Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox respond to Miguel De Icaza on Linux Desktop woes

http://www.itwire.com/business-it-news/open-source/56418-torvalds-pours-scorn-on-de-icazas-desktop-claims

by emkemp • 14 years ago

162 160 14 years ago

itwire.com

chris_wot• 14 years ago

"We'll force Corba/.NET down your throats"... ???

Firstly, Corba was there from the start, and then it was removed.

Secondly, there is no .NET dependency that must be satisified to create GNOME applications.

While there are a few interesting points Tovalds made, the problem isn't really a technical one in the code, but rather a lack of focus on what really matters.

rbanffy4• 14 years ago

> there is no .NET dependency that must be satisified to create GNOME applications.

No, but many apps that are part of the "official" Gnome desktop run on Mono.

microtonal2• 14 years ago

Like?

mixmastamyk• 14 years ago

I've read several of these pieces now post-mortem re the linux desktop. Far from disagreement, I find myself agreeing with everyone's major points.

I think the bottom line is despite how much people want one, there isn't just one reason for its unpopularity, there are dozens. It isn't good enough on multiple fronts--paper cuts abound next to deep slashes. All in the shadow of two compelling choices in modern Windows and OSX.

They have their own annoyances as well, but you can expect drivers, audio to work, no major regressions--nothing you use to just disappear between releases without recourse. I'm thinking of the gnome service control manager workalike and sessions, thanks Ubuntu.

mgkimsal• 14 years ago

"nothing to just disappear between releases without recourse."

Spaces, "Save As"... :(

batista3• 14 years ago

Those are annoyances one can work around. They are not APIs anyway (which is what the debate is all about), they are UI design decisions. Plus "Save As" kinda came back (hold Option while browsing the file menu), and Spaces are still here inside Mission Control.

Changing APIs like Gnome/KDE did frequently is something else altogether, especially when you don't have the luxury of a huge user base to force commercial companies to rewrite their code. As for open source application developers, they often just flee and abandon their apps than rewrite them for the third time around some new API.

batgaijin2• 14 years ago

Perhaps it has more to do with the Micrsoft tithe for all devices that distribute Linux:

http://www.informationweek.com/windows/microsoft-news/micros...

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090619161307529

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2331462,00.asp

ANTSANTS2• 14 years ago

None of this recent discussion is about why the average computer user doesn't use Linux or won't try it -- that topic has long since been beaten to death. It's about why Linux has the inferior desktop experience, and how OSX was able to steal away so many of the developers and users that, in a perfect world, should have been happiest on Linux.

batgaijin2• 14 years ago

It has an inferior experience because you can't profit from making it better.

guelo• 14 years ago

A link to the actual discussion is probably better, it includes some back and forth between Cox and Icaza as well as other comments: https://plus.google.com/115250422803614415116/posts/hMT5kW8L...

PayUpPal• 14 years ago

"probably"? Very definitely better than an article that goes like a story written by a 10yo: A said this and then B said that and then A responded ...

mekoka2• 14 years ago

I agree, maybe OP should have just posted this thread instead. After reading this I'm wondering if Miguel de Icaza is not in fact equating Gnome to Linux Desktop. One may be dying, doesn't have to mean that the other will follow suit.

smartkids• 14 years ago

Just based on the Linus quotes, I think he's right.

The kernel did what it was supposed to do back in 1991.

What is the "desktop" supposed to do?

There will never be unanimous agreement on that - every user will have different needs and preferences - and so desktop developers live in constant denial, believing they are the only ones whose preferences are relevant - i.e. they know what's best for users - and blaming others for their own failings.

I'm not a Linux fan, but I give Torvalds' +1 for his response (and knowing the value of "not breaking stuff").

cletus• 14 years ago

The actual conversation is more interesting and revealing than the blogspam on top of it (toolbar I have to dismiss? really?). This quote is noteworthy (from Linus):

> I personally think that one reason that the Linux kernel has been so successful was the fact that I didn't have a huge vision of where I wanted to force people to go

I agree. Thing is, this just doesn't work when it comes to user interfaces. You end up with a morass of principalities and wanna-be-kings who all have their own different view of what Linux on the desktop should be. This is an area where consistency really matters (to users).

