Why are Free-Desktop Developers Wedded to Linux? 528
An anonymous reader wonders: "We have been hearing promising predictions like 'This year will be the year of Linux on the desktop' for the last decade. However, the Linux of today seems to be as far away as ever from realizing the expectations of mass adoption we once had for it, without significant growth in home usage since the late 90s. Clearly, if Linux is unable to reproduce a third of Firefox's end user uptake over a much longer time-frame, there are deficiencies with the direction the GNU/Linux/X/Gnome/KDE system has taken. Of course, almost all free software and desktop efforts and development remain unquestioningly oriented around Linux.
Other free-desktop operating system projects which take different and innovative approaches like ReactOS, AROS, Mona and Syllable remain comparatively starved of developers and interest. An often cited reason for using a non-Microsoft OS is to avoid a monoculture, but free-desktop efforts have created a total monoculture around developing and promoting Linux, despite a decade of failure in supplanting Microsoft's proprietorial OSes with it. Why are free-desktop developers neglecting to consider an alternative to the penguin?"
BSD (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really (Score:5, Insightful)
They support some well documented and mature standards like Gnu Libc, X window and POSIX, among others.
Infact, for example, most of the desktop software can be compiled and run under almost all OS that comply to those standards.
Sometimes even under Microsoft's OSs.
Because it's about freedom! (Score:3, Insightful)
I know this will get troll/flamebait, this community does not like criticism, even though taking it into account could cause improvements.
Seriously though, the thoughts are this:
(1) They are enamored by the GPL license. I'll grant for certain uses and purposes, it's an excellent license, even if I don't agree with it.
(2) Momentum - Linux is the first OSS OS to gain popularity, and it hit it off big for such things. What this means is that it has more support and developers, which provides a more feature-filled system which brings the people and culture more of what they want.
(3) Flexibility - I'm not sure the whole background of it, partially it's the GPL, partially it's the management, but the Linux system is highly flexible in terms of development, allowing people to develop their projects how they want to. Especially at the kernel level. It may not be a coders dream environment, but it's pretty close.
(4) UNIX Like. I know ReactOS isn't Unix like, I don't know about the others. I know BSD, which you didn't mention, but lacks 1-3 is also a Unix OS. Regardless, the Unix methidologies are very comfortable to developers because (a) they are relatively regular in setup. (b) They tend to be highly modular, making things easier to work with and build - lots of re-use of things you made or thigns others made. B can exist in other OSes as well, but it isn't as pervasive as in the UNIX environments.
Note, there's probably a lot more to it than this, but this is what I've gathered from what I have seen and read on the various topics. and discussions.
The operating system is irrelevent... (Score:4, Insightful)
False analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux is an OS. Firefox is a desktop application. An OS differs from an application in many ways, including ease of installation and the impact to the rest of the desktop.
Perhaps this suggests "alternative OSs" should make it even easier to make use of virtualization on "popular OSs" (LiveCDs are popular & this would be the next logical step).
Of course the way to find the adoption of any software is difficult & the ways people look at browser usage compared to OS usage often differ.
Firefox can run on many OSs, including Linux. Unless another browser becomes very dominant on Linux or Firefox becomes unpopular in other OSs, it isn't a good point of comparison.
The fact that a browser was the basis for comparison is telling--server-side apps are becoming more important & many of these do run on Linux.
Some do (Score:5, Insightful)
Firefox used aggressive marketing in quick blitz. It had a great name. And Firefox had rapid growth because of that.
Linux is associated with geeks and carries plenty of negative baggage with the average person. When Mozilla became Firefox, it was able to be reborn in a marketing perspective, and may someday win the fight that Mozilla never could.
If Linux gets a similiar marketing facelift, you could see similiar adoption rates that Firefox had. It is a much bigger adjustment for people, but in the wake of Vista, more people may be looking for alternatives. However, the majority of the Linux community is quite content to cater to themselves rather than try to cater to the outside market. For mass consumption you would really need:
1 major primary distro for home users.
1 major desktop
Easy conversion wizard to help people convert Microsoft documents, desktops and settings.
