
Fragmentation Is Why Desktop Linux Failed [video] - axiomdata316
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8oeN9AF4G8
======
schizoidboy
Actual quote from Linus as opposed to the click-bait title:

> I still wish we were better at having a standardized desktop that goes
> across all the distributions. There's been some progress there. I mean, this
> is not a kernel issue, so this is just more of a personal annoyance how the
> fragmentation of the different vendors have, I think, held the desktop back
> a bit. But there has been some progress on that front too with Flatpak and
> things like that, so I'm still optimistic, but it's been 25 years. It's
> going to be another few years at least.

~~~
VvR-Ox
He is right with that. There is a few desktop environments that are quite good
like: KDE (Plasma), Gnome (with enough options tuning & customizing) and maybe
pantheon (see elementary OS)

We'd need something more smoove and better over-all integration because there
is still too many shortcomings and tiny bugs that could annoy a day-to-day
user that doesn't want to know anything about config files or extended menus
with special settings. It should be a great thing out of the box with sane
defaults. That includes the icon set as well as a decent file browser and
terminal emulator experience (iTerm2 on mac is THE REFERENCE here, I wouldn't
want anything less).

Next comes workflows like office /graphics /audio stuff. I like how OSX
handles PDFs etc and would love to see that on linux as well.

But I'm afraid this scattering is one of the biggest enemies of adoption and
maturity of open source software. There is so many OSes and tools that you
often have to research stuff for hours before you start off with a shitty tool
that get's the job half done and then you recognize you can start from scratch
because it doesn't work as you expected.

Instead many open source projects could live up to their potential if they'd
combine efforts to merge the best they did and create ONE super awesome tool.

The reallity is that very often projects are just abandoned because adoption /
donations etc. are too low or the 2 maintainers are tired after years of
working on a project only 100 ppl on the globe are using.

Unite! At least converge to 2 big streams: Pro-Users (the ppl making jokes
about shellscripts) and People (your mom)

Just focus on delivering for these 2 groups and I think most ppl would be glad
about the end product. I for myself will try to do my best in putting efforts
into projects I hope will have the biggest adoption.

~~~
speedplane
> There is a few desktop environments that are quite good ... Unite!

This is happening. The web is becoming the de-facto desktop environment.

~~~
pjmlp
Thing is, the Web as de-facto desktop environment is one reason less to even
care about Linux's existence.

A browser could run bare metal for what I care.

~~~
VvR-Ox
How exactly do you think you'll get your drivers working?

What do you do when the internet is crashed / your app is down?

I like the data-sync & backup part of web apps - you don't have to save etc.
and your whole machine can just fall into a river but you still have your
work. But I'd rather do this with a seperate solution and keep stuff on my PC
so I can access it without a network.

~~~
pjmlp
The same way that webOS, ChromeOS, FireFox OS and a couple of other attempts
do.

By providing a minimal kernel for juggling browser instances, local file
system and browser specific "native" APIs.

Welcome back to the timesharing days, just with prettier UIs.

~~~
Piskvorrr
Um...well...can't say I'm overjoyed about that - the Good Old Times, whenever
invoked, were rarely _good_ if you happened to actually live in them^$#%$#NO
CARRIER

~~~
pjmlp
I should have placed a sarcastic remark.

It is however the pace how things are going, even most mobile apps are modern
versions of those 2-tier apps during the 90s.

------
chomp
Very heavy headline for a very nuanced position by Linus.

It's an open secret that the ideal of choice fragments the focus of creating a
tight UX on the desktop. You have to understand when you watch this video
though that all Linus and the kernel team can do is make the kernel itself.
The community is what will end up driving the desktop UX, and they haven't
done a great job creating something that can capture the average PC user.

I am not sure if this is even a bad thing. My daily driver is a Dell laptop
running Fedora and I don't think I'd change a thing aside from some minor UX
gripes about Cinnamon. ChromeOS really is the best hope for mass Linux
adoption, and I personally know people who hate the Linux desktop experience
but use a Chromebook daily.

I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here other than my personal opinion that
desktop Linux has found a local maximum and I think only the distros
themselves can push DE volunteers to find something that has wider appeal (I'm
not sure if that is even desirable, because again, I'm personally very happy
with my experience).

~~~
wmf
_all Linus and the kernel team can do is make the kernel itself_

In some sense that's a self-imposed limitation. Linus could have chosen to
create an OS (like BSD) instead of a kernel.

~~~
tpush
> Linus could have chosen to create an OS (like BSD) instead of a kernel.

The BSD people also don't make a GUI.

~~~
JdeBP
On the contrary, they have. Lumina, for starters.

* [https://lumina-desktop.org/](https://lumina-desktop.org/) ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14282349](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14282349))

------
d--b
Fragmentation is one thing, but I don't think it's the main point. I've tried
Desktop Linux many times. Mostly to avoid paying for Windows. And every time,
there is something that I would like to do that I can't do, and then I'm back
to Windows.

