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You kindof got me there. Gnome 2 was good. I don't really know about superior, but it was good. The gnome devs decided to destroy it though so. Glad I never put too much effort into trying to use it.
Re:Standards (Score:5, Insightful)
I use XFCE on all my computers, since the early days of Gnome 3.
I love it. And bless it, for it has never changed and has continued to work well. Software perfection.
I don't use desktop icons. I use a full width bottom bar with a menu in the corner. Focus follows mouse. 10 virtual desktops. Many instances of xterm.
My wife uses it and she probably doesn't even know it. Or what OS is running. That's another part of software perfection; users who don't care don't even know about it, they only know about their applications.
Change is great when a tool doesn't work right, but it is often toxic when the tool already works.
Re: Standards (Score:3)
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Thats the issue though - say I made an installer - I could make a bit of code on Windows/Mac that draws Icons into Applications on the Mac or the Start Menu on Windows - on Linux I'd have to have separate code bases for every desktop UI - XFCE or whatever else is standard.
But you say - well I don't need that - I'll customize it myself - but that's the point - it doesn't scale well in an enterprise or at home.
Or take fonts - most articles about installing fonts on Linux can't be reduced down to a single sent
Me too ... (Score:3)
Me too ...
I have been using XFCE for a some years, having dumped KDE, the desktop I used for over a decade, for it.
I like its minimalist approach, its low overhead and that it stays out of the way.
KDE had more features but one release went against what KDE stood for: customizability. I was no longer able to control for how long a notification is visible. Then, it was missing certain crucial features (e.g. a weather widget, was it the 14.04 or 16.04? Can't remember).
So, I decided to move to XFCE, and has bee
Re:Standards (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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At the street level, the forks don't make much difference. Most stuff is well-behaved and work well.
Nothing went wrong. Ubuntu tried to push its X-replacement but we all know where that went. In the meantime, we just got work done anyway. Linus could pay attention to UI/UX a bit more as he's left that to others in a big way.
Gnome is fine. KDE is fine. What's difficult are UIs that look over your shoulder, sniff your pits, and monetize your interactions. Looking at you Microsoft, Apple, and Google. Get your
Re:Standards (Score:5, Informative)
(And another annoyance - Torvalds sees Snaps and Flatpaks as the "solution" to the package management/distro issue? Really? Yeah, let's just replicate the userland for each application you install to deal with what was a non-issue.)
Yes really. It's the natural end game for an entire system where libraries are maintained and update completely individually and programmers are forced code against a moving target. This shouldn't be a surprise. The whole point of a distribution, and what makes the maintaining of a distribution so difficult is the endless juggling of new versions of software and libraries and the inevitable incompatibilities between them.
If you want the most up to date software where you can happily install without any affect on your system what the vendor provides on they day of release then your only safe solution is a packaging system like Snaps or Flatpaks. The alternative is screwing with your system in ways the distribution maintainer doesn't expect.
The only time I've ever given up trying to repair a Linux system and flat out reinstalled the OS (aside from obvious malicious damage like deleting root recursively) was when someone years ago tried to get the latest version of some CCTV software on their Debian system. The distro version didn't support some feature so they added a repo for the current version, installed it, force updated some libraries, and by the time he was finished X stopped working, and the entire apt database was so screwed up that it was basically impossible to revert to a working system thanks to the library structure of Linux.
Snaps didn't get created in a vacuum. They are a solution to a real problem.
Re: (Score:3)
Ah, you're young. I remember when we had a standard: Motif.
Re:Standards (Score:4, Insightful)
> Anyone remember Ubuntu circa 2008?
It was awesome. And remained awesome until - I think - October 2010. That is when Gnome 3 and Unity came out. Then Ubuntu completely barfed all over itself with systemd.
What a massive disappointment. I used to anxiously await the upgrade, because Ubuntu just got better and better.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
It's what makes it usable, and what makes it easy for someone to switch.
Why don't people adopt Linux?