What's more the primary contributors are engineers who are unrepresentative of any kind of mass user base (potential or actual). People who want to be able to customize everything when no one else cares.

Ultimately I think the pseudo-anarchic development process doomed Linux on the desktop but some external factors didn't help, namely OSX. OSX really is "good enough" for anyone wanting a nix desktop/laptop. Sure it has problems but it means the gap between it and Linux is just that much smaller. And with Linux you give up great hardware (to varying degrees) and a snappy and consistent* UI/UX.

The company that has had the most success putting Linux interfaces in people's hands is, of course, Google with Android (disclaimer: I work for Google). And even there the principality problem has created a fragmentation nightmare as different vendors seek to "differentiate" themselves.

Phones and tablets of course don't have the same expectation and technical legacy that desktops do (from X11 on up). Hell, Apple did the same thing with iOS (essentially forking OSX).

Audio is another problem. Peripherally I've had to deal with PulseAudio and it really is a solution looking for a problem. Graphics drivers are another issue. AMD/ATI and nVidia have of course not helped matters here.

I think Canonical had a chance to make a real impact here but they essentially blew it.

xaa• 14 years ago

> with Linux you give up great hardware (to varying degrees)

I assume you're talking about Linux driver issues. But since we're talking about OSX vs Linux here, it's only fair to note that Linux supports a much greater variety of hardware than OSX. Linux also tends to support the very newest hardware more consistently than OSX (perhaps excluding video cards). See eg the laughable specs of Mac Pros.

Software also benchmarks faster on Linux vs OSX on the same hardware. So there is still an opening on Linux for people concerned with performance.

But yes, the Linux desktop is still light-years behind in terms of design, for the reasons you mention.

scott_s2• 14 years ago

it's only fair to note that Linux supports a much greater variety of hardware than OSX.

Entirely true, but I also don't have to look up what is or is not supported by OSX. I just buy an Apple computer. Of course, there's obvious tradeoffs here about having the freedom to buy whatever hardware you want.

mbell4• 14 years ago

> I assume you're talking about Linux driver issues. But since we're talking about OSX vs Linux here, it's only fair to note that Linux supports a much greater variety of hardware than OSX.

I'll take supporting a limited set of hardware very well over supporting tons of hardware often in a mediocre at best fashion. I'm not just talking about video cards either, over the years I've had "fun" with everything from SATA controllers to sound chips that were 'supported' under linux.

gamzer• 14 years ago

Now you made me curious. How would I be able to switch between different sound cards on the fly without restarting applications if PulseAudio did not exist?

toyg• 14 years ago

How many people ever had more than one sound card in their computer, let alone a need to switch between them ?

http://xkcd.com/619/

CamperBob2• 14 years ago

Not sure if serious

dsr_• 14 years ago

Let's take a common case: I have a motherboard sound device which I use 95% of the time, and I have a USB camera that has a built-in microphone.

When I go to settings in Google Hangout, it asks me which device I want to use. ALSA presents the interfaces. I choose whatever combination I want -- mic from the camera, headphone out through the mobo -- and it works.

shmerl5• 14 years ago

The problem with Android is its diverging from the Linux desktop path (i.e. X11->Wayland). Being completely incompatible put Android apart and it arguably can't be called a Linux desktop at all. The split it caused in the mobile devices (with no drivers available except for Android) is a horror, and like Aaron Seigo called it - Android is the best friend and the worst enemy.

The real future of the Linux desktop and mobile is Wayland, and Android it seems will stay apart forever, going its own path.

VMG• 14 years ago

> The split it caused in the mobile devices (with no drivers available except for Android) is a horror, and like Aaron Seigo called it - Android is the best friend and the worst enemy.

These mobile devices could grow some HDMI and USB ports in a few iterations and becoming stationary.

