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?

drwankingstein,

I don’t like the migration to wayland when it is so woefully not ready to replace x11, terrible a11y, window embedding is still non existent, the window positioning seems like we might be getting is a watered down version that still wont be compatible with many apps.

Im not saying x11 is good, I am more then familiar with the multitude of x11 issues that are honestly a meme at this point. pretending like migrating to wayland will be this massive step forward is wrong however, it’s a step to the side, just as broken, but different issues we can pick from.

x11 is broken by design, and wayland is designed to be broken

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

terrible a11y

Don’t think that is up to Wayland, but UI toolkits. What specifically do you mean?

window embedding is still non existent

They have documentation on how to do this. If there’s no libraries for this yet, it’s not up to Wayland, but maybe lack of interest.

the window positioning seems like we might be getting is a watered down version that still wont be compatible with many apps

Wait and see. What I’ve seen discussed seems pretty good. Also, they have to take into account that not every compositor is a floating window manager.

drwankingstein,

Don’t think that is up to Wayland, but UI toolkits. What specifically do you mean?

a11y requires a large range of features, because of wayland most OSKs are now platform specific, we can’t have overlays (we might be able to when the layers protocol lands, but thats a privleged protocol which is kind of up in the air how it’s handled) etc. a11y requires an entire ecosystem, you cant just lay it on the tool kits, compositors handle a lot too.

They have documentation on how to do this. If there’s no libraries for this yet, it’s not up to Wayland, but maybe lack of interest.

I’ve tried this a while ago, it’s a bloody joke, not only is it much harder to actually just do it, worse performance, and now I need to manage a bunch of additional crap. the fact that this is actually the reccomended process is a bloody joke, if you want window embedding, just use xwayland.

Wait and see. What I’ve seen discussed seems pretty good.

we shall see

Also, they have to take into account that not every compositor is a floating window manager.

I have absolutely no idea why people keep saying this. weston doesn’t support some xdg protocols, and gnome some ext protocols, so why the does this matter? clearly neither xdg nor ext protocols are mandatory, so it has nothing to do with compositors not wanting to implement it.

if it’s because tiling managers can’t do it, then simply combine both protocols into one, or use both protocols.

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

a11y requires a large range of features, because of wayland most OSKs are now platform specific, we can’t have overlays (we might be able to when the layers protocol lands, but thats a privleged protocol which is kind of up in the air how it’s handled) etc. a11y requires an entire ecosystem, you cant just lay it on the tool kits, compositors handle a lot too.

Ah, that makes sense. Tbf I’m not too familiar with it and mainly thought about screen readers and such, where only the toolkit knows what text is displayed since everything afterwards just gets a frame buffer. It would be great to get a portable way to do overlays and feedback like “user has focused a text input control”, yeah. How does this work on X11?

I have absolutely no idea why people keep saying this. weston doesn’t support some xdg protocols, and gnome some ext protocols, so why the does this matter? clearly neither xdg nor ext protocols are mandatory, so it has nothing to do with compositors not wanting to implement it.

As far as I know xdg protocols are supposed to be mandatory, ext ones aren’t. Weston devs just don’t care I suppose. (Though I can’t actually verify this so correct me if I’m wrong. I just know that getting a protocol included into xdg is a lot harder.)

Commiunism,

One of the things I really dislike about Linux is how when setting up, there’s a bunch of things you need to troubleshoot, look them up on the forums even though you haven’t really done anything wrong, it’s just how some software works or there’s a bug or there’s some weird setting that’s incompatible with your system.

I wish there were better defaults for software in the future or just better compatibility/more bugfixes so these cases get rarer and rarer, making it comparable to initial windows experience.

shapis,
@shapis@lemmy.ml avatar

Yup. Basically this. I’d love to not have to know anything about the system other than which programs I want to run.

kuneho,
@kuneho@lemmy.world avatar

I was always in and out with Linux.

My problem was always that something was always a bit off with the apps or environment than I got used to, and most of thr times I just couldn’t adapt. Things like my laptop touchpad worked differently, the mouse moved differently, apps had functions differently or lacking onebthing, others other things.

