A Glimpse at the Linux Desktop of the Future

hisham writes "Every now and then we see articles pointing out "what's wrong with Linux on the desktop." This one gives a nice overview not only of the problems we all know, but also where to look for solutions (app dirs, smarter filesystems) and what's out there (projects trying to change the face of Linux, like Klik, Zero Install and GoboLinux). Still, it usually boils down to things that Mac OS X already has or that are/were touted for inclusion on MS Longhorn. Fortunately, the major desktops stopped playing catch and are focusing on forward-looking Linux projects, like KDE Plasma and Gnome Beagle. Interesting times ahead."

one click

[zogger]

one click app installs exist on linux from places like Linspire, so it's possible that other distros could do it as well. And a front end like synaptic makes it pretty darn easy, and is more advanced than what redmond offers.

Linux is ready for the desktop,*especially* for grandma, it just needs to be preinstalled and sold like that in the big retail shops. And frankly, with hard drive sizes like there are now, getting a computer with dozens/hundreds of apps preinstalled and available in the GUI menu tree would tend to negate any reason for grandma to even go looking for more apps. And people who actually have a need for more exotic apps usually have the wherewithal to go find them and install them, on any platform.

Re:Dear Linux

[SillyNickName4me]

Odd...

X-windows allowed me to make modlines for very odd displays with very unusual resolutions..

I have yet to hear why that can't be done for this specific one..

Re:Dear Linux

[Markus_UW]

I have my 1280x800 working just fine... If I'm not mistaken, thats a rather similar aspect ratio, and a bizarre resolution. And my sound chipset doesn't work on a clean install of Windoze, but Slackware and ALSA found it just fine (and so did Fedora, Ubuntu, and SuSE).

Already posted on Linux Today

[kbmccarty]

FYI, this article has already been ripped to shreds in the comments at Linux Today:

here [linuxtoday.com]

Re:Two stories

[ncw]

Linux -- Plug it in, grep dmesg for information, create a mount point, guess exactly which partition to mount, and it works. And then I edited /etc/fstab in vi so it'll be even easier next time!

That's been my experience up until quite recently too.

However I got a new laptop for my wife recently, so I thought I'd have a go with ubuntu. Ubuntu was a dream to install, and everything just worked with two small exceptions (suspend and xv) which is pretty good for a brand new laptop.

I was extremely impressed when I plugged my Crucial USB memory stick in, and it just appeared (by magic) on the backdrop.

I believe linux has now caught up in that area!

I don't normally notice this sort of thing though, since I only really use x-windows so I can fit more rxvt & emacs on the screen ;-)

the best of all worlds

[mnemonic_]

Why doesn't someone try to combine the best of linux and make a decent distro? Something like:

• Gentoo's portage
• Knoppix's auto hardware detection and configuration
• Slackware's BSD-style rc.scripts
• Mandrake's installer and partitioning tool

There's a lot of stuff in the Linux world that could tackle the most common Linux concerns, but no one has tried combining them. Why not? Linux will not advance on the desktop without some realization that no distro is perfect, but by taking from multiple distros one can get pretty close.

Re:Two stories

[shish]

My experience:

• Ubuntu -- plug it in, it works
• Windows XP -- plug it in, ~1/20th of the time the drive randomly gets corrupted and locks up any app using it (including scandisk).

After plugging back into ubuntu and running fsck.vfat, it detects a load of errors but corrects them and it works again in both OSes.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Dear Linux

[henrywood]

Why, just last year, I tried to get you to work with my 23" Apple Cinedisplay.

OS/X - why just yesterday I tried to get you to work with my Athlon 64 PC and ...

Re:Mac OS X didn't work this morning

[B3ryllium]

What are the odds that the system was trying to preserve metadata attached to the files that only HFS+ would be able to store?

Re:I used to care about the "Linux Desktop"

[TheRaven64]

Licensing. Qt is GPL. This means that it's great from the point of view of Free Software, but rubbish from the point of view of Open Source software. Free Software says that all software should be Free, and any software written using Qt has to be GPL'd so that's fine. Open Source software says that eventually all software should be free, but in the meantime we need compromises.

Actually, Qt does offer a compromise. They offer expensive licenses, which raise the barrier for entry considerably. Basically, two classes of people can develop for KDE:

1. GPL developers.
2. Developers working for large corporations who can afford Qt commercial licenses.

This rules out:

• Small companies wanting to do a cheap *NIX port of their Windows / Mac app.
• Freeware / shareware authors.
• BSD or other GPL-incompatible Free Software developers.

If not everyone can develop for a platform, then those that can't will develop for something else. Anyone can develop for GNOME, since it it LGPL'd - even commercial developers.

Ironically, GNOME is an official GNU project, while KDE isn't.

Re:Desktop icons

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude. From TFA:

For the purposes of easy to access files, it is in the user's interest to allow selected files to appear on the Desktop. In the proposed interface, the Desktop would be merely a label used by the system to identify which files should appear. As a result, the right click menu and/or toolbars can provide the user with the option to add or remove the file from the Desktop. The key difference between how this would work in a DBFS vs. a regular system, is that the file is never moved in a DBFS. If the file is already organized, it will not have to move to appear on the Desktop. Rather, the file simply has the Desktop label added. Removing that label would have no effect on the file other than to make it disappear from the desktop area.

Re:Seamless Vs Extensibility

[matvei]

One seldom commented disadvantage of tightly integrated desktops like Gnome/KDE is their lack of extensibility.

