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2008: Not the year of the Linux desktop (iTWire)
Sam Varghese
attempts to define what the year of the Linux desktop
really means, in an iTWire article.
"What exactly do people mean when they say that a particular year will be the year of the Linux desktop? Do they mean that the number of people using Linux on the desktop will outnumber those using Windows? Even the most ardent Linux advocate and fanboy would say no.
Then is the year of the Linux desktop, the year when Linux becomes a mainstream operating system, the year when it is offered for sale by big computer sellers and resellers? If so, 2007 fits the bill very well with even Dell starting to sell both desktops and laptops with Linux installed."
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2008: Not the year of the Linux desktop (iTWire) Posted Jan 3, 2008 20:59 UTC (Thu) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] "The Year of the Linux Desktop" is simply a straw man for the media to tear down the rest of the year. The only thing that the media likes better than building something up... is tearing it down afterward. We see this very clearly in news on healt and nutrition. Some study "proves" that asparagus prevents breast cancer. But then, later, those scientist were wrong again! Asparagus *causes* breast cancer. People eat that stuff up. (No pun intended.) In a similar way, "The Year of the Linux Desktop" is a perennial. Expect the de-construction to begin in February or March. The reality is that Linux has seen gradual but inexorable progress in desktop usage over the last many years. It's exactly the sort of thing that does not sell news stories, so the journalist has to come up with a way to make it sound exciting. They have to either trumpet its metoric rise... or expose it as just a bunch of hype. In the general sense... truth is not stranger than fiction. It's boring. And someone has to make a story out of it before it is considered interesting. The truth is that it takes years... decades... to overturn a desktop monopoly. And we are nowhere near accomplishing that today, in 2008. But just wait another 10 years. The landscape will be different then. Patience, Grasshopper! ;-)
2008: Not the year of the Linux desktop (iTWire) Posted Jan 3, 2008 22:06 UTC (Thu) by smitty_one_each (subscriber, #28989) [Link] YOTLD will be a zen thing, arriving at the point when the linux desktop is ubiquitous, and no one issues such a proclamation.
2008: Not the year of the Linux desktop (iTWire) Posted Jan 4, 2008 15:40 UTC (Fri) by parcel (guest, #49806) [Link] Like the "The Art of War" saying ,winners always win to fight while losers fight to win, I consider it superior to maintain the highlights of LINUX:freedom,equivalence and share, this is the most useful weapon towards microsoft
2008: Not the year of the Linux desktop (iTWire) Posted Jan 3, 2008 21:23 UTC (Thu) by swiftone (guest, #17420) [Link] What exactly do people mean when they say that a particular year will be the year of the Linux desktop?After many years of Netscape mouldering, after many years of undisputed IE dominance, Firefox took the world by virtual storm and grabbed 10% of the market in a very short span of time. IE was (and is) still clearly dominant, but suddenly Average Joe and Average Jane that have no interest in open-source and who don't particularly care that Microsoft has a monopoly are running an alternative browser. These people aren't involved in the "emotional" debate - from their point of view it is simply that "it works better". Now IE and Firefox continue to compete, and IE continues to have clear dominance, but the market is also different than it was. That was the Year of the Browser. When and if such a revelation happens in the desktop market, that would be the Year of the Desktop.
defined by the competition? Posted Jan 3, 2008 22:29 UTC (Thu) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] You could tell the "year of Firefox" because it inspired MSFT to release an improved version of MSIE with some features copied from Firefox. Maybe the event that will mark the "year of desktop Linux" will be MSFT introducing a Linux-like feature.
Workspaces Posted Jan 4, 2008 2:27 UTC (Fri) by midg3t (subscriber, #30998) [Link] I hear Apple introduced workspaces (virtual desktops) last year. Strike that one up on the scoreboard.
