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


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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.

If you buy hardware that is linux friendly you don't have to worry about any of this. My intel graphics work perfectly out of the box in every linux distribution, same with my wireless, media keys etc...

I haven't had to touch a xorg.conf file in years, afiak xorg.conf is deprecated now. I did some googling and now for xorg.conf stuff its recommended to use /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-monitor.conf or /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-monitor.conf (depends on distro), this article might help for ubuntu: http://samuelmartin....-lubuntu-12-04/. You may be able to drop your old xorg.conf into this new file :)

Linux developers have to work very hard to support the myriads of possible hardware configurations, and hardware manufacturers aren't always linux friendly, so you can't reasonably expect every hardware configuration to work problem-free in linux as it does in windows. IMO ubuntu does a great job considering this :)

Regarding fedora to remove an app just sudo yum remove appname and to install just sudo yum install appname or search for it in the package manager check the box and hit install. I will agree fedora's graphical package manager is really terrible compared to ubuntu's (which is why I always use yum from the commandline in fedora because its graphical packagemanager gave me a lot of trouble), but otherwise its a good distro.

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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.

Errr, what? Red hat? SuSE? Mandriva (or however it's spelt)? Conical (Ubuntu)? Red Flag? Asianux? Oracle Hardened?

They're all companies that provide their own distros of linux AND provide commercial support.

In fact, Red Hat recently announced how well they are doing, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/28/us-redhat-idUSBRE82R1CU20120328 and https://www.neowin.net/news/red-hat-the-first-billion-dollar-linux-company

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I haven't had to touch a xorg.conf file in years, afiak xorg.conf is deprecated now. I did some googling and now for xorg.conf stuff its recommended to use /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-monitor.conf, this article might help: http://samuelmartin....-lubuntu-12-04/. You may be able to drop your old xorg.conf into this new file :)

Thanks for the tip, I'll see if it works out. (Y)

Edit It worked out brilliantly! You're da man ViperAFK! :D


Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
Modeline "1920x1080_60.00" 173.00 1920 2048 2248 2576 1080 1083 1088 1120 -hsync +vsync
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "vmwgfx"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1920x1080_60.00" "1024x768"
EndSubSection
EndSection
[/CODE]

post-128385-0-40440500-1346887534_thumb.

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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

Despite what the media and some fanboys say, I don't Linux has ever been in competition with the big boys. It just goes along merrily doing it's own and anyone who wants to can tag along. One day a thousand years from now when Windows and Apple have been long gone, Linux will still be prodding along. It may not be very much further than it is now, but it will still be here.

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It may not be very much further than it is now, but it will still be here.

Who's to say Linux (or anything else we've achieved for that matter) will survive whatever it is that wiped out Apple and Microsoft?

What aren't you telling us?! :|

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I found there are a lot of good points. Only thing for me is, I don't care about the market share.

A lot of people here don't seem to realize you don't need 90% marketshare in order to be successful.

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A lot of people here don't seem to realize you don't need 90% marketshare in order to be successful.

That's a long shot, really.

There are tons of people who know and understand that. It's actually funny you touch on this, because most, if not all, attacks made against Linux include the said "marketshare" as a metric.

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There are tons of people who know and understand that. It's actually funny you touch on this, because most, if not all, attacks made against Linux include the said "marketshare" as a metric.

OS X is living proof marketshare isn't everything. It "only" has 5-10% marketshare depending on who you believe, yet it has broad commercial software and hardware support. Developers who previously left or never really invested in the platform do now. Electronic Arts, Steam, Autodesk (AutoCAD) to name a few big ones.

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OSX has a 5% marketshare and is doing well.

Linux however has a ~1% marketshare total. each distro is pretty much at less than 0.1%, for the big ones. since linux isn't linux. linux is just the kernel.

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I don't care if the marketshare is zero. As long as people are willing to keep developing the OS, kernel, software and distros themselves, I'm happy

I feel the same way. I wish more people felt this way.

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