Why Desktop Linux (Still) Sucks. And What We Can Do To Fix It.

by r11t • 16 years ago

73 96 16 years ago

krschultz3• 16 years ago

The easiest problem to tackle is .RPM vs .DEB debate that should have ended about 3 years ago. If the LSB had said .DEB it might have happened, but since the "official" standard and the actual majority are diametrically opposed it doesn't want to happen. And of course the filesystems don't perfectly match across distros.

pyre• 16 years ago

From what I hear, .DEB is a bitch to do anything outside of the norm, whereas .RPM is much easier and less complex of a package format. That said, I much prefer the apt system on Debian, and Ubuntu. What really needs to happen is to take the best of both worlds and merge it into something of a complete system.

sirn• 16 years ago

Well, like Arch Linux's Pacman and AUR? :)

I found Pacman to be easy and simple--on the same level as APT, and when the binary package doesn't do what you want, packing your own package is really easy.

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Build_System

vidarh• 16 years ago

Apt has little to do with the underlying package format - there is an apt version for RPM.

codavid2• 16 years ago

The .rpm vs .deb debate is a fallacy. The real issue is that when packaging for say debian and RHEL you have to care about different glibc, different compiler versions with potentially different ABI, different filesystem conventions, different scripts for post install, etc... The format in which the files are packaged is the least of the issues compared to that. For example, packaging for opensuse once you have a package for RHEL is as much of a PITA than packaging for debian, really.

Once you standardize on what makes packaging difficult across distro, you basically end up with the same system. I think systems like the build service from Suse, etc... are much more useful than wishful thinking on packaging format.

sophacles2• 16 years ago

Meh, from a source point of view, once I have a debian/ directory, with a properly set up rules file, building becomes trivial. Then it is matter of generating a package per-distro/version with the right environment. This could be very well done in an automated manner and a few vms.

thingie6• 16 years ago

Yes, suse build service is a very nice tool and much more interesting than a single package format, which wouldn't help much. And if the dream is to provide just a single binary package for any distro in the world, it won't work anyway. Well, maybe in theory, but if you mean it seriously, you need to compile and link against exactly the same binaries that the target system use. (Or static linking. Or just believe it will work. But serious commercial vendor who wants to provide a real user support cannot.) Which would mean that every Linux system would have to use the same binaries, which is, hm, nonsense.

krschultz3• 16 years ago

I hear what you are saying, but we can reduce the differences between build systems while still using different targets.

I do a lot of work with OpenEmbedded, every distro image you create is for a different hardware platform, using different libraries, different tools, etc. But it is a unified build system. So I can say use this version of glibc and spit out the files in that folder, and with very minor tweaks I can use a completely different version of glibc and a different file structure for another image. If we had a unified dependency/build system across distros, we could have completely different contents while having relatively straightforward customization because if you knew one system, you'd know them all.

moultano• 16 years ago

I wish talks like these had transcripts. I listened to the first half, but don't have the time for the whole thing.

hobb0001• 16 years ago

tldw? Anyone?

sigh It's so annoying when you have to sit through a hour-long video for what would otherwise be a 5-10 minute read.

jodrellblank• 16 years ago

Might get something from the Mozilla Drmbeat project in a few years; maybe Google's speech recognition subtitles will be able to e port as transcript when it's properly live, too...

jgg2• 16 years ago

I listened to the first half, but didn't listen to the second half, since by that time him constantly cutting out on the mic had driven me insane.

theschwa2• 16 years ago

I think it boils down to what he was talking about at the end: Linux users need to be willing to buy software, and Linux software developers need to be more business savy.

sandGorgon5• 16 years ago

upvoted.

We buy our linux-based office software (we do NOT use OpenOffice). There should be more paid-for apps that are of much better quality than what's available.

