No, the Linux Desktop Hasn’t Jumped in Popularity

I know, i agree (see my username lol) my point is all desktop systems are too hard for the average user beyond the same level of interactivity a phone or console offers.

Windows is too hard for most users. Beyond web browsing, opening emails and reading .pdf's, most users haven't got a clue under Windows. Therefore, Linux or Windows, it's a fairly moot point.
 
Fragmentation is a problem with Linux if you're a developer. As a developer, how do you support that many distros? Each distro may have a different GUI, different versions of system libraries such as LibC, init.d vs. SystemD, etc. How do you support all of that? Do you want to know what that's called? A nightmare. No big commercial development house is going to come to Linux unless this fragmentation issue gets solved, they're not going to pour the kind of money needed to support 15 different distros all because some people like to have choice; it's just not going to happen. And before you say that you don't need commercial software support I'm going to tell you that you're delusional in thinking that you don't need it. Like it or not, not everything can be an open source program; there's intellectual properties that needs to be protected and there's no way that companies are just going to let everyone see the source code.
 
Fragmentation is a problem with Linux if you're a developer. As a developer, how do you support that many distros? Each distro may have a different GUI, different versions of system libraries such as LibC, init.d vs. SystemD, etc. How do you support all of that? Do you want to know what that's called? A nightmare. No big commercial development house is going to come to Linux unless this fragmentation issue gets solved, they're not going to pour the kind of money needed to support 15 different distros all because some people like to have choice; it's just not going to happen. And before you say that you don't need commercial software support I'm going to tell you that you're delusional in thinking that you don't need it. Like it or not, not everything can be an open source program; there's intellectual properties that needs to be protected and there's no way that companies are just going to let everyone see the source code.
I worked for one of those companies that did development for Linux apps. Know what they did? They lumped the OS into the same package as the app and sold it as an appliance, either virtual or physical. They didn't have to deal with anything about different OSes. That's about the best way to handle Linux apps.
 
I worked for one of those companies that did development for Linux apps. Know what they did? They lumped the OS into the same package as the app and sold it as an appliance, either virtual or physical. They didn't have to deal with anything about different OSes. That's about the best way to handle Linux apps.

Not needed anymore. Snaps are where it's at now.

100% app confinement and all the files you need can be contained in the snap itself so you don't screw with the system or other apps.
 
Not needed anymore. Snaps are where it's at now.

100% app confinement and all the files you need can be contained in the snap itself so you don't screw with the system or other apps.
That is definitely a better way to develop apps. I wish more people did that.
 
Fragmentation is a problem with Linux if you're a developer. As a developer, how do you support that many distros? Each distro may have a different GUI, different versions of system libraries such as LibC, init.d vs. SystemD, etc. How do you support all of that? Do you want to know what that's called? A nightmare. No big commercial development house is going to come to Linux unless this fragmentation issue gets solved, they're not going to pour the kind of money needed to support 15 different distros all because some people like to have choice; it's just not going to happen. And before you say that you don't need commercial software support I'm going to tell you that you're delusional in thinking that you don't need it. Like it or not, not everything can be an open source program; there's intellectual properties that needs to be protected and there's no way that companies are just going to let everyone see the source code.

You develop for .deb and .rpm packaging. Works fine, developers have been doing it for years now without issue. Take games under Steam for example, they're supported by SteamOS or Ubuntu, sure they'll work on other distro's, but use another distro and you're on your own with no assistance from the developer.
 
You have numerous people here, a place where computer enthusiasm is at its highest, giving their gripes about Linux, some are even Linux users! Instead of taking this time to hear the pleas of the people and taking them into consideration, we are once again presented with the same people telling them all that they are wrong.

Madness.
 
You develop for .deb and .rpm packaging. Works fine, developers have been doing it for years now without issue. Take games under Steam for example, they're supported by SteamOS or Ubuntu, sure they'll work on other distro's, but use another distro and you're on your own with no assistance from the developer.
But what if your distro has decided to keep with init.d as versus SystemD? What about different system library versions? LibC? How can anyone handle all of those variations? Reminds me of the days of DLL Hell back in the bad old days of Windows. Installing program B could break other program A because it was installing an older DLL but if you reinstall the newer DLL then it will break program A. Oops.
 
But what if your distro has decided to keep with init.d as versus SystemD? What about different system library versions? LibC? How can anyone handle all of those variations? Reminds me of the days of DLL Hell back in the bad old days of Windows. Installing program B could break other program A because it was installing an older DLL but if you reinstall the newer DLL then it will break program A. Oops.

