Comment It's the desktop (Score 2, Interesting) 1098
Dvorak point brings up the Linux desktop issue...
I use the Linux OS everyday, and for all kinds of tasks: servers, desktop, routers, embedded. Our company uses Linux embedded OS for our main products.
However, for Linux to truly succeed it must succeed on the desktop. Linux fans: let's be honest, gnome and KDE are neither cool, innovative or good in comparison to Windows or Mac OS - regardless of what style of windowing system you like.
To fix the issue Linux developers must move quickly. First, X sucks - it lacks the underpinnings that allow OS X to do thing like expose, and other nice 3D effects. The answer to this problem is to move to a pure openGL based render system (which is what OS X does) - such as Xgl being worked on by David Reveman - http://lists.freedesktop.org/pipermail/xorg/2004-N ovember/004358.html
who is now working for Novell.
Secondly, as a community we must *decide* on a GUI api - not have the 50+ ones which are available now. Perhaps this is gtk 2.0, maybe something else. But professional developers, and software companies which have to support products dont like making software which looks crappy b/c every developer is using a different system for drawing buttons and handling user activity.
Everything else is beside the point: window managers, kde, gnome desktop environments, etc.
But, without the two above problems solved, there is no way for Linux on the desktop to be significant.
However, for Linux to truly succeed it must succeed on the desktop. Linux fans: let's be honest, gnome and KDE are neither cool, innovative or good in comparison to Windows or Mac OS - regardless of what style of windowing system you like.
To fix the issue Linux developers must move quickly. First, X sucks - it lacks the underpinnings that allow OS X to do thing like expose, and other nice 3D effects. The answer to this problem is to move to a pure openGL based render system (which is what OS X does) - such as Xgl being worked on by David Reveman - http://lists.freedesktop.org/pipermail/xorg/2004-
Secondly, as a community we must *decide* on a GUI api - not have the 50+ ones which are available now. Perhaps this is gtk 2.0, maybe something else. But professional developers, and software companies which have to support products dont like making software which looks crappy b/c every developer is using a different system for drawing buttons and handling user activity.
Everything else is beside the point: window managers, kde, gnome desktop environments, etc.
But, without the two above problems solved, there is no way for Linux on the desktop to be significant.