I believe that Linux (or some distro) should incorporate licensing/DRM into the OS itself - which you have the freedom to turn on or off. More or less, it means an app store, but indie developers will not have to worry about building licensing into their software.

drivebyacct• 16 years ago

What? Microsoft and OS X have rich libraries of cost-based applications and they don't require any licensing or DRM embedded in the OS. Why on earth would an operating system that hinges itself on openness take a more Draconian step than any other major OS distributer has (mobile OSes aside)?

usaar333• 16 years ago

What office software do you use btw? I've been looking for some linux-based powerpoint replacement (impress does not cut it)

houseabsolute4• 16 years ago

The open question is why anyone would buy software for Linux. The key differentiating factor for _most_ people who use it is that it's free (as in beer). There are two other operating systems that for most people work better than Linux. It's hard to see how you can ask people to pay for software now in the hope that it will eventually be good. I'm sure some people will buy software because it's the Right Thing To Do, but considering the population that selects Linux and their reasons, it's hard to picture a big enough market there to draw really good consumer software developers.

An interesting business question.

theschwa2• 16 years ago

I completely disagree. I use Linux because of how well it works and would gladly pay money for it, and I think most long term Linux users stick with it because of how well it works. In fact, most Linux users I know purchased a computer with Windows already on it, and completely wiped it off to put Linux on there. So they've already 'payed' for Windows, but use a different OS anyways.

I'm also not saying people should pay for bad software in hopes that it will become good. I'm saying that we need to make it easier to pay for software so that software that good that already exists can be purchased.

Android is an example of how Linux and payments can work. An open source operating system with many free pieces of software, but an App store where products can still be purchased.

jberryman• 16 years ago

the key differentiating factor for most people is free _as in freedom_.whether they came to linux because their hard-drive crashed and they dont have permission to re_install the OS they payed for that came with their machine, or they are a geek who enjoys the power that comes from the freedom to tinker and benefit from others` tinkering.

no one is aware of the cost of their operating system anyway.

julio_the_squid• 16 years ago

The differentiating factor for me is that it's just what I've used for 12 years and what I'm most productive in.

Serious Linux users use it because it's the only thing that fits the way they work. Linux has all the interface and programs I'm used to, so of course I'd be more likely to buy software for it than any other OS. What holds me back is that there isn't any software I need that I don't have...

cschwarm• 16 years ago

> The open question is why anyone would buy software for Linux.

Well, I'd be interested in one of the following apps: a desktop wiki, an email client, a contact management app, a feed reader, a music player, a scalable image editor, a layout app, a recording app, a guitar effect app, a GIT client, and probably some more.

Of course, for each of these, there's some free app somewhere. But each of these free ones have something I don't like.

I admit, my willingness-to-pay is quite low. That's partially due to some free apps being available. The better reason, however, is that installing proprietary apps sucks under Linux. I also fear, the regular distro updates will break apps I've payed for.

In other words: If there's a way to conveniently download an app from a store or homepage, and to get security and "distro upgrade" updates (maybe, by registering the app automatically with APT during installation), my willingness-to-pay would be quite a bit higher!

> The key differentiating factor for _most_ people who use it is that it's free (as in beer).

How do you know? Any empirical studies I'm not aware of? Or just the Biased Sample fallacy?

> It's hard to see how you can ask people to pay for software now in the hope that it will eventually be good.

Dunno. There's a lot of applications that were not 'good' when they were first released. People still bought it.

alecco• 16 years ago

No, thanks. IMHO, the Linux project sold its soul and that is the current problem. In particular, almost every major developer of Linux is in the payroll of some software giant with interests in only running Linux servers. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't fit what I'm looking for running locally.

houseabsolute4• 16 years ago

If history is any evidence, nothing. :P

davidw2• 16 years ago

Actually, as someone who has used Linux as desktop software since 1996, I would say the exact opposite: it's making rapid progress compared to where it was once. Perhaps it still hasn't quite caught up, but I'm relatively certain that soonish, it will be 'good enough' for an ever-larger segment of the population. It's already 'good enough' for a lot of people.

jim_dot• 16 years ago

it will always "soon" be ready for large-scale adoption.

But it never will.

acon3• 16 years ago

I think what Linux really needs is to embrace some way of getting software outside apt/yum. Having to go through the package managers forces you to be an administrator to install software, and the developer and user have no say in which version of the application you get.

