Linus Torvalds: 'I Still Want the Desktop' 727
darthcamaro writes: Linux has clawed its way into lots of places these days. But at the LinuxCon conference in Chicago today Linus Torvalds was asked where Linux should go next. Torvalds didn't hesitate with his reply. "I still want the desktop," Torvalds said, as the audience erupted into boisterous applause. Torvalds doesn't see the desktop as being a kernel problem at this point, either, but rather one about infrastructure. While not ready to declare a "Year of the Linux Desktop" he still expects that to happen — one day.
Nobody else seems to want it (Score:5, Funny)
If he waits a little longer, he can probably just take it without anybody noticing.
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If he waits a little longer, he can probably just take it without anybody noticing.
Great point. Maybe we can take over tablets and cell phones with Linux, er, Android, er, whatever... It's not like Microsoft is making much of a play for these... (Windows 8, 8.1, and 9 not withstanding)
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Well, actually, if mobile, the cloud and chromebooks take enough of the market away from the traditional desktop, Microsoft has 2 choices. Either raise the price of Windows to make up for the declining market or lower the price of Windows to fend off the competition. If the price of Windows goes up - and the traditional desktop is only necessary for a limited kind of user, then Linux wins what's left of that market by virtue of the cheap price. If the price goes down, Microsoft may continue to dominate,
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Re:Nobody else seems to want it (Score:5, Interesting)
As a monopoly, Microsoft gets to hold the proverbial "gun" to device vendors heads and say, "support our OS on our schedule exactly how we say we'll fucking destroy your market and feed you to your competitors". Thus, Windows drivers get support from device manufacturers. Linux device drivers come from begging, pleading, and sometimes reverse engineering and all volunteer efforts of the open source community. Sometimes this happens despite hostile responses and legal threats from device vendors. My hope is that some day Linux will get to wield that gun...
Re:Nobody else seems to want it (Score:4, Interesting)
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"support our OS on our schedule exactly how we say we'll fucking destroy your market and feed you to your competitors".
Actually it's more just basic economics, if you want to sell hardware to people who run Windows then not supporting Windows isn't going to be a good choice now is it?
Linux device drivers come from begging, pleading, and sometimes reverse engineering and all volunteer efforts of the open source community.
Obviously, since Linux has like 3% of the market. Again basic economics dictates that you wouldn't put anywhere near as much support into it, not to mention one of the biggest selling points of Linux is that you can use it to repurpose old hardware. Did you know very few hardware vendors support Minix? Or Hurd? Or Amoeba? Or Mach? And nor shoul
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As a monopoly, Microsoft gets to hold the proverbial "gun" to device vendors heads and say, "support our OS on our schedule exactly how we say we'll fucking destroy your market and feed you to your competitors". Thus, Windows drivers get support from device manufacturers..
Now tell us about the Vista drivers
@bADlOGIN - Re:Nobody else seems to want it (Score:3)
As a monopoly, Microsoft gets to hold the proverbial "gun" to device vendors heads and say, "support our OS [or] we'll fucking destroy your market ...".
No, MS do not need to hold a gun or say anything.
Any hardware maker, unless they are very very specialised, will first write drivers for Windows simply because ~95% of their market is going to be Windows users. After that they might write drivers for Linux perhaps to pick up a few more sales (like that's why I buy HP printers) and/or just in case next year really does become the year of the Linux desktop.
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I'm a Linux (and UNIX and Windows) user, but I honestly know very little about how drivers in Linux differ from drivers in, say, Windows, or any other OS for that matter. Could you explain what the issues are? I Googled for "Linux driver model" but didn't find anything particularly enlightening.
Whne a smug Windows users wants to coomplain about Linux drivers, just ask them about how Vista handled drivers.
Then sit back and listen to the litany of replies blaming everyone else but Microsoft. Meanwhile a lot of contemporary peripherals were just unusable. ALthough they still worked on Linux.
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There's nothing wrong with drivers in Linux; hairyfeet always bitches about drivers in Linux but he really doesn't know what he's talking about.
The main controversy with Linux drivers is that they're tightly tied to the kernel, and maintained with it; there is no standardized API or ABI for Linux drivers, so a driver for one kernel version will likely not work with other versions; drivers have to be ported between kernel versions. In addition, drivers are absolutely not binary-compatible between kernel ver
Re:Nobody else seems to want it (Score:4, Informative)
So what you are saying is that NVIDIA and ATI don't release closed source binary-only drivers? I wonder what this whole tainted kernel thing is about then?
I wrote a FUSE driver for a toy fs in Linux a VFS driver to do the same thing in kernel-space, and it's funny, I don't remember getting cooperation "from the " whole "Linux kernel team". Apparently Basil Brush and hairyfeet are involved in anti-Linux FUD.