Answer me this: How do I download, install and run Autocad 2019?
How do I download, install and run Photoshop? (Not an alternative like the Gimp)
How do I download, install and run Microsoft Outlook?
If you can not do all three of these things, then you will not get 90% of business users to switch. Damn near everyone uses Office, but they only use office because it comes with the OS and the enterprise license m
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Please show me the Linux builds for AutoCAD and SolidWorks.
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No.
"Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
If the headline asks a question, try answering 'no'. In the vast majority of cases, the story is tendentious or over-sold. It is often a scare story, or an attempt to elevate some run-of-the-mill piece of reporting into a national controversy and, preferably, a national panic. To a busy journalist hunting for real information a question mark means 'don't bother reading this bit'
https://en.wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
Re:Standards (Score:5, Insightful)
The end user interface is the last thing that needs standardization. Desktops that look or act differently aren't the problem. What needs standardization is the back end API. There should only be one way for the installer to interface with the desktop manager for adding a new program icon. One way for a program to register its "settings". A single "control panel" where any program can add its configuration settings to. There should only be one form of IPC. One way for a printer to register a driver.
Once those issues are solved, once we have a rock-solid core set of standards there, then there can be a million distributions that look and feel different, that distinguish themselves by catering to X, Y, or Z. It won't matter. Any program will still be able to run on any of them, because they may look and feel different, but they will act and be configured the same.
Monoculture for UI is stifling. Monoculture for API is liberating.
Re: Standards (Score:4, Funny)
Sure -- as long as the one we standardize on is KDE.
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I have been following the Linux scene for 25 years now and I keep hearing the same things. Nothing has changed, and also this time nothing will.
Re: Adapting it to YOUR needs is *the whole point* (Score:3, Insightful)
Adapting it to YOUR needs is *the whole point*
For 99% of desktop users, their needs are for it to just work, and work consistently, and when they want to install something they just click on the installer.
And most importantly, when they want to use a piece of software, it's available and doesn't require a bunch of fucking around to make it work.
Re: Adapting it to YOUR needs is *the whole po (Score:3)
There are no windows only applications that do anything useful.
Tell you what sport, why not go down to your local hospital and ask them to remove any machine that either runs or requires a Windows-only application.
I eagerly await your link to an open source MRI machine.
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hehe "professional"
Re: Adapting it to YOUR needs is *the whole point* (Score:4, Insightful)
Windows is far and away the OS of choice for consumers and businesses. Why? Because anybody whose uses Windows at home knows how to use it at work. Repeat after me. The Linux user interface blows because itâ(TM)s not consistent.
Windows dominates because of technological lock-in. At one point it managed to grab by far the largest slice of the desktop market when it was young. The Linux desktop wasn't that much of a thing back then, it was too young and undeveloped to offer serious competition. Now everybody is used to Windows, and often has software that works only under Windows, hardware that works only under Windows, etc. It's a positive feedback loop, the fact that Linux desktops exist and actually work quite well on a variety of hardware (typing from a Linux distro right now) is a testament to the platform's resilience and capability.
The only OS seriously taking on Windows and thriving is one whose roots go further back than Windows, and which is made by a hardware manufacturer. Even that is a niche market and tied to only one hardware platform.
Meanwhile Linux has, via Android, become the Windows of the smartphone world. Due to the consistency of the user interface? Well, no, look at the differences between stock Android and the various manufacturer's flavours (Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei LG, etc.), as well as the differences between Android versions (my phone recently upgraded to a new Android version and I flipped after realizing they moved around really important stuff, like where some settings I check and change often are, etc.). It's because Android grabbed the market while it was young. Windows too has changed its interface, Office at one point changed everything, yet Microsoft still dominates these markets...due to lock-in.
Re: Adapting it to YOUR needs is *the whole point* (Score:4, Insightful)
Windows is far and away the OS of choice for consumers and businesses. Why? Because anybody whose uses Windows at home knows how to use it at work. Repeat after me. The Linux user interface blows because itâ(TM)s not consistent.
