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Why Desktop Linux (Still) Sucks. And What We Can Do To Fix It.

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Re: Why Desktop Linux (Still) Sucks. And What We Can Do To Fix It.

#31

Post by nailer »

thingie wrote: post #28
richardw wrote: post #15

So much of Linux is designed and modified by committee, so change is slow and painful. Apple managed to get a seriously hot UI onto FreeBSD in a (relatively) short time. Linux has everyone and their dog bartering to make changes, so the UI goes nowhere. Stop copying Windows, already. Start menu sucks. Dump X.

Did you listen to the talk? :) X.org is quite an advanced graphic system mostly doing what you want it to do. Throwing it out and trying to make something new (for what gain?) means wasting so much resources that it's not even nice. (And how is X related to some start menu?)

Depends. Most apps don't link against X, but the toolkits. If the toolkits can be modified to support a cleaner network protocol (something primarily vector based rather than bitmap based).

I don't think the parent poster is saying that X is related to GNOME and KDE's start menu clones, other than they both need changing.

Re: Why Desktop Linux (Still) Sucks. And What We Can Do To Fix It.

#32

Post by thingie »

codavid wrote: post #10
krschultz wrote: post #2

The easiest problem to tackle is .RPM vs .DEB debate that should have ended about 3 years ago. If the LSB had said .DEB it might have happened, but since the "official" standard and the actual majority are diametrically opposed it doesn't want to happen. And of course the filesystems don't perfectly match across distros.

The .rpm vs .deb debate is a fallacy. The real issue is that when packaging for say debian and RHEL you have to care about different glibc, different compiler versions with potentially different ABI, different filesystem conventions, different scripts for post install, etc... The format in which the files are packaged is the least of the issues compared to that. For example, packaging for opensuse once you have a pac…

Yes, suse build service is a very nice tool and much more interesting than a single package format, which wouldn't help much. And if the dream is to provide just a single binary package for any distro in the world, it won't work anyway. Well, maybe in theory, but if you mean it seriously, you need to compile and link against exactly the same binaries that the target system use. (Or static linking. Or just believe it will work. But serious commercial vendor who wants to provide a real user support cannot.) Which would mean that every Linux system would have to use the same binaries, which is, hm, nonsense.

Re: Why Desktop Linux (Still) Sucks. And What We Can Do To Fix It.

#33

Post by scorpioxy »

julio_the_squid wrote: post #26
houseabsolute wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The open question is why anyone would buy software for Linux. The key differentiating factor for _most_ people who use it is that it's free (as in beer). There are two other operating systems that for most people work better than Linux. It's hard to see how you can ask people to pay for software now in the hope that it will eventually be good. I'm sure some people will buy software because it's the Right Thing To Do,…

The differentiating factor for me is that it's just what I've used for 12 years and what I'm most productive in. Serious Linux users use it because it's the only thing that fits the way they work. Linux has all the interface and programs I'm used to, so of course I'd be more likely to buy software for it than any other OS. What holds me back is that there isn't any software I need that I don't have...

Same for me I guess.

One problem that I do have is that if I pay Canonical, for example, to make the whole OS better, it would mostly still crap out because I made the mistake of buying at AMD/ATI graphics card. Not sure who to blame at that point. The Ubuntu people say its from ATI/AMD and ATI/AMD say that there's not enough money in the market to justify better work on the driver(that or technical problems with the differences between distros). So what then? It would still have the same result.

But, in general, I do vote with my dollars.

Re: Why Desktop Linux (Still) Sucks. And What We Can Do To Fix It.

#35

Post by gizmo »

thingie wrote: post #28
richardw wrote: post #15

So much of Linux is designed and modified by committee, so change is slow and painful. Apple managed to get a seriously hot UI onto FreeBSD in a (relatively) short time. Linux has everyone and their dog bartering to make changes, so the UI goes nowhere. Stop copying Windows, already. Start menu sucks. Dump X.

Did you listen to the talk? :) X.org is quite an advanced graphic system mostly doing what you want it to do. Throwing it out and trying to make something new (for what gain?) means wasting so much resources that it's not even nice. (And how is X related to some start menu?)

You say advanced as if that's a good thing. I think a lighter system that considers hardware acceleration and multiple monitors from the ground up may be a good investment in the long run. Not to mention audio, and vector graphics and so on.

Multiple X sessions (one for each monitor + one for each vnc session + virtual X sessions for whatever reason) has to be combined with Xinemera and with graphic drives and with a KDE/Gnome desktop environment... and all the parts have to fit together perfectly for the system to work. I just don't see that happening anytime soon.

The whole concept of X clients and X servers... it's just too much. X was created back in the 80s, and it still doesn't get the basic usecases right. The requirements for desktop computers have shifted a lot in the last 30 years, so this kind of thing is to be expected.

Starting over every 30 years? I think that's reasonable, especially when it's holding Linux back. We've learned a lot since, and X isn't going to last until 2030... so why not throw it out now?

Re: Why Desktop Linux (Still) Sucks. And What We Can Do To Fix It.

