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?

Crozekiel,

Honestly my biggest hope is some generally accepted way to install software that is consistent among distros. I’m leaning toward liking flatpak for this currently, but I also like how appimage works too.

It is really close now, close enough I’ve dropped windows entirely at home, but occasionally there’s still something I’ll stumble across that officially only has Deb or rpm download options and if I try from my distro package manager it fails for one reason or another and I give up, just skip it, and be disappointed for a bit.

Oh and support from devs of games at least as far to get anti-cheat stuff to work via proton, but I avoid a vast majority of those games even on windows because their anti-cheat can be so system invasive…

Raspin,

Packaging software for linux is an insane problem. All distributions are so similar yet so different, all of these nuisances prevent you from making much assumptions about the host OS which for instance forced flatpak to be basically a generic distro you run apps on. For obvious reasons it’s not an ideal situation, memory consumption is bad, performance in various ways is impacted. I believe that the true packaging format will have to cut some corners and be specific by design to smaller set of distributions. Pretty much how snaps are built around Ubuntu, which imo. is a necessary compromise to have something reasonably fast and lightweight.

spiderman,

Better at gaming than now.

unionagainstdhmo,
@unionagainstdhmo@aussie.zone avatar

Linux isn’t inherently bad at gaming, it’s more like games are bad at Linux

kittenzrulz123,

Honestly Linux should keep going in it’s direction (standardization) and hopefully software support will get better over time.

TheHolyT,

my view for linux is basically macos but FOSS, my dream system would be a fully immutable install with secure boot and fully verified root on boot it would most likely use gnome and wayland and the only way to install programs will flatpak, there wont be a package manager it will instead be an image-based OS with everything needed preinstalled(amd,intel,nvidia drivers etc) if anyone is interested in developing something like this hit me up

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!

vvvvv,

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.

Mobile apps are shit for that. Sure, my phone is powerful enough to browse internet, play video and music but on desktop with mouse/kb it’s just weird and funky. And I’m not even talking about any productivity software which is straight impossible.

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

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.

dino,

Better documentation for any distribution not called Arch. Better bugtrackers for all major projects? (KDE, Thunderbird etc)

backhdlp,
@backhdlp@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

We need documentation standards on the level of OpenBSD

257m,

I’m surprised how great BSDs documentation is despite having a smaller userbase than even linux. Probably a result of less fragmentation.

intrepid,

Less fragmentation is part of the reason. The other part is that BSDs mandate documentation for their component software. Documentation by developers is obviously better than those created by regular users (like the arch wiki). Arch wiki is actually phenomenal considering that it’s by the user community.

tsallinia,

We are the future already :)

bitwolf,

Steam Deck gets more popular.

Steam console released with improved multi user experience and VR.

PlayStation sales drop in growth.

Steam OS released, PCs can use it with generic kernels.

Gaming PC manufacturers offer steam OS as a preinstalled.

PC manufacturers start to offer popular distros preinstalled.

System 76 puts their in house laptops into Best Buy shelves.

Adobe and Office no longer stuck on Windows and are distributed as wasm applications.

djtech,

I can see, in some rare-but-actually-possible conditions, all of those elements happen, but not the last one.

Why would Adobe and Microsoft release software for WebAssembly/Web environments, when Microsoft wants to keep you locked in their shitty environment?

What I could see is that the FOSS alternatives keep getting updated (some of them, like LibreOffice, are full alternatives to close-source software and they have been like that for years), the user population expands (expecially with Adobe and MS wanting to put subscriptions everywhere) and using FOSS software as alternatives for Office, Premiere, PhotoShop, … becomes the norm.

bitwolf, (edited )

I actually believe Adobe has already started to. Iirc that’s what powers the web version of Photoshop.

MS with Office is purely speculation. But I believe wasm will be very disruptive once we have a stable abi and I’m sure MS will want to make their own superset of that stable abi to sell Azure integrations.

This could likely also be used to make a more fully featured online office suite. If the others did come true. There could be some pressure to make office available if it put enough of a dent into Wundows market share.

djtech,

The azure speculation might be true, but Office? Naaahh…

kittenzrulz123,

I wish Oculus brought back support

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.

dutchkimble,

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

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!

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