Amen to that. In Windows CTRL-C and CTRL-P does Copy and Paste in everything. In Linux CTRL-C and CTRL-P does Copy and Paste in the desktop but switch to say CLI and you have to remember to use CTRL-SHIFT-C and CTRL-SHIFT-P and despite plenty of complaints about that over the years they still refuse to change it. Its little inconsistencies like that which get really annoying after a while.
Re: Adapting it to YOUR needs is *the whole point* (Score:5, Insightful)
Your problem is that you're switching to CLI and expecting the same interface. I'm more of a Ctrl-Insert to copy and Shift-Insert [wikipedia.org] kind of guy, and that works most of the time in both Windows and Linux.
Also it's trivial to configure XTerm or whatever terminal you like to use whatever key combination you want for cut and paste. Not that the end user should have to have to do this themselves.
Standardized interfaces are overrated. As a lefty even everyday tools like scissors and chainsaws made bad design choices for user experience.
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"Standardized interfaces are overrated." I have to disagree. Unfortunately, that doesn't make Windows any better, because it's going in the direction of non-standardized. Take the scroll wheel on a mouse; for some applications, if the mouse cursor is over the window, it will scroll regardless of whether the window is in focus. For other applications, it will only scroll if the window has focus. And for others (I'm looking at you, Windows Explorer), the scroll wheel doesn't seem to work no matter what.
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"Standardized interfaces are overrated." I have to disagree.
Go ahead and disagree all you want. I didn't say they have no value. I said they value is stressed more than I think can be justified.
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It used to be worse - you'd have some Motif application - could only copy and paste to other Motif applications. Same with any UI toolkit.
These are simply problems the Mac and Windows have never had :(.
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No worries. It's on systemd's TODO list.
Haiku (Score:4, Interesting)
It has a Posix layer and supports QT pretty decently in addition to it's very nice BeAPI framework.
And one thing that is *very* clear there is that it is a standardized desktop OS with sane defaults.
I think the potential for doing some really cool stuff there will open up once they release R1 in a few years most likely.
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I thought you were this guy [slashdot.org] for a moment.
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I've written a bit in Scribus on Haiku I find it to be a not very distracting OS. That in itself is useful.
Re:Haiku-history. (Score:5, Informative)
IBM was able to get OS/2 pre-loaded on PCs in Germany without those restrictions and gained 25% marketshare in the few months the vendors were doing it. Even IBM had to give up trying to get an alternative OS on PC hardware and their OS also ran Windows applications...
I ran BeOS on a machine for a short period and was stunned at how well it handled tough tasks.Playing multiple videos on different side of a 3D cube for example and the system was still very responsive.
LoB
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Virtualization stack? 1. Just go run Linux 2. There are some options that might work like porting libnvmm and the intel and AMD backends from NetBSD which would get you accelerated QEMU. I hear the HAXM code is ugly so probably not that, and KVM is too Linux specific and fast moving.
You seem to have completely missed the point, it is a cohesive desktop OS today... and Windows and Linux are not cohesive desktops anymor
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I have some ideas for that for instance, the Deskbar could become just a host application for replicants that would snap into it so you could swa
A new OS Microkernel Model (Score:2)
I think we should have a VM microkernel. Then a few drivers OSVM's under that. Then software OSVM's.
One VM is a dedicated desktop VM with realtime prioritization. It combines framebuffers from all other apps. Simplicity. That desktop VM does not need to be updated unless you actually want to. You can indeed run several desktop VM's. The video driver itself is in another VM.
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Ah the words of a naive young programmer... you can only do as you have suggested if you wish to throw away large chunks of performance and make your nice laptop battery life half as long. Leave VMs on the server and remote into them.
A native desktop should be just that. userspace drivers can be nice for some things that don't require too much performance. Graphics drivers is one area that splits it nicely also with parts necessary for performance in kernel and much of the driver residing in use
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Sounds similar to IBM MVS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] I always though the IBM ecosystem was boring because of its business orientated stance but they did lots of amazing development in hardware and operating systems.
