"Why Linux Is Still Not Ready For The Desktop"

[eydee]

Windows 7 can't install to my RAID without putting drivers on my usb and manually loading them before install, linux installs fine without doing anything. WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?!

Try Fedora, it won't...

[chris200x9]

Try Fedora, it won't...

I doubt it Fedora won't since even arch does...

[nanonyme]

Oh boy, I couldn't possibly disagree any more. Proprietary drivers should -NEVER- be auto installed. Although I do think it should be as simple to install as possible.

Well, all drivers automatically installed on Windows go through Microsoft certification programs anyway. They are big enough to say "FU, stop providing crap to our customers" to any driver vendor. In fact, they're big enough they don't even need to. Automatic installation of proprietary drivers on Linux would be utter lunacy with no proper certification requirements for drivers

[duby229]

Well, all drivers automatically installed on Windows go through Microsoft certification programs anyway. They are big enough to say "FU, stop providing crap to our customers" to any driver vendor. In fact, they're big enough they don't even need to. Automatic installation of proprietary drivers on Linux would be utter lunacy with no proper certification requirements for drivers

Sure, but even in this case you don't get OpenGL support. It so stupid. I can't even begin to count how many times I've had to install manufacturer drivers just because MS decided to be assholes.

[eydee]

I doubt it Fedora won't since even arch does...

Arch doesn't have one of the biggest piece of sh***ts of the linux world, Anaconda...

[brosis]

1. Arch does not support partial upgrades. This is like "you can not use house, until you renovated it fully"
2. Multiplied by a rolling factor without any barrier. This is like "you can't claim - this is okayish for now"

1 x 2 equals "you can never enter the house". You will be constantly renovating.
Real world example - imagine the need to check out this new VOIP software connectivity, installing the package - just to face lots of indications of soname library breakages.
That means one must fully upgrade a week old system before actually doing something productive. Just 800 MiB of packages and an aftermath of configuration diffs and merges (because Arch can't do a 4-way, like dispatch-conf or Debian)

This is why I take Debian approach anyday.

[Luke]

"Ready for the Desktop" is relative

Like the guy who had to switch to Libreoffice because his place of work uses it reported, what's "ready for the desktop" depends on what kind of work is sitting on that desk. Whether or not "photoshop is better than GIMP" depends on what you learned on and whether or not either contains a feature you need that is not present in the other.

OK, I do a lot of video editing on a MATE desktop using Kdenlive. A Windows desktop might be more like MATE than an Apple desktop, but the proprietary video editors used in either would surely be enough different than Kdenlive to slow me down and force the removal of some features from at least the first few videos I made. It would not matter what features they had that are missing in Kdenlive. Faster rendering with Adobe's GPU accelerated Mercury engine would be given back many times over with slower editing. This would continue unless and until I became familiar with the new environment. At that point probably either video editor would be "enough" do do the job I need, the only issue would be the inablity to open Kdenlive projects in Adobe's video editor or vice versa. Thus, if the projects were too big to finish in one sitting (like my running year to date videos), all the video workstations would have to have the same editor installed. Since Kdenlive is free and can do anything I need it to do, and paid editors with similar features cost big bucks, that would be Kdenlive. Kdenlive requires Linux, and I suspect Linux as a guest over a Windows host would slow down the rendering process.

There is Lightworks, which can be run in both Windows and Linux and has a free version. This would require a double export when the project was done, so it could be exported in a codec supported by the unpaid version and transcoded by one of the Linux boxes to a codec usable by end users with phones that can only play the videos in hardware. Since my videos are published free and without ads, I cannot afford to pay someone like Abobe to write a video editor any more than I can pay someone else to patch worn clothing, a job I do myself.

Of course, there is also this bias in my case: I have spent so much time on desktops I have customized myself that anything else looks alien and slows me down. Linux can be set up to copy almost any DE someone switching over is used to, the reverse is much more difficult. The TAILS distro for high security Tor use even offers a Windows XP theme as a default option at first run to prevent a computer from looking "different" to nosy bystanders who might remember something that looks unusual.

