linux What Killed the Linux Desktop (by GNOME founder Miguel de Icaza)

[Max Norris]

So if you were to go into 15 random high schools and ask who's used a different windows shell or who thinks it's possible, what percentage do you think would reply yes? 1%? If that?

Why would I even care what some random kids are using as their shell, and what does it even have to do with it? I'm just commenting on the fact that contrary to a few posts here, it's not impossible to replace it. In fact, it literally takes a few seconds. That's it. If somebody can't bother to take the few seconds to look up how things work, that's hardly my problem or concern, just pointing out some inaccuracies.

[HawkMan]

http://www.linuxinsi...port-74186.html

It's not the percentage that matters but the growth rate. Isn't that what WP fans keep saying? GNU/Linux is growing 100% per annum. That's huge. Apple's desktop OS X is also growing well year on year. Windows might have a desktop monopoly but its position is in decline. It's losing market share year on year, just like in mobile.

The future looks rosy for GNU/Linux and FOSS, with upcoming mobile OS's like Firefox and Tizen. Competition is good for all of us. Windows users get more features and better prices. You should be welcoming the success of Linux.

The difference is that unlike Linux, WP has a growth rate. The Linux growth rate is on average somewhere around 0% though lately its been negative.

You where saying?

[ArialBlue]

Funny, I think the same thing every time I see Windows 8. ;)

The interesting part is that Ubuntu might seem more familiar to Windows users now Microsoft is shifting towards Metro. Too bad app support is nowhere near the level of either OS X or Windows.

It looks nothing like Windows. If anything they are taking concepts from launchy and/or Windows V/7/8 start menu about launching apps. The WINKEY + app name + ENTER. But come on, easier? They are mimicking the Mac OS GUI on maximize mode.

[Nothing Here]

The difference is that unlike Linux, WP has a growth rate. The Linux growth rate is on average somewhere around 0% though lately its been negative.

You where saying?

Hmmm. That is an interesting comment. Let's actually take a quick look here:

http://idilix.net/ho...ers-predictions

That site states:

The increase of registered users at linuxcounter.net are of about 15,000 users per year, meaning that it could be a total increase of 600,000 new users per year.

Now I do believe the previous number of about 15k new users per year that have actually registered at LC. But how many more do not reg per year? It could be as much as 600k, but I highly doubt that. So, your statement of the growth rate of linux is in the negative, is totally false.

[Noir Angel]

Most distributions seem to be fronting with Gnome these days and I think the changes to Gnome are absolutely horrible since version 3. KDE is nicer to use, but a lot of KDE distributions seem to be either buggy or poorly maintained.

For me to gain any real interest in Linux i'd like to see a distro not based on gnome that works well.

[ViperAFK]

Most distributions seem to be fronting with Gnome these days and I think the changes to Gnome are absolutely horrible since version 3. KDE is nicer to use, but a lot of KDE distributions seem to be either buggy or poorly maintained.

For me to gain any real interest in Linux i'd like to see a distro not based on gnome that works well.

Personally I quite like gnome 3/gnome-shell, but to each his own.

Opensuse has a very solid kde desktop and is well maintained and stable. The new 12.2 release comes out tomorrow I believe, it looks like it will be pretty good :) You should give the live cd a spin when it comes out.

There's also mageia which seems to be getting pretty popular. Its KDE focused and I've heard that it is quite good, but I've not tried that one myself. I haven't been trying as many distros since I switched to arch :)

[SharpGreen]

It's not an open standard, any more than OOXML is. Microsoft controls and dictates what the specification is, and many of the API's are proprietary.

Then what's ECMA 334 then? Or ISO/IEC 23720:2006. Oh look C# standards. Also I believe there are several open source implementations of it too.

Then there's the question of patents and licences. We've all seen how Microsoft uses patents on industry standards like FAT to attack FOSS and Android by extracting very high royalties. And now we're just supposed to trust Microsoft's word that they won't sue or extract royalties in the future? Ha yeah right. Microsoft has already shown itself to be an aggressive patent litigator when anyone tries to compete with it. I wouldn't use any of their technology ever again.

The only company who's even tried suing over open implementations of a programming language (a non-standard one at that) is Oracle, and they lost, so precedent would not be on their side. Also FAT is not part of any standard so yea..

Python, Ruby, et al are true cross-platform, non-proprietary, non-patent encumbered, non-precarious development platforms, and are not controlled by a an aggressive patent litigator, unlike C#, dotNET.

