
Where does the Ubuntu Linux desktop go from here? - rbanffy
http://www.zdnet.com/article/where-does-the-ubuntu-linux-desktop-go-from-here/#ftag=RSSbaffb68
======
AndyMcConachie
We bought a ZaReason Linux laptop for my wife last year and it has really
reset my expectations for what I can expect of a Linux desktop. It works
mostly. But things break somewhat regularly and it needs a happy reboot at
least once every two days. In short, by 2017 standards it's a buggy piece of
shit. For the average computer user who does not want a Mac, I would recommend
Windows over Ubuntu at this point. It's more stable and less buggy.

In terms of quality I would put it about 10-15 years behind Mac OSX or
Windows. I almost never have to reboot my Mac because something broke, and
when I use modern Windows machines I also seldom have to reboot them.

So my message to Canonical is to make something that doesn't suck. My wife
doesn't care what window manager is chosen, just pick one and stick with it
until it works. And test the crap out of it. test, test, test... Find bugs and
fix them. Your geeky Linux user doesn't care about little annoying bugs, but
less technical users really do.

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
Sorry to hear about your wife's bad experience.

Never heard of the company, but based on the specs of laptops being offered
from the website, I'd hazard a guess that the discrete GPU is probably the
source of many of your woes. Linux has always been a second-class citizen for
video cards, particularly since NVIDIA's binary blobs fly in the face of the
FOSS spirit.

If she doesn't do intense graphical editing or gaming, an integrated GPU from
Intel would probably run much better on Linux.

FWIW (and I hate countering anecdotal evidence with more anecdotal evidence),
I've got a Dell XPS 13 running Fedora and it will run days/weeks without a
problem. I reboot it maybe once a month in order to apply the latest kernel,
and that's about it.

~~~
ramy_d
It baffles me that your recommendation is to get off Nvidia hardware +
restricted drivers and use an Intel integrated GPU. Have you had such bad time
with Nvidia hardware and their drivers?

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
Personally? No. But as stated, my primary laptop has an integrated GPU. Intel
drivers tend to have support in the kernel so everything just works out-of-
the-box. It's one of the reasons I tore the Broadcomm wifi card that came with
the XPS13 and replaced it with an Intel 7265.

I am not sure whether the parent was using the nouveau drivers or the NVIDIA
blobs. It's besides the point either way: GPU's on Linux are notoriously
finicky, no matter your stack.

The recommendation to go with an integrated GPU is strictly pragmatic. I
personally am a tinkerer and am willing to live with a little bit of pain as
far as functionality or configuration for ideological reasons if it means
supporting a FOSS distribution. But I can't make that same assumption for the
parent's wife, and if she wants something that "just works" because she's
unwilling to tolerate that level of pain, then an integrated GPU might be the
way to go.

~~~
ramy_d
I don't understand how that's your go-to suggestion. It just makes a lot of
assumptions, it's anecdotal, and I'm just surprised there's this kind of
armchair tech support on HN. And then others go on the forum and read it.

Everybody on the below thread is having a tertiary argument thinking I have
something to say about GPUs and their drivers. I could not care less.

------
systems
kde is really very good, maybe because i am used to it, i dont see what it is
missing, but i think even if it is missing something, it is probably minor

as Linus Torvalds said in a video on youtube, what linux on the desktop need
is to come preinstalled by the major pc vendor ... ubuntu need more deals with
big vendors that is all

~~~
terrestrial
KDE and Gnome are both really good nowadays, but Ubuntu is a buggy piece of
shit. I've helped friends install it a couple of times recent years, and seen
various desktop program crashes _every time_. It wasn't like this back in the
Gnome2 days.

What we really need is Red Hat to start selling Fedora computers. And KDE Neon
to ship laptops based on Debian stable. And obviously at least one big
retailer to have them in a physical store, so we tell our friends where to go.

~~~
rantanplan
A Fedora "leap" release, same as with OpenSUSE Leap, with a 3 year support
cycle would be the ultimate system for me.

I've been using Fedora for the last 7-8 years, but I have to upgrade every
13-14 months or so. And CentOS is not suited for a modern
development/workstation environment.

~~~
lima
I like it. Fedora upgrades are mostly painless and 3 year support cycles means
more outdated software.

~~~
rantanplan
Yes I like it too, but think farther ahead.

Why is Ubuntu the defacto supported Linux distro? Why is,quite often, steam so
difficult to install, while it's a breeze to install on Ubuntu?

You can't expect people to consider you as a legitimate target if you're
constantly moving :(

------
cs702
While Linux developers and users endlessly argued about, and worked on,
different UI environments, display server stacks, etc., Android's UI became
the world's most used computer interface environment (around 1.5 billion
devices, at last count):

[http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/android-
statistics/](http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/android-statistics/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems)

Market relevance aside, I view Ubuntu's return to Gnome as a Good Thing. It
means there will be more work towards common goals by Canonical and Red Hat.