Re:Nobody else seems to want it (Score:4, Informative)
This is complete BS. Drivers can be delivered as source and built on the target machine or as binaries with the appropriate packageing. For example, drivers can be delivered like the ElRepo kABI-tracking kmods [elrepo.org] (this includes such things as the Nvidia drivers), or installed via DKMS.
What is true however is that, without an open-source shim layer, drivers have to be delivered as source, which some closed-source bigots hate.
Re:Nobody else seems to want it (Score:5, Insightful)
In Linux, there is no ABI. Drivers have to be accepted and included in the kernel source tree. Yes really. It's that well thought out.
This means that you have to have code review from the Linux kernel team. And you have to divulge any amateur or buggy code embodied in the source. Which may compromise the imaginary advantage your marketdroids think they have on other platforms.
FTFY
Re:Nobody else seems to want it (Score:5, Interesting)
This means that you have to have code review from the Linux kernel team. And you have to divulge any amateur or buggy code embodied in the source. Which may compromise the imaginary advantage your marketdroids think they have on other platforms.
God yes this. 1000 times this.
One particular example I remember well was TV capture cards in the early/mid 2000s.
Basically the chipset was the Brooktree BT878, which was actually pretty good though remarably cheap. I ended up with a few capture cards what people gave to me because "they didn't work".
That meant they didn't work on Windows. Every manufacturer wrote their own buggy, unstable, system crashy drivers and put effort into some god-awful shiny TV program which made heavy use of gradients and nonstandard TV controls.
On Linux, they all. just. worked. There was one BT878 driver that was well written and well debugged and "shitty" capture cards that "didn't work" gave years of stable, flawless performance.
The same thing cycled around with webcams. It was a wild-west of chipsets. They'd all work after a fashion on Windows. On Linux, they either worked perfectly or not at all due to lack of drivers. The ones that did work were invariable more stable and more featureful because the driver would be written to expose the full functionality of the chipset.
These days the situation is better on all platforms since the standards people have realised that having standard driver interface makes for a much better experience. xHCI means that any random USB chipset works. Same for bluetooth now too. UVC means any camer works and so on and so forth. It's like magic. You can buy a cheap-ass piece of crap from any random vendor and it will just work, no drivers, no hassle on Windows, Linux and OSX.
The thing is vendors are almost uniformly bad at writing drivers. On Linux this means they don't bother. On Windows the drivers are a pile of crap. Having centrally maintained drivers is in fact a large improvement on BOTH operating systems.
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I agree 100% with you, to this day I have owned several machines that I need to manually download and install wifi and ethernet drivers for them to work on windows, in linux they just work. As matter of fact the only drivers I ever had any problem with in Linux were video card drivers.
I always forget to download the drivers before formatting and then I am stuck with a box that can not get into the internet to download them.
Re:Nobody else seems to want it (Score:4, Funny)
BTW what Torvalds SHOULD have said was "I want the desktop....but not enough to give up my shitty 1970s throwback driver model" because you look at the forums and a good 90% of what the problems in linux get boiled down to is that shitstorm of a driver model,
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. the 70's are gone, but your idea that Linux is still in the 70's shows ye know nought.
Next up, why don't you tell us all about those stupid 1 button mice that apple is still using....
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Uh, DOS most certainly did have drivers. I know for fact you weren't plugging an SB16 into a DOS machine and expecting it t work just by modifying your autoexec.bat and config.sys files. You had to install the drivers for it, first.
I'm sitting right here on my 486DX4 75MHz Toshiba laptop playing Doom on it.
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The first commercial game I shipped, SVGA Air Warrior (November, 1992) came on five 3.5" 1.44MB floppy disks. Three of those disks contained nothing but drivers for various video and sound cards. DOS absolutely had drivers, they were a nightmare to deal with.
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I think it's funny that you'd say this.
DOS had drivers in the form of Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) programs [wikipedia.org].
For instance, you had Microsoft's mouse.sys or mouse.com for standard serial port (and later PS/2) mice.
CD drives required config.sys to load a vendor-specific CD-ROM driver followed by autoexec.bat executing mscdex.exe.
From memory, sound cards notably didn't have drivers built-in, or rather the only startup programs they had just set the ports and interrupts the cards used. (i.e. sb16set)
Re:Nobody else seems to want it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nobody else seems to want it (Score:4, Insightful)
The desktop IS dead, at least in one sense.
If you buy one now, you might never have to buy one again.
Acknowledging that I might be pulling a "640k ought to be enough for everybody", I predict that a current generation mainline i7 and i5 will be sufficient for any "desktop" task more or less for ever (or until we move away from a physical interface like keyboard / mouse and touchscreens).
My 5 1/2 year old desktop is still a solid workhorse and significantly faster than my new $3000 ultrabook.
Re:Nobody else seems to want it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nobody else seems to want it (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Nobody else seems to want it (Score:4, Interesting)
Now you got Windows 8 because desktops aren't as important a market as mobile phones and tablets.