Tada - there's your Linux desktop.

gst3• 14 years ago

"the real future"...

The real future is what users like best, not what developers think that users might like. I personally don't like the Wayland approach and I think that competition is fine. Let the "market" decide what's best.

sandGorgon• 14 years ago

I'm curious - why cant a desktop version of Android be possible ? I mean, OSX is moving to a world where an app developer (optimistically) can code once and compile to both desktop and mobile targets. Why cant Android be able to drive that in Linux.

I would like to think that if Android was available on both desktops and mobiles, we would have been happily playing Dark Souls using Steam-on-Linux by now.

chao-• 14 years ago

I think Canonical had a chance to make a real impact here but they essentially blew it.

Curious to hear you elaborate on what they blew, and how. I don't use Ubuntu myself (prefer straight Debian), but I've always respected what they're trying to do (and to some extent, what they have already accomplished).

guard-of-terra• 14 years ago

Linux is not a corporation. It's not fighting for turf. If Mac OS X is good enough for most of the desktop users, Linux doesn't have to throw resources and bullshit around (as corporations do) to counter that success. As long as Mac OS X does its job well Linux can focus on being linux-y, and succeed.

mekoka2• 14 years ago

> I think Canonical had a chance to make a real impact here but they essentially blew it.

I keep seeing claims being made, and mostly by (former?) Linux superusers, that Canonical and Ubuntu are "doomed". Could someone point me to some numbers that show signs of this?

I know when the Unity desktop came out, a lot of people were flaming. I didn't install it on my laptop (I'm still on 10.04 LTS), but I did on a colleague's desktop. From time to time, I have to assist him with code he's writing. During those sessions I have to interact with it and to be honest I'm not pleased, but each time I ask him if he wouldn't be interested in switching to Gnome or maybe installing Mint or something, he keeps saying it's not that bad. I'm sitting next to him and frustrated because I can't find where everything is and how to bring stuff up, but when I ask, he just presses a few keys and whatever we need shows up on screen.

When Miguel de Icaza's post came out last week and I saw claims on the doom of Ubuntu, I started looking for evidence. I couldn't find anything that in fact confirmed this. I found a lot of people who complained about Unity last year when it first came out, but fast forward in 2012 and there are also more and more posts of people going I use to hate it with a passion, but I have to admit, it's now growing on me. Not everything is perfect, but with a bit of work I think they're on to something. Also interesting to me was that I had a sense that the most positive reviews came from people with no prior Linux experience. So much so that I'm getting more and more curious about it and I'm slowly mentally preparing to make a switch to it.

Is it possible that Canonical is actually moving away from Gnome and taking things in-house to avoid exactly the problems that Miguel de Icaza is underlining?

jeremyjh4• 14 years ago

>Is it possible that Canonical is actually moving away from Gnome and taking things in-house to avoid exactly the problems that Miguel de Icaza is underlining?

I do think this is part of it though they probably wouldn't say it way. They certainly do want a consistent user experience - and they want one that rivals OS X.

I don't understand why people complain about using software they haven't learned how to use yet. It all takes some getting used to for a new user, including OS X. Now I can definitely understand the frustration though of someone who just upgraded their OS only to find they don't know how to use it anymore.

lukeschlather2• 14 years ago

What really bothers me about Unity is that I haven't seen it work. I've got a quad-core machine with a decent NVidia GPU and 4GB of ram, and I was seeing multiple seconds of UI lag, even on the 2D mode.

I switched to Xfce and haven't looked back. Everything is snappy, and everything is configurable.

macco5• 14 years ago

Thanks for this comment. I personally think Unity kicks ass. It is the best out of the box experience I ever had with a desktop os.

Of course my heavily customized gnome 2 were better suited for me, because every detail was tweaked by myself. Unity I can use out of the box and it is working really fine.

