This article is full of nonsense. The Linux desktop push isn't failing because it has experiences and apps that are similar to Windows and macOS. Being able to run Windows apps on Linux is a benefit, not a failure. As for religious wars over init systems, desktop environments and package managers, competition is making the options stronger, not weaker. Competition is a reason why package management on Linux is far better than equivalents on Windows and macOS.
The main reason for Linux not taking off on the desktop is because most users don't care about what OS they run, they just want a computer that works. If the PC they buy comes with Windows out of the box, they're going to stick with that. Until you get manufacturers shipping PCs with Linux as the default OS, you're mainly going to see desktop Linux as an enthusiast-only option. It's no accident that one of the devices helping to spread Linux (the Steam Deck) comes with Linux as the default option.
> As for religious wars over init systems, desktop environments and package managers, competition is making the options stronger, not weaker.
Competition can definitely improve things, but it's not universally positive. In particular, endless competition in parts of the operating system makes it hard to build anything on top of them. E.g. if you want to distribute an application for Linux, do you build a Flatpak, or a Snap? Or take a more traditionalist approach and make RPMs, DEBs, etc.? You either pick your favourite and leave out a large fraction of Linux users who disagree, or you have to do more than one of these. This is definitely a drag on the ecosystem.
I agree that most users don't care about the OS, though.
Generally most Linux distributions are literally the same thing underneath. I have recently done an LFS build (using version 12.3 of the book). The same files were in the same directories in Debian, Arch and LFS for the most part.
I even had a look at source code for makepkgs in Arch and they are literally the same commands in the script that the book has you manually type in.
The packaging critique comes up over the years but it is a bit of an overblown.
Building packages for different distributions isn't super difficult. I've build Arch Packages using the ABS, DEBS and RPMS and they are all conceptually the same. Having a quick skim of the Flatpak instructions it doesn't look that different either.
If you don't want to bother with all of that. You can just have a script that drops the installation either in /opt or ~./.local/. I am pretty sure Jetbrains Toolbox does that, but I would need to check my other machine to confirm and I don't have access currently.
Dunno about not caring about the OS. My mum who's not techy got persuaded to get a Macbook after Windows and is finding it a big learning curve. I remember when Walmart sold Linux machines they gave up because the buyers returned them when they found their Windows stuff didn't run. I'm a fairly normal user and certainly care if it's Mac, Windows or Linux. I wouldn't run linux as my main os as I spend a lot of time in Excel.
If you build an application, The Right Way™ has always, and probably always will be a tarball. Leave to distributions the hassle to distribute your software.
This is absolutely not a solution. It more or less works for a few big widely used applications like Firefox & Libreoffice, but more niche applications can't realistically get someone in every major Linux distro interested in packaging them. And if someone does take an interest once, there's no guarantee they stay interested to package updates. Distro maintainers need to be highly trusted (give or take AUR), so it's not easy to add many more of them.
On top of that, some of the biggest Linux distros will only release application updates with their own OS releases, on a cadence of months or years. Software developers expect to be able to deliver updates in hours to days (at least in the consumer space - highly regulated things like banking are different).
There are good reasons why RedHat and Canonical, the companies behind some of the biggest Linux distros, are pushing app distribution systems (Flatpak & Snap) which aim to be cross-distro and have upstream developers directly involved in packaging. There are absolutely downsides to this approach as well, but it would be nice if we could stop pretending that traditional distro packaging is a marvellous system.
This is a complete and utter non-starter for most software developers.
On pretty much every other operating system out there, I as the application author have control over the release cadence of my software. On some platforms, I can simply release an installer and be done. On others, I send the app through some form of certification process, and when it's complete it appears on the App Store.
Linux is rather unique in that it has tasked the distro maintainers to be tastemakers and packagers of the software that appears in their repositories. They control what version is used, what libraries it's linked against and their specific versions, how often it's updated, which additional features are added or removed before distribution, et cetera.
From the outside, this is complete and utter insanity. In the old days, you had to either static link the universe and pray or create a third-party repository per specific distro. Thank goodness these days we have numerous ways to cut distros out of the loop - Docker, Flatpak, AppImage and of course Steam if you're a gamer.
> Its not about competition. RedHat employees pushed their idea of things and the volunteers either ate it up or left.
This is a narrow view about how innovation happens in Linux and related software. Yes, Linux-focused companies are driving many of the changes, but there is plenty of exploration of ideas that happens outside of those companies.
I was thinking about maintaining and keeping things running (like you would do with cars and houses and anything else except software) and less about innovation and change. I doubt there is a shortage of ideas that are being explored.
Like, innovative and fresh stuff is cool, but at the end of the day you need to keep your business running and not breaking down.
AppImage is, in fairness, a clever idea. But it's also yet another option. It only solves the mess of competing formats if it wins, if it becomes the normal way to publish user-facing software on Linux.
It's because the software they use is not available. Put aside there are alternatives. There are not alternatives for some software. I would use Linux if Autodesk made Revit and AutoCAD for Linux.
I would venture to guess that kids know the difference between Mac and Windows and probably prefers one over the other.
> Being able to run Windows apps on Linux is a benefit, not a failure.
It is a massive moral failure though. It shows that after two decades of work, the Linux community has been unable to build a simple sane functional stable development environment better than Win32.
Sane here is bearing a lot of weight. Developing on Linux is far easier than developing on Windows. I've never seen a windows project as simple as nq[0] or dwm[1].
A random macOS binary is more likely to run on another macOS install from anytime in the last half decade than a Linux binary on the same distribution.
Even Apple’s famously fast deprecation is like rock by comparison.
I'm not sure why you think this is a good metric; the space of "random Mac binaries" is far smaller. There's probably something to be said for this "curation," but you pay for it, both literally with money and in limited selection.
I don’t know; you don’t think having Win32 be the unofficial API is a problem?
It literally means Windows will always exist - as the preferred IDE and Reference Spec for the Linux desktop. It also means all evolution of Linux will be ironically constrained by Win32 compatibility requirements.
Meh. It shows a good part of software (namely, games) is written for Windows, because the userbase is Windows, because Windows is the lion's share. And it shows people on Linux want that software to run. It's an admission, but not a moral failure.
It's 2025. The "year of the linux desktop" has been a meme for years. No one says it in earnest. No one is having init or DE wars. And while there is plenty of healthy discussion about flatpak and other alt forms of software distribution, this is exactly the kind of innovation and experimentation that leads to the usability improvements the author wants to see. Linux is doing just fine, and I'm glad there are multiple options to accomplish similar tasks.
The /r/Linux Reddit very much exists contrary to your take, and you’ll see many commenters here also argue about whether it is the year of Linux on the desktop.
Never underestimate the identity association in enthusiast communities.
Linux becoming better than Windows to run games is the sort of thing that should actually scare Microsoft because it can lead to non-engineers installing linux because game go fast. The people spending a grand on gpus will put up with real hassles to that end.
Why would Microsoft be scared? They still own and set the future direction for the Windows APIs that those games are designed for, meaning that they're still in the driver's seat. Proton has to play an eternal game of catch up.
> The problem is that these are "wins" because they bring Linux closer to Windows or macOS.
