Schaller On Why The "Year Of The Linux Desktop" Hasn't Happened

[CrystalGamma]

Fallout 4 for one. I just tried Mass Effect 1 and that doesn't work. That game used to work and now it doesn't. The latest version of Origin works now, which before I had to copy it from my Windows Machine and set it to Windows XP.

Since when does the current Origin installer work on Wine? I distinctly remember having to fuck around with the legacy version and downloading binaries from third-party servers three or four months ago …

[Spooktra]

Yeah someone should take an OS that is freely licensed, like BSD, make a completely proprietary fork of it and make lots of money.

...

Well that happened fast.

Ok, now back to the GPL

I take it you never heard of OSX?

[oiaohm]

Any resources is a waste of resources for Android. Remember, these are the same people who didn't want Gallium-Nine code in Wine. Which in theory shouldn't effect the Wine developers resources put into wine compatibility. Yet here we are.

I have in fact had a direct talk with the Gallium-Nine developer showing exactly why the code would not merge. There is a evil set of relationships. Direct x 10 and 11 and even 12 applications use direct x 9 in places. So when he was trying to merge Gallium-Nine wine project devleopers were asking when are you doing Direct x 10,11,12 support and his answer was never. So the response from wine developers was simple we are never merging it as it goes against core objective of the wine project. Core objective of the wine project is run as many applications as possible without users having to set a single setting. So having something that was direct x 9 only and had to be turned off for direct x 10+ applications is breach of wine project core objective and was not going to reduce wine project workload one bit.

There is a valuable lesson from the Gallium-Nine project always make sure you find out what the upstream core objectives and what you are creating matches those objectives or you will just waste your time making something that can never be merged and in future will be replaced by something someone else implements that is compatible with the core objectives.

This is where the vulkan ports stand a better chance they are in fact opengl structure compatible so can do the required buffer compatibility between direct x versions..

Percent of what PC market? Gaming market is bigger than you think. Remember at one point Doom outsold Windows 95. It was enough of a problem that Gabe Newell was in charge of making a port for Windows to get more people onto Windows 95. I could find the video of Gabe Newell where he explains this. How many people play games on their PC today? Right now 42 percent of Americans play for at least three hours per week. The problem is that hardly anyone is going to install Linux and mess around with Wine to do something that just works on a Windows OS. As it is right now it is really hard to get anything working on Wine.

Playing 3 hours a week on what games. The percentage playing AAA and paid for tittles is not that large. Scary enough is the most popular played game on windows is still solitaire.

I think that Chromebooks have a growing market share because they're cheap, not because they're good. That doesn't mean that Chromebooks have a future. It's like the tablet market where everyone was predicted the end of the PC, and then the market changed. Turns out tablets can't do much, and as a result everyone started to buy laptops again. This will happen to Chromebooks as well.

Sorry the claim that everyone started to buy laptops again is bogus. The declining PC sales show this. Yes some people found tablets not suitable but tablets have taken a slice out the PC market. Chromebooks are doing the same.

So really here you have not looked at the numbers.

If Linux Desktop can hold a bigger slice this will mean better hardware support and better application support. But with what chromebooks and tablets tell us about the market we don't need more applications or games to grow larger than what Linux desktop current market share is.

Also Android does have a large amount of people playing games, just not AAA game titles. But then again I don't think many people can see themselves using a touchscreen to play Doom 2016 on their phone. Without physical buttons, I don't see the Android market going anywhere with gaming. Which is partly why I think anyone person porting Wine on Android is a waste of time. Besides x86 and ARM there's the average storage space of a Android devices which is pathetic at best.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-connect-a-game-controller-to-android-for-console-like-gameplay-si/

The fact android supports many physical controllers so android games don't have to be touch screen only.

Of course you are thinking the reason for porting wine to Android is games when its not. Majority of Codeweavers customers are interested in software that is used in business. This is kind problem complain about games not have the best track record under wine then you take a closer look at what codeweavers are being paid to work on and it all makes sense.