I think Linux distributions should be platforms which developers can develop applications for which they can distribute however they wish. Then users can choose which applications and which versions to install and does not have to go through the AppStore like package management system.

I also think applications should be stand alone. If they need anything outside the platform, these dependencies should be delivered as part of the application.

russell_h2• 16 years ago

Every binary distro I've ever used (SUSE, Debian, Ubuntu, RHEL and Fedora) came with a little GUI that let you install packages without going through a repository. Just download the .deb/.rpm and double click on it. This is how a lot of projects deliver their latest builds. If you're talking about a unified package format (it doesn't seem like it) then thats a completely different issue.

As for 'stand-alone' applications, that doesn't make much sense for open source stuff, but there's nothing stopping you from distributing your software that way. A lot of commercial software for Linux is delivered that way.

blasdel• 16 years ago

But everything packaged that way still demands to be installed as root, linked against their depgraph of ancient fucked-with libraries, and split apart into pointlessly separate packages.

acon3• 16 years ago

Unfortunately this isn't used enough. It is not used by Firefox and Thunderbird. Instead they provide .tar.bz2 files.

I was pleasantly surprised by skype and chrome, who actually provide rpms and debs. Nice!

Open Office gave me a tarball with a myriad of debs. Not the nicest kind of packaging.

Unfortunately the distributions performs their own packaging of a lot of these applications which may give some people the idea that they should use the version packaged by the distribution. The distributions should really stop doing this and refer people to the official packages instead. Otherwise users will be stuck on old versions.

I also don't know how well this kind of delivery mechanism works with automatic updates. Do the external packages get updated in the same way as the packages delivered by the distribution or does anything like Sparkle exist for Linux?

richardw4• 16 years ago

So much of Linux is designed and modified by committee, so change is slow and painful. Apple managed to get a seriously hot UI onto FreeBSD in a (relatively) short time. Linux has everyone and their dog bartering to make changes, so the UI goes nowhere.

Stop copying Windows, already. Start menu sucks. Dump X.

thingie6• 16 years ago

Did you listen to the talk? :) X.org is quite an advanced graphic system mostly doing what you want it to do. Throwing it out and trying to make something new (for what gain?) means wasting so much resources that it's not even nice. (And how is X related to some start menu?)

nailer6• 16 years ago

Depends. Most apps don't link against X, but the toolkits. If the toolkits can be modified to support a cleaner network protocol (something primarily vector based rather than bitmap based).

I don't think the parent poster is saying that X is related to GNOME and KDE's start menu clones, other than they both need changing.

gizmo2• 16 years ago

You say advanced as if that's a good thing. I think a lighter system that considers hardware acceleration and multiple monitors from the ground up may be a good investment in the long run. Not to mention audio, and vector graphics and so on.

Multiple X sessions (one for each monitor + one for each vnc session + virtual X sessions for whatever reason) has to be combined with Xinemera and with graphic drives and with a KDE/Gnome desktop environment... and all the parts have to fit together perfectly for the system to work. I just don't see that happening anytime soon.

The whole concept of X clients and X servers... it's just too much. X was created back in the 80s, and it still doesn't get the basic usecases right. The requirements for desktop computers have shifted a lot in the last 30 years, so this kind of thing is to be expected.

Starting over every 30 years? I think that's reasonable, especially when it's holding Linux back. We've learned a lot since, and X isn't going to last until 2030... so why not throw it out now?

wyclif• 16 years ago

The problem might be that the parent doesn't know the difference between X.org and XFree86.

richardw4• 16 years ago

X.org is just another implementation of X11. Re-implementing it isn't what I'm talking about. No, I don't expect it to be replaced, which I consider a problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System#Limitations_and... Here's the issue: why did Apple not just use X? Important question.

There isn't a relationship between X and the start menu in my statement.

