The future of Linux

I’m not proposing anything here, I’m curious what you all think of the future.

What is your vision for what you want Linux to be?

I often read about wanting a smooth desktop experience like on MacOS, or having all the hardware and applications supported like Windows, or the convenience of Google products (mail, cloud storage, docs), etc.

A few years ago people were talking about convergence of phone/desktop, i.e. you plug your phone into a big screen and keyboard and it’s now your desktop computer. That’s one vision. ChromeOS has its “everything is in the cloud” vision. Stallman has his vision where no matter what it is, the most important part is that it’s free software.

If you could decide the future of personal computing, what would it be?

SapphironZA, (edited )

I wish distro’s would combine efforts much more so we have a better desktop experience. Do we really need 15 window managers when we could have 2 or 3 much better ones.

Unify to a single package manager, they are all functionally the same.

Standardize on flatpacks and abandon snaps and appimage

tar_xf,

I like the option to pick different package managers but it would behoove the community to actually settle on a package format. Making a deb or rpm are very different processes and while containers are nice for server side stuff I wish there was something easier for desktop

flashgnash,

Nix might be what you want. Haven’t tried out the package manager on a non-nixos distro but it can be done

Massive package library, everything installs the same way and I believe it’ll run on any distro

I hear the aur is very good as well but I believe that’s arch only

SapphironZA,

The fact that the processes are so different, is part of the problem. Developers need to spend the same effort 3 or 4 times.

woelkchen,
@woelkchen@lemmy.world avatar

I wish distro’s would combine efforts much more so we have a better desktop experience. Do we really need 15 window managers when we could have 2 or 3 much better ones.

What is it when almost all window managers have moved or are moving to wlroots? KWin and Mutter are exceptions because they predate wlroots.

q47tx,
@q47tx@lemmy.world avatar

Appimages serve a different purpose than packages that you install.

SapphironZA,

I get that, but in functionally they are so similar from an end user perspective, I would argue their development efforts should be combined.

merthyr1831,

RISC-V first class support.

We have the basics down. But hopefully desktop-class RISC-V will be within our reach in a few years!

Immutable root filesystem.

Less user error from borking the root fs. And also less apps relying on the root filesystem would be good. Likely something to be achieved with portals and other XDG work.

Wayland only for all modern desktops.

Wayland will soon have the ability for a lot of cool features that X11 doesn’t have, such as storing session data to disk and relaunching into new desktop environments without relogging. This’ll make hybrid graphics a lot easier to manage as changes to the active GPU can be done dynamically without logging out and back into your system.

Greater adoption of XDG portals and XDG standards.

Linux is obviously great in many ways because it lacks a single solution to a given problem, and that it’s just a kernel, so most of your end-user system is totally configurable while still being a Linux system. However, we have a lot of overlapping work that makes said end-user systems hard to manage when standards collide. Hopefully Wayland will encourage developers to work through XDG portals and other common standards to make Linux user AND developer-friendly.

Nvidia drivers

A contentious issue, but I think the future of Nvidia drivers will be open source. The proprietary drivers have been a blocker in many ways as they’re ‘good enough’ and better than Nouveau, so no one is going to bother backing the FOSS project when the prop. project is better. However, lots of very smart devs are working on bridging the gap and leverage the newly open-sourced portions of NV’s drivers, which will hopefully manifest as the end of AMD/NV driver quality discrepancies.

WINE support improved for general desktop apps

Every few years we get a new “Photoshop WORKING on LINUX???” tutorial that has some cryptic setup instructions or github repo that eventually falls to the wayside. WINE is getting a lot more support thanks to Valve and I imagine starting to take on Windows apps for first class support will be a gamechanger for the creative industries that rely on certain Windows-only apps!

Ending the distro-specific packing systems.

Yup, the best saved til last. My boldest claim is that Flatpak is going to kill off the necessity for RPMs, Debs, APKs, etc. for most end-users. The flatpak size disadvantage is negligible in the age of terabytes, but it allows devs to ensure a consistent build environment for their apps on all platforms (something that has caused a lot of flame wars between Fedora and app devs in the past).