[oiaohm]

OK, yes, some of that backend tech is extremely important for a good desktop. But aside of Wayland, where is the novel UI and projects? After Canonical dumped Unity, we're now back to square one. Meanwhile, Phoronix publishes mostly interesting server/backend technology for us nerds. I think a self-contained self-explanatory UI where there is practically never any reason for almost all users to use the terminal is more important than most of the stuff we see announced on Phoronix if you want to attract the kind of users needed to make a The Year of the Linux Desktop a reality. I really hate Windows with a fudging passion, but you don't see even Windows power users needing to resort to cmd or PowerShell for their compute experience. Same with that spyware Android!

To fix particular windows issues you do need to drop to cmd/powershell. But a lot of Linux issues of needing to drop to shell trace to X11 being insecure.

Exactly why do we need novel UI. There have been tones of lets event the UI without sorting out the foundations under that UI. Common theme information for toolkits to use is still a pipe dream under Linux. You just look in the Linux setting menu tones of stuff but can you find want you are looking for. Lot of the fragmentation in configuration comes from back-end sorting out standard ways of doing things.

Even if you did a complete new UI for Linux without doing Android or Chrome of making the backend sane its going to fail.

I know its not what you want to hear nslay in a lot of ways we are only starting to lay the foundations for a good desktop with flatpak, IWD and wayland. At least at the moment we are serous-ally talking about what should and should not the foundation parts in fact do instead of lets just write a UI wrapper over than and attempt to hide the defective beast and when it breaks the user can fix it by command line.

[nslay]

To fix particular windows issues you do need to drop to cmd/powershell. But a lot of Linux issues of needing to drop to shell trace to X11 being insecure.

Exactly why do we need novel UI. There have been tones of lets event the UI without sorting out the foundations under that UI. Common theme information for toolkits to use is still a pipe dream under Linux. You just look in the Linux setting menu tones of stuff but can you find want you are looking for. Lot of the fragmentation in configuration comes from back-end sorting out standard ways of doing things.

Even if you did a complete new UI for Linux without doing Android or Chrome of making the backend sane its going to fail.

I know its not what you want to hear nslay in a lot of ways we are only starting to lay the foundations for a good desktop with flatpak, IWD and wayland. At least at the moment we are serous-ally talking about what should and should not the foundation parts in fact do instead of lets just write a UI wrapper over than and attempt to hide the defective beast and when it breaks the user can fix it by command line.

You're not wrong. There are some occasions where you drop into cmd (although, I've never had to use PowerShell). I hate to use anecdotal evidence, but I even personally had to use Icacls.exe to correct botched permissions from Cygwin-generated files. And I think I've even manually unregistered DLLs with regsvr32.exe many many years ago. And one time I used shutdown.exe from cmd over RDP to force the remote system to reboot (RDP Start Menu provides no such option). On Android, there were never any cases where I needed a terminal outside of development. You can claim that you users will use it to root a phone, but this is a not necessity to fix or use the device.

But I will say that I can probably count the number of times I've had to use cmd in Windows to fix system-related problems on one hand. A typical Windows user would never even be in remotely similar situations as I was. This is overwhelmingly not the case on proper Linux desktops.

It's a high bar, but it's unacceptable to have any user need the terminal to fix problems. This high bar is reflective of the current user experience in Windows, OS X and Android. And you need a novel self-contained self-explanatory UI because that's not how it currently is on proper Linux desktops with current solutions as you seemingly acknowledge in your last paragraph... There is something missing in current solutions where the UI cannot be used to solve basic computing problems.

[Dukenukemx]

Since when does the current Origin installer work on Wine? I distinctly remember having to fuck around with the legacy version and downloading binaries from third-party servers three or four months ago …

I tried it a couple of weeks ago and it works. I'm using Wine-Staging of course. It works both for 64-bit and 32-bit Wine.

[Dukenukemx]

I have in fact had a direct talk with the Gallium-Nine developer showing exactly why the code would not merge. There is a evil set of relationships. Direct x 10 and 11 and even 12 applications use direct x 9 in places. So when he was trying to merge Gallium-Nine wine project devleopers were asking when are you doing Direct x 10,11,12 support and his answer was never.

Someone could always fork it and continue it to DX10/11. God knows someone tried and it was left alone. This was years ago before Gallium-Nine.

So the response from wine developers was simple we are never merging it as it goes against core objective of the wine project. Core objective of the wine project is run as many applications as possible without users having to set a single setting.