Of course, Windows security has been a joke for years, though part of that comes down to two factors: One is that if 95% of all desktops run Windows, more than 95% of the attack programming will target Windows. The other is the traditional habit of Windows users of using the admin account for online activity! How secure would Linux be if everyone ran "sudo firefox" to go online, with no security extensions in the browser? The normal Windows case (I do NOT know if this is still true in Win 7/8 but it was normally the case), was better compared to running "startx" from a root console, then firing up a full DE from within X, starting your browser, and going online. No way in hell is that sort of thing ever "ready for the desktop."

I doubt Windows would ever have been set up that way except for having evolved from first a command line system meant for floppy disks, then from a GUI that could ignore the concept of privilige because it was either not on a network or was only networked locally. The routine public use of the Internet did not really take off until after Windows 95 had been released, at which time some version of Windows had existed nearly a decade. Unix, by comparison, was originally designed for big iron on which multiusers were the norm and securing each user against the others an expected requirement, Thus it began life more secure even though it is over a decade older than Windows.

[Luke]

and you can run GIMP in Windows

very few people really need Photoshop, but if you do, the price of it overshadows the cost of the windows licence that would have come bundled with your new PC anyway.

for the majority of people it's the interoperability with MS Office that matters.

Photoshop won't run in Linux except maybe under Wine for older versions, but GIMP, like the Audacity sound editor I've made do much use of, is cross platform. If you use GIMP for editing photos, you can open your projects on any box, because GIMP can be installed on whatever OS you may encounter. Similarily, if your only use of an office suite is to prepare finished documents exported as pdf's or any other universal format, Libreoffice. like GIMP, installs in Linux, Windows, and Apple, and that means being able to open all your own work on any box.

Only when multiple people work on the same projects does compatability become an issue, and then only if at least one critical player is on a non cross platform program. If I were to publish directories full of raw video clips with a Kdenlive file, that would mean you'd need Kdenlive running over Linux just to play them, but could also edit them. The finished video files play in most video players on any OS.

It really surprises me that law offices didn't respond with a crash conversion to what was then OpenOffice in response to reports that MS wanted to make MS Office subscription-only backed by DRM and revocation of former subscriber's documents. Word was MS wanted to hold lawyer's case files hostage to get huge annual subscription fees. It was those stories, not the Hollywood DRM concerns that back-burnered the "palladium" trusted computing project. There was talk that there would be a forced update to a new MS Office version that by default would use a DRM'ed file format backed by "trusted computing," so getting back your files after leaving MS would be about as easy as booting an iPhone to Linux is today,

[Zakhar]

Not everyone should use linux. It is fine if 10 percent uses it but not 90 percent. That would make it a mess and a target for viruses, malware and bloatware.

I agree with that! I think now we have the "critical" mass to make it interesting for some vendors like Valve, and it is a good thing.

And obviously, this guy has really bad Windows reactions.
With Linux you do NOT go to the Adobe site, grab flash and install it. That is NOT the way it is done in Linux, we have a apt-get (or software center, synaptic, etc.. for those who prefer graphic).
It is in fact much simpler. It is how mobile and tablets work, and very soon people will start being annoyed about how things work on Windows. You have to know where to go for Firefox, a different place for Chrome, a different place for VLC, etc... That is total nonsense, plus for each software that do not auto-update, you have to do it yourself.

People will become more and more used to what works on mobiles (repositories: AppStore/Google Play) and will be much more comfortable with how it works on Linux.

And for MS-Office, it is anyway a question of market share. M$ is starting actively to port to other platforms, due to it's own core O.S. failing badly. When they will thing there is enough market share to go Linux, there is no doubt they will port it. Nadela is much less stubborn about that, and goes where the money is: clever guy.

But of course, you would have to weight using LO at no charge, or using M$O at its high price. If the difference is really worth you dollars, then go for it.

Obviously, same goes for Photoshop. Once Adobe will think there are enough Linux customers, there is no doubt there will be a port.

[Marc Driftmeyer]

GIMP has been spinning its wheels attempting to appeal to the Windows crowd for nearly a decade.

Instead of maturing GTK+ and bringing GEGL/OpenCL rapidly along just on Linux and OS X they've spent an inordinate amount of time on Windows support.

GIMP 3.0 has been a moving target for nearly a decade.

Meanwhile, Blender explodes with innovation after innovation. It's one of the truly great applications on Linux/OS X, that happens to run on Windows.