For people who DO need apps from reproducible, stable-based pipelines (eg. docker, sysadmins, IT professionals) we’ll see Nix becoming dominant. In fact, it’s already beginning to eat into docker/container build systems thanks to its powerful reproducibility and infra-as-code paradigms. It’s having a real boost after a relatively quiet first decade of life, likely thanks to features like Flakes that can spin up developer environments in seconds.

2xsaiko,
@2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

My boldest claim is that Flatpak is going to kill off the necessity for RPMs, Debs, APKs, etc. for most end-users.

No it isn’t, until you can build a Linux system on top of only Flatpak. And guess what you have then? Yet another distro using a different packaging system with its own opinions, just like the rest of them. And there will still be other packaging systems because not everyone will agree with how it does things. Especially once developers start including questionable code in their Flatpak packages, because nobody is there to stop them, which distro maintainers are going to strip out in distro packages because it’s harmful to users.

gnuplusmatt,

that’s the beauty of distros, those that want traditional package structure can still use a distro that does.

Even the current flatpak first distros like OSTree spins of Fedora (Silverblue, Kinoite et al) provide mutable containers for using any package format you like.

merthyr1831,

Flatpak is still not able to fully replace native apps in certain situations, sure, but that wont be the case forever. If Ubuntu believes they can replace debs with Snaps I believe someone can do the same for flatpaks given enough time.

Flatpak lets people host their own repositories, which is where I think we’ll see distros becoming distinct if they DO choose to diverge from Flathub’s selection, such as choosing to block non-free software. Over time, though, people generally all just add flathub if it isn’t already available.

And, again, if you need something more finegrained than flathub, there’s no reason why distro maintainers can’t move to a nix-based infrastructure-as-code and you’ll be free to host a repo with all of your distro’s software packaged as code.

The power maintainers want over users is simply too much effort to justify as more apps begin to complain about packaging issues downstream, and apps become more complex to build. Users will inevitably bypass them. Devs will inevitably become hostile to downstream repacking.

dino,

because nobody is there to stop them, which distro maintainers are going to strip out in distro packages because it’s harmful to users.

I doubt thats really the case? Most distro maintainers mostly want to make sure a package works with their provides libs etc. If a package is malicious, it just will not become a distro package. At the same times this esoteric part about what distro maintainers actually do is so nebulous and at the same time “overrated” (debian).

gnuplusmatt,

The flatpak size disadvantage is negligible in the age of terabytes

the issue is overstated as most flatpaks use the flatpak platform runtimes and share their own libraries in a similar manner to the host, yes its separate libraries, but its not dozens of disparate copies like some detractors of flatpak seem to state

merthyr1831,

Yup this too. We’re basically seeing a more standardized and healthy way of managing shared dependencies in Flatpak that doesn’t sacrifice the developer or end-user for sake of a few megabytes.

dino,

Best post so far here.

Can you elaborate why a sysadmin/IT prof. should use Nix? Or are you referring to, those people deploying Nix systems for the “masses”?

merthyr1831,

I’m no sysadmin or IT prof. myself, but here’s my take.

With Nix, you can build out an entire Linux operating system from the ground up with a few files. You can specify the exact versions of software and even dependencies of software so that every single installation of your OS is going to be identical. You can upgrade specific software and roll it back if it has problems. Dependencies are managed through Nix in a way that allows them to be shared where necessary (saving space) but diverging when necessary to prevent dependency hell.

The best part, imo, is that all software is from source. You don’t have to rely on package maintainers at RHEL or Debian to keep apps up to date and working - Your system will download binary blobs from the cache server or build apps from source when theyre not available. You get to have bleeding-edge apps (if you want them) without the pain of waiting 6+ months for them to come in from your distro updates.

It’s quite immature when it comes to tools that make it easier to pick up and learn, so there’s drawbacks in that regard since many IT pros will stick to tools that enterprise systems offer that make managing their infra MUCH easier.

However, Nix is imo the future of non-flatpak applications because it’s simply smarter, faster, and more declarative than RPM, Deb, Apk could ever be.

dino,

Thanks for the write up, for me as a sysadmin it just doesn’t hold enough attraction on why I should make a switch. We are not going to change our infrastructure to NixOS. And for workstation use, I don’t see the benefit.

flashgnash,

I like that it’s kind of the wild west, there’s no single way to do anything and you’re sort of on your own with it, which also means you’re free to do whatever you want with it.