Also, most DEs was lacking functions (like dbl click on window icon to close), or were buggy. Then KDE4 came out and it was a trainwreck after 3.5 and I lost all my hope for a while.

And, on my mission to kinda solve these resulted always me bricking the system.

Now, to be fair, this was 10 years ago.

But, I know I won’t use Windows 11 for a while now and I kinda bored with Windows 10 so few weeks ago installed Debian on my PC with KDE Plasma. Tho I have nothing against Windows, it served me well in the past… 25 years. But now I’m more focused on dev work and productivity, and Windows 10 became slowly awkward for the different works I had. Most of the times I used WSL so why not just hsve the realdeal at the first place? Also, lots of Pis and some servers I have are also running Linux, so why not have it on my main machine?

It’s nice. Still have some minor annoyance or inconvenience with it, but I don’t care. Honestly, seeing what Linux became in these 10 years made me go ‘wow’.

So, I have hope in Linux in the future. Especially since OS and architectural boulders are rapidly disappearing.

I remember Wine being no more than a POC you can run Notepad or Solitaire on Linux. Now you can almost run any fucking game on a Linux system. This is awesome.

So, I’m testrunning Linux again before I invest a motherload of money into a new PC (I’m using a 2009 era server machine as my desktop atm) and if it’s good, I will continue to use Linux and probably Debian on my new machine and will format my drives and set up a partition table that is Linux-y, and not just mount all my NTFS drives and use them like they are native to the system.

jasondj,

I’m a big fan of retired systems for every day use. A 14 year old server has more function as a space heater and whitenoise generator than a desktop, though.

7th-8th gen Intel retired corporate desktops and laptops from Dell/Lenovo/HP are a dime a dozen on eBay man. Lenovos tend to run Linux very well out of the box. And Linus himself sent his daughter to college with a Dell XPS.

kuneho,
@kuneho@lemmy.world avatar

yeah, most of my machines are around 3rd or 4th gen Intel, some of those are recent buys - one for libreELEC under my TV, one for remote work, one for my mother… unbelievably cheap machines, and with an SSD and 16GB of RAM, they run happily forever. (even with Windows 10)

sergih,

recommend setting up a next cloud server with the old computer, byeto google drive photos etc

kuneho,
@kuneho@lemmy.world avatar

thanks for the tip, but I’m not that cloud storage guy. I have a homelab running, if I need to share files, I just put them there.

Maybe OneDrive is what I used more before, but I can totally live without it.

A_s_h_k_a_n,
@A_s_h_k_a_n@persiansmastodon.com avatar

@kuneho @pmk
I totally get it! Although I'm a few months a head of you. No more Windows for me. I used to run both using dual boot but after a while I got more and more into linux and learned to use it correctly. Then I realized there is much to control by yourself in a system rather than let windows to do it.
Just don't give up on Linux and try lot's of distros to find the best you need. I recommend Arch Or Debian 11. Debian 12 is still not a debian-standard distro in my experience.

kuneho,
@kuneho@lemmy.world avatar

I was thinking about going the Arch route, I really wanted to build up my system from scratch…

but then I was like “I’m too old for this sh*t”, and I’m not even sure what I really want from my machine, so I was looking through distros… openSUSE was my other candidate, but I used Debian based systems and APT in the past 10 years… and I like the philosophy behind Debian, so installed Bookworm.

maybe, after a while when I know what I need, what I use and how I use them, will build my own Arch installation.

ExLisper, (edited )

Nothing special. Normal adoption of new standards, protocols and features and some new, easier ways to develops desktop apps for it.

For example let’s say we want to add moving windows between phone and a desktop by swiping. It would be some new protocol and would be handled by DE on Linux and Android. Someone would develop the standard and different Linux app would add support for it. Exactly the same way we have bluetooth now.

jackpot,
@jackpot@lemmy.ml avatar

a small thing is that hardware will be linux focusef, such as removing the windows icon kn the super key

mindbleach,

FEX-emu / box86 / qemu-user let ARM machines run x86 binaries with minimal hassle.

