
Why Miguel de Icaza is Wrong About Desktop Linux - prajjwal
http://www.reddit.com/r/LinuxActionShow/comments/z7rdu/why_miguel_de_icaza_is_wrong_about_desktop_linux/
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jonaphin
My take: "The Desktop will die WAY before Linux dies". Nuff said.

------
batista
> _This is where I think Miguel's got the most traction, it's a historically
> weak area for Linux. But it's quickly becoming less of a problem. "Cloud"
> apps remove the issue of client compatibly breakage, Google's very
> successful internal use of Goobuntu proves this, and is an indicator of
> future business application._

At best that argument translates to "compatibility is not such a problem
anymore with cloud apps". Maybe so, but that's hardly an argument for "desktop
linux" not being dead. Thin clients and the "cloud" mean that it hardly
matters if you are using Linux or not.

And it's not that clear cut that the cloud is wining either. For some stuff it
is, for other stuff native trumps it, and he have seen a heavy switch back to
native, even for mobile apps. The web and HTML being what it is, there are
tons of apps that won't feel any good in cloud form, and those apps are what
the desktop is all about.

> _Native client apps can be distributed through Ubuntu's Software Center, and
> they can target LTS releases of Ubuntu for guaranteed compatibility._

It doesn't matter, since that doesn't mean you get the commercial apps that OS
X/Windows have. Even the LTS releases provide a too small period of stability
for a platform with such small market share.

> _He fails to notice that innovation in OS X has begun to slow, and age. It's
> HFS+ file system is disastrously out of date_

Which doesn't matter at all. For the things people use desktop computers for,
HFS+ is perfectly fine. Journaling, extended attributes, ACL, Unicode, are all
there.

Just because some geeks drooled over the possibility of ZFS on their desktop
doesn't mean it solves any real problem desktop users have (oh, and if some
desktop OS X user objects to this, let him check the terms "outlier" and
"statistical noise").

Plus, even if it was true that "innovation in OS X has begun to slow", it
doesn't matter, because it already has a huge, consistent, feature complete
and widely deployed code base out there already. And, as Miguel said, too much
innovation is one of the problems with desktop Linux.

> _and OS X remains tied to hardware that's priced beyond what a large market
> will pay._

Actually OS X sells better than ever every year, and it got from 2% to 10-15%
of the market. Linux being available on cheaper hardware (and free) itself,
didn't help it. So the argument is moot, except in developing countries and
such (where most of the population will rather pirate Windows anyway).

> _The future of Linux on the desktop, in the context of something that's
> targeted by commercial parties and has years of stability expected, already
> has become Ubuntu LTS._

That's a "too little, too late" kind of stability. The LTS kind of releases
are of more interest to server deployments and the enterprise, anyway, than in
any commercial party interested in desktop apps. And we were speaking of
"Linux on the desktop here".

E.g Adobe won't release Premiere for LTS only to see that in the next LTS base
Linux/Gnome APIs and frameworks have been rewritten and replaced with
something else "just because".