Uhh, no. Don't run that garbage except for testing (and laughing at its craptastic-ness) on a VM. I'm sure that Satya Nadella does *all* his work on his Windows phone. Please.
Is your data in the cloud yet?
Uhh, no. why do I want my private data hosted on "someone else's servers?" (that's the phrase you should substitute when anyone *ever* says "the cloud")
Is your email client a web app?
No. And it won't be anytime soon. Why should I? Standalone mail clients have *enormously* richer feature sets.
Still sure about the future of the desktop?
Eventually, "the desktop" will be commodity monitors and user input devices which you plug your mobile device which contain all your data, applications and other stuff. As long as there are people who need to crunch numbers, write code, write prose, etc, etc, etc, there will always be a market for equipment to allow people to use computing power in a stationary location. The equipment, software, form factors and input devices may change, but there will always be equipment which provides "desktop" like functionality.
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Not to mention that as soon as you host data external to your location you add latency and a failure point.
Why focus on the desktop? (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux has so much going for it in the device market that I don't see why Linus doesn't just double down on it. The future of Linux seems to make more sense as a kernel used for other things (like Android) rather than trying to break into the standalone desktop OS market.
Re:Why focus on the desktop? (Score:4, Informative)
What's he doubling down though? That term implies some stakes are being allocated.
It goes on to say he doesn't think the desktop is a kernel problem. Well, that kind of means he's not spending specific resources on desktop, which means that wanting the desktop doesn't contradict "doubling down" on the device market.
The actual part of the article that talks about investing is when he talked about shrinking Linux and about addressing the embedded market.
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We need a free desktop OS. Linux is the only contender.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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[...]Moving from Snow Leopard to Lion was my greatest mistake. Up to that point I had been a satisfied, kool-aid drinking, cash-spending Appletard.
I totally agree. I miss Snow Leopard very much. Lion was a piece of shit.
I'm currently using Mavericks, and I finally started to like Mac OS again - but I still miss Snow Leopard. Apple managed to dumb down the Mac OS X to a level that, frankly, offends me : why I can't use Expose? I was happy with it.
Re:Why focus on the desktop? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well first of all Linus has never been overly concerned with market share, just building a technically damn good kernel so I doubt this will have much practical influence on his work. It's got to be frustrating though, Linux works on massively huge and complex servers. It works on the smallest mobile and embedded devices. But a regular desktop that from the kernel's side is rather simple, one CPU and usually one GPU and pretty much no exotic devices (from the kernel side all USB devices look the same, for example) and no absurd limits being pushed in any direction.
I think the last real significant desktop feature was when they increased interactivity by changing the default time slice from 100 Hz to 1000 Hz and that was in 2004 or so. Heck, I would say it was at least as ready as the BSD kernel was when Apple created OS X in 2001. It's quite telling that the one thing Google did not want to rewrite when they made Android was the kernel. All else they ripped out and replaced with Apache licensed code, but not that. Well that and a bunch of Google proprietary APIs, but that's another flame war. I think I'd feel just the same in his shoes.
Device market does nothing for Linux ... (Score:3)
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Because he needs a functional to develop the Kernel! :-)
He used to use Gnome Desktop 2, and I prefer not to reproduce what he said when Gnome 3 was spilled out from the Gnome Foundation.
(and I totally agree with him)
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Well, Gnome always was a piece of crap in terms of internal structure and finally that project is imploding. About time. KDE/QT always was the technically superior approach and with Gnome fading it does look like we are heading in the right direction. Of course, we a monoculture would be horribly counterproductive for long term evolution, but there is obviously no danger of that.
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because linux is a kernel, any desktop system that uses linux as its base OS is by definition a "linux desktop"
"KDE/Gnome don't work with each other without both being installed.
bollox, you only need some libraries from either system not fully installed desktops if you want to use a gnome app on KDE (can you do that with OSX and Windows without installing a virtual machine?).
"you need to install everyone's flavor-of-the-week libraries and frameworks, so you end
Oh, the timing... (Score:5, Funny)
Working out of a coffee shop - just hit the slashdot page when one of the passer-bys looked over my shoulder and said "Slashdot? Is that site still around? Are they still talking about the Year of Linux on the Desktop?" ... and then we noticed the first story simultaneously...
Re:Oh, the timing... (Score:5, Funny)
Chrome OS or Android (Score:2)
Re:Chrome OS or Android (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually Chrome OS or Android are toys compared to a full desktop experience. Gnome 3 and Unity has go into the direction of toys for simple applications resulting in the frustration if so much users that projects like XFCE and Mate get attention like never before.
Multi-window and focused activity (Score:3)
"Linux on the Desktop" is called Chrome or Android and the "desktop" is wherever we are instead of a jumble of wires connected to a monitor.
