The challenges of Desktop Linux

The second point: "Companies tend to depend on a myriad of applications to run their business, and just a couple of them not running under Linux would be enough to derail a transition to Linux desktops" is the real killer.

This is really the only reason that I can't recommend trying Ubuntu to more people. People site usability concerns etc and while there are some issues there I think it's mostly "good enough" now and we're long past the days of having to compile a .tar.gz full of .c files and fettle with vi in order to get sound to work.

So the issue is how to get third party developers interested. I think the best way is by including a really sexy app store. Ubuntu Software Centre is a start but it's still nowhere close to what Apple has achieved in this area. Nasty looking icons, inconsistent screen shots (some showing gnome2, others Unity) and thousands of free apps with weird names don't make it the most attractive place to shop.

In many ways though , I would consider desktop Linux a success regardless of marketshare for the simple reason that it is now possible to "use a computer in freedom". I think the software world would be a bleaker place if Torvalds , Stallman et all hadn't spent the hours pushing code. Imagine a world where the cheapest HTTP server license went into thousands of $.

Actually, now is a great time to switch to Linux.

The only thing that was keeping my parents and some of my friends was that they needed Microsoft Office for their work/schoolwork. As of now MS Office runs like a piece of cake on Linux -- with PlayOnLinux (http://playonlinux.com/). Honestly, it's quite impressive how smoothly it runs (and how easy it is to install it.)

MS Office isn't the only application that PlayOnLinux supports - there's a ton of games and other software (Photoshop, Blender, Dreamweaver, Flash, etc.) that it supports. To top all that off, I feel like the desktop on has gotten better and better lately. I use KDE 4.9, and I will say it is quite nice. The level of integration KDE offers and the high quality of many of the standard apps that come with it will make a Windows user never turn back. Ubuntu too has a rather simple and straightforward UI (although it doesn't personally appeal to my taste).

The challenge of Desktop Linux is that it's not a product, it's a project.

Ubuntu is a very successful desktop Linux distro. It's pleasant to use and very modern. Nerds might hate it because Unity doesn't fall in line with Linux "the project" so much as its there to make Ubuntu "the product" better.

Overall, desktop linux as an overarching product failed, but so did mobile linux pre-android, but Android isn't so much mobile linux as it is Android.

Open source is a bit like herding cats and if you don't have a real product you are trying to ship, devs will scratch their own itch.

Stop looking backwards.

The desktop is being left behind by mobile. Recognize that Android/GNU/Linux has won mobile. Despite an early lead, Microsoft has been crushed worldwide in mobile by a Free Software platform.

Android provides a platform where both Free libraries and closed source apps proliferate - and are very inexpensive. All the failures of desktop GNU/Linux have been solved, or are not relevant, in mobile GNU/Linux.

Regarding the tablet segment of mobile, one could argue that GNU/Linux will seize the low end and gradually gain market share at the expense of iPad, leaving no room for Microsoft.

The only reason I care about desktop OS at all is to develop for mobile or back-end server.

In my crusade of boycotting apple production I switched from OS X to ubuntu. And you know what, despite high disregard from HN auditory, I've found Unity to be surprisingly good. For example, unity dock still worse than os x dock, but it's good enough. Single menu for all apps is familiar from os x, although I hit it when attempting to move windows more often than I want to. Application switcher can be navigated with arrows by default, which is good, although I would also like it to be navigatable via mouse too. 'Spotlight-like' menu named Dash Home takes way too much screen estate, but again, it's at least usable. Hotkeys are terrible, though, and first thing I did was disable alt and super keys calling dock/dash-home.

Overall, I like Unity way more than current Gnome, KDE, XFCE and LXDE. Your mileage may vary.