Whether it's some kind of website addin (things like video conferencing, or
offline video player with DRM that require you to download an app), or some
development tool (Visual Studio!), or some game, or my printer.

The issue is a catch 22: because Desktop Linux is not well adopted, companies
don't develop for it. If companies don't develop for it, then there are things
you can do on other systems that you can't do on Linux. And so Desktop Linux
does not get more adoption...

~~~
rocky1138
This experience is very common. Eventually, people have had to essentially
decide to either "burn the ships" and live without the thing they need or give
up and live with the pain of Windows.

The good part is that over the past couple decades, the things that require
Windows has become vanishingly small. Almost everything can be done on Linux
these days.

------
Animats
The amusing thing is that Microsoft blew it. Windows 7 was generally
considered good, but Windows 8 and 10 are widely acknowledged to be awful.
Windows 8 tried to make a desktop work like a tablet. Windows 10 has intrusive
ads and data collection. Most of corporate America would rather stay on
Windows 7.

Linux on the desktop works just fine. I've been using it almost exclusively
for five years now. I also have several notebooks using it. It's less trouble
than Windows. This should be Linux's moment on the desktop.

~~~
jchw
Some of my friends ended up trying Linux in the Vista era. What happened was
interesting.

I don't think any of them became full-on Linux users, but some of them
continued to use Linux alongside Windows. What this signifies to me is that
Linux has some strengths that people really want, but it doesn't do a great
job of replacing Windows in its current state.

I find this to be my exact problem, too. Windows does a lot of things right
that Linux may never, and the app library on Windows is probably going to be
the best on the desktop for at least another 10 years if not longer. Linux,
however, has a beautiful experience for developers and sometimes even for
power users. You can turn on and off almost any feature you want, there's a
ton of alternative setups. You can even run a different libc if you really
want to.

I still use a Linux desktop as my primary, but I have never managed to escape
dual booting or virtual machines entirely, and I'm not sure when it might be
possible.

~~~
vorticalbox
>the app library on Windows is probably going to be the best on the desktop
for at least another 10 years if not longer.

The app market will very quick shift if linux really starts to get the ball
rolling.

Just look how quickly developers jump on the mobile train.

~~~
jchw
>Just look how quickly developers jump on the mobile train.

Interesting. I don't feel similarly about the progress of mobile apps.

Like sure, there's a lot of mobile apps, but I feel like they are a lot less
mature and developed than desktop apps are. I would guess by development
effort spent, desktop apps still outpace mobile apps.

Don't get me wrong, I get that games and apps must be adapted for the amount
of system resources and for the input devices users will be using. But that
doesn't mean PS Touch is the same as Photoshop. It feels like a toy version of
Photoshop that you can use in a pinch between having access to real Photoshop.
I doubt the same number of people hours went into both.

Linux ports couldn't work that way. You would want the same thing you have on
Windows.

~~~
merlinsbrain
People used to pay a lot of money for desktop apps on windows - a lot of
businesses used “enterprise software” since web apps were not a thing.

There are still companies / labs across the world that are clinging to older
windows versions since they rely on them for desktop apps.

Mobile apps? In-app purchases and subscriptions are the saving grace there.

You get what you pay for.

------
eindiran
Maybe $YEAR_OF_THE_LINUX_DESKTOP isn't 2018, but I don't think the clickbait
title saying that desktop Linux has failed is fair. We're light-years ahead of
where we were in 2011, let alone 2007. The majority of users who now try Linux
desktops do so without any real workflow-breaking issues. Graphics card
drivers and printer drivers often work out of the box for me. All things
considered, I think desktop Linux is doing very well.

~~~
ahmedalsudani
Not only that. I'd venture to say no desktop is near as good as the Linux
desktop. (For a certain type of user, I should qualify.)

Don't get me wrong; there are issues. X is a system from a different era.
(Graphics) Performance is pretty bad, the effects are janky, the primitives
disparate.

But! As a "power user" I dread having to use any other system. On Linux, there
is an incredible variety of window managers, file navigators, terminal
emulators, etc. The whole gamut.

My workflow revolves around i3 and my i3 configuration. I have sworn off macs,
and when I use windows, I have learned to press Super+1 for Firefox and
Super+2 for Steam. Beyond that is a dark forest which I refuse to explore!

~~~
RussianCow
I don't think anyone here is talking about power users when discussing the
failure of Linux on the desktop.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
I'm a power user, and developer, and I certainly do think the Linux Desktop is
an utter failure. I cite as evidence how awful Windows has become and how few
people, power users included, have switched to Linux because of it.

------
_emacsomancer_
As has been already pointed out, this isn't really what Linus said.

And, in any event, fragmentation has nothing to do with it.

Ordinary users (and even many advanced users) don't install operating systems.
And one has to go out of their way to buy a machine with Linux pre-installed
(and ordinary users don't go out of their way, certainly not for something
that they know little or nothing about).

If real (decent) machine with Linux on them were sold in Best Buy etc. there
would be substantially more users of desktop Linux. Let's not pretend that
multiple distributions is the reason.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
I think that's a convenient ego-saving scapegoat for the Linux Desktop. Chrome
was never pre-installed and people went out of their way to get it because it
was a better product.

