Will The Linux Desktop Soon Be Irrelevant | Hacker News Reader

Will The Linux Desktop Soon Be Irrelevant

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7 pointslinuxmag22 comments

The desktop is far from being dead.

I run two machines, one with SuSE+ KDE the other with ubuntu+gnome, its a choice i have made.

That said, Linux will never have its "desktop year" at heart i believe the issue is design, the UI in most Linux apps falls far from the closed standard, most probably due to the fact that design decisions are made mostly by developers rather then UI designers.

Be it on a desktop or on the cloud, people will not use badly designed UI.

with very few exceptions, i have not been convinced open source development model makes good design choices. graphic design follows a different path then software.

with very few exceptions, i have not been convinced open source development model makes good design choices.

I know this is a matter of opinion, but I would beg to differ. I think FireFox is better designed than IE ever was. I think the design for GIMP, OpenOffice, and Pidgin are every bit as good as the comparable closed source offerings. In particular, after the "Ribbon" was introduced I cam to think that OpenOffice had the better design.

While it is a niche product by and for developers, I find Spyder to be amazingly well designed and choose it over ever other IDE out there for short, simple scripts (it works less well for large programs for which I pull out Eclipse, which is also OpenSource).

And I do all of this on Windows since my primary job is as a SQL Server DBA (I do have Linux at home alongside windows, but even there is a secondary for certain niche tasks). Even in Linux, I think the design is quite good.

I do not beleive design is the issue. I think it is a combination of Windows being ubiquitious already so it is easy to get, easy to find help with, and you know it will work with just about all major software. In fact, the only program I can't easily run in Windows really is Sage (a mathematics suite) and that has competitors that run nicely on Windows.

You do not have to think about getting Windows, it is the default. Getting Linux or even a Mac requires a deliberate choice.

Pidgin isn't to bad, but OO and GIMP? They're a horrid example of UI. GIMP especially with how clunky everything is layed out.

I can't speak for OO, but I definitely prefer Gimp's interface to Photoshop. On the other hand, I use weird window managers.

>>but I definitely prefer Gimp's interface to Photoshop

wow, maybe it's just that I got used to PS before using GIMP, but I find GIMP's UI to be nothing short of ghastly.

Yeah, most discussions I've read on this boil down to "it's what I learned first." Seems to be a familiarity thing.

What bugged me about PS is that it's really hard to manage all the panels and subwindows. They end up covering what I'm trying to see, and moving them around efficiently took way too long. I prefer the Gimp's docks and tear-off menus, which collapse quickly and respond nicely to my window manager shortcuts.

On the other hand, looking at my co-worker's CS2, it looks like photoshop has moved towards that behavior some... so I'm probably out of date. It's been several years since I used CS on a regular basis.

Check out some of the screen casts of CS4. It's pretty awesome.

I don't mind Gimp either. It just takes a bit of getting used to, but its interface is actually pretty well thought out.

Why try to compete on the old platform niche from the 1970s? Technology is opening up new platform possibilities. Actually, they've been around for awhile, but the tech has reached the level where we can do really slick and convenient implementations for a reasonable price.

Also, don't discount the power of the marginal. http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html

The inherent advantage of Linux is its openness. M$ and Apple can never match this. It is an inherent quality. How can it be turned into an unassailable advantage? One thing for sure, we'll never do that by playing Apple's game or Microsoft's. How do we play our own game and stop playing catch-up in theirs?

Agreed. This "Year of the Desktop" bullshit is why Ubuntu is a pile of bloat.

What about this reason: Windows 7 is good enough.

What would switching to Linux bring to a person that doesn't care much about computers?

Exactly -- For the average PC user, the amount of effort required in switching to linux is more than the perceived benefit (if any) of using linux.

Windows 7 can run a web browser, sure yes, it is, but so can anything else. The thing you use to run your web browser doesn't really matter as long as it works and isn't expensive.

If we had a company that sold Linux desktops, provided good tech support, ensured most devices/cameras/printers etc. worked out of the box, marketed the online software side correctly, (because your average person is not aware of Google docs for example) - and this unfamiliarity of Linux came at a reduced price, people would go for it. I don't think they'd care. ( e.g. most people can switch cell phones without thinking twice because they know it does photos/calls/emails/SMS)

But there won't be a company like this. Because it doesn't make business sense. We don't pay too much of a premium for Windows when it comes pre-installed. And if the demand conveys that even that premium is too high - Microsoft can comfortably reduce that to maintain share. So the company that gets into the Linux desktop game is never going to win.

>I don't think they'd care. ( e.g. most people can switch cell phones without thinking twice because they know it does photos/calls/emails/SMS)

I think you'd be wrong in that assertion or at least not entirely right - the differences in predictive text between different handsets is enough to prevent a lot of people changing; or indeed the differences in UI.

MS make more from Office and server software than from OS sales don't they?

I meant non-smart phones. Check this on switching phones:

http://www.crowdscience.com/blog/article/android_battles_iph...

Users of phones other than iPhone & Android are quite willing to switch.

True that Office+Exchange+Servers is bigger than Windows. But Windows 7 is stronger than ever. Just see last quarters numbers for MSFT.

Anecdotal, but it generally goes against my observations of family and friends. Blackberry users are not typical phone users, my sister has one but she wouldn't be able to tell you what an operating system was - if she can receive calls and email without the OS getting in the way then it would be fine but I'm sure she'd prefer to keep the current phone as this requires no additional learning effort. If you're not a gadget fiend then why change to get functionality that you already have?

Non-smart phones have predictive text, or at least every mobile phone I've ever had has including my current Siemens A50 (!) which uses T9 I think (yes I've used newer phones it's a quirk that I'm back to this one).

The biggest issue comes down to OEMs. There are practically no OEMs making Linux machines, especially great ones. The masses don't install operating systems. It just comes with their machine ready to go.

With all due respect to the people who use it, when was the linux desktop ever relevant?

Shining city upon a hill.

I'm not sure what that question means.

It's been relevant for me since I started using it 12 years ago (Slackware reviving an old laptop). Yes I use MS Windows XP/Vista/7 and OSX (occasionally) but a Linux desktop manager is a big part of my homelife and worklife.

So I guess it's as relevant to me as the Internet - it's something I use everyday for work and pleasure but that a lot of people don't have, or don't realise they have, don't use and/or don't understand.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=%28ubuntu|kubuntu|xubuntu%29%...

is interesting.

About 2000-2002 was the closest it ever came. GNOME had become usable, Linux could play more commercial games than MacOS.

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