Comment by gabereiser
3 years ago
Even statically linked, the problems you just described are valid. The issue is x11 isn’t holding up and no one wants to change. Wayland was that promise of change but has taken 15+ years to develop (and still developing).
Linux desktop is a distro concern now. Not an ecosystem concern. It’s long left the realm of an linux concern when MacOS went free (with paid hardware of course) and Windows was giving away free windows 10 licenses to anyone who asked for it.
Deepin desktop and elementary are on the top of my list for elegance and ease of use. Apps and games need a solid ABI and this back and forth between gnome and kde doesn’t help.
With so many different wm’s and desktop environments, x11 is still the only method of getting a window with an opengl context in any kind of standard way. Wayland, X12, whatever it is, we need a universal ABI for window dressing for Linux to be taken seriously on the desktop.
With the rise of WSL, I have a real hard time justifying wanting a linux desktop.
I've got a VM with a full linux distro at my fingertips. Virtualization has gotten more than fast enough. And now, with windows 11, I get an X server integrated with my WSL instance so even if I WANTED a linux app, I can launch it just like I would if I were using linux as my host.
It does suck that the WSL1 notion of "not a vm" didn't take off, but at the same time, when the VM looks and behaves like a regular bash terminal, what more could you realistically want?
> what more could you realistically want?
some privacy, no telemetry, no ads, and the computer only applying updates that I choose and only rebooting when I ask it to?
(I know it's a lot to ask for these days...)
I opted in telemetry to ensure OS vendor has data on usage, issues, crashes. The same for say Firefox.
I believe providing it helps vendors to improve and fix issues quicker.
:pulls out wallet: where?
WSL2 is very limited; from not having a "proper init" to having NAT-ed network, it is fine for running simple docker containers, but proper linux it is not.
Comparing it to the real linux is like comparing powershell prompt to full windows.
> [WSL] is fine for running simple docker containers
WSL is passable for running Docker containers, and that is if you add a ton of complicated socket forwarding machinery and Window-side service management automation to it, which is what Docker Desktop does.
Without that, WSL2's lack of a proper init system means that you literally don't even have a way to automatically start `dockerd`. And you have the same story for the integration of that Docker daemon with the other Linux WSL hosts.
> Comparing it to the real linux is like comparing powershell prompt to full windows.
True, although in a way this comparison is unflattering to Linux because PowerShell is generally better made, better documented, and less hostile to automation or customization than most software that comes with Windows.
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Say I'm webdev (I'm not) and proper Linux for me is that one which can start Flask dev env, and I can copypaste things from stackoverflow. Totally fine for my needs to call it proper Linux.
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WSL is really only a viable alternative to dual-booting for Windows people who have merely dabbled in Linux desktop usage. Admittedly, this is likely the only case Microsoft cares about.
But if you're used to Linux, Windows is not only borderline unbearable in a cultural way, but you're likely to notice that a ton of important pieces of WSL (and the wider Windows CLI environment) are broken, inadequate, missing, or just different in a way that makes them unattractive to longtime Linux users.
> I've got a VM with a full linux distro at my fingertips. [...] when the VM looks and behaves like a regular bash terminal, what more could you realistically want?
To name a few, things, limited strictly to WSL:
> - your distro's normal init system / a standard way to configure persistent services
> - bridged networking or some other advanced networking configuration
Sounds like something in sysadmin's language.
I hope WSL will keep within the current paradigm, not trying to replace your Proxmox test lab.
Yeah, WSL(2) was a huge huge win for Microsoft. It seems silly, but it’s kept thousands of devs from dual booting…
I dunno
it's quite possible it'll work out as well as IBM's OS/2 running Windows apps did
Since when saving time and increasing productivity became silly? Not even saying getting rid of Linux VMs, shared folders and similar annoying things is a good thing overall.
> Linux desktop is a distro concern now. Not an ecosystem concern. It’s long left the realm of an linux concern when MacOS went free (with paid hardware of course) and Windows was giving away free windows 10 licenses to anyone who asked for it.
You seem fixated on the Free Beer misinterpretation of Free Software.
No, but it sounds that way I guess. It’s more about where the developer en-masse focus lays. Few developers are interested in the desktop for Linux because they are supported on windows or Mac and during the time period I mentioned, it didn’t cost them anything monetary.
There were indications that windows and Linux May converge. Instead we got WSL2. A lot of times we decide to develop something because of the pain of using the other thing. Sometimes we develop something as a “me too”. Sometimes we develop something that is just better. Sometimes, it’s worse.
My point is the fight for a foothold in Linux desktop looked promising for a bit. SteamOS looked like it was gaining, steam…
The reality is there are complexities at that level that people don’t want to deal with and we all have opinions on how it should work, should look, and should be called.
Red Hat (former RH’er myself) should take this on and really standardize something outside of core and server land. And no, it should not be Gnome.