What is the difference between Kernel and Desktop? (Score:2)
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Just curious: What can you not do with a - say - ubuntu desktop? I see no problems with stability, performance or configurability.
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Not having a desktop is the whole point!! (Score:2, Interesting)
What is it with these cluess articles recently?
Everyone who got into Linux*, knows that it is how it is, because it's *supposed* to be that way! It's a workhorse of an OS! That expects and is designed for *competent* users! For computer users!
A large Hilti that *will* drill through you head if you put it on your ear! Not an iKEA $10 drill!
It and BSD are the last of their kind left for US! Not for consumers!
So if you are a consumer, and expect colorful clickables, a padded prison cell, and being told what yo
What is this nonsense? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is not a single Linux "desktop". That is restricted, authoritarian Windows lore. For example, I use FVWM as "desktop" (properly called a "window manager") and that is not even tied to Linux, but available generally on UNIX and UNIX-like OSes. Hence the connection between a Linux "desktop" and a Linux distro the author is trying to make is pretty much meaningless.
In actual reality, Linux on servers and workstations will be around as long as there is hardware to run it. And that is not going away, especially as Linux is not limited to AMD64 in the first place and runs pretty well on slower hardware. And there will always be people that mistrust the cloud with good reason and that hence want their local, independent computing capabilities.
Snap privileges Canonical over other sources (Score:5, Informative)
Despite being a regular user of Xubuntu, I agree with Linus about preferring Flatpak over Snap for this reason: Flatpak docs [flatpak.org] refer to repositories, plural. A publisher could run its own repository. Snap docs [ubuntu.com], by contrast, refer to "the Snap Store", singular, and it is considered --dangerous [ubuntu.com] to install a snap from any source other than Canonical Ltd.
The usual solution (Score:2)
"There are too many different and diverse desktops."
"What should we do to solve the problem?"
"Create another one!"
we have one (Score:2)
Why??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most people use Gnome / KDE, but I use XFCE / LXDE / Icewm. WHY STANDARDIZE? We already have several killer desktops. This "holy grail" of standardization of the desktop is not going to win converts. Why? Because people want Outlook and Quick(en|books). They buy the special app they need and the app (mostly) dictates the platform. The "killer app" is going to be .. the apps!
OS/2 (Score:3)
I just want OS/2 back.
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I loved OS/2 but it was so damn picky about hardware. I have old Thinkpads from that era that should run OS/2 but they don't like it one bit.
When hasn't it been in trouble? (Score:2)
I have been using Linux since I got a copy of TAMU Linux version 1.something in 1993 (mainly because it had X-windows). As I recall, despite much optimism, Linux on the desktop has always been in trouble.
The What is In Trouble What? (Score:2)
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Given that Microsoft is essentially dumping the desktop in favor of their crappy online variants (Office 365, Azure, etc). Right now having to migrate from Atlassian tools that work and are easy to use towards Microsoft tools that are mediocre at best.
Destroy all but Mint for desktop use. (Score:2, Informative)
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Begging for volunteers is bad enough, but don't tell people to stop doing other things so they can come help you out. Yikes.
Self fulfilling prophecy (Score:5, Insightful)
Desktop definitition clarification (Score:2)
one itch fits few (Score:3)
Fragmentation is the virtue that allows new developers to show up and scratch their own itch. Once upon a time, that was vaunted as the defining virtue of unpaid collaboration. When you start tilting the landscape towards "one size fits all" the surface area of viable itch-scratching decreases immensely.
These values live in fundamental tension.
Consolidation brings you economy of scale, diversity brings you new ideas, and satisfies the edge cases without loading every possible complication onto the consolidated effort. All the good times in open source happened when the community was large enough to support consolidation and diversity at the same time.
There are no easy solutions here.
