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What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

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Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#11

Post by jankotek »

VonGuard wrote: post #6

I think it was the inability for GUI's to stay stable. Gnome went off the rails, Unity completely ruined Ubuntu[1], and KDE always felt very cheap and hard to navigate. My opinion, yes, but I always felt the GUI changes in Linux were extremely gratuitous after Gnome 2. Couple this with the fact that for a decade, the actual GUI was tied very, very heavily to the apps. So you had to use Gedit in Gnome, or whatever the…

2001 laptop? Even contemporary systems (Win XP) would be slow on that.

> Inside, it had plenty of power, an 850MHz Pentium III-M, 256MB of RAM, and 802.11b for wireless networking (if you could find a wireless network, that is). Plus it had 20GB of storage, FireWire and even one USB port.

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#14

Post by VonGuard »

jankotek wrote: post #11
VonGuard wrote: post #6

I think it was the inability for GUI's to stay stable. Gnome went off the rails, Unity completely ruined Ubuntu[1], and KDE always felt very cheap and hard to navigate. My opinion, yes, but I always felt the GUI changes in Linux were extremely gratuitous after Gnome 2. Couple this with the fact that for a decade, the actual GUI was tied very, very heavily to the apps. So you had to use Gedit in Gnome, or whatever the…

2001 laptop? Even contemporary systems (Win XP) would be slow on that. > Inside, it had plenty of power, an 850MHz Pentium III-M, 256MB of RAM, and 802.11b for wireless networking (if you could find a wireless network, that is). Plus it had 20GB of storage, FireWire and even one USB port.

LOL, I use this very laptop with XP all the time. Yes, it is slow for modern tasks. But the XP OS is responsive! I can move the mouse, navigate menus, open the text editor. I can do this on this 2001 machine using Debian with no GUI, but not with Unity over Ubuntu.

This was an issue because where I used to work, we installed old computers with Ubuntu and gave them to poor families and schools. The SECOND Unity arrived, we were fucked. We had to go and build our own image with Gnome as the default and install that. It was really stupid, and I never saw our users have any easier a time with Unity than they did with Gnome. It was a gratuitous change for change's sake.

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#17

Post by ramblenode »

The people I know who use desktop Linux love their Linux rigs a whole lot more than my Windows and Mac acquaintances enjoy their computers--which in many cases just borders on tolerance, especially with Windows 10. Maybe software needs something beyond market share, sort of like what Bhutan did with Gross National Happiness. We'll rank products based on how much people enjoy them and then see who's the dominant desktop.

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#18

Post by phillipwills »

jankotek wrote: post #11
VonGuard wrote: post #6

I think it was the inability for GUI's to stay stable. Gnome went off the rails, Unity completely ruined Ubuntu[1], and KDE always felt very cheap and hard to navigate. My opinion, yes, but I always felt the GUI changes in Linux were extremely gratuitous after Gnome 2. Couple this with the fact that for a decade, the actual GUI was tied very, very heavily to the apps. So you had to use Gedit in Gnome, or whatever the…

2001 laptop? Even contemporary systems (Win XP) would be slow on that. > Inside, it had plenty of power, an 850MHz Pentium III-M, 256MB of RAM, and 802.11b for wireless networking (if you could find a wireless network, that is). Plus it had 20GB of storage, FireWire and even one USB port.

Also, XP was released in 2002, so it should work rather well on the previous year's hardware...

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#19

Post by jankotek »

VonGuard wrote: post #14
jankotek wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2001 laptop? Even contemporary systems (Win XP) would be slow on that. > Inside, it had plenty of power, an 850MHz Pentium III-M, 256MB of RAM, and 802.11b for wireless networking (if you could find a wireless network, that is). Plus it had 20GB of storage, FireWire and even one USB port.

LOL, I use this very laptop with XP all the time. Yes, it is slow for modern tasks. But the XP OS is responsive! I can move the mouse, navigate menus, open the text editor. I can do this on this 2001 machine using Debian with no GUI, but not with Unity over Ubuntu. This was an issue because where I used to work, we installed old computers with Ubuntu and gave them to poor families and schools. The SECOND Unity arrive…

Unity needs graphic acceleration. Of course it does not work on something like that. Use Lubuntu and it will work just fine.

XP on such machine is not responsive. Maybe it could be usable, if you uninstall half of operating system, and replace most programs (IE with Opera 12.X....). Or better is to use Win2k.

No! Lightweight Linux distro, is your best bet to revive such junk today.

EDIT: fixed typo; I restored a few netbooks in EE, but whatever.

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