What killed the Linux desktop • Hacker News Board

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#241

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 29, 2012, 10:39 PM UTC

nirvana wrote: post #196

zerostar07 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would bet if you ask people what they don't like in their linux setup design would come last. The main issues i hear seem to be compatibility and missing obvious functionality (oh clipboard). In fact , most desktops are so configurable you can actually make them look great. If you want to make a system popular, start with the people who are actually using it. Linux is used by technical people, so why are they putti…

Right, because the people who use linux don't understand what design is. Look at the responses to my comments-- almost all of them defending linux make comments that show they don't understand what design is. They think it is how it looks. >OSX is not easier to use either, it has many nonintuitive quirks but they stick to their design and improve it instead of overhauling it. I suspect you simply haven't used OS X mu…

[deleted]

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#242

Post by lelandbatey » Wed, Aug 29, 2012, 10:39 PM UTC

wheels wrote: post #164

sjs wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's silly to pretend that Mac is somehow perfect in these matters. Straw man. Nobody said OS X was perfect. > In my experience it's only been marginally better than Linux, if at all. I used Linux on my desktop for several years and have now used Macs as well for several years. I won't say this is bullshit because I don't think you are lying about your experience, but I think you are extrapolating way too far. > An…

I don't see any material difference between "hardware compatibility just works" and "hardware compatibility is perfect". As for fixing the issue, both of my issues were kernel issues, as are most hardware compatibility issues. On OS X reverting to a previously working kernel would have meant backing up all of my data, reinstalling the OS from the DVDs, installing the combo update to the last working version of the co…

I still hold that Linux has a lot of "usability." It is extremely useful, extending itself into every possible use I can think of. It is an extremely useful tool.

That said, maybe Linux in it's current stage isn't destined for the pickup approach of Windows or OS X. I believe that Linux is not following the same path as Windows or OS X, and because of that it may not end up at the same destination.

I agree with the original article; Linux is produced differently, often with different goals than Windows or OS X. Trying to shoehorn it into the same path as Windows or OS X may not prove fruitful till we see someone with the drive to change everything onto the design path that Windows and OS X are taking.

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#243

Post by andybak » Wed, Aug 29, 2012, 10:39 PM UTC

nirvana wrote: post #202

snitko wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought Samsung Galaxy S3 recently, plugged it in via USB and was not able to browse it because, as far as I understood, MacOSX has no support for "media devices" whatever that is. I had to download some obscure Samsung "Kies" software through which I was able to get to the filesystem and upload some files. Wasted hours.

This is samsung not following USB standards. OS X has perfectly find support for media devices, and has worked fine with every digital camera, SD Card or other card reader, etc, that I've attached via USB in the past decade!

Actually it's lack of MTP support in OS X.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#244

Post by zerostar07 » Wed, Aug 29, 2012, 10:39 PM UTC

nirvana wrote: post #196

zerostar07 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would bet if you ask people what they don't like in their linux setup design would come last. The main issues i hear seem to be compatibility and missing obvious functionality (oh clipboard). In fact , most desktops are so configurable you can actually make them look great. If you want to make a system popular, start with the people who are actually using it. Linux is used by technical people, so why are they putti…

Right, because the people who use linux don't understand what design is. Look at the responses to my comments-- almost all of them defending linux make comments that show they don't understand what design is. They think it is how it looks. >OSX is not easier to use either, it has many nonintuitive quirks but they stick to their design and improve it instead of overhauling it. I suspect you simply haven't used OS X mu…

I said there are some quirks , OSX is very usable in general although first time users do have to learn the ropes. For example, maybe everyone likes the fact that the maximize window does different things depending on the app or hate using keyboard shortcuts but i don't. I didn't mean to be anyone's advocate, as you seem to do.

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#245

Post by mindslight » Wed, Aug 29, 2012, 10:41 PM UTC

nirvana wrote: post #189

mindslight wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're conflating design with the marketing and support that convinces people to open themselves to learning a new system design. Linux copied the Windows interaction paradigm (and everything else too - fvwm95/afterstep/olvwm/cde/etc) because the goal wasn't to create a new method of interaction and suffer from two adoption battles, but to appease people complaining about how Linux wasn't intuitive (after they'd alre…

>You're conflating design with the marketing and support No, I'm talking about knowing that users are faster and more efficient when the menu bar is at the top of the screen rather than attached to windows. Design makes people more efficient. Undesigned things, or poorly designed things don't care about these factors, or do them half assed. > The idea of someone saying my setup is 'wrong' from a design perspective is…

Firstly, just no, stop arguing against a straw man. I'll agree that putting window toolbars at the top of the screen seems more efficient. I honestly don't have much experience with OSX, but given what people say, I'm willing to assume that it has examined these details and come up with a nicer all-around experience.

However, the nicest experience in the world isn't sufficient for success. Something has to make people get over the activation energy and earnestly investigate something other than what they know without complaining what's different and lacking - generally social factors.

> This is because you reject design

No, it's because I acknowledge that design happens within a context - most design is not universal. What is an appropriate UI for a CAD program is not appropriate for an airport kiosk, and vice-versa. When a user wishes for customization, they are designing within their own context. Their judgment is small in scope and may end up hurting other aspects of their experience, but it's ridiculous to say that the opinions of a blessed Designer aiming for the 'common user' are more valid than their own opinions of what they desire.

