Yeah, god forbid a Linux desktop ever do as much as Windows or OS X can. I think KDE has come the closest out of all of them, depending on the distro, to being loaded with as many features, but they all still lack in critical areas. These are areas in which Windows is still, after decades, p0wning Linux.

The biggest problem is standardized Linux packaging. All these distros think it's lovely to keep users in their walled gardens, and it's extremely sad when Linux users don't mind. Sure, it's nice to have a cute little manager connect you to their walled garden, and some gardens contain a fairly big wealth of programs, but they are still gardens with walls. This leads to fragmentation due to the same programs being customized and fucked up in different ways instead of everyone being on the same page by downloading the default program from the developers directly. Great, now I have to look on *Fedora's* forums to figure out this Apache issue, or *Ubuntu's*, or *SUSE's*, etc, instead of being able to learn and rely upon real standards. Most importantly it leads to the inability for users to share programs directly, and instead they have to grovel and rely on their service-based repository while at the same time laughing at cloud OSes and saying they will never become reality. Guess what, Linux has been mostly a cloud OS because of walled garden reliance and a lack of packaging standards for a long time now. You only own your OS once you don't rely on a repository and your software is truly mobile and modular. Sure, you can make a server archive of all the packages, but only for a specific distro and specific version. Woohoo, great flexibility there, not.

Another area is driver management. I don't care of the solution is DKMS, making Linux have actual standardized ABIs for some/most/all driver module interfaces, or what, but the fact that there isn't an existing desktop solution there sucks. It's great when you never have to fuck with things, but that's true of all OSes, until you need to. Then what is the solution? Can users share drivers to get around issues? No, you're fucked unless you're a Linux geek, you're reliant on your distro and bring the problem to them instead of taking it to the actual developers directly.

Instead of helping Linux standards and working on the key problems, Linux users seem complacent to allow distros to put in proprietary solutions. They want to use proprietary leverage to get money instead of being good neighbors in the Linux communities and competing in fair ways while upholding user freedom. Sure, some of these companies have done some good things in different areas, but you can't ignore the bad just because of that.

Until Linux is free and no one has to rely on a single point of failure, a single dictator, a single source for their livelihood, and instead can help the world and Linux community as a whole grow by utilizing and helping with real standards so that software proliferates and helps instead of gets held back and controlled due to a lack of those standards, Linux won't ever be number one on the desktop.

Was to give Microsoft an excuse so they could proclaim that their systems followed standards and were cross-platform. Of course in reality, the standards are always only possible if you're using Windows, otherwise you get only partial functionality, which means it's not really a standard.

A total lack of standards on the laptop building topic aside, this would make all computers bundled with Windows totally useless. Fine! That will push even MORE users over to building their own computers, something which will always be cheaper anyway.

Thanks for that, and this is why pushing for openness to combat all that control and corporate greed is so important. Support all movements for openness!!!

I'd like to start an open car company myself as I'm incredibly sick and tired of overpriced proprietary replacement part costs. Of course, the U.S. government might have to be overthrown first for that to happen due to the depth the existing auto companies have dug themselves into the government.

Interesting, never heard of that one, thanks!

Yes, it is of course slightly space-inefficient keeping older libraries around if the programs could be compiled with newer ones. If the maintainer of a program stops maintaining it, you might have to keep older libraries around if newer ones have broken their ABI/API. If the choice is between a functioning program or a broken one, I'll take the functional one and so would anyone unless you can find a replacement, and those can't always exist, especially for games for example.

I wish everything used standardized dynamic paths, like you could have them be an environmental variable, where programs would just query $LIB64 or $BIN64 etc in order to communicate effectively, allowing a system to store files anywhere it wants. Hell, you could make a structure like Windows did if you wanted to, and put all the shared libraries in \Linux, and all the bins and other stuff in \Program Files, hehe. ^^

Ah yes, one of the last major problems Linux still really needs to solve: binary portability. They should provide 7.11 available for download in a universal installation package which contains everything needed, and then at the end of the installation you select which Xorg version you want to boot into by default if you already have a version installed.

When are Linux users and devs going to hunger enough for this kind of freedom so that they all switch to truly cross-distro installation packaging systems like Zero Install?

Windows has installation CDs that are slimmed down as well as ones which contain more software. The solution isn't to have all distros include the same software. You said what the solution is: standards. All you need are standardized ways for the same type of thing to be done across any distro, like program installation standards. The system needs to be able to recognize all dependencies and to easily obtain anything which is missing. Then, who cares if libraryXYZ is missing? Your package manager will get it for you.

The stupid create-your-own-software-universe model needs to die. Programs need to be cross-distro at the very least, and cross-platform preferably.

Everyone: please just say no to any systems which attempt to lock you into a single vendor source for your software when alternatives exist that give you much more freedom. Using Android as an example, it takes away your freedom by locking you into Android-only apps. Why would I choose that over a distro which allows me to run any and all Linux apps? Want to buy something from the Ubuntu Software Center? Hell no, you shouldn't be ball-and-chained to a specific distro, and even if you did find the DEB file you would be locked out of RPM-based distros unless you somehow converted the DEB to RPM, but why should you have to?

The point is that even open source software can make you a slave if it doesn't offer standards, because that is where real freedom comes from. Development time has a cost, so spend your time and money helping out projects which seek to give true freedom to all computer users world-wide. Programs like Zero Install perhaps? Standards groups like freedesktop.org?

Of course driving a semi is safer than riding a bicycle when it comes to having an accident with the typical vehicle on the road, but the more who drive smaller vehicles the more the typical vehicle decreases in size which makes the road safer for everyone. Constantly pushing tons of metal and plastic around on the road wastes insane amounts of energy. There are lots of other ways to get from A to B without having to do that.

It's called not having to do anything at all, if the Linux kernel had an intelligent standardized driver interface. scp driver.ko stupid@box:., ssh stupid@box modprobe driver.ko, hard I know.

Having drivers come with the kernel so that there is more "plug-n-play" out there is a wonderful feature, but no, these are problems that do affect everyone. There are lots of scenarios I can come up with where this feature would be great to have. One would be being able to use new hardware with an old stable kernel easily. Another would be for users to be able to share drivers easily with each other, instead of having to give noobs instructions on how to compile something. Yet another would be so that anyone could package a driver that works with a piece of hardware that works. Vendors would be able to do this for instance. Vendors could also give Linux support much more easily without having to go through an annoying compilation step.

No matter how you look at it, that *feature* in Linux would be exactly that, it would give you more flexibility, require less upkeep, and make support much easier. Oh, that driver that came in that older kernel is crap? Here's this newer one that works, Grandma, just click on it to install. *That* is a feature, and there's no god damn technical reason why a standardized interface allowing for a more modularized kernel like that cannot be implemented. I'm all for open source drivers, but this isn't an open vs. closed argument, having this feature would help *everyone*, regardless of the license of the driver. Just saving the work of having to recompile all the drivers every time there is a kernel revision would be a nice feature. Save some electricity. Geezus.