The Linux desktop experience is killing Linux on the desktop, Part II • Hacker News Board

Re: The Linux desktop experience is killing Linux on the desktop, Part II

#21

Post by IvarTJ » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 12:27 PM UTC

httpitis wrote: post #16

To me, the article comes across as a request to the linux community for solving the linux desktop problem. In other words, when given a viable chioce, the author wants linux on his desktop. The author's complaints seems confirmed when looking at the trends [1] in market share for contemporary os's. >Desktop Linux has to be made somehow profitable for companies to start investing more heavily in it... I also believe t…

Android seems to be an example of a Linux-based operating system becoming successful partially because of its importance to hardware vendors. Could Linux distributions in general benefit from a hardware vendor becoming the goto vendor for Linux-running laptops and/or desktops?

Re: The Linux desktop experience is killing Linux on the desktop, Part II

#22

Post by nitrogen » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 12:33 PM UTC

muuh-gnu wrote: post #17

Spyro7 wrote: post #3

I feel like I've read over 20 of these articles lately. I have used linux on the desktop in some form or another since 1998. It works, trust me. I find it strange that the author says they should have gone back to FreeBSD. In terms of "desktop" experience, both of these operating systems are somewhat similar. I understand his complaints about the driver situation, but, really, this just means that you need to do some…

> I have used linux on the desktop in some form or another > since 1998. It works, trust me. So have I, since 1998-1999. It never really "worked" as a desktop compared to windows. Never. Gnome 2 (the latest few versions) was the best they managed to get together. It was always borderline unusable, but it worked somehow. But the latest versions are literarily killing off all Desktop Linux achieved in the last 15 years…

Do you find Gnome 2 more usable than KDE 3.5? It seems that each major version of both major DEs added new layers of abstraction that slowed things down, but I think the usability+features to performance ratio peaked with the last revision of KDE 3.5.

Still, I think it's a bit drastic to say you'll go back to Windows. I've been trying Unity on my (1080p) laptop just to give it a fair chance, and I agree it's not that great, but I can disable it and switch to Gnome 2 or a customized KDE4 and still be more productive than in Windows.

Re: The Linux desktop experience is killing Linux on the desktop, Part II

#23

Post by nitrogen » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 12:36 PM UTC

movingahead wrote: post #19

Spyro7 wrote: post #3

I feel like I've read over 20 of these articles lately. I have used linux on the desktop in some form or another since 1998. It works, trust me. I find it strange that the author says they should have gone back to FreeBSD. In terms of "desktop" experience, both of these operating systems are somewhat similar. I understand his complaints about the driver situation, but, really, this just means that you need to do some…

Installing os x on a non-Apple machine is a hack. Installing linux on simple hardware was never supposed to be a hack. As the author says, the drivers of even linux friendly companies like intel and nvidia don't support their latest developments which forces desktop linux user to get on with inferior hardware.

Nvidia's binary drivers nearly always support their latest cards, sometimes even before release. It helps that people use Nvidia cards in Linux for doing Serious Work like rendering movies and analyzing stock trends.

Re: The Linux desktop experience is killing Linux on the desktop, Part II

#24

Post by ch0wn » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 12:45 PM UTC

Spyro7 wrote: post #3

I feel like I've read over 20 of these articles lately. I have used linux on the desktop in some form or another since 1998. It works, trust me. I find it strange that the author says they should have gone back to FreeBSD. In terms of "desktop" experience, both of these operating systems are somewhat similar. I understand his complaints about the driver situation, but, really, this just means that you need to do some…

Thank you. I've been using Linux for more than 12 years now and it works. Every user got to make its own choice. I tried OS X, Windows and Linux and I will stick with the latter.

Re: The Linux desktop experience is killing Linux on the desktop, Part II

#25

Post by piger » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 12:46 PM UTC

People keep saying "it works for me, go away", as if other people who care about a DECENT desktop experience are just morons.

"Ah! Another stupid windows/osx user!"

I don't care about your fvwm desktop with 99 xterms and emacs everywhere, or your fully customized arch linux that "works for you"; I, like many other people, have different needs. And yet the general response from the community is "fuck off".

First rule of desktop linux: you do not complain about desktop linux.

Greetings from the year 2011.

Re: The Linux desktop experience is killing Linux on the desktop, Part II

#26

Post by emilsedgh » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 12:49 PM UTC

Dislacimer: I've been involved in the KDE community in the past few years. However, im not a core developer or a decision maker and I just make very side contributions. What follows are my thoughts and obviously not KDE's.

Main issues behind Linux on desktop:

1) Motivation. Volunteers are doing an incredible job. Truly amazing. Outstanding. No word describes it. However, how much can you expect from them? Most linux-based companies care very little about linux on desktop.

On server linux, almost whole industry is based on FOSS stacks (linux, bsd, etc). Why on earth you expect UI developers do a job as good as server-side people? Most of them are pure volunteers. Until more companies are interested on Desktop linux, the situation is more or less the same.

2)Complexity. The whole stack is very complicated and is not handled by a single entity. Kernel, X, Qt/GTK, KDE/Gnome. Now, add to that distributions with different release policies. Different mix of the whole stack, each one producing a unique end-product. Thats much different from windows where they even 'build' the whole stack.