I think, the real linux desktop problems are when something goes wrong. Sometimes updates are unsafe. Sometimes you find a bug in a software. I had 10 or 20 crashes and error report windows in my first day. Commercial software is terrible too. Skype is buggy, crashes often and is just bad. Nvidia binary drivers suck and nouveau crashes on my card (560ti). Twinview can only VSync one screen. Your other screen is doomed to lag on renders. Xinerama has a bug with cursor randomly jumping over to another screen. Whenever something bad happens you resort to google and waste 10 minutes+ for fixing it.

I also think that applications not being made for linux is not a very big deal. 80% use case includes browser, music player and office package. All of which are included by default in most distributions.

I use desktop linux quite a bit (though only through a VM these days). What's interesting is many of the applications that always seemed to be missing or worse than their Windows competitors have been absolutely destroyed with web-based software. Both Windows and desktop Linux have been losing that battle.

The funny thing is that desktop Linux apps have always been trying to match Windows apps feature-to-feature, but web developers haven't. Turns out I didn't need every feature from Excel, I needed something faster, more convenient, and easier to use.

I don't think there needed to be so many bullet points to explain why the adoption of Linux as a desktop operating system has been extraordinarily slow and generally unsuccessful.

In my opinion, it would fall under these two reasons

1) The difference between a Linux desktop & a Windows/Mac desktop is negligible, or worse. GNOME/KDE don't really add any compelling features that make them better than Windows or Mac anymore. I remember a few years ago, I loved putting Ubuntu on my system because drivers would be downloaded automatically and I could easily access all Linux packages from one simple package manager. The folder browser was pretty familiar, and the GNOME 2 bar was a nice hybrid between Mac & Windows, but nothing too special.

However, the driver installation & central package directory have been long a competitive advantage with the era of Windows 7, etc. Granted, these weren't "defining" features of Linux, but when I personally used it, these were thinks that struck me then, but are no longer relevant now.

2) The ecosystem. I think it goes without saying that the Linux software ecosystem is much more fragmented, and is often found in the "underground".

It's not an issue of whether or not there are substitutes to things like Office, Adobe Creative Suite products, iPhoto, and other essential apps that normal people/working people use on a daily basis, etc. (although I do think that there aren't adequate substitutes for these and that the friction of trying to get these actual products to work through things like WINE, etc is too much).

However, because things are so much more fragmented on Linux, it being an open system, it's harder for there to be de facto software (unless you lurk in some Linux community, which again, normal people aren't generally interested in).

The user has to make so many choices, which are often arbitrary and needless, and in doing so becomes frustrated and confused. There is too much stuff to explain that isn't necessary to explain, and too much detail to go into that again, is not practical.

The trade-off with Linux is that you get an enormous amount of power and responsibility. The benefit of this is that you get an enormous amount of power & responsibility. The cost is...the same, some people just don't want to bother.

I see a much simpler explanation. Linux has, for a very long time, followed the path opened by (and thus replacing) technical Unix workstations. Those were specialized machines built for people who would put up with cryptic interfaces in order to run the powerful software they needed. As any specialized tool, it has appeal to the few professionals who have actual use for them.

Only recently (3 years?) Linux distros started being friendly to "mere mortals". This change coincided with the acceleration of the demise of the PC. There may never be a year of the Linux desktop.

Yet, Linux is everywhere. As soon as you fire up your network connection, you are using Linux. Every time I look up the time on my phone, I'm using Linux. Most internet-connected TVs run Linux, as do most set-top boxes and e-readers. I amuse myself thinking the convoluted things Steve Ballmer is compelled to do just to be able to claim he doesn't use it.

To me, 'Desktop' Linux has never worked because the lofty aim of projects like GNOME to secure 'everyday' users is completely at odds with many of the basic design decisions of the Linux/Unix platform that underpin it. Things like storing data in string-based-files, chaining small command-line-tools to do everything, a historically eccentric file structure, and pluralism in every-way (eg. custom built binaries on a per-machine basis) are never going to work for the 'everyday' user. You'd need to have an even bigger project than GNOME to change these design decisions (like redesigning the file structure and standardizing the hardware/software platform on which it runs, as OSX did).