Perhaps "Linux on the multi-window desktop" or "Linux on the desktop in a focused activity setting [theplatform.io]" is a more precise of what some people mean. The Android ecosystem, from the CDD on up, is staunchly opposed to rich window management, instead preferring a paradigm of all maximized all the time that makes it hard to work on one document while referring to another document.
Would be awesome (Score:3)
Would also require that people be able to run most of the apps they want in Linux. Note that though this has long been a problem, the increase in web-based apps is slowly eroding the relevance of any specific OS. Even for games, though the quality of web-based games will always be inferior. And (nearly) everyone likes to play games.
Re: Would be awesome (Score:3)
Why does point and click make the OS less reliable? In any case there's been a GUI free version for 5 years if you want to put yourself through that.
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What really kills open source is that it doesn't have a functional GUI or a dearth of useful apps. It is because it doesn't have what marketing is looking for, vendor lock in for not giving competitors access to the same tools/data sets. It doesn't guarantee high profits, on low margins. It doesn't offer a user base of clueless clickers, who will pay because everyone else is charging for software, and think software means paying money...
Re: Would be awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux could own the desktop... (Score:4, Interesting)
All Google has to do is dump that stupid steaming pile called ChromeOS, and admit that Android wins. A desktop customized version of Android (complete with a real desktop) is still based on Linux (at least Google's fork of it), already has hundreds of thousands of apps, and could be better in nearly every way than Windows or Mac OS-X in 2 years, IMO.
The other broken OS, GNU/Linux, needs a major overhaul before it will ever be popular among anyone but geeks who are willing to accept that their OS is hostile to sharing new apps, or too blinded by fan-boy-ism to notice. I write this from my Ubuntu laptop, where my code contributions are far lower than Android or even Windows, even though I put in most of my effort here. It's just easier to publish an Android app. It's even easier to publish software for Windows. If Mark Shuttleworth were just a bit smarter, I think he'd realize he needs to abandon managing .deb packages and start this whole mess over based on a more git-like aproach. He's done a lot in that direction - user PPAs for example, but it's still not there. No RPM or .deb based Linux OS will ever become the basis for the Year of the Linux Desktop.
Re:Linux could own the desktop... (Score:4, Informative)
Packaging is a very big achievement. Even Android use packaging with APK file. Really, packaging is not the problem. I remember systems before packaging, this was a nightmare. Never return to this hell...
The problem is to have popular tools able to build and publish proper *.deb package as easy as for *.apk packages. For example a good IDE where you find a "new C++ Debian package" button (and others language option of course), fill a simple form and start coding your application from a functional template. Then a "build" button should create the *.deb package and you should be able to debug it. The IDE should have a "Add Debian repository" button with a simple form to create a remote Debian repository using FTP or SSH. Finally the IDE should be able to publish your packages in your remote repository. Like for Android, the IDE should be able to build package compatible with a choice of releases.
From my point of view, the packaging is not the problem. The lack of competitive developers tools advancement in the Linux distribution compared to Android is in my opinion far more the root cause if the problem. While structured very differently, *.deb and *.apk packages target almost the same goals from the system and user point of view.
The situation in creating and publishing *.deb package is actually like if you create and publish *.apk packages all by hand using a lot of command line, instead of a easy and shiny IDE.
Android is not Linux ... (Score:3)
A desktop customized version of Android (complete with a real desktop) is still based on Linux (at least Google's fork of it) ...
Android is not based on Linux. Android is **hosted** on Linux, it is really its own operating system. Most Android apps are Java and have zero interaction with Linux, they only use Android. As for apps that have some native code (c/c++ via NDK) they are usually using legacy c/c++ code that is not Linux based and/or they are using operating system calls that are POSIX based not Linux based.
Linux is just a host for Android. It could be replaced with some other POSIX compliant OS and the vast majority of An
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Android is not based on Linux. Android is **hosted** on Linux, it is really its own operating system.
Complete nonsense. Android is an "operating system" only in market speak. In fact, Android is an application platform, not an operating system. If you doubt me then you need to get an operating system textbook and read for yourself what an operating system actually does. Hint: manage hardware at a low level, presenting a uniform interface for applications; manage memory; schedule execution; enforce security constraints; etc. All of this done by Linux, and not the Android libraries, and much more besides.
Well, you have mine. (Score:3)
My desktop computer at home is running Linux for more than a decade now.
Re:Well, you have mine. (Score:4)
Every time I upgrade to the latest version of slackware, I'm able to simply copy data and I'm right back in business. This matter of having the same data for 10+ years is extremely important to so many people. I wonder how many windows users can say that they have data (and I'm talking about personal files as well as other files, like config files for programs to run as you like them to run - not music, movies etc...) that's 10+ years old. I ran windows for 15+ years prior switching completely to slackware. I ran slackware for more than 6 years before I ever typed 'startx' at a prompt.