I want a future where platforms matter about as much as image formats. Some will be better. Some will be worse. Some will be closer to what your setup expects. But the idea your system won’t open it, at all, is absurd.

backhdlp,
@backhdlp@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

If the platform doesn’t support transparency, I’m not using it!

tsallinia,

We are the future already :)

radioactiveradio,

There’s this project called darling which is like wine for Mac OS I hope that takes off and we can pirate them damn Adobe apps everyone needs for work.

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

For Linux in general? If I could decide? Here goes:

  • I would want people to realize that distro maintainers are actually important and Flatpak and co. are not actually as good of a thing as everyone makes them out to be.
  • I would want a full actively developed GNUstep-based desktop environment as the “default” Linux desktop (which apparently was the original intention).
  • I would want Xorg to finally go away.
beta_tester,
  • while the current state of flatpaks might not be perfect. Aren’t they on a good path to provide a futuristic packaging format?
2xsaiko,
@2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Does what they built work well? I suppose so. But is what they’re doing a good idea? I would say no, and the reasons as to why are in the post I linked.

What would you consider a “futuristic packaging format”?

beta_tester,

I can’t find that flatpaks are mentioned in that article

I guess mostly sandboxing, permission control, distribution and reproducibility

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

I can’t find that flatpaks are mentioned in that article

Flatpaks, like Snap (that it does mention) are the “upstream packaging” the entire article is about. Specifically about how they both have software vendors directly publish packages to their repositories without maintainers in between.

sandboxing, permission control […] reproducibility

Yes, those are good. (Not sure how reproducible it actually is since I can’t find a way to download build files from flathub, though…)

distribution

What do you mean by that?

beta_tester,

Snaps only have one central repository which is controlled by canonical. I can set up a flatpak repo myself if I want to.

I haven’t validated a package either but I read that you are able to do it.

hottari,

I love Flatpaks and have embraced them totally on my desktop. They just make sense for sandboxing applications with Flatseal. Distro maintainers also ship software with bad defaults. I want to be able to easily control that.

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

sandboxing applications

Sandboxing is nice, but is not exclusive to Flatpak. I’m talking about the software distribution model.

Distro maintainers also ship software with bad defaults. I want to be able to easily control that.

So you trade distro packages which you can usually customize pretty well if you need to (e.g. modified Arch packages on the AUR) for Flatpaks where you have no chance at all to do that because the package build script isn’t available? And the problem still isn’t solved because now the people who can set bad defaults still exist, they’re just different people.

ShiningWing,
@ShiningWing@lemmygrad.ml avatar

because the package build script isn’t available?

What are you talking about? Every Flatpak on Flathub has their build manifest available on GitHub, you can fork or download it for yourself and change it how you’d like, just like you can with an Arch PKGBUILD

And the problem still isn’t solved because now the people who can set bad defaults still exist, they’re just different people.

For one, unlike with distro packages, lots of Flatpaks are made by the developers of their apps, so bad defaults aren’t really going to be a thing for those since the developer would want to choose what’s best for their own app

And for packages maintained by a third party, bad defaults are less common because maintainers don’t need to account for each individual distro’s unique package situation or specific dependency versions, and only have to package it once for every distro

hottari,

Aside from all the things Flatpaks get right, a sandbox framework built right into the design is a major win and in my case, it’s one of the big reasons I went with it.

You can also modify the build script for any flatpak’s manifest and create packages with flatpak-builder. May not be as easy as PKGBUILDs but it’s certainly possible.

The problem of bad software defaults is easily solved with Flatseal. My point is that, it takes a few clicks to deny permissions to Flatpak applications as opposed to sandboxing a traditional app yourself.

Writing sandbox profiles for apparmor or something similar is usually a complex elaborate affair. And even when you do finally manage to get a working profile, it still requires maintenance to keep the sandbox functional as the target software updates. You won’t face any of these problems with Flatpak’s bubblewrap.

raven,

Whatever it is I hope we don’t end up “selling out” for a higher market share. KDE is proof that you can have stability while also having infinite configuration options. Gnome seems to be openly hostile to any other way of doing things that isn’t the gnome way.

