The Future direction of Linux

[MurphCID]

I read something, which, of course I can no longer find, that there is a movement to get Compiz working under Wayland. I also notice that as Windows changes, many linux desktops start moving towards the things that Microsoft does to some extent. But I guess there are only so many ways to do something.

[Peter Linu]

it was so much nicer to use Mint Xfce on a Lenovo Tablet

Ross,
How did you manage to put Mint XFCE on a Lenovo Tablet? I have bin wanting to do that for ages.

[MurphCID]

it was so much nicer to use Mint Xfce on a Lenovo Tablet

Ross,
How did you manage to put Mint XFCE on a Lenovo Tablet? I have bin wanting to do that for ages.

If it can be done, Ross can do it, he is a freaking genius.

[thom_A]

Most important factor for user while choosing a distribution is not its features but its infrastructure and maintenance policy.

Spot on. Which is why I love the Ubuntu LTS codebase of Mint.

I really never understood this apprehension from certain users about Mint's future. As well as this hate towards Ubuntu-based Mint and this aggressive push for the LMDE... In a way I understand the trust gained by the Mint team, that anything Mint-developed is superior than anything else out there.
But for me, in case Ubuntu code based cease to exist, LMDE would not be my go to distro. I'd simply use other more mature Debian-based ones that have been developed from day one, until Mint develops exactly like the Ubuntu one... There are more than a hundred distros available, and it's still growing. Worrying about Mint's future doesn't make any sense to me.

[rossdv8]

it was so much nicer to use Mint Xfce on a Lenovo Tablet

Ross,
How did you manage to put Mint XFCE on a Lenovo Tablet? I have bin wanting to do that for ages.

If it can be done, Ross can do it, he is a freaking genius.

Ross is NOT a freaking genius !! Ross is a 'freaking idiot !!
Because Ross 'should have clarified things' and written that it was nice to use Mint Xfce on a Lenovo 'CONVERIBLE Tablet', which has an Intel i5 processor.

Sorry for that slip. I just only ever use the Tablet function because it came with a smashed keyboard, so I use just the touch screen and the Touch Screen keyboard on it.

I just upgraded it to Mint 21.2 and it is still excellent. It is the Lenovo that made me look seriously at getting Mint running on the Surface Pro 3 that also has an i5 processor, because it runs so well on the Lenovo Yoda in Tablet mode - EXCEPT that so far I don't have Portrait Mode on Yoda.

Again - sorry for confusing convertible tablet, with tablet. My dumb. I would also love to get Mint running on my Lenovo 10 inch Tablet, but no luck so far . .

[MurphCID]

There is an interesting discussion on another forum where the comment was made that the use of Flatpaks will cause a contraction in the number of Linux distros due to fewer distros having the ability to package the multitude of packages for each one. This has made me curious, could this move to flatpaks for applications such as Libreoffice, etc be a movement to slim down the number of maintained distributions?

[spamegg]

This has made me curious, could this move to flatpaks for applications such as Libreoffice, etc be a movement to slim down the number of maintained distributions?

It's a movement for app developers to stop packaging their apps for every distro. So, less work for them.

It's also a movement for distro maintainers to stop packaging every app out there. Again, less work for them.

Both app developers and distro maintainers enjoy reduced amount of work.

[t42]

So, where do we go in Linux?

The answer to the quo vadis question also depends on how we identify with where are you from marker, which may be
Debian Celebrates 30 years now!

[spamegg]

I really never understood this apprehension from certain users about Mint's future. As well as this hate towards Ubuntu-based Mint and this aggressive push for the LMDE...

It's mostly internet drama and memes. People act like "stuff I heard on the Internet" is real.

Some Youtubers were making videos like "Is this the end of Mint?" when Ubuntu Cinnamon became an "official flavor" for example.

Also some very anti-Canonical, anti-corporate users kept spreading false information about "Mint is abandoning Ubuntu and switching to Debian" and this kept spreading, to the point that innocent bystanders were asking "what's the progress on that? When can we expect it?" and I had to correct them on several occasions "please don't believe in these memes, it's a self-perpetuating myth, Mint devs never said anything like that".

People are very used to getting their information from third or fourth-hand "sources" these days, instead of going to Mint's own website and blog where they can hear it directly from the main developer...

[MiZoG]

I have objected the sensationalist anti-ubuntu narrative and always argued in favour of main edition's advantages compared to LMDE.
Still the problem is quite real given that Ubuntu is apparently going to push harder with Snaps in the future. Truth is snap adoption creates a divide between the Mint Team and Ubuntu. Clem 'n' co have taken a clear stance. It's not important here to tell who's right and who's wrong though I wouldn't hide my sympathies with Mint devs. I'm just stating the facts. If upstream decisions put a huge strain on Mint to repackage apps shipped as snaps by Ubuntu, "divorce" is a matter of time.

in case Ubuntu code based cease to exist, LMDE would not be my go to distro. I'd simply use other more mature Debian-based ones that have been developed from day one, until Mint develops exactly like the Ubuntu one...

LMDE is not a "new" experiment. It was introduced a while back and at this time is almost on par with Main Mint Cinnamon. I doubt there are many debian-based distros as refined as LMDE is right now.

