
Is the Linux Desktop Dream Dead? - macco
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/208337/is_the_linux_desktop_dream_dead.html
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forgottenpaswrd
Please, don't send FUD here.

PCWorld is a magazine witch primary Ad buyer is Microsoft, this kind of
magazines live from their ads(I have worked on printing presses), not for
their customers paying the magazine.

<http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html>

No, Linux is not dead, and you make the numbers totally up(1% market share).
Linus is not going to be professional in the areas that commercial software
makers only support Windows or Mac(games, CAD, CAE, publishing...) until they
support Linux, but is the only OS in witch you have total control.

~~~
bad_user
If you would have read the first sentence in that article, you would've seen
the author argues the contrary ... that Linux on the desktops is not dead.

On the other hand your point is totally useless.

    
    
         Linus is not going to be professional in the areas that 
         commercial software makers only support 
         Windows or Mac
    

NO SHIT ... unfortunately it is not going to happen soon. You know why?

Because Linux users don't pay for software, and proprietary software has some
kind of stench attached (RMS says so).

E.g. Adobe tried to ship Flex Builder for Linux:
<http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/flexbuilder_linux/>

And I've been to one internal meeting in Adobe that discussed the viability of
Linux. Users not paying for software was problem #1, but they still considered
it viable because of recent trends (e.g. Dell / Walmart starting to sell
Ubuntu / gOS computers).

Guess they backtracked on that decision based on consumer feedback.

~~~
mgkimsal
perennial chicken/egg problem, but they 'chickened' out I guess (yeah, bad
pun).

Would be interesting to know the final reason for killing it. At that time, I
had a _need_ for Flex Builder, and wanted it on Linux, and would have paid for
it in a heartbeat. Others I know would have too. But we couldn't because it's
not available.

I've paid for other software on Linux in the past (financial software, mostly)
and got tired of waiting for the programs I wanted and needed to be available
on Linux, so I jumped to a Mac. I'd been a rather late holdout, only jumping
in late 2008, after about 8 years of trying to do only Linux on the desktop.

I guess there were never enough of us to make certain software profitable, or
_insanely_ profitable, which is perhaps what vendors like Adobe were after.

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nailer
I think the desktop itself is dying. The Linux desktop, however, did give
birth to KHTML, which became one of the major browser platforms. You can now
access your apps without a proprietary software requirement on most devices. A
win, but not in the way anyone expected.

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bryanlarsen
Linux got a lot of momentum from the "Microsoft is evil" camp. However, OS X
sucked off most of that momentum, and now I would guess the primary users of
Linux are developers who deploy onto Linux servers or embedded devices who
realize that it's easier to develop on the same platform you deploy on. (And
who have a lot of knowledge about the platform because they deploy on it).

But there is a growing "Apple is evil" movement, and I expect Linux to get
some momentum from that. I wish that more people would try Linux for it's
positive features -- for example, Virtual Desktops is my killer feature, but
Linux still gets most of its users because its "not Windows" and "not Apple".

One huge advantage that Linux does have is that it's really the only Desktop
platform that's seeing rapid advancement. KDE 4 is maturing into a very nice
platform, Gnome 3 is coming out soon, all with significant changes and
enhancements, for good or bad. OTOH, OS X 10.7 is coming out with what, an app
store?

Of course, neither Microsoft nor Apple are putting a lot of effort into
desktop environments because of their decreasing relevance...

~~~
rbanffy
> for good or bad. OTOH, OS X 10.7 is coming out with what, an app store?

... that could be described as a credit-card-aware half-brained package
manager...

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joubert
In the meantime mobile phones will probably (if not already) be most people's
interaction with "computing" and there Linux is a compelling story.

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jarin
Linux is a passable desktop OS if you're a developer or most of the things you
need live in the browser. I have an Ubuntu box loaded up and sitting in the
garage just in case my Macbook gets stolen or dies on me, and I know that I'd
be able to clone my projects and be up and running and billing clients again
in a couple of hours.

That being said, desktop Linux is lacking a lot of the other things that I use
on a daily basis (no, Gimp and OpenOffice.org are NOT "just as good"), and I
just don't enjoy using it as much as OS X.

However, I in no way look down on the people who love their Linux desktop
machines more than life itself, because without them we wouldn't have things
like Webkit, TrueCrypt, VNC, Wine, Eclipse, and Cedega (and its cousin Cider,
for running Windows games on Linux and the Mac, respectively).

So keep hacking away on your Linux desktop machines!

