The Linux desktop experience is killing Linux on the desktop, Part II

Unlike the Linturds of COLA, this guy actually uses Linux and knows why
it's having problems as a desktop alternative to Windows.

Read it and weep freetards!!!

Let the discrediting games begin!!

http://batsov.com/Linux/Windows/Ran...art-2.html


Overture

A few days back I wrote a somewhat controversial article called, ¡§The
Linux desktop experience is killing Linux on the desktop¡¨. While many
readers seem to have grasped the true purpose of the article, a lot of
people claimed that it was nothing but FUD (a favorite term of many
people in the Linux community, who would rather ignore existing problems
than face/acknowledge them).

If you¡¦ve read my last post and generally agree with it - don¡¦t bother
reading this one. It¡¦s basically more of the same - in greater detail
and with less profanities.

In this article I¡¦ll have a look at the state of the Linux desktop, it¡¦s
usability, strengths and weaknesses.
Let¡¦s get some facts straight

I¡¦m writing this post from my Emacs 23.2 client (in Markdown, to publish
it via git to my jekyll powered blog) connected to my Emacs daemon,
running on my Fedora 15 GNOME 3.0 desktop at home. This machine has its
every part carefully selected for maximum Linux compatibility (the
machine is a bit old, but that wasn¡¦t always the case) - a GeForce
9600GT known to work ¡§great¡¨ with the open-source nouveau driver, an
Asus Xonar DX sound card, supported by the great Oxygen HD audio driver,
etc. I do know how to buy hardware (contrary to popular belief).
Actually I¡¦ve been a hardware enthusiast for most of my life and I know
much more about the inner workings of computer components than most
people. That said - the hardware that I bought for my home PC was not
the hardware that I wanted to buy, but the one I had to buy.

Even the ill-fated T520 Sandy Bridge laptop was supposed to work very
well with Linux - after all Intel and Nvidia video cards are the safest
bet in town.

One of the great things about using a free (as in speech) OS like Linux
is that you get to do things exactly the way you want to do them. You¡¦re
in control. Everything is transparent. Nothing magically happens behind
the scenes. It¡¦s sad that this doesn¡¦t extend to the ability to pick any
piece of fairly generic hardware and properly enjoy it. Often you just
have to hope and pray - and sometimes you might get lucky.

A reader pointed me to this piece - a rebuttal of my article. Here¡¦s an
excerpt:

Here we go again. Some fellow has gotten all whiny about being such a
big Linux fan, ¡§¡K hardcore Linux user ¡K¡¨, but he just had to go back to
Microsoft to get things done. Why? Because he is tired of having to
tinker with Fedora Linux to make things work, or fail to work, with
cutting edge hardware ¡K and 64-bit Flash on 64-bit Linux is sucky ¡K and
Skype on Linux is sucky ¡K and ¡K and ¡K and. It was all just so painful
and time consuming he could not take it any longer and went back to the
safe arms of Microsoft to escape the horror that is Linux. Good grief.
Okay, first and foremost, a true ¡§hardcore Linux user¡¨, in my mind a fan
of Linux, is unlikely to switch from Linux to anything else. Oh yes, he
or she will switch Linux distributions in a heartbeat, or maybe three
heartbeats, if a distribution fails to work as needed. But switching to
Microsoft and leaving the Linux desktop behind? Not likely, my friends.
I consider myself a true ¡§hardcore Linux user¡¨ and I see no voluntary
switch from Linux in my future ¡K ever.

This bit produced a sad smile on my face. Had to go back to Microsoft?
Absolutely not! Chose to use Windows 7 (for the time being)¡K If I was to
go back to something it should have been FreeBSD since it was the OS I
was using before Linux (and of course Windows before that indeed). I
actually switched quite reluctantly from FreeBSD to Linux for a simple
reason - Linux supported wider hardware variety and there were more
native apps for it.

All Unix-derived OSes are more or less the same from an user¡¦s
perspective - mostly the same environment, the same applications. The
only thing that really makes the difference is the hardware support and
Linux is clearly far ahead of its competition.