------
secfirstmd
Just give a Linux desktop which is a smooth as macOS.

~~~
Asooka
Oh god please no. I would really prefer that we stop the experimentation and
just go back to implementing the standard desktop. Linux got its success by
being a Unix clone, down to copying the syscall numbers. We should mimic that
on desktop by just copying Windows, rather than chasing unproven weird ideas.
OSX succeeds not because it's quirky, but because it is backed by a company
with massive resources. And even OSX is much closer to Windows than Gnome is.
Please stop innovation for innovation's sake and just make Windows 98 again.

~~~
criddell
> OSX succeeds not because it's quirky, but because it is backed by a company
> with massive resources.

If deep pockets was all it took to make an OS succeed, Windows Phone wouldn't
be dead.

On the desktop, OSX, Windows, and most Linux variants are all good enough.
What matters is application support. For my job, 50% of the applications I use
run on Linux, 75% run on OSX (natively), and 100% work on Windows. Can you
guess which OS I use at work?

Thanks to Valve, Linux has a real shot at picking up some steam in the gaming
space. Without Adobe and Microsoft, it probably won't go anywhere on corporate
or consumer desktops.

~~~
zamalek
> 100% work on Windows

Make that 110% if you include Visual Studio. The degree of polish that Visual
Studio has just isn't available anywhere else. At some point early this year I
was considering Linux+VSCode. VS2017, with F5-to-Docker debug, launched and
everything else looks like a giant pain in the ass once again. The Azure
integration is anticompetitive but, wow, is it also so much better than the
alternative.

XCode is a hilarious joke that Apple is playing on developers.

Linux IDEs, while much better than XCode, would have been competitive in 2003
(unless you use Java/IntelliJ exclusively).

It's no wonder that Windows is the only platform where developers shy away
from text editors - it's the only platform where the alternatives to text
editors don't absolutely suck. It's really not that text editors are better
than IDEs - an good IDE and a good text editor are complementary, not
competitive.

Where I'm going with this is that a good IDE begets a quality application.
That 100% doesn't arise from the ether. Alongside your game argument comes
another indicator of this: Windows has a very mature graphical debugger[1]
(having been growing it since DX9) where, so far as I have read, both
competing operating systems lack this functionality _entirely._

Balmer might have looked like a fool with his "developers, developers,
developers" dance. The thing is that he was completely correct - instead of
mocking his monkey dancing, Apple and Linux should have been paying attention
to the people that he was praising.

If Ubuntu want to compete in this space the developer experience must be
fixed.

[1]: [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/hh315751.aspx](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/hh315751.aspx)

~~~
reitanqild
_The degree of polish that Visual Studio has just isn 't available anywhere
else. _

I like Windows more than before but people saying VS is fantastic are starting
to annoy me.

My VS _crashed_ 3 times today (!). This comes on top of almost not having any
refactoring support unless you buy ReSharper.

I was really excited to get to try .Net three months ago.

Now I'm really looking forward to go back to Java and Netbeans (even if I will
miss some things.)

 _It 's no wonder that Windows is the only platform where developers shy away
from text editors_

This developer love Netbeans on KDE.

~~~
zamalek
ReSharper? I typically run lightweight in terms of extensions and I've heard
woes from others that don't.

~~~
reitanqild
But without ReSharper, Visual Studio (at least the community edition) can't
refactor almost anything.

------
wowtip
While I like Ubuntu going back to Gnome for desktop, it is unfortunate this
lessens the chance of running Linux on mobile phones anytime soon.

~~~
criddell
Linux already is running on the majority of mobile phones. :)

That said, the UI has never been what's holding back Ubuntu on the phone.

~~~
dorfsmay
What was the issue?

Lack of apps? Marketing?

~~~
reitanqild
My guess is the biggest issue is almost every phone is locked down.

------
syntaxing
Does anyone here use Budgie as their main DE? I've been following Ubuntu
Budgie since the official flavor was announced last year. I played with the
unofficial version a bit in a VM and it worked relatively well. I would love
to hear some insight on it's performance and stability.

------
godmodus
More stability, add gaming support.

I moved to fedora because Ubuntu tends to break and guzzle resources.

------
type0
How I wish that Canonical would have chosen MATE instead, Wimpy is already
working for them.

~~~
lima
MATE is a dead end if you want a modern, Wayland-based desktop.

~~~
CrankyBear
Not true. Wayland's on MATE's Roadmap. [http://wiki.mate-
desktop.org/roadmap](http://wiki.mate-desktop.org/roadmap)

~~~
majewsky
Well, from what it says there, it sounds like "yeah, we will have to do that
sometime".

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reneberlin
Do not talk about - make my desktop experience last forever by upstreaming
unity in a fork. This will be my reality for years :)

I will be agnostic - won't change a lil thing even if the distro changes the
wm. watch the progress. i will keep unity .. forgive me. i even would backport
- if it doens't happen.

------
douche
I miss Gnome 2 Ubuntu.

~~~
ploggingdev
You can use the Mate Desktop Environment [1], it's pretty close to Gnome 2.

[1] [https://mate-desktop.org/](https://mate-desktop.org/)

~~~
douche
That is what I use these days, although I've switched to Mint instead of
Ubuntu.

~~~
everybodyknows
How are you liking Mint so far? Comparison with Cinnamon?