That's not happening. You can't use Wine without Winetricks. At least compatibility would be severely limited if you do. PlayOnLinux does a better job at this than plain Wine.

So having something that was direct x 9 only and had to be turned off for direct x 10+ applications is breach of wine project core objective and was not going to reduce wine project workload one bit.

I wonder if the DX9 to Vulkan project would work any differently?

Playing 3 hours a week on what games. The percentage playing AAA and paid for tittles is not that large. Scary enough is the most popular played game on windows is still solitaire.

There's more people playing PC games than console.

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/pc-games-sales-in-2017-are-almost-as-big-all-console-sales-combined/

Also the most played game is not solitaire. Maybe the most popular Microsoft game, but not the most played.

https://www.vg247.com/2017/10/19/playerunknowns-battlegrounds-overtakes-league-of-legends-as-the-most-played-game-at-korean-pc-bangs/

Sorry the claim that everyone started to buy laptops again is bogus. The declining PC sales show this. Yes some people found tablets not suitable but tablets have taken a slice out the PC market. Chromebooks are doing the same.

For gaming, PC sales are booming.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/pc-gaming-expected-to-drive-pc-sales/

The overall trend isn't bad for the PC market.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/263393/global-pc-shipments-since-1st-quarter-2009-by-vendor/

Tablet sales are showing a similar decrease.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/272070/global-tablet-shipments-by-quarter/

Of course you are thinking the reason for porting wine to Android is games when its not. Majority of Codeweavers customers are interested in software that is used in business. This is kind problem complain about games not have the best track record under wine then you take a closer look at what codeweavers are being paid to work on and it all makes sense.

How would CodeWeavers know what everyone wants when Wine has traditionally been terrible for gaming? It just seems that CodeWeavers is stuck thinking like it's 2005.

[oiaohm]

You're not wrong. There are some occasions where you drop into cmd (although, I've never had to use PowerShell). I hate to use anecdotal evidence, but I even personally had to use Icacls.exe to correct botched permissions from Cygwin-generated files. And I think I've even manually unregistered DLLs with regsvr32.exe many many years ago. And one time I used shutdown.exe from cmd over RDP to force the remote system to reboot (RDP Start Menu provides no such option). On Android, there were never any cases where I needed a terminal outside of development. You can claim that you users will use it to root a phone, but this is a not necessity to fix or use the device.

http://brandonpadgett.com/powershell/Local-gpo-powershell/

Main reason why I included powershell is when you have issues like local policy stuffed up because computer was connected to domain and it did not cleanly disconnect. The graphical editors of group and local policies don't always show everything. Of course a lot of windows users just do a complete reinstall instead of fixing stuff like this. I really don't call having to do a full reinstall to fix particular faults as being user-friendly either..

Android fixed up the lower stack to provide API so proper UI applications to do most things could be made. There are gaps in the windows UI.

But I will say that I can probably count the number of times I've had to use cmd in Windows to fix system-related problems on one hand. A typical Windows user would never even be in remotely similar situations as I was. This is overwhelmingly not the case on proper Linux desktops.

It's a high bar, but it's unacceptable to have any user need the terminal to fix problems. This high bar is reflective of the current user experience in Windows, OS X and Android. And you need a novel self-contained self-explanatory UI because that's not how it currently is on proper Linux desktops with current solutions as you seemingly acknowledge in your last paragraph... There is something missing in current solutions where the UI cannot be used to solve basic computing problems.

You have over looked my

But a lot of Linux issues of needing to drop to shell trace to X11 being insecure.

So what happened ssh is secure its shell most of the the administration tools on Linux are targeted at shell. Then you go and configure cups then notice you are going to a web page locally hosted. So they went to the effort of making a web server than using X11.

One of the big reasons why we need wayland is so that you can in fact write graphical administration tools that random programs cannot copy you authorisation information as you type them in. So the Linux administration tools are design around the idea you drop to a text tty or ssh or http/s into the system as these are the secure options. You don't want huge popularity when basic security stuff like this is missing. Like first Linux desktop virus major deployed would be basically able to snoop everything if we are still using X11. So first step to reducing the amount of time you need to drop to the terminal to fix things is cease having X11 as the item in charge of the screen and have something like wayland that has the security stuff.

