

How Apple killed the Linux desktop - alkasimi
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/27/tech/web/apple-linux-desktop/index.html

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norswap
To be honest, the Linux desktop killed itself (or rather, never really took
off), because, well .. it sucks.

It sucks because it is fragmented. If a developper wants to write a nice GUI
application that integrates nicely with the desktop, he needs to target 4 or 6
different desktops, and maybe even more variations (taskbars software, menus,
whatever). So the developer makes a console application instead, and the Linux
desktop suffer.

Of course, some open-source enthusiasts will cobble together some script to
integrate the program with their favorite desktop software. It will work one
time out of two, and will break with every update of the program or of the
desktop environment.

You end up with complex desktop environments nobody understands fully except
the core devs and an abysmal user experience.

~~~
gizmo686
I don't know what Linux you are talking about, but it is not the Linux I know.
I started off in Linux with Ubuntu 10.04. About 4 months ago, I switched
window managers from Gnome to Awesome. Awesome is nice, but pretty minimal, so
I wanted a bunch of the widgets from my old gnome desktop. When I ran the
widget program (IE, nm-applet for network manager...), the network manager
applet icon appeared in the corner of my screen, and behaved just like it did
under gnome. I use Thunderbird for e-mail. When I get a new e-mail, I still
get a desktop notification under my widget tray.

One of the things that sets Linux apart is modularity and standards, so if you
write a program to work with one envirement, it would almost definitively work
in another envirement.

Put another way, what is a form of desktop integration that requires targeting
multiple desktops.

Also, developers make console application because they are: 1) Easier to make
2) The norm on Linux 3) More developer/power user friendly 4) More compostable

I find the (mainstream) desktop envirements more understandable than Windows,
with a better user experience.

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eckyptang
Vendors + distributions are all committing suicide by pandering to the app
store model, tablet interfaces and walled gardens. Noone is killing anyone.

Linux pissed the power users off (the entire market segment no less) during
the gnome2 to gnome3/unity transition.

Apple are pissing power users off with their walled garden growing higher and
some shoddy unreliable features.

Microsoft are pissing off power users with the same mind bending crapfest
changes i.e. Metro.

It's all gone to shit actually. I really wish I did something else for a
living.

I'm sitting here on a T61 with Debian on it, awesome window manager and
xterms. It's the last bastion of common sense for the power user.

~~~
norswap
> Linux pissed the power users off (the entire market segment no less) during
> the gnome2 to gnome3/unity transition.

I think you meant "Ubuntu" instead of "Linux" here.

~~~
eckyptang
Nope.

Ubuntu, Redhat (which is pulling gnome3 into RHEL7), Fedora, Mint. Nothing
else is of significance.

At least Debian have the balls to pick something different.

------
mseepgood
Wrong facts in the article:

"Torvalds switched to Xfce"

Wrong, he didn't switch to Xfce: _"And for all the people wasting everybodys
time with "Why don't you use Unity/KDE/xfce/xyz" - I've tried them. They are
even worse"_
[https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/UkoAaLDp...](https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/UkoAaLDpF4i)

"GNOME 3.6 is out"

3.6 is not out. 3.5.90 is out, which is a beta version.

~~~
klint
Thanks for the info. Looks like he switched back. I've updated both pieces of
the article.

------
nicholassmith
I don't specifically think Apple has killed Linux on the desktop. Linux on the
desktop, without being horrible, was a pipe dream.

I use Linux everyday for development, I'm a big supporter of the project and
would recommend everyone give it a go. However I'd fully expect half the
people trying it to get confused and give up, some of the interface metaphors
aren't quite there, installing software can be a chore of working out how to
get there and what to do, and there's still too much emphasis on command line
operations.

These things are all fine (and enjoyable in their own right), but for the
majority of people they just need something they can switch on, and get on
with. Ubuntu has gotten closer, but it's still just not quite there, so it's
not that OS X has trumped it on the desktop for people seeking an alternative
but that they've hit what they can currently get. There's lots of room for
winning people over, some of Apple's poorer decisions recently might actually
push a lot more people into the arms of Linux, we'll have to wait and see.

~~~
gizmo686
Can you mention specifics of what Ubuntu is missing?

Installing software is easier than on Windows: it automaticly handles
dependencies, and if you cannot find the program by searching in synaptic
(same concept as an app store except for the lack of money), then Ubuntu is
popular enough that the project likely offers their own *.deb.

As a desktop user, I never had to open the command line for normal computer
configurations (until I switched to a non-standard window manager).

------
blub
The web is open when you have standard data exchange formats and control over
your information. What happens most times though is that you connect to a
black box that happens to use FOSS underneath - not free and not open. What
Mozilla is doing is not enough, and recently I have come to think of it a
complete waste of time. Web apps are not magiclly open because they're written
in JS and HTML.

Finally getting back to Linux, I don't think it has lost. I am pleasantly
surprised at how good the latest Ubuntu is as a desktop. If Apple continues to
lock down Mac OS people will move to Linux - in my case I am investing in my
Linux skills and decided not toinvest in iOS.

------
PaulHoule
RHT deserves some blame too.

As a result of Gnome, Linux was doomed to have two half-baked desktops which
would make the Linux desktop, at best, the butt of jokes.

One of the biggest problems of Linux in the 1990's was that applications wrote
directly to the sound device, so that only one application could play sound at
a time.

The obvious userspace answer is to create an "X Windows" for sound, and it
would have been OK if there has been an "X Windows" for sound, but there was
also a Y, a Z, and some letters from Suess's "Alphabet beyond Z" as well.

This was unfair to app developers, commercial or open source, and it was
unfair to users. Things are better now, but there was a long stretch when I
just didn't bother to attach speakers to Linux machines because it wasn't
worth the bother.

Finally, RHAT's worst problem is that it was so successful -- look at this
chart!

[http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=RHT+Interactive#symbol=rh...](http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=RHT+Interactive#symbol=rht;range=5y;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined);

RHT was successful because it sold to the corporate market, but that's a very
dangerous market to aim for -- because a product that pleases corporate buyers
typically causes endless misery for corporate users. There's just no reason
for a company like RHT to do the slow and steady work to gradually improve a
UI when it's selling lots of product to people who couldn't care less cause
they'll never use it.

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imtyler
"Killed" is a pejorative word in my opinion. The article itself clearly
explains that Apple was able to _beat_ Linux by being better at the time, not
by employing nefariousness tactics. There are better reasons to hate Apple.

------
verroq
Apple bridges the gap for fairly technical people who want a OS with the raw
power of Linux but more polished.