Choose what software you do or don’t want, delete important system files if you really want to, break stuff and be allowed to fix it yourself rather than a company telling you what you can and can’t do with your own computer

As long as it stays like that it’s good how it is

More of the few games remaining that don’t run on Linux via proton making the slightest effort to support it would be nice though

broface,

I’d be happy with the destruction of copyright and patent laws.

MayonnaiseArch,
@MayonnaiseArch@beehaw.org avatar

An immutable distro with working gpu passthrough for vms (or whatvere that’s called). That’s the dream

shrugal, (edited )

I want to be able to use all the software I want on Linux, officially supported by the manufacturer. No more unofficial version that’s kinda working but not really. All the hardware in my new Laptop should come with official Linux drivers, so I can actually use all the things I payed for. I want to be able to contact the support if something doesn’t work, and not get a “we don’t support that” as an answer. And I want to be able to truly recommend a Linux OS to my non-techy friends and family, so they too can enjoy the freedom and privacy instead of having to sell it out to big corporations because they just can’t use a terminal.

I don’t think this “plug in your phone and use it as PC” will ever really work. Apps and games always get more fancy and demanding as computers become more powerful, and desktop PCs will always be much more powerful than phones. E.g. a couple of years ago I thought at some point I can buy a tablet and use it for heavy duty coding because it will have become powerful enough, but all the tooling just eats up the performance increase to help you be more productive.

I also don’t believe in the “OS in the cloud” thing. Always connected programs and games are shitty already, just image that with your entire OS. There are physical limitations that will always make it inferiour to a good local setup imo, at least until we figure out how to connect network devices with wormholes instead of cables. What I do believe in is having a small always-on personal server in your home, that can replace most of the cloud services we rely on today.

dino,

The first paragraph tells me you don’t understand linux?

shrugal,

Why is that?

dino,

I don’t know what you mean by “unofficial versions”. All the hardware being supported is simply not feasible because there is no financial interest for manufacturers to do so. You as a user have to make sure you are buying hardware with a good rep. How often did you call/write to a support in terms of computer hardware in the last 10 years? Fixing the problems yourself is a much faster way of solving issues. And this never will cease to be the case for any linux distro.

Your friends are not prioritizing freedom/privacy over comfort, so Linux will never “solve” their problem.

version_unsorted,

Maybe the problem is that there shouldn’t be a financial interest in order to motivate or enable support.

dino,

And the money for that should come from where?

version_unsorted,

The problem I am alluding to is the way that “financial interests” means somebody reaping the value from others’ labor. There is more than enough talent, interest and time available to develop robust solutions to hardware enablement if we stop feeding the machine what it consumes today. There is simply no reason that a manufacturer shouldn’t be producing hardware with open specifications to a global market that consumes its product. Additionally there is more than enough revenue that goes to paying people that contribute less than they produce for the hardware purchased by consumers. We fix this by making it illegal to create walled gardens that make us beholden to vendors.

dino,

There is simply no reason that a manufacturer shouldn’t be producing hardware with open specifications to a global market that consumes its product.

Are you aware of Intel scandal in regards to AMD? What do you think Microsoft was/is doing? Also if you criticism is aimed at hardware manufacturers, then this is the wrong topic for it? Linux cannot do anything about it, because it has no financial interest.

version_unsorted,

I was talking about how the corrupt corporations are literally the reason we can’t have nice things. We are on the same side here. I’m just trying to express that “financial interest” is only of interest to capitalists so they can continue to profit from the efforts of common peoples. The point was to shift the discussion from trying to interest someone financially to fostering an environment in which social interest can actually cause movement and development.

shrugal,

I’m not talking about how it is today, I’m talking about how I think it should be in the future. Of course there are reasons why the things are like they are today, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t or can’t change.

