Linux Torvald explains why Linux Desktop Sucks!

[hendrb01]

Interesting conversation by Linus Tarvald's on why the Linux Desktop sucks, and I completely agree!

While Linux may be great for a web server with the LAMP stack, I find it useless as an everyday desktop OS.

What are your oppinion?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzl1B7nB9Kc&t=88s

[Bucko]

I recently made the switch to Debian 12 with the XFCE desktop. Why? It's simple Windows 12 is going to suck with it's spying crap built in, they say it will be removed but I don't believe them. I made the move also because rumors abound that Windows 12 or 13 will be cloud based like Office 365 and there will be a charge again. Don't get me wrong, if there is one thing I pay for it is my OS on my computer. Linux is free! Everything about it is free! Everything I use with it is FREE. XFCE is super light and I run 5 VM's with 2gigs of RAM and 2 CPU cores each. My main driver has 32gigs of RAM, a 12 cores and yes it is overkill but this computer never breaks a sweat, unlike when I was running Windows.

So why do I run Linux Desktop? FREE and Debian 12 is extremely stable..

[hendrb01]

Well. There might actually be something to thank the DoD, Health Insurance, and banking industry for in this case.

* DoD. There is NO WAY IN HELL the DoD would migrate to any version of Windows that put screenshots in the cloud. While there may be specific version of Windows made for specific security requirements for one project or another (Disclaimer: I have no knowledge of this being done. I am simply speculating.). Harding of the OS is a configuration / manual process to specific regulations/guidelines. These guidelines are publicly available by NIST, called a STIG.

* Health Insurance. Transmitting screenshots of health information, especially to a noncovered entity such as an OS developer would be another HUGE no no no. I am not sure Microsoft though out the liability they would be taking on HIPAA wise when they thought of their system.


* Banking / Financial regulations. This is a fuzzy area for me, as I have no experience with financial IT, nor its security requirements with workstation security, data at rest, and data in transit, however I am sure it is at least as regulated as the healthcare industry.

That aside, I think Mr. Tarvolds hit the nail on the head with regards to why there is little mainstream software development for Linux. IE Adobe, Office (And please do not compare OpenOffice, LIbre, ETC. ).. Those packages are CRAP! (In my opinion), if you use it, and it meets your needs. Great, I could probably find someone out there that thinks GeoWrite on a Commodore 128 meets their needs. I can think of no situation where I could convince anyone that an OpenSource office solution can be deployed at the enterprise level. I feel the same way about Apple's Office suite product as well, so it is not an Apple Fanboy thing.

Sure, you MIGHT be able to spend a day or so getting Adobe Acrobat, or Lightroom CE working under Wine, but at that point. Just run Windows or get a Mac!

The other issue with mainstream software vendors writing for Linux is the GNU3 licensing system! If you use any Opensource software that is licensed under GNU3. You must release all of your source code into Opensource as well. So this leaves companies in a position to either reinvent the wheel for stacks and libraries freely available or making all of their proprietary code available. Apple was stuck in this position, which left them scrambling to create their own version of SAMBA and left us languishing on BASHv3 until migrating to the Z-Shell (ZSH).

How long will your Linux Desktop remain free? There seems to be a strange shift with projects that have historically been opensource, suddenly becoming closed. IE RHEL / CentOS, and MySQL (After being purchased by Oracle).

Linux is a great server OS, that is what I run my web applications on, but I have never gotten to a point where I could feel that it met my needs as a Desktop OS.

I could through this whole thread into disarray by pointing out that Linux is not an operating system, but that is another thread for another time!