
The rise and fall of Limux - bitcharmer
https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/737818/3e293b6b20f8de9a/
======
epx
The problem is Office. It is actually a problem of two sides.

1) Libre/OpenOffice was never satisfactory. It is ugly and crashes. Tried many
times using it since 1999 and it gets worse and worse. Pity, because
StarOffice was a perfectly usable alternative back then.

2) Office-like products are addictive in corporate environment. People love to
make ramsom-note style documents and presentations. An old typewritten
document seems way more professional in direct comparison... People add so
many 'hairs' in documents that not even Office365 can open them anymore, so
you have to resort to native MS-Office. And sometimes it must even be the
Windows version, because the Mac version does things a little differently and
messes up a really complicated document. (The second last version for Mac
consistently broke when review mode and table changes were mixed, and I worked
in an environment where review mode was extensively employed.)

Any migration away from Windows would have to tackle these problems before
even the operating system. The rest of the desktop UI is ok in Linux - people
use mostly the browser anyway. Google Docs is an option - no documents more
complicated than GDocs can handle should be allowed.

I actually preferred the documents were all generated, either by software, or
at least using markup like HTML or LaTeX, that are diff'able. But I know this
is impossible to impose on the layman.

~~~
EthanHeilman
>Google Docs is an option - no documents more complicated than GDocs can
handle should be allowed.

At least in my experience the GDocs is rapidly eating Office. Deployment is
cheaper and easier. All you need to do is send a link and someone can edit
your document. It works everywhere.

~~~
randomstudent
It also runs on Google's servers, which makes it unacceptable for many use
cases.

------
tomalpha
This has (some) echoes of the rise and fall of the use of Linux at Central
Scotland Police:
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/11/ms_lochs_down_polic...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/11/ms_lochs_down_police/)

I worked with one of the architects of that (many moons ago). He was a fervent
believer in OSS and its use in the enterprise. From what I could glean, they
struggled with user interface issues - end users didn't like having to relearn
how to use their very-similar-but-not-quite-the-same-word-processor software.
As soon as he left (and it was never clear which came first) they decided to
return to the Microsoft fold.

edit: better article link

~~~
danieldk
_From what I could glean, they struggled with user interface issues - end
users didn 't like having to relearn how to use their very-similar-but-not-
quite-the-same-word-processor software. _

I find this very interesting. We are all familiar with less tech-savvy users
that are only comfortable what they know.

However, Google Docs is a fierce competitor of Microsoft Office. Android/iOS
replaced Windows for a lot of regular users. Chrome crushed the competition,
including Internet Explorer.

Why are these examples different? Is it because these alternatives did not try
to emulate Microsoft's products and hence didn't cause the impression that
'it's almost the same, but glitchy'. Or was the experience of these products
so much better than Microsoft's counterparts?

What lesson could the FLOSS world learn here?

~~~
jcrawfordor
I have sort of an underlying philosophical theory that open-source projects
that start out as attempts to clone a popular commercial package will
ultimately fail. The reasoning goes like this: even if you achieve a good
clone, the commercial project will move along and you will not be able to keep
up. Your desire to catch a user-base that is resistant to change will actually
encourage you to not keep up, as at first this looks like a kind of success,
but then a few years down the road you will realize that you are terrible
behind.

As an example, look at LibreOffice. It is widely marketed by OSS enthusiasts
as "just like Office" and "just as good as Office," but it struggled to meet
feature parity while remaining stable early on. Then, MS transitioned Office
to the Ribbon UI. This was absolutely hated by a fairly large group of users,
and it became a marketing point, at least in my circles, for LibreOffice that
it had not made such a transition. This pulled in more users and looked like a
success story. Years later, though, Office users have adapted to the Ribbon UI
and discovered its advantages, and when you compare Office to LibreOffice,
LibreOffice seems hopelessly out of date.

I think KDE is another example of this phenomenon as it was commonly seen as
the best way to transition from Windows. But as a project it seriously
struggled to retain interest after Microsoft continued to evolve their desktop
environment in big ways, and now that I think they've successfully divorced
themselves from any "clone of Windows" objectives they're still not really
able to make up for the lost steam.