Someone buying a Windows laptop or Android phone for example doesn’t need to check if that OS is well supported on that hardware or whether they will get official support for it. The device comes with the OS and the manufacturer guarantees that it will work, that is what we should achieve for desktop Linux as well. E.g. those dev machines with Linux preinstalled and officially supported by the OEMs are a great step in the right direction, but we need that for the regular consumer across a wide range of devices!

Unofficial versions are versions created by the community because the manufacturer of a software doesn’t officially support it on your platform. A simple example would be Flatpaks for Discord or Teams, or running games with Proton or regular programs with Wine. If it works it works, but the original devs won’t invest any time to improve it, and they might even break things in new releases because it’s just not on their radar.

And many of my friends and family do think about privacy a lot, but most of them just cannot fully migrate to Linux without extensive and continuous help from me or other techy friends/relatives. They cannot fix a broken boot or a game that won’t launch unless you tweak the configs! They can use a preinstalled Windows or macOS however, and they can call/write the support of whatever they want to use if it doesn’t work. There is no reason desktop Linux can’t reach the same level of official consumer support, and it needs to in order to be a true alternative for regular people. They should not have to sacrifice comfort for privacy and freedom.

dino,

Again, you don’t understand Linux. There never will be official consumer support for Linux. Also Linux is the wrong answer if you don’t want to fix problems yourself.

shrugal,

You are free to think that, but I completely disagree! Desktop Linux is in this “you have to fix it yourself” niche by necessity right now, not because it’s a good solution. And it actively prevents most people from enjoying its benefits.

dino,

I mean I upvoted because you can have your opinion anyway, even though I disagree. But I really don’t get how people rely on support to fix there problems. I never contacted windows support or whatever, I always researched myself how to fix something. I feel this is like an illusionary argument.

shrugal, (edited )

I mean, do you do everything around you yourself? Do you fix all your appliances, do the plumbing in your home, do your own health check-up, complete car maintenance and repairs, all the details of your finances, and so on?! Probably some of it, but we all have things we cannot do ourselves, or where it just makes sense to let people with more knowledge and experience do it for us.

For many computing is exactly that, I guess because the abstract logic of computers just doesn’t come natural to them, and it can be very complicated if we are being honest. There is extensive customer support in that field for a reason. I’d say the majority of people couldn’t fix a broken package installation if their lives depended on it, not without substantial time investment, education and training.

You just can’t expect most people to know how it all works and be able to fix everything themselves , but they should still be able to enjoy the benefits of free software imo. Just like I can keep my home warm in the winter without having intimate knowledge about how my heater works and being able to repair it myself. I can just call the landlord and get it fixed the next day.

dino,

First paragraph I fully agree. But I fail to see the point why that should’nt be true for Linux machines then. If you don’t have friends/colleagues which can help you do stuff, you need to get your own hands dirty. Relying on “support” is nebulous. You cannot even call anybody from Microsoft “support”.

And if you are in need of such support, there already exist solutions: www.tuxedocomputers.com system76.comNot sure what more you are looking for…there never will be Linux distro fixing all its problems by itself.

shrugal,

I’m not just talking about M$, most software and hardware should support Linux officially. And support also means making the usage with Linux easy and robust, having official instructions for Linux, being able to return it if it doesn’t work with Linux, and so on.

Tuxedo and System76 are exactly what we need imo, but at a much bigger scale. I want Linux to be on almost every PC and laptop, and that would mean every major OEM supports it.

dino,

Okay but your wishes will never come true in this world. So maybe work on it from another perspective.

Linux is not aiming to achieve more market share anywhere. Nor does it want to hold your hands to solve all your problems without you having to put effort into it.

shrugal,

How come you can see the future and speak for the entire Linux community?

dino,

man future

PR_freak,

The future of PCs in general is tied to professionals and gamers, there is no need for a pc anymore in an household who is not anything of the above

Which means that the average PC user will become more and more tech savy, this is the only thing that could raise the Linux market share

On the other hand I don’t see a single chance of linux becoming relevant in personal computing unless a big corporation decides to offer an experience that is/has:

  • A polieshed UI, something eye-pleasing like MacOs
  • Noob friendly in the sense that it offers a 100% TRUE terminal-free experience
  • Reliable across hardware of any kind, the average user doesn’t want to worry about graphic or wifi drivers. Heck the average user doesn’t even know what a driver is
  • Not buggy
  • An easy way to install any software they need, today’s program coverage in various software centers often doesn’t fulfill the needs of the average user
0x0,

The RedHat and Canonical oligarchs are well underway in achieving their windows-like linux desktop through systemd and flatpaks and what not, so we may see a small but highly deployed number of immutable distros becoming the forced de-facto standard.