So is C#. I can write C# code on Windows and have it compile and work under Mono on Linux and vice versa. I believe that is the definition of cross platform. Plus that whole FRAND thing that usually applies to standards essential patents would like prevent any meaningful litigation. Also it's only "precarious" and bad if you're MS hater. No one has ever been sued for using C# on Linux and it's incredibly unlikely that anyone WOULD be sued for it as would be completely pointless. Even more so than Apple BS patent suit against Samsung.

Nothing's killing GNU/Linux, it's alive and well and thriving.

I would agree if this thread was about Linux on servers. But its not. So I disagree.

[Noir Angel]

Personally I quite like gnome 3/gnome-shell, but to each his own.

Opensuse has a very solid kde desktop and is well maintained and stable. The new 12.2 release comes out tomorrow I believe, it looks like it will be pretty good :) You should give the live cd a spin when it comes out.

There's also mageia which seems to be getting pretty popular. Its KDE focused and I've heard that it is quite good, but I've not tried that one myself. I haven't been trying as many distros since I switched to arch :)

A lot of sites also seem to suggest that Linux Mint is pretty good, how is their KDE distro?

[ViperAFK]

A lot of sites also seem to suggest that Linux Mint is pretty good, how is their KDE distro?

I haven't tried linux mint in a long time and have never used the kde version.

I would agree if this thread was about Linux on servers. But its not. So I disagree.

It certainly isn't the "year of the linux" desktop or anything like that, but linux on the desktop is certainly not dead or dying, the title of this blog post is pure sensationalism.

[Noir Angel]

Ok, well I'll try both then thanks for the advice.

[Max Norris]

A lot of sites also seem to suggest that Linux Mint is pretty good, how is their KDE distro?

Not bad if you want to stay with the Ubuntu repositories.. kind of a tossup between it and Kubuntu, altho personally not my first choice either way for KDE in general. Maybe it's just me, but typically run into stability issues in KDE with both of them, well moreso than other distros I've toyed with anyway. Personal preference (if sticking with Linux at the core) would be Arch and then SUSE for KDE, typically runs pretty well as far as KDE goes.

[Growled Member]

Opensuse has a very solid kde desktop and is well maintained and stable. The new 12.2 release comes out tomorrow I believe, it looks like it will be pretty good :) You should give the live cd a spin when it comes out.

Really? I didn't realize it was out so soon. I will definitely be trying it.

[.Neo]

It looks nothing like Windows. If anything they are taking concepts from launchy and/or Windows V/7/8 start menu about launching apps. The WINKEY + app name + ENTER. But come on, easier? They are mimicking the Mac OS GUI on maximize mode.

It looks more like previous versions of Windows than Metro does. It's that simple.

[BobSlob]

The number 1 problem with Linux.. and in fact, any *nix/bsd based OS (I'm going to exclude OSX)...

"Hey I have an issue with xxxx" "RTFM NOOB!!!!!"

The OS/UI/User Base are not "noob" friendly.. at all.

[joe_banana]

Linux is great but it doesnt have the support from commercial companies like microsoft does and what they do with OEM and also the money for advertising like Apple does.

[Nashy]

The thing that has killed the Linux desktop is it's just too open. There are too many distros that aren't compatable across the board. It's ****ing ridiculous.

[.Neo]

The thing that has killed the Linux desktop is it's just too open. There are too many distros that aren't compatable across the board. It's ****ing ridiculous.

And there's just ALWAYS something isn't there? Installation failing for whatever reason, hardware not working properly, not seeing your screen resolution in the list, unable to set the proper keyboard layout, unable to install whatever software, etc. Which in its turn ALWAYS leads to one thing: Having to fiddle around in Terminal trying to manually add things through commands I don't really understand.

Yesterday I spent 1,5 hours trying to install Arch Linux in VMware Fusion. It kept failing, so after a while I just ended up being frustrated and threw the whole thing in the Trash. Then I tried Fedora, but couldn't figure out how to uninstall certain apps and install the new ones I wanted. Documentation I found involved much older versions of the OS. Also ended up frustrated.

Ubuntu so far is the only one that sort of just works. Except when booting natively I can't get my bluetooth Apple Keyboard to work, no matter what I try. In VMware Fusion I can't apply any 16:9 resolution, even after fiddling around in xorg.conf. I created a config file that used to work in the previous version of Ubuntu, but not anymore. Again, very frustrating. Looking around the internet there I don't know how many people who can't get any 16:9 resolution to work.

Here I am talking about the most basic of basic things. Really don't want to know what happens when I actually need more advanced stuff to work. I never ran in so many issues with either OS X or Windows. Sure, little annoyances here and there. But never fundamental problems that drove me mad to the point I just gave up.

