Is Linux really not ready for the desktop?
Recently, OSNews has a link to linuxfonts.narod.ru/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.html . And on OSNews, it is not presented as just a holywar flame, but as a valid list of reasons why Linux is not ready for use on the desktop. I went to read, it means. And the first thought that arose: enchanting (well, you yourself know that) is a game of facts, for the most part not related to reality. The author has forbidden to copy the material, so I will beat him on points further.
0. Not true.
')
0.1. Many commercial complex closed source programs are now targeting Linux as well. ANSYS, MATLAB, Mathematica, etc., etc.
0.2. Many developers of closed packages under Windows participate in the development of WiNE in order to use their packages in Linux. Solidworks, for example.
0.3 WiNE is a very advanced thing. The guys have already begun to engage in support for Shader Model 4.0. This means that more and more games will be able to play in Linux. In addition, there are quite a lot of gaming 3D engines that are written directly under Linux: irrlicht, l3d, linderdaum, ogre, ...
1. Sound. Yes, there are minor problems. For example, you need to manually specify the layout of connectors for snd-intel-hda. Or unload snd_pcsp so that the speaker is not used together with the sound card. But these problems are well documented and resolved in 5 minutes. At the same time, after their permission to work with the audio system, you can be much more flexible and more interesting than with the audio system in Windows: transfer audio streams from the device to the device, play the sound with a slight mouse click via HDMI, etc., etc.
1.1., 1.2., 1.3. ALSA mixer?
2. X Window System
2.1. And why do you need to have one library for drawing GUI? Why do you need a standardized gui-framework, if you can always install the necessary gui-library application? My QT and GTK get along well in my system. And the exchange buffer between them works. What else do you need for happiness? Why should developers be forced into some kind of standard framework if this standard is not needed?
2.1.1. About 'very unstable' GTK and QT, I did not understand. I personally have never failed anything because of QT or GTK. In addition, does the author not know that QT is quite such an industrially standard library, and is used in a heap of various commercial applications, including under Windows.
2.1.2. That's the beauty of the fact that GTK and QT are high-level libraries. If you need an old application, you can take the old library and the application will easily work with this library without interfering with new applications that work with new libraries and interfaces.
2.2. Hmm ... In fact, the libraries themselves are fast enough. If Firefox slows down, then this is not a GTK problem, this is a Firefox problem. Because here Midori, for example, or claws-mail does not at all slow down and the impressions of working with them are very positive.
2.3. Again, not true. Cairo has an OpenGL backend. In addition, support for OpenVG has already been introduced in the X-Window, which is specifically designed for drawing two-dimensional vector graphics: fonts, buttons, etc. And, of course, Cairo will soon learn how to use it.
2.4. Fonts are actually rendered through the high-level library, but the conclusions from this are incorrect.
2.4.1. The author did not use GNOME / KDE? And the fact that different applications can have different fontconfig settings is even an advantage. In some applications I may want anti-aliasing (some vector editors), while in others I may not have (text editor). In Windows, for this you need to write a self-made font rendering, in Linux you can use the same for these tasks, and even the user can easily set the desired mode in each application.
2.4.2. This is a strange statement. Anything that renders fontconfig fonts can smooth them out. Anything that does not render cannot. If in Windows to draw fonts in a way different from the standard one, then there may also not be smoothing.
2.4.3. They do not therefore look crooked, because there is no antialiasing, but because they are curves. Unfortunately. But you can always install normal fonts.
2.5. But this is a blatant lie. Even vesa driver in X windows supports double buffering. And it does it much better than Windows. Probably the whole experience, described above, the author received, working in the X-Window without any drivers at all.
3. Each person chooses a Linux distribution to his liking, and then lives with it. Each distribution kit, in general, is a rather independent Operating System. They are united by some standards, but no more. Debian Linux and Arch Linux are different systems in their philosophy and, of course, they need to work in different ways. And this is a virtue of the Linux ecosystem, because there is some competition and the search for a better solution. As a result, the public gets quite comfortable tools, and they are diverse. Can not be said about Windows.
