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It Will Never Be the Year of the Linux Desktop

unix.foo

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Re: It Will Never Be the Year of the Linux Desktop

#11

Post by foul »

"On Linux under Wayland" is a big part of the problem. On X11 a significant part of missing "GUI-exposed-as-api" is present. If we concede (and I think otherwise) that we need a FOSS operating system and desktop experience to be fully on par with competitors and offer agentic-first options, I think that an open-minded developer (or one that can afford to run a fairly good LLM on local machine), presented with the problem, can see evidently that said roadblock doesn't exist: X11 can stop being a maze, or thousands of Wayland apps can be forked to make them expose an API, the FUSE filesystem kind of API.

I don't care much about agents though, I sure see as potentially useful some desktop assistant, and that is that.

Re: It Will Never Be the Year of the Linux Desktop

#13

Post by the__alchemist »

I would like to see a non-big-corp-controlled (e.g. Open source) OS that is focused on single-user systems. (Personal /"Desktop" computers) ABI compatibilty, no sudo or permissions; "just works". Schedule software, provide a GUI, threads, memory allocation etc. But get out of the way; no complicated user system; no delicate balance of text config files scattered throughout a file system.

Currently, OSS (etc) OSes are synonymous with Linux; I don't think I will ever see eye to eye with the Linux design philosophy; too many compromises which prioritize servers, multi-user IT systems; embraces scattered state across the FS etc.

Re: It Will Never Be the Year of the Linux Desktop

#14

Post by ryanmcbride »

I've always interpreted "Year of the Linux Desktop" as a personal journey, like Hot Girl Summer. It's not about the year that there's a watershed and suddenly everyone is rolling custom distros, it's about an individual's journey with discovering and trying Linux. Every year can be the year of the Linux desktop if you believe!

Re: It Will Never Be the Year of the Linux Desktop

#16

Post by mda_damico »

Octoth0rpe wrote: post #6
mvkel wrote: post #4

Codex's computer use came from OpenAI's acquisition of the Apple Shortcuts team, whose institutional knowledge allowed them to exploit all sorts of undocumented macOS APIs, not some virtuous accessibility* stack. With 99% of work happening on the web anyway, it IS fair to say that it's not the year of the Linux desktop, or any desktop, because the desktop doesn't need to exist at all. *macos26 introduced a multitude…

> because the desktop doesn't need to exist at all. Which is a really strong argument for most people just buying chromebooks, which run linux.

It doesn't mind what Chromebooks have under the hood. They don't make the Year of the Linux Desktop closer rather the another Decade of Chrome browser.

Re: It Will Never Be the Year of the Linux Desktop

#20

Post by samgranieri »

mvkel wrote: post #4

Codex's computer use came from OpenAI's acquisition of the Apple Shortcuts team, whose institutional knowledge allowed them to exploit all sorts of undocumented macOS APIs, not some virtuous accessibility* stack. With 99% of work happening on the web anyway, it IS fair to say that it's not the year of the Linux desktop, or any desktop, because the desktop doesn't need to exist at all. *macos26 introduced a multitude…

macos26 is just one big UI regression. Ugh.. so much wasted screenspace.
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