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

[unixfan2001]

*Looks at Liri and elementary OS* *cackles dark agely*

[creative]

Looking at a top listing on the machine I’m using to write this, systemd shows “0.0” in both the “%CPU” and “%MEM” columns. In other words, its resource usage is lost in the rounding error. Where is the “bloat”, exactly?

I actually posted earlier about systemd bloat but now that you mentioned it yea checking out top it says the same thing you mentioned but it does show up towards the top of the feed a lot. More than anything what is actually hogging cpu tends to be IRQ up to 6% on my system. That does make sense though since I am using a low latency kernel with jack/pulse sync. Seems since that is the way I have my sound setup configured towards aggressive low latency maybe I should expect that especially using ubuntu studio. I may end up going back to a Lexicon Alpha since I don't need to use pulse sync with that for general computing. Only problem is I can't get 192 audio recording with that interface. Going to have to start monitoring my IRQ CPU usage more with jack/pulse sync on and off.

Also after doing some researching systemd does not seem that bad especially after reading about systemd myths. I started out using slackware over a decade ago and moved to Vector Linux then Ubuntu Studio. Since then a lot of things have changed and for the better honestly. WAY BETTER! At any rate there are plenty of distros out there to give a person more than enough choices especially with the likes of Ark and Gentoo type distros. Not to mention the custom tailored distros for this that and the other. If any thing I want to say Linux has entered the age of enlightenment. Linux really is a niche thing at the end of the day. People want freedom of choice and Linux provides plenty of that. Obviously for everyone else there is windows, mac and the even smaller percentages using other operating systems. Linux saves me a ton of money on software and I like the ability to modify to my hearts content. The cost of audio applications can really rack up to a ton of money throw in professional video editors and that would be quite a bit of debt for me. Most money I spent on software is on videos games and windows 10. There is the possibility that I still might end up buying an absolute license for Lightworks for my music/art things I am trying to do. First I need to try it and learn it though. If that happens I will have likely already bought something insane hardware wise like an Intel i7 6950X system. I really am a Linux purest when comes to art things. I know windows and mac offer a lot more but when there is free software created by people with a passion I tend to want to support that, up to even donating to them whatever I can offer.

[ldo17]

Numbers don't lie.

Or maybe they do. I remember a decade or so ago, a senior Microsoft official saying their own figures showed Linux at around 5% of the desktop.

[ldo17]

[systemd] tends to be bloat

Looking at a top listing on the machine I’m using to write this, systemd shows “0.0” in both the “%CPU” and “%MEM” columns. In other words, its resource usage is lost in the rounding error. Where is the “bloat”, exactly?

[Vistaus]

Great, but it's nowhere in comparison to VLC or SMPlayer.

VLC is debatable, but it is comparable to SMPlayer (if you count in the options you can manually set in the MPV configuration file as well and the fact that you can extend GNOME MPV with Lua Scripts). It's getting better and better and is a decent alternative to most other GNOME players. In fact, if it wasn't comparable, then I wonder why Solus just replaced VLC with GNOME MPV as the default media player.

[Niarbeht]

You get promises that your GPU/sound card/WiFi/whatever will work halfway decently in vNext

For me, vNext was about four or five years ago, and yeah, it works fine now. For me, at least.

[aufkrawall]

mpv's LUA pseudo-GUI does just fine (on any DE).

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!).

Great, but it's nowhere in comparison to VLC or SMPlayer.

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.

There are numbers of opinions as far as I remember. Furthermore, it shows KDE apps are the best.

[mulenmar]

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.

Chromebooks, those Chromebit things, etc, are all just a Linux desktop built around Google's browsing-tracker software. Android's also a thing, though I'm far less inclined to give that the benefit of classifying as desktop-material. Valve has, in fact, brought dozens and dozens of games to Linux, directly or indirectly.

EDIT: Not to mention DVRs based on Linux, ffmpeg, and such, then TiVo-ized.

Microsoft is having to drastically change their business model and bribe a hell of a lot of governments to switch back to them because the free desktops -- GNU/Linux, Bionic+JVM/Linux, *BSD, whatever -- and free software have made their old methods increasingly useless. ...I'm going to include bittorrent clients in that, as `piracy' is also an inescapable part of that.

Is any form of Linux-kernel OS going to become dominate? I don't think so -- I'd give that likelihood to something like Redox or some seL4-based system, in the long-term. However, claiming that it hasn't gained *any* traction is simply disingenuous.

[fabdiznec]

Don't put words in my mouth.

I apologize, I did not mean to, though I did read what I said as your implication, so maybe it was good to get that cleared up, FWIW.

(I still stand by my statement about shit-stirring.)