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?

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.

Snoopy,
@Snoopy@jlai.lu avatar

An immutable OS that run all app whatever are their package distribution.

Later a full OS rewritten in Rust with goods tools that share folder’s content accross all devices and mass storage device as syncthing do.

Let’s imagine a button where you click on add devices, then you scan the QR code and chose which folder you want to share. :)

squaresinger,

Network shares aren’t exactly a new thing. They exist now for almost exactly half a century.

Snoopy,
@Snoopy@jlai.lu avatar

Yes and i didn’t reinvent the whell. However, I still remind people to do backup accross those devices. It’s not news but it’s not well applied by lot people, so i would hardcode it into the OS.

  • Do you have a phone ?
  • Please scan qr code
  • Choose folders
  • Do you have a mass storage device ?
  • Connect it
  • Chose folders
  • Warning : you haven’t setup any backup
  • Warning : your last backup was last week. please connect your mass storage device to save your backup.

So, for something new, i would like to improve those utilities/tools and expand their use.

squaresinger,

Android, Windows, and Apple products offer out-of-the-box backup to different cloud services.

They are so deeply integrated, that many people don’t even know that their data is backed up.

And most Linux users object to it for exactly that reason.

Pantherina,
@Pantherina@feddit.de avatar

Syncthing hahaha. Would just need a very simple system tray / settings page UI with just the “show ID” “select folders” and more buttons

Snoopy,
@Snoopy@jlai.lu avatar

Ahah yeah but completely integrated in the OS so we do need to remind people to save their important data in 3 differents supports. I’m pretty sure people don’t do thoses saves. Except techies and people who learned it the hard way.

And a better UI where you can setup the folder space as a disk manager. eg : don’t save video on my phone. Limit the folder to 1gb on phone. And on external mass storage, share everything : 1tb

I think there is lot potential and that Syncthing should be integrated in the GNU/Linux’s core.

Pantherina,
@Pantherina@feddit.de avatar

Very true! Its a great, powerful and very easy to use software.

Fungah,

The sharing thing sounds like a security nightmare. And who the hell am I sharing files with anyway? No thanks.

My vision of the future is having an os that’ll install itself on any device I own whether the manufacturers want me to or not. I want to own the things I own.

That’s it. Everything else is fine.

Snoopy,
@Snoopy@jlai.lu avatar

Well, that depend a lot on how do you setup security.

On nextcloud, i can see which device are connected to it, who, when, where and i get alert mail. When you add a new devices, as it is in the settings you will need your password. You might want to extend this security to usb storage with an isolated environnement. So all you need is a dashboard.

The solution i suggest is also a security in case of hardware faillure. How many people do a backup and copy their important file regulary ? I think i’m just making their life easier by hardcoding it. For me it’s as brushing my tooth, it’s not mandatory, but it’s better to make it mandatory.

My vision of the future is having an os that’ll install itself on any device I own whether the manufacturers want me to or not. I want to own the things I own.

Same but i differ. I don’t want any kind of device to exist to reduce our footprint’s carbon. Eg :

I would limit phones to 3 models and remove all brand. No ads needed, nor announcement. Something low tech. There would be lot benefit on the software side and repairability. It’s easier to maitain and it leaves our hand free to improve the OS

Fungah,

Yeah it does depend on how you set up security but…

I never used to give a shit about being secure until I got I got a virus last year. This wasn’t just any virus. I’m pretty sure there were people on the other end but it lived in my uefi, made it’s way onto 3 android phones, a tablet, my laptop, and I caught one of my phone uploading custom firmware to my Samsung tv. Samsung claimed it was impossible but. It was in progress.

Some glitch allowed me to resize the window that was being used on my phone to see their remote desktop application. And holding a button meant they couldn’t activate that button so I was able to get a peak under the hood so to speak…

Regardless I ended up needing a new motherboard and it took me ages to figure out how to get at the secret partitions on my pcs hard drives. I have to do a full NAND reinstall of the OS on my phones since. Surprise surprise. It lived in the eeprom (eeprom? Where the bootloader is) and factory resets don’t touch that.

I’ve been paranoid ever since. The fucked up part was (I still used windows at the time).that it hooked into the kernel at boot so the vrisu itself was invisible, but I could see changes to the registry it would make in real time, the one drive files it would create, the permissions you’d gradually lose if you did anything that could be interpreted as fucking with it.

I’m not sure how long it was doing it’s thing before I found it plenty of people I talked to didn’t even believe any of this, and it was hard to prove because it was fucking invisible.

So when I hear about security functions like you describe that amount to “don’t worry we’ll show you it’s secure trust is” unless I’m able to really get at EVERYTHIG in real time and have it backed up, locally or another online service, I just can’t feel secure.

Even some of the most secure platforms have the NSA hooked into everything. Like. If it doesn’t show me EVERYTHING I don’t fucking trust it. Full stop.

Snoopy,
@Snoopy@jlai.lu avatar

That’s just crazy…Given my IT knowledge, I would be a Bantha fodder…I’m not sure i would be able to see those registry being written in the system log as my main skill is doing a search several time until i undertand what were the correct words for this case and try few command. Let’s see the first step would be disconnecting the wifi. And maybe use Kali ? Dunno.

Well that’s very scary, i apologize. Thank for sharing your story :)

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.

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.

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)
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.

yesdogishere,

linux has to start a new OS from the ground up. Go back to command line and PC-DOC days. Everything must be controllable at a basic level. Shove MS and Apple out the door. Nobody wants their adware and virus bloated shit any longer.

lyth,

How basic are we talking? You can already tear out the desktop environment if that’s important to you

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.

experimentmapass,

@pmk Future linux should take example from Tromjaro.

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

mmstick,
@mmstick@lemmy.world avatar

I hope to see Linux brought to the Web 2.0 era with proper use of Git forges. As it is, most people won’t bother to go through the existing processes unless they’re paid to do it. Raising the barrier to entry in order to discourage low quality submissions is a poor excuse. The existing system makes it difficult to get any changes approved or reviewed with a serious eye, regardless of their quality.

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.

anon_8675309,

I’m still a proponent of phone as workstation. They’re fast enough. I’ll still run a server at home but being able to plug a cable into my phone and it turns into a work station is still a dream of mine.

woelkchen,
@woelkchen@lemmy.world avatar

being able to plug a cable into my phone and it turns into a work station is still a dream of mine.

Is it a dream because you think it’s not possible? If so, I have good news for you:

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/97ff68c8-037b-49d4-820b-02b5d7cd4266.png

mintycactus,
@mintycactus@lemmy.world avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    woelkchen,
    @woelkchen@lemmy.world avatar

    I would like to do same.

    Then do. DeX exists on Samsung phones and tablets since years.

    slackassassin,

    Seems like it is not available for newer versions.

    https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/7a64a871-3b52-4a48-b769-df655889c661.jpeg

    woelkchen,
    @woelkchen@lemmy.world avatar

    DeX itself is just built into Samsung phones. DeX Max is a 3rd party app that merely forces some apps into fullscreen that would otherwise stay in the phone screen’s aspect ratio. I used it for Netflix which did not work in fullscreen under DeX at some point but I cancelled my Netflix, so I don’t care much anyway.

    slackassassin,

    Oh, OK. Thanks!

    jsdz,

    Well okay, since it’s up to me: Let’s have free software. Fully free Linux on every phone, including all “firmware” which has gotten awfully soft lately. No more proprietary driver blobs for ethernet controllers or cellular modems. No more proprietary DRM modules. No more “smart” consumer goods that come without source code. The free software revolution has gone pretty well in some respects, but we need to finish the job and put an end to all that garbage.

    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.

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