Moonlight: Yet Another Linux Desktop Environment

[the303]

The picture in G+ page seems promising. If the project's aim is being resource friendly and it will look like that, I am all positive towards it.

[prodigy_]

But even still Windows systems just work with only minor annoyances.

As someone who spent years working in IT support (and I worked for some very large international corporations too) I wish I could say that to users when I had to rebuild hopelessly broken Windows installations from scratch. And to everyone who complained about terrible performance on not so low-end hardware. And finally to hardware itself every time I saw a BSOD.

Windows is harder to manage than Linux (especially if you want to do it remotely without interfering with end users' work). It's incredibly awkward to deploy automatically. It's pure hell to set up manually with all the drivers and applications you need to install. Transferring existing installation to different hardware is pain. Group policies are crutches at best. Etc, etc. Granted, I never had to support Windows 8 but somehow I don't think it's any better.

Windows doesn't just work - even in corporate environments with lots and lots of dedicated support. Much less at home if the user isn't computer savvy.

[devius]

Linux users used to laugh at and mock Windows for its blue screens and bugs but the state of Linux today is worse than Windows 95 ever was.

That's ridiculous. Win95 crashed all the time whatever the hardware was. And they were kernel panics, not just some application crashing, although an application crashing usually meant the OS was next, if it didn't also crash instantly. Unless you're using proprietary graphics drivers and/or Flash how many times do you see a kernel panic with any linux distro?

[mrugiero]

Unless you're using proprietary graphics drivers and/or Flash how many times do you see a kernel panic with any linux distro?

I never had a kernel panic due to Flash, is that actually common? Sounds counter intuitive. Proprietary drivers makes sense, but Flash? Ain't its memory supposed to be protected and just crash Flash?

It's pretty easy, as an end user to say and believe that fragmentation is bad. In the developer POV though, some times (many times, actually) it's easier to start a whole new project (or fork one) than contributing to an existing one, and I'm not talking about technical difficulty...

Still, having too many projects trying to solve the same problem makes other developers' life worse. Luckily, DEs are kind of the exception, as long as they use a common toolkit.

Also, regarding Michael's sentence... yeah, pretty bad taste, even if probably correct... We shouldn't forget that many big projects we use today were once "probably will fail" projects...

Even though I don't like the fact he discourages them from the beginning, I don't think the projects that are big today were actually "probably will fail" projects, as all the alternatives at the moment they arose were either severely worse feature-wise than what was proposed or had some licensing problem, either with the project itself or with their dependencies. A big factor in failing is trying to solve a problem that is already solved.

[Cann]

[...] likely will fade away like the many other third-party desktop environments with limited manpower and scope.

This is not how you write an article. Personal opinions and preemptive assumptions should not appear in an article such as this one.

[litfan]

That's ridiculous. Win95 crashed all the time whatever the hardware was. And they were kernel panics, not just some application crashing, although an application crashing usually meant the OS was next, if it didn't also crash instantly. Unless you're using proprietary graphics drivers and/or Flash how many times do you see a kernel panic with any linux distro?

Ummm. Daily. Not that it matters. To any end user a kernel panic or their DE crashing down around them has the same end result in lost work and time. No one gives a flying fuck if the kernel is stable if the rest of the OS is such a steaming pile of shit that it isn't usable i.e. GNOME/KDE.

[Vistaus]

I don't have a problem with the statement itself -- it is likely correct. My issue was just the claim that Michael was reporting the news. He was not. He was expressing his opinion. Which is fine in a blog or an editorial, but if he wants to be recognized as reporting the news, he needs to keep his opinion out of the news articles.

Or he could report the news and at the end of the article write: My opinion about this news: followed by his opinion.

[mrugiero]

Ummm. Daily. Not that it matters. To any end user a kernel panic or their DE crashing down around them has the same end result in lost work and time. No one gives a flying fuck if the kernel is stable if the rest of the OS is such a steaming pile of shit that it isn't usable i.e. GNOME/KDE.

No, they haven't the same effect. For a start, a crashing DE doesn't make you lose your work. You can still save it, you can get the DE up again. Maybe you are confused with a graphics session crash? As long as X and the dependencies (of which the DE shouldn't ever be one of anything you use to work) are alive, you shouldn't lose any unsaved work. A panic kills everything.

