So I have been wondering lately. Has the Linux community gone quiet? This is a short article speculating about the seemingly negative trend in passion and activity in the Linux community in recent months. What do you say? http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/linux-low.html Cheers, Mrk
I've been too short with Linux to really see a trend. But I prefer boring xfce instead of flash and annoying Windows 8 Metro tiles or whatever it is called today. At least I can customize it to what ever I want.
You make a good point, maybe you could do a follow up based on peoples feedback/opinions. Maybe we are all busy being productive (we just deployed Spine2 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/09/nhs_spin2_rips_out_oracle/) instead of trying new shiny things
I could definitely do that. But it's a chicken and an egg problem. Given the low activity, will there be enough feedback? Aha. Mrk
If anything, it could just be the "mobile revolution" as you mentioned. That's probably it more than anything else. The dumbing down of the nation (or world). Perhaps as more young people enter the arena, they are going mobile and less and less good old desktop or laptop. Maybe MS is right, even though they've destroyed the desktop and are too little too late in mobile. I don't know... I still enjoy linux and have more or less dumped Win. I'm happy. As for the rest of the world, I know not..
Given the ongoing platform shift, I suspect that developers are migrating to, and focusing on, Android and iOS. For example, I was surprised to see some younger Tor developers working on OSX
IMHO, a big problem with Linux, for novices, is the surabundance of distros. Experts and geeks may like that, but it may scare people who, for instance, are looking to replace their XP for something else, and free if possible.
IMHO, in the Linux world, Gnome 3 and/or Unity has been a disaster. It has disappointed and disillusioned many people leaving them in a situation where they have to seek workarounds to make the OS usable. But even with these workarounds it's still not a pleasant experience. The only bright spot, at least for me, has been Cinnamon (my main DE). It has made using Ubuntu enjoyable again. On two older Sony laptops that I own (1.7 ghz non-pae processor) that are unable to run Cinnamon smoothly I use a highly customized Lubuntu 32 bit version that runs quite well. Via udisks-glue, and some specialized rules, it functions a great deal similar to Cinnamon (usb drives auto-mount and open in pcmanfm...DVD movies auto-play...music CDs auto-play). Very nice, but a lot of work went into making it as such. BTW, udisks-glue, though not in the trusty repos, can still be installed and it functions just fine. If you need a link to them just post and I'll provide it. Later... Bob
@Trespasser: likewise KDE 4. You've got to love a desktop that takes 30 seconds to log in no matter how powerful your hardware is... And the apps have also bloated up quite a bit. Especially file managers, and mind, most of them *still* don't implement combined file/folder tree view, and other basic features found in MacOS 8.6 Finder in 1999. Don't get me wrong, Linux is my workhorse OS. Windows has its strong points, but there is no substitute for a free UNIX clone that runs on almost anything. Linux Gets Stuff Done. But it's still not really suitable for end-user desktops. (Neither is Windows IMO, but that's another matter entirely.)
Absolutely. Android and iOS are still in diapers, but making excellent progress. It sure as hell scared me. I wouldn't know where to begin! Linux is too complex and doesn't do all I need.
Indeed! I've been crunching a large (but not huge) dataset. I did preliminary massage in MySQL on Debian, and was impressed. MySQL behaves very much like SQL Server, and it's multithreaded. But now I'm working on final analysis and graphics in LibreOffice Calc on Debian, and I am not impressed. There are two major issues for me. First, Calc only uses one CPU core, which is painful when there are many calculations. Second, I haven't found an option to calculate during saving (rather than after each edit). I tend to do multiple levels of lookups, and so even minor changes can trigger millions of recalculations In Excel, I can tweak stuff, and then just calculate as I save. I'd love a multithreaded spreadsheet app in Debian. I've tried Wine, by the way, and it gets hammered too easily. Is there one?
I cannot confirm that. KDE starts significantly faster on my computer (perhaps 10 seconds or even less) although my hardware is not the newest one: I have an Intel Core i7-2600 CPU. My boot disk is an SSD, though. What are you thinking of precisely? Bah! What's the end-user you're talking about? There is not "the" end-user but many types of end-users with different requirements. Sure, there are always situations where specific users with specific needs miss something (this applies to any platform). But for an average user who browses the internet, gets some emails, writes some letters, does online banking or whatever, Linux is perfectly fine, IMHO.
Agreed 100%. I can and mostly do use linux exclusively for all of the above. BTW, the XFCE environment is my favorite by far. It gives me enough desktop appeal without the bloat on my aging hardware.
Have you checked possible alternatives like Gnumeric or Kingsoft? I don't know if they support multithreading but they might be worth a try. And I remember that I read somewhere that Calligra supports it.
Gnumeric only uses one CPU core. I've never tried Kingsoft. It seems to be a Chinese MS Office clone. I'll try it, and report.
What file manager do you use? Thunar is somewhat limited, in comparison to Caja for instance, which comes with the Mate DE.
OK, so I finally got around to checking out WPS Office (formerly KingSoft) in Linux. Bottom line: BAD The first roadblock was the lack of a 64-bit package. But yesterday, being a little desperate, I created a Debian 7.6 32-bit VM, and installed it. Then I discovered that the spreadsheet app CAN'T DO CHARTS They say that they're working on it In other news, I've found how to prevent hanging in LibreOffice Calc. In Options / LibreOffice / View, disable "Use hardware acceleration" and "Use anti-Aliasing". Maybe this is just relevant to VMs.
Once more games come to Linux the Windows down low will be bigger. CS : GO is coming to Linux and so will happen to other games. When there will be no need for Direct X ,there will be no need for Windows for the average user.
Responses from readers, fans and community members: http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/linux-low-your-responses.html Cheers, Mrk
Linux doesnt do everything. But it has a specific use for me. It can be customized to look like classic windows 98, it is super fast with xfce and it gets no viruses. Neither windows 8 nor OSX can do any of the above as well as Linux. The down side of course is that not everything works as well on Linux as on mac or windows. Still, Im getting macbook soon, and will probably try to work with OSX but most likely at some point will either set up dual boot or go 100% Debian like I did on my Thinkpads. Linux is far from dead. Long live Linux