[MurphCID]

I think we will see where this trend is going a year or two down the road. Now that SuSE Linux has been taken private, I wonder how that is going to effect things later on?

[spamegg]

I think we will see where this trend is going a year or two down the road. Now that SuSE Linux has been taken private, I wonder how that is going to effect things later on?

To me it seems that the Suse thing was purely a money-making corporate tactic (buy company, go public, wait 2 years, stock price goes down, buy stocks back at half the price -> huge profit), probably not related to the direction of Linux.

[rossdv8]

I'm more concerned to see where the ECRA law and Google's DRM push for restricting access to websites and content to specific (like Chrome) browsers, will affect, in the first case, Open Source software as a whole, and in the second, access to content like movie platforms, YouTube and a lot of other things.

I'm no longer a web developer since I slid my last commercial sites to someone else to look after last month - but if I was still on the game, I would be very concerned. As a user of content, I'm too old to worry about it much, but again, if I had another 20 years of active online life it would concern me.

It would be a shame to see Linux hobbled not only by its own Commercial vs Open Source fight, but buy finding its usefulness restricted to 'Paid Browsers', and online searches tightened up even more in favour of Paid Advertisers.
I already had that fight with Google almost ten years ago, and won, after they sandboxed the website of my resort, because I wrote a system that caused us to get the first twenty listings on everey search ahead of a resort run in another company on a beach with the same name as our island. Marriot International run two resorts on that beach, and apparently complained us having so many results ahead of their 'Guaranteed Paid Search Results'. I can sort of understand their disappointment, but it wasn't my fault that I code better than their developers.
I won that one, but it did cause them to do a bit of thinking and rewrite their algorithms.

However, not everyone wins against big companies like Google. I used to dislike Microsoft and Apple for some of the things I disagreed with. I now think they were tame compared with my experiences with Google.
I also don't agree with some of the moves companies like red hat are taking in regard to Linux. In the case of Google, it's more about planned hardware obsolescence (by dropping updates to perfectly good, functional hardware) and constant use of advertising to intrude into our lives in ways that are a complete nuisance. Like pushing me to include advertising code into my website code - something I managed to side step for about fifteen years.

I'll add here that as a web builder for quarter of a century, I know the costs involved with maintaining a website or twenty, and I understand where sites like this forum benefit to some extent from advertising revenue (Mint Forums is one of the few sites where my Ad Blocker is permanently OFF) I hate having advertising rammed down my throat.

So I fear for the direction Linux might take in the future. It sometimes looks a bit like a herd of cattle or sheeps, with big corporations circling the hurd, being mustered towards the yards, and forced in a direction it doesn't really want to go . .

[MurphCID]

I think we will see where this trend is going a year or two down the road. Now that SuSE Linux has been taken private, I wonder how that is going to effect things later on?

To me it seems that the Suse thing was purely a money-making corporate tactic (buy company, go public, wait 2 years, stock price goes down, buy stocks back at half the price -> huge profit), probably not related to the direction of Linux.

You could be correct in this.

[MurphCID]

I tried Mageia 9 yesterday, and boy that was a mistake. Why in this day and age do there exist Linux applications that cannot even find a printer much less install it. I thought I was back on Mandrake in 1999! All the Debian based distros find, install, and set up the printer without me having do to anything. Mageia 9 is arguably worse than Mageia 8.

Linux in this day and age should never have that happen. Also no distribution of Linux should be released with issues of software installation like Mageia was last night. Mint 21.2 with the 6.2 kernel went back on the Galago Pro asap.

[spamegg]

Debian on RISCV seems to be developing much faster than I anticipated. You can now play Super Tux Cart! (on a tiny single board RISCV computer)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na6PT4npsMg

[rossdv8]

This if it passes, is likely to have a significant impact on Open Source projects that are partly funded by donations and sponsorships from Businesses (even small ones). Open Source projects or even parts of Open Source projects that end up being used in a broad range of situations. And not only Linux Distros could be affected - but even individual Open Source components within a distro could open up liability 'cans of worms'.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/e ... ersecurity

Until then, let's hope the world doesn't get some sort of choke hold on Linux . . .

[MurphCID]

I agree Ross, I think that RISC-V might be the next "killer app" event in the computing world. Apparently the chips are relatively easy to fab compared to x86 style chips according to some internet folks. It is going to get interesting.

[rossdv8]

I agree Ross, I think that RISC-V might be the next "killer app" event in the computing world. Apparently the chips are relatively easy to fab compared to x86 style chips according to some internet folks. It is going to get interesting.

You probably remember when RISC was the 'new BIG thing about 40 years ago and the RISC vs CISC debate. I was watching that EC link and the little SOC board running Linux on RISC was interesting as a proof of concept. The only problems seemed top be that while the OS was fine running on a RISC processor, the software was still written using complex instructions and had to be translated.
If someone does a Linux Kernel, and eventually Distro written for specifically RISC processors (as more of the things come online in SOC format) it might open up a whole new world.
But then again - so might quantum computers once they can be scaled down to run on a smart watch . .

[gugalcrom123]

I do not like the immutable buzz for a very naive reason: it takes control away, and turns the distro monolithic just like Windows. You can't swap a desktop on those distros, because it's not just another package. You can't upgrade to a mainline kernel, or remove Firefox either.