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

[Geopirate]

Do you think the problem is something other than a poor user experience?

Find a person to have a conversation with in real life who can use Linux at home and chooses to and can use Linux at work and chooses not to. Ask them why. Bonus points if they are a developer or someone else with some technical proficiency.

Maybe then you'll start to understand.

[oiaohm]

Do you think the problem is something other than a poor user experience?

Find a person to have a conversation with in real life who can use Linux at home and chooses to and can use Linux at work and chooses not to. Ask them why. Bonus points if they are a developer or someone else with some technical proficiency.

Maybe then you'll start to understand.

I have used Linux since 1995 its had been my desktop since 1996. My main reason for choosing Linux at home is legacy hardware support for running up-to date software.

But I have work experience with companies who operational software is truly OS neutral. The UI and back-end issues effecting application deployment, security and networking prevents them from choosing Linux.

Market share is a huge factor to support from hardware companies. We cannot expect to grow market share when those who are suitable to migrate cannot or will not due to UI and back-end issues.

Lot of issues are really just icing on the cake. Quality back end and UI is the core cake of operating system you expect users to use.

Lack of MS Office, Commercial games, other Commercial software .... They are all icing things that will come when OS can stand on it own two feet with Quality back end and UI. Android is example of this quality application install system and API/ABI for application development and in time MS Office came to Android once Android market share grew.

A cake issue effecting applications is that due to ui and back end issues you cannot always install either a old version or new version of an Application at your own will by only using the UI. This might be addressed by either Flatpak or Snappy.

The issue here is it really easy to get detracted by pieces that are nothing more than icing and come excuses not to even try to fix the cake parts.

It took me many years to work out that I was being detracted by many things that are just icing issues and some cases items that were not issues at all. One that is not issue at all is binary drivers. DKMS allows binary blob drivers to deployed with just as much dependability as Windows and OS X binary drivers of course the quality of package of DKMS drivers is kind of lacking.


Geopirate asking what the UI should provide to users then making sure the back-end can do it would be a very good development process and would reduce going into many distractions and worrying about stuff that is pointless to worry about.

Its like asking for 100% MS Office compatibility only way that can be achieved is if Microsoft ports MS Office to your platform as they control that format so it pointless to worry about from development side. Instead worry about making application installation and supporting back-end items for that better.

[nslay]

You will never have a The Year of the Linux Desktop, nor growing market share, nor commercial support, until you can provide a full, completely and consistent UI experience for the 99% of people who don't anything about computers. Anything that involves opening a terminal to fix or resolve problems is show-stopper. This is not a new observation either... And we participate in a community that largely discusses server/backend work that will never lead Linux to the kind of desktop that a doctor, cashier, librarian, lawyer, etc... can use. It will only help people like us... the 1% of knowledgeable Unix-like users.

And you're both full of crap (poster above me, and poster above that poster). The long gibberish post is you (@oiaohm) wrote is, what you would call, not even wrong. It is a babbling post stringing together things that kind-of go together with a combination of truth, falsehoods and completely irrelevant gibberish. It is so bad that I spent an hour trying to draft a response to correct and clarify everything you wrote, irrelevant thought it may be... and I gave up. It was a lost hour of sleep. I wasn't kidding that you did me a disservice. Complete crap.

And I'm not really clear what you (@Geopirate) are referring to. You could be one of those data scientists that overwhelmingly use Linux AI software (because there is mostly nothing for Windows!) to solve industry problems, or you could be one of those end-user developers who write software for end-users who mostly use Windows. My guess is you're the latter... and you probably didn't know that the most interesting science, statistics and math software are almost exclusive to the Linux community. So, you know... Industry that does this kind of work is mostly not using Windows.

[oiaohm]

You will never have a The Year of the Linux Desktop, nor growing market share, nor commercial support, until you can provide a full, completely and consistent UI experience for the 99% of people who don't anything about computers. Anything that involves opening a terminal to fix or resolve problems is show-stopper.

There are cases that Windows users do drop to the terminal and are instructed to-do so. So anything that involve opening terminal to fix problems is not right.

Due to non uniform back-end when you drop to terminal under Linux how do you check if wifi network is up? How do you reconnect a wifi network connection...

Under windows.

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-manage-wireless-networks-using-command-prompt-windows-10

Yes a predictable set of terminal commands for these basic items.

Linux are you using network-manager, networkd, wpa-suplument directly, some other option????

If you do go into the adb shell on android device there is only 1 way to connect device to a wifi network.

nslay what I have written is not falsehoods. You are well and truly underestimating the problem. If UI is broken for some reason the command line under windows can be still your saving grace.

A lot windows users do end up on command line to fix different broken items if dropping to command line was always a problem there would be more Mac users. The difference is when a Windows user goes to command line or powershell to fix something windows is in fact consistent not needing to ask what backend part am I using for what instructions to use.

Messy backend causes more mess in the front end ui as well due to front end ui either having to support more backends to work or just having multi front ends that only work if you are running the correct backend bits..

[ntrepid8]

I wonder how this is being measured exactly. Almost everyone I know who works as a professional software developer uses Linux everyday in some capacity and about half of the folks I work with every day use it as their primary OS on their laptop or workstation.

I've seen a lot of people migrate from OS X to Linux for their primary OS over the past 2 years and unless Apple stops treating developers as 2nd class citizens I don't see that slowing down. I know it's an anecdote but at this point in my life if I want something to "just work" I always default to Linux. Even my 12 year old kid runs Linux on her laptop b/c her robot stuff is easier to interface with in Linux compared to Windows.

I think the real road-block to more rapid adoption in the consumer PC space is that the market is not really growing the way it used to. For a company to make a serious retail push they would have to invest a ton of money for a retail roll-out and I just don't see that happening with the way the desktop PC market is changing.

The good news is that as PCs continue to move up-market for professionals and consumers move more and more to consuming content on phones, we'll continue to get excellent Linux desktop options like what you see from Dell. The developer edition laptops work really well, and Dell has been diligent in making sure all the required drivers are available in the mainline kernel.

Also, I happen to really like Gnome3 and how much more focus it puts keyboard operation compared to Gnome2. I realize it's a bit of a learning curve, but the less I am forced to touch the mouse, the better the ergonomics are for extended use.

[MartinN]

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

Longtime Fedora/GNOME developer Christian Schaller who leads the desktop engineering team at Red Hat recently commented on some bold Linux/tech predictions for 2018. He's now also shared his personal opinion on why "the year of the Linux desktop" has yet to materialize...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...ear-Linux-Desk

this could all change if Microsoft took Linux under its wing, Jobs style, polished the desktop (e.g. Wayland-based), provided a way to run Win32/NT apps on Linux w/100% compatibility and ported Office to Linux. If anyone can do it, it's Nutella and they could probably pull this off in under 3 years.

[name99]

Sorry but that is just bullshit to me..

There are four factors that can change it:

3-Linux distros are very easy to use these days ( at least Ubuntu variants ) but they're still not suitable for mediocre people use. A Linux user must be ready for come up solutions for his/her problems.

I'm sure THAT attitude has nothing to do with it...