What Killed the Linux Desktop

[monkeyboy]

Yep incomplete, misleading and plagiarized you know FUD

My God! Worse and worse... I take this for a joke, saw also the smiley. I hope, and I prefer answering no more to this.

what have you developed for a Linux so far ?

My God! Worse and worse... I take this for a joke, saw also the smiley. I hope, and I prefer answering no more to this.

I'm sorry but this has nothing to see with the subject. This has no importance. And this could be assimilated to some "superior and arrogant" behaviour by power users and devs who consider other people like crap. At least those who don't think like them and dare to question what is being done. Sacrilege! As bad that a religion...

I'm sorry and apologize to be a little harsh but this kind of remark makes me bristling hairs... What you have develop? OK, so you can say nothing. Pfff... Just stupid. Unfortunately, we see this often. Don't be astonished if some people don't come to Linux...

Oh, and I have never said we must have only one desktop. Although this has advantages...

When the going gets tough the trolls get going.

[turtlewax]

Having kids killed the Linux desktop for me. As the article points out, there is a maintenance cost for maintaining a linux OS.
It is a fun hobby, but it conflicts with homework and football practice...
In a few years my kids will be too cool to spend time with me, then maybe I'll get back into it.

[linuxviolin]

When the going gets tough the trolls get going.

Always so silly.

As the article points out, there is a maintenance cost for maintaining a linux OS.
It is a fun hobby

A "fun hobby"... You're right, maybe.

[exploder]

Just my opinion but I think the Linux desktop is alive and well. I think that KDE, Cinnamon and Unity are helping to make Linux more popular. Yes that's right, I did include Unity. I see more and more game developers showing interest in us Linux users now and that is something that has held Linux back in the past. Unity has been maturing pretty quick for all the longer it has been around and the same can be said about Cinnamon. Unity has appeal to new users that want something fresh and I have seen first hand new users enjoy the Mac like appeal that Unity has. Unity has come a long way in a short amount of time and lets face it, people like the look and feel of the Mac OS but most can not afford the huge price associated with Apple products. I see more and more refinements and better decision making going on with Unity and I think that by the next LTS release Unity could surpass the Mac OS in style and elegance.

Cinnamon also has a lot of appeal, it gives you a very elegant traditional desktop with just the right amount of desktop effects. Cinnamon is getting better with each new release and the introduction of the Mintbox demonstrates that there is a market for it. Clem's decision to fork Nautilus was a good move, no one has to give up features they want and Nemo will be very full featured. Cinnamon really gives you the best of the old and the new and by Mint's DistroWatch ranking I would say that Cinnamon is a successful project.

KDE is very full featured and it can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. KDE 4 has really matured well and it is loaded with features. KDE 4 had a really rough start but in my opinion it is much more solid and stable than KDE 3 was now.

I see more interest in Linux than ever before. Better decisions are being made and distributions are doing their own thing and not just following the crowd so much anymore. The introduction of Gnome 3 has sparked developers into doing things their own way. The only desktop environment that does not seem to be going anywhere is Gnome Shell. I can't figure out what they are even trying to accomplish with Gnome Shell... It seems to me like they just keep taking away features from Gnome Shell, it's no wonder that these guys think the Linux desktop is dead they are the ones killing it. We would not have new shells being developed if Gnome Shell had any sort of direction.

I see plenty of indications that the Linux desktop is doing better than ever. There is a lot of good work going on right now and I can think of several distributions off the top of my head that are doing some very high quality work. Keep in mind, these are just my views and opinions and I am not trying to force them on anyone.

[KBD47]

Having kids killed the Linux desktop for me. As the article points out, there is a maintenance cost for maintaining a linux OS.
It is a fun hobby, but it conflicts with homework and football practice...
In a few years my kids will be too cool to spend time with me, then maybe I'll get back into it.

I think it can be a hobby depending upon the user. It need not be a hobby. Linux can be fully useful and require little maintenance. There are people who have run Debian for 10 years, the same system with hassle-free upgrades. The only time you have to fix Linux is if an update/upgrade breaks it. The answer is to run something like Debian Stable, Ubuntu/Mint LTS, or simply set the thing for only security updates. Tweakers like myself, and multi-booters will occasionally break things, but I have family members using Linux with no issues. It depends what you are running, and if it's running well if you are simply willing to leave it alone.

[monkeyboy]

monkeyboy: When the going gets tough the trolls get going.

Linuxviolin: Always so silly.

Silly perhaps, but posting a topic called "What Killed the Linux Desktop" on a Linux board is so much more obvious. I will wait for the spin now.

[OldManHook]

Five Stars...exploder.
Killed the Linux Desktop
The Linux desktop is alive and Well...Sometimes i think it the Headlines like this that does more harm to Linux than anything MS do And most are written by So-Called Linux Experts.

[animaguy]

The headline insinuates doom and gloom.

