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?

experimentmapass,

@pmk Future linux should take example from Tromjaro.

PlexSheep,
@PlexSheep@feddit.de avatar

I think stability is a huge factor. Just yesterday, my laptop shit off without any forewarning. There is still too much random issues that seemingly have no reason.

chunkyhairball,

There are a couple factors that play into future-planning. The first, and most important factor is that most people neither care what OS their hardware uses or actually need more than the barest baseline. They want to spend time with their friends doing the things their friends are doing.

This is what has allowed Android to gain such massive prominence in the mobile space. It’s all that’s needed to play crap web games, listen to music, watch videos, and commune on social media. Expect more and more consumer hardware to be ARM-based devices running Android for the next few years.

The next big factor is that Linux has become a sort of driver dumping ground for reputable hardware manufacturers. Want to sell a piece of hardware? Better make damn sure it’s got Linux driver support so that it can be part of an Android device. This means that more manufacturers are contributing drivers and code to the rest of Linux. It doesn’t necessarily mean that code that works with Linux is going to be open source or play well with others. nvidia has proven to be an absolute bastard in this regard.

I don’t think that means the future for Linux is going to be dim. I do think we need to expect and plan for more corporate presence. Some of that presence will be good. It doesn’t take much to be a good member of the community. However, we do need to keep our collective eyes out for nvidia-like presences that will only serve to anchor everyone else down.

Where I’d personally LIKE to see Linux going is to provide more power to older hardware. We have a wealth of hardware that’s in the 10-20 year-old range that can be doing useful work. The problem there is maintainership. It’s harder to get volunteers to work with older hardware. If you can get people to work on supporting that hardware, it means fewer PCBs in landfills and more doing hobbyist or scientific work.

In the ‘modern’ Desktop Linux space, I’d like to see a renewed focus on privacy. I’d like to see privacy features baked into the kernel alongside security features. In a lot of cases those are the same feature.

Pantherina,
@Pantherina@feddit.de avatar
  1. Linux Distros finally work together better. Canonical merges its Snaps with Flatpak. In times where we are so closw to unifying all apps in one package format, and Canonical does THAT.
  2. a smooth Desktop that is cleaned up and focusses on stability. I think KDE 6 will be very good, as they cut off old and duplicated code. But tbh I also look forward to Cosmic, as I think a new desktop, in Rust, fast and stable, made with all the modern features planned in from the beginning, has an awesome future.
  3. More Value in FOSS from Companies. Reverse-engineering sucks, but maany of the supported devices simply use Blobs, which is not the future I want. So Hardware with real opensource drivers, this also goes for entire Mainboards i.e. Coreboot. Coreboot is so unknown, even though its literally the only BIOS there should be. Novacustom, 3mdeb, Starlabs, System76 all work on small projects, not to forget Googles Chromebooks (with their horrible hardware)
  4. Accessibility, standardisation, unifying of standards. I talked with some people and they meant for example Accessibility Documentation is worse documented and not standardized, in contrast to MacOS and Windows.
  5. More Linux preinstalled. On routers, Laptops, phones.
  6. Security and privacy out of the box. All Flatpaks using portals, a differentiation between FOSS and Proprietary apps. Mac randomization, SElinux confined users, containerization for all apps. Simply what Android has since forever. A share dialog. Verified and measured Boot like with the Heads Bios.
  7. Stability and ease of use. An immutable distro with all the right presets, automatic updates that listen to unmetered networks and enough battery level. A nice setup dialog including things like that. (Possible in GNOME and KDE)
skilltheamps,

For me it would be open-ness and through that privacy. The dream device would be some mobile convertible with the repairibility of framework, that is completely free and open source hardware and software. Like powered by risc-v, with some future open gpu, and every (storage-/keyboard-/touchpad-/touchscreen-/battery-/network-/wifi-/ etc) controller on it being risc-v and running open firmware as well. Just such that for every byte being processed in this device you could pin down the piece of circuit and line of code that makes it so. In terms of linux some future version of gnome on a immutable distro with flatpaks that have very tied down permissions would be a nice future to me.

And I think overall many aspects of this are moving in that direction. The biggest roadblock is probably a truly open gpu, and then highly integrated controllers like for storage.

3arn0wl,

FWIW I’m still very much an advocate of the Mark Shuttleworth Convergence vision. It’s the Holy Grail that makes sense to me.

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