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What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

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Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#271

Post by alkonaut »

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.

Android took linux and solved the problems: it created an ivory-tower set of API's for applications and it provided an app distribution model that isn't insane.

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#272

Post by alkonaut »

fooker wrote: post #241
closeparen wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why do you think desktop applications have to be different for the distros? It is rather easy to ship libraries with your package or even do static builds.. Even without that, things are relatively portable. (Steam packaged for Ubuntu works on most of the distros)

Yes. Of the two problems (apis and deployment) apis is actually the easier problem. It's not solved by any means (OS services are just too dang hard to figure out because desktop linux isn't one OS. How do I do desktop notification, printing, service init etc in a way that works for all distros?) but at least that's doable.

The deployment is the hard problem imho.

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#273

Post by microcolonel »

pawadu wrote: post #262
microcolonel wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why systemd's natural dominance of system orchestration and device initialization, and PulseAudio's natural dominance of consumer audio configuration could not be more welcome. The big threat right now, as ever I suppose, is fragmentation in consumer desktop systems; the worst problem being Canonical's decision to develop Mir for reasons they later admitted were fabricated. The point is that all major toolkit…

things that have caused problems on my machine lately: 1. systemd 2. pulseaudio 3. avahi do you see a pattern?

The pattern is... you edit the default configurations of system daemons until they don't work, then complain on the internet?

Wow! it's terrible that your init system has been fighting you! Let's figure out what custom unit you wrote which is causing the problem.

Unless your alsa devices are broken, I find it unlikely that pulseaudio 10 will do anything untoward; if it does, well then, time to fix a bug, good thing there are so many people working on pulseaudio.

Avahi... well idunno. Avahi tends to be true to the name of ZeroConf networking. I have never written an avahi configuration in my life, and yet it works for me. Maybe you have a malicious mDNS peer on your network? I'm sorry you have to experience that! If you could fire up wireshark and pass the hail mary instead of letting it drop to the green, that would be great.

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#274

Post by fuzzfactor »

Floegipoky wrote: post #62

For anyone who skipped the comment section of the article, I found the following comment by "has" to be very insightful. Specifically the way that the community would rather divide its resources to keep multiple mediocre implementations of a given thing around than consolidate them, and how the Unix Philosophy has been ignored: @Miguel: You are right about developer culture being a huge factor. Linux geeks all to oft…

"The Linux desktop killed itself, by playing on their terms instead of its own. The best thing it can do now - once denial and recrimination are done with - is turn the killing process itself into a virtue, and slice not only the DE/application mess but also the cultural one right back down to the bone and start rebuilding from there."

One of the key features of Linux is the way it was always supposed to run noticeably better than Windows on much older and/or lesser hardware.

If everyone involved had at least prioritized this one feature without compromise (I know, infiltration of open source by those who felt the need to kill this advantage), that would still be part of the playing field that other OS's would have to contend with instead.

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#275

Post by krasicki »

udp wrote: post #29
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…

> Put Unity Ubuntu on that same machine, and it's unusable garbage. I can't even hit alt-F5 to get to another terminal because Unity slows the whole rig down to an absolute crawl. Like, can't even move the mouse, 5 minutes between keypress and action taking place. Fuck Unity. I blame Unity about 40% for killing the Linux desktop. Have you tried Xubuntu? It fills the gap that Ubuntu used to, and it's my go-to desktop…

Thumbs up to Xubuntu - best GUI across vendors. The latest Unity desktop is a vast improvement over the initial rollouts (this my current work environment).

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#276

Post by bwat48 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #122
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 do…

> 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.

This definitely used to be the case (and was one of the main reasons I used macbooks over windows laptops, the other being the touchpad) but this is no longer true (outside of cheapo laptops) imo.

High quality ultrabooks like the dell xps 13 rival the macbook in build quality and battery life, and afaik are not more expensive than macbooks.

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#278

Post by vanderZwan »

wink wrote: post #85
AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments like these really make me believe that it is people like you who are killing the Linux desktop. Of all the window managers and desktop environments I have tried the last years on Linux, Unity, Gnome3, and Cinnamon are the only ones that don't look and behave as if they are from fucking 2003. Those others might be enough for those people who have stopped adapting and like to be left alone under their rock, bu…

I think the problem here is if people were happy with what they had in 2003, why change it? Not everything UI-wise in 7 or later is better than in XP I'd say. And apparently many people agree. Actually I am still using 7 and all the UI stuff that's nixer than XP or even 2000 is just eyecandy and nothing "I would totally never go back". Because I would - if I needed a stable Windows that only came with XP's UI - so be…

> people were happy with what they had in 2003, why change it?

Because the people who were willing to run a Linux desktop in 2003 are not in any way a representative sample of the population. That's like saying "if assembly was good enough for the first batch of programmers, why would we need higher level languages?"

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#279

Post by shmerl »

scholia wrote: post #247
wolfgke wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as long as they aren't forced to pay the nasty Windows tax. It is much simpler just not to ship any OS to customers that want to avoid the Microsoft tax (indeed some vendors sell PCs without any installed OS - in particular for enterprise customers; I also). This has the advantage that they don't have to provide support to customers that are using the installed GNU/Linux distribution. But note that avoiding the "Mi…

An extra point is that OEMs charge to distribute third-party software, which is usually called crapware. If you install a lot of crapware, you can reduce the cost of Windows close to zero. That's why OEMs do it even though users don't like it. If one of your users subscribes to the bundled AV software then you can make a recurring income from Windows that can be larger than the profit you made on the hardware. Offeri…

All this is a poor excuse for perpetuating monopoly, which should be simply illegal.

Re: What Killed the Linux Desktop (2012)

#280

Post by marvy »

shmerl wrote: post #279
scholia wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An extra point is that OEMs charge to distribute third-party software, which is usually called crapware. If you install a lot of crapware, you can reduce the cost of Windows close to zero. That's why OEMs do it even though users don't like it. If one of your users subscribes to the bundled AV software then you can make a recurring income from Windows that can be larger than the profit you made on the hardware. Offeri…

All this is a poor excuse for perpetuating monopoly, which should be simply illegal.

The thing that should be illegal is the kind of secret deals that MS makes with PC manufacturers; see this for example:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/02/20/be_inc_sues_microsof...

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