I sell laptop with Ubuntu 12.04 and I have a return rate of 3%, normal return rates are 20 to 30 %. It can't be that bad for normal users.

rbanffy4• 14 years ago

> I think the pseudo-anarchic development process doomed Linux on the desktop

I'll repeat myself here. Linux is the natural successor of the technical Unix workstation. It's, therefore, a niche product: built by a highly technical crowd for a highly technical crowd. Only recently efforts were made to make Linux more muggle-friendly and those efforts nearly coincide with the decline of the relevance of the desktop PC.

microtonal2• 14 years ago

You must have never seen Corel Linux, Caldera OpenLinux, Lindows/Linspire, etc.

Many attempts were made to make Linux more user-friendly at the start of the century (and ever since).

SlipperySlope• 14 years ago

Google's Android users activate one million new devices each day. This Linux based mobile OS has absolutely crushed Microsoft's mobile software, and has surpassed Apple worldwide.

I have begun to wonder that, given the evident superiority of Linux in mobile, given the lack of GNU within it, and given the central control of Linux mobile development by Google and Amazon, then to what degree has GNU and its development traditions held back Linux desktop adoption?

Thoughts?

akldfgj6• 14 years ago

GNU is not really relevant, except may be to say that free software philosophy can't build something for the mass market, since it takes money to pay workers to slave away for the benefit of the plebes.

The UI layers (GNOME/KDE/Canonical) may be relevant. Linux desktop doesn't have a giant company funding massive ad campaigns and retail outlets and spit-and-polish and OEM integration, and all that is needed to launch a successful product for the mass market.

Linux desktop is very successful in the developer workstation and server markets, where the users are more tech savvy.

macco5• 14 years ago

Actually I think Canonical is making a terrific job. IMO it has the best out of the box experience of all desktop OSes on the market.

darklajid• 14 years ago

Since it's customary to bash on PulseAudio: Here's one user that is very happy to have it, using its end-user features.

I wouldn't want to have a machine again, where any of these things won't work:

- Set volume per source/application (More flash video for the presentation, some mp3 still in the background)

- Move applications between devices (Wife complains about the sound of my video call/video/game? Move that thing to the USB (!! No jack that directly does what you want anyway) headphones)

- Normalize output so that nothing blows up my headphones when I switch between different audio sources

Apart from that I did use the 'stream over the network' feature a couple of times in the past and while it wasn't something I'd need on a regular basis it worked fine for me.

Long story short: Pulseaudio solves problems for me. It totally might not do that for you, but please don't project.

knewter• 14 years ago

I <3 pulseaudio as well, glad to hear someone else loves it. All the reasons you mention :)

emperorcezar2• 14 years ago

Linux will never work on the desktop because it is made FOR neckbeards by neckbeards.

It is a community driven effort, which means the community pushes its development and design. Who do you see using the linux desktop? The exact type of people who design and develop it. Power users and developers.

They are a stubborn bunch. Even if Unity/Gnome 3/etc were more usable desktops, the majority of users would hate it. Because something like a newbie usable desktop just doesn't fit who's designing the desktop.

Something else will have to shove it into the wider market where it can be judged by those standards, not by what set of power user keyboard short cuts it supports.

fromhet2• 14 years ago

Oh don't tell people how they feel about things! There are hordes of non-programmers (or their likes) using Ubuntu, even if they could choose Windows or Mac. Neither my SO or brother can code and they have rarely if ever been in a terminal, but are both very happy with Ubuntu.

emperorcezar2• 14 years ago

I agree with you, my SO is fine with it also. I'm talking about the design process. I really like the direction that Ubuntu is going. It's being designed for the masses, but the pressure on ubuntu is from the power user crowd.

I think it will go nowhere because the current linux user base will be holding it back. Gnome3 and Unity are fighting this tide also.

I don't think the state of the linux desktop should be, "Copy XP and put a real shell behind it".

shin_lao• 14 years ago

There might also be the fact that OS X and Windows are more than decent desktop OSes and competing with them is not easy.

fromhet2• 14 years ago

I think it is more about people being exposed to Windows and Macintoshes. If my non-technical parents had Ubuntu at their jobs and their computer were shipped with it, do you think they would even dream about searching for a new OS to learn?

dedward3• 14 years ago

The same argument works for any of those systems.. not just linux.

