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Azure Linux Desktop

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Re: Azure Linux Desktop

#31

Post by Magniquick »

carlosjobim wrote: post #20
bokkies wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is now the average Joe doesn't need to. Just tell Claude to fix it

Imagine if different sectors worked like that. To go to a restaurant, each customer brings their own private chef to let loose in the kitchen. Wouldn't it make more sense for OS makers to "tell Claude" to make a user friendly GUI for their terminal commands?

That's what KDE (and gnome, to a lesser extent) have been trying to do for a long while.

The fundamental issue is that a GUI is a static abstraction over a CLI that allows for millions of potential combinations. You can only expose so many options in a menu before the interface becomes completely unusable.

To expand on your analogy, it’s like running a restaurant that only uses automated vending machines to serve food. It works perfectly fine if someone just wants toasted bread. But the moment a customer asks for more than toasted bread, you're toasted.

Imho, the best bet for the future is a bunch of pre loaded llm skills and clis an agent can work with: getting the chef to use pre-approved hardware, sorta, that can cook up anything that is needed.

Re: Azure Linux Desktop

#32

Post by wpm »

carlosjobim wrote: post #20
bokkies wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is now the average Joe doesn't need to. Just tell Claude to fix it

Imagine if different sectors worked like that. To go to a restaurant, each customer brings their own private chef to let loose in the kitchen. Wouldn't it make more sense for OS makers to "tell Claude" to make a user friendly GUI for their terminal commands?

I agree but its becoming increasingly clear that "chatbot-as-the-CLI" is likely a "worse is better" situation. It's clearly crappier and slower than just hitting a button, but everyone knows what they want and they know how to put it into text. CLIs in the past never could cope because they relied on exacting, esoteric syntax, so mere mortals had to learn a lot about how to translate what they want "Send a copy of this photo to my friend Sally". So a button is abstracted that says "Send" and "Attach" and some file-based metaphor is built up to allow the work to map better to what people know and understand and can intuit.

My mom can't find the button in the GUI though, and odds are it would be buried in menus she'd get lost in. She can type "Send Sally this picture" into a box and hit go. Anyone literate can.

Re: Azure Linux Desktop

#33

Post by embedding-shape »

hparadiz wrote: post #30
embedding-shape wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It could also be general purpose for what you can run on it. Yeah of course, it's a Linux distribution. But feels like a marketing push when multiple people suddenly go "oh yeah Microsoft building a general purpose Linux distribution" when that's not what's happening. So what if it isn't general purpose and built purposefully for Azure? It doesn't remove anything, just being more accurate with how it's being market…

When you create a VM on these cloud platforms the categories are like "general purpose, high memory, high cpu, high gpu" and there's various types of VMs to select from. They are simply using the terminology that DevOps folks use when discussing instance types. General purpose just means it's not tuned to favor anything in particular. Don't overthink it. You are not the audience.

> General purpose just means it's not tuned to favor anything in particular

Agreed, that's why it doesn't make sense to call this "general purpose", since it's specifically tuned in favor of Azure:

> Azure Linux was built with that principle in mind: a single, Microsoft-supported Linux foundation designed to work across every Azure compute surface [...] with a predictable update cadence designed around Azure infrastructure

It's quite literally tuned for Azure and Microsoft...

Re: Azure Linux Desktop

#34

Post by QuercusMax »

newsoftheday wrote: post #22
baq wrote: post #4

The year of the Linux desktop. Meanwhile I’m stuck on macOS for work. Oh the irony.

I retired last year but I too had to use a Mac for a year. It was the first and last time I ever used a Mac. I hated it. So many quirky behaviors, window controls on the wrong side, just wow I had a whole list I could have articulated last year but thankfully it's a distant memory now.

This isn't a new observation by any means. You could literally have said that anytime in the last 3 or 4 decades about trying a mac when you're used to other systems.

And guess what? You can say exactly the same thing the other way around.