It's a bit of a shame though, since I think the overall progress being made with Ubuntu is great.

[Knife Party]

And there's just ALWAYS something isn't there? Installation failing for whatever reason, hardware not working properly, not seeing your screen resolution in the list, unable to set the proper keyboard layout, unable to install whatever software, etc. Which in its turn ALWAYS leads to one thing: Having to fiddle around in Terminal trying to manually add things through commands I don't really understand.

Yesterday I spent 1,5 hours trying to install Arch Linux in VMware Fusion. It kept failing, so after a while I just ended up being frustrated and threw the whole thing in the Trash. Then I tried Fedora, but couldn't figure out how to uninstall certain apps and install the new ones I wanted. Documentation I found involved much older versions of the OS. Also ended up frustrated.

Ubuntu so far is the only one that sort of just works. Except when booting natively I can't get my bluetooth Apple Keyboard to work, no matter what I try. In VMware Fusion I can't apply any 16:9 resolution, even after fiddling around in xorg.conf. I created a config file that used to work in the previous version of Ubuntu, but not anymore. Again, very frustrating. Looking around the internet there I don't know how many people who can't get any 16:9 resolution to work.

I never ever ran in so many issues with either OS X or Windows. Sure, little annoyances here and there. But never fundamental problems that drove me mad to the point I just gave up.

poor you ! :rolleyes: Anyways, nothing killed the 'linux desktop', its alive!

[HawkMan]

poor you ! :rolleyes: Anyways, nothing killed the 'linux desktop', its alive!

In it's own bubble seen separated from everything else yes.

relative to even MacOSX it's dead, relative to Windows, it never even made it far enough to get DOA status

[Anthonyd]

And there's just ALWAYS something isn't there? Installation failing for whatever reason, hardware not working properly, not seeing your screen resolution in the list, unable to set the proper keyboard layout, unable to install whatever software, etc. Which in its turn ALWAYS leads to one thing: Having to fiddle around in Terminal trying to manually add things through commands I don't really understand.

Yesterday I spent 1,5 hours trying to install Arch Linux in VMware Fusion. It kept failing, so after a while I just ended up being frustrated and threw the whole thing in the Trash. Then I tried Fedora, but couldn't figure out how to uninstall certain apps and install the new ones I wanted. Documentation I found involved much older versions of the OS. Also ended up frustrated.

Ubuntu so far is the only one that sort of just works. Except when booting natively I can't get my bluetooth Apple Keyboard to work, no matter what I try. In VMware Fusion I can't apply any 16:9 resolution, even after fiddling around in xorg.conf. I created a config file that used to work in the previous version of Ubuntu, but not anymore. Again, very frustrating. Looking around the internet there I don't know how many people who can't get any 16:9 resolution to work.

Here I am talking about the most basic of basic things. Really don't want to know what happens when I actually need more advanced stuff to work. I never ran in so many issues with either OS X or Windows. Sure, little annoyances here and there. But never fundamental problems that drove me mad to the point I just gave up.

According to netusage, linux is now used at 75% at your house! Where instead you primary using another OS.

[.Neo]

poor you ! :rolleyes: Anyways, nothing killed the 'linux desktop', its alive!

Getting emotional again I see.

According to netusage, linux is now used at 75% at your house! Where instead you primary using another OS.

According to netusage? That's interesting since the network connection wouldn't work. :laugh:

[White Man]

You cannot kill something that's never been alive.

[simplezz]

And there's just ALWAYS something isn't there? Installation failing for whatever reason, hardware not working properly, not seeing your screen resolution in the list, unable to set the proper keyboard layout, unable to install whatever software, etc. Which in its turn ALWAYS leads to one thing: Having to fiddle around in Terminal trying to manually add things through commands I don't really understand.

Yesterday I spent 1,5 hours trying to install Arch Linux in VMware Fusion. It kept failing, so after a while I just ended up being frustrated and threw the whole thing in the Trash. Then I tried Fedora, but couldn't figure out how to uninstall certain apps and install the new ones I wanted. Documentation I found involved much older versions of the OS. Also ended up frustrated.

Wait, let me get this straight. You're complaining about having to use the terminal, yet you're installing Arch? If you did the most rudimentry research, you'd realise that Arch involves a lot of terminal work, it's not meant for people who are only comfortable with GUI's. For that, Ubuntu, Mint, and so forth are much more suitable. When I use Ubuntu or Mint, I never even touch the terminal.

As far as documentation is concerned, Arch's Wiki is one of the best, along with Gentoo.