Hardcore user? You bet! But hardcore doesn¡¦t mean an ¡¥unreasonable
idiot, blinded by zealously¡¦. It¡¦s not always that someone¡¦s favorite
technologies are the best solution to a problem. The section ¡§the shit
I¡¦ve endured¡¨ had a dual purpose - list a ¡§few¡¨ problems and show how
resilient I am.

Distro hopping is something that mostly newbies do, because they fail to
grasp a fundamental thing in the land of Linux - 95% of the stuff that
comprises a distribution is generic stuff found in most other distros.
You cannot seriously expect that the same drivers in a different distro
will yield wildly different results¡K Sure, bugs do tend to occur, and
sometimes they are truly distribution specific. Sure, some distros
happen to patch the stuff they ship heavily, while others favor shipping
vanilla versions of both software ant the kernel.
The process of driver development

My former post placed a heavy emphasis on existing driver issues. While
I abhor some Linux drivers I¡¦ve never ever blamed the authors of open
source drivers. Here¡¦s why:

The year and a half I¡¦ve spent writing Linux drivers for a proprietary
Austrian company was some of the hardest time in my professional career.
Writing drivers is fairly hard task for two reasons - you have to have
very intimate knowledge of the hardware at hand and you have to write
very safe code (and carefully test it), because otherwise you might
bring the whole kernel down. I was basically reading tech specs (most
boring read in the world) most of the day and writing very little code
in end. Debugging drivers is not a pleasant task either.

Linux certainly has some of the best developers in the world. I have
little doubt in that. The problem is that these same developers spent
their days working other jobs and you cannot seriously expect them to
have the time or the energy (not to mention the specs required) to
produce drivers that are on par with commercial counterparts developed
for OSX and Windows by big team with vast resources at their disposal.

This is the actual problem as I see it - we¡¦re expecting individuals to
create good drivers for us out the kindness of their hearts in their
little spare time with little or no hardware specs on which to rely for
absolutely no money.

I¡¦ve read the source code of many network layer drivers in the Linux
kernel and I¡¦ve noticed a common trend - a lot of the drivers were
actually written by hardware engineers (instead of software engineers) -
they are filled with copy/paste segments from other drivers, lots of
useless/dubious/dangerous code. This doesn¡¦t surprise me - few software
engineers have solid grasp of hardware and/or the will to take part in
driver development. This is a big problem with no easy solution.

The hardware vendors are the only party that deserves blame for the
sorry state of many drivers. I cannot believe how hard it is for a
company with the size of AMD to deliver a decent Linux driver for so
many years. Their driver is a monument of everything that is wrong with
hardware vendors as far as Linux is concerned - no support for latest
kernels/X, no support for current state-of-the-art Linux video
technologies, notorious instability and performance. Nvidia fare a lot
better but still - their driver lacks the support basic stuff such as
KMS¡K

So what can we do? Obviously not everyone can start writing better
drivers, but still everyone could try to help¡K

For most desktop hardware vendors Linux is a non-existing OS. Linux
truly has a small market share, but that is not the actual problem. The
actual problem is that Linux desktop user would rather wait for someone
from the community to come up with a solution instead of the pressure
the vendors into action. Fill their mailboxes with angry letters, write
blog posts about their inadequacy to properly support the third largest
desktop OS in the world. Companies love to make money and hate bad
press¡K
The desktop software stack

The Linux desktop stack has some great qualities - for instance it often
comes with batteries included. You have most of your day to day need
covered as soon as you install your distro - a decent browser, a good
email client, an office suit, disk burning utility, torrent downloader,
IM client, text editors, photo organizers, image editors, etc. When I
installed Windows 7 I was a bit surprised how bare the initial
installation is and how many third party apps I needed to install. And
of course most of the Linux desktop apps coming from the same
environment (KDE, GNOME, XFCE, etc) have a very uniform look and feel to
them which I personally value a lot.