It has hit critical mass and is self sustaining. (Score:4, Interesting)
Linux is now everywhere. From people wanting to save money to corporations using it. It may never hit 70% desktop share, but it has hit a point where a Linux Desktop will always be a viable solution for those that want it and it fits their needs.
I finally spent the time to learn tiling window managers and get comments that my desktop (awesome) looks like something from the 90s, but it works for me. There are enough awesome-wm users that there's a FreeBSD port and it's available for every popular Linux. If I search google for how to add a widget there are enough online resources to figure out the solution. And I'm a very small fraction of a fraction of Linux users.
I recently switched to pop!OS. Which is pretty well put together by Systems76. It's built on Ubuntu and has a LTS (18.04) that will be supported for a good while. (So it's "binary compatible".
Most major companies release a .deb of their software, even if it's proprietary. Nvidia releases drivers for both FreeBSD AND Linux. (Although CUDA is Linux / Windows only).
Arguing over desktop share is pointless at this point.
It's almost to the point where the *BSD desktop is the same way. Project Trident (https://project-trident.org/) is about where Linux was ~15 years ago.
You know what I would like to see? (Score:3)
A desktop that's oriented toward people with a brain, rather than chasing after the swipe-and-wipe infotainment suckers.
Myself, I expect to keep living inside emacs using the icewm window manager for some time to come-- whenever I look at a newer window manager I find they've completely ignored keyboard commands--
(And the idea that we're going to simplify the package manager landscape by adding new ones is pretty funny...)
Not Torvalds, Stallman (Score:3)
How does Stallman feel about standardization anyway? I'd like his take on this.
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Containers (Score:3)
I've been hearing about containerized Apps, basically everything needed to run an app all standalone.
I have admittedly not toyed with this technology first hand, but from a purely theoretical standpoint, this feels like the direction to go. It sounds promising at least.
I think asking the core Linux community to standardize something that inherently rejects standardization beyond the very basic foundations of the kernel and system tools is a non-starter.
A solution like containers seems like a good way to have the best of both worlds. Linux can stay fragmented, which is just part of what Linux is, for better or for worse. But containerized Apps can rely on very basic core system functionality that should already be standardized.
Well we were already there (Score:3)
I mean the classical WIMP scheme does everything people want and designs have been refined fairly well on essentially every GUI out there. It's just that recent developments from all GUI makers (from Gnome to Windows) derive from that, putting design over usability.
I don't think it's worth chasing the "mobile user" as they will have Android (or IOS) anyhow. Getting rid of useful features in order to chase people who won't look at your product anyhow isn't worth it.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Been there before (Score:3)
There are already standard bodies for the linux desktop, that's freedesktop.org
From their website:
"We also host discussion and development of specifications for interoperability. A full list is available at our specifications page.
These specifications mostly cover low-level desktop issues, such as identifying file types, launching applications, and exchanging data between applications and desktops. They are often called 'XDG' specifications, as an acronym for the Cross-Desktop Group."
the big DE's all follow these specifications.
I found this from the summary rather funny;
"Linus Torvalds is tired of the fragmentation in the Linux desktop. In a recent [December 2018] TFiR interview with Swapnil Bhartiya, Torvalds said, "Chromebooks and Android are the path toward the desktop.""
Chromebooks & Android are possibly even more fragmented then KDE vs Gnome!
Free as in beer is the problem. (Score:3)
It's the free as in beer mindset that will prevent linux from ever being successful with the average user. It limits you to mostly volunteer developers who will only do what they feel like. That's why you end up with poorly supported hardware, no documentation, bugs and incompatibilities that linger for decades, and burnout that leaves projects to wither and die leaving users in the lurch.
The linux community has always been very harsh on its users expecting them to be knowledgable enough to resolve all those issues on their own. If my NVidia card doesn't work after an upgrade I'm supposed to know how to modify the driver. It's a ridiculous expectation and eliminates linux as an option for most users.
