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What killed the Linux desktop

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Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#291

Post by wmwong »

cletus wrote: post #97

This is the money quote: > The second dimension to the problem is that no two Linux distributions agreed on which core components the system should use. Linux on the desktop suffered from a lack of coherent, strategic vision, consistency and philosophy . Every engineer I know likes to do things a particular way. They also have a distorted view on the level of customization that people want and need. I like OSX. Out o…

Agreed that things should just work. In case you're still looking for a fix for the dual monitor full screen issue. I had the same problem on Chrome. It was when they introduced built-in flash. You need to disable Chrome's built-in flash and everything is back to normal.

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#292

Post by hcarvalhoalves »

Linux isn't dead in the desktop because it never was a product in the first place.

The first attempts were Mandrake and Conectiva. Canonical has been doing a good job lately, the problem is that the platform is now beyond hope on the desktop, it simply doesn't gather traction from 3rd party developers - the most important thing for a desktop OS. You're pretty much limited to the FOSS utilities that exist on the repositories.

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#293

Post by fmoralesc »

ajross wrote: post #130
antihero wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you using for sound? I use Pulseaudio on my desktop (custom built with a M-Audio Delta 2496 Pro soundcard) and on my laptop (crappy Lenovo G575) and I don't have any problems at all. All I do is have this line in my .xinitrc: [[ -x /usr/bin/start-pulseaudio-x11 ]] && start-pulseaudio-x11 & And it works perfectly! If I want to change my volume or manage which device it outputs on, I just run pavucontrol

What distro are you using that you are having to start pulseaudio manually? I swear I thought it was default everywhere.

It is the default in all mayor DEs, but he might have a custom X session, using a standalone window manager and extra tools. Or he could work in the console.

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#294

Post by RegEx »

bpatrianakos wrote: post #264
diminish wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To stress out again; OS/X has the poorest hardware support for 3rd parties; even compared to Linux. Just "think different" and buy some hardware and you ll see what I mean..

Oh well now that you said it the argument is settled. You can't just say OS X has the poorest hardware support ever and not back it up with anything except "go buy some hardware and see what works and what doesn't". Is there maybe a table online that lists these incompatibilities you can link to? Please don't say "do some research" because the onus is on you to prove yourrself right, not on me to prove you right. You…

> Then when you added in the "think different" line you made it seem even more like your comment was based off some kind of blind loyalty to Linux rather than loyalty to facts.

Don't read too far into things, and "...loyalty to facts" eye roll.

Anyway, It's pretty common knowledge to Linux users that hardware/driver support on Linux can be a challenge. Sometimes things work right out of the box, other times you have to do a lot of work and a lot of Googling.

That being said, I don't agree with the parent. For basic hardware needs, Windows and OSX have a fairly high success rate of plug-and-play functionality. For me on Linux, it's about 50/50.

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#295

Post by dchichkov »

justincormack wrote: post #132
_delirium wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among non-ultra-geeky Linux users I know (mostly part-time users), "Linux" does seem to be reasonably standardized as far as desktop components go, because by "Linux" they mean "Ubuntu". It's possible the Ubuntu desktop dominance came a bit too late, though, and still isn't entirely complete. My own experiences aren't great with Windows, though they're smoother on OSX than Linux. The problem I have with Windows is th…

Windows is horrible to use, everything is poorly designed. Linux (Ubuntu in my case) and OSX just work sanely mostly, but OSX is a horrible dev environment, so I moved back to Linux.

Actually OSX development environment is only horrible to cross-platform / open-source application developers.

But if you are Apple pet developer then you'd just use XCode/XCode projects/etc for all your needs. And would be very happy with that.

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#296

Post by canadiancreed »

einhverfr wrote: post #271
cletus wrote: post #97

This is the money quote: > The second dimension to the problem is that no two Linux distributions agreed on which core components the system should use. Linux on the desktop suffered from a lack of coherent, strategic vision, consistency and philosophy . Every engineer I know likes to do things a particular way. They also have a distorted view on the level of customization that people want and need. I like OSX. Out o…

If that was the only problem though we would have expected FreeBSD to overtake the desktop. the larger issue, unfortunately is just that people are afraid to switch from Windows to anything other than Mac. Android is helping there, but it will take time. Never underestimate the fear of the consumer that they will break stuff on a computer they are unfamiliar with. The fact that Windows is actually getting better may…

As a FreeBSD user since 2007 I found the desktop options to be just as clunky as Linux if not more so. It was the only part of the OS that didn't just work when I used it in my travels, so it's stayed as server duty. If there was an open source windows managing system that was on par with Mac's version...whole new world. (There might be, I havnet' looked since 2009 so)

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#297

Post by mekoka »

alpeb wrote: post #259
patrickaljord wrote: post #45

What killed it is that it didn't have a huge and multi-billion dollar company betting on it (on the desktop) like Microsoft and Apple had, even Apple with its billions is still around 5% market share worldwide so having 1% is still a great accomplishment when you think that it had no support from huge corporations. Now take the mobile world for example, Linux on mobile had been around for a decade but it never really…

Redhat and Canonical are big companies that did bet the house on Linux. A few years back I was confident Canonical was what desktop Linux needed to get its shit together. And today I'm typing this on a Zareason laptop that's supposed to provide 1st class support for Ubuntu (even has an Ubuntu key), and the mic doesn't work, Fn keys don't work, youtube videos appear in monochrome blue, and it likes to boot itself up r…

You're one user. I've been using the same System76 laptop at work and at home for 3+ years. Still works flawlessly (fn keys and all).

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#298

Post by mbell »

sirmarksalot wrote: post #274
mbell wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coming from the perspective of a developer: I used linux as my only OS sans VMs from roughly 2008 till 2011. I finally gave up because it handled monitor switching, multiple monitors so poorly (using Nvidia GPU). I begrudgingly switched to windows because I owned the hardware already, and it was the only option. Windows sucks, the lack of a usable shell kills it, full stop, nothing else windows does matters. And no,…

As for the "lack of a usable shell" part, have you looked at Powershell? It comes bundled with Windows, and has a lot of the features that are missing from the command prompt. It does have some rough edges that may cause you to dismiss it as unusable, but it offers tab completion, colored text output, and a real scripting environment (not DOS batch scripting). Every serious Windows developer I've talked to nowadays u…

> As for the "lack of a usable shell" part, have you looked at Powershell?

No, and I have zero reason to do so. I don't deploy on windows, I have no reason to ever deploy on windows, so why would I bother learning another syntax just to develop on windows? It really doesn't make any sense. Powershell only makes sense for IT admins whom have to manage windows networks, it makes no sense at all for developers deploying on *nix.

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#299

Post by DeepDuh »

rahoulb wrote: post #261
diminish wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To stress out again; OS/X has the poorest hardware support for 3rd parties; even compared to Linux. Just "think different" and buy some hardware and you ll see what I mean..

The real difference is that on OSX is if something doesn't work it doesn't work. Under Linux it may work, or work badly, or you can probably hack it to make it work well. I used to think I liked the latter but there's something appealing about the binary clarity of OSX.

Thank you, that's exactly how I think, it's even this way with Windows. On other systems I would waste days after days of my life to set things up 'just the way I want' only to find that it's never gonna be quite that way. Macs just let me accept the things as they are and get back to work. Very often, I'd get to see after a while, why things work the way they work (say, Window management).

Anyway, this has been almost 100% true up from 10.3 through 10.6.x. Recent developments both on Apple's as well as on MS's side have closed the gap between the two systems quite a bit. I still prefer OSX but it's gotten close. The real reason I continue to buy macs nowadays is the hardware quality.

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