ok maybe i'm a sore loser, but looking at where the popular desktop OSes have been going going i think i'm fine with linux remaining an enthusiast thing
Exactly my thoughts. I think Linux is in a good sweet spot; popular enough so that applications advertise support for Linux, but not popular enough to be spoiled and optimized for the "casual" user.
>but not popular enough to be spoiled and optimized for the "casual" user
I'm trying really hard to come up with a scenario where optimizing the desktop experience for the average user is a bad thing.
For example, what keeps me on Windows (and WSL2) at the moment is that the freesync/variable refresh rate technology doesn't always behave as you would expect it to be, resulting in games that stutter, frame dip and eat inputs. Gnome devs have a branch pending final tests for vrr for months. KDE on Wayland is the best for what I'm asking atm but even that has its problems during gameplay.
And let's not forget the pains Nvidia's drivers cause compared to AMD on Linux for desktop. I built my desktop using AMD GPU and CPU specifically for Linux to play nice, and yet it doesn't for the only 2 games I play during my downtime. It's just sad.
> I'm trying really hard to come up with a scenario where optimizing the desktop experience for the average user is a bad thing.
Again, maybe I'm a sore loser, but it definitely feels like a lot of software is becoming increasingly hostile to me, personally because it's being optimized for a presumed average user. I have no beef with this average user and it's globally a totally correct optimization to make stuff work for them as well as possible, but it means that software makes tradeoffs that are inconvenient for me personally.
The most common use case is streamlined by removing options that clutter up the settings menu or banishing the buttons I press a lot into some tertiary menu, or niche features I rely on become unsupported and then get removed (of course with forced auto-updates, because the average user experience is improved by them) to free up developer bandwidth for the core features. And then I end up using a different off-brand window manager with the serial numbers filed off that barely works in general, but works for my specific 'workflow" exactly like I want it.
Of course, at the same time I also benefit from general improvements targeting the average user. It's only about the tradeoffs.
> I'm trying really hard to come up with a scenario where optimizing the desktop experience for the average user is a bad thing.
It's a bad thing if you're not an average user, because software aimed at the "average user" tends to be a pain in the butt for the non-average user. I would point to Windows, the entire web browser space, etc., as examples of this.
And it's not just about the average user. It's also about the compromises needed to make a product suitable for mass production. I already see the effects of that on Linux, in the form of things like systemd, snaps, flatpack, etc.
I think we're past the sweet spot, things are starting to go "casual user", you only need to check what Ubuntu and Fedora are pushing,in a way the "windows ification" of Linux: gnome 3/4,systemd+,snapd,telemetry etc.
It's not so much that systemd is designed to lure in casual users, it's that it (like other software on the list) reflects an attitude that separates "developers" who decide how a system should work, from "users" who have to take what's given to them. This stands in opposition to the traditional unixy world order, where the two groups are one and the same "hackers".
I'm using ubuntu among other distros, and it never tried to push gnome to me. Using i3 is literally one "apt install" away. As of systemd I'm old enough to remember when initialization was managed by a pile of unreadable shell scripts and I never wanted it back.
It's odd that you included systemd in the list. It's something that a casual user isn't going to notice, but that has made life easier for system administrators and desktop tinkerers. With systemd, I can write a few lines of config to turn a simple Python script into a daemon with syslog integration, process monitoring, and resource limits. I understand the concerns about scope creep, but I'd take systemd any day over the maze of distro-specific shell scripts that was there before it.
Systemd definitely belongs in the list, even if some admins like it.
"Windowsification" is a admittedly vague concept, but tends to cover software that is gratuitously different, not a team player in the bazaar, prone to making land grabs through "embrace and extend", and reluctant to offer configuration options that conflict with its "opinionated" stances.
As an aside, I'm really sick of the systemd / "random pile of shell scripts" false dichotomy. It's trivial to turn a python script into a system service with runit, too. Simple, stable, and focused.
Systemd was widely adopted because it makes life easier for the distros. It is directly resulting from the increased popularity of Linux putting an increased demand on them.
There's nothing stopping different organizations from making very different distributions of Linux, with some optimized for casual users and others optimized for techies. We're already had this for ages, with Ubuntu being aimed at more casual users and Gentoo/Arch/etc. being aimed at more technical users for instance. If Microsoft dumped Windows and made a new version of Windows based on Linux internals (but of course lots of big changes to make it more like Windows, plus a bunch of telemetry and advertising crap), that wouldn't prevent other distros from continuing to do their own thing.
It also helps that there have been very few important (big, complicated) applications in the past decade or two. Firefox is there? My development environment is there? I'm probably good.
Steam is there, with Proton, and Lutris. It's almost a better experience than the twelve different launchers situation I left behind (though they're annoying in very different ways!)
I was recently surprised to find installing battle.net with Steam Proton is not only possible, but dead simple, and actually worked.
I had been trying for days using the lutris installer, but just shit keeps breaking endlessly. At some point I compiled lutris into a venv just to try and solve all the dependency shit that was lurking in there.
But lutris as it stands now breaks everything almost every time I use it.
I had steam unlaunchable for over a week because of something lutris was doing implicitly. Now running steam directly off the CLI seems to be working for 90% of the games I play (which isn't a very long list).
Only thing I doubt I will be able to figure out is stuff like fortnite or anything that uses easy-anti-cheat (since their devs give a fuck about linux and effectively believe we are all hackers trying to ruin their game).
That's all I got, don't bother with Lutris unless you have an insane amount of time to debug which component is missing.
Yeah I admit at this point in my life, much like I used to start up the SNES to play Zelda back in my parents' living room, I start up my Windows system to play Monster Hunter or whatever, while trying really hard to ignore the whole desktop thing on that system.
To be fair, SteamOS is just a barely customized Arch Linux.
All the UX work is being done in the steam client itself and is not exclusive to the Steam Deck. In fact, the SteamOS ui is now available 1:1 in the good old PC Steam client, replacing the old Big Picture mode.
The only thing that doesn’t comes directly with Steam is Gamescope (but you can install it yourself easily).
Other than that, the SteamOS is just an Arch Linux with Steam installed, KDE and a Steam wallpaper.
And the SteamOS UI doesn't have the same game controller configuration options as the old Big Picture mode had. That is a good example of "dumbification" of the UI in order to make things cheaper.