And yet I only see a lot of interest in Linux as compared to over 5 years ago when Linux was not a realistic alternative to the casual user.

[3fRI]

When the New York Times erroneously reported his death on June 2, 1897, Mark Twain responded, "The report of my death was an exaggeration." He didn't die until 1910.

IMHO, the Linux desktop is not dead by a long shot. Given the evolution of Linux during the past 20 years, I predict it even has a future!

[linuxviolin]

First, I thank the people who have answered to this thread with calm and expressed their views simply, i.e. almost everybody. Thanks.

Then, and although I should not answer to the silly provocations, I'm going to try, a last time I hope, to answer to the only person who has played the "parasite" with the hope he'll see at last the light, even if I fear I no longer believe really:

Silly perhaps, but posting a topic called "What Killed the Linux Desktop" on a Linux board is so much more obvious. I will wait for the spin now.

The article is about Linux, right? It's an opinion about the Linux desktop, right? OK, so it has its place here as elsewhere. And everybody can give his/her view, except you apparently ... For you it's just a play for silly useless posts and agression towards people. Continue to play if you can be happy with this but this is quite sad, really...

[xenopeek]

Let's all back off a bit. This topic isn't going in the right direction.

Let's keep the banter friendly please

[KBD47]

on topic article:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/81333

and another about how KDE weathered the storm:
http://www.datamation.com/open-source/d ... ash-1.html

[animaguy]

I was on another forum and believe me some of the people are really mean.

i love this forum cause of two reasons.

1) Linux Mint is awesome
2) The people here are awesome too

I respect this thread.

The article is legitimate.

My position is that Linux Desktop is alive and well.

However, this article is important to read.

So to all sides involved I hope we can at least all agree that we are here to discuss tech issues and share ideas.

I am confident that if you really explore the topic objectively you may find there are common issues that we can agree with that minimize the issues we disagree on.

[fraxinus_63]

Good post above from exploder.

Sometimes you have to look back a bit further than you usually do to get things in perspective. I have used Linux everyday for eight years now. Back when I was first installing SUSE 9.1, I often thought that 'this is exciting!', but also that 'things will surely improve'.

Today's Mint and openSUSE releases are light years ahead of what was on offer in the mid-2000s. Mint is now astonishing - I seem to be able to install any app I want from the vast Debian ecosystem and it works; I can run as many other OSs as I want in VirtualBox; I can mix and match 'Gnome' and 'KDE' apps as I wish and they all work; best of all, I hardly seem to do any system maintenance whatever, apart from backing up my data. So far as I'm concerned, if you are happy to stick with LTS releases there need be no 'maintenance cost' of the kind that turtlewax describes in his/her post. You set it up and it just works and works and works. If you want to play, of course, you can! But it is not compulsory nowadays, if you choose your distro carefully.

I am not being complacent here. The renewed and dismal desktop wars of the last two years have done no good at all to encourage new adopters, who see Linux as complex and arcane. I am also really disappointed that there are not more people 'out there' benefitting from the Linux desktop. I agree with Miguel's point that sound on Linux is still often very hard to understand and troubleshoot (the only significant problems I have had with Mint have been connected with Pulse Audio). But the Linux desktop is far from being dead in my own study, and on my family's desktops.

[KBD47]

If I need a Linux machine to be unbreakable, I will set it for just security updates. In my limited experience about the only thing that can break Linux is updates. If your use LTS you limit that possibility. If you use Debian Stable you limit it further. If you have a very solid Linux system that's working perfectly, set it just for security updates and forget about it

[exploder]

fraxinus_63, you are sure right about looking back to put things in perspective. Back when I started with Linux it was difficult to install and configure, you had to know all of the specs on your monitor for example. The first distro I was ever able to get installed was Caldara, it came with Gnome and KDE. I used KDE because when I went into Gnome I thought it looked strange and I really did not even know what to do with it! Back then RedHat was supposed to be the easiest distro to install but even using a book I could never get it to run. Linux was a real challenge back then.

Now look at how easy things are, anybody can easily install Linux and there is little or no configuring to it anymore. The first time I tried Fluxbox I had to do practically everything by hand, do a lot of reading and ask a lot of questions. Now installing another desktop environment is just a few mouse click away and most of the time it just works. Also, when I first came to Linux most distros did not come with any codecs and it took a bit of research to figure out how to get most multimedia to play. Early distros almost never looked very good out of the box either. Back then I thought everyone that was building Linux distributions must have really bad taste because most distributions looked pretty ugly and you definitely had to spend some time to improve their appearance.

The first distro I can remember that just worked out of the box was Simply Mepis. My wife brought home a book from the library, "Point And Click Linux" or something like that. The book had a Mepis Live CD, as soon as I tried it I had to install it! I put Mepis on a computer I had built from used parts, it was a real pile of junk that was all cobbled together! After about a week though, I stopped using Windows and ran Linux full time. Things sure have changed since then!