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Desktop Linux Keeps Winning the Wrong Battles

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Re: Desktop Linux Keeps Winning the Wrong Battles

#91

Post by takluyver »

TiredOfLife wrote: post #67
takluyver wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As for religious wars over init systems, desktop environments and package managers, competition is making the options stronger, not weaker. Competition can definitely improve things, but it's not universally positive. In particular, endless competition in parts of the operating system makes it hard to build anything on top of them. E.g. if you want to distribute an application for Linux, do you build a Flatpak, or…

> do you build a Flatpak, or a Snap? .appimage

AppImage is, in fairness, a clever idea. But it's also yet another option. It only solves the mess of competing formats if it wins, if it becomes the normal way to publish user-facing software on Linux.

Re: Desktop Linux Keeps Winning the Wrong Battles

#92

Post by phendrenad2 »

(This is a dupe so I'll copy my comment on the old, unloved post from 5 days ago...)

Linux is a fish, stop trying to make it a bird. The fact that a significant portion of the Linux-user population thinks/believes/hopes/expects that it will someday be a bird won't make it so, or do anything to unblock the technical, legal, and organizational roadblocks. If you want a FOSS desktop OS that can win the "right battles", here's what you do:

1. Come up with a name and a logo. Trademark them. Make a basic set of rules that people have to adhere to if they want to use your logo. Obviously, get a lawyer to look it over to ensure it's ironclad.

2. Fork FreeBSD (or any other open-source-but-not-copyleft-licensed kernel)

3. Pick a GUI layer. GTK, Qt, WxWidgets, doesn't really matter as long as you keep the API stable so programs written in 2028 will run in 2038 (good luck doing that on Linux).

4. Create a driver API interface so someone can write a Realtek Wifi driver once and it'll never need recompiled or updated for a newer kernel. The driver file will work in 2028 and 2038 (of course, excepting the case where there's a new CPU architecture, or a security vulnerability).

5. Stabilize the application-level API as well. That means, probably pick a version of glibc and stick with it forever. Patch vulnerabilities, but maintain backward compatibility as much as possible. Application binaries should work forever.

If your instinctive reaction to these bullet points is to think "who's gonna do all that" then yeah, I agree with you. It's not going to happen.

Re: Desktop Linux Keeps Winning the Wrong Battles

#93

Post by phendrenad2 »

int_19h wrote: post #87
CommonGuy wrote: post #63

Developing GUI applications for Linux is also a huge pain. Developers not familiar with Linux need to learn so many things... What is X11, Wayland, GNOME, KDE, d-bus, application ids, portals, etc. Then once you have a working application, users request having it distributed as .tar.gz, snap, flatpak, you name it. Then dependencies are missing on some Linux distribution or there are random bugs with Nvidia graphics c…

> What is X11, Wayland, GNOME, KDE, d-bus, application ids, portals, etc. ... Compare that to developing for Windows, where most things "just work" This is a weird complaint, and I'm saying this as a mostly-Windows developer. Windows has an insane number of technologies, many of them replacements for older replacements for older replacements ... etc going 30+ years back. Do you know how registration-free COM works, f…

> you're right in that distribution is a pain

Yeah that part is just bonkers. Take Discord, for example, probably the most popular "app" that people install on Linux these days. There is a Snap, a Flatpak, a DEB. I can't imagine how much work it is to maintain all of those. Screen sharing is broken in random versions. People say to install the DEB (if you're lucky enough to be on a Debian-based system), but oh, make sure you install via a terminal command with "--fix-broken" to install all dependencies (wouldn't the app store GUI do that? maybe not). Apparently the Flatpak is better, but don't forget to install something called "flatseal" so you can upload files (Flatpaks are sandboxed by default). I imagine Discord tech support gets a lot of angry emails from Linux users who didn't get the "flatseal" memo and think that Discord just sucks at developing software.

Re: Desktop Linux Keeps Winning the Wrong Battles

#94

Post by akagusu »

The Linux Desktop is not failing because there is no such thing as Linux Desktop.

Windows is an operating system made by Microsoft for PCs, macOS is an operating system made by Apple for Macs but a product call Linux Desktop does not exist.

There is Ubuntu, REHL, Debian, Fedora, Arch and many other operating systems based on the Linux kernel - which is a just a kernel - that are built for different purposes, none of them targeting mainstream desktop usage.

In the history of operating systems based on Linux there were a few products targeting mainstream desktop users like Lindows and Ubuntu, but the only really successful, at least for some time, was Ubuntu.

