Can Desktop Linux Stay Relevant in the Era of Cloud and Mobile?

http://servicesangle.com/blog/2011/11/23/as-ubuntu-declines-can-desktop-linux-stay-relevant-in-the-era-of-cloud-and-mobile/

by klintron • 15 years ago

13 30 15 years ago

servicesangle.com

jmathai• 15 years ago

Any chance Linux had in overtaking Windows on the Desktop was ended by Apple.

UI on mobile is even more difficult to get right than on the desktop. This is where Linux has always struggled. Even Ubuntu (Linux's best attempt to date) is several years behind everyone else.

I love that they're putting forth a serious effort but I don't see it making a meaningful dent.

rbanffy5• 15 years ago

> Any chance Linux had in overtaking Windows on the Desktop was ended by Apple.

Which is sad, because I think I am more productive on Linux than on OSX. Running an OS that's much closer to the servers I deploy to is a huge timesaver (and avoids lots of "works on my machine" kind of problems)

astrodust2• 15 years ago

VMWare or VirtualBox would help pave over these problems.

astrodust2• 15 years ago

Does Android count as Linux?

j2labs2• 15 years ago

Android isn't a desktop os.

klintron4• 15 years ago

I don't think so, though it does use the Linux kernel.

klintron4• 15 years ago

Linux never had to overtake Windows to be relevant, I'm more concerned that it seems totally stagnant.

I disagree that the interface is years behind, but would agree that the experience is behind. I've always been impressed with GNOME and think it's a better interface than OSX or Windows 7. When I switched to Ubuntu a few years ago (I've since switched back to Windows for various reasons), I expected to have a really stable operating system that was perhaps a little harder to use than a mainstream OS. What I found was that it was actually a joy to use, but it was really unstable. Not because of the OS itself, but because of the buggy apps that ran on top of it. Linux users have some great apps, but are still stuck with subpar alternatives for a lot of stuff (particularly in multimedia).

And then there's hardware support. From what I've heard, things are pretty easy on desktops, but I had a lot of trouble using it on laptops. There are a few companies that sell laptops with Ubuntu or other distros preloaded, but other than that you can face a lot of challenges trying to wrap Windows drivers and so forth.

The hardware aspect might be easier on phones and tablets, but it's going to mean starting almost entirely over on the UI and applications (which is the direction Unity is going).

rbanffy5• 15 years ago

> I'm more concerned that it seems totally stagnant.

I don't think it's stagnant. I kind of like Unity - it's unobtrusive and direct. I like it a little better than Gnome 3 (mostly because I use the multiple-monitor multiple-desktop thing as a space extender and 3's separate monitor switching breaks that). On a more basic level of functionality, most of my data live on BtrFS filesystems (which is the next-best-thing after ZFS) and comparing if with either NTFS or HFS+ is just cruel. Package management on Ubuntu has been, as in Debian, perfect for most of a decade. Yum is quickly catching up. Programming language support is still excellent and most anything runs, or can be compiled, out of the box. It's been a very long time since I had a major device support hassle either with notebooks or with desktops (the removal of support to buggy-but-Windows-compliant ACPI caused major breakage, but it seems to be stable now).

rbanffy5• 15 years ago

I don't think desktop Linux was ever relevant outside a small software-development centered ecosystem.

Now... Mint being the most popular Linux with more share than all others combined? Fedora overtaking Ubuntu? I wonder where their data comes from.

j2labs2• 15 years ago

Their graph says the data comes from distrowatch's page hit ranking from Nov 23 2011.

rbanffy5• 15 years ago

I would expect distrowatch to be skewed towards the most adventurous users and we should not misrepresent it as a good approximation of the general desktop Linux space.

All we can say is that distrowatch visitors are migrating to Mint.

tomwalsham• 15 years ago

As someone's who has exclusively used Linux since early 2000s, I never saw the aspiration for Linux to ascend to mainstream popularity on the desktop as something I favoured. I wanted feature parity - browsers, plugins, sdks etc. - and for several years these have all been released near simultaneously. The 'mainstream' ambition required stripping out the fragmentation/customization which has always been one of the biggest draws for me. Unity is the eventual conclusion of this goal - the pursuit of generic, supportable 'usability'.

As for the premise of the article, the massive skew in Distrowatch's stats are deeply misleading. It's not downloads or active installs, it's hits to an informational page. DW is #3 on Google for 'Linux Mint' so it's a barometer of general interest, but the only conclusion you can draw is 'the negative reception of Unity as default was capitalized on by Mint to drive interest'.

Not to say it won't result in an upswing in Mint installs (I was considering it myself until I discovered the baked-in search engine capture), but DW stats make Alexa look like a paragon of accurate reporting.

klintron4• 15 years ago

"The negative reception of Unity as default was capitalized on by Mint to drive interest."