I'd also like to point out that fixes for security issues and/or any other update that's required, are almost always released prior to any microsoft fix. Pretty important stuff, especially if you're running any type of server out of your home.
I point all of this out, not out of egoism, but to really say that even running slackware, probably the clunkiest way to run the linux kernel, the X environment is pretty damn stable, and very adapted to the rest of the world. Of course, slackware IS known for it's stability...
Re:Well, you have mine. (Score:5, Funny)
Linux fanboys ftw (Score:2)
We Are the Linux fanboys.
You Will be Assimilated.
Resistance is Futile.
- Linux fanboy :)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Oh it'll happen... (Score:5, Interesting)
They used to have a link to an OpenSuSE live CD to do just that (well, with XFree86/X.Org. Wayland isn't a priority for KDE). It would appear that is no longer present on the site. Also, KDE doesn't really care to be Linux - they target UNIX compatible systems (AIX, FreeBSD). GNOME, on the other hand, wants to be just Linux, and is largely in bed with the Fedora Project.
Re:Oh it'll happen... (Score:4, Insightful)
Right. Because a Window Manager is the OS. All that threading, management of processes, filesystems and the like are just uneeded cruft!
You have what you are asking for available today. You just don't know which distribution to recommend. Your recommendation to relatives should be: "Find someone with a clue and they can help you." Your problem is that you are pretending to have when, when you actually don't
Give your relatives a computer sans OS and try recommending : "Just go get Windows!" and see how far they get before they ask Which version? Home? Premium? 7? What is this Server 2008? Or should I get Server 2012? Maybe I want MS-SQL? What's the difference between 32 bit and 64 bit? How many Gigabytes should be CPU be? The Hard Drive is the box with all the cables coming out, right?
Re:Oh it'll happen... (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a much bigger deal than people seem to think. I tried getting my father set up on Linux not that long ago.
"I need help, this says GNOME needs updating, I thought I was running Linux?"
"You are, Linux is the kernel, but GNOME is the desktop environment."
"Well, what's Debian? It says Debian needs updating."
"You're running the Debian distribution of Linux."
"I thought it was GNOME?"
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What's with all this KDE shit? We all know GNOME is the real package to go with. Only losers use KDE.
Yes, I'm kidding, but now you know exactly why we don't have Linux on the desktop. Linux Ignorance sat around for the better part of a fucking decade bitching back and forth over which desktop package to go with.
Desktop schmesktop. I want to use an application, not stare at some fscking icons, menus or panels all day. Fluxbox with no panel and a dozen virtual screens gives me just that. I basically have one v-screen for each task, for 100% focus. Out of sight, out of mind. The point of a computer is that it can handle much more information than me -- I'd just get lost in all that, instead I'll just do one thing at a time, and do it well.
Of course, that's just, like, my opinion, man. If someone wants to recreate
And Russia wants to be the USSR again ...... (Score:3)
careful what you wish for (Score:5, Funny)
It's not a kernel problem (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is the GUI. People don't like X, and Linux people have no desire to give us anything else. Engineers and enthusiasts may well argue that it's better from various objective reasons but the end user doesn't care. They use it and they think it sucks. Perhaps the problem is that it still pretty much needs the shell. Perhaps it's large, slow and clunky. Perhaps it's the poor support for games.
Android doesn't have these problems because the developers didn't cripple themselves with X. TiVos and Tomtoms (before switching to Android) used Linux without X and people were quite happy with them.
Give us a nice, simple, standard GUI without a bazillion customisations, and with the ability to to just install an app from the GUI and run it from the GUI, and Linux might actually work on the desktop.
Re:It's not a kernel problem (Score:4, Insightful)
> The problem is the GUI. People don't like X
A stupid noisy minority of techno-hipsters don't like X. For the rest of us it's invisible and no more bothersome than the graphics subsystem on any other platform.
The problem with your rant is that the still marginal market share of Apple refutes it. Linux in other forms was able to gain traction because of lack of an entrenched monopoly (or being the monopoly).
Apple demonstrates that applying the "one true way" approach to the desktop won't help you get away from Microsoft.
So there's no real point in sabotaging Linux just to suit some delusion that ignores reality on the ground.
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The problem is the GUI. People don't like X, and Linux people have no desire to give us anything else.
I seriously doubt the premise that the common user cares about X enough to not like it. The operating system is a platform for people to run the programs they need to accomplish certain tasks. Windows will continue to be the heavyweight champion because there is so much legacy crap out there which nobody cares to port over to other platforms. It's not a matter of saying that Linux has application A which is fully compatible with application B on Windows; it's a matter of saying that a user can accomplish
Apple as a model (Score:4, Insightful)
Linus does not understand the size of the effort (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft probably has somewhere between 6 and 20 thousand engineers working on device drivers for various windows versions out there making about 80k a pop. Sorry but Linux simply does not have these kinds of resources. It would be nice but I don't see it happening.