It's seldom commented because there is no such thing. The interoperability features that KDE provides are way more advanced than UNIX pipes.

Case in point: DCOP [wikipedia.org]. Using the console DCOP client, or the DCOP APIs you can control almost every KDE program from your scripts. For example, if you want to pop up the K menu at the mouse cursor, just call `dcop kicker kicker popupKMenu 0`. Want to switch to the next virtual desktop using your script? No problem: `dcop kwin KWinInterface nextDesktop`.

With the evolving desktop, people stop writing general purpose tools that abstract data and functionalities as simple files and scripts, and instead write their stuff for specific desktops.

I don't really understand what your point is. AFAIK (correct me if I'm wrong) there is nothing stopping you from using DCOP calls from a GNOME or XFCE application. If you are interacting with application X from your script, your script naturally depends on X. It doesn't matter if you use DCOP, D-BUS [wikipedia.org] or pipes to do that.

Re:Dear Linux

[henrywood]

God, what a literal soul you are! I was making a - obviously somewhat obscure - comment about all these "xxx hardware doesn't work with Linux" remarks.

Look at it the other way round: Athlon 64 doesn't work with OS/X, Pentium doesn't work with OS/X, iSeries doesn't work with OS/X, Amiga doesn't work with OS/X, Sparc doesn't ...

Glad the "douches" could perceive the slight tinge of sarcasm and get to the (informative) point of my remarks.

Does that make any more sense?

Nothing sadder than those who complain when the moderators don't accord with their predjudices!

Re:Desktop icons

[AKAImBatman]

Hello, Mr. Smith. You might want to reread my article. Immediately after the sentence you quoted is this:

For the purposes of easy to access files, it is in the user's interest to allow selected files to appear on the Desktop. In the proposed interface, the Desktop would be merely a label used by the system to identify which files should appear. As a result, the right click menu and/or toolbars can provide the user with the option to add or remove the file from the Desktop.

It tends to help to read the entire article before commenting. Don't worry, though. You're in good company. A large vocal user base has been misinterpreting my ideas since they've been posted. I'm working on a followup blog to see if I can hammer a few of these misunderstanding out. ;-)

Mods? How about a few points so that this correction will appear on par with parent post?

Re:Change the people, not the software...

[matvei]

Providing an easier interface (an abstraction layer) over the existing tools does not take anything away from the power users. They can always choose to ignore the interface and use the underpinnings directly. For example, I can drive a car but I have no idea of what's going on under the hood. I still have the need to drive the car and every right to do so. Likewise a car mechanic needs and has every right to use a computer. If a person does not have a degree in computer science, that does not mean that he is dumb.

Higher levels of abstraction don't mean decreased efficiency. If they would, we'd still be writing all the software in assembly.

SymphonyOS???

[charnov]

I can't believe no one has mentioned Symphony and it's eadically different interface. SymphonyOS [symphonyos.com]

Re:Dear Linux

[SenorChuck]

Actually, you can install the Creative sound drivers without the stupid original CD. I had to do this just yesterday.

I followed the instructions which I found here: http://www.help2go.com/postt14349.html [help2go.com]

Hope this is useful to someone.

Re:self-installing applications is a bad idea

[youknowmewell]

I disagree. I think the real problem is that many developers, administrators, and users don't like the idea of trusting an application to install itself correctly on a system....

Autopackage allows one to install a package without a root password, so it must install it in the home directory, thereby avoiding any conflict with existing files. I'm not aware of any mechanism that rpm or yum has to automatically detect 'tampering' of already-installed files (such as through a worm or virus). I'm not aware of any measures autopackage takes to ensure that a package is not a virus or spyware, but in theory they could have developers register in a 'trusted packages' list that autopackage would ping each time a user tried to install a package. Then if the package isn't from a 'trusted source' than a dialogue would pop up to warn the user of potential danger associated with installing this package. Then of course, there is the probelm of statically linked libraries. There does seem to be a potential security issue with that, and it would be more of a hassle for the user to update all his apps to plug a security hole. Then again, autopackage could hold a database with a list of all installed libraries across all installed apps, and then one could download a .package file and have it update all instances of X library. Autopackage doesn't have update abilities yet, but in the future his may become a possibility.

You can double click a rpm file and have it install itself, but it requires the root password to do so, and it doesn't handle dependencies like autopackage does.

Really, the three major advantages that autopackage has are cross-platform compatiblity with other distros, the resolution of dependencies without being required to go to yum or Synaptic, and faster distribution of software among different distros (one doesn't have to wait for their repos to be updated with the package, one can just go to the developer's web site and install it from their .package file, regardless of their distro). The ability to just click on a .package file and have it install itself and any dependencies is a big advantage. But autopackage also lacks things that rpm and deb has, and so autopackage isn't a replacement for rpms or debs, but rather a partner with them to make installing certain pieces of software easier.

Re:Linux desktop of the now!!!

[oliverthered]

The more testes the better,
At the moment I'm merging everything with wine, but in a week or so there should be lots of testing to do...

drop me an email at [e-mail] and I'll let you know when enough works been merged into wine that many games should be playable.

Sofar the Directx 9 playable games include:
Halflife 2.
Rolercoster tycoon 3
Teenage mutant ninja turtles
Colin Macea rally 2004
Kohan 2
Axis and Allies
The increadables
Warhammer 40k
Evil Genius
Pirates
Robots
Settlers heritage of the king.