
Is the Linux Desktop Dead? – GUADEC 2019 [video] - pjmlp
https://guadec.ubicast.tv/permalink/v125d0af6044fmc08q4k/
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spondyl
Personally, 2019 was finally the year of the Linux Desktop for me. Proton from
Valve has totally changed everything for me. It runs AAA titles such as The
Witcher 3, Grand Theft Auto V and even Final Fantasy XIV (with a little
tweaking) out of the box at 60 FPS! That was my final holdout and it freed me
up to just run Manjaro outright :)

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brnt
Although I've been running Linux on my desktop for a long time, I indeed also
kept a Windows install around. I've tried (and succeeded) in using Wine over
the years, but it can be tricky to setup, and known good setups from e.g. 2004
at some point stopped working and I kind of gave up on it.

Proton changed all that: zero config compatibility for many of my Windows
games, even demanding ones like you mention. Simply fantastic. December 31
2018 I removed my Windows partition so in that sense, also for me 2019 is the
year of the Linux Desktop.

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throwaway8941
While everyone around me is rejoicing, I am somewhat sad that a single
commercial entity managed to do in a year what the whole FOSS community could
not do in twenty.

They were standing on the shoulders of giants (Wine), which is like 90% of the
work, but it seems you still need to involve commercial interests to put the
necessary polish to make the product really useful.

~~~
brnt
An important ingredient to Proton in DXVK, which was a new project and the
author of which was quickly funded by Valve as it greatly improved
performance, especially AAA+++ titles. Secondly, Valve funds Crossover, the
commercial entity already responsible for large parts of Wine. The heart of
Proton is thus free and libre software.

What sets Proton apart from alternatives like Lutris, which also configure
Wine, DXVK, and other components, for you, is that it is zero conf, integrated
in a tool (Steam) you probably are already using if you play games.
Personally, Proton is the only tool where the autoconfiguration actually
always works.

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moksly
Maybe the desktop hasn’t moved because it’s at its peak? My kitchen knife
hasn’t seen much innovation either, works well though.

Then again, maybe I’m just a grumpy unimaginative old man.

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goalieca
Well this grumpy old man switched away from gnome when they went 3.0. I’d say
I don’t know anyone who stayed. Some of us went to xfce and others tried out
mint which ships something more like 2.

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brnt
Perhaps the Gnome desktop. As a big fan of the 2 series I don't know what the
goal was with the 3 series. More dumbed down than mobile OSes... I took refuge
with the KDE project, which, with Plasma 5, really got into its own, but Mate
is a good alternative as well.

Gnome, I know it's the default on most distros, but I can only imagine that is
because of inertia. Who ordered what Gnome 3 offers?

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einpoklum
> Is the Linux Desktop Dead?

No, but maybe Gnome is dying?

But more seriously, this is a silly question for two reasons:

1\. There's no such thing as 'The Linux Desktop' unless you create a strong
tie-in between the kernel and the desktop environment. IIANM Gnome is kind of
doing that through systemd, although I might be wrong. Anyway, other than
that, it's "X- and Wayland-based desktops" 2\. Are there libre, non-X, non-
Wayland desktops which are doing better than KDE, Gnome, XFCE, Mate, Cinnamon
and the rest? ... I don't think so. Maybe on mobiles.

> Isn't there potential to update the desktop into the 2020 version of itself?

(shrug) Whatever...

> And isn't it possible for GNOME to be the organization that does that?

Sounds like they want to remove even _more_ of the UI, so that in their
dialogs and windows you really can't configure anything at all. Welcome to the
2020 version of lameness.

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guidedlight
I would say so. You can’t even launch a vanilla Linux instance on AWS and
connect directly to its desktop, at least without going through lots of hoops.

I blame the KDE vs Gnome fragmentation, and over-customisation.

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emilsedgh
There's a ton of fragmentation on Windows. There are many more toolkits and
paradigm's on that platform.

And regarding fragmentation, GTK+ vs. Qt has never been the main issue. It's
been different distributions and the fact that app creators cannot ship apps
easily to all distro's themselves.

But, I believe, the main issue behind Linux Desktop has always been lack of
corporate interest. There was some in early 2000's but never anything serious.

Windows and Mac "are" ecosystems due to financial motivations.

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unwind
Meta: perhaps this should have the [video] tag, since it's a talk. I didn't
see a transcript available.

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guidedlight
Allowing pluggable third party DRM, made a lot of content inaccessible on
Linux too.

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mr_vile
it's dead? maybe I live in a bubble but it seems to be more alive than ever
for me and my peers...

