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What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

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Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#121

Post by julian_1 »

VonGuard wrote: post #6

I think it was the inability for GUI's to stay stable. Gnome went off the rails, Unity completely ruined Ubuntu[1], and KDE always felt very cheap and hard to navigate. My opinion, yes, but I always felt the GUI changes in Linux were extremely gratuitous after Gnome 2. Couple this with the fact that for a decade, the actual GUI was tied very, very heavily to the apps. So you had to use Gedit in Gnome, or whatever the…

> Gnome went off the rails, Unity completely ruined Ubuntu[1], and KDE always felt very cheap and hard to navigate.

Completely agree, and as a user of Desktop Linux for a very long time - I always felt that Linux GUI have been inferior to the options available on Mac and Windows.

It's not for everyone, but I found a personal solution with tiling window managers (Xmonad, I3) and related tools (suckless' dmenu). They restore sanity by providing lightweight, shortcut focused GUI systems, that don't intrude but provide enough functionality to get things done.

For anyone searching and testing GUIs like XFCE, don't dismiss tiling window managers as being too complicated or a bridge too far. My experience is that they work wonderfully in practice.

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#122

Post by mschuster91 »

dcdevito wrote: post #65

The Linux Desktop didn't die, because you simply can't kill something that never had life to begin with. Linux (as in the kernel) succeeds because it's free, flexible, stable and secure. But none of those words are "pretty", "aesthetic" or "powerful". And the DEs associated with Linux reflect this in every nature. OSX became the uber tech junkie's OS of choice, but with Apple's recent shenanigans these savvy enthusia…

> OSX became the uber tech junkie's OS of choice, but with Apple's recent shenanigans these savvy enthusiasts and devs are also starting to use Windows again.

I believe that hipsters/nerds migrated to Apple for two things: build quality (most laptops these days STILL are made of plastic, and well as someone who often eats near his machine or operates it with pizza-greasy fingers I can say that an Apple laptop just doesn't give a sh.t while all my Windows laptops end up looking very indecent after a year), and battery lifetime.

The latter is the most important: Apple with its ultra tight control down to the tiniest chip on the motherboard can tune the performance in ways that cannot ever be achieved by either Windows or Linux, with 6+ hour usage times being the norm. Windows laptops with this usage time usually are way more than expensive than Macbooks, are heavier than a piece of granite rock, or a combination of both.

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#123

Post by lumberjack »

alkonaut wrote: post #118
bitwize wrote: post #115

What killed the Linux desktop? Not being preinstalled. For a bit of context from PC history, this is also what killed the GEM desktop, killed the OS/2 desktop, and damn near killed the Windows desktop until Microsoft put pressure on vendors to make a 386SX with VGA the entry-level option and ship Windows 3.0 with every unit. Preinstalls are an OS's golden ticket to adoption.

If one Linux with one desktop was widely preinstalled, that would help. That would have made that environment the target for desktop developers, which in turn would have added the pressure for backwards compatibility. Now, as a desktop developer I'm surely not targeting Linux desktop because it's not even a single target.

Doesn't stop Android adoption.

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#124

Post by shmerl »

marvy wrote: post #119
bitwize wrote: post #115

What killed the Linux desktop? Not being preinstalled. For a bit of context from PC history, this is also what killed the GEM desktop, killed the OS/2 desktop, and damn near killed the Windows desktop until Microsoft put pressure on vendors to make a 386SX with VGA the entry-level option and ship Windows 3.0 with every unit. Preinstalls are an OS's golden ticket to adoption.

These days you can get computers with Linux preinstalled. What you can't get is a computer that has both Windows and Linux preinstalled in some kind of dual boot or VM setup. That you must still do yourself. You can get the choice to preinstall Windows, or preinstall Linux; never both.

> These days you can get computers with Linux preinstalled.

If you look for them specially, and not from most manufacturers. Try getting one from Dell (any model, not one specific variant), Lenovo and etc. Good luck with that.