~~~
StavrosK
I'm the opposite, I used OS X for a few months and found it abysmal for
development, really unfit for power-user usage (keyboard accessibility was
horrid) and completely uncustomisable. I switched to Linux and never used it
again.

I used to use Windows before that, but now I've switched all my computers to
Linux. Windows is a close favorite (7 is great), but installing the dev tools
I need isn't easy (or possible, sometimes). OS X is a distant third.

~~~
jarin
I can understand that point of view, but I notice that a lot of desktop Linux
users bring up UI customization as one of the big arguments for using Linux.

I've always seen extensive UI customization as just one more distraction
between me and real work. I'd rather just set a flat black or very minimalist
wallpaper and get cracking instead of spending hours finding the right
interface theme, tweaking the colors and fonts, and designing the perfect
wallpaper to highlight my CPU/RAM/weather/calendar desktop widgets (I have
done all this before).

I'm actually really glad that the only UI customization that's easy to do in
OS X is choosing between color or greyscale title bar close buttons.

~~~
jarin
Spaces definitely has its issues, that's for sure. Aside from the alt+tab
problem you mentioned, it just started feeling really slow so I turned it off.

I guess you could make an argument that Apple gets a lot of usability ideas
from Linux, but when they go through the Stevejobsification Process they tend
to lose some of their usefulness in trade for simplicity and prettier looks. I
think the problem is that the only people who even notice these things are
power users, so it's not even a factor in adoption rates.

~~~
StavrosK
Probably, but the stevejobsification process in this case completely missed
the purpose of the feature and produced a larger desktop instead. I agree that
only power users notice these things, but I was commenting on why I don't use
it, not on why I don't want other people to use it :P

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drallison
I use Ubuntu out of the box for desktop machines and Centos for servers. The
Gnome/Ubuntu desktop is OK and way better than XP for me. (Yes, I do know my
tastes are 3 sigma away from the norm, but I am not sure which direction.)

I am irritated by the tendency of the Linux Desktop designers to clone the
Windows and/or the MAC Desktop features and problems, good and bad. I would
prefer a Linux Desktop that provides a better interface than the competition,
one without the warts of the other products.

I do not see the need all the graphical configuration themes and options,
which just seem to add complexity. Few of the people I know use anything other
than the "standard" configuration simply because a private configuration needs
to be maintained and provides almost no marginal advantage.

I find Desktop GUI tools are frequently cumbersome and using them causes a lot
of busy hand work. Shell command lines, BASH scripts, and Python programs work
better for me than the Desktop GUI. I am frustrated when Desktop Tools are not
easily usable from scripts as sometimes is the case with Gnome.

None the less, I think the Linux Desktop is alive and well.

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fbcocq
_The 21st-century desktop isn't based on the fat-client desktop of the last
25-years. It exists on the Web in Web-based applications and software as a
service (SaaS) and what I call "Content as a Service." If the content
providers have their way, you'll view content from the Web instead of
downloading it._

So I just took a break and played a round of SC2 and now I'm back to do some
work in Photoshop/Excel. Just thought you'd like to know.

------
rue
Daddy, what's a desktop?

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InclinedPlane
Yes.

And no.

Linux was never a very good _desktop_ OS. Though it was a fair to perhaps good
workstation OS. However, the future of the desktop may well be in mobile-
heritage OSes such as iOS and Android. Just as the PC grew to fill its mini-
computer and mainframe big brothers' shoes so mobile OSes are likely to mature
into robust desktop platforms (though founded on different paradigms).

And if that's the case, then the linux desktop dream may yet live indirectly,
through android and related offerings (chrome OS, etc.)