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Microsoft probably has somewhere between 6 and 20 thousand engineers working on device drivers for various windows versions out there making about 80k a pop. Sorry but Linux simply does not have these kinds of resources. It would be nice but I don't see it happening.
Try 500-600. Most of those are "project managers" too who farm the work out to Indian contractors. Microsoft doesn't have the development force you think they do.
I suggest Kickstarter (Score:3)
I use Mint 17 Linux daily, but what I miss, what is really lacking are Adobe apps. Someone should start a kickstarter for Linux ports. Adobe is already familiar with Qt ( I think I read Lightroom is Qt) so they have the experience.
Let's put our money where our mouth is and get adobe to Kickstart the ports.
It no longer matters. (Score:4, Insightful)
The days of paying hundreds of dollars for an operating system and compiler are (thankfully) gone. The OS is irrelevant anyways; you go to where the applications are; anything else is just silly...
ease of use (Score:3)
I use Linux, almost exclusively, but I can see one of the major problems preventing migration that many linux developers cannot. It's confusing and difficult for the average user to learn where all the configuration files are and what they do. The moment you expect a new user to open a terminal you've already placed a giant barrier to adoption in the way. Certain distros have made giant leaps of progress in this matter but it's still a problem for all.
Want to make a minor adjustment to how your sound card works? Command line. Want to tell your laptop to ignore the touchpad? Command line. Want to use Tor? Command line. Want to install software that's no on the Ubuntu Software center? Command line. I understand that GUI is a dirty word to some developers. I understand the focus on making things work before worrying about making them easy. But the path to the year of Linux on the desktop is paved with intuitive, simple, GUI driven configuration and computer usage.
How Linux wins the Desktop (Score:4, Interesting)
How Linux wins the Desktop
1. We need a "Default". Not necessarily a default Distro, but a set of standards that all distros can follow. Of course, other options will be allowed, even encouraged. Rationale: We need the "fragmentation" problem to be addressed, and I would suggest that a good start would to have a standard interface that is common across all of "Linux".
2. We need an easy way to manage a large group of computers. Large or small, businesses and schools want to make the configuration of their computers easy. Examples: Mass deploy Chrome. Setup a lab of computers to use a single printer. Setup logins with permissions and shared home folders. Rationale: These features are easy to configure on Windows and Mac OS X, but not so easy on Linux.
3. Easy Deployment. There needs to be a scriptable deployment that can mass install Linux onto multiple computers easily, including initial setup and joining of whatever management system is being used. While "image based" deployment can work, native installation deployment with configuration would be better. Rationale: If it is going to compete against Windows and Mac OS X, it has to be as easy to deploy.
I'm sure there are some projects that already fill some of these needs... but it's not there yet.
Ugh (Score:4, Interesting)
I think if you want the desktop it's going to take another linux-kernel-level effort around the GUI. The question is do we keep trying to put more band-aids on X11 or do we design something from the ground up that everyone can agree on?
Linus wants the Desktop? (Score:5, Insightful)
So I recommend him to start his own Desktop project. :-)
Seriously, I don't know of, now, any other Open Source leader capable of doing a decent Desktop. Torvalds finishes what he starts, and he finishes it vrey well (see git).
We had very good Desktops in the past, but nowadays things are just too shiny and too new and... too dumbed down to be useful to me: who knows me from other /. posts about this matter knows why I migrated to MacOS two years ago, and don't plan to migrate back in the short run.
I still love Linux - all my non desktop machines are Linux, no questions asked. But I just can't handle any of the present mainstream Desktops to use Linux again on my working box.
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You guys no nothing about Linus or how he likes to use his desktop. It's funny how people export their dreams and ideas to one man like this.
I follow the guy on G+. I did read what he said about Gnome 3 at that time in first hand.
But you can read about it here [slashdot.org].
The guy is not remotely qualified to write a desktop. Have you seen all the commands in git? The first round was a usability nightmare. Hell he himself would admit that.
Linus wrote Linux 0.99, a really little piece of crap compared to any usable UNIX kernel at that time. But yet, he managed to lead this project in a way that now Linux is probably the most used kernel (UNIX like or not) in the world. And the thing is really good (but granted, perhaps not the best).
Linus wrote git, a really piece of crap compared to any usable DCMS at that time. But yet, he
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perhaps you can enlighten us as to why he's wrong, and what the linux kernel has to do to better support desktop environments?
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perhaps you can enlighten us as to why he's wrong
I never said he was wrong... Only that he's true to form..