Microsoft continues their new approach at EEEing linux through WSL Azure, and everyone’s happy about it.

Torvalds will eventually die, as will Stallman, so all that’ll be left are the communities, which unfortunately don’t have that much strength/voice.

Caboose12000,

I think other figureheads will rise up and take charge, I don’t think Linux is going to just blow away like a pile of leaves in the wind when stallman and torvolds are gone.

0x0,

I hope so too.

Eryn6844,

I hope the joy and knowledge and freedom our for-bearers had is what we will continue to reap in the future. there will be challenges, but we will prevail.

glasgitarrewelt,

I hope selfhosting becomes even more convenient. It already is for tech savy people, but I mean ‘buy a Pi and press a button’-easy. It would take away the power of so many big companies.

mtchristo,

For Linux desktop to grow past the single digit market share it is at today. It needs to be led by tech visionaries not by code evangelists . The average user doesn’t care about if it’s running Wayland or x11 or whatever shit you name it they only care about their OS having all the features they need and support all the latest hardware they buy.

Add to that any average Joe would freeze at the prospect of having to enter a command line to maintain their computer or use their firewall. In short for Linux to grow it needs to copy windows or macOS otherwise it will keep being used by nerds and sys admins

Chobbes,

In a very real sense I do think that the command line is ever so slightly too maligned as a beginner friendly tool. I definitely agree that it’s intimidating for people and that it’s easy to mistype a command or whatever… but good god is it ever nice to be able to tell somebody to “just copy and run this command” instead of guiding them through a GUI. Of course that has its own problems (ideally you don’t run commands you don’t understand), but it can be a really nice way to quickly help somebody. Macs strike a good balance with this in my opinion. There are GUI options for more or less everything (that seem to be front ends for command line tools), but also command line versions available, giving you the best of both worlds.

mtchristo,

The problem with the command line line. Is that people don’t understand what they are typing . what command means what. And don’t really care to memorize them. I’ve seen tech illiterate people navigate their way through leading how a mobile OS works because of how user centric they are designed. If you give them a Linux distro with a bunch of command lines to type. They would rather call someone more knowledgeable to do it or give up on it entirely. Unfortunately this is something Linux Devs don’t understand

WeirdGoesPro,
@WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Linux dev’s do understand this, and there have been huge UI strides in the last 10 years that make Linux a lot more beginner friendly than it used to be. With the use and improve philosophy of Linux, you end up with the largest number of changes being targeted towards a similar demographic of the people making the changes—power users and nerds. As the audience for Linux has widened, we’ve seen a bigger variety of ideas integrated to make Linux approachable, as a direct reflection of the diversity of the people making the improvements.

Basically, Linux is a direct reflection of the people contributing to it.

Chobbes,

For sure! The command line definitely lacks discoverability and just isn’t the mode of interacting with a computer that the average person is used to. That said there are situations where it is very much the right tool for the job and there’s plenty of times where it’s the easy way to set something up, even for a beginner.

If I’m being perfectly honest I do find that a lot of the complaints about the command line come across as a bit… silly, sometimes? I can absolutely acknowledge that it has its problems and seems intimidating, and I’m not expecting the average technology illiterate person to deal with it… But there really is not that much to it, and I think people are far more afraid of it than they need to be. Plus I think the amount of command line knowledge required for somebody to start using a mainstream distro is greatly exaggerated. You may eventually want to learn it (and shouldn’t be scared to!) and you may rarely run into something where the best way to solve a problem involves the command line… but you’ll be fine :).

captain_aggravated,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

Sometimes I think what we would do differently if we could rebuild the terminal from scratch. Do away with all the recursive acronym naming bullshit and the “You had to be a member of the compsci faculty at Stanford in 1975 to get it” references, use words that mean things to modern computer users.

dino,

Thats the reason I hate pacman. pacman -Syu…ok.

captain_aggravated,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

APT had (and kinda still has) the opposite problem. “apt-get install” is redundant. And true to Linux fashion, there have been a few implmentations of an “apt install” syntax, which were different enough to be a problem.