Yes, listened to the talk. Audio frameworks aren't why the universe isn't using Linux.

scythe• 16 years ago

If you want to try something like throwing out lots of the current design and going to a new one, it'd probably be best to go around, drum up support, and bill it as something new. Sounds cool, but someone has to get coding.

nessence• 16 years ago

I gave up on Linux. Not fodder; ^ if you agree.

batterseapower• 16 years ago

The blog post from the speaker has a link to the slides: http://lunduke.com/?p=1075

Maro• 16 years ago

Here's one suggestion: adopt the drag & drop software installation model of OSX.

lovskogen• 16 years ago

Yeah, desktop linux sucks at installing apps.

cookiecaper• 16 years ago

There's no reason this couldn't be done now, someone just needs to implement that in PackageKit and it would work fine on many distros and package managers. The backend and everything is all there, just make a drag and drop event instead of clicking an "Install" button.

That said, installation of software on Linux has been one its shining points for a long time. Package management is awesome and neither OS X or Windows offer it.

coffeeaddicted3• 16 years ago

Some package management (apt) would be better if it would be easier for 3rd party vendors to get into the sources.list. For now you either have to get users to edit that file by hand (for which they might not even have the rights) or you have to use another installation mechanism which avoids the package management to which they are used and lose the advantages of stuff like upgrade. Maybe there should be a sources.list per user which allows normal users also to install software and distros could be set-up to work with a certain file-type in a way that if you click it on the web, then a default installer goes up which guides you all the way through the installation.

Right now the situation is that if you want anything that's not in the "official" package repositories (probably the majority of software ...) you are getting into a world where installation is harder than in any other OS. And that is true as well for open-source applications (you want newest blender or one that is months behind?) as closed-source applications (which simply don't get into official repositories anyway).

I also tried using one of the binary installers for a while, but when it stopped working with newer distros (my application still worked) I guessed that tar.gz and zip are for the moment simply the best I can really offer and that's still what I'm using for now.

hristov• 16 years ago

Don't agree. Installation of distribution supported software on linux is very easy already. Drag and drop will just cause a lot of issues with software that actually requires more complicated installation, as well as libraries, etc.

coffeeaddicted3• 16 years ago

That is pretty much the problem. The only software that installs easy (in most cases) is the "distribution supported software" (in the version(s) currently used by the distribution that is).

protomyth• 16 years ago

I guess one of the questions to answer about ease of installation is what makes Linux software different from the majority of OS X software.

[note] OS X does have a package format for more complicated stuff

nitrogen3• 16 years ago

If the camera person for that video reads this, I suggest placing the speaker in the bottom-left/bottom-right corner of the video frame and keeping the slide visible at all times. You can pan around when people ask questions, but keep as much of the slide visible as possible and move back when the question is done.

k-zed3• 16 years ago

The major advantage of "Desktop Linux" (that I've been using happily for quite a few years now) is that it's utterly unlike Mac OS X or Windows. We use Linux not because it's free, but because it's more comfortable, the UI is better and friendlier, and developing programs for it is a whole hell of a lot easier.

Everything Gnome, Ubuntu and this sort of people do work against these advantages. We use Linux because of its differences - these differences to other systems need to be accentuated (zsh, the suckless project, etc), not fought against (Ubuntu, network-manager, HAL, etc).

By every step these people take, Linux gets more difficult to develop for and less comfortable to use. This needs to stop.

bad_user2• 16 years ago

> We use Linux because of its differences

I don't know who you speak for, but it's not about me ... I use Linux because it's cheap and I'm in control.

Other than that I love having aptitude and a good repository, but every once in a while I really wish there was a click-to-install standard and I also really wish I wouldn't burn my weekend over wireless issues.

> developing programs for it is a whole hell of a lot easier

You're not speaking about desktop applications / games. That's hell-like compared to the alternatives, being partly the reason why companies like Adobe aren't investing in it ... I've worked there and I know the arguments that are flying back and forth.

> By every step these people take, Linux gets more difficult to develop for and less comfortable to use. This needs to stop.