Re: Desktop Linux Keeps Winning the Wrong Battles

#95

Post by tim333 »

takluyver wrote: post #55
ZenoArrow wrote: post #23

This article is full of nonsense. The Linux desktop push isn't failing because it has experiences and apps that are similar to Windows and macOS. Being able to run Windows apps on Linux is a benefit, not a failure. As for religious wars over init systems, desktop environments and package managers, competition is making the options stronger, not weaker. Competition is a reason why package management on Linux is far be…

> As for religious wars over init systems, desktop environments and package managers, competition is making the options stronger, not weaker. Competition can definitely improve things, but it's not universally positive. In particular, endless competition in parts of the operating system makes it hard to build anything on top of them. E.g. if you want to distribute an application for Linux, do you build a Flatpak, or…

Dunno about not caring about the OS. My mum who's not techy got persuaded to get a Macbook after Windows and is finding it a big learning curve. I remember when Walmart sold Linux machines they gave up because the buyers returned them when they found their Windows stuff didn't run. I'm a fairly normal user and certainly care if it's Mac, Windows or Linux. I wouldn't run linux as my main os as I spend a lot of time in Excel.

Re: Desktop Linux Keeps Winning the Wrong Battles

#96

Post by int_19h »

pengwinhayden wrote: post #8
jrm4 wrote: post #2

One thing that I think this argument sorely misses is an honest discussion of how e.g. bad (or perhaps unliked) decisions get made that have big impacts here. For example, count me in with those folks who think the "new" GNOME sucks. Now, maybe you disagree and that's fine -- but so often those discussions start and end with "Well it's open source and so because you're not making anything better you can't even talk."…

Those moves are made by Red Hat, to benefit their enterprise customers, because enterprise customers are the ones who pay for Linux, their interests get top priority. Shuttleworth did so much for desktop Linux by mailing us all free install CDs, but then users everywhere began to expect Linux to be free as in beer. But until users are willing to pay for desktop Linux again, like some of us may remember, enterprise wi…

It's not obvious to me from looking at Gnome that it is the way it is to "benefit the enterprise customers". If anything, I'd expect the DE that does that to be much more conservative about its UX choices, and sticking more closely to established industry standards (i.e. "what Windows does") to minimize the need for retraining and such.

Re: Desktop Linux Keeps Winning the Wrong Battles

#97

Post by takluyver »

tim333 wrote: post #95
takluyver wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As for religious wars over init systems, desktop environments and package managers, competition is making the options stronger, not weaker. Competition can definitely improve things, but it's not universally positive. In particular, endless competition in parts of the operating system makes it hard to build anything on top of them. E.g. if you want to distribute an application for Linux, do you build a Flatpak, or…

Dunno about not caring about the OS. My mum who's not techy got persuaded to get a Macbook after Windows and is finding it a big learning curve. I remember when Walmart sold Linux machines they gave up because the buyers returned them when they found their Windows stuff didn't run. I'm a fairly normal user and certainly care if it's Mac, Windows or Linux. I wouldn't run linux as my main os as I spend a lot of time in…

People definitely care about applications they use a lot, and MS Office is a big one - even if LibreOffice would work just as well for many use cases, people are hesitant to give up what they know works.

The OS does make some difference, but I think that if all the same applications were available, a lot of people could switch without much difficulty. In some ways going from Windows to Linux might be easier than Windows to Mac, because many Linux distros are happy enough to conform to UI conventions that are familiar from Windows.

Re: Desktop Linux Keeps Winning the Wrong Battles

#98

Post by joquarky »

int_19h wrote: post #86
blueflow wrote: post #3

> While this could absolutely happen, the way that Linux as a whole has been developing over the years isn't always conducive to making the world's Windows and macOS users convert en masse. Its the way Windows is developing that is driving this change. GNOME might be hardly usable but Microsoft managed to top that. Edit: I retract the last sentence. I'm currently trying GNOME and its less usable than Windows.

Stock Gnome is indeed a mess, but thankfully we're not limited to that. KDE, Xfce, and Cinnamon all offer environments that are far more intuitive to use, especially from someone coming from Windows. And there are good distros built around all of these as the primary DE. I usually recommend Mint (the default edition, i.e. Cinnamon) to people who get UX fatigue from the recent developments in Windows land and want som…

This is what I went with about a year ago and I have had only one small issue (not enough swap space by default).

This is my first Linux desktop success after several attempts over the past two decades.

I still remember my first attempt (probably late-90's) - it took me 3 hours to figure out how to get an mp3 to play.

Re: Desktop Linux Keeps Winning the Wrong Battles

#99

Post by vitorgrs »

cocoto wrote: post #57
donmcronald wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my complaints with Gnome is that I can’t hand it to a normal person and let them use it because it’s not obvious how to use it. The entry point to everything looks like a horizontal scroll bar in the top left corner and basic actions take more clicks than Windows. The biggest battle desktop Linux is losing is the one where a minority of devs are dictating their preferred compute paradigm to a majority of users…

Gnome is way simpler to use than Windows. If you let grandma or a kid with no prior Desktop experience, I’m pretty sure they will find Gnome more intuitive. The problem is that it is too different for a Windows user, so the switching cost is high.

Gnome is as simple as Windows 8.0. Maybe even less. We know the history about Windows 8.0.

Gnome made several decisions toat make it super complex for normal users. Windows have a taskbar. Mac have a dock. KDE have a taskbar.

And I really like Gnome design language, UI. But the UX is awful.

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