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.)

wischi,

Linux is way to fragmented and without a great dominating distro it will never. Waymand, Ubuntu, Mint, Gnome, KDE, WTF, Users don’t fucking care about that jargon. Most Window users don’t even know the name of the browser they are using or that “the internet app” is even called “browser”.

A few weeks ago I updated Ubuntu from 22 to 23 on my home media center. First tried the Updates App because why not just press a single fucking button like on windows or mac. No - no major updates there. Open a console, apt update and upgrade the hell out of everything, update the package sources with some shady regex command I copy pasted from some random forum, update upgrade again dist-upgrade WTF. After everything was done the layout of the info area (network, wifi, etc) was fucked up. Read some only shit about gnome shell extensions, themens, nothing made sense, force reinstalled the gome shell - worked again.

And somebody expects that “typical” users to do that don’t even know what Windows Version they are running - sure.

iHUNTcriminals,

I’d like to see some phone distros to use as a daily driver.

Other than that I like where gnome and KDE are going.

I’ve been using my htpc mostly with a mini keyboard and touch pad. A TV mode would be cool to see. Like what big screen is doing I guess.

onlinepersona,

TLDR: The future are linux hardware vendors, governments deciding to use linux, and RISC-V+ARM.

There are already a few linux hardware vendors out there and my favorites are Tuxedo Computers as well as Starlabs and Slimbook (the guys who make the KDE laptop. Not to be outdone by linux phone vendors like Pine64, Purism, and Volla. We need more of them.
Hopefully they will have the funds to start marketing and ad campaigns to change the image of linux from “just for geeks” or “only if you have spare time” to something like “better for privacy”, “the only option for true freedom”, “cheap but classy”, “subscribe to nothing”, etc.

Linux has no problem providing a fluid experience with RISC-V and ARM, while windows struggles - especially due to the amount of proprietary and legacy software that exists on it. Windows might be able to prepare for it and provide a translation layer or VM for those things, but probably not with a good experience.

Finally, governments. I thank Trump a lot for this: getting China to start accelerate ditching Microsoft. The EU is also wary of Trump winning again to start a tradewar + there is an EU level decision to use opensource. Countries are slow to implement this decree, but I only see it accelerating and countries wising up to international collaboration to create either their own distro (e.g EULinux or something), or paying emergent opensource vendors to write solutions for them.

I don’t believe this will be done before 2030, probably 2035 we might see ~50% of government desktops and laptops on linux, but the future is very difficult to predict.

art,
@art@lemmy.world avatar

I think immutable distributions will be more attractive to hardware vendors. I think hardware vendors feel that current Linux is too much like the wild West. Much like Chrome OS, the immutable OS can be a lockdown for work environment or school environments.

I can see a market for that.

Those of us who know how to unlock it, will have a large selection a very powerful Linux hardware.

HouseWolf,

I think the future of Linux is brighter than Windows, which is one of the reasons I switched.

I know I’m in a growing niche that still prefer to do my computing at a stationary desktop with a standard keyboard and mouse, A lot of Linux DEs still feel mainly geared towards desktop use while Apple and Microsoft have been mainly focused on the tablet/laptop space for over a decade now.

Then we get into the whole push to “cloud computing”. I don’t think Microsoft will go cloud only with their next OS like some are saying, But I do believe cloud integration will become so embedded within Windows that disabling cloud features or going completely offline will no longer be possible in the foreseeable future. The average person doesn’t give a shit about this move, hell some are welcoming it with open cheeks, But it will be a breaking point for a lot of enthusiast users.

I got a lot of other reasons for moving to Linux but I’m overall happy with the way things in the Linux world are going. And I got a few friends interested in moving to Linux sooner or later for similar reasons.

Maragato,
@Maragato@eslemmy.es avatar

El futuro de los pcs sera importante para Linux solo si los fabricantes de hardware apuestan por Linux o las leyes oblligan a publicar sus drivers como software libre. Mientras esto no suceda, veo dificil el futuro de Linux, al comprobar como la gente renuncia tan facilmente a su privacidad a cambio de la experiencia de usar windows, google,…

GustavoM,
@GustavoM@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t think theres anything else that might happen with Linux – it’s already “The free Windows” as is.

not_amm,

I think that if Linux improves and the economy/companies go the way they’re going right now, FOSS has an opportunity to grow and bring more users, if not to Linux, to the decentralized and libre software communities. But i hope it goes hand to hand, as Linux would require better hardware support as its demand increases. Btw, I also think that accessibility would improve, which is good for everyone.

Aside from Linux, the people will, at some point, understand that a free product will worsen over time, and it’s better to invest some money or time into the services/apps they like so they don’t get enshittified. As FOSS communities grow and alternatives improve (like Godot, Blender and Mastodon), it’ll attract the curiosity of the people.

ndsvw,
@ndsvw@feddit.de avatar

The future? Chrome… Chrome everywhere… Forgive me this Spongebob joke

buckykat,

The good future includes the total and final death of Trusted Computing, which means the end of capitalism.

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.

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.

MigratingtoLemmy,

I just want ubiquitous Libreboot support along with more FOSS drivers

chicken,

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

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