No volunteer is going to do hundreds of hours of tedious grunt work for nothing. But the average user will pay $5, $10, or even $50 for a well supported linux desktop that they have some assurance will just work with good support and updates for 5-10 years down the road and not require a computer engineering degree to use and maintain. But that whole concept is the very antithesis of Linux and so linux will always be a minor niche for young tech people until they grow up and get tired of the BS.
I have a CS degree from a top tier school, and I ran a Linux desktop for about 5 years (1997-2002). Switching to Windows.XP was a huge relief. It was like getting out of prison and finally being able to enjoy life. Everything just worked so easily, it looked better, had decent fonts, my network card worked without hours of frustration. I'm well aware a lot has changed in 17 years, but the core philosophy of free volunteers delivering half-baked products that nobody can be bothered polishing with the attitude the user is getting it for free they can do the work to make it into what they need is still the prime principle of the linux desktop. I will never install a linux desktop again, I would pay $500 for windows to avoid free linux.
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Re:Complains about Linux being fragmented... (Score:4, Insightful)
The special sauce is Google Play Store. It gets, installs and updates apps for you, and updates automatically. Linux does have package managers but they work differently and independently depending on the distro, and Ubuntu variants have a dedicated update manager that does similar things but they're not consistent, just look at the list of package managers: dpkg apt pacman flatpak snappy rpm and they're not compatible or interchangeable except maybe flatpak and snappy, which usually works on most systems fine. Steam, snappy and flatpak work more like Google Play and Steam's ease of use would make it more like Google Play, and ease of use is the main issue here: if you have to go to the command line people will balk at it.
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The Google Play Store as originally envisioned would be a good basis. The Play Store as it exists now, as a storefront for flashy entertaining junk is really disappointing. It's a horrendous multicolored ugly mess compared to a few years ago.
Re:Linus is completely wrong... (Score:5, Informative)
... again (the guy is just an computer nerd: he's views on the real life are, mostly, laughable)
Yes, because the average user wants their desktop to break when they update their OS because their nvidia driver didn't compile correctly because someone thought it was a good idea to rev the GCC version and they GCC folks thought it would be a good idea to enable some weird compiler check from 1997 that nobody in the C/C++ world knows about because this the first time it was implemented. Sigh, any little amount of customization on your desktop and you likely run into a bunch of weird problems that pop up because nobody tested this specific set of of hardware and software configurations. Standards help with those issues but nothing can fix everything and these are all just patched for the core problem. Most distros just don't have the (QA) resources to test and maintain a complex software stack in a modern OS. And when some dumb 25 yro kid decides the problem is in how packages are installed (clearly indicating that they know nothing about the core problems caused by complexity) all they do is increase the workload of the developers. The core problem is that there isn't enough developer time put into bug fixing and testing. Thus the solution only makes the problem worse.
Your comment illustrates the core problem here. You seem to think you have some sort of insight into the problem when there is no real reason for you to believe this. You so overestimate your understanding as to propose and implement "solutions" that do nothing to fix the problem (in this case even making it worse) but you got to put that you work on an opensource project on your CV so who cares. The fact that the world would be a better place without your efforts never enters your mind. Either help out (by learning about how hard it is to keep a distro working it the face of a shifting set software projects that are rarely working together) or fuck off. Linus has likely done more to help others in the last 24 hours than you will do in your entire life and your sad little attempt to tear him down says more about you than Linus.
Re:Linus is completely wrong... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's been a good 10 years since you explored Linux, right? I've had none of these troubles with Debian, Ubuntu, or their many flavors.
And I disagree with Linus. The strength of linux is the different flavors. If you want an easy to use disro, there are many out there. If you want one where you have more control, there are some out there as well.
Re:Linus is completely wrong... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's been a good 10 years since you explored Linux, right? I've had none of these troubles with Debian, Ubuntu, or their many flavors.
And I disagree with Linus. The strength of linux is the different flavors. If you want an easy to use disro, there are many out there. If you want one where you have more control, there are some out there as well.
All the examples I gave were from the last year on an older but still maintained Ubuntu distro.