~~~
_emacsomancer_
I never said users don't install _software_ , I said they don't install _OS_
's. Of course users install _software_ , you can't keep them from installing
nearly every weird thing they come across online, that's why a quarter of the
machines running desktop Windows are part of botnets.

And of course part of the reason people installed Chrome is because Google
owns half of the web and they kept popping up messages telling people to
install Chrome. (If it was really about installing _better_ software, we would
see Firefox dominance: even privacy and openness etc. aside, Firefox has been
an objectively better browser than Chrom{e|ium} since at least version 56.)

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Operating Systems are software. They aren't even really that much harder to
install than Windows or Linux applications.

Consider that part of the reason Linux Desktop has failed to gain any traction
is people like you who would rather imagine that everyone not using their
favorite software is just too inept to do so.

~~~
_emacsomancer_
Ok, they install _applications_. I thought the context was clear enough that
_software_ would be understood in the intended way. And yes, you're right that
installing, say, Ubuntu isn't particularly difficult. It does entail more
'risk' than installing Chrome, since you could wipe out your existing OS
and/or data/home-directory unintentionally if you're not careful.

> Consider that part of the reason Linux Desktop has failed to gain any
> traction is people like you who would rather imagine that everyone not using
> their favorite software is just too inept to do so.

I never said that they were too inept to do so (I think we agree that it's
really not that difficult even for a non-techy person), just that they don't.
I think it's fairly clear that ordinary people don't install OSes (again, not
that it would actually be difficult for them to do so, just that they don't).

------
macdice
The whole concept that "Linux is just a kernel" sounds like some kind of
whining pedantic hair splitting, unless you understand that almost all the
stuff that ships in a Linux distribution including all the FOSS stuff we call
"the desktop" runs perfectly well on all modern Unix-like systems like FreeBSD
et al. xorg, Firefox, Gnome/KDE/foo/bar, yada yada. Admittedly there are fewer
and fewer Unix-like systems left (I cut my teeth on OSes that are now dead and
buried), but it's a massive disservice to all these wonderful projects that we
don't have a better ways to describe this stuff so that we don't have people
talking about "the Linux desktop". Get off my lawn, etc.

~~~
jillesvangurp
It's worse, things like the Gimp and most most other major user facing linux
applications have a history of also being built for windows and mac os. E.g. I
regularly use Darktable on my mac and with the last release they also started
supporting windows builds. Why not? The more users the better from their point
of view.

Linux has a software packaging issue. There are several so-called package
managers and they basically have overlapping goals and they all suck from an
end user perspective. On Ubuntu when you do an apt-get install darktable, you
pull in a gazillion of packages. Everything and the kitchen sink, basically.
On a mac, I drag the darktable.app file to the applications after I download
it. And it runs. Exact same software. It's a 217MB self contained package.
There are no software conflicts. Apple designed the way that stuff works last
century when they were designing OS X and wanted to keep the simplicity of how
software installations worked on OS 9. The disk usage is a non issue There are
no dependencies to manage. This stuff works across major versions of OS X
even. Package managers don't solve a problem real users have.

The existence of package managers led to what we now call distributions, which
made a lot of sense in the early nineties when slackware came in the form of
27 disks (been there, done that) but not this century. No two distributions
are the same. They each need to test and integrate the same software to work
in their ecosystem. Even major versions of the same distribution tend to be
very different. I personally think Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. have no business
whatsoever acting as a gatekeeper here and I tend to think of them more as an
obstacle then as an enabler. E.g. I know the Darktable people are preparing a
2.6 release (awesome stuff). I'd like to get a binary package from them as
soon as they release it. I don't see what value Ubuntu doing the same months
(optimistic?) later adds. Why wait? Their need to test before they can
integrate is self inflicted. It's a problem they have yet to solve.

Flatpak and similar solutions are sort of aiming to solve this for linux. But
standards are lacking, progress is slow, and this stuff is nowhere close to
being standardized. So, again fragmentation. Compare that to the docker eco
system. Most custom stuff you deploy to a server comes as a docker image. And
you can run those on many different operating systems. This kind of OS neutral
way of packaging software needs to start extending to desktop software. We
need Docker for end user applications.

------
hyperman1
I am missing an important part in this discussion: The absolute lack of a
stable API for GUIs.