I disagree that this is an issue. The main advantage of Linux for me is that I have choice (including using various desktop environments that the author is annoyed by; I used GNOME for years and eventually had too many problems with it so I switched to KDE), and those choices are not controlled by one entity which, in the case of Apple and Microsoft, view me only as a customer to extract money from.
One of my complaints with Gnome is that I can’t hand it to a normal person and let them use it because it’s not obvious how to use it. The entry point to everything looks like a horizontal scroll bar in the top left corner and basic actions take more clicks than Windows.
The biggest battle desktop Linux is losing is the one where a minority of devs are dictating their preferred compute paradigm to a majority of users that don’t agree it’s a good solution.
I can “fix” Gnome in about 2m with extensions, but that doesn’t help when a new user loads it up for the first time and is hit with the unintuitive ideology of some nerds.
> The biggest battle desktop Linux is losing is the one where a minority of devs are dictating their preferred compute paradigm to a majority of users that don’t agree it’s a good solution.
Absolutely. A commercial product can succeed while maintaining an auteur's vision, so long as that vision largely aligns with users' needs. In contrast, open-source projects are often not viewed through a "product" lens, to their detriment.
When this happens in open source, we get clunky and idiosyncratic (though sometimes lovable) software like GNOME and GIMP. When it happens in the commercial world, we get projects like Megalopolis.
Gnome is way simpler to use than Windows. If you let grandma or a kid with no prior Desktop experience, I’m pretty sure they will find Gnome more intuitive. The problem is that it is too different for a Windows user, so the switching cost is high.
I very much doubt that they will, because Gnome heavily uses the obnoxious UI paradigm where controls are hidden away, and you need to perform "magic gestures" (like moving the mouse cursor into a corner) to even get them to show up.
I don't even understand why they thought it would be a good idea. On mobile there is at least the justification that it helps keep the valuable screen estate for "important things" (although anecdotally I've seen how much more my mother and grandmother both struggle with button-less iPhones because they can't remember the gestures). But on the desktop, even on laptops, it is a very weak argument.
Using a computer take training. Look at a windows user switching to macOS. It's not intuitive for them either. GNOME is actually nice, even if it's less customizable than KDE.
MacOS has some really clunky stuff. I hate finder. I like Gnome once I add dash to dock, tray icons, and window manager tweaks. I’m just saying the defaults are a bad choice if they want adoption.
Totally agree. Dash To Dock + App Indicators seem like they should be part of Gnome. I end ups changing to the icons to Papirus as I prefer those. They make Gnome really nice to use.
I use GNOME without extensions. The default are fine by me.
But your use case is why GNOME have extensions. To alter the defaults and add stuff that they don't care about, but you do. In macOS, you have to basically reverse engineer and use private APIs.
Agree. In addition, I don’t believe that significant amounts of switching was ever going to happen without desktop Linux becoming more like its commercial counterparts. One has to remember that most computer users use computers as tools and don’t relish having to learn a whole new set of conventions.
There will always be more “Linuxy” out in the weeds desktops for people who want them. Most people who want that built their own setup anyway, making whatever the big DEs do more or less moot.
Every distro except arch is full of preinstalled crapware. Some like OpenSuse even have preinstalled crapware bundles where stuff you uninstall comes back after update
Linux desktop has already arrived for me. All the apps and utilities I need is there, all installable via apt. It's not a Linux problem anymore when the hardware manufacturers won't support it.
GNOME is nice, KDE is nice, and we have other options for people that don't like the two previous one. The issue we have now is walled garden, when some proprietary software won't support standards and even their own file format.
> While this could absolutely happen, the way that Linux as a whole has been developing over the years isn't always conducive to making the world's Windows and macOS users convert en masse.
Its the way Windows is developing that is driving this change. GNOME might be hardly usable but Microsoft managed to top that.
Edit: I retract the last sentence. I'm currently trying GNOME and its less usable than Windows.
Edit 2: I accidentally minimized Steam to tray, but Gnome has no tray. Steam continues running invisible without being represented somewhere in the UI. One of the developers of Gnome (the only DE where this happens) said this is an application bug[1]. And then continues to complain that devs only test against "stock" environments.... but Gnome is the stock environment. What an ass.
I do understand why people bash Gnome and their developers. The hate is deserved.
Stock Gnome is indeed a mess, but thankfully we're not limited to that. KDE, Xfce, and Cinnamon all offer environments that are far more intuitive to use, especially from someone coming from Windows. And there are good distros built around all of these as the primary DE. I usually recommend Mint (the default edition, i.e. Cinnamon) to people who get UX fatigue from the recent developments in Windows land and want something that "just works" and isn't made by developers who have a permanent you're-holding-it-wrong mentality.
This article is kind of old hat - it's basically been true that Linux is fine as a desktop OS for Grandma since some point circa 2010 +/- a few years. The big requirement is that Grandma just uses web browsers and other basic software from the OSS ecosystem, hardware was relatively compatible to begin with, and somebody does the OS upgrades for her every 3 years.
The real issue is that these kinds of "grandma" users maybe just don't use computers anymore. And the folks that do are joined at the hip to proprietary software like Photoshop or CAD programs or whatever else they care a lot about and don't want to relearn, and also make enough money that the costs are invisible. Or they're business computers and not using what's familiar (Windows) is a support cost.
From this perspective, gaming and specific hobbyists are basically the only feasible audiences for the Linux desktop unless people are very much pressured by software costs, or annoyed by proprietary software (DRM, lockdowns, upgrades, etc.) enough to switch their major activity to an open source option. In which case they awkward situation of "software works better on Linux, but won't try Linux until confirmed they like the not-totally-integrated-and-nice-on-windows-or-mac software running not on Linux."
I do think there ought to be more of a business case for Linux as a business OS as you should get reduced hardware and software and support costs, but there aren't actually a lot of people with the right experience and expertise to run a business off Linux as a desktop OS to begin with and so those savings can't be realized effectively.
That said, as computers get more locked down, I think there will be a bigger drive for power users who influence friends and family to switch.
Any case, my house has had year of the Linux Desktop ongoing since circa 2006.
The year of Linux on desktop is not come=ing, because the year of anything on desktop is not coming, and hasn't been for maybe a decade. Every new mass-market thing runs either in the browser, or, more rarely, specifically on mobile phones. Or maybe it's a game, so it completely eclipses whatever platform experience. If not that, it's entrenched ancient desktop software, like Excel (turning 40 in a few weeks), which is also its own world.
The "desktop" itself, the underlying OS, is irrelevant to most users who are not hardcore pros, like, well, software developers.
I feel like I could have read this article back in 2004. The main benefit is that you get to choose. The other two big operating systems don't really allow much choice.
> Meanwhile, the Linux community spends enormous energy on debates that rarely affect mainstream adoption. Consider the “init wars,” where systemd sparked endless flame wars (and memes) about the proper way to boot a Linux system.
This is almost in anything. We had play ground arguments over whether SEGA or Nintendo were better. Then Playstation vs N64 vs Saturn. There was Amiga vs Atari. BSD vs Linux. Vim vs Emacs. Ford vs Chevy.
I need to have Outlook, Zoom and zScaler working seamlessly. Not with wine or whatever but right there bam it works. Otherwise I cannot use the OS in my company.
I can install them if this is easy.
Now, I've been using Linux since 1994, wrote a small bit of the kernel at that time (you may have ran it, it was for a well known NIC) and I use it daily on my systems. Via ssh or remote dev in vscode.