Re:Torvalds is true to form.... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's GNU/Linux's fault. Android, still based on Linux, could likely win the desktop if Google got their act together and stopped pushing ChromeOS. Notice how my binary applications run on *very* many Android devices without recompilation, even when I write in C using the NDK. Notice how Android does not introduce bugs in my applications by swapping in a buggy shared library which I never tested. Notice how nearly impossible it is to publish a GNU/Linux app in comparison. In one case, you just publish your app to Google and wait a day or so. Notice how my app simply installs in a comparitavely secure jailed directory rather than having to disperse crap all over the file system. For Linux, you need to write and test different and binary incompatible installatoin packages for RedHat, Arch, Debian, Suse, then wait a few years for your package to be accepted and migrate from unstable to testing to stable, and even then you don't run everywhere.
Just freaking stupid.... year of the GNU/Linux Desktop my butt!
On a completely unrelated note, WTF is up with the new slashdot site? I had the newly dumbed-down ads disabled with a check-box. The check box is gone, and the ads are back, and dumber than ever! I miss the days of Barracuda ads that made sense on slashdot. The new ones aren't targeted at geeks at all.
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It's not his fault.
Linux is a kernel, an a great one at that.
GNU is a desktop, and isn't dominant right now, but it's very popular among large groups of users, some corporate included.
Re:Infrastructure? (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately the stuff piled on top of it is either not keeping up with trends (X and the way modern video changes on the fly), or not really good at handling what a user would want automagically.
I attempted to use the most integrated desktop with vanilla Ubuntu 14.04, but I found its window manager to be so restrictive as to be useless to me. It handled a lot automagically, but not what I wanted, and it was also very unclear how to go about getting to what I needed to change. It wasn't even intuitive on how to bring up a terminal window, for example, which is basically the bulk of what I use Linux for.
The lack of documentation is also hurting, badly. I'm working on building a multiseat box at home and LightDM was redone sometime between Ubuntu 12.04 and 14.04, and there wasn't any good support documentation explaining how the configuration files now work. I ended up switching to kdm even though I'm not using KDE, just so that I could configure a display manager that would actually work right.
I think that the golden age of FOSS documentation is over. For a long time Linux and other FOSS docs were based on how commercial UNIX documentation was written, but slowly more and more developers aren't creating volumes of use or configuration docs in the UNIX model anymore, and as few UNIX-era developers work on Linux and other FOSS, there are less people who remember how those documents were made and why. I think that is what will hurt FOSS the most, simply being unable to figure out how to do the things that one wants to do because the docs don't exist.
Re:Infrastructure? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the main problem is that Linux is *TOO* configurable. "Normals" don't want hundreds of options. They want people to tell them which of a limited number of options will work for them.
Which distro should I pick? Which window manager should I pick? How do I configure my computer to be optimal for *ME*? I'm a techie and I can't tell you which distro is really the best for most people. I can tell you which ones are more stable.....but it isn't just ONE.
With Windows....and even Apple.....those choices are more or less made for you. All a "normal" needs to do is decide which apps they need to run and whether their OS supports those apps.
Neither do some geeks (Score:4, Informative)
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I think the main problem is that Linux is *TOO* configurable. "Normals" don't want hundreds of options. They want people to tell them which of a limited number of options will work for them.
I hate being an ass... but, shut the fuck up you stupid moron. YOU are the reason Gnome sucks.
It is not the number of options that are available, it is how they are presented. You remove the ability to configure, you remove the most important part of your user base.
DO NOT EVER MAKE IT LESS CONFIGURABLE.
If someone is telling you it is too confusing, give sane defaults and then think of a way to organize the configuration options in such a way that the ordinary user does not feel they need to go in and start
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Not the ones using KDE as the desktop
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Linux has also been superior on the desktop for quite some time.
Superior by what definition? Stability? sure, I'll give you that. ease of use? I doubt it.
I've been a linux only user for over a decade but it still doesn't work as smoothly as windows out of the box.
I occasionally still run into random problems like wifi failing to connect, can't read a cd which windows has no problem with,
wifi card is not supported, etc... Granted most thinks come with windows drivers but even when they do happen to
include linux drivers the linux drivers are often an afterthought and
Buy a chromebook and install Linux on it ... (Score:3)
However laptops have always been very troublesome. I have figured out a solution. Buy a chromebook and install Linux on it.
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You don't know what "out of the box" means. You pick any laptop with Windows pre-installed and buy another and let me install and configure Linux and put it in a box. You will then see how a Windows system when compared to a Linux system is inferior "out of the box". Everybody wants to bundle properly installing and configuring an OS as part of the user experience. It isn't.
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How much say did you get in how Microsoft, the laptop vendor and all those little annoying trialware app vendors configured the Windows install?
Re:Infrastructure? (Score:4, Informative)
The difference is that Linux desktop comes running out of the box.
I had to use Windows 7 the other day for the first time in 6 months, repairing someone's failed Windows Update.