Unfortunately not everything is great¡K

The Linux desktop application stack suffers from a few serious problems:

* a few individuals make crucial decisions without taking any input
from the user community
* many projects have only one principle developer that happens to do
things his way without regard for anyone else
* often highly unstable beta quality software is pushed as stable to
the end users
* a lot of prominent apps that are multi-platform seem to undergo
sub-par testing/QA process under Linux and experience common problems
like crashes and memory leaks that don¡¦t manifest that often on other
platforms

In more details¡K

Is it really better for the users?

Often a new feature arrives that is marketed as a huge improvement for
the end-users. Most of the time the end-users are never inquired about
their opinion of the feature. PulseAudio is a great example. I was
pretty happy using ALSA directly, but nobody asked me what I thought
about the change. Initially it was fairly easy to disable pulse audio,
but as it became more and more integrated into the desktops the process
became harder (luckily pulse audio improved in the process). While I¡¦m
perfectly aware of the technical reasoning that lead to pulse audio¡¦s
creation I do find it rather useless. With only one major architecture
left (almost no one uses OSS on Linux these days) the introduction of
intermediate sound layer of dubious quality never made that much sense
to me. Sure, ALSA needed a simpler API, but we didn¡¦t deserve to be
punished with pulse audio¡K

It¡¦s my way or the highway

Most of you probably remember that Pidgin (formerly Gaim) used to be the
default IM client in GNOME based distros. At some point this quickly
changed and Empathy became the default client. Part of the reason for
the switch was the unwillingness of the lead developer in the Pidgin
project to collaborate with the GNOME developers. I still remember the
controversial fix that made the input area non-resizable with no option
to go back to the previous setting. I guess GNOME¡¦s devs were really
pissed about something since they replaced the all around great Pidgin
with a vastly inferior and immensely buggy (at least for the first year
and a half) product.

Too much power of the hands of a single person with no overseer is
dangerous. In the open-source world one can easily fork a project, but
this is a dangerous path as well that is often likely to wreak havoc
into the development of the project.

Are we your users or your beta testers?

A few examples from recent years:

KDE 4.0

GNOME 3.0

Empathy

PulseAudio

NetworkManager

Beagle

The list could go on and on¡K Microsoft and Apple have certainly had
their fair share of mistakes (Win ME, Win Vista, OS X Leopard), but
nothing on a scale as epic as KDE 4.0 or GNOME 3.0¡K

Some users are more important then others it seems¡K

All those programs run on all major OS, but they perform worst on Linux:

Firefox

OpenOffice

Flash Player

Obviously writing great multi-platform apps is possible as illustrated
by software such as VLC and Google Chrome. But what about all the rest.
I feel that Firefox¡¦s days as the dominant browser on the Linux desktop
are numbered - most of my friends that use Linux have already switched
to Chrome (or the open source Chromium). Firefox on Linux is like a bad
joke - slow, memory hungry and unstable. I keep hearing that it runs a
lot better on OSX and Windows, probably because it got a lot more
testing on those platforms. I understand their reasoning - most of their
clients use those two OSes so it makes sense to make them important in
the dev/testing phases. But they should remember something - Firefox is
(for now) the default browser only in most Linux distros and it¡¦s never
going to be the default in Windows or OSX¡K

Same goes for OpenOffice to the letter.

And flash is well - flash. It¡¦s not the greatest piece of software on
any platform, but it¡¦s absolutely horrible in Linux. When I open a flash
intensive web site my CPU load generally spikes up to the sky (thank God
for AdBlock & FlashBlock).

Skype was not even mentioned here (until now obviously) since the Linux
version is so far behind the one for OSX and Windows that I wouldn¡¦t
even consider it a port. It¡¦s just some pile of crap compiled to be able
to list Linux as a supported OS on their website¡K They promised
improvements, they promised an open-source Linux client - two years
later we¡¦re still using Skype 2.1 BETA. I wish more people had the sense
to use a service like Google Talk so I wouldn¡¦t have to put up with
skype at all.
The community (communist) model

I live in a country from the former Soviet block (Bulgaria) and I¡¦ve
seen first hand what Communism leads to. I¡¦ve also seen first-hand why
Communism doesn¡¦t actually work - few people actually live and abide by
it and the rest of society simply practices the fine art of ¡§getting by¡¨
and lives on their shoulders. The Communism can only really work if
everyone is pulling their own weight in it (which sounds a bit absurd
indeed).