I have no idea what the graphical interface is today and how to configure it. I could learn if this is easy.
One thing I know is that the sound did not work on my Thinkpad last time Ininstalled Ubuntu and the second screen would not wake up (the third did). Surely googling and chatgpting would help but in Windows 11 it just works.
(This is a dupe so I'll copy my comment on the old, unloved post from 5 days ago...)
Linux is a fish, stop trying to make it a bird. The fact that a significant portion of the Linux-user population thinks/believes/hopes/expects that it will someday be a bird won't make it so, or do anything to unblock the technical, legal, and organizational roadblocks.
If you want a FOSS desktop OS that can win the "right battles", here's what you do:
1. Come up with a name and a logo. Trademark them. Make a basic set of rules that people have to adhere to if they want to use your logo. Obviously, get a lawyer to look it over to ensure it's ironclad.
2. Fork FreeBSD (or any other open-source-but-not-copyleft-licensed kernel)
3. Pick a GUI layer. GTK, Qt, WxWidgets, doesn't really matter as long as you keep the API stable so programs written in 2028 will run in 2038 (good luck doing that on Linux).
4. Create a driver API interface so someone can write a Realtek Wifi driver once and it'll never need recompiled or updated for a newer kernel. The driver file will work in 2028 and 2038 (of course, excepting the case where there's a new CPU architecture, or a security vulnerability).
5. Stabilize the application-level API as well. That means, probably pick a version of glibc and stick with it forever. Patch vulnerabilities, but maintain backward compatibility as much as possible. Application binaries should work forever.
If your instinctive reaction to these bullet points is to think "who's gonna do all that" then yeah, I agree with you. It's not going to happen.
The Linux Desktop is not failing because there is no such thing as Linux Desktop.
Windows is an operating system made by Microsoft for PCs, macOS is an operating system made by Apple for Macs but a product call Linux Desktop does not exist.
There is Ubuntu, REHL, Debian, Fedora, Arch and many other operating systems based on the Linux kernel - which is a just a kernel - that are built for different purposes, none of them targeting mainstream desktop usage.
In the history of operating systems based on Linux there were a few products targeting mainstream desktop users like Lindows and Ubuntu, but the only really successful, at least for some time, was Ubuntu.
This desire for “year of Linux on the desktop” is always attributed to “Linux lovers,” and other nebulous fan voices. This article uses the word “win,” but as far as I can see the prize they are looking for is… a lot of additional non-technical desktop users? Why? What’s the goal here that actually benefits Linux or broader open source development?
I think one of the reasons is that if you think it's better and see how other users are struggling with all the bs these companies are throwing at them, it's only natural that you would suggest what works for you.
There is also another reason, though, and this is more on a platform level, i.e. think globally, act locally. If more users are on Linux then companies will start to target it as a platform that requires first class support. So, then, even if payable, we would also get native Linux apps for enterprise. This would be a win.
As it stands, Steam was the big push but we need more companies to adopt this approach. Don't get me wrong, even wine was amazing, but Proton is such an easier experience that makes it all a breeze.
So, why? In the long run, it will be a better experience for all of us, Linux native users.
Developing GUI applications for Linux is also a huge pain. Developers not familiar with Linux need to learn so many things...
What is X11, Wayland, GNOME, KDE, d-bus, application ids, portals, etc.
Then once you have a working application, users request having it distributed as .tar.gz, snap, flatpak, you name it. Then dependencies are missing on some Linux distribution or there are random bugs with Nvidia graphics cards.
Compare that to developing for Windows, where most things "just work"
> What is X11, Wayland, GNOME, KDE, d-bus, application ids, portals, etc. ... Compare that to developing for Windows, where most things "just work"
This is a weird complaint, and I'm saying this as a mostly-Windows developer. Windows has an insane number of technologies, many of them replacements for older replacements for older replacements ... etc going 30+ years back. Do you know how registration-free COM works, for example? Probably not, yet it is there, and if you go to the Windows section of MSDN and just start reading through the docs, you'll have to read through that too.
You can reasonably argue that it's not a thing that you actually need to know to write an app for Windows, and it's true. But similarly you don't actually need to know what d-bus is, never mind how it works, to write an app for Linux. If you use a reasonably high-level framework such as Qt, it takes care of all that for you. Hell, you can even go for .NET Core + Avalonia to get something very similar to WPF on Windows.
And then there's Electron, which lets you pretend that everything is just a browser...
Nah, writing the apps for Linux isn't difficult at all. OTOH you're right in that distribution is a pain, and end-user support across numerous wildly different distros can also be a pain (especially when they start packaging a patched version of your code in their package repos!).
Yeah that part is just bonkers. Take Discord, for example, probably the most popular "app" that people install on Linux these days. There is a Snap, a Flatpak, a DEB. I can't imagine how much work it is to maintain all of those. Screen sharing is broken in random versions. People say to install the DEB (if you're lucky enough to be on a Debian-based system), but oh, make sure you install via a terminal command with "--fix-broken" to install all dependencies (wouldn't the app store GUI do that? maybe not). Apparently the Flatpak is better, but don't forget to install something called "flatseal" so you can upload files (Flatpaks are sandboxed by default). I imagine Discord tech support gets a lot of angry emails from Linux users who didn't get the "flatseal" memo and think that Discord just sucks at developing software.
It first complains that the Linux wins, such as running more games, etc are the wrong wins because they make Linux more like Windows.
And yet, later, it says the reason Windows for ARM failed is the apps users wanted not running for it, and what users really want is their stuff to just work. But that’s literally the stuff the author called the wrong kind of win at the beginning.
Further, the author complains about the multiple DEs, init systems, etc and considers this fragmentation to be the cause of LOTD’s failure. And yet, getting rid of this would actually make Linux like Windows/Mac unlike adding compatibility for more games.
Finally, I think this is substantially wrong as well. The variety in Linux is what made it possible for Valve, for example, to put together the steam deck. They were able to choose the combination of different options in different areas they worked best for the Steam Deck’s use case. Further, Linux’s tremendous success on the server is also likely due to fragmentation. The fragmentation meant that several different companies could survive and flourish, such as SUSE, Ubuntu, RH, etc and each one of them could contribute different improvements that either helped the entire ecosystem or initially provided an advantage on their ecosystem which the competitors would need to come up with an answer for.
One thing that I think this argument sorely misses is an honest discussion of how e.g. bad (or perhaps unliked) decisions get made that have big impacts here.
For example, count me in with those folks who think the "new" GNOME sucks. Now, maybe you disagree and that's fine -- but so often those discussions start and end with "Well it's open source and so because you're not making anything better you can't even talk."
No. Some big players put their thumb on the scale and had a vision and a direction for GNOME and what role it would or should play; someone thought it was a good idea to try to out Steve Jobs Steve Jobs.
THOSE moves need more discussion and transparency in order to REALLY talk about "the Linux Desktop."
Those moves are made by Red Hat, to benefit their enterprise customers, because enterprise customers are the ones who pay for Linux, their interests get top priority.
Shuttleworth did so much for desktop Linux by mailing us all free install CDs, but then users everywhere began to expect Linux to be free as in beer.
But until users are willing to pay for desktop Linux again, like some of us may remember, enterprise will always win out.
