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What killed the Linux desktop

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Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#61

Post by jsnell »

jrockway wrote: post #9

I've used Linux for years and have never had these problems. I think the issue is that getting everything working requires a deep understanding of each component and the system as a whole. If you just follow advice on forums, you will make things worse because you're doing things you don't understand to a system that you don't understand. That's not going to lead to success. You need to be able to think critically ab…

I have used Linux as my main desktop and laptop OS for 17 years, and see these problems frequently. It used to be a system I could keep completely in my head, and understand what was happening and why. But from maybe 2005 onwards there has been a persistent and accelerating trend of replacing the old working and transparent (though possibly a bit baroque) infrastructure with fancy new components that are completely inscrutable. And the lack of transparency gets worse and worse the thicker these layers of garbage get. It's mostly fine as long as things work. But things never seem to work if you have a configuration that differs even a bit from the default.

Want to log in from a terminal and start X? Well, too bad there's some new infrastructure this month that makes sure you'll only get access to the sound device when you log in from a properly configured gdm. Want to modify the keyboard layout? Whoops, the xmodmap format that had been stable for a couple of decades now changed for the third time in a year. Want to add a tmpfs on /tmp to fstab? Well, too bad. Some implicit and undebuggable circular dependencies in systemd will make the system unbootable.

And the sad parts are that the problems this new infrastructure is supposed to solve never actually existed. "Great, now audio doesn't work at all. But if it worked, it would have full support for network transparency". It's easy to understand why the problem exists - creating something new tends to be more rewarding than working on the old stuff. It's much harder to see how to fix this madness.

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#62

Post by freyrs3 »

nirvana wrote: post #25

I think he's right, but I think he's missing a key point. Design. Design is what killed the linux desktop. It never had it. OS X has it. Even windows, crappy as it may be, has it. Before I go on, let me say that Design is NOT "making it look pretty". In fact, thinking that this is what design is, is what leads many linux advocates to reject the needs of design. Apple's work looks pretty-- because it is designed to fu…

> Design is about usability and understanding the user

Here's the point you're missing. The overwhelming majority Linux users don't give a flying hoot about the average user or mass adoption. They just want a system that gets out of their way and let's them do their technical tasks. Linux succeeds and excels at this because it is precisely designed for that niche and curated by its end-users.

There are however people who do care about mass adoption, i.e. Canonical, "Linux Advocates". Generally they're either emotionally invested in Linux for some reason or they get a paycheck for their work. These people are the minority of Linux users.

Saying the culture doesn't care about design is absurd, it's the non-technical user we don't care about. Let's not conflate the two. Looking at a piece of software like XMonad or TMux it's hard to not appreciate the elegance in it's design. It's just different form of design that say iTunes or Photoshop.

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#63

Post by [deleted] »

jrockway wrote: post #9

I've used Linux for years and have never had these problems. I think the issue is that getting everything working requires a deep understanding of each component and the system as a whole. If you just follow advice on forums, you will make things worse because you're doing things you don't understand to a system that you don't understand. That's not going to lead to success. You need to be able to think critically ab…

[deleted]

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#64

Post by anigbrowl »

nirvana wrote: post #25

I think he's right, but I think he's missing a key point. Design. Design is what killed the linux desktop. It never had it. OS X has it. Even windows, crappy as it may be, has it. Before I go on, let me say that Design is NOT "making it look pretty". In fact, thinking that this is what design is, is what leads many linux advocates to reject the needs of design. Apple's work looks pretty-- because it is designed to fu…

The last time Linux on the desktop looked and felt good was when Enlightenment DR16 came out. When I installed Ubuntu last year I felt like I was using something for children.

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#65

Post by MatthewPhillips »

batista wrote: post #41
ajross wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really didn't intend it as a swipe against Miguel, but I think it does inform his perspective. And I meant "platform fan" in the advocacy sense: he has a tendency to "fall in love" with favorite products. That's not uncommon in the general population (it's pretty much the norm at HN!), but it certainly is among core Linux people who tend to prefer doing new things in different ways. > His early world was Midnight C…

> And I meant "platform fan" in the advocacy sense: he has a tendency to "fall in love" with favorite products. Well, for one, C#/CLR was not a favorite product when he fell in love with them, were they? At the time lots of people thought MS was foolish to try to overtake Java, and it took a couple of years for people to accept and like .NET. > But to claim that these were innovative new projects is silly. Sure, they…

> Sure, they weren't, but it's not like Linux in general has given us much innovative things in the desktop space.

O.o

Two off the top of my head: workspaces, app stores.

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#66

Post by darkstalker »

stevencorona wrote: post #11

In like 2006 I switched from Windows XP to Linux. This was before Ubuntu was what it is today. I learned using Slackware and eventually switched to Gentoo. It was cool and gave me nerd cred when I went to college. I switched to OSX for exactly the reasons the author mentioned. The fact that I have an awesome UI + ability to use the shell all day is a huge win for me.