Something similar is happening on the Linux desktop ship - everybody
says he¡¦s on board, but very few people are actually rowing and bringing
the Linux desktop to it¡¦s designated port.

I¡¦ve written only two desktop project for Linux from scratch (an
English-Bulgarian dictionary utility and a GUI front-end for pacman on
Arch Linux), but I¡¦ve contributed bug reports and patches to lots of
projects. No matter what your opinion about me is - I¡¦ve done something
for the Linux desktop and I¡¦m doing something for the desktop now as
well - writing this article¡K

What have you done? Sure, very few users are software engineers, but
that doesn¡¦t mean they can¡¦t help. Bug reports are just as important as
patches. Ideas and suggestions for improvements are highly valued as
well. Don¡¦t sit in the shadows doing nothing - step into the light and
do something to help your favorite project get a little bit better.

Step by step. Fix by fix. Improvement by improvement. This is how good
software gets created.

The bottom line is - the more of us that pitch in the fight for a proper
Linux desktop experience, the bigger the chances of the dream becoming
reality become.
Future

Unless something radically changes in the near future I don¡¦t see how
Linux can rise up to be a mainstream desktop OS. With very few companies
having any stakes in the Linux desktop that isn¡¦t happening any time
soon. I find a somewhat troubling trend in recent years - a lot of
companies that worked for a better desktop experience are now gone.
Ximian (the company behind GNOME) was purchased by Novell and later
Novell crumbled, making the future of one of the most popular desktop
distributions OpenSUSE doubtful. Mandrake was once one of the most
powerful Linux companies and Mandrake Linux was widely used. Currently
Mandriva is constantly on the brink of bankruptcy. There are many other
examples - Xandros, VidaLinux, etc¡K Even the ¡§mighty¡¨ Canonical
struggles to build a successful business model around their widely
successful Ubuntu OS.

Desktop Linux has to be made somehow profitable for companies to start
investing more heavily in it. This is the hard, but honest truth. As
long as the primarily development is carried out with little (or no
funding), mostly by volunteers the hour of the desktop Linux will never
come.

There is one more serious problem - diversity. There are two many
distributions bring too little value to the table. The time spent
repacking the same software for a hundred distros could be better
utilized developing new applications/drivers and improving existing
ones. We need to have at least a couple rock solid desktop
distros/environments, otherwise the whole diversity thing means
basically nothing.

Few good options are worth more than a million half-baked options!
Epilogue

This article (and the one before it) was never about jumping the ship,
claiming that Windows or OSX are better than Linux or spreading ¡§FUD¡¨
(if I totally hate a term this is the one). It was always about raising
the awareness of existing issues in the land of desktop Linux. After all
just a few days before I had written a post installation guide for
Fedora 15.

While I was writing the last paragraph I got another GNOME 3 shell
corruption (time for killall gnome-shell to take the stage) on my
totally supported hardware¡K A skype sound notification interrupted the
song I was listening to (thanks a lot, PulseAudio)¡K And yet I¡¦m still
here. I did switch to Windows 7 on my laptop and I do intend to use
Window 7 at least for a while there. It¡¦s not perfect either, trust me
about that. Poor terminal emulator (though great PowerShell), a few
random application crashes (but these happen in Linux as well in recent
years) just to name a few.

The Linux desktop is at the edge of a cliff now. It¡¦s up to us to decide
whether we would save it or push it over the edge.
flatfish+++
Please visit our hall of Linux idiots.
http://linuxidiots.blogspot.com/

Watching Linux Fail:
http://limuxwatch.blogspot.com/

Linux's dismal desktop market share:

http://royal.pingdom.com/2011/05/12...top-linux/

Desktop Linux: The Dream Is Dead
"By the time Microsoft released the Windows 7 beta
in January 2009, Linux had clearly lost its chance at desktop glory."
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscent..._dead.html

Desktop Linux on Life Support:

http://www.techradar.com/news/softw...ad--961508