The reality is many people try many systems and settle on one they like.

sgt101• 14 years ago

The point of desktop linux is that it keeps MS and Apple honest. If they push things too far away from where the common good lies (ie. toward the short term interests of their stock holders) then expect to see a huge resurgence of desktop linux, supported by OEMs who will suddenly be pushing cheaper faster linux machines with tested specs as a way of winning back territory. Until then, don't, because it will be down to a volunteer community to do heroic work to other peoples schedules and basically that's always going to be hard.

Server side stuff has a lot of support from big shops that need their iron to work well - so that can go along just fine as is.

My point is that because it exists and is nearly viable it is a success and does what we need it to, even if using it can be nightmarish.

lifeguard5• 14 years ago

The Linux desktop has been wildly successful! Hobbyists have been using it since the 1990s. Yahoo! was built using the linux desktop. Much of Facebook was, too. People in web dev and tech support use it as their workstation OS.

The Linux desktop has failed to become a mainstream 'consumer' OS. Meritocracy has nothing to do with it. Microsoft's monopoly is just unbreakable here. OS X is less than 10% of the market. Linux less than 1%. I believe the Linux desktop is usable in the retail space, because I installed gOS on a guest computer and several novices (including my mom) used it for email, web, music and word processing.

My linux desktop progression has been X11R6 -> KDE -> Mandrake -> Ubuntu gnome -> Mint -> latest Ubuntu HATED IT! -> Xfce crunchbang -> (plan to) Mint Xfce

mbell4• 14 years ago

> The Linux desktop has been wildly successful! Hobbyists have been using it since the 1990s. Yahoo! was built using the linux desktop. Much of Facebook was, too. People in web dev and tech support use it as their workstation OS.

While true, look around at younger companies, OS X has taken over a very large segment of the web dev crowd and I don't see any signs of that changing, especially with the almost mandatory nature of using OSX for iOS development.

zanny6• 14 years ago

This is entirely brand. I went through college where all the cool kids had overpriced shiny aluminum macs and that was the hip thing to own. Having used OSX on laptops in High School and IMacs in college the desktop is awful and I much prefer the diversity of Linux DEs, especially ones like Cinnamon and XFCE.

OSX got its market share off spoiled 20 year old college kids getting their parents to buy them overpriced trendy hardware. I have a 15 year old and 13 year cousin who each have a macbook because its hip.

But besides the hip factor, OSX succeeds because it is the default on Apple products, where Windows succeeds because it is the default on everything else. When average Joe buys a pc, they go to best buy, and every single device has Windows on it, so they use that. They don't know any better and would never fathom installing an OS, and if you show an alternative to them it breaks their minds because it is universe breaking that Windows isn't the computer.

lifeguard5• 14 years ago

It has been my experience graphic designers use Apple's OS du jour and hackers are split between Linux and OS X.

akldfgj6• 14 years ago

> Mint -> latest Ubuntu HATED IT! -

Why this step? Most people go in the reverse direction.

lifeguard5• 14 years ago

The new UI sounded interesting. But after running it the UI felt like it was for a touch tablet and I have a K/M.

teyc• 14 years ago

The discipline of being posix compliant forced Linux to innovate across the defined boundary. I recall Chris Click's talk about JVM and its definition of garbage collection APIs, class libraries etc each enabled innovation to be done independently of one another.

There is no such story for kernel-mode drivers. The problem was so dire with network card drivers at one time that there was a project that enabled windows drivers to work on Linus. Think about it - if Linux standardized on a stable external API, then there'd be no arguments about how to implement it.

Linus kept talking about userland vs kernel, and did not address the issue Miguel talked about. Kernels need performant external interfaces too. Drawing a line around what is being innovated and changed will only help Linux the way posix did.