Command line tools, web servers, ... are easy: Take POSIX and be a bit
conservative with the edge cases. It will work with a recompile for most linux
distros,BSDs, OSX and if you're willing to look at e.g. cygwin, even windows.
I had to compile an ancient linux 1.x program last month, and it works.

The GUI world however is a different beast. There is X11 which only offers the
most basic of primitives for drawing and pointing, nothing decent for text,
and the API designers want to take away even that with wayland. There is GTK
that actively does not want to provide any form of stability. There is QT
which has a hard-to-interop C++ API and every major version breaks everything
once more. And i haven't said anything of the licenses

This means no community investment can be made in Linux GUI's: Every year or
so, you have to do serious upgrades or a GUI application simply perishes.
Which is basically insane. It means that whatever Linux GUI exists today is
temporary for everything but the biggest applications.

Ironically, win32 is the only reasonable option on Linux: wine will provide a
good enough environment, and as they are anchored API-wise to microsoft, they
can guarantee they'r there for the long term.

But how I dream for a posix-like API that both GTK and QT could provide.

------
mevile
Android shows how you do it. You get a big company with tons of money that
wants to seriously build a working platform from end to end. If a company with
pockets deep enough had stepped up to create a 3rd viable platform for
consumers based on Linux, we'd have it. Mark Shuttleworth's pockets were not
deep enough. System76's pockets aren't deep enough. It would have to have been
a company like HP or Dell. Dell played with consumer side Linux but never
found it lucrative to go all in.

~~~
taeric
Isn't android heavily fragmented? There are hopes they will get better, for
sure, but there is a marked difference between Samsung and other phones. I
don't see that going away anytime soon, sadly.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It is. It has the same problems with everyone having different UI tweaks, but
at least the base Android comes with _some_ UI. Fragmentation isn't that big
of a problem for users, because there's only so much you can do on a phone -
between your photo album, contacts app, web browser and social media, any kind
of UI will do. It also helps that most popular apps ship their own UI.

~~~
flukus
Android took off when we had HTC sense, Samsung touchwiz and others, almost no
one was running the stock UI. But if KDE and GNOME and others were all running
on GTK you'd still probably call it fragmented.

There's no consistency between apps on android so you don't notice it as much.

------
qwerty456127
Linux desktop has not failed and desktop environments competition is a major
reason why it is getting better and better. Many people love GNOME3 (and it is
a de-facto standardized desktop) but I hate it and love KDE5 (and so do many
other people). I hated Unity at the beginning and switched to XFCE when it was
introduced but once Unity got improved I've began considering it a perfect
desktop. Tiling WMs are awesome (pun intended) for particular tasks on
particular display configurations. I also hope somebody is going to implement
a Haiku-like WM on Linux or invent something entirely new. Diversity is good!

~~~
kungtotte
For existing Linux users, the situation is indeed fantastic. We have lots of
choices and we're aware of this.

But if you think of "Year of the Linux Desktop" as the point in time where you
can get the Windows-using masses to switch, diversity is a big problem. People
don't want to be told that they have to make umpteen choices about what
software to use if they want to use a different OS, they want a cookie cutter
experience.

This is why "Windows like" is a selling point for many DEs/distros. It's the
McDonald's principle: everywhere you go a Big Mac is a Big Mac. You don't have
to worry about figuring out what appeals to you in the local cuisine.

~~~
_emacsomancer_
> People don't want to be told that they have to make umpteen choices about
> what software to use if they want to use a different OS, they want a cookie
> cutter

So they install Ubuntu. How is that any different from Windows or Mac (where
one still can go onto the internet and download a multitude of choices of
software).

The real answer is that ordinary users don't install OSes. 'Fragmentation'
(real or imagined) is a red herring.

~~~
pjmlp
Ordinary users install software, and then their beloved software only works in
Ubuntu, but they got XYZ distribution with their computer, which just happens
to have other package format, additional paths, .so versions, startup scripts
and then everything falls apart without technical help.

~~~
_emacsomancer_
But why would they have XYZ distro? Whoever sells machines with Linux pre-
installed sells them with Ubuntu. Ok, so you turn the argument around and say,
"Fine, but their beloved software only works on Fedora. So what then?" Then
someone packages up that software in a Snap, an Appimage, or a Flatpak and
they install that software (in a not dissimilar fashion to what they might be
used to from other OSes).

~~~
pjmlp
The large majority of the time that someone doesn't exist for anything outside
distribution repos.