I don't get all that OSX "awesome UI" everyone talks about. With my previous experience on Windows/Linux, everything seems wrong and backwards, and there is no way to configure or change it. Also the shell looks like a crippled version of unix.

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#67

Post by aj700 »

1. If this is true, and it seems right to me, maybe some of the massive effort put into designing new GUIs for Gnome/KDE/etc should be put into hacking the look and feel of the OS X desktop?

Unsanity ShapeShifter hasn't worked since OS 10.4

and I know about

http://magnifique.en.softonic.com/mac - 10.5 only

http://www.marsthemes.com/crystalclear/ 10.7 support claimed, but it's not very radical. I'd love xfce's window look controls or a Stardock windowblinds.

I know Apple don't want anybody to do this. I know they will deliberately introduce changes that break hacks. But as I said, how can it be more effort than Linux?

-----

2. To try to prevent OSx86 hacks, DSMOS.kext uses crypto to prevent the system running essential UI elements like Finder, SystemUIServer, etc. Can't we build our own versions of those parts? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93Intel_architectur...

-----

3. Is this true?:

Linux desktop - dying, dead

Windows 8 - trying so hard to copy OSX/iPad/Springboard/Launchpad that everybody is gonna hate its TWO UI's! (dying?)

Mac - winning, won (by default?)

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#68

Post by wpietri »

ajross wrote: post #4

I think some of this is perceptive. It's true that the attempt by both Canonical (Unity) and Red Hat (Gnome 3) to sort-of-incompatibly break away from the so close to standard that it hurts to type this Gnome 2 environment did a lot more harm than good, at least as far as platform adoption goes. And clearly OS X is an extremely polished Unix and is going to appeal to the more UI-focused of the hacker set. And Miquel…

So in that light, I think the idea that the Linux desktop got "killed" is sort of missing the point. It's no more moribund now than it was before.

I strongly disagree. It is losing exactly the sort of person that the author is: developers who, all else equal, would rather use Linux. But who eventually get tired of the BS and just want something that works and you can actually get software for. I have a lot of sympathy for that.

I write this from a Linux laptop, but that's more out of mulish stubbornness and 15 years of accumulated irritation with Steve Jobs and his dickish business practices.

The last time I got a new laptop I knew I didn't have time to screw around for days with X configuration files. And so I paid a vendor several hundred dollars over list to give me a laptop that JFW. And despite that the sound is still way too quiet. After a few time-boxed 2-hour excursions into whatever sound system they're using this week, I still can't fix it. I've given up.

The only legitimate reason I have for staying on desktop Linux is that I code for Linux servers, and I think it's impossible to really understand system performance if you're not running the same OS. But even that seems shaky to me; hardware keeps getting cheaper and developers keep getting more expensive, so it just doesn't matter as much.

One day some bright Linux spark is going to "innovate" again in a way that I'm expected to put up with their rough edges for 6 months (hello, Unity!) and I'm going to say fuck it and buy a Mac because I just don't have time to screw around right then. Or maybe I'll just want to watch a Netflix movie without hassle, or play the video game my pals are all talking about. And maybe by then it will be a fancy dock for my 8-core Android phone.

Overall, I agree with his point, except that I don't think Linux on the desktop is so much dying as cutting its own throat.

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#69

Post by mratzloff »

scrumper wrote: post #52
nirvana wrote: post #25

I think he's right, but I think he's missing a key point. Design. Design is what killed the linux desktop. It never had it. OS X has it. Even windows, crappy as it may be, has it. Before I go on, let me say that Design is NOT "making it look pretty". In fact, thinking that this is what design is, is what leads many linux advocates to reject the needs of design. Apple's work looks pretty-- because it is designed to fu…

This is pretty much spot on. I believe that the lack of "strong-D" Design you refer to is because Linux's desktop is pretty much the ultimate committee-driven project. It's very democratic: great for preventing abuse, but rather bad when it comes to vision. Most of us here know how difficult it is for one person in a company to drive an idea through without it being diluted; countless product companies have gone bust…

Maybe collaborative development is incapable of producing something as complex and difficult as a clean, well-designed desktop environment and API? Forking, competing spinoffs, factionalism are all useful things in some ways, but they're death to this kind of project.

The Rails community seems to manage.

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#70

Post by pnathan »

hnriot wrote: post #7
brianobush wrote: post #3

funny; I am using a linux desktop right now. not dead yet.

by choice though, or out of work necessity?

I have a Linux desktop at work and one at home. I actually see the modern Linux desktop as absolutely amazing compared to where it was a decade ago.

I also have a Mountain Lion MBP, but AFAICT, I will be leaving the Apple cart after it dies and I'll be 100% Linux.

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