For just a last example, I would point to The GIMP, which has successfully
navigated the transition from "a kind of clone of Photoshop" to "a kind of
clone of a very old version of Photoshop."

~~~
lakechfoma
I wholeheartedly agree with all of that except GIMP. The UI in GIMP is
horrendous and the only reason it's successful IMO is because the gap it fills
is that of an expensive and confusing product that is niche to a lot of people
who need some of the functionality but don't use it for their job.

I use it quite often (and loathe the interface) but I'll never pay for
photoshop because I don't need the pro tool and after 10+ years of GIMP I
don't want to shake up.

~~~
progman
To me it's exactly the opposite. I am glad that KDE remained to be a _usable_
desktop, and did not follow the Win 8 GUI disaster.

I also appreciate that LibreOffice sticks to the classical menu system and
doesn't overload the desktop window with a multiple of icons where most of
them are barely used.

------
bipson
There is a lot of hyperbole, idealism and straight out lies around this story,
from both sides unfortunately.

All idealism aside, it is important to acknowledge that there were (always
will be?) issues with documents made in MS Office sent by e.g. other
departments or by citizens. After all, the workers are supposed to handle
applications and such.

The departments were promised free Linux based software solutions made from
scratch to cover their workflows. This has actually nothing to do with Linux
itself, but it seems that software never fulfilled the requirements.

It appears that Microsoft spent quite some time and money to convince the
decision bodys and the workers that none of this problems would have happened
with MS Windows. All idealism aside, if you are going to partially stick to
handling MS Office documents, there is no way Linux will be satisfactory.

~~~
buovjaga
Can you give some examples of straight out lies from the Linux camp?

~~~
hutzlibu
everything will be cheaper and better

(not neccearily from any officially involved, but you could hear it from the
advocates on many forums and can still hear it. The german Heise forum for
example is very bad for this, unfortunately)

~~~
bipson
Sigh

<strikethrough> You're statement is the kind of thing I was stabbing at with
my critique: a hidden (shallow) argument, that going with LiMux is worse than
going with MS, and it would have been wiser and cheaper to stick with MS in
the first place?

Why can't such a thing (arguably a complex matter) be discussed in a mature
way, without unfounded arguments that are just re-iterated anecdotal wisdom,
and mostly stabs at the other guys? This is not a we vs. them thing! And you
should stop believing everything you're being told by the guys in your group.
</strikethrough>

I was taking this the wrong way. Nevertheless, we should stop arguing with the
idealists and their idealistic, unfounded arguments, basically taking the
discussion down to a unsolvable level. Let's discuss objective (measurable or
at least verifyable) arguments instead.

~~~
hutzlibu
"Let's discuss objective (measurable or at least verifyable) arguments
instead."

Agreed. And I think, if this would have done from the beginning, especially
from the linux crowd, then maybe they would still have Limux or are on their
way of having a stable variant, yet. I mean with all that money, it definitely
should have been possible to adjust LibreOffice in the needed way by now.

But so there were wrong expectations and then disappointment.

------
DannyB2
If somebody does not want a software system, or in some cases, wants to
sabotage it, this is not a technical problem. No technical solution will fix
it.

It might be fixable, but not with a software update.

~~~
soulbadguy
Yes, but at one point we need to ask why people don't want linux. Apple MACOS
& IOS, android, even windows 8 and 10 did introduce radical new changes, it
was a bumpy road, but at the end people did start using it. It is a technical
problem, Linux on desktop is just worst than both windows and MACOS; Both in
term of software available (can we stop pretending that libreoffice is even
remotely comparable to MS office...), basic drivers and OS services (wifi
etc...) and UI design

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
To a certain extent, I think the lack of applications, driver compatibility,
and "familiarity" are excuses trotted out by Linux Desktop evangelists.

Don't get me wrong, they definitely are a problem, but they'd be solved
problems if people actually wanted to work with a Linux Desktop. The thing is,
people don't.

I grew up in the 90s, and I was even a Linux and OSS evangelist during my
stupid teenager years. I really wanted to make a Linux Desktop work. I still
do want a viable OSS desktop. But what I found was that the community built up
around Linux, and the Linux Desktop in particular, seems intent on making
things suck as much as possible. I can hypothesize a wide variety of reasons
why, and I suspect anyone who's spent a significant amount of time working
with OSS communities can as well, but the upshot is that pretty much nothing
they do is conducive to producing a good product. What's worse is that they
largely refuse to recognize any problems they might actually have, technical
or otherwise, preferring instead to believe they are a perfect beacon of The
Way Things Should Be, that everyone else is doing it wrong, and blaming
Windows's dominance for their failures.