~~~
qwerty456127
IIRC it only takes a click to add a PPA (a 3rd-party repo) in Ubuntu.

~~~
pjmlp
The theme is about ordinary users, not power users.

And even then, the software needs to be available from such PPA source and the
specific user is required to be running Ubuntu.

------
joe_the_user
Really, the reason desktop Linux isn't popular is:

1) A few things still don't work. Vanishingly few now but still a few.

2) Linux can't be simply as good as Windows or MacOs, it would have to be
better for people to make the effort. And it's not going to be better. I don't
think "better" is possible now (not in a fundamental, decisive way. Lots of
little ways sure but, again, I don't think that's what people care so much
about). An Os is just a way to launch apps and we've kind of a limit on such
goodness. My desktop Linux launches my apps, especially my browser and that's
about it. I like being independent of the corporate megamachine but most
people would not spend the hard two hours required for this.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _I like being independent of the corporate megamachine_

You aren't, and you won't be. Companies did an end run around user freedoms by
turning everything into a service. You neither own nor control the software
you run in the browser, and neither do you own the data. Replacing an OS won't
help you if it's only serving as a bootloader for Google Chrome; if you want
independence, you need to prefer locally executable software (which is
becoming harder by the day).

~~~
joe_the_user
Meh, I like being independent in this particular dimension. I use Firefox but
that's another aspect. Obviously, Linux is "the revolution" but that doesn't
mean it doesn't change on particular aspect of my existence.

------
skocznymroczny
A good start would be implementing flicker-free boot on Linux. Windows and
macOS had it for a long time. On Linux, it takes 5-6 mode changes before the
system actually boots. It doesn't make a good impression on users, especially
ones unfamiliar with Linux to see the system constantly go dark, make some
noises and switch from text mode to graphics mode constantly. Same thing for
shut down, most Linuxes when shutting down flash text mode for a bit with lots
of messages like "trying to kill xxx unsuccessful". To an average user that
screams "this software is unfinished and can break any moment", which doesn't
inspire confidence.

I think the best chance for unification was Ubuntu and Unity. I use Unity on
Ubuntu 18.10 because I don't like the GNOME interface (and it's much slower on
my low-end laptop too). Unfortunately, the community seems to enjoy
reinventing things. Implementing new stuff is exciting, fixing bugs isn't :(

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
To me this sounds like the rough equivelent of "users aren't buying our
product, it must be because it is the wrong color".

------
sunstone
In my experience the real barrier to regular users adopting Linux has been
Microsoft Office. The UI is not a big impediment but when it comes to "How do
I send and receive word/excell documents?" That's where the wheels fall off.

Sure there are work arounds and other formats etc but for most people that is
just too much hassle.

~~~
RussianCow
This is mostly a non-issue with LibreOffice, unless you work with the advanced
features of the Office programs (most people don't). Sure, the UI isn't as
good, but I don't think that's the biggest barrier to adoption, or even close
to it.

~~~
rushikesh98
Umm, no.

The only time I use W10 is reading ppts by profs because Impress really messes
the rendering.

~~~
RussianCow
I admit I have never actually used Impress, so I'll take your word for it. But
I have never had an issue opening ppts in Google Slides. The point being,
there exist solutions for opening Microsoft Office documents on Linux that are
good enough for average/casual users.

------
docker_up
The idea of a Linux Desktop is about 10 years too late now and fading fast.

I'm using Windows 7 on a desktop built in 2012 and I have no impetus to
change. My wife has abandoned her desktop for an iPad Pro, which she uses at
work extensively. The only thing she needs a desktop for is Excel, which she
uses hardcore.

The only application I run on my desktop these days is Chrome/Firefox. Other
than that I'll run Sublime because I'm a programmer, but there's nothing else
I really need. Everything else is on my iPhone.

------
aussieguy1234
Failed? I got rid of windows back in the windows 98 blue screen days. I've
been using Linux desktops ever since

~~~
GordonS
No offence, but the success of desktop Linux isn't measured by the adoption of
1 person.

------
lmedinas
My view on the topic:

I have used Linux Desktops for about ~15years and involved in the Development
community it astonished me how frequent the APIs break specially at Desktop
Application/libraries level. I remember several libraries, like GTK+
deprecating often APIs even during stable releases. The consequence of this is
that the main application developer spends a big part of its time constantly
updating its application instead of developing new features and make it
feature rich.

The same can be said in order parts of the Desktop like the transition from
X11 to Wayland/Weston and all the Desktop Environments that some years ago
fragmented and decreased their quality. Unity, KDE and GNOME all failed in
producing a Desktop that really appealed to all users.

Finally for me another failure is the package management. For the App
developer he needs to get his app packages for all major distributions and
imagine the effort of the App developer and App maintainer to support
different libc and userspace tool versions.

All in all the Application developer has such a huge burden that he is most of
the time updating his app to new apis/tools than actually developing new
features.

------
sandGorgon
And one of the biggest reasons here is package management - the rpm, Deb ,
Pacman split is one of the biggest divides. I don't know if I should add APK
to this list.

We had a chance to fix it in the new world, but it's gone back to a
zeroinstall versus flatpak versus snap vs Deb vs rpm vs Pacman ecosystem.