On another tangent, when Microsoft made IE6 the stable browser platform, it gave a clear goal for Mozilla. It became a reference implementation, allowing Mozilla to emulate all the layout behaviors and eventually carving out a nice marketshare for itself.

voltagex_• 14 years ago

ndiswrapper is/was more a function of the hardware vendors not supporting Linux/supporting Linux very badly. Go look at some of the early Linux Realtek drivers for example.

zanny6• 14 years ago

Why does this topic come up ever other day, and every time people go on tyraids about individual projects and developers being wrong or right, when the answer isn't complicated at all.

Windows is the default. Microsoft got in bed with hardware producers and computer retailors and got Windows on every product on every shelf. For 2 decades you went to buy a PC and you were buying a PC with Windows pre-installed. The extreme majority of PC users and buyers have no comprehension of how to build your own PC, what an OS is, or that they can even use alternative operating systems. At this point, Windows is the computer to a tremendous majority of desktop OS consumers.

OSX is prosperous because it is the Mac default in the same way Windows was prosperous because it was the everything default. The average consumer does not conceptualize or think about how the software is independent of the hardware, what they see and get is what they stick with 99% of the time. The other 1% is Linux / BSD / everything else.

The day of the Linux Desktop is the day a laptop running any flavor of a linux distro sits in Best Buy next to a Windows laptop and costs $50 less because it doesn't have the Windows license fees attached. Everything else is just window dressing of that issue, which is in plainest terms that Apple and Microsoft have a profit motive in getting their OS on your machine, and go out of their ways to see hardware with the OS preinstalled so Joe Shmoe uses it, whereas Linux distributions have no financial incentive or warchest of influence to push Linux as the default. And the default is what matters.

rbanffy4• 14 years ago

> The day of the Linux Desktop is the day a laptop running any flavor of a linux distro sits in Best Buy next to a Windows laptop and costs $50 less because it doesn't have the Windows license fees attached

Well... It's not Best Buy, but, still, it's something:

http://imgur.com/tzv74

akldfgj6• 14 years ago

I bought a $400 Lindows desktop from WalMart last decade. Not many others did.

ANTSANTS2• 14 years ago

You should read the "story" before commenting. Allow me to copy and paste the response I gave to a similar comment earlier:

"None of this recent discussion is about why the average computer user doesn't use Linux or won't try it -- that topic has long since been beaten to death. It's about why Linux has the inferior desktop experience, and how OSX was able to steal away so many of the developers and users that, in a perfect world, should have been happiest on Linux."

tsahyt4• 14 years ago

But that's not really sparking a discussion. "Inferior desktop experience" is completely subjective. Personally I think OSX has the worst desktop experience of the three (Windows, Linux and OSX), Windows sits in the middle and Linux is the most joyful one to use. That might not be true for you or for anyone else though and arguing about it is really leading nowhere.

All I know is, that I'm glad to see differences between OSes regarding not only kernels and the way things happen but also regarding UX and interfaces (where Linux is by far the most flexible, because there's more than one desktop environment - a further differentiation) and I don't want them to be the same either.

yk• 14 years ago

Short rant ahead:

Why should Linux be doomed (or killed as wired puts it) just because Windows & MacOS have more idiots using it? For a desktop there are certain design choices to be made. If one wants to target users, then one should use sensible defaults and try to hide complexity. If one wants to target hackers, then one should have a lot of easily accessible APIs, preferable accessible via a CLI. That means exposing complexity. For the two groups consistency in a UI does mean two different things, users want a "intuitive" UI, whatever that means. Hackers want a UI which is based on principles, such that one can deduce the proper operation, even if it is complicated and takes some time to learn in the beginning. The list could go on, but in short: I have different needs on my desktop than the average user. And if Linux would become a sensible desktop OS for the average user, then I would likely move to BSD (or Plan9 or whatever).

mbq• 14 years ago

Agree; moreover Linux is only a kernel, so you'll always find a distribution with aims compatible to what you want.

qznc• 14 years ago

Unfortunately, there is no distribution which matches my "want" exactly. I know, I'll just make my own...

gitarr• 14 years ago

Linux on the desktop isn't doomed at all. People saying the opposite are either naive or have interests to lie about it.

