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What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

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Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#201

Post by flukus »

ufo wrote: post #149
patrickaljord wrote: post #31

Nothing killed the Linux Desktop. Windows already won that war and it was good enough. Heck, even Apple and its billions couldn't get more than 5% market share worldwide. The next "war" moved to mobile and there linux is not doing that bad.

The Linux kernel is doing well on mobile but GNU/Linux and open source in general is doing terrible. The status quo right now is that mobile operating systems are super locked down and almost all the software you install on it is proprietary stuff you get from an app store.

> The status quo right now is that mobile operating systems are super locked down and almost all the software you install on it is proprietary stuff you get from an app store.

I think there's been a shift from developers. As a collective we used to value open source a lot more, now the focus seems to be on getting venture capital for private services and the great mobile land grab.

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#202

Post by CaptSpify »

flukus wrote: post #199
CaptSpify wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I'm currently looking for a new phone, and everything looks like a locked-down POS. I'd love an open, hackable, "actually linux" phone, but I don't know if one is available.

I'm hoping the fairphone ( https://shop.fairphone.com/en/ ) works out well myself, and that I'll be able to install something like ubuntu or sailfish on it.

Is that one of the goals? On their homepage they say android. Do they have an ETA for a release?

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#203

Post by pinum »

vacri wrote: post #187
pinum wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be fine with not getting new OS features. The problem is that the repo system ties application software versions to OS versions. I want to install SomeApp. My options are: * `apt-get install someapp` and get v0.6.0.1abzrhotfix2 from 5 years ago * Google to see if a third party repackaging repo exists, decide whether I trust the maintainer of that repo with root access to my machine, `apt-add-repo blah blah`,…

> Meanwhile on other OSes, I can download the latest someapp.dmg/someapp.exe and a nice GUI guides me through installing it. I much prefer the repo system to the Windows "I wonder if I can trust this site to deliver a safe .exe, and which of the four 'download' buttons is the real one and not just a malicious ad?" > it will include everything it needs and handle updates in whatever way it thinks is most appropriate,…

>I wonder if I can trust this site to deliver a safe .exe

Your first point is only applicable if you are downloading unknown, untrustworthy software from tophotfreeawesomedownloadsnow.com.

>and which of the four 'download' buttons is the real one and not just a malicious ad

I agree that this is a severe problem for non-technical users. For those users, there is a lot to be said for a walled-garden app store (which could take the form of a GUI apt wrapper, I suppose). More experienced users know what the link and download should look like, rendering those ads a mere annoyance. I doubt anyone reading hackernews has fallen for those things.

>Yes, because every application needs its own phone-home updater (with questionable security)

For what it's worth, I usually disable auto-updaters for any desktop app that isn't network-reliant. I manually update if I find a bug or want a new feature, knowing that I can always re-install the old version if I find the new one is worse. I appreciate that this has its own downsides (especially if the user doesn't keep themselves updated on security advisories), but the point is that I /can/ do this whereas it's pretty much impossible on desktop Linux. I would have to choose between several undesirable alternatives, as I detailed above.

>with bonus "value-add" crapware popping up to remind me it exists

I don't have this issue with software I use. If I noticed it, I would try the following steps in order:

* Block network, if the reminders are fetched from the web

* Disable any reminder features in the app's own settings menu

* Revert to an older version of the app which didn't do this

* Consider alternatives, of which there are probably several

Your first reaction is probably "none of that should be necessary and there is generally no crapware on desktop Linux", and this is true. But as soon as you try to use anything that isn't the version in your distro's repo, you are in for a world of painful incompatibilities and package manager hell. For every app you want to do this with.

You have /less/ freedom to set up the system how you want it than you do on Windows/OSX, because even though you technically /can/ install whatever you want, it is horribly time-consuming and aggravating to actually do so.

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#204

Post by ythn »

udp wrote: post #29
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…

> Put Unity Ubuntu on that same machine, and it's unusable garbage. I can't even hit alt-F5 to get to another terminal because Unity slows the whole rig down to an absolute crawl. Like, can't even move the mouse, 5 minutes between keypress and action taking place. Fuck Unity. I blame Unity about 40% for killing the Linux desktop. Have you tried Xubuntu? It fills the gap that Ubuntu used to, and it's my go-to desktop…

I've tried so many Linux distros over the years, and Xubuntu impressed me enough that I've abandoned all other distros for around 5 years now. It's got the perfect balance of trade-offs that make it fast, usable, and low-maintenance.

