Former Compiz Developer: Free Software Desktop Might Enter A Dark Age

[ant8]

Seems to me he is taking a somewhat arrogant position. I am quite happy to hear about the death of unity and mir. We have wayland so there was no need for mir. Maybe unity can be rewritten for wayland. On the desktop we have rich graphical interfaces like gnome and kde, etc all of which run on wayland. Personally i dont see any dark age. Gaming on linux for example is making progress with mesa and vulkan. Intel, nvidia and amd devote resources to linux graphic drivers. Unity3d is maturing on linux.

[anarki2]

...

20-something years later, still no sign of the Linux desktop *ever* getting any traction. You can rationalize it any way you want (read: let cognitive dissonance defend your ego), it won't change a thing. Not even Valve was enough to change this fact. Numbers don't lie. And yeah, please tell me more about how the Steam survey is biased constantly for all Linux users for years. CD at its finest.

[Vistaus]

1. What Win32+UWP try to resolve is different from GTK+QT.
2. Dev resources and users in Windows are much larger than in Linux desktop.
3. In your linux desktop, there might be actually 5 tool different toolkits wasting your CPU/RAM resources: GTK2, GTK3, QT4, QT5, Java.

I like Linux because she is light, consistent, with clear and managed package dependencies.

1 Doesn't matter if it's different what they try to resolve, what matters is that it's a choice for devs and a learning curve if you want to learn to build UWP apps.
2 Again: doesn't matter. What matters is that devs want to use what they want to use, whether that's a Linux toolkit or a Windows toolkit or a cross-platform toolkit (Qt, FOX, etc.). And if they can't choose, they'll move to a different platform.
3 I have yet to see a system where so many toolkits are wasting CPU/RAM resources. And believe me, I've seen a whole lot of Linux desktops in the past 6 years. My system, for example, only has, GTK3, Qt5 and FOX (but FOX is extremely light and only for one app: Xfe file manager) to waste my resources.

[enihcam]

And on Windows, where you can choose to develop traditional apps or UWP apps, that's not a problem? I don't see devs moving away from Windows because they can choose between Microsoft's two major toolkits there, so I fail to see why it'd be a problem for them on Linux.

1. What Win32+UWP try to resolve is different from GTK+QT.
2. Dev resources and users in Windows are much larger than in Linux desktop.
3. In your linux desktop, there might be actually 5 tool different toolkits wasting your CPU/RAM resources: GTK2, GTK3, QT4, QT5, Java.

I like Linux because she is light, consistent, with clear and managed package dependencies.

[leipero]

It tends to be bloat, people with dominant "Keep it Simple, Non-Bloat" metaphore or traditionalists have all rights to hate it. Other apps to support It also introduce dependcy on it, so by the time it also tend to turn off other options, etc...

Some people just hate any sort of bloatware, that is it. Imagine your OS and your apps do exactly what you want, exactly no more and exactly no less. That is hard to imagine to some, as for that you will need to write your OS and all your apps, SystemD goes into entire opposite direction - it strive to be only one and promise that by the time it will eat everything including you

To me it is forced shit, same like Gnome was forced by Novell on OpenSUSE by default regardless of their K tradition at the moment where KDE users represented 70% of userbase, but Gnome about 20% Companies like to invest in future and pushing thing around where they see some interests as always

Same like here M.R: Shuttleworth won't invest anymore in Unity, regardless of some people like it as it is, etc... push here, push there and see what would happen

Well, Arch by default use KISS principle, and by default it uses systemd, it's fine if someone do not like it for some reason, but contrary to what some of the comments suggest, i think systemd follows KISS principle much better than upstart or other alternative. My system is doing (almost) exactly what i want

I mean, question is always about functionality and what you want, if you want fully functional system, resource usage of systemd is actually very good, dare i say excelent, for the functionality it provides. Even better, systemd makes it easy to manage those resources, so when some distribution, for example Ubuntu, (not picking on it, using as example) decide to include some services you might not need by default, it is very easy for you to manage it and disable.

When Ubuntu used upstart, Arch used systemd, and that's where i used it for the first time, and it sort of made sense to me, i was thinking like: "yeah, this makes sense, why Ubuntu keeps things complicated for no good reason", but that's just my point of view.

gojul
I wouldn't call it operating system, I think that's "a bit" of strech, it all depends how you define OS. I think that's more of the design choice (GDM etc.), i mean tehre are tons of options tbh, if systemd and X were nto the best option at this time, most distribution would already go to the better ones. X will likely be replaced in about 4 years from now, in Ubuntu terms, default at maybe ~19.10 version.