Lets see if Docker CNAB and systemd push this ecosystem forward.

Reposting [http://0pointer.net/blog/revisiting-how-we-put-together-
linu...](http://0pointer.net/blog/revisiting-how-we-put-together-linux-
systems.html)

~~~
opan
I think Nix and Guix are going to solve this problem better than snaps and
flatpaks. Not only are they really good package managers, but they were made
to work on other distros.

------
hguhghuff
The average professional website /web application looks more visually
consistent and appealing than any Linux desktop, ever. No matter what desktop
they always end up feeling weird and like the spacing is wrong or the fonts
don’t match or something.

Put another way, it’s no longer hard to design brautfinand consistent User
interfaces but for some reason that’s never been possible on a Linux desktop.

Linux desktops have always had a sort of Frankenstein feeling to them, clearly
made up of a hodgepodge of boys that just don’t quite fit together.

------
atlih
I think it failed not because of some wrong technical setup or fragmentation
but because nerds generally don't care about the novice user experience, it's
near the bottom of the list of priorities. For profit companies don't care
either but are instantly rewarded for it financially so those that get it done
increase their market share. It's a sad dilemma that I have no idea how or if
it can be fixed because I would love not having to use a mac and use Linux as
a desktop instead.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Nerds don't even care about the nerd user experience. If you complain about
anything then you should fix it yourself, or you're doing it wrong, or it
isn't actually a problem because they've never encountered it.

------
root_axis
I don't think the Linux desktop has failed. If popular adoption is the
standard then MacOS is also a failure of sorts. At the end of the day, there
was just no reason for anyone except enthusiasts to end up with linux on their
machine since with rare exceptions you literally couldn't buy it anywhere. If
you don't build software, you have pretty much zero incentive to use a linux
desktop, especially when factoring in the monumental software compatibility
hurdles for non-technical users.

~~~
opan
>If you don't build software, you have pretty much zero incentive to use a
linux desktop

I've heard this before, but I never really understood why people think it.
I've always had an interest in computers, but I think there's a huge jump in
difficult and complexity from using a less popular operating system to
creating your own software. I consider programming to be extremely difficult.
Using GNU/Linux is just something new. Once you overcome the initial
discomfort of it not being like whatever you're used to, it's just fine. It's
fun, even.

~~~
root_axis
I agree with everything you've stated here. I'm not saying _there are no
reasons_ to switch, I'm saying that the typical user _has no incentive_ to
switch. The linux desktop is just as capable and IMO superior to a Windows or
Mac desktop, but the story for the user is "buy a Windows machine" or "buy a
Mac machine" and linux simply never comes into the equation unless they are an
atypical tinkerer type or someone technical guides them to using linux.

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InclinedPlane
It's amazing how so many smart people can be so blind.

I've been using unix and linux for about a quarter of a century. I cut my
teeth on proper X Window terminals and Motif Window Manager (and NeXTSTEP and
SGI IRIX workstations, etc, etc.) I was using firefox on linux before it was
even named firefox. I've used a variety of desktop linux distros over the
years, but I've never felt compelled to actually make the jump for good.

In theory I'm the perfect candidate for switching to a linux desktop but for
me it's never been worth it. Yes, desktop linux can be a perfectly fine
experience, but is it a superior experience? Every time I've made a serious
effort to try out a desktop linux OS it's always felt like a bit of a
downgrade. Not just because of all the stuff I miss out on like being able to
run games and other software I like, but even well beyond that. Despite most
desktop linux distros being pretty decently polished there are inevitably a
few dozen little completely unfinished and often completely buggy or broken
parts of the OS lurking around. It's like opening a door in a house and
finding everything ripped down to the studs with an excitable nest of raccoons
roosting where a bedroom should be.

The fact is, it's pretty common to have to do some rather serious "IT
department self-service" when you try to use desktop linux, just in the course
of dealing with ordinary trivial stuff like power management, connecting to
wifi, watching video, etc. I remember the bad old days of X Window config
nightmares: type in the correct horizontal sync frequency in kilohertz to
avoid blowing up your monitor. Things are light-years better than those days
but they still aren't at the "install off a usb drive and everything basic
mostly works with at best some annoyances" level.

The value proposition of a linux desktop has to have a lot more to it than
"you can have a kind of ok experience with it if you don't ask for too much"
if it's going to get any sort of adoption. Especially in a world where the
competition isn't just windows/macos computers but android/ios tablets and
smartphones as well as chromebooks. Linux has such a compelling story in the
server space, but people need to really stop pretending that they can just
tweak that story a bit and push it into the desktop space, it still needs a
ton more work to get there.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
The fact that you are being downvoted is a pretty good data point for why the
Linux Desktop sucks and continues to suck.

Rather than develop something good, the people who work on and evangelize the
Linux Desktop would rather stick their fingers in their ears and pretend that
everyone who doesn't use it is just too stupid to see how obviously superior
it is.

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hspak
Is there anything preventing the Linux Foundation jumping in and officially
supporting a desktop environment? Is it because the two main DE’s are already
more-or-less backed by a foundation and the LF hopping in would fragment it
even further?

Ubuntu tried for a while to lead their own efforts (MIR/Unity) and in the end,
they pulled the plug and decided to just adopt Wayland/Gnome. Do people
consider this a good change for the linux desktop landscape?

