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> The main flaw in todays linux environments is the lack of focus on professional niches outside of devops and sys admin tasks, especially professional designers.

This is a trait of UNIX culture, which never cared about doing cool UIs and GUI oriented development stacks, with NeXT being the exception.

Maybe Sun as well, if we consider how cool NeWS was before being killed.

Steve Jobs while at NeXT did not have the UNIX CLI culture in high regard.

"They said a Unix weenie was code for software engineers who hated what we were doing to Unix (the operating system we licensed)—putting a graphical user interface on it to dumb it down for grandmothers. They heckled Steve about his efforts to destroy it. His nightmare would be to speak to a crowd of them."

https://www.cake.co/conversations/rZXhqtP/that-time-i-had-st...

In a way, part of ChromeOS and Android success story is due to providing a full stack story to the developers and users, where Linux plays an invisible role.

> "...putting a graphical user interface on it to dumb it down for grandmothers..."

I actually hate how this attitude often seems to be the focus of GUI environments in the Linux world. The effect is that if you have to deal with anything not nicely wrapped up in the dumbed down environment you're presented with, you immediately need to drop down to a CLI world that's difficult to figure out and constantly changing.

Meanwhile, both Windows and OSX actually focus on more of a middle-ground with their UI (to different extents, I'll admit). All the mundane admin tasks, and even those scary super-technical admin tasks actually can be done from within their GUIs.

And then you have FreeBSD, which doesn't even try to target the GUI user. They admit their user is a technical sysadmin, but embrace it by actually making the CLI quite friendly to that set of users.

I think it stems from a logic fallacy that goes something like this:

If a GUI makes a program easier to use, then by using it, I am indicating that I am less technical.

It's not usually stated explicitly, but it's a pervasive attitude. IMHO, even highly technical users can benefit and be more productive from well thought out interface design. It's not like (most) grandmothers are suddenly going to use Visual Studio because it's got a GUI.

>This is a trait of UNIX culture, which never cared about doing cool UIs and GUI oriented development stacks, with NeXT being the exception.

The idea of UNIX is more productivity through shared conventions, where the system behaves as expected and newly introduduced programs don't increase the cognitive load that much, because you already have gained experience with those conventions through those other programs in your toolbox.

The idea of modern GUIs for professional tasks is kinda the same, reducing coginitive load and reducing the barrier of entry through aquired familiarity with similar GUIs.

UNIX the GUI way means getting away with not differentiating between professional and casual users, and scaling complexity horizontally by using programs in conjunction with other programs, or task based contextual adaption of UIs in larger programs, where e.g. your sidebar changes depending on what you have selected instead of stuffing all options in the UI at once.

Apple and it's ecosystem of apps have figured that out, there are not really two worlds like in the Windows ecosystem, where there's a hard cut between casuals and niche professionals.

On a Mac you might find your way around Sketch if you've only used Keynote before, or in Logic Pro coming from Garage Band or Final Cut. It's this similarity that adds up and gives generalist creative people superpowers, like those Unix wizards on the command line.

This needn't be idle speculation - there's an opportunity coming to execute.

It's apparently still non-obvious unless you track the field in technical detail, but HMD's as a screen alternative are not far off. As in last-year-ish... modulo costing a few $k in parts, and no market, and patents, and the supply chain being bought up so even diy is problematic. But upbeat, there's also new human interface devices incoming.

Point is, there's a "Great Software Rewrite" coming. Comparable in scale to writing apps for phones. And thus the opportunity to do better this time.

I use React with Three.js. But... sigh. I miss DisplayPostScript. I'd love a richer type system than PureScript/Idris. A VM with JITed multiple-dispatch PICs. Dylan as it might have become. The shoemaker's children still have no shoes, and we're running out of window to make them. If we don't want another long march on bloody broken crippled gangrenous feet, now's the time to look to making better footware.

But getting the social and market dynamics right is just as important as the technical side. And thus the value of "unit[ing] frontend devs and designers". We have no clue what productive 3D work environments look like. October may see art-focused pen refreshes from both Microsoft and Apple. And maybe new dev machines from Apple. So Linux has work to do to stay competitive. But everyone will have some degree of linux-compatibility. And there seems opportunity to leverage "getting the representation right".

> What could be successful is a Linux distro that unites frontend devs and designers, but where the different tools and building blocks of that distro are used outside of the Linux ecosystem, for professional interface design on other platforms.

A lot of KDE apps work just fine on windows and macOS. Krita, Digikam... the tools are the same for every platform including iOS and Android: Qt, QtCreator. It's made for designers : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko3YPM_tStM