4. Why!? Why should everything be configurable via GUI? In many situations, this is wildly uncomfortable. In many situations for such a configuration is very difficult to write a manual. I still can not understand in any way why the entry in the command line of a pair of lines is considered to be a less convenient method of customization than picking in a heap of menus? And the CLI manual is much more convenient to write. Plus, you can always sequence of actions "alienate" and give the user a ready-made configuration script. How to do this in the GUI? But if the author cannot live without the GUI, I’ll ask again: GNOME, KDE and a bunch of other configuration tools. What exactly the author could not configure through the GUI (note, he wrote the text this year, when you can even configure bluetooth via the GUI)?
5. The unpopularity of Linux. Yep We have only 1% of the market, but all the same.
5.1. What kind of working Windows software that cannot be run under WiNE has no alternatives in Linux? The author writes - many such programs. But personally, I have not met one.
5.1.1. Varcon / Blender / GiMP / Inkscape / etc
5.2. Judging by the source of commercial engines flowing into ed2k, Linux support is present. Games do not release under Linux for purely political decisions. Perhaps because of the unpopularity of the platform. But these are not technical issues. Perhaps developers expect better driver support. Gallium3D and all that. Well, I agree, relative tension is with games. But is the desktop just for games?
5.3. There is such a thing. But not supported devices are less and less. Personally, I have not met with the lack of drivers. The author did not indicate specific models of webcams and lexmark printers. With modern printers, everything is very good - they work perfectly with standard protocols over the network.
6. Where did the firewood come from? The author is the official maintainer of the Linux kernel or any other opensource application?
7. Did the author see the Windows bugzill somewhere? Linux is good because we know about potential problems. You can not say about the world of Windows. Which can unexpectedly and to demolish file system, and to arrange a heap of other delights.
8. Is the kernel part of the application? And how actively are kernel capabilities used in Windows? At least some examples of the author cited. In addition, as I have not come across new features of the kernel, if they are not experimental, then they come with user-level utilities / libraries that allow them to be used. So, the kernel example is incorrect. And the statement about the “poor interaction of applications and their components” is extremely mysterious.
8.1. Well, naturally. If you set up authentication with your ass, it will hurt. And if the head, then the pain will not. And what LDAP has to do with virtual users is completely incomprehensible.
9., 9.1. The launch speed depends on the linker. It depends on the environment in which to run the application. If from GNOME / KDE, where all the libraries are loaded, everything starts smartly. In Windows, the download speed is ensured by the fact that Explorer is already dragging a bunch of libraries into memory. Acceleration of work in WiNE may be due to the fact that the OOo version for Windows could be compiled without some features or statically.
9.2., 9.3. And in Arch, for example, everything is long ago parallel, and turns off quickly
10. CLI allows you to display more information in a convenient form to help rectify the situation. Is it really worse than the usual GUI message: the program caused an error at 0xABCDEF12?
11. If the documentation is so bad, then how are we - not at all involved in supporting Linux - managing to work in it? From my own experience, finding guides to configure, well, for example, iptables is much easier than guides to configure packet filtering in Win2k.
12. Is Linux a bad security model because sudo is not a GUI application? Or did I not understand something in this statement? Well ... Then I hasten to please the author, there is such a thing gksu. In general, the security model in Linux: groups, users, and DBUS policies - is not inferior to the capabilities of the Windows model. It is simply different, but mathematically quite equivalent to what is in Windows. And in terms of usability, it even surpasses it, because the Linux model is much simpler.
13. I did not understand the great intention of the author. Does he suggest taking an application from a new distribution and trying to run it in the old one? So what? But why does he need it? Unclear. If you can always get a new version that works great.
13.1. Sure sure. And precisely because of this excellent compatibility, Microsoft offers VirtualPC with WinXP inside for free for everyone to ensure compatibility with old applications in Windows 7.
14. Again it is not clear. Is there any standard application distribution method in Windows? There, it seems, everybody installs into it. Unlike package managers for each distribution. Yes, they are different in all distributions, but corporate users rarely decide to work with ten different Linux systems at once.