It's not obvious to me from looking at Gnome that it is the way it is to "benefit the enterprise customers". If anything, I'd expect the DE that does that to be much more conservative about its UX choices, and sticking more closely to established industry standards (i.e. "what Windows does") to minimize the need for retraining and such.
Imagine if Windows got rid of or hid the start button, taskbar, tray icons, and window controls. Gnome is made for the devs that work on it more than the normal people that use it.
I love Linux, and I use it daily for software development and gaming, but I am often exasperated by the Linux community. There's a strange combination of newbie-friendliness combined with gaslighting; if you're completely new, you'll get tons of enthusiastic help, but the moment you experience genuine frustration, you're castigated or told that your preferences are inherently wrong. I think that many hardcore Linux users don't get that some people will never grok the command line, or do not intrinsically enjoy tinkering with their OS. Luckily, I do, but I am hesitant to recommend a Linux box to just anyone.
I HIGHLY agree with this article and IMHO all the comments bashing Gnome just don't really get it. For all of it's faults, I still roll with Ubuntu/Gnome every day because it just freaking works, gets out of my way, gets the job done, and doesn't require a weekend of tweaking software to get everything working just right.
I don't care at all for the SystemD/whatever else flame wars. Sure if you work on these systems you probably care deeply about the differences but please realize that most of your end users do not give a shit. The same goes for the various packaging systems, I prefer to still use DEB's when I can but at the end of the day it really just comes down to how easily can I get the apps setup on my computer to get my work done, myself and most other users also don't really care.
What I care about are things like: why is multi monitor support still half assed? why does full screening my chrome window crash my monitor? why is it that half my installed apps don't conform to my theme? why is it that when I switch on X window manager instead of Wayland my wallpaper goes away?
But it seems that the folks that actually work on Linux don't care about these issues because when I ask why VSCode crashes my monitor, all I get is answers telling me to use vim or emacs, or when I complain why the themes look all janky all I get is: "well this wouldn't be an issue if you used <insert obscure window manager that requires a week's worth of configuration to get running and a steep learning curve>.
The vibe I get around these issues is that it's below most Linux developers as they are too busy arguing about some flag in the kernel or whether to use systemd or not. But those same people bitch and moan why "Year of the Linux Desktop" hasn't come yet. Figure out that these issues are not below you, they are the issues that people care about. Fix those issues and I'm positive that adoption will go up.
Most users who develop on Linux are not really Linux developers in the sense that we just write our own code and don’t contribute anything to the kernel, or to the userland programs that you were trying to use. The people who write the code you actually use are quite busy, so you usually just get random nobodies (myself included!) when you go online to chat about Linux. There’s some possibility that you might get help, because we happen to be using the same program, but that’s all there is to it.
If you want to know why VSCode is buggy, you will probably have to get into contact with Microsoft, I guess. I know this looks like some kind of smarmy sarcastic response, but it really is the truth; the rest of us really don’t know why they put bugs in there.
Yeah the real problem is that the only thing that’s well tested is what devs use. It’s like the FOSS parallel to startups only testing on top of the line MacBook Pros and iPhones (“works on my machine”). As soon as you step outside those bounds, good luck.
> Yeah the real problem is that the only thing that’s well tested is what devs use
I see this issue as well. A CLI setup with Emacs/VIM doing C/C++ development is very stable, because that's how the majority of linux devs interact with Linux.
What puts a bad taste in my mouth is when you mention issues outside of that setup, the usual response isn't "oh this is an issue we need to fix", it's "well your setup sucks, stop using VSCode/Gnome/Chrome/etc"
Most of the uses for a casual computer user have been replaced by smartphones and tablets.
Then you have walled gardens like the Apple ecosystem where interoperability is superior among Apple products which cross sell each other. If you got an iPhone, now get the Apple Watch and a Macbook and all integrate well.
Then you have games, where consoles will give you a decent experience for less money.
Then you have professional users where the most common use case is office documents. This remains contentious but there are more alternatives now like web apps, MS Office clones like Libreoffice, Softmaker Office/FreeOffice, WPS Office.
Then you have specific desktop apps for specific OSes and there you are tied to an OS. This is one of the few legitimate uses for Windows I can think of.
Some of us are old enough to remember Corel Linux. It was about as mainstream as Linux could have gotten.
It shipped with WordPerfect Office, which was still neck and neck with Microsoft Office at the time, including WordPerfect, Quattro, Corel Presentations, Corel Draw, all there.
It had migration tools to move Internet Explorer, Netscape, Outlook, mIRC, and ICQ settings, and Windows registry settings to Corel Linux.
It shipped with a Wine-based Windows application compatibility layer out of the box.
When your unique selling proposition is that you are just like Windows, but cheaper, you end up with a lot of customers who are expecting 100% Windows behavior.
For desktop Linux to be successful, it needs to be the cool different OS -- not the boring Windows that the accountants use, and not the MacOS that the art snobs and marketing hipsters use, but something appealing on its own merits.
And, arguably, that's about where it is now: 70% boring, 15% commercial hipster, 15% indie.
it's already happened. So many of the main contributors work for IBM, Microsoft, and Intel. It's extremely difficult to have your voice heard / patches accepted if you're just a hobbyist developer
I've gone to the extreme of writing my own OS because I got fed up with how corporate Linux has gotten
This article is full of nonsense. The Linux desktop push isn't failing because it has experiences and apps that are similar to Windows and macOS. Being able to run Windows apps on Linux is a benefit, not a failure. As for religious wars over init systems, desktop environments and package managers, competition is making the options stronger, not weaker. Competition is a reason why package management on Linux is far better than equivalents on Windows and macOS.
The main reason for Linux not taking off on the desktop is because most users don't care about what OS they run, they just want a computer that works. If the PC they buy comes with Windows out of the box, they're going to stick with that. Until you get manufacturers shipping PCs with Linux as the default OS, you're mainly going to see desktop Linux as an enthusiast-only option. It's no accident that one of the devices helping to spread Linux (the Steam Deck) comes with Linux as the default option.
> As for religious wars over init systems, desktop environments and package managers, competition is making the options stronger, not weaker.
Competition can definitely improve things, but it's not universally positive. In particular, endless competition in parts of the operating system makes it hard to build anything on top of them. E.g. if you want to distribute an application for Linux, do you build a Flatpak, or a Snap? Or take a more traditionalist approach and make RPMs, DEBs, etc.? You either pick your favourite and leave out a large fraction of Linux users who disagree, or you have to do more than one of these. This is definitely a drag on the ecosystem.
I agree that most users don't care about the OS, though.
Generally most Linux distributions are literally the same thing underneath. I have recently done an LFS build (using version 12.3 of the book). The same files were in the same directories in Debian, Arch and LFS for the most part.
I even had a look at source code for makepkgs in Arch and they are literally the same commands in the script that the book has you manually type in.
The packaging critique comes up over the years but it is a bit of an overblown.
Building packages for different distributions isn't super difficult. I've build Arch Packages using the ABS, DEBS and RPMS and they are all conceptually the same. Having a quick skim of the Flatpak instructions it doesn't look that different either.
If you don't want to bother with all of that. You can just have a script that drops the installation either in /opt or ~./.local/. I am pretty sure Jetbrains Toolbox does that, but I would need to check my other machine to confirm and I don't have access currently.