Ubuntu so far is the only one that sort of just works. Except when booting natively I can't get my bluetooth Apple Keyboard to work, no matter what I try. In VMware Fusion I can't apply any 16:9 resolution, even after fiddling around in xorg.conf. I created a config file that used to work in the previous version of Ubuntu, but not anymore. Again, very frustrating. Looking around the internet there I don't know how many people who can't get any 16:9 resolution to work.

Have you tried actually installing Ubuntu instead of a virtual machine? The experience you get in a VM isn't going to be the same as a native install. And as far as VM's go, VirtualBox is much better than VMWare.

Messing around with xorg.conf isn't going to solve your problem. If Ubuntu can't detect the correct resolution for your VM, then it's not going to work. It's probably most likely something to do with your VM. Try booting off a live cd/usb pen (from the system not a VM) and see if the correct resolution is detected. That will tell you if it's a problem with your VM setup or not.

I never ever ran in so many issues with either OS X or Windows. Sure, little annoyances here and there. But never fundamental problems that drove me mad to the point I just gave up.

You're running it in a VM. Have you tried running OS X in a VM before? Perhaps you should try out a live cd/usb before complaining.

[.Neo]

Wait, let me get this straight. You're complaining about having to use the terminal, yet you're installing Arch? If you did the most rudimentry research, you'd realise that Arch involves a lot of terminal work, it's not meant for people who are only comfortable with GUI's. For that, Ubuntu, Mint, and so forth are much more suitable. When I use Ubuntu or Mint, I never even touch the terminal.

No, I'm annoyed with the fact that whenever there's an issue I end up fiddling in Terminal. Even in Ubuntu in this case trying to force a 1920 x 1080 resolution.

As far as documentation is concerned, Arch's Wiki is one of the best, along with Gentoo.

If you read my post properly you'd notice I was talking about Fedora's documentation. Arch Linux had a very extensive beginners guide, no complaints there (apart from having to manually do everything). In combination with some YouTube videos I could make my way around it.

Have you tried actually installing Ubuntu instead of a virtual machine? The experience you get in a VM isn't going to be the same as a native install. And as far as VM's go, VirtualBox is much better than VMWare.

My post clearly stated I did in fact tried that. It ended up with me not being able to get my keyboard to work, at all.

Can't say agree I agree with your assessment about VirtualBox being much better than VMware. In my experience that's simply not the case. It's also trivial since people using VirtualBox are running into the exact same problem.

Messing around with xorg.conf isn't going to solve your problem. If Ubuntu can't detect the correct resolution for your VM, then it's not going to work. It's probably most likely something to do with your VM. Try booting off a live cd/usb pen (from the system not a VM) and see if the correct resolution is detected. That will tell you if it's a problem with your VM setup or not.

Once again, my post clearly stated that a modified version of xorg.conf did in fact managed to force a 1920 x 1080 resolution in the previous version of Ubuntu. I did my research and as it turns out most people (if not everybody) using Ubuntu as a guest PC, be it in VirtualBox, VMware Workstation/Fusion or Parallels, are running into these problems. All possible solutions on the internet point to modifying xorg.conf.

This is what I used before to successfully force a 1920 x 1080 resolution in VMware Fusion:

gksu gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
[/CODE]

[CODE]
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Virtual1"
Device "Failsafe Device"
Monitor "Failsafe Monitor"
Defaultdepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Virtual 1920 1080
Modes "1920x1080" "1280x720" "1280x800" "1280x768" "1280x768" "1280x854" "1280x720" "1152x768" "800x600" "1440x900" "800x600" "1440x900" "800x600" "1600x1024" "800x600" "1680x1050" "800x600" "1680x1050" "720x400" "1920x1200" "640x350" "1920x1200" "640x400"
EndSubSection
EndSection
[/CODE]

It worked in Ubuntu 11.10, stopped working in 12.04. I'd greatly appreciate any other suggestions to get 1920 x 1080 to work.

You're running it in a VM. Have you tried running OS X in a VM before? Perhaps you should try out a live cd/usb before complaining.

I suggest you take the time to properly read something before hitting the "Post" button.

[b]PS[/b] After screwing around a bit more I finally managed to temporarily force a 1920 x 1080 resolution. It was gone the moment I restarted though.

[Haggis Veteran]

Opensuse has a very solid kde desktop and is well maintained and stable. The new 12.2 release comes out tomorrow I believe, it looks like it will be pretty good :) You should give the live cd a spin when it comes out.

I use Suse as a daily and KDe is very good on it

I use Gnome personally just for ease of use