1 major form of package management, and thusly one major package repository
Remember the GetFirefox.com campaign? Remember all the CDs thrown around?
Imagine a LiveCD distribution campaign that did the same thing, but also helped you convert/migrate? Give it a snappy name, and a cute mascot and there you go!
Re:Not really (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as I'm aware, neither the GNOME nor the KDE devs explicitly promote Linux as the sole underlying OS. The whole point of having an X-based desktop environment is to make it portable to different systems.
The question might as well be "Why do the GNU people spend all their time developing the Linux userland tools?" The answer is they don't - Linux distributors use the GNU/GNOME/KDE stuff, not the other way around.
Duh.
The reason you find the Linux kernel in most free desktop systems should be pretty obvious - it's currently better at handling the random hardware that desktop users throw at it than anything else out there.
The're not wedded to Linux.. but are to Unix (Score:4, Insightful)
Unix is probably popular with developers because it is "open" and standardized in the specifications and widely know and taught in computer science departments.
So the "failure" to catch on is wider than Linux. Solaris/SunOS alone has been deployed in probably every large corporation in America and Western Europe since the '80s, but has never broken out of the specialist server/workstation market and into the general desktop market. And during all that time, SunOS/Solaris has gone from OpenLook, to CDE, to Gnome. The various X-Windows desktops really didn't get off the ground in a meaningful way until the mid-1990's with CDE (which was announced in 1993, I first saw it myself in 1996 on HP-UX), by which time Win3.1 and Win95 were already entrenched. Also, compare Win95 and FVWM circa 1995, and you'll see why Windows was the only desktop game in town at the time.
Windows owes it sucess to the ubiquity of MS-DOS in the 1980s-early 1990s. MS-DOS owed its ubiquity to the "street-credit" granted to it by IBM's endorsement. Had IBM implemented their PC with Xenix or some flavor of Unix capable of running on an 8088, then we would all have unix desktops.
Userbase critical mass (Score:5, Insightful)
To succeed you really need some base to start with (as Apple had when they moved to MacOS X, although even they lean on X11 and apps built on the GNU toolchain to some extent), or you need to support the toolchains of the applications (see OpenSolaris and BSD, which lean on X11, GNOME, KDE, etc.). Depending on what it is you wish to get rid off things can go from easy to very hard. Just ditching the Linux kernel is feasible - see the BSD and OpenSolaris options, among others. If you want to get rid of X11 as well... well that's trickier, but if you have a graphics system that will run GTK+ and or QT you might get by because you'll still have the rich supply of GTK+ apps, and can probably get KDE ported. If you want to ditch everything up to GNOME and KDE... well that means rewriting all your applications from scratch, and really that's a huge and incredibly daunting task. It's not just the big applications like web browsers and email clients, its all the different little niche applications that make the environment so rich. Its that that keeps many people on Windows - the one little application that few other people have any interest in, but happens to be vital to them; because everyone has a slightly different vital niche program it adds up to a lot of applications to reproduce before you can truly draw a large user base.
Linux has crossed the first threshold: it has enough users and application developers working on it that its self sustaining. It has yet to cross the next threshold where it provides a rich enough ecosystem of applications to entice the myriad of home users. It is, however, slowly crawling toward that goal.
Linux doesn't only exist to overthrow MS (Score:2, Insightful)
I use Linux because I prefer it, not because I want to spite a business. Same reason, I think, that many developers work on Linux. They like the system; they don't (all) feel the need for penguiny desktop domination.
2 answers (Score:5, Insightful)
Answers:
1) Most free software developers I know gravitate towards standards, not an OS. Their programs will run well on a GNU BSD system and cygwin. That's their goal. Every developer whose motivation for development is philanthropy or ego will aim to maximize compatibility rather than being exclusive to Linux.
2) Linux cannot take over the desktop for a few simple reasons. First and foremost is the lack of standards. Theres gnome AND kde. And there are several popular distros to develop and test for to make sure installation is smooth and seamless like in Windows. Windows is a single distro and extremely predictable in that regard. Developing and deploying a desktop app for it is much easier.
Secondly there is a lack of opensourced drivers and directx doesnt exist. DirectX makes things much easier than opengl plus other api.
