As I’ve said before: There will never be a “Year of the Linux Desktop.”
I’ve been following the commentaries, both big names and nobodies, on the new GNOME 3 desktop, as well as more comments on KDE 4. If you are a fan of either of those, you will hate this, and it’s likely any comments you make will end up deleted. Proceed at your own risk.
As you might expect, most of those who bother discussing it at all are serious fans of Linux and the various desktops. These are the ardent computer lovers, for whom choices such as Linux distro and desktop approach a religious devotion akin to the ancient VI versus Emacs wars. Even those who can’t make up their minds tend to be quite religious about other aspects of the discussion. There is some overlap, but for the most part, it’s easy to pick out the folks for whom computer use is important, but choices of OS, desktop, etc., are just a matter of what suits the purpose. We could safely generalize it by saying, “Never the twain shall meet.”
Computer users don’t really understand all that religious devotion erupting from the fanboys, the serious hobbyists. The latter are almost hostile to regular users. At best, it’s like the monster church pastor whose only real interest in you is adding numbers to his prestige. Waxing rhapsodic about their own favorite, however joyful and friendly, masks a near rabid hatred for anyone who doesn’t buy their line. I used to be one of those rabid fanboys, so I know what I’m talking about.
Then I grew up and realized the world is full of real people, with real needs, and computers are simply one tiny aspect of what they do to meet those needs. Now I find myself back on the outside, looking back in at this insane show. The names and faces change here and there, but the plot never changes. They don’t seem to notice no one else is paying any attention.
There was a time the GUI was just a way to use the programs you run on your system. Messing with the system itself required a console terminal of some sort. Eventually we rose up from that to having some parts of the system integrated into the GUI. We are very nearly to the point where the GUI is the whole thing. That’s okay, because it’s really convenient and consistent with the way the mass of humanity prefer to use their computers. Right now, all the energy and development is going towards the cellphone/tablet interface. That’s partly justified, since it’s the fastest growing segment of the computer market. If not already, any day now those mobile devices will outnumber all other types of general purpose computers combined, except servers. The workstation is dead.
Except it’s not. There are still millions of them out there, still in use, and for businessmen and bureaucrats, they aren’t going anywhere. The dinosaurs aren’t all dead yet. Indeed, the most ignored market of all is the workstation users, both in business and home. Ignored, I say, by Linux desktop developers. You see, all this crap about GNOME 3 and KDE 4 is because they both cater to the cellphone user, and everyone else be damned. Yes, the latest Linux newbies, and a narrow slice of those who use computers in ways most of the world cannot even imagine, will continue with KDE 4 and GNOME 3, totally in love. Comments from this crowd range from dismissive to openly hostile at the suggestion either of the major desktops are somehow not quite perfect.
If you happen to be anyone else in this world, just ignore them. Let them continue down their happy virtual path. Further, let them take Linux with them. They will, anyway, if they can. Aside from the tiny few Linux distributions which understand the importance of the workstation — mostly Red Hat and clones, CentOS and Scientific Linux — Linux has moved away from it’s one chance to capture the computer desktop market. No, Ubuntu is no better, having gone down their own cellphone interface path. Of course, if you are a competent computer geek, you can make Linux do what you like, but most people who use computers don’t want that, and don’t need it. If you use a smartphone, you’ll encounter Linux a great deal. Otherwise, you can forget it.
For myself, I’ll keep using Scientific Linux and CentOS until I see whether they and Red Hat are going to join this madness. I hope not. We have the 6.x release and it’s good for at least seven years (in theory). I’m not a big fan of Red Hat; it’s just the only way I can get something sane for my laptop. FreeBSD just recently added support for hibernation, but they insist on rolling release, which makes it useless for anyone who needs the GUI. You’ll end up rebuilding it monthly. That’s okay for the underlying system; two hours or less on most workstations and you’re done for awhile. GNOME was never less than four hours for the most basic stuff, and KDE has never been less than twelve hours to build. I want my computer to work for me, not the other way around. From what I’ve been able to see, nobody in the BSD world comprehends in the least the value of stability in terms of patching, versus constant upgrading. But I like the way their stuff works, so if you don’t mind being chained to the server room, it’s okay.
Maybe Haiku OS will become usable some day. Yes, I still hate Windows. Mac has never been my forte; it’s not hard unless you switch between Mac and other OSes. Since Mac does so little of what I want to do without costing more than a new car, it’s just not worth the trouble for me. I gave up long ago on the idea someone might actually develop the console interface for Linux. For all the really large number of folks begging for it, all we get is a bunch of jerks who don’t understand why the likes of Screen is not a hit with ordinary users. The fans of Screen belong in the whacko fanboys group. I’ll type extra slowly for them: It does too little, and what it does is not friendly to ordinary users. Nothing can replace a good TUI, and nobody who knows how wants to make one.
Yes, there’s XFCE, which may eventually include the functionality of GNOME. Enlightenment is not a desktop, just an extended window manager. FVWM will never move away from the obscure textual configuration files, and God forbid it should ever link in system functions. There are others, but they are either mere window managers, or so arcane nobody will understand them. Businesses and governments will use workstations for awhile longer, but only one major distro cares about their needs. Unless Red Hat can come up with something which does what GNOME 2.x did, I wonder how much longer than can pretend to have a workstation offering. Servers they can do; most distros can do that decently. The days of Linux as a computer workstation OS are already passing.
But, of course, I belong to a passing generation. Aside from the captive Windows audience, people under forty can’t wait for us dinosaurs to die so our resources can be spent on something else. I was blessed to pass through life while Linux was a viable workstation alternative, and pretty good on laptops. By the time I die of natural causes, should I be so lucky, people will be using implanted computers and call them something else.