As an Ubuntu user, I use .deb installers, and I have never once encountered the issues you're describing and I have ~ 70 PPA's added to my system. The situation is really no different under Windows/macOS, there's a number of software packages that used to run under older and still widely used versions of both operating systems that will not run under Windows 10 without purchasing new, completely updated software packages - If you use one of the older versions under an older, but perfectly suitable and usable version of macOS/Windows, you're pretty much on your own.

As a developer you are not obliged to support every conceivable distro/configuration, just stating Ubuntu 16.04 LTS/Fedora 26 support is enough.
 
As a developer you are not obliged to support every conceivable distro/configuration, just stating Ubuntu 16.04 LTS/Fedora 26 support is enough.
Limits, there you go... limits. But that's contrary to the whole concept of Linux, the concept of Linux is choice; the choice to use whatever distro you want to use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions

If you subtract all of the purpose-built distros there's still a metric f***-ton of distros to support if you're a developer. Oh, and I know... you're going to tell me that you don't have to support all of them, you can just tell a person that if they're not running one of the supported distros they can go pound salt. And what do you think will happen if a developer does that? Oh yeah, massive amounts of hate thrown your way which is then followed up by boycotts and other various not-so-nice things. And we wouldn't want that would we? No sir, so as a developer who wouldn't want to piss off the entire Linux community they would have to support everything including that one obscure distro because there's probably someone, somewhere, running it for God knows what reason.
 
Limits, there you go... limits. But that's contrary to the whole concept of Linux, the concept of Linux is choice; the choice to use whatever distro you want to use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions

If you subtract all of the purpose-built distros there's still a metric f***-ton of distros to support if you're a developer. Oh, and I know... you're going to tell me that you don't have to support all of them, you can just tell a person that if they're not running one of the supported distros they can go pound salt. And what do you think will happen if a developer does that? Oh yeah, massive amounts of hate thrown your way which is then followed up by boycotts and other various not-so-nice things. And we wouldn't want that would we? No sir, so as a developer who wouldn't want to piss off the entire Linux community they would have to support everything including that one obscure distro because there's probably someone, somewhere, running it for God knows what reason.
Sucks to be alone in the world, having to figure everything out all by yourself and have everything upon your shoulders. ... or there's reality where you're not.
You're not developing in a vacuum nor having to put it all together all by yourself (or at least you don't have to). You would form relationships with the community members and work out a workflow for building, testing, and packaging your software for multiple distributions. If you make honest attempts to participate in the community, the majority of people won't shit on you. ("majority" qualifier is there because there's always someone...)
 
Limits, there you go... limits. But that's contrary to the whole concept of Linux, the concept of Linux is choice; the choice to use whatever distro you want to use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions

If you subtract all of the purpose-built distros there's still a metric f***-ton of distros to support if you're a developer. Oh, and I know... you're going to tell me that you don't have to support all of them, you can just tell a person that if they're not running one of the supported distros they can go pound salt. And what do you think will happen if a developer does that? Oh yeah, massive amounts of hate thrown your way which is then followed up by boycotts and other various not-so-nice things. And we wouldn't want that would we? No sir, so as a developer who wouldn't want to piss off the entire Linux community they would have to support everything including that one obscure distro because there's probably someone, somewhere, running it for God knows what reason.

The model for Linux is different than the paradigms used for Windows/macOS. The onus is on the distro maintainers to offer correctly configured packages of your software for their distro. If the distro does not bundle LibreOffice then it is not for the user that seeks it and they should look elsewhere. This creates an environment for competition between distros, which drives innovation...

The developer should focus on designing their application as agnostic to the distro specific features (standard file locations, init system, libc, compiler, kernel modules...) as possible. Again, this is good for competition. As a distro maintainer who would like to bundle say a plant growth simulator, if you had a choice between software that requires specific version of glibc versus software that runs with any glibc, which one would you go for?

Of course, this mainly applies to Open Source development. When looking at commercially supported development, Steam's model of officially supporting only Ubuntu, while still making it possible and even easy to port it to other distros is a way to go.
 
Limits, there you go... limits. But that's contrary to the whole concept of Linux, the concept of Linux is choice; the choice to use whatever distro you want to use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions

If you subtract all of the purpose-built distros there's still a metric f***-ton of distros to support if you're a developer. Oh, and I know... you're going to tell me that you don't have to support all of them, you can just tell a person that if they're not running one of the supported distros they can go pound salt. And what do you think will happen if a developer does that? Oh yeah, massive amounts of hate thrown your way which is then followed up by boycotts and other various not-so-nice things. And we wouldn't want that would we? No sir, so as a developer who wouldn't want to piss off the entire Linux community they would have to support everything including that one obscure distro because there's probably someone, somewhere, running it for God knows what reason.
I have mentioned this before... Linux is not like windows so stop using Windows mindset when comparing distro's

Ubuntu, fedora, arch is nothing like win10,win8,win7 where it is not guaranteed anything will run...