Once a real and effective standard is settled upon in Linux (api, distro, installation and package maintenance mechanism) I suspect Linux would be much more popular on the layman's desktop.
A world of projects, but only few winners (Score:2, Insightful)
We can't blame Linux for being more succesfull in attracting the workforce. The question should be: "Why are the projects you mention unable to attract the same kind of attention?" Maybe there is no answer, maybe some of their good parts will one day merge into what is now considered the main stream (like the BeOS developer that is now hired by Microsoft).
Re:Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Some do (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:False analogy (Score:3, Insightful)
No kidding, I thought this was a ludicrous comparison when I read it too. Firefox achieved popular success because it runs on Windows. Can Linux do that? Uh, no, barring geeky stuff like vmware which itself doesn't have the same uptake as a web browser.
Plus when he talks about the Linux desktops being wedded to Linux even though Linux has failed to achieve Firefox-like success, he misses the whole friggen point of these desktops: to make Linux and other *nix more ammenable to being the "average user's" desktop! He's basically saying, give up on that, and try to be popular on Windows, assuming that's even possible.
The fact that a browser was the basis for comparison is telling--server-side apps are becoming more important & many of these do run on Linux.
Indeed, good point.
Firefox and Linux ... not really comparable (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a bit of a red herring. Firefox gained market share for a number of reasons, some that may be applicable to Linux as well. But the single biggest reason for Firefox's market share is that you could install it on Windows.
Have you ever tried installing Windows from scratch? That is like two days effort (by the time you get all your drivers and programs installed, and everything set up as you like). I don't think Linux is worse than Windows, just different. And for certain setups, its better (consider all the good programs that are already available by most distros default install).
So, the main reason Firefox gained so much popularity compared to Linux, was that you could use it on whatever OS you were already using. Possibly this includes it being "so easy to install and use", but that is a misleading statement because you are implying a Linux distro isn't. Firefox installs like any other application on any supported OS, and is as usable as most mature programs. Linux distros are likely the easiest operating systems to install, but that doesn't really matter, because most people will never install an OS. Linux is quite usable, as long as you don't expect it to be the same as Windows or OSX and are willing to get used to it.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's see a Balkanization of the Open Source OS community!
Re:Not really (Score:3, Insightful)
What about Solaris? What about OS X? Can anybody share why they do or do not prefer one of these over GNU/Linux?
Mu (Score:5, Insightful)
The premise of the question is that Linux' lack of desktop market penetration indicates some failing with Linux. I think that premise is flawed. I think Linux has achieved more desktop market share than could reasonably be expected in the time elapsed, and that all of those who have predicted more widespread use were simply fooling themselves.
See, every bit of desktop market share that Linux achieves must be taken away from the Microsoft desktop monopoly (plus maybe a bit from Apple, but that's a tiny corner of the market and one that is very hard to crack). That means that Linux has to deal with the fact that pretty much all of the desktop software in the world, and all of the PC hardware in the world, is built for and around Microsoft Windows.
Look, for example, at the reasons why people here on /. commonly say that they don't want to (or can't) switch to Linux:
Looking beyond the slashdot crowd to the more general PC user base, Linux has another, even bigger obstacle: Most people don't install their own operating system, ever. They buy a PC with an OS already on it, and that's what they use. What OS comes on every PC on the shelf? The latest version of Microsoft Windows, of course.
Given that these are the real problems holding back widespread desktop adoption of Linux, what is some other OS, that supports less hardware and has less software available, and even less mindshare among PC vendors going to do to fix the problem?
Not a damned thing, obviously.
Desktop Linux will make its breakout, if it does, in exactly the same way that Desktop DOS and Windows achieved theirs -- via the business desktop. In the more-controlled corporate environment, where hardware is less varied, the IT support staff is better educated (i.e., there is an IT support staff), application sets are more limited (e.g. no games), and there is a stronger focus on cost containment and security, Linux is beginning to make some inroads, and will continue to make more. Linux is getting serious attention as a preferred desktop platform by governments, both for reasons of openness and for reasons of cost management.