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I’m with you. For the first time in a long time I’m at a loss as to what I will run after my 10.04 LTS runs out. Unity and G3 are utter crap so I won’t go that route. I left KDE 3.2 b/c they ruined everything by going to 4 but I’ve been hearing things are getting better. Then they announce their KDE5 sdk and I kinda lost interest again. G2 worked, got out of the way and was nice. I use to love XFCE when it modelled CDE but then it went the mac way for a while and since I hate docks, well you get the point. So like you I have no idea what the future in linux will bring.
I remember reading once, in regard to Slackware and its one, primary developer (Patrick V.), someone responded to the question “What if there’s no [next version]?” with “I’ll be using [current version].” While I agree that there will not be a “Year of the Linux Desktop,” I also don’t really care if it matters. I’m probably overly cynical, but I almost think of it along the lines of “narrow is the way and few who find it.” That feels sacrireligious to make an analogy between Linux and Christianity, but a) I think there are few people that find a benefit to Linux, and b) I don’t think either group – Linux users or non-Linux users – is better or worse than the other; they’re just different.
Agreed, David. If we could get the rest of the Linux community to stop pretending we could have popular mass appeal, we might get more done. It’s the efforts at mass appeal which inevitably bring us the worst software. That’s a real conflict which doesn’t seem to appear when we see efforts at business appeal. If we are going to make it something other than a hobby, a simple toy, we have should know we can’t chase popular appeal without destroying everything. If we’re going to chase anyone, it should be the people who actually have a practical need for computers. The reason MS holds so much computer space is because they met the needs of business first, and gamers second. We need not be commercial to make software business really needs.
Thanks for these posts. While I am primarily a Windows and Mac user, I have been making attempts at switching to Linux since first installing Yellow Dog in the late 1990’s. Currently I am using Ubuntu 11 with Gnome 2, But Gnome 3 really freaks me out (in a bad way), as I have no interest in using some bloated and flashy tablet GUI on my computer.
While I realize that I could stick with Ubuntu and Gnome 2, or just skip the GUI and move to an all command line interface, I am seriously looking to find a Linux dist that is not currently inclined towards the flashy stuff. I thought about Mint, but I now see that they are adding Gnome 3. It is starting to seem that XFCE might be my best bet, or CentOS, which I hadn’t heard of until I ended up here…
Regardless, thanks for the posts, they are giving me lots of information on which directions I should or shouldn’t go.
You’re welcome, Ashley. Recent news indicates Red Hat is taking the GNOME 3 path, so I’ll be sticking with the dinosaur 6.x release (via Scientific Linux) until it goes away or my needs change.
Hi Ed,
I’ve just spent a week trying to get CentOS 6.2 w/ Xfce to work. It chokes on simple things like desktop configuration files. Firefox will not work from a desktop icon with /home/michael/download/firefoxdownloads/ff120/firefox -no-remote -P ff120, but you can open a terminal, cd to it’s directory and it runs fine. Just a stupid default directory problem, but Xfce can’t figure it out.
As a web applications developer, I just want a linux box that works and has a desktop GUI that doesn’t kill my machine (or start mysql servers to read email).
Any suggestions on a desktop (not KDE, Gnome, Xfce) that just works with CentOS 6.x?
It’s very sad when the desktops of Linux has torched themselves so badly, I’m probably going to say screw it, and just install CentOS 5.8 and KDE 3.x. At least I know they work…
Best,
Michael
So far as I know, those are the desktops available. Everything else is just a window manager, and pretty lightweight. My favorite is IceWM. I launch it from GDM (GNOME’s login manager). Configuration is complex initially, but once you learn it, you can customize the menu on the fly. I can help you, but it’s time intensive at first. The big thing is every part of your “desktop” is independent, without any easy central config.
I’ve never heard of using that path for launching any application. I believe using the ‘download’ folder is tagged with a limited purpose. I was under the impression RedHat clones allowed you to have a ~/bin folder, and that it was (or could easily be made) part of the normal execute path.
Hi Ed,
That’s “download” not “Download” (~/Download being added as a special use well after I started using Linux and dumping much junk in ~/download). And you can make anything, anywhere executable, so path really isn’t a problem. Usually.
That method of creating a desktop (icon/config/laucher/…) for running multiple, concurrent versions of Firefox has been stable for years. Though I’m not sure I can now blame Xfce, as the use of profiles [-P] on Trinity are abend’ing as well, when they don’t load the system Firefox. So it’s probably a CentOS 6.x issue, which is annoying as it was working fine under CentOS 5.x. Eventually I’ll track down who/where it’s breaking and lodge a ticket with the appropriate party.
I finally switched to Trinity (the continuation of KDE 3.x) after Xfce destroyed itself twice (two clean installs of OS and Xfce). Applications no longer showed up in the app/docking bar and title bars on the applications themselves just disappeared.
And, unfortunately, even though I’ve been using Linux almost a decade, and *nix for close to two, you’re right, people “Can’t Take the Linux Desktops Seriously” as it probably never will be compatible with a large enough user base to be considered mainstream. Sad really.
Best,
Michael
http://www.zdnet.com/article/five-reasons-id-rather-run-windows-8-than-linux/
Thanks, esx. I’ll just leave that link without commenting except to note he is quite right about Linux users and quite wrong about MS Office, because I have it running on my Linux laptop right now — that is, as much of it as I want. That’s the whole point, of course, getting what you want. I can’t use Win8, ever.