[nedR]

nedR, just a few things.
The first, do you actually feel it regressed? One thing is that it's still not good, but if you seriously see it as being worse than in 2010, I believe you are seeing that with rose tinted glasses, I can find no other explanation. Back in 2010, porting software to Linux was kind of developers' nightmare. I don't know if that was justified, but see how often it was taken seriously by a company (specially in the consumer segments) and how often it is taken seriously now. See OpenGL support on the free drivers back then and now. See hardware support in general. Maybe we are not good yet. I do think we've still got some road ahead, but we are definitely not worse. Specially if we talk about gaming.
The second thing is developers already have to care about those issues. Not about DEs and such (which really shouldn't be a problem, it shouldn't have any effect), but they have to care on Windows on your video card, for example. Faulty software, and this includes drivers, exists pretty much everywhere.
In all of the other things, you are probably right, but still, in none of those we are actually worse than before. If anything is really not advancing that much (although that's arguable) is mostly in power consumption, which the only real advance that comes to mind is DPM in the free drivers, and Intel's p-state driver, and probably audio.
On the matter with your laptop, it probably has a lot to do with primusrun. There exist this concept called supported configurations. If you go out of them, you are on your own. And this exists also for games. If you use trainers that alter your game in RAM, you don't complain with the game's distributor about the crashes you get. If you use a solution not formally supported by your OS, you don't complain about instability.

My laptop running 10.10 had better battery life than Windows. After 11.04, I was getting 1 hour less battery life when compared to Windows. That is a regression. It was partly Unity's fault, but it also had to do with the serious linux kernel regressions that were found and widely reported on Phoronix at the time. Things have greatly improved since then (Unity is much less of PITA to use), but I am yet to see pre-11.04 levels of performance or battery life.
As for supported configurations, Dota2 won't even run without bumblebee. Even Valve's official instructions ask Optimus users to install primus to run Steam. Linux today, simply does not support Nvidia hybrid graphics (or Nvidia doesn't support linux).

As someone who spent years working in IT support (and I worked for some very large international corporations too) I wish I could say that to users when I had to rebuild hopelessly broken Windows installations from scratch. And to everyone who complained about terrible performance on not so low-end hardware. And finally to hardware itself every time I saw a BSOD.

Windows is harder to manage than Linux (especially if you want to do it remotely without interfering with end users' work). It's incredibly awkward to deploy automatically. It's pure hell to set up manually with all the drivers and applications you need to install. Transferring existing installation to different hardware is pain. Group policies are crutches at best. Etc, etc. Granted, I never had to support Windows 8 but somehow I don't think it's any better.

Windows doesn't just work - even in corporate environments with lots and lots of dedicated support. Much less at home if the user isn't computer savvy.

I am not talking about running servers or mass deployment. I am talking about everyday users doing their everyday tasks. I know. I am an everyday Windows user (as well as being a linux user). My windows system just works out of the box. I have been doing the Windows reboot-reformat-reinstall?™ method of system repair for years. But over time i had to do it less and less often. I can't remember the last time I have had a BSOD. No crash or event (including low memory) in Windows today will prevent me from launching the task manager. I have had memory leaks on firefox cause my linux system to freeze up, where nothing works- not even ctrl +alt + f1. It used to be Windows systems that could be brought to its knees by userland applications. Not Linux. I hate Windows for it inflexibility (eg: the user folder must be in the c: drive for Windows not to break) and stupidity as much as every one else . But I have to admit, Windows has certainly gotten better over the years (in my personal experience).

He has a track record of doing that, like a lot of other journalists these days.



Supporting more applications and hardware, looking more modern is a regression now?

What does "looking modern" mean exactly? It's that attitude that has completely destroyed GNOME for no fucking reason at all. How about usability? How about stability?

This.

Linux users used to laugh at and mock Windows for its blue screens and bugs but the state of Linux today is worse than Windows 95 ever was.

I wont go that far. but I will say that Windows desktop today is far ahead of the Linux desktop- which in my opinion was not true a couple of years ago.

[litfan]

No, they haven't the same effect. For a start, a crashing DE doesn't make you lose your work. You can still save it, you can get the DE up again. Maybe you are confused with a graphics session crash? As long as X and the dependencies (of which the DE shouldn't ever be one of anything you use to work) are alive, you shouldn't lose any unsaved work. A panic kills everything.

A crashed WM will allow you to save your work. Not a DE. You're DE goes down you're done. I think you're the one confused. I'm done with you. Keep your linux hopes alive on the desktop though, maybe in another 20 years it'll actually happen.