Also my OSMC box bitches at me when I run “apt upgrade” because it wants me to type “apt full-upgrade…”

There are some things I’d like to ask the Flatpak developers while holding them 6 inches off the ground by their shirt collar. Like why is it such a bitch to run flatpak update over ssh? It wants you to key in your password 96 times if you do that. It’s also really fun to deal with org.whatthefuck.WhatTheFuck too.

dino,

I don’t think apt is as bad as pacman, I use nala on my debian machine. The best syntax in my book has zypper, but I am biased. Simply running a flatpak from cli is a hassle. :P

captain_aggravated,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

Yeah I’ll go with that; convention is you run software by evoking its name as a command. apt install vim, then you can run vim by typing “vim.” Not with Flatpak, you evoke “flatpak run .org.bullshit.Vim”. It’s not merely designed to be used through a GUI, it’s designed to be not used through a CLI.

dino,

Clicking buttons doesn’t mean you understand what they do. And often time they don’t do what you would think they do. CLI on the other hand is actually much more direct, because the entered command does the same thing on almost any machine and you can read about what it does with “man command”.

interdimensionalmeme,

GUI have context and user feedback

Command line has :0: error: Undefined temporary symbol :0: error: Undefined temporary symbol

dino,

What? Is this sarcasm? CLI offers much more debug potential than GUIs.

ultrasquid,
@ultrasquid@sopuli.xyz avatar

For someone who knows what they’re doing maybe, but this is about those who don’t, which is 99% of people.

dino,

So what are you doing when a GUI tells you “error”? You give up and do something else?

interdimensionalmeme,

A GUI tells you a lot more about the current status and what you can do, in an intuitive way, than the cli ever can

dino,

This is no argument, this is simple opinion without any base. How does a “next/proceed/ok” button tell you anything? Also windows is hilariously known for its horrendous error messages. Stop trolling please.

dino,

Linux is not the answer you seek.

Ibaudia,
@Ibaudia@lemmy.world avatar

I think it’s already a great system, its philosophical foundation of being built around user freedom is fantastic. It just has a few things that are definitely still problems for desktop users. Namely,

  • Sensible defaults
  • Proprietary driver management
  • Distros needing to distribute software in their repos instead of authors doing it themselves
  • Too many competing application formats, each with glaring issues
  • Inconsistent theming with GTK vs QT (mostly app developers’ faults tho)
  • Both popular display servers have huge issues
  • Lack of manufacturer support for hardware (this will come with time if Linux continues to become more popular)
  • Incompatibility with existing standards, especially Microsoft products
  • Lacking proper professional applications for things like video editing that actually work consistently
  • Gaming anti-cheat compatibility
  • Generally being easy to break the whole system on accident
  • Power consumption on mobile devices

I guess that’s a lot, but it’s still a great system ha.

venji10,

-1 downvotes?

glasgitarrewelt,

That is like a double upvote!

Synthead,

in my opinion, Linux has an edge on pretty much everything except for adoption. It’s stable, secure, and updated very often. There are a ton of very great libraries for it that make building and running programs very easy. It’s great on resource management, and the kernel makes great use of the hardware.

However, most pitfalls in Linux comes from it having less adoption than more popular OSes like Windows or Mac OS. Ultimately, this dampens the “friendliness” of Linux to the masses. If you buy a piece of hardware from the electronics store, there will often be no Linux support. The “mom and dad” folk might enjoy it, but won’t know how to install or update things, simply because it’s different. Vendors will often deliver shoddy binary blobs for common hardware like wireless cards.

With more adoption comes more pressure for support. We’re seeing this with the Steam Deck already: if a game company wants to sell their games on the Deck, then they need to add Linux support, even if that means ensuring that it runs on Wine. I’d love to see this kind of thing for everyday use, i.e. a scanner including Linux software and instructions (and hopefully isn’t a nasty “install.run” thing).