~~~
icebraining
I think you're sincere, but your post sounds like a pretty good troll. Lightly
attacks a wide group of people while not being overly aggressive and doesn't
actually make any concrete point (like point out those problems) so it's easy
for others to read in it their own opinions and defend it.

[http://www.urban75.com/Mag/troll.html](http://www.urban75.com/Mag/troll.html)

~~~
slededit
Not op but to bring this into concrete terms the multiple incompatible UI
toolkits, and especially the GTK rewrites couldn't have helped.

I remember first starting out trying to decide if I should use KDE or GTK. And
this choice would affect how well your apps worked in ways that are totally
non obvious if you aren't a UI programmer.

------
ams6110
Maybe they would have had better luck if they didn't create their own distro?
That seems like a lot of unnecessary overhead, unless it's just marketing for
"Ubuntu + preselected set of packages"

> Along the way, it was reported that 20% of the users of Limux were not happy
> or satisfied with it

I would guess you could survey users of any computer/OS combination and get
that response. That means 80% of users are happy (or at least, not unhappy)
which is phenomenally good, really.

------
CyberFonic
There are so many great answers here, but ...

As technical folks, we tend to forget that its all about politics and the
hidden under-belly of politics is money, lots of it. MS and their consultant
partners have a massive vested interest in keeping organisations subservient
to their vision of IT. Limux and open source are certainly in the public's
better interests, but that runs contrary to the plutocrats' interests. Guess
who wins?

------
ThatGeoGuy
> "Do we sometimes harm these migrations by volunteering?" Migrations to free
> software are generally

> driven by individuals, either inside a public administration or by a parent
> for a school. Those

> individuals start bringing free software in and do lots of work (for free)
> to make it all work.

> Problems arise and there is no budget to bring in others to help out; people
> burn out and then

> everything fails. Instead of coming to the conclusion that not having a
> budget led to free software

> failing, the organizations often decide to "get a budget and do it right".
> He thought it might make

> more sense to try to get the budget for the free-software project, instead
> of volunteering.

When reading I thought this was a rather insightful passage. I've noticed this
at varying levels by helping others out (family) or by watching others put in
overtime for small fixes: if you don't set a budget, then free == charity ==
not as good as the free market could do in most people's eyes. Does anyone
have any additional anecdotes or data into how this happens? I get that people
attribute cost to value, even if the two aren't related at all, but I wonder
how this affects institutions at a higher level.

------
macspoofing
>Limux will be replaced with Microsoft clients. It doesn't make sense, he
said, because the city already had a strategy to move away from desktops to
"bring your own device" and other desktop alternatives.

There are no desktop alternatives at work. You BYOD for checking email not
doing work.

And phones and tablets are much more proprietary than desktops.

------
vmarsy
I'd be curious to read a similar story about how GendBuntu [1] is doing. They
migrated 70,000 workstations, compared with 15,000 for LiMux.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu)

------
arunc
Without improving Linux on the desktop[1], implementations like Limux are
bound to take this route.

[1]
[http://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.th...](http://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.current.html)

~~~
e1ven
There is a LOT that can be done to improve desktop linux, but I think in this
case, at least according to the article, the difficulties were largely
political, not technical.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
In the general case, though, I think the biggest problem is that the community
that uses and works on the Linux Desktop doesn't actually want it to improve.

If you're an open source developer, for instance, why would you work to
improve or maintain software X when you can create an alternative that does
things slightly differently? That looks a lot more impressive on a resume. And
I'd swear many Linux Desktop users wish it was even more complicated and
fragile either because they love troubleshooting or just so they can virtue
signal that they're leet. I mean, why else would /r/unixporn exist?

~~~
amcca029
I think this is largely an issue with X rather than users wanting to show off,
I think wayland (while not perfect) can really help with developing easy to
use desktop enviroments.

Also not everybody who uses "complicated" setups care about "leetness",
personally I use i3 (and alot of mods, customizations) because nothing
compares to the ease of use + functionality for me.

I personally want more linux desktop adoption, Ive switched my parents over,
trying to convert my brother.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
I suspect you'd have been better off switching them to ChromeOS. Most people
do not need a desktop in 2017. There was only a brief window in the late 90s
and early aughties when "most" people did, but that was only because of the
internet. We have better consumer-oriented devices for that now. Desktops are
for people who do work, hobbyists, developers, and the kind of gamer who is
basically the hotrod-guy of the computing world. If someone actually wants to
make the Linux Desktop a good desktop OS, they'll have to stop trying to make
things "easy" for the strawman of the "average" user and instead make
something for those people.