Re:Linus is completely wrong... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, because the average user wants their desktop to break when they update their OS because their nvidia driver didn't compile correctly...
Ubuntu (and therefore everything based on it) has the http://ppa.launchpad.net/graph... [launchpad.net] repositories with the latest precompiled Nvidia drivers. Compiling an Nvidia driver hasn't been necessary in years. And Nvidia has really gotten its Linux act together recently, as their newer drivers integrate into the desktop seamlessly. This obviates all of the GCC stuff. There are legitimate problems, but having to manually compile anything isn't one of them.
My KDE desktop settings have mostly carried over for the last few rolling Kubuntu distribution upgrades. The sole exceptions have all been in the KDEPIN suite, which has gotten so bad that I stopped using every single application in the suite. It went from being a very respectable collection of integrated software to being an unpredictable, data-destroying nightmare that I can't stand anymore.
I have a small list of issues that I think would hold back the average person from being completely self-sufficient with Kubuntu, but none of them are show-stoppers.
But at least this story mentioned a solution... (Score:2)
However I agree with you [sfcat] that the proposed solution of greater standardization of the user interface is misdirected.
I think it would be better to look at alternative financial models. For example, I think the main problems with Windows and OS X are both due to the focus on profit maximization and cost minimization, resulting in, among other flaws, an actual fear of innovations that might reduce profits. Ubuntu Linux is crippled by its big-donor financial model, making it too dependent on one donor's
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But you understand that most distros' users use *precompiled* drivers, desktop environments, programs? Right?
No. You are wrong. It depends on the driver. Many drivers release source code that is compiled dynamically against the newly installed kernel headers. Nvidia among others does this. Also, often the binary only drivers you reference break quite often. Finding workarounds by writing kernel patches against changing kernel code which isn't moving in lockstep with you is time consuming and difficult. And the hardware vendors often do nothing to help and release shit docs that can easily be out of date wit
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To sum up... simplifying makes things simpler. ok
Or complexity has a cost. So if you want a good desktop that works on lots of hardware with few bugs you make the entire stack simpler or provide more dev and QA resources. How hard is that? Adding yet another package manager, nope. Adding some weird gesture features nobody uses, nope. Making the desktop more configurable, nope. Testing and bug fixing yes. Refactoring yes. Removing unnecessarily complex libraries and abstractions yes.
Windows is FAR buggier than any Linux distro I have ever used.
Agreed.
The type of driver issue you're making up is a joke.
And this is why it doesn't seem to matter because you blame
Re:Linus is completely wrong... (Score:4, Interesting)
I usually don't find Linus to be a sage either, but I think he is right here. Too many applications fail in obvious ways that tech users overlook. Things like: does it install a shortcut for the user after installing? Too often basic things like this are missing. Of course, this comes up on Slashdot often, and there was excellent discussion [slashdot.org] quite recently on the limitations of desktop Linux.
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I disagree. I think your stance is pretty laughable. However you are doing it to yourself, and hence I have zero compassion for you. Incidentally, without "nerds", the human race would still be living in caves. I find the change kind of nice, it is just a pity that people like you benefit from it as well.
Re:Linus is completely wrong... (Score:4, Insightful)
Diversity in the Linux desktop world is a good thing, not a bad thing. I really don't get what these two are blathering on about.
Kind of disgusting that some idiot modded you troll for pointing out that Linus is wrong. It would be far from the first time, the Bitkeeper fiasco iss a marquee example. You are 100% right, Linus has not got much useful to say about the Linux desktop. Vaughan-Nichols has got it wrong too with this troll article: the more Microsoft pushes its users to do what they don't want, that is, rent PCs from Microsoft, the more Linux converts we will get. I do agree that Linux is likely to be the last usable desktop standing.
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those are offshoots that are not GNU/Linux, Linus not a dumbass at all.
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and suse does not have GUI SUDO asks for root (Score:2)
and suse does not have GUI SUDO asks for root and by default needs root to use some wifi networks.