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Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)

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Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)

#41

Post by c-smile »

What exactly is the Linux Desktop? There are too many of them.

"If you have several watches you cannot tell exact time". Likewise "several Linux WMs - no Linux Desktop at all".

Creating Linux desktop application these days is the same task as to create multiplatform application that will run on Windows, MacOS, Linux/GTK, Linux/KDE, Linux/... (~40 of those more).

Conceptually we can use XWindow primitives (if it is used in particular WM), but that does not help at all when your application need to show "file open" dialog or the like.

If someone would ask me to establish Linux Desktop architecture I'll start from defining WindowProc(HWND,MSG,WPARAM,LPARAM,LPRESULT*):BOOL abstraction. Similar to VERY stable WndProc concept of Microsoft Windows. Plus defining stable API that all WMs should implement.

Only after that we may see real Linux Desktop - not just WM but bunch of useable applications.

Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)

#42

Post by hayleox »

bawolff wrote: post #19

What he's saying is true, but also i think the app-store type approach that apt-get provides is a major benefit. With windows i have to find some random program, hope its not malware, possibly pay for it, etc. With linux, i have reasonable assurance that packages (from main repos) aren't evil, they are free (as in beer), and i can easily search through and find something for my usecase. I can't really do that in wind…

The problem is that there are always going to be a ton of apps that aren't in the repos. The repos contain the top hundred apps that have a million user each, but they don't contain the top million apps that have a hundred users each. The repos get you most of the way there, sure, but they can't possibly provide every app that every user wants.

Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)

#43

Post by tachyonbeam »

Gwypaas wrote: post #33
tachyonbeam wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched to Linux around the same time as you. Before that I was a Windows user from 1997 until ~2008. In the late 1990s and early 2000s people just accepted that Windows crashing everyday was a normal feature of that software, and they blamed every crash on user error, eg: "your drivers are bad", "you're running buggy software", etc. My Windows 98 install couldn't run for more than ~4 hours without crashing, it wa…

Windows 8.1 reached end of mainstream support on January 9, 2018, over three years ago. Windows 8 support ended on January 12, 2016. No wonder you ran into issues if you installed it and tried getting it "updated" recently. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/faq/windows#windo...

Here is a post from 2016 outlining the same problem I was describing: https://superuser.com/questions/1103966/windows-update-doesn...

There is a bug in the Windows Update client on Windows 8.1, and it can't update itself.

Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)

#44

Post by cturtle »

hayleox wrote: post #42
bawolff wrote: post #19

What he's saying is true, but also i think the app-store type approach that apt-get provides is a major benefit. With windows i have to find some random program, hope its not malware, possibly pay for it, etc. With linux, i have reasonable assurance that packages (from main repos) aren't evil, they are free (as in beer), and i can easily search through and find something for my usecase. I can't really do that in wind…

The problem is that there are always going to be a ton of apps that aren't in the repos. The repos contain the top hundred apps that have a million user each, but they don't contain the top million apps that have a hundred users each. The repos get you most of the way there, sure, but they can't possibly provide every app that every user wants.

Its not the right solution for everyone, but the AUR on Arch Linux has been wonderful for managing those "hundred users each" applications.

Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)

#45

Post by bcrescimanno »

While I think a lot of the complaints he raises here are still relevant 7 years later, it's interesting that both MacOS and Windows have trended more towards a package management system with their respective app stores--with MacOS especially discouraging downloading or running any apps from outside that ecosystem.

Since one can reasonably expect to target "Windows" or "MacOS" the packages in these app stores can be maintained directly by their developers which avoids a lot of the problems that Linus talked about in this video. When you get past the surface layer concept of, "We've sort of overblown this whole package management thing," it's really an argument that the fragmentation of the distributions and shared libraries that can't reasonably be shared.

Even using Arch with its rolling release model and making liberal use of the AUR for the most bleeding edge, I've found myself in exactly the situation Linus describes of needing a newer version of a package because the older one flat out doesn't work for me. I can make it work because I'm technical enough to roll my own package if I need to; but, even my wife who is pretty tech-savvy herself wouldn't be willing or able to go down that route.

IMO, the fact that the conversion in these comments will be rich with opinion and debate (almost all of which will be informed and intelligent) is the crux of the problem. Too many cooks have built too many kitchens--or some such metaphor. :)

Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)

#46

Post by cpach »

guhidalg wrote: post #40
skohan wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree. This is one of the things that makes Windows feel like a second-tier OS to me compared with Linux and Mac. If I have to do something "tech-y", on Linux or Mac, I look for it in the package registry. I trust that action would probably have been taken by the community if it were doing something malicious, and usually I can find the project on github and peruse the source if I really want. By contrast o…

Right, because sourcing a ruby file to install homebrew on macOS is what “real” operating systems should do.

It might not be pure, but IME it works very well.

Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)

#47

Post by willis936 »

uo21tp5hoyg wrote: post #38
willis936 wrote: post #29

Does appimage not solve this problem? Linus himself released software by appimage the next year (2015). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppImage

I think part of the problem is that there's so many "Does x not solve this problem?" solutions now all with their own unique downsides and upsides, it reminds me of that one xkcd[0]. [0] https://xkcd.com/927/

I spent time in MIPI PHY and I am very familiar with this issue. appimage isn't the same kind of solution though because there were zero competing solutions. There were no universal linux binaries. Having one is a much better situation.

Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)

#48

Post by Wowfunhappy »

sascha_sl wrote: post #11
rektide wrote: post #6

it'd be interesting to try to make a hybrid static/dynamic library program. assume you can find the libraries you want on the system, but have a fallback where you go download some Debian packages & install them into your XDG_CACHE_DIR & load libraries from there, when the system (whatever os it is) didn't have it. part of the trick would be making this code significantly smaller than doing a static build.

I think you'd like Nix.

I’m not the GP but I for one am quite sure I would love Nix.

...just, well, not quite enough that I want to spend time learning how to use it. :/

Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)

#49

Post by [deleted] »

hayleox wrote: post #42
bawolff wrote: post #19

What he's saying is true, but also i think the app-store type approach that apt-get provides is a major benefit. With windows i have to find some random program, hope its not malware, possibly pay for it, etc. With linux, i have reasonable assurance that packages (from main repos) aren't evil, they are free (as in beer), and i can easily search through and find something for my usecase. I can't really do that in wind…

The problem is that there are always going to be a ton of apps that aren't in the repos. The repos contain the top hundred apps that have a million user each, but they don't contain the top million apps that have a hundred users each. The repos get you most of the way there, sure, but they can't possibly provide every app that every user wants.

[deleted]

Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)

#50

Post by philliphaydon »

loudtieblahblah wrote: post #9
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #3

Worth watching. But if you don’t... [Linux desktop sucks because application writers don’t make binaries that “just work”, pushing the user to always just have to recompile for their system, they try and address this in the kernel by not breaking things, but the distributions to and screw it all up, because breaking is fine so long as it’s “improving”] Tons of contrary points I’m sure, but duh. It’s really nice to be…

I use Linux top to bottom in my home. My work laptop. My wife's PC. Our plex/jellyfin media server. My sister's pc and my elderly parents PC are also ubuntu. I have found my support time for all of them dramatically went down after I got them off windows. Windows slowing down over time. I longer happens, lengthening the age of hardware and pushing off OS reinstalls, which can at times cost money based on the OEM mode…

I tried Ubuntu with my parents. Caused lots of problems. Moving dad back to Windows and my mum to a MacBook Air. I haven’t done the whole support call in 3 years now.
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