Linux Founder Linus Torvalds 'Still Wants the Desktop'

I have mixed feelings about Linus Torvalds, I disagree with many things he says and agree strongly with other things.

Linus once said: " ...Microsoft makes terrible operating systems".

Seriously?.. Forget marketing for a second, if you compare the best Linux Desktop with Windows 8.1, in almost all technical aspects Microsoft Windows 8.1 is vastly superior, it boots faster, applications run smoothly and pretty much everything you plug in works immediately.

Don't get me wrong, I am a Linux Administrator and all our servers run either Debian or CentOS, I would not use anything else unless I am absolutely forced to by a client.

but as far as desktop usage is concerned and after using Ubuntu for 2 years (which is a really good OS), Windows is just better (and I can play games while drinking a glass of wine instead of spending 30 minutes tweaking "Wine"), much more refined and in tune with every day use.

The problem with Linux on the desktop is that it doesn't have any significant, practical advantage to offset the significant, practical disadvantages.

BENEFITS:

-- Costs $0: But that is also the marginal cost of Windows and OS X. When you pay what you must pay for the hardware you want, you can almost always have Windows or OS X at no additional cost. So, if Linux is also available at no additional cost, so what? The benefit to the end user only shows up when building custom hardware, repurposing old hardware, or using a VM--things I care about but the average consumer doesn't.

The zero cost benefit of Linux is of more value to hardware manufacturers than to consumers.

-- Freely modifiable: But you can freely modify Windows or OS X systems, too, with preference settings, or utility apps, or writing your own code in any number of languages, including code that uses system APIs to make big changes.

The fact that Linux lets you change even those things that are not exposed via APIs is once again of more practical value to hardware manufacturers, or certain other businesses or organizations, than to consumers.

COSTS:

-- You have to set it up yourself, and it never seems to work right. The problem is not Linux itself, but the fact that Windows and Mac are pre-installed, pre-configured, and tested by teams of experts, but doing that job for Linux is up to YOU. Few consumers want to deal with debugging system service (audio, network, battery, etc.) problems. Even the little bit they still have to do with Windows or Mac outrages most consumers. The last thing they want is for this problem to be WORSE.

Where Linux has been successful, it has been on the server (no audio, GUI, no battery, etc.), or on client hardware platforms (like TiVo), where the Linux configuration was done by the platform maker, not the consumer. Once again, manufacturers are the direct beneficiaries.

-- You can't run a lot of the software you want to use. This problem has dogged Mac users for decades. It's far worse on Linux.

-- You have to do your own tech support. Your techie neighbors, friends, and relatives can usually help with Windows problems and, in some geographic locations, even Mac problems. But online is all you have for Linux, and some of those people are not as "sociable" as your friends and family. To be a desktop user (or even a Mac user in some places), you have to be a techie yourself or have a close, personal relationship with one. That rules out most people.

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I still want desktop Linux to succeed, too, but I'm not sure what could make that happen. I'm afraid it would take a big, powerful company that DIDN'T already have its own non-Linux OS to push, that would build the hardware and pre-install Linux and somehow resolve the lack of Excel, Photoshop, ....

Google is the only remote possibility that comes to mind with maybe a desktop-Linuxy Android or something, but I'm not holding my breath.

So the crowd "erupted into boisterous applause" when he states that, yet probably had a huge group of developers from Gnome present who actively work to destroy the desktop through forcing us into a single-task, phone-like mentality via the joys of Gnome 3. The twisted part of this seeming cognitive dissonance is that the Gnome developers certainly don't see how their personal view of what a computer should look like and how users should interact with it is killing the desktop. In their world I suppose "desktop" simply means "not a phone" or "does not run off a li-on battery."

(I've heard that more recent Gnome 3s added back much of the desktop functionality by default (desktop icons, minimize buttons in the title bar, etc.), but after trying the abomination that was Gnome 3.0 in Fedora 15, I fled to XFCE's loving embrace and never looked back. Maybe the Gnome devs changed their minds, maybe they're just kowtowing to the users' demands.)

Linux (Android) has made good progress on mobile SOCs. Desktop motherboards continue to shrink as more functions move onto the "CPU". The reduction in PC hardware diversity is bad for desktop hardware innovation, but it cuts the cost of Linux testing and reduces the historical advantage of Windows.

New AMD x86 CPUs include an ARM coprocessor and blur the memory boundary between CPU and GPU. Nvidia's K1 processor is transcoding ARM instructions to the hardware ISA, but is theoretically capable of transcoding x86.

What defines a "desktop"? Large monitor & keyboard? Or large local storage? ChromeOS has the first two and simplifies centralized management, but is dependent on public cloud. As mobile & PC hardware architectures converge, we need to decide if desktops are systems-of-record or local caches.