14.3. 1. LDAP, and what does it mean: easy to manage? Why is it hard to manage LDAP? And of course, a centralized user base is so much needed by a home desktop user. 2. NFS, AFS, FTP, SSHFS (and indeed a bunch of fuse FS). 3. Bonjour.
0. Not true.
')
0.1. Many commercial complex closed source programs are now targeting Linux as well. ANSYS, MATLAB, Mathematica, etc., etc.
0.2. Many developers of closed packages under Windows participate in the development of WiNE in order to use their packages in Linux. Solidworks, for example.
0.3 WiNE is a very advanced thing. The guys have already begun to engage in support for Shader Model 4.0. This means that more and more games will be able to play in Linux. In addition, there are quite a lot of gaming 3D engines that are written directly under Linux: irrlicht, l3d, linderdaum, ogre, ...
1. Sound. Yes, there are minor problems. For example, you need to manually specify the layout of connectors for snd-intel-hda. Or unload snd_pcsp so that the speaker is not used together with the sound card. But these problems are well documented and resolved in 5 minutes. At the same time, after their permission to work with the audio system, you can be much more flexible and more interesting than with the audio system in Windows: transfer audio streams from the device to the device, play the sound with a slight mouse click via HDMI, etc., etc.
1.1., 1.2., 1.3. ALSA mixer?
2. X Window System
2.1. And why do you need to have one library for drawing GUI? Why do you need a standardized gui-framework, if you can always install the necessary gui-library application? My QT and GTK get along well in my system. And the exchange buffer between them works. What else do you need for happiness? Why should developers be forced into some kind of standard framework if this standard is not needed?
2.1.1. About 'very unstable' GTK and QT, I did not understand. I personally have never failed anything because of QT or GTK. In addition, does the author not know that QT is quite such an industrially standard library, and is used in a heap of various commercial applications, including under Windows.
2.1.2. That's the beauty of the fact that GTK and QT are high-level libraries. If you need an old application, you can take the old library and the application will easily work with this library without interfering with new applications that work with new libraries and interfaces.
2.2. Hmm ... In fact, the libraries themselves are fast enough. If Firefox slows down, then this is not a GTK problem, this is a Firefox problem. Because here Midori, for example, or claws-mail does not at all slow down and the impressions of working with them are very positive.
2.3. Again, not true. Cairo has an OpenGL backend. In addition, support for OpenVG has already been introduced in the X-Window, which is specifically designed for drawing two-dimensional vector graphics: fonts, buttons, etc. And, of course, Cairo will soon learn how to use it.
2.4. Fonts are actually rendered through the high-level library, but the conclusions from this are incorrect.
2.4.1. The author did not use GNOME / KDE? And the fact that different applications can have different fontconfig settings is even an advantage. In some applications I may want anti-aliasing (some vector editors), while in others I may not have (text editor). In Windows, for this you need to write a self-made font rendering, in Linux you can use the same for these tasks, and even the user can easily set the desired mode in each application.
2.4.2. This is a strange statement. Anything that renders fontconfig fonts can smooth them out. Anything that does not render cannot. If in Windows to draw fonts in a way different from the standard one, then there may also not be smoothing.
2.4.3. They do not therefore look crooked, because there is no antialiasing, but because they are curves. Unfortunately. But you can always install normal fonts.
2.5. But this is a blatant lie. Even vesa driver in X windows supports double buffering. And it does it much better than Windows. Probably the whole experience, described above, the author received, working in the X-Window without any drivers at all.
3. Each person chooses a Linux distribution to his liking, and then lives with it. Each distribution kit, in general, is a rather independent Operating System. They are united by some standards, but no more. Debian Linux and Arch Linux are different systems in their philosophy and, of course, they need to work in different ways. And this is a virtue of the Linux ecosystem, because there is some competition and the search for a better solution. As a result, the public gets quite comfortable tools, and they are diverse. Can not be said about Windows.
