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

[starshipeleven]

Unity can be treated as extended Gnome Shell where components can be easily adapted to extension.

You can treat it like you want, but it is still a heavily customized fork with also Qt stuff in it.

The switch to GTK3 from MATE only highlighted what Gnome Classic already has.

Nope. Mate does not have a retarded settings manager for example. Sure the looks of windows and buttons are similar but don't confuse that with functionality.

Frankly, unnecessary duplication and forks are what slowing down the adoption of Linux operating system as consumer desktop.

This bullshit about "too much differentiation" has to stop eventually. Differentiation is one of major Linux Desktop selling points, removing that would be harmful.

What is preventing the adoption of Linux on consumer desktop is the lack of a company strong enough to convince OEMs to preinstall its own distro, as simple as that.
Google is doing decently with their (linux-based) Chromebooks for example, but they aren't pushing a true linux desktop distro.

[torsionbar28]

I don't think desktop environments are entering a dark age. I understand the logic behind Spilsbury's thoughts, but he's also acting like Canonical was somehow the last hope, when in fact they were probably making things more difficult for the Linux desktop

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.

Why is this important? Corporations rely heavily on things that hobbyists and home users do not - in-house IT support, training, and documentation. Change the UI radically, from one release to the next, or situations of competing UI's, Gnome vs. KDE vs. Unity and that creates huge amounts of work around re-training staff, updating documentation and SOP's, etc. In the business world, these are all expenses. Not to mention the lost productivity due to learning curve of a new interface. For this reason alone, Windows and Mac are more appealing.

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.

[starshipeleven]

IMO the Linux world ought to adopt a desktop GUI standard interface, something like LSB has done for the filesystem layout.

I'll channel Griffin for a moment and boldly state: GNOME is the Enterprise Linux Desktop!!! All bow to its awesomeness and to its mythical QA team.

Because GNOME is already a standard for businness-oriented distros and has been for a long while already. RHEL and SUSE and even Debian are using GNOME by default. Ubuntu didn't decide to switch to GNOME (against most of its userbase, again) by chance.

So no, while your argument is valid, (companies don't like UI changes), this isn't an issue for Linux distros used by companies anyway as they have already adopted a standard.

Who the fuck cares about DEs used in distros not used by companies, let them live free.

[roothorick]

Unity was Canonical's Windows 8 Metro interface, but they started it earlier and held on to it later than Microsoft did. When even stubborn Microsoft have abandoned an approach you know it's time to kill it off.

You think MS abandoned Metro. Heheheh... that's cute.

Gnome 2 hit gold on the most usable desktop interface of all time, and while further developments of it, like Mate and more modern work-a-likes like Cinnamon are very welcome, any deviations from its general interface are not welcome in the slightest.

No. Just, no. This "One True Way" bullshit is the stuff of MS and Apple. We're better than that.

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.

Wait, what? Are we talking about the same Windows 8 and Windows 10 here? 8 is LESS like 7 than 10 is, and both are very substantial departures from their predecessors. I think you have a point though -- corporations have been highly resistant to 8 and 10; Win7 Pro/Enterprise are still dominant.

[DMJC]

We are nowhere near a dark age, hell this week someone on the GNUstep mailing list wants to take a GSOC shot at getting webkit working on GNUstep. That could finally deliver a mac-like experience on a Linux desktop. I'd say the Linux desktop is where it's always been, on the cusp of greatness, just needing a few critical apps to push it over the edge.

[onicsis]

You can treat it like you want, but it is still a heavily customized fork with also Qt stuff in it.
Nope. Mate does not have a retarded settings manager for example. Sure the looks of windows and buttons are similar but don't confuse that with functionality.

This bullshit about "too much differentiation" has to stop eventually. Differentiation is one of major Linux Desktop selling points, removing that would be harmful.

What is preventing the adoption of Linux on consumer desktop is the lack of a company strong enough to convince OEMs to preinstall its own distro, as simple as that.
Google is doing decently with their (linux-based) Chromebooks for example, but they aren't pushing a true linux desktop distro.