I don’t mind gnome existing but it isn’t for me and I hope I don’t get forced into using something that I can’t modify to meet my workflow wishes. I’m seeing a lot more programs being written without prioritizing being desktop agnostic. I think we can forge our own path making a desktop that is both as stable as Mac OS and as approachably configurable as Linux should be.

gunpachi,
@gunpachi@lemmings.world avatar

There are some very crazy looking Gnome customizations in the unixporn community. At a glance they look like a custom window manager setups, not sure how well it performs though.

Well my point is that Gnome can be customizable just not as straightforward as KDE.

Patch,

Part of the great Linux experience is the ability to have competing projects with differing philosophies. Part of infinite configuration choices includes the choice of installing GNOME instead of KDE (or one of the dozens of other DEs and WMs).

Personally I much prefer the GNOME design ethos over KDE; I am not one of life’s desktop tweakers, and my Linux experience would be much diminished if that’s all there was. But I’m glad KDE exists for those users who like that sort of thing.

dutchkimble,

I’d settle for Microsoft 365 offline apps + trouble free miracast

BaalInvoker,

Idk why people are so passionate about it, cause there is no “Linux” - there is a lot of “Linuxes”.

I mean, what defines Linux? The kernel? The desktop environment? The flexibility?

Cause, dude, in a desktop level linux has many options, some very little smooth (like any window manager you have to configure everything by yourself) and some very smooth (like KDE and Gnome). I risk to say that Gnome and KDE are as smooth as MacOs/Windows.

Applications are kind the same. What applications are we talking about? There is a huge range of possibilities, which includes apps that run only in windows as well as apps that run only in Linux. Surely main stream apps are most designed for Windows, cause they have the majority of market share, however almost always there is an alternative good enough in Linux.

I wish the future of Linux would be our own people don’t blame on projects trying to innovate, like Gnome and KDE does. People on Linux looks like loves to makes things hard or exclusive, but man, we need simple things as well. Simple things on Linux does not “rot” Linux, but make Linux more usable and, as consequence, makes development faster while big techs have to start paying attention to Linux.

raptir,

By a strict definition, the kernel is what defines Linux.

BaalInvoker,

We all know that nobody respect these definiotions and mostly when someone says linux, reffers to the full operate system

mindbleach,

Define chair.

terminhell,

Not where I’d like to see it, but where I see it going:

Much like the three major publishers - Mac, MS, Google. Google and Apple are already using Linux/bsd. MS, on desktop is the only player left. They happen to be the most prominent player. It’s an odd thing though, as others have pointed out. That more and more people, outside of work simply don’t have a PC anymore. Phones have taken over for what a lot of people would have used a PC for to begin with.

With that, MS may replace their NT kernel with a *nix (probably built themselves or heavily modified from something like Gentoo - like ChromeOS) and then what. We’ll still have these mega corps still pushing closed sourced systems.

Idk, I guess the question of “do we actually want Linux on everything?” remains. The enthusiast PC market differs from pre built OEMs for a reason.

Would I like to see wider adoption, yes. But I think it’s better suited still for enthusiast and repurposing older machines to save them from e-waste.

andruid,

Hyper convergence between phones, desktops, storage and networking. I think there has just been awesome progress in all of those fronts to the point that have a home server(s) that serves out the home wifi, shared storage, desktops (for gaming, school, and personal use) to the sharef human interfaces of choice. Even more so treat them as one giant multiuser machine, instead of a dozen separate devices.

chicken,

I want it to be accessible enough that people can realistically use it as a transition from mobile to PC

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • uselessserver093
  • Food
  • [email protected]
  • aaaaaaacccccccce
  • test
  • CafeMeta
  • testmag
  • MUD
  • RhythmGameZone
  • RSS
  • dabs
  • oklahoma
  • Socialism
  • KbinCafe
  • TheResearchGuardian
  • Ask_kbincafe
  • SuperSentai
  • feritale
  • KamenRider
  • All magazines
    •