~~~
danieldk
While I largely agree with your observation, the problem with ChromeOS is that
not everybody wants to ship their behavioral data in real-time to Google. So,
there is is still a place for a basic Linux-based family desktop that just
runs a privacy-friendly browser.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
That's not a desktop, it's a kiosk. Linux is actually fine for these kinds of
single-tasking embedded use-cases.

But seriously, who does that? I don't know anyone who primarily uses a desktop
computer just to browse the web. That's what tablets and phones are for.
ChromeOS is just one of those with a bigger screen and a keyboard, which is
why it is perfect for them.

"Family desktop" was only a thing in the brief period between the internet
becoming popular with consumers and the first iPhone. Outside of that period,
multi-user desktops (or microcomputers, if you recall the 80s) are an extreme
edge case.

~~~
amyjess
Don't forget about the educational market. ChromeOS is very popular in schools
_because_ of how locked down it is, and computer labs in schools are one of
the few environments where multi-user desktops thrive.

~~~
pjmlp
Just in US schools though.

I hardly seen any Chromebook on sale, or being used in coffee shops, around
European countries.

In Germany when they are on sale, they happen to be a single unit, discounted
multiple times until it somehow disappears from the shop.

------
DyslexicAtheist
it wasn't just a technical issue [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rise-fall-
limux-my-perspectiv...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rise-fall-limux-my-
perspective-joachim-bauernberger/)

------
HumanDrivenDev
You can pry my Linux desktop out of my cold dead hands. I've been using it for
almost 10 years now, and I couldn't imagine having to deal with windows
telemetry and terrible performance, or apples outrageous prices. Yes it takes
longer to set up but my desktop setup fits me like a glove. I always feel
slightly handicapped when I have to use windows at work.

There is one thing that would make me switch, and that's apples IME methods
for Chinese characters, which are a lot more sophisticated than the Linux
offerings.

~~~
kllrnohj
"windows [...] terrible performance"

Uhh... what? The only significant performance difference is in graphics &
media, which is where Windows handily bests Linux. What performance are you
talking about?

~~~
greenhouse_gas
It depends. The thing with Windows is that you have exactly one way to use it,
and if your computer is old and it's specs aren't good enough, too bad.

Linux, on the other hand, can be run with Gnome 3, or with lxqt, or with i3.
You can even run a desktop Linux on a raspberry pi.

So maybe Windows 10 beats Gnome 3 (although I don't know if it's true, I don't
have Windows), but it definitely can't beat "Linux"

~~~
kllrnohj
> So maybe Windows 10 beats Gnome 3 (although I don't know if it's true, I
> don't have Windows), but it definitely can't beat "Linux"

This gets back to the question of what performance are you even talking about.
It sounds like you're talking about the performance of random apps here rather
than of the OS or any of its fundamentals.

No matter what DE you run, though, you're not fixing Linux's graphics
problems, so Windows will always beat Linux on that front until the driver &
compositor situation radically improves. Wayland simply can't compete with
WDDM today, and for some god unknown reason you still get X11 on many distros
by default anyway.

Running on a raspberry pi isn't some monumental achievement, either. The Pi
has rather quite a lot of power. Windows IoT core runs just fine on it, which
despite the name still has a graphics stack and all of that (more "windows
lite" rather than "iot core")

~~~
HumanDrivenDev
Windows 10 must be amazing then, because from win2k to win7 I've dual booted
and always found Linux to be much faster and smoother for everything. "Random
apps" forms the bulk of what we do with operating systems. windows being more
performant on some level is all very well and interesting, but I don't care
because it's sluggish when I browse the internet, watch videos or use IDEs.

------
matt4077
> "Do we suck at the desktop?"

Yes. Absolutely. UI design doesn't work in the OSS "bazaar model". It needs a
pope who is generally regarded as infallible, and deferred to even when not.
Alternatively, a rather strict set of rules like Apple's HIIG might work,
possibly created and enforced in a process like Wikipedia's.

I've repeatedly cringed when watching some eager young guy set his grandfather
up with Linux. It may have improved now, but having once seen a 75-year old
type commands into a terminal as dictated over the phone to install flash has
thoroughly ruined any instinct to proselytize I may have had.

