Will The Free Software Desktop Ever Make It?

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Will The Free Software Desktop Ever Make It?

Luc Verhaegen, the former Novell employee who previously worked on the RadeonHD driver and is known for butting heads with other X developers and making ambitious proposals like modularizing DRI and Mesa drivers, has out a new blog post. In something not too far off from where he said the Linux desktop will be dead if Keith Packard got his way in merging graphics drivers back into the X Server, his new blog post is entitled "This way, the free software desktop is never going to make it."..

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=OTAxNA

[deanjo]

I don't know if it will ever "die" but with issues like Luc was having I can see it going nowhere in a hurry. Let face it, if an old hat like Luc was having difficulty how can we expect the masses to adopt a free desktop without addressing those issues?

[RealNC]

Well, after all, "Linux" is a bunch of different projects thrown together, developed by different people with no central management and no central configuration interface like in every other OS.

What did he expect? People prefer Windozes and Macs for a reason.

[diegocg]

So, the system was working fine out-of-the-box, but he wanted to use the really really weird "virtual screen" configuration, which is something only used by him and god knows who else and apparently was added back only to appease him, and he claims that something is wrong because such rare option is not well documented and not easy to use?


WTF...

[pvtcupcakes]

I don't know what he's whining about really. At the end he admits he didn't put quotes aroudn something in xorg.conf. Whats the issue here?

If he just wanted to configure dual screen, Gnome has a nice utility in System->Preferences->Monitors and you can really easily configure it. It took me 2 seconds to do.

Back in the middle of '09, this guide was really useful in setting up xorg.conf for two screens on the r600 xorg driver when it was still really raw.

[RealNC]

So, the system was working fine out-of-the-box, but he wanted to use the really really weird "virtual screen" configuration, which is something only used by him and god knows who else and apparently was added back only to appease him, and he claims that something is wrong because such rare option is not well documented and not easy to use?


WTF...

Lots of people use that. It's even in Windows, available thourgh a simple right-click menu on the desktop.

[md1032]

Why is this news?

Known Troll Writes Inflammatory Blog Post, news at 11!

[Temar]

I don't know if it will ever "die" but with issues like Luc was having I can see it going nowhere in a hurry. Let face it, if an old hat like Luc was having difficulty how can we expect the masses to adopt a free desktop without addressing those issues?

I agree. While Linux is easy to use if you do not have any problems, it is a nightmare for normal users once something does not work out of the box.

[PsynoKhi0]

I agree. While Linux is easy to use if you do not have any problems, it is a nightmare for normal users once something does not work out of the box.

Hmm... That applies to any OS AFAIK

[Smorg]

Unfortunately the best desktop distros are also the ones considered "hard". Desktop linux has been ready for years it's just we don't have any distros which don't both totally suck to use if you know what you're doing, and offer 2 click install for everyone else. The software itself is fine aside from the hard problem of GPU drivers which probably isn't going to be solved for years and years if ever.