Next part of the process after that is going after getting libraries and UI made for the key things. Libraries are key calling out to shell from a UI to execute a command normally end up with UI not getting sane debugging information.

The thing you have missed is to raise the bar on how much can be done by UI to Windows, OS X and Android levels requires fixing the security nightmare X11 has been in the graphical stack.

nslay this issue that is always easy to miss is quality of Interface you can safely provide is dependant on the quality of the backend stuff behind it. The backend graphical stack on Linux has been many levels of garbage force for years because you could not get accelerated graphical drivers for anything other than X11. On top X11 is majorly security flawed in protocol so you cannot be X11 protocol compatible and secure. Wayland is at long last seeing light at end of tunnel. Note we still don't have Nvidia fully on board providing decent drivers for Wayland.

Yes nslay I understand how people not understanding the problem would think that its lack of graphical UI tools is why they need to go to command line. Completely missing the security issue of X11 that means it not security sane to have people entering passwords on X11. So its not security sane to write administration tools that use X11. A developer working for a company and the software they release has a major known security flaw could cost them their job. So a developer working at a company is totally unlikely to make users a X11 administration tool due to the X11 issue but will write a command line tool. We need to change this so developers can write good UI tools without risking their job.

As a server being controlled by ssh ie commands Linux is a fairly secure thing. As a desktop running X11 Linux is a security nightmare. This is why I say focus need to be on having the back end right. Because while back end is wrong issues from that propagate up and also in worst cases like X11 level of issue prevent people from even considering making particular things that end users really need.

There was really never going to be a proper year of the Linux Desktop with X11 as the base of the desktop.

[oiaohm]

Someone could always fork it and continue it to DX10/11. God knows someone tried and it was left alone. This was years ago before Gallium-Nine.

Gallium-Nine starts in 2010 aiming at only Direct x 9 support then Direct X 10 was released in 2006. Codeweavers for MS Office need Direct x 10+ to Direct x 9 bridging so on this point alone it a no go for Codeweavers. Please note wine started implementing Direct x 10 in 2007.

Gallium-Nine has issues it design to go straight to graphic card this is good except when you fail to include bridging back to opengl as well. Turned out to run some games and business applications you do need Direct x9 to opengl bridging as well. Yes Gallium-Nine is better than wine default in limited case but there are hell of a lot of cases where Gallium-Nine choices make it a nightmare.

That's not happening. You can't use Wine without Winetricks. At least compatibility would be severely limited if you do. PlayOnLinux does a better job at this than plain Wine.

Core objective of the wine project is run as many applications as possible without users having to set a single setting. << Read this again.

Core objective does not mean wine is there yet. Wine is technically an Alpha. Also you have not noticed how many items have in fact over time disappeared out of winetricks as wine completes of those sections of itself.

Please do not say PlayOnLinux does a better job I have had to deal with users who complain that X game does not work or poor performing when the Wine project has documented success using winetricks and current versions of wine with it working and performing very well. Why because PlayOnLinux has done overrides that are wrong.

So the reality is what you claimed as not happening is in fact happening at a slower pace than most people would like. The pace is party controlled by how many people pay for product.

I wonder if the DX9 to Vulkan project would work any differently?

The early DX9 to Vulkan the VK9 can already link in and work with wine own direct x 10+ and provide the required bridging between opengl and direct x. So we already don't have the Gallium-Nine nightmare of not being able to integrate properly.. So Direct x 9, 10,11 and 12 backing to Vulkan making into wine I do see as a possibility.

There's more people playing PC games than console.

Does not matter there are more people playing games on tablets and smart phones over all. So 43 percent of the game market is made of of those playing games on smart phones and tablets

Also the most played game is not solitaire. Maybe the most popular Microsoft game, but not the most played.

Most played games on Android and IOS devices are Solitaire games they have a bigger player base than any of your PC/Console games. So solitaire games are in fact the most played. The reality is if you are PC focused you start thinking PC games are lot more important than what they are.

For gaming, PC sales are booming.

This is not a surprise. To play latest PC games requires updating your hardware. This is just a direct side effect of the PC market shrinking at some point you would have to reach the point that the dominate purchases are from gamer. So those playing PC games have not migrated to tablets.

