Can Desktop Linux Stay Relevant in the Era of Cloud and Mobile?
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Now... Mint being the most popular Linux with more share than all others combined? Fedora overtaking Ubuntu? I wonder where their data comes from.
All we can say is that distrowatch visitors are migrating to Mint.
As for the premise of the article, the massive skew in Distrowatch's stats are deeply misleading. It's not downloads or active installs, it's hits to an informational page. DW is #3 on Google for 'Linux Mint' so it's a barometer of general interest, but the only conclusion you can draw is 'the negative reception of Unity as default was capitalized on by Mint to drive interest'.
Not to say it won't result in an upswing in Mint installs (I was considering it myself until I discovered the baked-in search engine capture), but DW stats make Alexa look like a paragon of accurate reporting.
That's a good hypothesis, though in that case I would assume the surge in interest in Mint would be accompanied by at least steady interest in Ubuntu instead of a drop. Also, the interest in Mint has been rising for quite some time and interest in Ubuntu has been decreasing steadily. This could just be that by now everyone who's interested in Linux knows all they want to know about Ubuntu, but interest in alternatives is starting to increase.
My premise has less to do with the particulars of the exact numbers of Ubuntu vs. Mint users, and more to do with the fact that there's not really a go-to distro for new users anymore. Ubuntu, Mint and Peppermint are all contenders for this role, and openSUSE and Fedora are still options as well. I think this lends to an uncertainty about which to choose and which will have continued support. The problem is compounded by the fact that a lot of applications are being accessed from browsers and/or mobile devices, so that even as Ubuntu could be gaining power users its pushing power users away in an attempt to gain mainstream users that they may never get.
UI on mobile is even more difficult to get right than on the desktop. This is where Linux has always struggled. Even Ubuntu (Linux's best attempt to date) is several years behind everyone else.
I love that they're putting forth a serious effort but I don't see it making a meaningful dent.
Which is sad, because I think I am more productive on Linux than on OSX. Running an OS that's much closer to the servers I deploy to is a huge timesaver (and avoids lots of "works on my machine" kind of problems)
I disagree that the interface is years behind, but would agree that the experience is behind. I've always been impressed with GNOME and think it's a better interface than OSX or Windows 7. When I switched to Ubuntu a few years ago (I've since switched back to Windows for various reasons), I expected to have a really stable operating system that was perhaps a little harder to use than a mainstream OS. What I found was that it was actually a joy to use, but it was really unstable. Not because of the OS itself, but because of the buggy apps that ran on top of it. Linux users have some great apps, but are still stuck with subpar alternatives for a lot of stuff (particularly in multimedia).
And then there's hardware support. From what I've heard, things are pretty easy on desktops, but I had a lot of trouble using it on laptops. There are a few companies that sell laptops with Ubuntu or other distros preloaded, but other than that you can face a lot of challenges trying to wrap Windows drivers and so forth.
The hardware aspect might be easier on phones and tablets, but it's going to mean starting almost entirely over on the UI and applications (which is the direction Unity is going).
I don't think it's stagnant. I kind of like Unity - it's unobtrusive and direct. I like it a little better than Gnome 3 (mostly because I use the multiple-monitor multiple-desktop thing as a space extender and 3's separate monitor switching breaks that). On a more basic level of functionality, most of my data live on BtrFS filesystems (which is the next-best-thing after ZFS) and comparing if with either NTFS or HFS+ is just cruel. Package management on Ubuntu has been, as in Debian, perfect for most of a decade. Yum is quickly catching up. Programming language support is still excellent and most anything runs, or can be compiled, out of the box. It's been a very long time since I had a major device support hassle either with notebooks or with desktops (the removal of support to buggy-but-Windows-compliant ACPI caused major breakage, but it seems to be stable now).
The only thing stopping my non-programmer flatmates from using Ubuntu is only MS Office.
They are envious of the interface and the ease at which I get all sorts of packages without worrying about malware.
Office productivity isn't the only issue. The issue is they already have Windows, and Office on their computer so there is no real advantage after switching to a free alternative, and there are some REALLY HUGE disadvantages like having to edit bash scripts to manage your computer.
Linux desktop failed. The sooner the Linux community gets over it and starts to focus on cloud stuff (virtualization, management) the better.
The average person would not have to edit a bash script to manage their computer. Almost everything works right out of the box like you would expect.
Besides which, whether Ubuntu is the top Linux distro is completely orthogonal to the capacity of Linux in general to serve as a desktop.
Considering Ubuntu had its first release in 2004, this article should probably be taken with a grain of salt.
No, Linux desktop is no longer relevant.
It is a completely different story for photoshop/maya/visual studio/solidworks/nx/matlab.... These programs are not designed for the type of mulch-touch input that tablets are able to excel at. XP is supported until 2014...
Programming tools are already being ported to the web (cloud9 ide).
Google Docs and Office 360 are already being targeted at replacing MS Office.
In a few short years very few reasons to still use a Windows desktop UI will exist.