Remote desktop vs. remote display [LWN.net]

Remote desktop vs. remote display

Posted Feb 18, 2013 0:22 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
In reply to: Remote desktop vs. remote display by khim
Parent article: LCA: The ways of Wayland

The success (or not) of Linux on the desktop is nothing whatsoever to do with X.org. If anything, the main problem that is holding Linux back on the desktop is that pretty much every major Linux distribution does its own thing as far as desktop environments go. All of this goes on on top of X.org, which all the competing desktop environments use as their base technology.

If there was one obviously canonical desktop environment/graphical tool kit instead of half a dozen it would be a lot easier to standardise things farther down the stack, and hence to develop or port applications that can be distributed in a neutral format to run on all important Linux distributions.

Which does not by any stretch of the imagination mean that Linux isn't any good as a desktop system today. As dskoll's examples show, among many others, it can be a very capable, powerful and cost-effective system. You just have to get rid of some preconceived notions.

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Remote desktop vs. remote display

Posted Feb 19, 2013 18:11 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

I'm not saying that X.Org is a failure. Far from it. But - and you've noted that above, too - it's the other way around. I mean: Linux has huge momentum today. Ton's of companies do tons of work. But they are not doing all that for desktop Linux - and X.Org is only used on desktop! This means that X.Org can easily repeat fate of Betamax even if the Linux world will continue to thrive. The signs are there: X.Org people often complain that there are so very few of them and this situation persists over years, any development which pushes what's possible happens elsewhere, etc. The fact that Linux is growing everywhere else will not save X and/or Wayland.

Remote desktop vs. remote display

Posted Feb 21, 2013 3:12 UTC (Thu) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

And having a paradigma where half of the apps are X and other half are Wayland... doesn't make it better makes it worst, no matter if you could run both on the same system.

Has many "experiences" reported here, even from the Windows world, success on "mass adoption" for the end user, the large majority not tech aware, depends a lot on "familiarity" and "consistence"... all things that have run against Linux many times... ppl can't even agree on something so simple has having a common Icon Set engine, and one Icon Theme is installable everywhere...

And that is the main problem, everyone wants his bit of fame and success not sacrifice... it lacks humility, it lacks truly cooperation at most levels... any perceived growing triggers a wave of arrogance and bickering...

This way outside potential participants tend to stay away... even worst than when every "analyst" predicted that Linux desktop will never happen...

It seemed better then, outside "important" criticism made some how ppl group a little together... but its so absurd the situation, of why you **fork** so much yourselfs instead of the sacrifice to make it better and improve for the sake of compatibility and that "consistence"... why you shoot yourselfs so much in the foot, that it seems if Microsoft wants that Linux desktop never succeeds, the only thing it has to do is pay for a lot of reporting praising Linux!