That said, many of the components of GNOME (GTK, GStreamer, etc.) are great and we shouldn't forget their usefulness to other projects whilst the Gnome Desktop is coming up against these existential questions...

Gnome 3 completely borked my system of 8 years running on an Thinkpad R50e I was happy with. There really is no excuse for what happened. There was no cure either. I am done. Writing from a mac now.

I read that blog post and all I can do is shake my head. They seem to be fighting the same old monsters for the last 12 years. The list of reasons on the post sickens me.

Personally I don't see these points as being that important when looking at casual home users. I've recently setup a couple of older laptops with Ubuntu for some family members who just want to use them for watching movies and browsing the web ... and for that, it excels.

The linux desktop probably hasn't suceeded due to pirating! Imagine if the developing world jumped onto Linux in a bigger way.

I think MS realise this, there's suggestion that they'll be offering Windows 8 for a reasonable figure for once. Then desktop Linux better beware.

The GNOME project has failed because they have hacked at things that don't matter. For example, what the world wanted and needed was a decent word processor. It got OpenOffice. It needed an easy to use flow chart creator. It got dia. It needed project management software. It got... Heck, what did it get?!?

Cheese and Gnome Shell are all very nice, but so what?

His 1st bullet point says it all. Ken Thompson said the same thing about Linux in an interview years ago. He said that is Linux's major problem.

I find preoccupation with some company's metaphor to be a sign of lack of creativity. And the people behind Linux distributions are obsessed with Microsoft and the "desktop".

The "desktop" is only one metaphor.

Does iOS have a "desktop"?

To speed up Vista when it was first released, I used to disable the desktop in Windows by changing the registry key that specifies "explorer.exe". I would just boot to msconfig or task manager.

The system ran much faster that way. Applications can still be minimised. It worked so well, I never went back to the aero nonsense.

Obsession with a "desktop", and trying to look like Microsoft's version of it, is one of Linux's major flaws.

To all people complaining about unstable apps, poor performance and buggy drivers: I purchased my last laptop from Dell because I was aware it was well supported on Ubuntu.

This alone makes a huge difference, trying to install Mac OS X on a frankenmac will result in an troublesome experience too.

Doing your own transition to free software is also a key for success, and if you're not tied to a proprietary technology, you should try it. I've been a full-time Ubuntu user for 5+ years, working as a developer using Java, Ruby or Python, and I'm very satisfied. Even further, when I had to use Windows 7 or even Mac OS X it feels odd.

One of thing which I believe hindered in Linux’s popularity right from the early days, was its not so impressive User Interface, compared to Win95/98. I think this is where/when Windows took off and nobody was able to catch up comparably for a very long time to come.

Another aspect was the lack of availability of compatible software. Software back in the days were in the form of CDs-on-the-shelf, and I don’t think anybody made any of them Linux compatible.

So the challenge was just not there from the beginning to get a hold of average desktop user.

A dream-wish: The people who developed the Harmattan UI (Nokia N9) design something new and refreshing for Desktop Linux. I know, that's probably improbable, but if it did happen... This was the first (and only) UI on top of linux that I really found beautiful. Android does not have the same polish, unfortunately..

elementary OS is doing something right. Learn from them!

Android PC

Does anyone remember netbooks? How they used to have Linux? That was when Linux had a real chance.

http://www.informationweek.com/windows/microsoft-news/micros...

If you don't think Microsoft is directly responsible for this, you are an absolute idiot.

Every manufacturer has to pay for Windows Mobile for every Android phone they sell. No company has stood up to Microsoft. This is a real threat.

You want to talk about Gnome 3? Fuck you. Why would anyone invest a cent in a WM if you can't distribute Linux installed on a laptop?

People like talking about Microsoft and Apple as though they are different teams. Nope, they are on the same team: fuck people who think they can get by without them.