~~~
_emacsomancer_
> Is there anything preventing the Linux Foundation jumping in and officially
> supporting a desktop environment?

How would it change anything? Stock Ubuntu, Stock Fedora, Stock Red Hat, Suse
Enterprise Linux at least all ship Gnome Shell as the default desktop. If the
LF said "Gnome Shell is the default 'official' Linux desktop", what would
change? I don't think Best Buy would immediately begin stocking Linux
desktops.

------
NullOtoko
Sadly, this is the nature of open source and decentralization. If your code
can be easily forked, if consumers have freedom and control instead of an
authoritarian entity gatekeeping what can be done with their software, then
fragmentation will occur.

As users tweak and change systems and software to meet their needs, a variety
of options and choices become available. Each branch on the tree results in
further fragmentation. For the standard user this is a bad thing as it means
they can't just learn one widespread system. For users like me this is a boon,
because it gives variety. If I don't like how Gnome works, I can use KDE, if I
don't like APT I can use YUM. If I don't like SystemD, I can use another INIT
system.

------
killjoywashere
Desktop Linux is like the Hogworts limit of academic incentives: wonderful
baubbles to play with appear constantly, as if from thin air, but you're never
getting an Air Force or intercontinental shipping system out of it.

------
Santosh83
Linux not gaining majority maindshare on the desktop may have something in
common with why Chrome _has_ gained just that in browser space, i.e., getting
bundled in or preinstalled. The vast majority of PC/laptop users will not have
a compelling reason to change the OS that comes preinstalled with their
computer, and that is almost always Windows. If Linux can find an OEM to
massively push it out on a range of machines (not just targetted at
developers), then we'll see the tide turn, but I suspect OEM will fear the
wrath of the behemoth...

~~~
chmln
> Linux can find an OEM to massively push it out on a range of machines

Who is Linux?

I feel like the Linux Foundation won't do much to dethrone Windows, with
Microsoft as a platinum dollar bag on board.

------
newnewpdro
It's as if Linus is oblivious to Google's Fuchsia effort. Before Linux
conquers the desktop via ChromeOS, ChromeOS will have pivoted away from even
running it on bare metal.

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therealmarv
It's not that. It's that if I create and want to sell desktop software I would
not loose substantial user base by NOT supporting Linux. I would concentrate
my investments on Windows and/or maybe macOS and Linux is third and only nice
to have. Nearly nobody makes big money with Linux desktop programs. Companies
like e.g. Adobe know that.

~~~
danShumway
On the other side of things, if I wanted to support _only_ Windows, I would
need to use Windows as a development machine, which would be a substantial
loss to productivity for me.

I don't feel like Windows in its current state is a platform that I would
recommend to anyone who uses computers as a professional.

So when I get to which platforms I support, if it's something personal for me,
I only support Linux. If it's something that I plan to sell, I support Windows
because that's where the money is, and Linux because, well, I've got this
build sitting here, so I might as well throw it out as an experimental build
(see Spotify, Unity, Reaper, etc...). Even if I'm developing a game that will
rely on Windows specific APIs, I prefer to put those parts in last and do the
majority of development on Linux.

The exception to that is if I know I'm going to be doing a lot of support. I
feel like handling support for Linux users is worse than handling support for
Windows users, and will often cost me more time and money in the long run.

So when I think about much bigger environments like Adobe, I'm sure they have
Linux builds internally, because I just don't believe that their entire
development staff would be content to use Windows. I would be willing to bet
pretty heavily that there's a subset of Adobe engineers who have internal
builds of Photoshop compiling on Linux.

But compiling Photoshop for Linux is not the only challenge to actually
releasing it on Linux. Linux fragmentation means you never know when something
is going to go terribly wrong because somebody swapped out a random part of
the host OS. It means another testing environment, and another set of internal
documents about production deployments.

I feel Linux is currently hands down the best engineering environment out
there. But engineers don't handle support calls. So I would hazard that a lot
more software is out there that _could_ already run on Linux, but just hasn't
been released.

~~~
pjmlp
Usually engineers at companies like Adobe use whatever the IT department
allows their computer images to be.

Normally rogue installs aren't well seen from security point of view.

------
kristianp
That opinion has been around for a while; see: One Frickin' User Interface for
Linux (2003)

[http://web.archive.org/web/20070830173313/https://cs.anu.edu...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070830173313/https://cs.anu.edu.au/people/Hugh.Fisher/writing/1fui.html)

~~~
Alan_Dillman
No friggin way. Only having one user interface is what drove me away from
Windows.