If it becomes more common, then friends will help other friends with their computer. “Mom and dad” can look up solutions to problems on the internet, and they’ll be able to fix it themselves. Your aunt will buy an iPod and she’ll be able to run iTunes in a first-party way. With enough adoption, it will even be weird to run operating systems other than Linux because hardly anyone runs Windows or Mac OS anymore.

I don’t think Linux will ever be in the majority, but I see it climbing a bit in the next ten years. Lots of kinks have been worked out, and with the right software, it’s even easy-to-use and pretty to look at. We need more devices like the Steam Deck to help pave the way for more adoption! Then after a while, people will use it cause that’s what they know.

lemmyvore,

The “mom and dad” folk might enjoy it, but won’t know how to install or update things, simply because it’s different.

This is rapidly becoming irrelevant as the PC crowd is being reduced to professionals and hobbyists, who don’t have a problem learning things. The less computer-literate users stick to phones nowadays and they’re mostly content consumers on that platform so all they contribute is body count. They wouldn’t bring any contribution to Linux even if they tried to use it.

I don’t think Linux will ever be in the majority

But it is being dominant on every platform where it makes sense and/or there hasn’t been a concerted effort to keep it out. The PC is basically the only major holdout thanks to Microsoft and even them have adopted it to some extent.

Synthead,

These are great points. Ironically, most phones run Linux, too 😁

andruid,

I wouldn’t bank on professionals being technical. The desktop has tons of use in the white collar space which is full of people all over the spectrum of technical literacy, but also specialty.

chicken,

The less computer-literate users stick to phones nowadays and they’re mostly content consumers on that platform

I think this is a bad thing

lemmyvore,

I mean, they’d be consumers on any device they used. Streaming/social/email/browsing that’s pretty much it.

It’s definitely bad for kids who aren’t exposed to PCs anymore.

WeLoveCastingSpellz,

Honestly Wayland vs xorg thing keeps me from switching to it

Caboose12000,

I just want it to become more popular and easy to use while remaining free (like to buy, hot take I know) and libre.

I want it to be something I can endorse to all my friends, even the friends that almost never use computers and barely know what a filesystem is

my hope is that after this point of it being popular and accessable, FOSS principles will start to gain more traction in spaces like mobile phones and car head units. there will always be proprietary OS’s and software, but in my ideal world FOSS is at least an equal competitor, not just a a niche thing that only super involved computer people get into

agressivelyPassive,

I’d go a few levels deeper: the kernel development process seems to become more and more dysfunctional. Legacy code hindering innovation, bad people being bottlenecks and this absurdly ancient “send a patch via mail” process.

Currently, that’s only sand in the gears, but if it gets worse, this could seriously threaten the future.

Synthead,

I’m 100% with this. It doesn’t have to be on GitHub, but something like GitHub would really help. It’s easy to create a fork, a PR, and get good reviews on relevant lines of code. With email, not so much. In my opinion, If email really was better, few folks would adopt a VCS like GitHub.

agressivelyPassive,

I mean, you could still have emails as the base layer, de facto it already is a well-defined protocol layer on top of SMTP, so why not slap a nice GUI on it and call it a day?

Synthead,

Sounds like GitHub 😁

andruid,

Except not proprietary and solely owned by a FAANG company.

PHLAK,
@PHLAK@lemmy.world avatar

You mean something like patchwork.kernel.org?

AnonStoleMyPants,

What the heck even is the point of using email for this?

agressivelyPassive,

It’s established and vendor/platform independent.

I get the idea, but come on, the inventor of git, a distributed VCS is unable to have an actually distributed development?

BitSound,

Linus wrote git before anything like github existed, and the best way to do it was email. They just haven’t switched away from using email

AnonStoleMyPants,

Weird.

myxi,
@myxi@feddit.nl avatar

“send a patch via mail” process.

I don’t see a problem with it. I don’t know what tools you use, but the current process certainly isn’t ancient. Even if I use GitHub or something else, I still highly depend on my e-mail to actually know somebody published a patch and if I am supposed to review it. I don’t have to use a GUI coupled with shitty UI decisions. E-mails are very simple in their own way and I don’t find it ancient or bad.

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