LxQT is based on Qt5 and already look like classic Windows 98. Pretty simple but can evolve quickly, is very modular.

And back to the Stone Age, Gtk and something Gnome Shell based - thx but (a Big) No thanks.

[Niarbeht]

We are nowhere near a dark age, hell this week someone on the GNUstep mailing list wants to take a GSOC shot at getting webkit working on GNUstep. That could finally deliver a mac-like experience on a Linux desktop. I'd say the Linux desktop is where it's always been, on the cusp of greatness, just needing a few critical apps to push it over the edge.

Bizarrely, GNUStep is one of those things I wish had taken off and been kinda successful. Not because it looked good back in the day, but because the potential for similarity between OSX and GNUStep would have made it easier to snag developers. A familiar and friendly environment would have been a GOOD thing. Instead, we went down the Gnome/GTK and KDE/Qt path. That's fine, though. I'm fine with how Gnome 3 turned out in the end.

[anarki2]

Point is, the Linux desktop *never* was in a "bright" age. Nothing really changed in the past 20 years. The Linux desktop has *always* been an inconsistent, unreliable mess with "we'll fix this in vNext" promises. All. The. Time. You get promises that your GPU/sound card/WiFi/whatever will work halfway decently in vNext, and you keep waiting for *years* until one day it becomes deprecated. And this is just HW support, but there's just way too many other issues to even mention. So I won't bother, all this has been said a million times already.

No, nothing's really changed recently. This is more of a point where simply more and more people start to finally realize how things actually have been in the past and learn the difference between the *potential* it had and the actual *product* we ended up with.

OTOH Linux server rocks, prolly more than ever before. So might as well concentrate and improve on the good parts and leave the rest.

[starshipeleven]

Point is, the Linux desktop *never* was in a "bright" age. Nothing really changed in the past 20 years.

Yeah, please tell me more about how now there is still need to recompile the whole goddamn kernel for a printer driver or other stupidity that was common back then.

The Linux desktop has *always* been an inconsistent, unreliable mess with "we'll fix this in vNext" promises. All. The. Time.

Someone needs to learn how to use sane and stable distros like Linux Mint and OpenSUSE and/or how to choose his hardware.
I'd also like to know where you read these promises because afaik most opensource devs don't make such very optimistic promises.

You get promises that your GPU/sound card/WiFi/whatever will work halfway decently in vNext, and you keep waiting for *years* until one day it becomes deprecated.

Same as above, if you buy hardware that has bullshit support then expect it to magically improve, it does not usually happen. If it had bullshit support there is a reason after all.
Supported stuff does not get deprecated until it is VERY old. Linux still supports cards from 15 fucking years ago man, GPUs, sound, TV and wifi. Also Printers/scanners and other stuff. Try doing that on Windows (lasting 2-3 Windows releases).

And this is just HW support, but there's just way too many other issues to even mention. So I won't bother, all this has been said a million times already.

Yeah, don't bother, it was probably just more bullshit arguments anyway, let's keep this trollpost short.

No, nothing's really changed recently. This is more of a point where simply more and more people start to finally realize how things actually have been in the past and learn the difference between the *potential* it had and the actual *product* we ended up with.

No, this is more of a point where someone isn't seeing clearly that Linux desktop is much more than just Ubuntu, and the non-Ubuntu Linux Desktop is doing fine so far, with improvements everywhere.

OTOH Linux server rocks, prolly more than ever before. So might as well concentrate and improve on the good parts and leave the rest.

"Leaving the rest" won't change anything as people working on GUIs don't usually adapt well to kernel development or other stuff.

This is the usual bullshit argument, "decreasing choice focuses effort", which is bullshit because Linux desktop isn't a single project made by the same company with the same CEO. All people that would stop making DEs will not be reassigned somewhere else, they would just disappear. And at the end you'd get 0 gains and only losses.

[ElderSnake]

Man some people are miserable around here. Use what you like, don't worry about others and live and let live.