I'm not alone in my desire to have things my way, and to meddle with
everything. Every time someone rolls out a new distro, a new package manager,
or just a new DE, Its because someone wasn't satisfied with following someone
else's lead.

All of us, you, me, the author of that article, Linus, and Stallman, have one
unifying trait: "Not satisfied with the menu".

Collectively, Linux is never going to be satisfied with any menu.

The linux community exists as a perpetual diaspora. It was born from people
wandering away from fiat design. The vast disjointed ecosystem happened
because of this adventuresome spirit, and its delusion to think that any sort
of 'one size should fit all' paradigm is going to quell that.

Or that it could be enforced.

"The 1FUI will require the backing of a major vendor as champion and enforcer
to succeed."

I don't know what that author thinks, fifteen years later. I'd tell him that
"Fewer options is never a solution to people who went looking for more
options".

The Linux community has spent 27 years persistently solving a problem: Not
enough options. 'One Frickin User Interface' is like trying to make a river
flow uphill.

------
sys_64738
For me, the weakness in Linux on the desktop is laptop battery is generally
poor compared to running Microsoft or Mac OS X. Second is multiple monitor
support is such a hassle in Linux. For Microsoft it is an excellent experience
and OS X isn't too bad either.

A couple of data points to ponder.

------
valrama
Well, you just wait - Microsoft is going to come to our rescue:
[https://www.zdnet.com/article/ms-linux-lindows-could-
microso...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/ms-linux-lindows-could-microsoft-
release-a-desktop-linux/)

------
sakthimurugan
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chennai/)

------
dschuetz
The title is not just click-bait, it's flat-out wrong. Instead of failing it's
become even more successful over the years, because of the efforts of
thousands of maintainers and developers. The recent support/endorsement from
Valve is just another success story. And Linus is not the only one who's
identified several competing major software projects as the main culprit for
Linux desktop lacking traction in the past years.

I'm surprised though, that systemd was adopted unanimously almost immediately
on every major distribution over classic Init despite lots criticism and
protests. But they can't agree on which GUI is best for a Linux desktop? Why
is that I wonder?

~~~
mateuszf
> Why is that I wonder?

Maybe because"configuring" packages and services (main job of init system
"users") is lot easier than writing gui applications. App developers use so
many languages and frameworks (often with failing cross platforms
abstractions) that it would be really hard to "force" them to use a common
standard.

------
nabla9
Mixing music over the voice did not work for this video.

------
mverwijs
OT: I wish Youtube / technology in general had an option to filter out noisy
background music.

------
agentPrefect
Which is what a lot of people have been saying for a very long time.

------
RandomTisk
Every desktop distro needs to have a "Home User" GUI configuration option
either as a default or an option during the setup. This should emulate the UX
of either Windows or MacOS as closely and as shamelessly as possible.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Linux Desktop's failure isn't, and never has been, that it just doesn't look
enough like Windows. People have been saying variations of that idea for
decades now and look where it has gotten us. Stop looking down on users as
stupid people who don't have good reasons for the choices they make and need
to be fooled into using your system!

------
facorreia
Poor sleep or suspend support is much worse.

------
NetOpWibby
I'm so glad I come to the comments.

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marmot777
As someone who recently used a Linux laptop for a week before punting and
going back to Mac, finding this talk right now is a cool coincidence.

~~~
VvR-Ox
interesting. What where the reasons if I may ask and what about OSX/macOS did
you miss on linux?

~~~
marmot777
I love Linux for servers but I have a lot tools that work a certain way for
work and it would have taken more time than I had to get my Linux set up that
way. Part of it was frankly the Linux laptop I ordered was made of cheap
plastic, and the track pad didn’t work very well. I was disappointed I spent
all that money and they skimped on things that really affect the user
experience.

So it could be I ordered a Linux laptop from the wrong company. Of course, I
won’t name names.

I was behind on my work, stressed out, and having trouble sleeping so I sent
the laptop back and bought a MacBook.

So in thinking about it, if the laptop had been made of higher quality
material and the track pad had worked well, I ay well have had a different
experience. It also fell in a week where I head very limited time.

------
Joeri
I doubt there’s a single reason why desktop linux failed. I do know why I
stopped using it: driver support, lack of some of the commercial apps I wanted
(and no good open source alternatives), constant rewriting of things that were
fine as they were. The former two are indirectly caused by the lack of an ABI,
the latter due to the nature of volunteer development work (maintaining is
less fun than rewriting).

~~~
opan
What sort of commercial apps weren't available that you needed? Is it
something like Photoshop where you found the alternatives lacking, or
something more niche where there was nothing like it at all?