Workspaces Posted Jan 4, 2008 7:37 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Mac OS X has always had a form of 'virtual workspaces'. Each Application gets it's own workspace, and each workspace is layered on top of each other. This has a effect on usability. For example when using Gimp on Windows you have lots of individual windows associated with that application that get mixed up with each other and other applications. This makes it confusing and slow to use. With Photoshop on OS X, like all applications on OS X, all the windows are associated to a specific 'layer' of the desktop and picking one window brings them all forward with the context menu always at the same place at the top of the screen. With Krita on Linux and Photoshop on Windows they emulate how Photoshop on OS X operates by having a parent window in which other windows reside inside. Essentially creating a WM inside of a WM Of course this is a bit ackward and your sacrificing a signficant amount of usable window space. With Gimp on Linux you can do a similar effect without the wasted screen realstate by configing the window hinting to make the toolbar and dialogs as 'utility' windows. Everybody copies from everybody else, even when they are not totally aware of it. I remember when XP was released people were pointing out how their user choice screen was almost identical to the one used in Mandrake at the time. For Windows 2003 server they copied the Linux/BSD approach of having mostly only the essential services enabled by default. With Windows 2000 server they had all sorts of sample scripts for the webserver and stuff like that, most of which was very badly programmed, which caused all sorts of security headaches with admins that deployed that server with default configurations. This is one of the major reasons why Windows 2003 server had a much more impressive security record compared to NT or Windows 2000. (If its not going to affect W2k3 in it's default configuration then Microsoft does not feel it has to make it security advisory, so it looks very good on websites like Secunia) With Windows Vista Microsoft has followed the Xorg/DRI model of having it's video drivers in userspace. Now with Windows 2008 server Microsoft is talking about releasing a 'NT Core' version of the OS for clusters and large scale enterprise deployments. It is suppose to strip away everything except for the essential command line environment, absolutely minimal amount of services, and kernel. This is what a large number of people do for Linux. so on and so forth.
Workspaces Posted Jan 4, 2008 12:33 UTC (Fri) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link] Er, no. Krita does not have "windows within windows". Every image loaded has its own top-level window. You can dock the palette and tool windows to the image window in Krita, but when you undock them, the palettes are managed by your friendly window manager. If your friendly window manager is as good as KWin, the undocked palette windows are associated with their image window and, as on the various Apple OSes, only shown when the image window is active. The undocked palette windows also do not show up in the taskbar. So, basically the only difference between Krita and Gimp is that Qt has made it easy for us to allow users to dock the palette and toolbox to the image window. Since users tend to like that a lot, we do that by default. Boudewijn Rempt, Krita Maintainer
Workspaces Posted Jan 4, 2008 15:08 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Well it's certainly it's default configuration to have that stuff all managed inside a single large window. It's nice to know that you don't have to do that if you don't want to. It's not a contest to see who is the most original or anything like that. What matters is what works. You guys are following the standard multi-window approach for graphic applications that is typified by Photoshop in Windows and many graphic-oriented applications in Windows, which is itself a reflection of how all applications are managed in Mac OS with it's 'stacked virtual desktop' approach to window management. (which is not suprising seeing how Mac OS dominated that industry for a long time) It's a good way to have stuff and it works without confusing users. I am sure that your just doing what you think is best. Having the ability to break away dialogs from the main window in Krita and the ability to associate dialogs/toolbar to the main window in Gimp abviously allows you to have a more flexible workflow then what is typically found on either OS X or Windows. I like this approach and it's one (this flexible attitude) of the reasons why the GUI in Linux is generally superior to GUI in either other OS for very experianced users and/or with people that have specific needs with their workflows.
Workspaces Posted Jan 4, 2008 15:17 UTC (Fri) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link] "You guys are following the standard multi-window approach for graphic applications that is typified by Photoshop in Windows and many graphic-oriented applications in Window" The point is, we are not following that approach at all. In Photoshop in Windows, all your image windows are inside the MDI window. Krita is a strict SDI application. Every image has its own main window. Actually, the Windows version of Photoshop is quite weird, at least under Wine. The image windows inside the main window move with the main window, but the floating palettes stay where they are if you move the main window. Probably nobody notices because they always use the app full-screen, but it is weird.
2008: Not the year of the Linux desktop (iTWire) Posted Jan 4, 2008 9:10 UTC (Fri) by Seegras (subscriber, #20463) [Link] ah well. I don't care. Our company (a bigger ISP) runs Linux just about on every desktop except the ones of the accounting-division. Even the 1st-Level supporters do have Linux.
Here's an idea Posted Jan 5, 2008 10:00 UTC (Sat) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link] Here's an idea: Let's declare 1991 as the Year of the Linux Desktop and forevermore abolish any such prophecies even remotely related to "Linux", "Year", and "Desktop." Then, we can refer to the YOTLD in an historical context. 1991 was the year Linus had a dream of a Unix-like OS capable of being run on common desktop hardware and did something about realizing that dream. As for number of Linux desktops surpassing Windows, well, that'll happen when it happens (assuming it does happen). Linux "becoming" a mainstream OS? Sounds like a horribly vague and open-ended metric subject to wide debate. Just my $0.02 (and I might be shy a penny). ;-)
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