Dunno about not caring about the OS. My mum who's not techy got persuaded to get a Macbook after Windows and is finding it a big learning curve. I remember when Walmart sold Linux machines they gave up because the buyers returned them when they found their Windows stuff didn't run. I'm a fairly normal user and certainly care if it's Mac, Windows or Linux. I wouldn't run linux as my main os as I spend a lot of time in Excel.
If you build an application, The Right Way™ has always, and probably always will be a tarball. Leave to distributions the hassle to distribute your software.
This is absolutely not a solution. It more or less works for a few big widely used applications like Firefox & Libreoffice, but more niche applications can't realistically get someone in every major Linux distro interested in packaging them. And if someone does take an interest once, there's no guarantee they stay interested to package updates. Distro maintainers need to be highly trusted (give or take AUR), so it's not easy to add many more of them.
On top of that, some of the biggest Linux distros will only release application updates with their own OS releases, on a cadence of months or years. Software developers expect to be able to deliver updates in hours to days (at least in the consumer space - highly regulated things like banking are different).
There are good reasons why RedHat and Canonical, the companies behind some of the biggest Linux distros, are pushing app distribution systems (Flatpak & Snap) which aim to be cross-distro and have upstream developers directly involved in packaging. There are absolutely downsides to this approach as well, but it would be nice if we could stop pretending that traditional distro packaging is a marvellous system.
This is a complete and utter non-starter for most software developers.
On pretty much every other operating system out there, I as the application author have control over the release cadence of my software. On some platforms, I can simply release an installer and be done. On others, I send the app through some form of certification process, and when it's complete it appears on the App Store.
Linux is rather unique in that it has tasked the distro maintainers to be tastemakers and packagers of the software that appears in their repositories. They control what version is used, what libraries it's linked against and their specific versions, how often it's updated, which additional features are added or removed before distribution, et cetera.
From the outside, this is complete and utter insanity. In the old days, you had to either static link the universe and pray or create a third-party repository per specific distro. Thank goodness these days we have numerous ways to cut distros out of the loop - Docker, Flatpak, AppImage and of course Steam if you're a gamer.
Its not about competition. RedHat employees pushed their idea of things and the volunteers either ate it up or left.
RedHats and Canonicals paying enterprise customers are whats keeping the Linux ecosystem alive. No one else brings the required manpower to the table.
> Its not about competition. RedHat employees pushed their idea of things and the volunteers either ate it up or left.
This is a narrow view about how innovation happens in Linux and related software. Yes, Linux-focused companies are driving many of the changes, but there is plenty of exploration of ideas that happens outside of those companies.
I was thinking about maintaining and keeping things running (like you would do with cars and houses and anything else except software) and less about innovation and change. I doubt there is a shortage of ideas that are being explored.
Like, innovative and fresh stuff is cool, but at the end of the day you need to keep your business running and not breaking down.
> do you build a Flatpak, or a Snap?
.appimage
AppImage is, in fairness, a clever idea. But it's also yet another option. It only solves the mess of competing formats if it wins, if it becomes the normal way to publish user-facing software on Linux.
It's because the software they use is not available. Put aside there are alternatives. There are not alternatives for some software. I would use Linux if Autodesk made Revit and AutoCAD for Linux.
I would venture to guess that kids know the difference between Mac and Windows and probably prefers one over the other.
Even more so users don't care about what kernel their OS is running, nor do they even know what a kernel is.
It's entirely possible for a large enough brand to ship a Linux based desktop OS to mass adoption. It has already been done once with ChromeOS.
Linux will never be the name users remember, and it's not meant to be.
> Being able to run Windows apps on Linux is a benefit, not a failure.
It is a massive moral failure though. It shows that after two decades of work, the Linux community has been unable to build a simple sane functional stable development environment better than Win32.
Sane here is bearing a lot of weight. Developing on Linux is far easier than developing on Windows. I've never seen a windows project as simple as nq[0] or dwm[1].
[0]: https://git.vuxu.org/nq/
[1]: https://git.suckless.org/dwm/files.html
Neither has Microsoft, Google nor Apple.
A random macOS binary is more likely to run on another macOS install from anytime in the last half decade than a Linux binary on the same distribution.
Even Apple’s famously fast deprecation is like rock by comparison.
I'm not sure why you think this is a good metric; the space of "random Mac binaries" is far smaller. There's probably something to be said for this "curation," but you pay for it, both literally with money and in limited selection.
... which is much less of a problem for Linux than closed source ecosystems.
I don’t know; you don’t think having Win32 be the unofficial API is a problem?
It literally means Windows will always exist - as the preferred IDE and Reference Spec for the Linux desktop. It also means all evolution of Linux will be ironically constrained by Win32 compatibility requirements.
It isn't and won't be. So no.
Meh. It shows a good part of software (namely, games) is written for Windows, because the userbase is Windows, because Windows is the lion's share. And it shows people on Linux want that software to run. It's an admission, but not a moral failure.
Huh? Does the mountain of software written for Linux to the point where Windows added Linux support to attract devs mean nothing?
Surely WSL is not a moral failure for Microsoft.
It's 2025. The "year of the linux desktop" has been a meme for years. No one says it in earnest. No one is having init or DE wars. And while there is plenty of healthy discussion about flatpak and other alt forms of software distribution, this is exactly the kind of innovation and experimentation that leads to the usability improvements the author wants to see. Linux is doing just fine, and I'm glad there are multiple options to accomplish similar tasks.
The /r/Linux Reddit very much exists contrary to your take, and you’ll see many commenters here also argue about whether it is the year of Linux on the desktop.
Never underestimate the identity association in enthusiast communities.
Linux becoming better than Windows to run games is the sort of thing that should actually scare Microsoft because it can lead to non-engineers installing linux because game go fast. The people spending a grand on gpus will put up with real hassles to that end.
Why would Microsoft be scared? They still own and set the future direction for the Windows APIs that those games are designed for, meaning that they're still in the driver's seat. Proton has to play an eternal game of catch up.
Given the size of the steam market, I suspect many game authors would be fine with supporting whatever runs on Steam.
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> The problem is that these are "wins" because they bring Linux closer to Windows or macOS.
I disagree that this is an issue. The main advantage of Linux for me is that I have choice (including using various desktop environments that the author is annoyed by; I used GNOME for years and eventually had too many problems with it so I switched to KDE), and those choices are not controlled by one entity which, in the case of Apple and Microsoft, view me only as a customer to extract money from.
One of my complaints with Gnome is that I can’t hand it to a normal person and let them use it because it’s not obvious how to use it. The entry point to everything looks like a horizontal scroll bar in the top left corner and basic actions take more clicks than Windows.
The biggest battle desktop Linux is losing is the one where a minority of devs are dictating their preferred compute paradigm to a majority of users that don’t agree it’s a good solution.
I can “fix” Gnome in about 2m with extensions, but that doesn’t help when a new user loads it up for the first time and is hit with the unintuitive ideology of some nerds.
> The biggest battle desktop Linux is losing is the one where a minority of devs are dictating their preferred compute paradigm to a majority of users that don’t agree it’s a good solution.
Absolutely. A commercial product can succeed while maintaining an auteur's vision, so long as that vision largely aligns with users' needs. In contrast, open-source projects are often not viewed through a "product" lens, to their detriment.