The overall trend isn't bad for the PC market.

The trend is still downwards. This will mean PC gamers will make up larger percentage.

Tablet sales are showing a similar decrease.

IDC looked different they notice that large screen smart phone growth at 7inch screen aligned with decline in Tablet sales of 7inch and smaller. Was there in fact a decrease in market for those making games for 7 inch tablet sized screen the answer is no the market has been nicely growing just instead of a tablet a person is using a phone. So there is a transfer from one type to another. Its mostly as the cost difference between tablet and phone have reduced for the same size screen. So it a mistake to say there has been a similar decrease the decrease on tablet makes absolute sense if you can get something with more features for the same dollars that does the same thing why would you not.

How would CodeWeavers know what everyone wants when Wine has traditionally been terrible for gaming? It just seems that CodeWeavers is stuck thinking like it's 2005.

CodeWeavers does not need to care about everyone. CodeWeavers only need to care about their customers who are buying CrossOver. Gamers seam to want to make do with wine or playonlinux and not pay CodeWeavers for CrossOver should not be surprised by the lack of support you got what you paid for.

[nslay]

http://brandonpadgett.com/powershell/Local-gpo-powershell/

Main reason why I included powershell is when you have issues like local policy stuffed up because computer was connected to domain and it did not cleanly disconnect. The graphical editors of group and local policies don't always show everything. Of course a lot of windows users just do a complete reinstall instead of fixing stuff like this. I really don't call having to do a full reinstall to fix particular faults as being user-friendly either..

Android fixed up the lower stack to provide API so proper UI applications to do most things could be made. There are gaps in the windows UI.



You have over looked my

So what happened ssh is secure its shell most of the the administration tools on Linux are targeted at shell. Then you go and configure cups then notice you are going to a web page locally hosted. So they went to the effort of making a web server than using X11.

One of the big reasons why we need wayland is so that you can in fact write graphical administration tools that random programs cannot copy you authorisation information as you type them in. So the Linux administration tools are design around the idea you drop to a text tty or ssh or http/s into the system as these are the secure options. You don't want huge popularity when basic security stuff like this is missing. Like first Linux desktop virus major deployed would be basically able to snoop everything if we are still using X11. So first step to reducing the amount of time you need to drop to the terminal to fix things is cease having X11 as the item in charge of the screen and have something like wayland that has the security stuff.

Next part of the process after that is going after getting libraries and UI made for the key things. Libraries are key calling out to shell from a UI to execute a command normally end up with UI not getting sane debugging information.

The thing you have missed is to raise the bar on how much can be done by UI to Windows, OS X and Android levels requires fixing the security nightmare X11 has been in the graphical stack.

nslay this issue that is always easy to miss is quality of Interface you can safely provide is dependant on the quality of the backend stuff behind it. The backend graphical stack on Linux has been many levels of garbage force for years because you could not get accelerated graphical drivers for anything other than X11. On top X11 is majorly security flawed in protocol so you cannot be X11 protocol compatible and secure. Wayland is at long last seeing light at end of tunnel. Note we still don't have Nvidia fully on board providing decent drivers for Wayland.

Yes nslay I understand how people not understanding the problem would think that its lack of graphical UI tools is why they need to go to command line. Completely missing the security issue of X11 that means it not security sane to have people entering passwords on X11. So its not security sane to write administration tools that use X11. A developer working for a company and the software they release has a major known security flaw could cost them their job. So a developer working at a company is totally unlikely to make users a X11 administration tool due to the X11 issue but will write a command line tool. We need to change this so developers can write good UI tools without risking their job.

As a server being controlled by ssh ie commands Linux is a fairly secure thing. As a desktop running X11 Linux is a security nightmare. This is why I say focus need to be on having the back end right. Because while back end is wrong issues from that propagate up and also in worst cases like X11 level of issue prevent people from even considering making particular things that end users really need.

There was really never going to be a proper year of the Linux Desktop with X11 as the base of the desktop.

My head is bleeding from head-vs-wall showdowns from reading this post.

I do remember my doctor needed to do Local/Group policy editing in power shell one time to get Wi-Fi working. The GUI Policy Editor couldn't do it...

We're done here... You really did me disservice with this response. Seriously man. We had a good thing going too.