~~~
rbanffy
> Linux was never a very good desktop OS

Have you ever seriously tried to use it? Because, lacking a proper official
definition of what a good desktop OS is, I am very satisfied with the one
running in front of me and can only say it's really good. Good as in "solid
and predictable".

I understand there are Linux distros for every taste, from the heavy-duty-
server guy to the most curious hacker that wants to compile the kernel for
every upstream release, but I find - and that's first-hand experience - Ubuntu
makes for a very nice destkop OS.

~~~
StavrosK
I agree with you on everything, except the fact that it's solid. In my
experience, it crashes a bit more than Windows (Gnome/the GUI does, the rest
of the system runs great). E.g. gwibber-service keeps taking up 100% of my CPU
at random times, network-manager-applet keeps disappearing, disconnecting me
from the net, etc.

Other than that, I love it, it's my main OS. I just wish they debugged it a
bit more. Ubuntu is known for using bleeding-edge packages rather much...

~~~
rbanffy
I have experienced some Gwibber weirdness, but in 10.04. It's been behaving
very well on 10.10 and I haven't seen Gnome crashes in a long time except one
during the upgrade from 10.04 to 10.10 (since no non-linux desktop OS can do
such a feat - imagine upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7 while you work
on the machine being upgraded... - I consider that a moot point)

It's hard to debug with the vast amounts of undocumented hardware people run
it on. The developers have access to only a tiny fraction of all the hardware
combinations their users have and an even smaller fraction of those have some
documentation or specs developers can write for. Graphic accelerators and
wireless interfaces are just two very visible categories where far too many
hardware manufacturers want to make sure open-source developers fail.

There used to be a hardware popularity/test app with Ubuntu. I can't find it
on 10.10 but, if it might be useful for you to run it or whatever came to
replace it. Also, it's entirely possible very few people run it on the exact
hardware you have and filing a bug report may help others with similar
problems.

~~~
StavrosK
Ah, it's good to know Gwibber is fixed in 10.10 (I'm running 10.04). I'm
waiting a month or so after each release, because upgrading right after
release has given me problems in the past.

Gnome doesn't crash _completely_ , just a few applets disappearing or other
weirdness. I agree that it's hard to debug wireless adapters or graphics, but
gwibber, for example, shouldn't really take up all your CPU like that.

It's generally fine, everything works fine on all my computers, except nm-
applet, which does crash on three separate computers quite frequently. I hope
it's fixed on 10.10, thank you for the info!

~~~
rbanffy
There is no way to escape the fact that Ubuntu has less users than Windows has
beta users. It takes a lot of luck to expose more rare bugs during the beta
stage, specially in short cycles like Ubuntu's

But I kind of like having a new desktop rolled out every 6 months, even if the
price is having to troubleshoot stuff or filing bug reports. If I wanted a
boring, stable, rock-solid OS, I would run Solaris 10 on my PC ;-)

On your nm-applet thing, are the three computers using the same wireless
interface?

~~~
StavrosK
What do you mean? They have different adapters, they are on the same network
most of the time but it happens both on other networks, plus it happens to a
computer that doesn't even have a wireless interface.

It hasn't happened in a while, thankfully.

~~~
rbanffy
Oh no.. Same as in same model. It could be a problem specific to that
particular chipset. You can report a nm-applet specific bug with apport-bug.
This helps a lot with triaging and collects hardware info and meaningful
(hopefully) logs automagically.

~~~
StavrosK
Ah, right. I tried apport-bug but it said "You need to specify a PID", and I
have no time to research that right now... I'll try later on, thanks!

~~~
rbanffy
Thanks.

The more users that report bugs, the better coverage the software will have.

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erikstarck
Android will be bigger than Windows ever was.

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nightlifelover
Yes it is.

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robwgibbons
Linux desktops will never die.