That's a good hypothesis, though in that case I would assume the surge in interest in Mint would be accompanied by at least steady interest in Ubuntu instead of a drop. Also, the interest in Mint has been rising for quite some time and interest in Ubuntu has been decreasing steadily. This could just be that by now everyone who's interested in Linux knows all they want to know about Ubuntu, but interest in alternatives is starting to increase.

My premise has less to do with the particulars of the exact numbers of Ubuntu vs. Mint users, and more to do with the fact that there's not really a go-to distro for new users anymore. Ubuntu, Mint and Peppermint are all contenders for this role, and openSUSE and Fedora are still options as well. I think this lends to an uncertainty about which to choose and which will have continued support. The problem is compounded by the fact that a lot of applications are being accessed from browsers and/or mobile devices, so that even as Ubuntu could be gaining power users its pushing power users away in an attempt to gain mainstream users that they may never get.

sycren• 15 years ago

Well on one hand linux is free apart from support and the cloud would offset this support for a fee on usage. I think desktop linux will still stay prevalent for high-end computing. For example the London Stock exchange runs on linux starting from this year. Research projects in universities and institutions prefer linux over other OS's.

3pt141592• 15 years ago

Yes it is still relevant.

The only thing stopping my non-programmer flatmates from using Ubuntu is only MS Office.

They are envious of the interface and the ease at which I get all sorts of packages without worrying about malware.

wavephorm4• 15 years ago

Star Office is awfully good.

Office productivity isn't the only issue. The issue is they already have Windows, and Office on their computer so there is no real advantage after switching to a free alternative, and there are some REALLY HUGE disadvantages like having to edit bash scripts to manage your computer.

Linux desktop failed. The sooner the Linux community gets over it and starts to focus on cloud stuff (virtualization, management) the better.

jaetldev• 15 years ago

The best brains in *nux should be focusing on the next generation FOSS/GNU tools to 'power the web'. If desktop OS itself is at risk of extinction , this is one fight which the Linux community has taken on for too far and too long.

3pt141592• 15 years ago

Hasn't failed at all. These guys want to use what I'm using right now. In fact they do use it from time to time by logging in under their own user accounts.

The average person would not have to edit a bash script to manage their computer. Almost everything works right out of the box like you would expect.

wavephorm4• 15 years ago

The entire "desktop computing" paradigm is coming to an end. Overlapping windows, buttons, icons, cascading menus... it's over. We're entering the next phase of computing, touchscreen, voice, hand gestures, AI.

No, Linux desktop is no longer relevant.

rhizome• 15 years ago

It'll just be another inflection in the long-running cycle between thin and thick clients. I think the last time it reached this pitch was mid-late 90s, when Microsoft, Yahoo, @home, AOL, etc. were trying to make their online services and portals the be-all of the mainstream's Internet Life.

vacri2• 15 years ago

I take it you don't work in an office of any kind. Do you really think all office workers are going to switch to tablets for the daily grind?

wavephorm4• 15 years ago

I'm betting my startup idea on it.

hendrix• 15 years ago

Yes, the desktop is a thing of the past for youtube/facebook/news/casual gaming/light email. Tablets can handle these tasks (content consumption) imo much better than a desktop.

It is a completely different story for photoshop/maya/visual studio/solidworks/nx/matlab.... These programs are not designed for the type of mulch-touch input that tablets are able to excel at. XP is supported until 2014...

wavephorm4• 15 years ago

photoshop/maya and other graphical tools can be repurposed without the Windows-style buttons and menus.

Programming tools are already being ported to the web (cloud9 ide).

Google Docs and Office 360 are already being targeted at replacing MS Office.

In a few short years very few reasons to still use a Windows desktop UI will exist.

twstws• 15 years ago

I think they've got it backward. 'Cloud computing' makes all desktop OS irrelevant. Which means it's easier than ever for me, working in a Debian ecosystem with Fluxbox/Emacs/Firefox as my main apps, to collaborate with peers using OSX or Windows, without them knowing or caring.

Besides which, whether Ubuntu is the top Linux distro is completely orthogonal to the capacity of Linux in general to serve as a desktop.

hexis• 15 years ago

"“It’s disappointing when an old friend releases such a terrible interface,” Lucas Charles, a linguistics major at Portland State University who has been using Ubuntu since 2001, told me. “It’s not inherently bad, just buggy.”"

Considering Ubuntu had its first release in 2004, this article should probably be taken with a grain of salt.

klintron4• 15 years ago

Thanks for pointing that out, I meant to write Linux, not Ubuntu. I've corrected it.

JohnTHaller• 15 years ago

The DistroWatch numbers don't measure installs, active users or downloads. They only measure hits to informational pages about each distribution on DistroWatch. So anyone quoting them and calling them trends of actual Linux usage, doesn't know what they're talking about. It's like quoting the W3schools browser numbers and saying the represent actual browser share (they, too, only measure visitors to their website).

Can Desktop Linux Stay Relevant in the Era of Cloud and Mobile?

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