When this happens in open source, we get clunky and idiosyncratic (though sometimes lovable) software like GNOME and GIMP. When it happens in the commercial world, we get projects like Megalopolis.
Gnome is way simpler to use than Windows. If you let grandma or a kid with no prior Desktop experience, I’m pretty sure they will find Gnome more intuitive. The problem is that it is too different for a Windows user, so the switching cost is high.
I very much doubt that they will, because Gnome heavily uses the obnoxious UI paradigm where controls are hidden away, and you need to perform "magic gestures" (like moving the mouse cursor into a corner) to even get them to show up.
I don't even understand why they thought it would be a good idea. On mobile there is at least the justification that it helps keep the valuable screen estate for "important things" (although anecdotally I've seen how much more my mother and grandmother both struggle with button-less iPhones because they can't remember the gestures). But on the desktop, even on laptops, it is a very weak argument.
Intuition is based on prior exposure. What exposure do i need to understand GNOME?
For example, how am i supposed to discover how to maximize a window?
Using a computer take training. Look at a windows user switching to macOS. It's not intuitive for them either. GNOME is actually nice, even if it's less customizable than KDE.
MacOS has some really clunky stuff. I hate finder. I like Gnome once I add dash to dock, tray icons, and window manager tweaks. I’m just saying the defaults are a bad choice if they want adoption.
Totally agree. Dash To Dock + App Indicators seem like they should be part of Gnome. I end ups changing to the icons to Papirus as I prefer those. They make Gnome really nice to use.
I use GNOME without extensions. The default are fine by me.
But your use case is why GNOME have extensions. To alter the defaults and add stuff that they don't care about, but you do. In macOS, you have to basically reverse engineer and use private APIs.
Now if only GNOME didn't regularly break the more useful extensions...
> I can’t hand it to a normal person and let them use it because it’s not obvious how to use it.
I'm not sure that means anything. Every time I have to help my kids or wife with a Windows problem, I'm perpetually plagued by how weird it is.
The only people who find Windows easy or obvious are already Windows users. And yes, the same can be said of Linux environments.
Agree. In addition, I don’t believe that significant amounts of switching was ever going to happen without desktop Linux becoming more like its commercial counterparts. One has to remember that most computer users use computers as tools and don’t relish having to learn a whole new set of conventions.
There will always be more “Linuxy” out in the weeds desktops for people who want them. Most people who want that built their own setup anyway, making whatever the big DEs do more or less moot.
Linux is already winning some important battles:
-no ads
-no tracking
-no vendor lock in
-no preinstalled or unremovable crapware
That's enough for me. Yes, it's not perfect, but you're simply allowed to say no.
> no preinstalled .. crapware
Every distro except arch is full of preinstalled crapware. Some like OpenSuse even have preinstalled crapware bundles where stuff you uninstall comes back after update
Debian?
Linux desktop has already arrived for me. All the apps and utilities I need is there, all installable via apt. It's not a Linux problem anymore when the hardware manufacturers won't support it.
GNOME is nice, KDE is nice, and we have other options for people that don't like the two previous one. The issue we have now is walled garden, when some proprietary software won't support standards and even their own file format.
I'm in a MS centric business and am in the middle of setting up a Linux MOE solution for it.. this is winning in my mind.
> While this could absolutely happen, the way that Linux as a whole has been developing over the years isn't always conducive to making the world's Windows and macOS users convert en masse.
Its the way Windows is developing that is driving this change. GNOME might be hardly usable but Microsoft managed to top that.
Edit: I retract the last sentence. I'm currently trying GNOME and its less usable than Windows.
Edit 2: I accidentally minimized Steam to tray, but Gnome has no tray. Steam continues running invisible without being represented somewhere in the UI. One of the developers of Gnome (the only DE where this happens) said this is an application bug[1]. And then continues to complain that devs only test against "stock" environments.... but Gnome is the stock environment. What an ass.
I do understand why people bash Gnome and their developers. The hate is deserved.
[1] https://discourse.gnome.org/t/feature-request-show-when-apps...
Stock Gnome is indeed a mess, but thankfully we're not limited to that. KDE, Xfce, and Cinnamon all offer environments that are far more intuitive to use, especially from someone coming from Windows. And there are good distros built around all of these as the primary DE. I usually recommend Mint (the default edition, i.e. Cinnamon) to people who get UX fatigue from the recent developments in Windows land and want something that "just works" and isn't made by developers who have a permanent you're-holding-it-wrong mentality.
This article is kind of old hat - it's basically been true that Linux is fine as a desktop OS for Grandma since some point circa 2010 +/- a few years. The big requirement is that Grandma just uses web browsers and other basic software from the OSS ecosystem, hardware was relatively compatible to begin with, and somebody does the OS upgrades for her every 3 years.
The real issue is that these kinds of "grandma" users maybe just don't use computers anymore. And the folks that do are joined at the hip to proprietary software like Photoshop or CAD programs or whatever else they care a lot about and don't want to relearn, and also make enough money that the costs are invisible. Or they're business computers and not using what's familiar (Windows) is a support cost.
From this perspective, gaming and specific hobbyists are basically the only feasible audiences for the Linux desktop unless people are very much pressured by software costs, or annoyed by proprietary software (DRM, lockdowns, upgrades, etc.) enough to switch their major activity to an open source option. In which case they awkward situation of "software works better on Linux, but won't try Linux until confirmed they like the not-totally-integrated-and-nice-on-windows-or-mac software running not on Linux."
I do think there ought to be more of a business case for Linux as a business OS as you should get reduced hardware and software and support costs, but there aren't actually a lot of people with the right experience and expertise to run a business off Linux as a desktop OS to begin with and so those savings can't be realized effectively.
That said, as computers get more locked down, I think there will be a bigger drive for power users who influence friends and family to switch.
Any case, my house has had year of the Linux Desktop ongoing since circa 2006.
The year of Linux on desktop is not come=ing, because the year of anything on desktop is not coming, and hasn't been for maybe a decade. Every new mass-market thing runs either in the browser, or, more rarely, specifically on mobile phones. Or maybe it's a game, so it completely eclipses whatever platform experience. If not that, it's entrenched ancient desktop software, like Excel (turning 40 in a few weeks), which is also its own world.
The "desktop" itself, the underlying OS, is irrelevant to most users who are not hardcore pros, like, well, software developers.
I feel like I could have read this article back in 2004. The main benefit is that you get to choose. The other two big operating systems don't really allow much choice.
> Meanwhile, the Linux community spends enormous energy on debates that rarely affect mainstream adoption. Consider the “init wars,” where systemd sparked endless flame wars (and memes) about the proper way to boot a Linux system.
This is almost in anything. We had play ground arguments over whether SEGA or Nintendo were better. Then Playstation vs N64 vs Saturn. There was Amiga vs Atari. BSD vs Linux. Vim vs Emacs. Ford vs Chevy.
>It would require coordination with hardware and software vendors, and some sort of coherent leadership
Time for a Cathedral and the Bazaar refresher?
https://web.archive.org/web/20250307173133/https://www.catb....
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The mother of my girlfriend installed Ubuntu this year.
She's 58 and a book keeper.
She even went so far and got some windows apps running with wine. All just with the help of a forum posts she found via a web search engine.