[schmidtbag]

Yes, absolutely, one of the reasons for lack of corporate desktop adoption (aside from the Microsoft Office monopoly) is the inconsistency of the Linux desktop. Ignoring Windows 10, all Windows PC's had an almost identical user interface and user experience. From Windows 95, through Windows 8 - two decades of desktop UI consistency.

Not to get nitpicky, but Windows 8 was the black sheep, not Windows 10. People hated Windows 8 because it was inconsistent; people like Windows 10 because it's slightly more familiar.

IMO the Linux world ought to adopt a desktop GUI standard interface, something like LSB has done for the filesystem layout. You could use Gnome or KDE or whathaveyou, but it would ship with a standard configuration of UI elements, their locations, their styles, their behaviours, etc. Of course you could customize it however you liked, or switch it to other predefined style/behavior themes, but the default install should be consistent across DE's and across toolkits.

There is - it's Gnome. Whether we like it or not, Gnome has pretty much always been considered the Linux default, up until Ubuntu confused things with Unity. Debian-based distros are often considered the standard for desktop PCs, while Red Hat based distros are often the standard for enterprises. Key word here is "often". Most commercial devs decide to just commit to one type of distro.

[GreatEmerald]

Some people just hate any sort of bloatware, that is it. Imagine your OS and your apps do exactly what you want, exactly no more and exactly no less. That is hard to imagine to some, as for that you will need to write your OS and all your apps, SystemD goes into entire opposite direction - it strive to be only one and promise that by the time it will eat everything including you

You're describing Gentoo. Which I use, with systemd, because it does exactly what I want.

[Michael_S]

https://extensions.gnome.org/extensi.../dash-to-dock/

Oh, I know it exists. But I like using my desktops with the settings at default. That way when I recommend Linux to a less technical friend or family member, I can just say "install it and start using it". "Install it and then do these three steps" is no big deal for me, or for you, but it won't fly with my wife, my kids, or most of my friends that aren't in our industry.

It tends to be bloat, people with dominant "Keep it Simple, Non-Bloat" metaphore or traditionalists have all rights to hate it. Other apps to support It also introduce dependcy on it, so by the time it also tend to turn off other options, etc...

Some people just hate any sort of bloatware, that is it. Imagine your OS and your apps do exactly what you want, exactly no more and exactly no less. That is hard to imagine to some, as for that you will need to write your OS and all your apps, SystemD goes into entire opposite direction - it strive to be only one and promise that by the time it will eat everything including you

The systemd developers aren't intentionally forcing the rest of the Linux world into their playground. But what happens is that alternatives stop being maintained. For example, one of the reasons systemd-logind for login management became so popular is that ConsoleKit is unmaintained (there is now ConsoleKit2 under development, which is great for people that want alternatives).

I'm a happy systemd user, but not a fanatic. I've been happy with the Runit init system that's used by Void Linux, among others. I also want to take GNU Shepherd init (formerly called GNU DMD) in GNU Guix Linux for a spin.

And the Gentoo developers do a great job supporting systemd for those that want it and other init systems for those that don't.

[Vistaus]

It's simple: take a look at Ubuntu's application manager and notice some KDE/Qt apps have highest rankings. I didn't hear about gnome-mpv before, but it seems to be very simple like dragonplayer. It seems there's no alternative to VLC or Smplayer.

gnome-mpv has more options and features than Dragon Player (and it's also gaining new features every now and then, so the thing is growing!).

Also: what do high rankings say about use? One supermarket downtown in my city gets high rankings but most people are going to other supermarkets. So high rankings don't say much.

How do you know that most Ubuntu users prefer KDE/Qt applications? Also, GNOME has good a good video player: gnome-mpv (https://github.com/gnome-mpv/gnome-mpv). IMHO it's stellar. I don't really use music players on my laptop anymore (hurray for streaming music!) but gnome-mpv handles that nicely as well IMHO.

It's simple: take a look at Ubuntu's application manager and notice some KDE/Qt apps have highest rankings. I didn't hear about gnome-mpv before, but it seems to be very simple like dragonplayer. It seems there's no alternative to VLC or Smplayer.