When a significant percentage of the world's desktop PC users use Linux at work, then you'll start to see significant home market penetration as well. And that business desktop penetration is happening, but it's going to be a long, slow process because it's a fight against a very deeply entrenched and very powerful monopoly.
I think Linux is doing an excellent job of getting there. The Free desktop environments and application suites are in excellent shape, and are continuing to improve rapidly. I think KDE and GNOME are both much *more* usable than MS Windows, each in their own way, and I can cite numerous Free applications that rival or even exceed the best of their commercial competition. Linux is *ready* for the desktop, and has been for quite some time. But being ready isn't enough to displace Windows. There have to be other advantages, to counter the massive juggernaut of Windows inertia. And there *are* other advantages, but even so, it will take time. Lots of time.
People don't focus much on the other a
Re:If they could just cooperate more (Score:3, Insightful)
The goal of the GNOME project, for example, isn't to spread Linux desktops -- it is to spread GNOME desktops.
Re:BSD (Score:5, Insightful)
X11 sucks, that's why! (Score:1, Insightful)
X11 was great back in 1990. But we've stuck with it for too long. The various widget sets built on top of it (motif/gtk/etc...) are just lipstick on the pig.
Look at OS X... Throw out X11. Implement a nice clean OO GUI desktop, and add a rootless X11 compatability layer back in for the legacy apps.
OLPC uses Redhat (Score:2, Insightful)
Clearly, if Linux is unable to reproduce a third . (Score:3, Insightful)
A web browser and a OS Desktop are very different things, and require very different reasons to switch. Perhaps most importantly, whereas many users have noticed that IE began to suck (with viruses, popups, et al), Windows just is; for non-Windows users, its always sucked. For Windows users it just has been; and 95-98-XP, it has gotten better. The Firefox marketing campaign has been "Take back the web", not "Get a brand new web that you don't know about".
The effort to implement a switch to FF, from IE is 5 minutes. And to become just as proficient as a user, from a couple of hours to a couple of days. For Windows to some other Desktop, days and months. The "undo" time for FF is 0, IE is still installed. Undo Linux may be 0, or as much as a few days too.
To repeat myself: browsers and Desktops are very different things; users annoyance with them is different, the effort to switch is different. Comparing the relative "success" of OSS versions of these different things is blatantly wrong, and a disservice to hackers on both teams.
Re:Some do (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, sure. But Windows suffers from all these problems and more. For every "I couldn't get my digital camera working in Ubuntu" anecdote out there, there is a similar "I couldn't get this scanner working in Windows" anecdote. Technical issues are not the problem. Technically, Linux is ready for the desktop.
The big barrier here is user perception, and market fragmentation. Would Firefox have been as successful if people were told to switch, and then told that they could choose from Firefox, Mozilla, or Seamonkey, and that each one is very similar but different in some visible ways, and that users of each one are fiercely loyal and will tell you to bugger off if you asked in the wrong forum for help? Of course not. The same situation applies to Linux. We (the Linux evangelists) push Linux on people, but then we are ambiguous about what Linux actually is. Is it Ubuntu? Is it Debian? Is it BSD? Is it Gentoo? And even within distros, there is ambiguity about KDE vs. Gnome, etc.
Joe Average is not ready for a change in paradigm, just a change in OS. What we need to do as a community is to standardize on a single "evangelist" distribution, that comes with fewer choices than most distros. Then we need to start a marketing campaign, like the GetFirefox campaign, that encourages people to use a LiveCD. Give this distribution the "click Yes to install" functionality that people expect. Once we've gained marketshare, THEN we can start introducing Joe Average to the paradigm of choice within the OS itself.
Remember that when trying to unseat a major market player, your product can't simply be "as good as." It must be better. So much better that people have incentive to switch.
Re:Because it's about freedom! (Score:3, Insightful)
The GPL is not about Openness. LEt's not start a disinformation battle here.
The BSD license and the GPL are about freedom but they choose different people to give it to.
FreeBSD gives the most freedom to the first tier of users. The guys who get the software fromt he author have the freedom to do pretty much anything they want with it, even restricting the freedom of people they distribute the software to, or creating proprietary derivatives.