After the system was all cleaned up, I clicked the login button. And waited. And waited. And waited. And watched the disk drive light flicker like nobody's business. And waited. All those "essential" accessories starting up, disk scans, mysterious machine-eating magic, all shouldering themselves between me and being able to do anything.
I'm not in love with the current crop of Linux desktops, but at least I can begin using the bloody things within a few seconds of logging on.
Re:Infrastructure? (Score:5, Interesting)
Superior by what definition? Stability? sure, I'll give you that. ease of use?
1. Take a random Windows XP user.
2. Sit them in front of two machines, one running Window 8, one running Linux MATE.
3. Ask them to start a text editor on both machines.
4. See which one takes longer, and results in more bitching and swearing.
I mean, seriously, if I didn't know about Windows+R, I wouldn't have been able to start freaking Notepad on the Window 8 machine I played with in a local computer store.
Re:Infrastructure? (Score:5, Funny)
Um, if you're on the Metro screen you type "notepad" and press enter. Gosh Windows is complex.
and how would you discover this? (Score:3)
If you didn't already know about this, and didn't have a network connection, how would you discover this?
(And yes, the same complaint holds true for linux as well....)
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When I had my first linux installation, Slackware, 1992 or 1993, I ofc. had a desktop ... X Windows, don't remember which windows manager. And I believe I also played with OpenView, or at least a windows manager that looked like it.
However I never really worked with a linux desktop (except in companies where my Java Development environment ran on a Linux machine, and Firefox and Thunderbird, ofc.).
The main reason is they brain dead idea how yo configure such systems.
If you edit a config file, next boot some
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The config overwriting used to annoy me as well, but the universal solution is to chattr +i the file that keeps getting overwritten. There's often an added bonus that whatever keeps overwriting it generates an error logged to the console or syslog whenever it tries again, providing a nice breadcrumb to figure out what's overwriting it.
Re:Infrastructure? (Score:5, Insightful)
People who purport to know about computers need to stop asking stupid questions like "When will Linux be ready for the desktop ?", and start asking intelligent questions like "When will the general populace get a clue ?"
No, no they don't. What they need to ask is "Why do Linux desktop distros not appeal to end users?". The answer has always been clear, it is that they don't offer any significant advantage over the incumbents, they are not disruptive and thus will not disrupt the market.
Look at iOS and Android, they stole the smartphone - and much of the wider cell phone - market from the incumbents by being innovative and disruptive, users didn't care that they were different or incompatible because they offered features that were better! Desktop Linux distros do not do this, they are me-too products scrambling to do whatever OS X and Windows do and thus people don't want to abandon familiarity and compatibility for dubious benefit.
You can provide all the anecdotes you want about your hardships with OS X or Windows and I'm sure they'll be matched with anecdotes about people's hardships with Linux so that gets you nowhere. You can blame Microsoft or blame the user (which is what you're doing) but that doesn't make desktop Linux distros any more disruptive or innovative and thus no more appealing to users.
Offer real, tangible, innovation that is disruptive to the market and the ISVs and OEMs will be climbing over eachother to support it just as they did with Android.
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Offer real, tangible, innovation that is disruptive to the market and the ISVs and OEMs will be climbing over eachother to support it just as they did with Android.
I like my Linux desktop the way it is, thankyou, and I do not want it "innovated". We will crush Microsoft some other way.
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Feeding the shill/troll here...
Linux is was not, and is not meant to be anything but a hobby OS for someones spare time, or a companies spare time that they can develop a UI for and deploy their own flavors (android, Red Hat, Ubuntu, etc.) Linux is far too complicated for the everyday user to understand. Even something as simple as entering a static IP address sometimes requires going back to the terminal windows (command prompt) and setting it the hard way. And THAT's the problem with Linux! It was never meant to be a GUI OS just like it's parent, UNIX.
That's why desktop users use Ubuntu.
1 - Open network meny by clicking network indicator at the top bar of the desktop
2 - Choose "edit connections"
3 - Choose the connection you want to edit - click "edit"
4 - Click "IPv4 settings"
5 - Change IP
Please, remind me how that's done in windows 8.1. Feel free to explain differences with windows 8, 7 , XP.
The drivers for Linux SUCK and that's because it's an open source OS and there's no one "single" distro.
Just like any other OS. Supported hardware works, and in this case, backwards compatibility is maintained. Unsupported hardware, shock
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Its name comes from the ed command g/re/p globally search a regular expression and print.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... [wikipedia.org]
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Swap is not optional if you're going to use leaky software (like for instance browse the web) on a linux machine for long periods of time without rebooting. Firefox or Chrome can easily grow to 4 or 8 gigs over time if you don't have a swap partition. If you have 16+ gigs of RAM on your machine you might not need swap at this time, but as web sites become ever more bloated you will need to upgrade to more RAM or get a swap partition or swap file.