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#205

Post by madiathomas »

I have just installed Fedora Linux 25. So far so good. Only thing stopping me from switching completely to Linux is MS Office. If Microsoft can create a Linux version of Office, I am switching completely. Until then, I will keep on going back to Windows whenever I want to compile documents.

I have lots of Office documents. Alternatives are just awful. If focus of the open source community can be diverted to making LibreOffice better, Linux will win some decent Desktop market. Having 100 different distros won't help.

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#206

Post by flukus »

CaptSpify wrote: post #202
flukus wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm hoping the fairphone ( https://shop.fairphone.com/en/ ) works out well myself, and that I'll be able to install something like ubuntu or sailfish on it.

Is that one of the goals? On their homepage they say android. Do they have an ETA for a release?

No, but I think it's meant to be open enough that other people can provide alternative OS's. At least I hope it is, I don't care for the ethical side of things much. ETA is late may.

The biggest problem I have with the current alternative OS's is that they only seem to support nexus devices that I'm not interested in. It would be ice if this or something like it became the PC of smart phones.

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#208

Post by dorfsmay »

AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #93
wink wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem here is if people were happy with what they had in 2003, why change it? Not everything UI-wise in 7 or later is better than in XP I'd say. And apparently many people agree. Actually I am still using 7 and all the UI stuff that's nixer than XP or even 2000 is just eyecandy and nothing "I would totally never go back". Because I would - if I needed a stable Windows that only came with XP's UI - so be…

If people were happy with Windows XP in 2003, why change it and install Linux? We deviated from what was good enough 15 years ago! Let's put XP back on the clients and Solaris back on the servers! /s When I started using Linux, it was about thinking out of the box and about change. It had many exciting window managers that put everything in Windows to shame when it came to customizing and style. Nowadays I have the f…

I'd use OSX if it could do focus follow mouse and had a trackpoint.

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#209

Post by dorfsmay »

FireBeyond wrote: post #143
soyiuz wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's the gui. I'm a relatively savvy user running Debian on a Thinkpad for more than five years now. Printing is still touch and go. I spent countless hours to get sleep working correctly. It is broken now and I don't have the energy to fix it knowing that nothing I do is guaranteed to last through the next apt update. Wifi will mysteriously refuse to connect with some routers (a daily struggle at the u…

Printing still sucks. Out of the box Ubuntu with my WF-3540... Add Printer shows the printer. Great! I hit Add and it says "Here's the OpenPrinting driver for it". Great! I click "Use this driver". It spins. And then acts like nothing has happened. I click it again. Same. I hit Cancel. Oh. Now my printer is installed... with the Generic Text Driver. So I go to OpenPrinting.org directly and download the driver myself.…

Don't use the apps, use cups directly. It's not right but it'll get you printing.

http://localhost:631

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#210

Post by narag »

yellowapple wrote: post #89
Asooka wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's no coincidence. Libre software devs saw what MS and Apple were doing and went "oh no we have to do the same to stay relevant!" Couple that with the rampant egos typical for an OSS project lead and you have today's situation. Of the big 3 (or is it 4 now) DEs, I feel KDE has stayed the most sane and provides the same desktop metaphors. Then again, they mostly bet on the "semantic desktop" direction, which was tha…

I feel like Xfce and LXDE actually do a decent job here, too (respectively). Both have stayed pretty consistent over the last decade from what I've seen. openSUSE + Xfce is my go-to for installing a desktop system for a new Linux user. While openSUSE moves a couple things around relative to a typical Xfce installation, they tend to feel a bit more natural to Windows XP users (which, amazingly enough, still exist). Us…

Both have stayed pretty consistent over the last decade from what I've seen.

I used LXDE until they removed the tree panel in the file manager, many years ago. After having left KDE because another update that killed my workflow and reading that GNOME was not any better for this matter, it made me abandon Linux desktop completely, after two years of exclusive use.

I wonder if they brought the tree back, but... too late.

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