> They don't care about Snap or Flatpack
They usually do not need to know - they just see a software centre which is app store like.
> they care that their favorite apps will work
That depends on app developers.
> that updates won't break anything (which Windows does all the time)
Already done
> and that they don't have to learn a list of text commands to make basic changes to their computers.
Already done.
I need to have Outlook, Zoom and zScaler working seamlessly. Not with wine or whatever but right there bam it works. Otherwise I cannot use the OS in my company.
I can install them if this is easy.
Now, I've been using Linux since 1994, wrote a small bit of the kernel at that time (you may have ran it, it was for a well known NIC) and I use it daily on my systems. Via ssh or remote dev in vscode.
I have no idea what the graphical interface is today and how to configure it. I could learn if this is easy.
One thing I know is that the sound did not work on my Thinkpad last time Ininstalled Ubuntu and the second screen would not wake up (the third did). Surely googling and chatgpting would help but in Windows 11 it just works.
(This is a dupe so I'll copy my comment on the old, unloved post from 5 days ago...)
Linux is a fish, stop trying to make it a bird. The fact that a significant portion of the Linux-user population thinks/believes/hopes/expects that it will someday be a bird won't make it so, or do anything to unblock the technical, legal, and organizational roadblocks. If you want a FOSS desktop OS that can win the "right battles", here's what you do:
1. Come up with a name and a logo. Trademark them. Make a basic set of rules that people have to adhere to if they want to use your logo. Obviously, get a lawyer to look it over to ensure it's ironclad.
2. Fork FreeBSD (or any other open-source-but-not-copyleft-licensed kernel)
3. Pick a GUI layer. GTK, Qt, WxWidgets, doesn't really matter as long as you keep the API stable so programs written in 2028 will run in 2038 (good luck doing that on Linux).
4. Create a driver API interface so someone can write a Realtek Wifi driver once and it'll never need recompiled or updated for a newer kernel. The driver file will work in 2028 and 2038 (of course, excepting the case where there's a new CPU architecture, or a security vulnerability).
5. Stabilize the application-level API as well. That means, probably pick a version of glibc and stick with it forever. Patch vulnerabilities, but maintain backward compatibility as much as possible. Application binaries should work forever.
If your instinctive reaction to these bullet points is to think "who's gonna do all that" then yeah, I agree with you. It's not going to happen.
The Linux Desktop is not failing because there is no such thing as Linux Desktop.
Windows is an operating system made by Microsoft for PCs, macOS is an operating system made by Apple for Macs but a product call Linux Desktop does not exist.
There is Ubuntu, REHL, Debian, Fedora, Arch and many other operating systems based on the Linux kernel - which is a just a kernel - that are built for different purposes, none of them targeting mainstream desktop usage.
In the history of operating systems based on Linux there were a few products targeting mainstream desktop users like Lindows and Ubuntu, but the only really successful, at least for some time, was Ubuntu.
This desire for “year of Linux on the desktop” is always attributed to “Linux lovers,” and other nebulous fan voices. This article uses the word “win,” but as far as I can see the prize they are looking for is… a lot of additional non-technical desktop users? Why? What’s the goal here that actually benefits Linux or broader open source development?
Well, that's a good point. Why?
I think one of the reasons is that if you think it's better and see how other users are struggling with all the bs these companies are throwing at them, it's only natural that you would suggest what works for you.
There is also another reason, though, and this is more on a platform level, i.e. think globally, act locally. If more users are on Linux then companies will start to target it as a platform that requires first class support. So, then, even if payable, we would also get native Linux apps for enterprise. This would be a win.
As it stands, Steam was the big push but we need more companies to adopt this approach. Don't get me wrong, even wine was amazing, but Proton is such an easier experience that makes it all a breeze.
So, why? In the long run, it will be a better experience for all of us, Linux native users.
In both Linux and Windows, websites, in any browser, look “washed out” and not pleasant to look at.
But MacOS always gets it right: in any browser, the websites look “juicy” for the lack of a better word, and pleasant to look at.
Why can’t Linux fix this and render closer to MacOS?
Hopefully, without all the other “value added” stuff.
> Article mischaracterizes the experience of running x64 apps on Windows on Arm, which is Rosetta 2-like at this point, but whatever
Where is the translation layer that lets me seamlessly run x64 apps on Linux on Arm?
Developing GUI applications for Linux is also a huge pain. Developers not familiar with Linux need to learn so many things...
What is X11, Wayland, GNOME, KDE, d-bus, application ids, portals, etc.
Then once you have a working application, users request having it distributed as .tar.gz, snap, flatpak, you name it. Then dependencies are missing on some Linux distribution or there are random bugs with Nvidia graphics cards.
Compare that to developing for Windows, where most things "just work"
> What is X11, Wayland, GNOME, KDE, d-bus, application ids, portals, etc. ... Compare that to developing for Windows, where most things "just work"
This is a weird complaint, and I'm saying this as a mostly-Windows developer. Windows has an insane number of technologies, many of them replacements for older replacements for older replacements ... etc going 30+ years back. Do you know how registration-free COM works, for example? Probably not, yet it is there, and if you go to the Windows section of MSDN and just start reading through the docs, you'll have to read through that too.
You can reasonably argue that it's not a thing that you actually need to know to write an app for Windows, and it's true. But similarly you don't actually need to know what d-bus is, never mind how it works, to write an app for Linux. If you use a reasonably high-level framework such as Qt, it takes care of all that for you. Hell, you can even go for .NET Core + Avalonia to get something very similar to WPF on Windows.
And then there's Electron, which lets you pretend that everything is just a browser...
Nah, writing the apps for Linux isn't difficult at all. OTOH you're right in that distribution is a pain, and end-user support across numerous wildly different distros can also be a pain (especially when they start packaging a patched version of your code in their package repos!).
> you're right in that distribution is a pain
Yeah that part is just bonkers. Take Discord, for example, probably the most popular "app" that people install on Linux these days. There is a Snap, a Flatpak, a DEB. I can't imagine how much work it is to maintain all of those. Screen sharing is broken in random versions. People say to install the DEB (if you're lucky enough to be on a Debian-based system), but oh, make sure you install via a terminal command with "--fix-broken" to install all dependencies (wouldn't the app store GUI do that? maybe not). Apparently the Flatpak is better, but don't forget to install something called "flatseal" so you can upload files (Flatpaks are sandboxed by default). I imagine Discord tech support gets a lot of angry emails from Linux users who didn't get the "flatseal" memo and think that Discord just sucks at developing software.
This article is completely incoherent.
It first complains that the Linux wins, such as running more games, etc are the wrong wins because they make Linux more like Windows.
And yet, later, it says the reason Windows for ARM failed is the apps users wanted not running for it, and what users really want is their stuff to just work. But that’s literally the stuff the author called the wrong kind of win at the beginning.
Further, the author complains about the multiple DEs, init systems, etc and considers this fragmentation to be the cause of LOTD’s failure. And yet, getting rid of this would actually make Linux like Windows/Mac unlike adding compatibility for more games.