Linux is more like windows7 but each machine is at a different patch level. Steam only officially states Ubuntu but it is painless to install on Gentoo. Mathworks only officially support Ubuntu and redhat but works an installs faultless on Gentoo
 
You're not developing in a vacuum nor having to put it all together all by yourself (or at least you don't have to). You would form relationships with the community members and work out a workflow for building, testing, and packaging your software for multiple distributions.
But if you're a commercial software developer and for the sake of patents you can't let anyone see your source code you're kind of screwed.
 
But if you're a commercial software developer and for the sake of patents you can't let anyone see your source code you're kind of screwed.
Not really. Companies hire outside consultants all the time. NDAs, etc...
 
True but it seems that the idea of Linux is very much against the idea of closed-source programs. It's almost like a cult, either conform to all of the rules or you're thrown out and shunned.
 
True but it seems that the idea of Linux is very much against the idea of closed-source programs. It's almost like a cult, either conform to all of the rules or you're thrown out and shunned.
The premier gaming platform and most of its contents are closed source. The most popular video card driver is closed source. There are numerous commercial closed source softwares that ship that are closed. (Arcserver, MS SQL come to mind off hand)

I think open source has way less friction as you can get more people to help sort problems, and there's certainly that free software philosophical tone to the whole environment that I won't try to pretend isn't there. However, it doesn't prohibit you from being closed if you don't want to leverage that aspect of the environment/community/whatnot, and people won't crucify you. (unless you're shipping Flash player.)
 
True but it seems that the idea of Linux is very much against the idea of closed-source programs. It's almost like a cult, either conform to all of the rules or you're thrown out and shunned.

Rubbish!

I use a number of closed source software packages. If software is good I have no problem paying for it provided the price is fair and reasonable, the idea of FOSS only is ridiculous.

As others have stated, Linux is not designed to replace Windows any more than macOS is designed to replace Windows - You have to get out of the Windows mindset.
 
But if you're a commercial software developer and for the sake of patents you can't let anyone see your source code you're kind of screwed.

Except any distro worth using has a package manager that can deal with a deb or rpm. Solus has eopkg. For 3rd party software like Chrome eopkg is able to open the deb or rpm and repackage the whole thing into an eopkg file for installation. For debian based distros most can use alien to repackage the rpm into a deb. Arch based distros have the AUR for stuff like that.

You're making an argument that has many workarounds. If you only create a deb the community will find a way to get it elsewhere. It isn't hard. Now with Snaps picking up steam and flatpak making noise as well it's only getting easier.
 
But don't you want that? Doesn't the Linux community want Windows dead?
No they don't. Linux users want CHOICE.

If I want to run a commercial desktop from Microsoft to fill one need I do. If I want to run something that has more open licensing than the GPL I can run FreeBSD. If I want to run something with better acceptance than FreeBSD with lots of source available but less freedom I can run a Linux Distro.

In my house we have:

1 FreeBSD Server
Multiple linux vms & a Linux based vm server
2 Macbooks (1 dual boot to Ubuntu, one pure mac)
2 Windows boxes
1 Chromebook.

I can use each for it's strengths and it makes my overall computing experience much better overall.
 
I am typing this from Linux and I am sick of it. The desktop already went to Win 10 and when I will get home January 10 and begin using my T25 then I will not install Linux on it. Here's https://github.com/chx/chx.github.io/wiki/How-I-set-up-my-Windows-10-(coming-from-Linux) my writeup on setting up Win 10 after a very very long streak of Linux desktop usage (and an even longer Linux server usage -- 24 years).

Half the chat clients are missing or missing performance / features

Every update breaks one of Bluetooth, printer, scanner

Battery life is worse. Wifi range / stability is worse.

The list is long. Linux on the desktop happened indeed, it's on the Windows Desktop and everyone is happy.
 
I never said Linux was "special". I never once said why someone should use it (in my last post), YOU said that.

What I was talking about, was that game developers releasing games for Linux ARE turning profits, which is the very business reason people are citing why they are NOT releasing for Linux.

Also, that percentage market share matters very little, when you have as large a player base as STEAM has. You can still reach so many gamers on Linux, as a result, that you can be profitable by releasing games on Linux. Many developers have actually gone public and said they made profits by releasing on Linux, that they weren't getting before! (which I had said in my previous post, but I guess you decided not to read that part).



So among "web developers," the world's most flexible set of users, the Windows market share is still 85%?

That's still pretty damn depressing.

I'm sorry, but there's nothing special about Linux. The best open-source applications are already ported to your platform of choice.
 
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