[Discuss] The next Linux desktop

[bogstad at pobox.com (Bill Bogstad)]

On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 1:51 PM, Richard Pieri <richard.pieri at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I want to work backward through this.
>
> First of all, the OS doesn't matter. ?X11 is its own environment. ?An X
> server doesn't need an operating system. ?The X11 protocol suite was
> designed with "dumb" X terminals in mind.
>
> This leads to a disconnect. ?What various OS users want out of their OS is
> orthogonal to what an X-based desktop should deliver: a consistent, elegant,
> functional experience. ?It's funny, but TWM did that better for me than
> GNOME ever did.

I'm sorry the X11 protocol doesn't provide or is (was?) marginal at
many things that people expect from an integrated desktop environment:

1. Sound
2. Printing
3. Inter-app communication/alerts/events
4. Plug & Play storage management

If all of that stuff worked as poorly in MacOS as it (sometimes) does
in Linux systems, I'm not sure that people would care as much about
the consistent look and feel of Apple's GUI.    That's not to say that
I don't think that more work should be done to make Linux desktop
systems more attractive to general users.   The inconsistent GUI of
different apps certainly doesn't help.   If nothing else, there is the
training issue.  However, I think the total brokenness that sometimes
happens in the areas I mention above is much more of a problem and
extends well beyond the particular GUI a toolkit slaps onto a Linux
app.  Just think about the number of GUI variants that Windows has
gone through in the last decade and a half.    Sure they had
"monopoly" status, but people still managed to adapt.   There are many
reason why, but Windows "just works" for many users when compared to
Linux.  Efforts like freedesktop.org have tried to deal with this, but
from the outside it seems like they haven't been able to make much
headway on this.

Bill Bogstad