I had skimmed the tap to zoom patent and all of the claims seemed quite generic. I'll have to examine it in more detail, but I have to ask - if the patent does contain a novel technique for using a capacitive touchscreen as input to a UI, why does it include the specificity of zooming, a quite necessary and obvious activity for most UIs ?

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#246

Post by lvillani » Wed, Aug 29, 2012, 10:42 PM UTC

snitko wrote: post #170

atirip wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardware? What hardware? Frankly, I havent bought nothing over last 10 years. I have laptop, you see...

I bought Samsung Galaxy S3 recently, plugged it in via USB and was not able to browse it because, as far as I understood, MacOSX has no support for "media devices" whatever that is. I had to download some obscure Samsung "Kies" software through which I was able to get to the filesystem and upload some files. Wasted hours.

Starting with Honeycomb the storage partition is exposed through MTP (or PTP), this way it can be accessed concurrently by both Android and your computer. Before Honeycomb, said partition could be accessed as an USB mass-storage drive but that required it to be unmounted, thus making all data unavailable to Android while it was connected to a computer.

In my experience only Windows 7 has passable MTP support. On Linux I had mixed results with gvfs and mtpfs (slow and crashy). jmtpfs [1] is a nice replacement, though. Google also released an application for OS X [2] but I can't try it since I don't own an Apple computer.

My solution to the problem was to install a WebDAV server (such as [3]) on my device (Galaxy Nexus) and access it wirelessly.

  [1]: http://research.jacquette.com/jmtpfs-exchanging-files-between-android-devices-and-linux/
  [2]: http://www.android.com/filetransfer/
  [3]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.theolivetree.webdavserver

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#247

Post by eitland » Wed, Aug 29, 2012, 10:53 PM UTC

sjs wrote: post #128

wheels wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have two monitors on my Linux desktop. A month ago full screen on video stopped working. [...] In this regard, both Windows and OSX just work. Just because it's never happened to you on OS X or Windows doesn't mean it doesn't happen. OS X 10.6.7 broke the output on my 13" Macbook for either of the two external displays I own. Both worked fine previously, when booted from the install CDs, or from Linux on the same…

> It's silly to pretend that Mac is somehow perfect in these matters. Straw man. Nobody said OS X was perfect. > In my experience it's only been marginally better than Linux, if at all. I used Linux on my desktop for several years and have now used Macs as well for several years. I won't say this is bullshit because I don't think you are lying about your experience, but I think you are extrapolating way too far. > An…

Strawman argument invalid: Mac being marginally better is a valid point because GP builds his argument on Mac being better.

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#248

Post by sjtgraham » Wed, Aug 29, 2012, 10:56 PM UTC

I dislike titles such as these that beg the question.

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#249

Post by jsnell » Wed, Aug 29, 2012, 10:56 PM UTC

aaronmhamilton wrote: post #219

jsnell wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

PulseAudio doesn't depend on GDM, you just need to create a config for it; What I do (on fedora) is move the default.pa from /var/lib/gdm/.pulse/default.pa to ~/.pulse... You can't expect everything to work when you tear out components then fail to configure things properly...

I wasn't tearing out components. I was doing everything exactly the way I'd been doing forever, and it no longer worked. Which is bad in itself, but maybe it's understandable that niche usecases break every now and then. It's just that it's happened so often and for so many parts of the system that it's hard for at least me to think it's isolated incidents rather than a cultural issue.

The truly toxic part is that every single transition adds complexity and reduces transparency, making it harder and harder to understand the system. It's just not the breakage alone, or the complexity alone, or even the lack of transparency. It's the combination of all of those.

In the start of this thread jrockway proudly says that all you need is deep understanding all the components and the system as a whole. Back in the day this was not actually an unreasonable thing. But it's been getting less and less reasonable for a long time.

(Incidentally the audio example in my original message wasn't even directly related to pulseaudio. It was a few years back, but IIRC it was some daemon tweaking the device permissions, and something else adding users to a special group in the GDM login path but not the console one.)

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#250

Post by ajross » Wed, Aug 29, 2012, 11:00 PM UTC

lazyjones wrote: post #225

ajross wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, for... Just drop the .ttf in your .fonts directory and be done with it. That you insist on mucking around in a GUI to do something as simple as placing a file in the spot where it belongs says everything you need to know about whether you belong in the "technical user who wants a system that gets out of the way" class or not.

There is no .fonts directory and this is a desktop machine - I want to install the font system-wide. Plus, the problem with half the running applications not seeing the font still exists. So I'm not a technical user for you because I insist that such things should not require no more attention than a double click on the font file? Technical users aren't by definition masochists who take the longest route just because…

Are you for real? In what universe is "mkdir ~/.fonts; mv .ttf ~/fonts" (or "sudo cp .ttf /usr/share/fonts" if you want them system wide) the "longest route"?

So fine, you didn't know this trick. No shame there. But you're willing to click around trying to discover the feature in your GUI (and expect the desktop to hold your hand trying to do it!) yet won't take 30 seconds to google for "install linux fonts". (I just did, by the way: the first two links tell you exactly what I just did).

So sure, the Linux desktop isn't for you. You want more polish and attention than it's willing to provide. Just don't pretend that your inability to learn a few facts about the implementation of your desktop and/or develop an intuition about how things might be done represents "hassle" that takes time away from your important work. Those skills are good to have, and those of us who have them are, quite frankly, better at our jobs than those who don't.