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#125

Post by aidenn0 »

paulddraper wrote: post #97
aidenn0 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The linux kernel is hard-core into not breaking backwards compatibility. 2/3 of Linus's rants targeting a kernel developer tend to be because they broke userspace. On the other hand, there is approximately zero chance that a dynamically linked executable from 10 years ago will run on my current system because the system libraries break backwards compatibility all the time. Drepper takes a lot of flak for this, but gl…

DVDs, printers, and to a lesser extent graphics have more issues for me than audio.

Also my experience, but people complain about sound. I know Ubuntu adopted PA way to early, so perhaps that's what some people are thinking of. Also, back in the day, dmix was not enabled in setups where it really ought to have been so you had the "some program is blocking everyone else from using the sound."

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#126

Post by wolfgke »

shmerl wrote: post #124
marvy wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days you can get computers with Linux preinstalled. What you can't get is a computer that has both Windows and Linux preinstalled in some kind of dual boot or VM setup. That you must still do yourself. You can get the choice to preinstall Windows, or preinstall Linux; never both.

> These days you can get computers with Linux preinstalled. If you look for them specially, and not from most manufacturers. Try getting one from Dell (any model, not one specific variant), Lenovo and etc. Good luck with that.

> If you look for them specially, and not from most manufacturers. Try getting one from Dell (any model, not one specific variant), Lenovo and etc. Good luck with that.

Before you complain about that, consider that every GNU/Linux nerd has strong feelings about their preferred GNU/Linux distribution (or version (such as LTS, Stable, Bleeding Edge etc.). So they will probably not be satisfied with the distribution that is installed and install their preferred one. Also there is only one or two Windows versions that the customer wants preinstalled at any given time. Only every few years (much less often than a new version of a typical GNU/Linux distribution gets released) there will be a necessity to offer a new Windows version.

So if you are dreaming of PCs preinstalled with GNU/Linux for the mainstream market, first standardize on 1 or 2 distribution for, say, 95% of the market.

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#127

Post by closeparen »

lumberjack wrote: post #123
alkonaut wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one Linux with one desktop was widely preinstalled, that would help. That would have made that environment the target for desktop developers, which in turn would have added the pressure for backwards compatibility. Now, as a desktop developer I'm surely not targeting Linux desktop because it's not even a single target.

Doesn't stop Android adoption.

Um, what? Phones differ in size and power, but a particular version of Android is a particular version of Android everywhere.

Android developers don't have a debian vs. ubuntu vs. centos. vs. gentoo vs. arch type choice to make, only a "how backwards compatible do I want to be" choice.

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#129

Post by wolfgke »

Shorel wrote: post #66
PaulHoule wrote: post #24

The original sin of the Linux desktop was the kde/gnome split over licensing. Had Linux had one good desktop, like the other operating systems, it could have had a future on the desktop. Instead it has had a number of almost-good desktops that are still fragmented by hate and the desire to thwart interoperability. For instance, the GTK team won't fix certain bugs that affect running in a rootless X server because the…

And that was mainly the job of the author of this article. Who is currently working for Microsoft. I smell an agenda here.

Why do you assume the correlation that he wrote this kind of articles to be hired be Microsoft? Isn't it much more likely that he had the posed point of view for all the time, but it did not become accepted in the GNU/Linux world. On the other hand Microsoft wanted to expand their .net ecosystem to Linux and mobile devices, so they bought Xamarin and hired Miguel de Icaza.

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#130

Post by [deleted] »

Shorel wrote: post #66
PaulHoule wrote: post #24

The original sin of the Linux desktop was the kde/gnome split over licensing. Had Linux had one good desktop, like the other operating systems, it could have had a future on the desktop. Instead it has had a number of almost-good desktops that are still fragmented by hate and the desire to thwart interoperability. For instance, the GTK team won't fix certain bugs that affect running in a rootless X server because the…

And that was mainly the job of the author of this article. Who is currently working for Microsoft. I smell an agenda here.

[deleted]
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