Why Linux is not ready for the desktop, the final edition

I am sure what he means that is we lost a lot when it become unprofitable for companies to offer solid UNIX offerings that were supported in the way he would like. Other than the fact that it evolves glacially, Illumos is in an even worse position than Linux when it comes to offering support.

If we are being honest though, in the terms that this article is arguing, "Linux" as an ecosystem is the wrong label. When it comes to stability and support, we need to think of each Linux distro as an Operating System. In that sense, things like RHEL are certainly well supported--including on the desktop. If your app targets RHEL, you pretty much have none of the problems discussed in this article. You still have a smaller universe of applications than Windows of course which is to be expected.

So, the problem boils down to "nobody is making sufficient money off desktop Linux to steward a desktop Linux distro". That is not careless devs or bad design decisions though--no matter how chicken-and-egg you try to paint it. It is simply the network effect.

Decent desktop operating systems exist and they already have large application universes and large, monetizable user bases. They appeared into a vacuum that lacked such operating systems but that vacuum no longer exists. That makes it almost impossible to economically introduce a new desktop platform. Certainly none of the commercial attempts have succeeded in the last few decades. In fact, the system that has been the MOST successful is Linux. By that metric, saying that Linux is doing it all wrong does not ring very true.

Valve is doing a lot to make Linux gaming a reality because, when it comes to the network effect, it is largely true that Steam ( not just Windows ) is the true platform. So, if you can bring Steam to Linux, you can move the users there too. It is still early days for that but it appears to be working.

On the mobile side, the network effect is very much alive as well. This is why Windows, using of course all of Microsoft's tricks, strengths, and knowledge, completely failed while the Linux kernel ( in the form of Android ) has totally dominated. And that is not for any of the reasons cited in the article. Do you think an Android app from 2008 will run on Android today unmodified? An iOS app from 2008 on iOS today? I don't think so.

The lack of deduplication, or more like avoiding duplication, of what are basically files in some of these implementations is a problem.

But it's not a problem for me. It's also not a problem for most people. And it's not at all a problem next to the dumpster fire of closed source OS ; so ultimately there is no real problem.

Yet, all of that is moot, because someone already solved the problem. But I'll wait until they publish their work to talk about it.

The most one can say is all versions of Linux cannot ever be a successful desktop OS.

However, it’s very possible for a company to build an Apple like company by creating their own Linux distro that is well tested and guaranteed to run at least as well on their hardware as Apple’s software does on Apple’s hardware.

This is the System76 approach.

Alternatively, you could create a distro that is restricted and sell it to hardware vendors who then have the responsibility to test your distro against their hardware. This is the MS approach. There’s no reason such an approach would necessarily have any more issues than MS does.

In fact, because of the open source nature of Linux development, it’s likely that the Linux versions should do better than their proprietary counterparts, because downstream companies, teams and users can test before the product is released and point out problems before the product has even hit alpha. Heck, they can even share patches.

The real problem with Linux on the desktop is that it doesn’t have enough market power to make the kind of testing MS and Apple and their downstream clients do financially worth it.

There is no reason why the server space shouldn’t have the same issues. But the Linux server space has enough money that downstream vendors clients and users are able to invest money in testing, which has meant the advantages of open source have pretty much wiped out all the competitors in the space.

Can't argue with that. I'm still not super worried for Valve though; between Alyx, Deadlock, the Deck, and Proton, it's pretty clear that CS2 is less of a new norm and more of an outlier too popular to be announced dead and buried yet. Counter Strike has always felt like the drunk uncle of Valve's IP, it would be nice to see him clean up for once but I'm also not upset having him at a holiday party or out at the bar with friends.

> If somebody does to desktops like what Google did for smartphones, then Linux will finally have its moment.

That's already happened, and Google did it. They are called Chromebooks. They are Linux underneath, use the GNU userspace stack and Wayland for GUI. They have a button that installs Debian, and GUI packages you "apt install" appear in the Chrome app launch folder.

Apparently ChromeOS is being swallowed by Android, which I suspect isn't a big move. Crosini, the LXC thingy that hosts Debian on ChromeOS, has already been ported. That means Android will be powering laptops. Does that make it a Desktop OS? If so, that does the we can count Android's 45% market share of all personal computing devices towards a Desktop OS? And if we do that, does that mean Linux has finally won the desktop wars? By any definition it's already won the personal computing devices wars.