Finally, I think this is substantially wrong as well. The variety in Linux is what made it possible for Valve, for example, to put together the steam deck. They were able to choose the combination of different options in different areas they worked best for the Steam Deck’s use case. Further, Linux’s tremendous success on the server is also likely due to fragmentation. The fragmentation meant that several different companies could survive and flourish, such as SUSE, Ubuntu, RH, etc and each one of them could contribute different improvements that either helped the entire ecosystem or initially provided an advantage on their ecosystem which the competitors would need to come up with an answer for.
One thing that I think this argument sorely misses is an honest discussion of how e.g. bad (or perhaps unliked) decisions get made that have big impacts here.
For example, count me in with those folks who think the "new" GNOME sucks. Now, maybe you disagree and that's fine -- but so often those discussions start and end with "Well it's open source and so because you're not making anything better you can't even talk."
No. Some big players put their thumb on the scale and had a vision and a direction for GNOME and what role it would or should play; someone thought it was a good idea to try to out Steve Jobs Steve Jobs.
THOSE moves need more discussion and transparency in order to REALLY talk about "the Linux Desktop."
Those moves are made by Red Hat, to benefit their enterprise customers, because enterprise customers are the ones who pay for Linux, their interests get top priority.
Shuttleworth did so much for desktop Linux by mailing us all free install CDs, but then users everywhere began to expect Linux to be free as in beer.
But until users are willing to pay for desktop Linux again, like some of us may remember, enterprise will always win out.
It's not obvious to me from looking at Gnome that it is the way it is to "benefit the enterprise customers". If anything, I'd expect the DE that does that to be much more conservative about its UX choices, and sticking more closely to established industry standards (i.e. "what Windows does") to minimize the need for retraining and such.
Which is one reason a lot of people use kde which doesn't have anyone with their thumb on it.
Imagine if Windows got rid of or hid the start button, taskbar, tray icons, and window controls. Gnome is made for the devs that work on it more than the normal people that use it.
I love Linux, and I use it daily for software development and gaming, but I am often exasperated by the Linux community. There's a strange combination of newbie-friendliness combined with gaslighting; if you're completely new, you'll get tons of enthusiastic help, but the moment you experience genuine frustration, you're castigated or told that your preferences are inherently wrong. I think that many hardcore Linux users don't get that some people will never grok the command line, or do not intrinsically enjoy tinkering with their OS. Luckily, I do, but I am hesitant to recommend a Linux box to just anyone.
I HIGHLY agree with this article and IMHO all the comments bashing Gnome just don't really get it. For all of it's faults, I still roll with Ubuntu/Gnome every day because it just freaking works, gets out of my way, gets the job done, and doesn't require a weekend of tweaking software to get everything working just right.
I don't care at all for the SystemD/whatever else flame wars. Sure if you work on these systems you probably care deeply about the differences but please realize that most of your end users do not give a shit. The same goes for the various packaging systems, I prefer to still use DEB's when I can but at the end of the day it really just comes down to how easily can I get the apps setup on my computer to get my work done, myself and most other users also don't really care.
What I care about are things like: why is multi monitor support still half assed? why does full screening my chrome window crash my monitor? why is it that half my installed apps don't conform to my theme? why is it that when I switch on X window manager instead of Wayland my wallpaper goes away?
But it seems that the folks that actually work on Linux don't care about these issues because when I ask why VSCode crashes my monitor, all I get is answers telling me to use vim or emacs, or when I complain why the themes look all janky all I get is: "well this wouldn't be an issue if you used <insert obscure window manager that requires a week's worth of configuration to get running and a steep learning curve>.
The vibe I get around these issues is that it's below most Linux developers as they are too busy arguing about some flag in the kernel or whether to use systemd or not. But those same people bitch and moan why "Year of the Linux Desktop" hasn't come yet. Figure out that these issues are not below you, they are the issues that people care about. Fix those issues and I'm positive that adoption will go up.
Sorry for the rant.
Most users who develop on Linux are not really Linux developers in the sense that we just write our own code and don’t contribute anything to the kernel, or to the userland programs that you were trying to use. The people who write the code you actually use are quite busy, so you usually just get random nobodies (myself included!) when you go online to chat about Linux. There’s some possibility that you might get help, because we happen to be using the same program, but that’s all there is to it.
If you want to know why VSCode is buggy, you will probably have to get into contact with Microsoft, I guess. I know this looks like some kind of smarmy sarcastic response, but it really is the truth; the rest of us really don’t know why they put bugs in there.
Yeah the real problem is that the only thing that’s well tested is what devs use. It’s like the FOSS parallel to startups only testing on top of the line MacBook Pros and iPhones (“works on my machine”). As soon as you step outside those bounds, good luck.
> Yeah the real problem is that the only thing that’s well tested is what devs use
I see this issue as well. A CLI setup with Emacs/VIM doing C/C++ development is very stable, because that's how the majority of linux devs interact with Linux.
What puts a bad taste in my mouth is when you mention issues outside of that setup, the usual response isn't "oh this is an issue we need to fix", it's "well your setup sucks, stop using VSCode/Gnome/Chrome/etc"
Chrome and VSCode do suck. More developers there than the Linux kernel and they won't play nice with Wayland. Shame!
Most of the uses for a casual computer user have been replaced by smartphones and tablets.
Then you have walled gardens like the Apple ecosystem where interoperability is superior among Apple products which cross sell each other. If you got an iPhone, now get the Apple Watch and a Macbook and all integrate well.
Then you have games, where consoles will give you a decent experience for less money.
Then you have professional users where the most common use case is office documents. This remains contentious but there are more alternatives now like web apps, MS Office clones like Libreoffice, Softmaker Office/FreeOffice, WPS Office.
Then you have specific desktop apps for specific OSes and there you are tied to an OS. This is one of the few legitimate uses for Windows I can think of.
Otherwise Linux is king.
Sure. Whatever. The year of my linux desktop was 1998.
I don't even want linux to be mainstream.. this will inevitably lead to more for-profit enshittification of the ecosystem..
Some of us are old enough to remember Corel Linux. It was about as mainstream as Linux could have gotten.
It shipped with WordPerfect Office, which was still neck and neck with Microsoft Office at the time, including WordPerfect, Quattro, Corel Presentations, Corel Draw, all there.
It had migration tools to move Internet Explorer, Netscape, Outlook, mIRC, and ICQ settings, and Windows registry settings to Corel Linux.
It shipped with a Wine-based Windows application compatibility layer out of the box.
It lasted less than a year.
When your unique selling proposition is that you are just like Windows, but cheaper, you end up with a lot of customers who are expecting 100% Windows behavior.
For desktop Linux to be successful, it needs to be the cool different OS -- not the boring Windows that the accountants use, and not the MacOS that the art snobs and marketing hipsters use, but something appealing on its own merits.
And, arguably, that's about where it is now: 70% boring, 15% commercial hipster, 15% indie.
The way that happens is if you don't make the ethos of Linux mainstream.
It can't just be a means to an end; that's what happened to Android. You make it an expectation that everything on a given box be FLOSS.
tbh I can't see that ever happening, the average person is never going to care whether their software is free or not (or even know what that means)
it's already happened. So many of the main contributors work for IBM, Microsoft, and Intel. It's extremely difficult to have your voice heard / patches accepted if you're just a hobbyist developer
I've gone to the extreme of writing my own OS because I got fed up with how corporate Linux has gotten
how?
Ubuntu is a great example, paid security updates. Still in the process of moving my work servers over to Debian.
oh god yeah
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