the default desktop [LWN.net]

the default desktop

Posted Feb 20, 2022 12:33 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
In reply to: the default desktop by rahulsundaram
Parent article: McGovern: Handing over

You miss the point. What is usable to one person, is painful in the extreme to someone else.

I took to WordPerfect like a duck to water - I had a choice of several word processors, and when WP turned up it just elbowed the other two out no contest.

Then the company standardised on Word, and oh was it painful. It still is, but unfortunately everything is now word clones, so the entire space is a personal nightmare.

The problem with "usability" in the word processor space, is it's intended to let managers pretend they are qualified typists. And from all the complaints I hear, Gnome's usability is very similiar ...

When all you can buy is DIY hammers, the professional who knows how to use a nailgun is at a severe disadvantage ...

Cheers,
Wol

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the default desktop

Posted Feb 20, 2022 12:48 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (2 responses)

> You miss the point. What is usable to one person, is painful in the extreme to someone else.

I understand that but it is irrelevant to how defaults get picked by distributions. They have to pick a default anyway for various components, so that's going to get driven by several factors (licensing, accessibility, usability etc). If multiple distributions pick a default, it is safe to say those do work for a lot of people regardless of your personal preferences.

the default desktop

Posted Feb 20, 2022 13:20 UTC (Sun) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [Link] (1 responses)

Debian doesn't have a fixed default - but it happens that GNOME is at the top of the list in tasksel. Many of the smaller lighter weight desktops eventually end up pulling in some component or other from a larger desktop at some point as you add your favourite program.

It's not a zero sum game: in the long term, no desktop "wins" as there's enough space for several desktops, many use cases.
The caveat is that there aren't enough developers to go round - many attractive desktops in smaller distributions which draw people to them are, in fact, a reskinning of something like Ubuntu as the upstream. My colleagues who say "I'd like to get into Linux but there are hundreds of different Linuxes" miss this point and stay on Windows because it's more consistent for them.

What does make it difficult is when a major vendor has more or less abandoned the workstation because they focus on servers or cloud components. That just means that everyone uses Windows by default in that environment.

the default desktop

Posted Feb 20, 2022 13:39 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

> That just means that everyone uses Windows by default in that environment.

Nope, this hasn't been true for a very long time. There is Chromebook or Macs or virtual desktops and so forth. There are plenty of alternatives for different form factors and use cases even if you discard traditional Linux distros.