Re: Azure Linux Desktop

#35

Post by pjmlp »

sublimefire wrote: post #10

Even within MS Azure Linux is at odds because it is not working in WSL out of the box. Folks had to port stuff to AZL away from ubuntu but without an easy path to use WSL to continue development. Sure you could adopt it but there is something fundamentally fragmented if such an adoption vector is missing in WSL. Now this… why do I need AZL desktop?

Of course not, people talk about what they don't know.

This was released this week, and Microsoft clearly stated it is coming to WSL later this year.

But people love to take conclusions without informing themselves.

Re: Azure Linux Desktop

#36

Post by pjmlp »

baq wrote: post #4

The year of the Linux desktop. Meanwhile I’m stuck on macOS for work. Oh the irony.

It isn't a problem as long one understands the difference between UNIX and GNU/Linux.

For me Linux had been mostly the UNIX that we have back at home, while most work was done in Solaris, HP-UX, Aix, DG/UX.

I am not attached to Linux specifically.

Re: Azure Linux Desktop

#37

Post by pjmlp »

abc123abc123 wrote: post #14

Microsoft Linux... what an abomination. But each generation has to learn the lessons of the previous one, again and again. Have fun with the lock-in and e.e.e. Microsoft-fans!

Devs already forgotten the IE lesson and have offered the Web on a plate to Google.

Re: Azure Linux Desktop

#38

Post by haydenbarnes »

sshine wrote: post #3
leoncos wrote: post #2

Great work! I really hope it can be designed to be agent-friendly. The current CodeX/Claude code sandbox functionality is very limited; it would be wonderful to use this as a sandbox.

I use bubblewrap inside Ubuntu inside WSL. https://github.com/nix-tools/bubblebox

I had issues with bubblewrap inside the container and creating namespaces. Need to dig into a bit further.

Re: Azure Linux Desktop

#39

Post by carlosjobim »

wpm wrote: post #32
carlosjobim wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if different sectors worked like that. To go to a restaurant, each customer brings their own private chef to let loose in the kitchen. Wouldn't it make more sense for OS makers to "tell Claude" to make a user friendly GUI for their terminal commands?

I agree but its becoming increasingly clear that "chatbot-as-the-CLI" is likely a "worse is better" situation. It's clearly crappier and slower than just hitting a button, but everyone knows what they want and they know how to put it into text. CLIs in the past never could cope because they relied on exacting, esoteric syntax, so mere mortals had to learn a lot about how to translate what they want "Send a copy of th…

One thing that's been really useful for many years is the Help menu in MacOS. You click it and start typing the command you are looking for, and MacOS conveniently opens the menu and any submenus and shows you the command with a big blue arrow. Wouldn't this be easy to pair with a simple AI, so that people can more freely type what they want to do? Maybe even make it Spotlight accessible.

I like the visual and thus get along much better with drag-and-drop than any text based interface. So for me (and maybe your mom) the best solution would be that Sally was a window you could open and drag things to. Surprised that Apple and nobody else ever did this on desktop. At least on iOS, your friends are pictures that appear whenever you press share, but it's not perfect.

Re: Azure Linux Desktop

#40

Post by baq »

pjmlp wrote: post #36
baq wrote: post #4

The year of the Linux desktop. Meanwhile I’m stuck on macOS for work. Oh the irony.

It isn't a problem as long one understands the difference between UNIX and GNU/Linux. For me Linux had been mostly the UNIX that we have back at home, while most work was done in Solaris, HP-UX, Aix, DG/UX. I am not attached to Linux specifically.

The thing is, I'm not talking about POSIX or CLI; I'm strictly speaking about the desktop GUI. macOS keeps going into a direction which is actively preventing being efficient with it, all the while making weird net-negative decisions about looks for reasons which can only be explained by UI and UX designers trying to sell themselves as useful internally. I used to be an early adopter, now I'm waiting for the enterprise-forced upgrade of major versions, which is the only reason I'm upgrading at all.
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