#36

Post by thingie »

nailer wrote: post #31
thingie wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you listen to the talk? :) X.org is quite an advanced graphic system mostly doing what you want it to do. Throwing it out and trying to make something new (for what gain?) means wasting so much resources that it's not even nice. (And how is X related to some start menu?)

Depends. Most apps don't link against X, but the toolkits. If the toolkits can be modified to support a cleaner network protocol (something primarily vector based rather than bitmap based). I don't think the parent poster is saying that X is related to GNOME and KDE's start menu clones, other than they both need changing.

How cleaner? X11 is very extensible, if you wanted some vector graphics methods, you could just make an extension. Whole font drawing got replaced in this way, nobody really use old X core fonts anymore, everybody now uses client-based Xft system. (Well, yes, you could make a new version without this old stuff. But backwards compatibility and so.) In fact, this is what happens if you are drawing with OpenGL, you use X11 just to make a window to draw in, set some other stuff, handle input, but drawing itself completely sidesteps X11 and X server.

Re: Why Desktop Linux (Still) Sucks. And What We Can Do To Fix It.

#37

Post by scythe »

richardw wrote: post #15

So much of Linux is designed and modified by committee, so change is slow and painful. Apple managed to get a seriously hot UI onto FreeBSD in a (relatively) short time. Linux has everyone and their dog bartering to make changes, so the UI goes nowhere. Stop copying Windows, already. Start menu sucks. Dump X.

If you want to try something like throwing out lots of the current design and going to a new one, it'd probably be best to go around, drum up support, and bill it as something new. Sounds cool, but someone has to get coding.

Re: Why Desktop Linux (Still) Sucks. And What We Can Do To Fix It.

#38

Post by russell_h »

acon wrote: post #11

I think what Linux really needs is to embrace some way of getting software outside apt/yum. Having to go through the package managers forces you to be an administrator to install software, and the developer and user have no say in which version of the application you get. I think Linux distributions should be platforms which developers can develop applications for which they can distribute however they wish. Then use…

Every binary distro I've ever used (SUSE, Debian, Ubuntu, RHEL and Fedora) came with a little GUI that let you install packages without going through a repository. Just download the .deb/.rpm and double click on it. This is how a lot of projects deliver their latest builds. If you're talking about a unified package format (it doesn't seem like it) then thats a completely different issue.

As for 'stand-alone' applications, that doesn't make much sense for open source stuff, but there's nothing stopping you from distributing your software that way. A lot of commercial software for Linux is delivered that way.

Re: Why Desktop Linux (Still) Sucks. And What We Can Do To Fix It.

#39

Post by thingie »

gizmo wrote: post #35
thingie wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you listen to the talk? :) X.org is quite an advanced graphic system mostly doing what you want it to do. Throwing it out and trying to make something new (for what gain?) means wasting so much resources that it's not even nice. (And how is X related to some start menu?)

You say advanced as if that's a good thing. I think a lighter system that considers hardware acceleration and multiple monitors from the ground up may be a good investment in the long run. Not to mention audio, and vector graphics and so on. Multiple X sessions (one for each monitor + one for each vnc session + virtual X sessions for whatever reason) has to be combined with Xinemera and with graphic drives and with a…

X.org considers hardware acceleration, with XRender, for example. Quite too often, buggy and incomplete graphic drivers and other problems makes it even worse than no acceleration at all. I don't really see these problems as X.org specific, is there any evidence that they are? I think it's more likely caused by very limited resources that are available, incomplete or proprietary (ati and nvidia tends to lag months behind new X server releases, would they ever catch up with a completely new system?) drivers, and other problems, and throwing out X means throwing out all effort spent to solve this problems.

But that doesn't mean that it is not a good idea to explore other possibilities and experiment with another systems in parallel. Like Wayland, for example. Of course it is. Just, don't hurry with burying X11, it's the best what you've got, and likely to remain so for a long time.

Re: Why Desktop Linux (Still) Sucks. And What We Can Do To Fix It.

#40

Post by nitrogen »

sandGorgon wrote: post #22
drivebyacct wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Microsoft and OS X have rich libraries of cost-based applications and they don't require any licensing or DRM embedded in the OS. Why on earth would an operating system that hinges itself on openness take a more Draconian step than any other major OS distributer has (mobile OSes aside)?

Because you need to jumpstart the paid-apps ecosystem. I am not talking about approval processes, but something more on the lines of an Android app store than an iphone one. What you get by that is : 1. signed software 2. small time developers dont have to worry about licensing 3. Distribution channel 4. Payment gateway The windows or the mac system was never built on the basis of a package management system, which L…

Lindows/Linspire actually had an app store back in the day, where developers could package and distribute commercial software. It used apt as its backend.

Since that didn't work out, it looks like the next best alternative is something like Steam. It seems highly possible that Steam will be released for Linux (a port already exists). Valve could be persuaded by enough software developers to add non-game software to their system.

Neither system required/requires DRM to be integrated into the OS.

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