I am absolutely sure that Microsoft and Apple are fighting against desktop Linux any way they can as it takes away market share and any amount of market share is fought hard about these days.

In my opinion Apple and Microsoft favoured (paid off) bloggers/(ex-)developers, and opinion writers do their best to spread FUD and anti Linux propaganda all the time and everywhere. I think that a large part of the Ubuntu Unity FUD for example comes from there.

Look at any discussion remotely about Linux or Ubuntu and you will see random comments about how bad Unity is, even here in this thread. Even if the topic has nothing to do with Unity. It's not a coincidence.

I am a developer using Unity and find it the greatest thing that ever happened to Linux, and the non-developer people I support on their Ubuntu Unity machines just love it, they wouldn't want to change anything.

All I see is that the Linux desktop now is getting really competitive (yes I mean Ubuntu 12.04) and that's why we hear all this FUD now. With "competitive" I mean usability, security, ease of use and style. The market share is low, yes, but it's slowly growing and it will continue to do so.

The Linux desktop being dead is just a laughable idea when looking at the facts.

tsahyt4• 14 years ago

Upvoted because it's a rant and a good one too! I agree with your conclusion. Same here although I think that won't happen. Linux is really just a kernel, the whole UI/UX stuff is happening at distribution level and I think there'll always be a distro for the hacker type.

aerique• 14 years ago

Agreed. I don't even know what this "Linux Desktop" is what most people are talking about here[1]. If I walk around at work or look amongst my friends which use Linux there's no single desktop that is the same. THAT is the Linux desktop IMHO and that is its strength.

[1] Perhaps Ubuntu's default install?

antirez2• 14 years ago

The problem with Linux is much simpler IMHO. No I don't mean the actual causes, but the root cause: Linus is a technical leader, so the kernel is a good product. He is not a "product leader" from the point of view of the final Desktop experience, so he took no responsibility for that (he actually blamed the UX of Linux many times in the past).

No one emerged as the "Linux Desktop Guru", taking full responsibility of a distribution completely targeted at fixing the UX, selecting a set of defaults to actually create a development platform. Fixing the problem of users supporting in a perfect way at least a subset of computer systems (targeting macs makes sense for instance).

So the Linux Desktop was the sum of a multitude of different tries, that alone sometimes were interesting, but not enough at all to define the whole OS experience from the point of view of the user.

TheCondor• 14 years ago

Is it possible for the community to allow a desktop guru? Early on in GNOME they had a number of popular graphics designer types making all sorts of really exotic looking UIs, a number of conflicts ended that. (enlightenment was the official window manager for a while there)

Then the eazel guys showed up and made Nautilus, if anybody could have been the guru, it was Andy. I honestly don't know what appended there. Nautilus is still around, it's under gone some substantial changes along the way.

Seems to me it's a very difficult community problem to solve. Look at replacing sysv init, it's a very technical issue, it doesn't matter to a lot of users, there are some technical goals you can bring up to keep the discussion rooted in fact over opinion and there is tremendous disagreement about it. The community hasn't arrived at any conclusion exactly. Why should something as esoteric as a ui be easier to arrive at consensus on? Everyone has an opinion on ui.

There is another aspect to it, it's distribution fragmentation. How do you set an ip address in Ubuntu? How about Fedora? Do it via UI and command line. They are different and that's an easy one. The mechanics are so different, it's not a desktop problem, it's a distribution problem, which sort of makes KDE and GNOME toolkits rather than desktops themselves.

antirez2• 14 years ago

Well what I mean is, imagine if Ubuntu at some point started to be opinionated about what a Desktop Linux should look like more and more, with some people inside fully responsible to build the UX in every detail, how binary packages should be trivial to download and install, how drivers should be trivial to install (for a subset of the hardware that is fully supported at least), and so forth.

A distribution that tried to provide a full experience, instead of being, indeed, a Software Distribution. In that case you can have people in charge of deciding all the details. Payed people to do the best work possible.

Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox respond to Miguel De Icaza on Linux Desktop woes

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