People should and will work on whatever they want, and all "wasted effort" arguments are bullshit. If you think there are better paradigms that should be explored, then jump in and show the world how right you are. Talk is cheap.

k-zed3• 16 years ago

> You're not speaking about desktop applications / games

Those apps aren't hard to develop because libraries or the environment or whatever; they're hard to develop because their developers want them to be closed, so recompilation and putting them into the real package management system is impossible. Starting with such a handicap makes things complicated :)

> If you think there are better paradigms that should be explored, then jump in and show the world how right you are

The better paradigms have been known and used for 20 years (such as the Unix paradigm of connecting multiple programs, the CLI, and so on). That it doesn't appeal to some end users is not our problem.

(also username post combo, but just kidding :)

blub• 16 years ago

Not me. I use Linux (among other OSes) because it's Open and Free, and I think that it's important to have an alternative to proprietary systems.

I don't consider it to have a better UI or to be easier to develop for and I feel more comfortable with Windows.

k-zed3• 16 years ago

Then you need to try the following things: - vim or emacs - tmux or screen - tiling window managers - zsh

Each of these things result in a massive usability increase.

nailer6• 16 years ago

Lowercase f free.

He's saying most people use Linux not because it's $0.00, which includes your reason, that it's liberated.

xtho• 16 years ago

It's funny you're saying that after all the years of work that went into making traditional window managers more Windows/MacOSX like.

machrider• 16 years ago

The audio situation is a total debacle. n-1 of the sound systems need to be killed so we can focus on making the remaining one work really well.

It's really funny that this is his first point, because I ran into it just two days ago... the microphone jack on my laptop, which worked fine in Ubuntu hardy, intrepid, and jaunty, no longer works in karmic thanks to the upgrade to pulseaudio (bug has existed in launchpad since november). It's insane that something so simple (analog input jack) on such common hardware (Intel 82801i) could be non-functional in 2010. Of all the weird driver problems I've had in 12+ years of Linux use, this one is probably the most shocking.

colonelxc• 16 years ago

It is hard to believe that sound can be so broken, after all these years (and looking at the huge strides other parts of the desktop have made).

If Ubuntu wants to be the uber-friendly, runs anywhere (just works!) distro, they need to avoid these types of regressions from one version to the next. I know they're not in charge of all the upstream work, but they are the ones that make the decision on what version of pulse audio to use (or X version, or whatever). Instead it seems that Ubuntu always tries to stay on the bleeding edge, which is inevitably going to be broken for some people.

vorador• 16 years ago

But it's not that simple : often, the bleeding-edge fixes others annoying bugs and it's really hard to have an estimate of the affected population. Maybe they should add an extra step to their installer that would allow to send anonymously data about your hardware configuration to Canonical ?

ZeroGravitas• 16 years ago

I think Fedora has led on the bleeding edge of pulseaudio. Ubuntu apparently had a borked setup in one version of Ubuntu, but the same code was running well on Fedora.

Having said that, pulseaudio really seems to bring out the cranks and probably most of the issue is that it's become something that it's okay to complain about, rather than something that people get behind and fix.

It is however clearly the future and like many things in Linux ripping out mature half-solutions to replace them with newer full solutions is going to cause regressions for some. As long as Linux is making progress on average then it's all part of the game.

jgg2• 16 years ago

Worth mentioning: http://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html

known• 16 years ago

Linux on Desktop is offering too many options for users to install and configure apps.

macco2• 16 years ago

Does somebody know who is the speaker? Didn't see it on the blip.tv page.

macco2• 16 years ago

Bryan Lunduke - sorry I saw it on the video now.

Kilimanjaro• 16 years ago

Sell Ubuntu (and other apps like OOo, Gimp, etc) for a nominal $9.95

Give two options in the download area of your software, one green button with a $9.95 download and one blue button for a free download. Both pointing to the same package.

If you want to contribute to open source, click the green one.

Also sell it on best buy and walmart for $9.95 to reach the non-tech-savvy audience.

Even if they drop it on the trash can when they get home. At least some money goes to the pockets of the open sourcerers, which is better than none.

Why Desktop Linux (Still) Sucks. And What We Can Do To Fix It.

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