3)Excitement on desktop has been decreased. Desktop in not sexy anymore. Tablets are. Linux on desktop is in middle of some confusion at the moment. Their job is to produce high quality user interfaces. Not just for desktop. And they have lots of potential there. They are moving towards other form factors as well. Which is a big change.

4)Community's attitude. You see, the FOSS community is very big now. However, most people's attitude is teasing linux on desktop or criticizing it. As far as I can remember, open source attitude was 'scratch your own itch', 'get involved', etc. KDE and Gnome communities are both very very welcoming toward new developers. For example, KDE has ~1 new contributor each day. Which is a proof that it is actually pretty welcoming.

In my personal opinion, Linux on desktop is actually doing incredibly well. Despite the above points, we have very high quality applications. We have very high quality API's. Awesome technologies. Most of the work has been done. We have great looking, stable, efficient workspace and applications. What remains is a bit of polish. (Although I have to say, I personally cant stand windows for more than 5 minutes)

So, dear FOSS community. If you think linux on desktop sucks, help making it better. Thats how linux and open source works.

I would also like to ask KDE users to actually help KDE. You can of course contribute to it or Join The Game[1] and give us a little bit of financial help.

[1] http://jointhegame.kde.org

Edit: fixed formatting.

Re: The Linux desktop experience is killing Linux on the desktop, Part II

#27

Post by slowcpu » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 12:50 PM UTC

May I respectfully suggest that those who do not fulfill the minimum wetware requirements to run Linux successfully should stick to an operating system that is consistent with their cranial capacity.

Re: The Linux desktop experience is killing Linux on the desktop, Part II

#28

Post by rchowe » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 12:53 PM UTC

IvarTJ wrote: post #21

httpitis wrote: post #16

To me, the article comes across as a request to the linux community for solving the linux desktop problem. In other words, when given a viable chioce, the author wants linux on his desktop. The author's complaints seems confirmed when looking at the trends [1] in market share for contemporary os's. >Desktop Linux has to be made somehow profitable for companies to start investing more heavily in it... I also believe t…

Android seems to be an example of a Linux-based operating system becoming successful partially because of its importance to hardware vendors. Could Linux distributions in general benefit from a hardware vendor becoming the goto vendor for Linux-running laptops and/or desktops?

Android is a different story. Even though it's based on Linux and is supposedly "open source", Google's still the driving force behind its development. So the problems the article points out with the linux development process won't really apply to Android.

Canonical partnered with Dell for a while to get Ubuntu on a few systems (Dell had been looking for an alternative to windows and had gone to Apple to try to license OS X; Apple refused). Turned out customers didn't really want Ubuntu, and mostly installed (pirate?) Windows and wiped out Ubuntu. You can't just wipe out iOS and install Android on your iPhone (well you can on an original iPhone, but it's not as easy as installing a desktop OS).

System76 is an Ubuntu-only computer vendor, but for most linux geeks they just buy any PC that works with the Linux flavor they want and put linux on it. Most non-geek linux users had linux put there by a geek linux user and don't know any better.

Re: The Linux desktop experience is killing Linux on the desktop, Part II

#29

Post by VMG » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 12:53 PM UTC

Stiffy wrote: post #10

Spyro7 wrote: post #3

I feel like I've read over 20 of these articles lately. I have used linux on the desktop in some form or another since 1998. It works, trust me. I find it strange that the author says they should have gone back to FreeBSD. In terms of "desktop" experience, both of these operating systems are somewhat similar. I understand his complaints about the driver situation, but, really, this just means that you need to do some…

The problem isn't Linux. The problem is GNOME, and to a lesser extent, KDE. GNOME is just not a good desktop environment, yet it has often been pushed as "the" Linux desktop by various distros and vendors. New Linux users end up using GNOME, finding that it's a pretty bad experience, and then they blame Linux and OSS as a whole. Had they used XFCE, for instance, they'd probably think otherwise. If recent experience i…

I disagree. I'm using Gnome3 on all my machines and I like it. My non-techie girlfriend is also fine with it.

Re: The Linux desktop experience is killing Linux on the desktop, Part II

#30

Post by zem » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 12:59 PM UTC

muuh-gnu wrote: post #17

Spyro7 wrote: post #3

I feel like I've read over 20 of these articles lately. I have used linux on the desktop in some form or another since 1998. It works, trust me. I find it strange that the author says they should have gone back to FreeBSD. In terms of "desktop" experience, both of these operating systems are somewhat similar. I understand his complaints about the driver situation, but, really, this just means that you need to do some…

> I have used linux on the desktop in some form or another > since 1998. It works, trust me. So have I, since 1998-1999. It never really "worked" as a desktop compared to windows. Never. Gnome 2 (the latest few versions) was the best they managed to get together. It was always borderline unusable, but it worked somehow. But the latest versions are literarily killing off all Desktop Linux achieved in the last 15 years…

i moved to xfce4 when arch moved to gnome3, and so far i've been perfectly happy with it. one or two annoying bugs, but on the whole it's a very usable desktop environment.