[Discuss] Linux desktop is here (Re: Ubuntu alternatives)

[richb at pioneer.ci.net (Rich Braun)]

Derek Martin commented:
> It's clear to me that the desktop has improved in the last 15
> years or so, but frankly the improvements since then have only
> been marginal, and on the whole I believe I was more satisfied
> with my simple FVWM configuration.  The one thing I give the
> Gnome people is that it is much less work for me to get an
> environment that satisfies my basic need

The whole concept of a window environment as pioneered at Xerox PARC gave us
the basic need.  There's only so many ways you can throw rectangular boxes of
content onto a 2-dimensional screen.  So improvements from the time they were
invented to the distant future will always be "marginal".

What's been a whole lot more substantive in the past 3-5 years have been (a)
the explosion of useful desktop applications, and (b) improved software QA
focused on ease of installation.  Painless virtualization (of Windows under
Linux) has made it easy to transition from a Windows-centric desktop to an
all-Linux one.

Today I can build a better desktop with Linux, with less effort, than a
Windows desktop.  The only problematic area that I can point to these days is
audio:  there are about 4 different ways that Linux pumps sound to speakers,
and the lack of consensus still causes installation problems.  Other than
that, Linux on the desktop Just Works.

-rich