The GPL takes some of that freedom away fromt he first tier, in order to assure that everybody who gets the software, no matter how deep in the distribution chain, gets the same freedom. So, when they distribute it, they are prevented from restricting further users, and from creating proprietary derivatives.
In exchange, the freedom to use, study, share, improve, and modify improvements of the software, is assured for every user of the GPL software.
The BSD license grants freedom for the first tier of users, and that's it.
The GPL takes some freedom from them as distributors, but ensures the freedom of all users.
Re:Not really (Score:3, Insightful)
But does Linux support more devices marketed to home users that are still being sold? Drivers for server devices and obsolete devices are good for increasing bullet point counts but not for having the best live-CD experience on real home PCs.
Re:NY Times says (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:BSD (Score:2, Insightful)
But the reason GNOME developers don't target most of these other operating systems is because the latter, by and large, offer a full package, including their own GUI. The question should be, where are the innovative interfaces for Linux? Qtopia? Enlightenment for Embedded?
Re:BSD (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not really (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:BSD (Score:4, Insightful)
"Free to do anything except deny freedom to others" - i.e. maximal freedom for everyone, not just for you.
In your definition of free, are you restricted from owning slaves? The Bill of Rights puts restrictions on Congress, so we'd be more free without it?
P.S. I have nothing against the BSD license, but it's purpose is different. Arguments about it being "more free" miss the mark entirely and look at freedom only from a completely selfish perspective.
Missing Drivers and Applications (Score:2, Insightful)
To my mind the problem is threefold:
1) Installing desktop hardware (especially notebooks) can still be a nightmare, even for advanced Linux users: Webcams, modesm, scanners, soundcards, new motherboard chipsets, bluetooth, graphic cards, input devices (keyboard/mouse/joystick) - they all come in various fashions and nearly none of them have native Linux driver support. This is different with server hardware, where drivers most often exist for Linux - moreover people who install servers are seldom Linux newbies.
2) Missing applications: No MS-Office, no CorelDraw, no Adobe Writer, no xyz, no... - the list is sooo long. And people often _have_ to use these applications.
3) Various content can not / not easily be viewed from Linux. This can be blamed on missing applications as denoted above but also on DRM, such as encrypted DVD's and the like. And for sure, new multimedia content will emerge that can not be viewed on Linux due to DRM restrictions.
The above three points apply to all other operating systems, such as ReactOS, BSD - regardless if these operating systems have "better" concepts or not. If there are no drivers, no applications and no content, no one will use it and it's pretty useless to port KDE/Gnome...
Re:Not really (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps not, but it's not very relevant actually. Linux supports a vast number of devices however you look at it, old or new. Support for extremely new hardware is always going to be an issue for non-microsoft software as long as the the device manufacturers ignore or even actively try to prevent support for it, but Linux simply has more mind-share, more developers, and more companies working with it than other free OSes, and as a result has overall better support for new hardware. In general the coverage is quite good.
Re:BSD (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone who actually worked with the Internet or other large networks/servers in the 80s and early 90s?
When I started my first ISP back in the days of analog dial-up, pretty much everything everyone used was a flavor of BSD. FreeBSD for most of the low budget crowd and BSDi or a similar commercial offering for the rich folks. There were some people using early versions of Windows NT for some server stuff, but Linux was not really part of the internet/server scene at the time.
There were still some people using older main-frame style stuff, but the x86 market was BSD, with Sun/IBM/Compaq/HP/etc... mostly doing their own things at least partially based on BSD code bases.
Even today, the most popular non-MS desktop OS has a large BSD influence in it's userland. Even MS has stolen a lot of BSD stuff over the years, so it's pretty much everywhere.
Re:BSD (Score:3, Insightful)
If somebody can't be bothered to release a few patches as a thanks for letting them have a running start then I don't want them using my code. It's a way to share with the people who appreciate the gesture and hopefully they can give back, but it's more for the Tivos of the world who will just take it for granted. People are not forced to use my code. But if they want to use it, they have to respect the terms I offered. Freedom is "imposed" all around us. Open your eyes.