4. Why!? Why should everything be configurable via GUI? In many situations, this is wildly uncomfortable. In many situations for such a configuration is very difficult to write a manual. I still can not understand in any way why the entry in the command line of a pair of lines is considered to be a less convenient method of customization than picking in a heap of menus? And the CLI manual is much more convenient to write. Plus, you can always sequence of actions "alienate" and give the user a ready-made configuration script. How to do this in the GUI? But if the author cannot live without the GUI, I’ll ask again: GNOME, KDE and a bunch of other configuration tools. What exactly the author could not configure through the GUI (note, he wrote the text this year, when you can even configure bluetooth via the GUI)?
5. The unpopularity of Linux. Yep We have only 1% of the market, but all the same.
5.1. What kind of working Windows software that cannot be run under WiNE has no alternatives in Linux? The author writes - many such programs. But personally, I have not met one.
5.1.1. Varcon / Blender / GiMP / Inkscape / etc
5.2. Judging by the source of commercial engines flowing into ed2k, Linux support is present. Games do not release under Linux for purely political decisions. Perhaps because of the unpopularity of the platform. But these are not technical issues. Perhaps developers expect better driver support. Gallium3D and all that. Well, I agree, relative tension is with games. But is the desktop just for games?
5.3. There is such a thing. But not supported devices are less and less. Personally, I have not met with the lack of drivers. The author did not indicate specific models of webcams and lexmark printers. With modern printers, everything is very good - they work perfectly with standard protocols over the network.
6. Where did the firewood come from? The author is the official maintainer of the Linux kernel or any other opensource application?
7. Did the author see the Windows bugzill somewhere? Linux is good because we know about potential problems. You can not say about the world of Windows. Which can unexpectedly and to demolish file system, and to arrange a heap of other delights.
8. Is the kernel part of the application? And how actively are kernel capabilities used in Windows? At least some examples of the author cited. In addition, as I have not come across new features of the kernel, if they are not experimental, then they come with user-level utilities / libraries that allow them to be used. So, the kernel example is incorrect. And the statement about the “poor interaction of applications and their components” is extremely mysterious.
8.1. Well, naturally. If you set up authentication with your ass, it will hurt. And if the head, then the pain will not. And what LDAP has to do with virtual users is completely incomprehensible.
9., 9.1. The launch speed depends on the linker. It depends on the environment in which to run the application. If from GNOME / KDE, where all the libraries are loaded, everything starts smartly. In Windows, the download speed is ensured by the fact that Explorer is already dragging a bunch of libraries into memory. Acceleration of work in WiNE may be due to the fact that the OOo version for Windows could be compiled without some features or statically.
9.2., 9.3. And in Arch, for example, everything is long ago parallel, and turns off quickly
10. CLI allows you to display more information in a convenient form to help rectify the situation. Is it really worse than the usual GUI message: the program caused an error at 0xABCDEF12?
11. If the documentation is so bad, then how are we - not at all involved in supporting Linux - managing to work in it? From my own experience, finding guides to configure, well, for example, iptables is much easier than guides to configure packet filtering in Win2k.
12. Is Linux a bad security model because sudo is not a GUI application? Or did I not understand something in this statement? Well ... Then I hasten to please the author, there is such a thing gksu. In general, the security model in Linux: groups, users, and DBUS policies - is not inferior to the capabilities of the Windows model. It is simply different, but mathematically quite equivalent to what is in Windows. And in terms of usability, it even surpasses it, because the Linux model is much simpler.
13. I did not understand the great intention of the author. Does he suggest taking an application from a new distribution and trying to run it in the old one? So what? But why does he need it? Unclear. If you can always get a new version that works great.
13.1. Sure sure. And precisely because of this excellent compatibility, Microsoft offers VirtualPC with WinXP inside for free for everyone to ensure compatibility with old applications in Windows 7.
14. Again it is not clear. Is there any standard application distribution method in Windows? There, it seems, everybody installs into it. Unlike package managers for each distribution. Yes, they are different in all distributions, but corporate users rarely decide to work with ten different Linux systems at once.
14.3. 1. LDAP, and what does it mean: easy to manage? Why is it hard to manage LDAP? And of course, a centralized user base is so much needed by a home desktop user. 2. NFS, AFS, FTP, SSHFS (and indeed a bunch of fuse FS). 3. Bonjour.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/59926/
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