Moonlight: Yet Another Linux Desktop Environment

[Delgarde]

But it's getting just plain ridiculous with a new DE wannabe being announced every week or so.

Eh, that's hardly "getting" ridiculous. I've been using a Linux desktop for fifteen years, and there's *always* been a new WM or DE announced every week. It's just one of those things that attracts people, the idea that they could develop their very own desktop, unique from all others. And Michael's right - almost all of them are never heard of again, silently disappearing after the developer realises that it's a lot more work than they expected...

[mrugiero]

The overall level of fragmentation seen in today linux desktops (not specifically referring to Desktop environments) is bad in my opinion.
There are too many bugs; your experience varies widely depending on which system configuration, distro, desktop environment and drivers you use. For example, Dota 2 simply does not work (crashes, freezing, failed launches) on my particular acer laptop (propietary nvidia + primusrun) running ubuntu 13.10. If it was a common bug faced by many people, it would have been fixed faster. But it seems specific to my particular configuration. This is why unix hackers have been leaving linux for mac in hoardes. Macs cost more and are less flexible. But all your applications work; Your are guaranteed a certain level of performance and battery life.

Yes there is innovation and experimentation in linux desktops which is good; but at the end of the day, people just one a system that just works and allows them to do their work or gaming. People don't want to spend all their time on google or AskUbuntu or IRC just to get their system in a working condition. Android is linux done right. Ubuntu was. (until about 10.10) The linux desktop has seriously regressed since those days. Windows 8 is a fiasco, sure. But even still Windows systems just work with only minor annoyances.

This is especially important when linux is trying to attract game developers and gamers to their environment. Support and bug fixes are very costly. And there are going to be many, if developers have to worry about whether you are running nouveau or amd or pulse audio or Unity or KDE or whatever. </rant>

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.

[Calinou]

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.

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

Ubuntu was. (until about 10.10) The linux desktop has seriously regressed since those days

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

[s_j_newbury]

Journalism vs Reporting

Do people really not understand the difference between journalism and reporting? Have people been so conditioned to only accept "official" press releases as "news", and should be reported as is; without comment, investigation, or analysis?

http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2009/dec/10/newspapers-pressandpublishing

[ihatemichael]

Michael is a moron and this is proof of it.

[Ancurio]

This is especially important when linux is trying to attract game developers and gamers to their environment. Support and bug fixes are very costly. And there are going to be many, if developers have to worry about whether you are running nouveau or amd or pulse audio or Unity or KDE or whatever. </rant>

Linux isn't doing anything; you're thinking of Valve.

[a2r-l]

To all those claiming that such projects die off rather fast, it might be true to an extent. But you must also not forget projects like MATE (started off on Arch forums) and Cinammon, which are doing rather well.

So, try to be more positive

[Apopas]

Michael is a moron and this is proof of it.

While statements like this one, make you better?

[mdias]

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...

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...

[litfan]

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?

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.