Re:The Year of Linux on Everything but the Desktop
by ChuckMcM on Tuesday February 21, 2017 @09:43PM
(#13702495)
> I suppose it's an acquired taste.
I think it is true, and there has always been desktops that are a small taste variation away from Windows and desktops that are a small taste variation away from MacOS X, and desktops that are a small taste variation away from CDE/Motif.
I have always felt that this was the single largest impediment to Linux as a desktop, not because there were several different tastes but that the APIs used to provide the UX were different across all of them as well. GtK2, GtK3, Qt4, Qt5, XMotif, Etc. Some FOSS apps try to 'adapt' depending on which desktop you are using, many just punt and look like what ever their 'birth' desktop looked like, and many suck in that other desktop as a function of being installed. My Ubuntu 16 deskop has XFCE on it (Xubuntu) but other apps have sucked in both versions of GTK, and all of Qt and the KDE libs.
While it lets people complain if you force a single desktop metaphor down their virtual throats, at least it has a good shot of the Apps all working, in a general way, the same way. And that is what separates (in my opinion) more general adoption of the Linux desktop from the specialize adoption we have now.
I have always felt that this was the single largest impediment to Linux as a desktop, not because there were several different tastes but that the APIs used to provide the UX were different across all of them as well. GtK2, GtK3, Qt4, Qt5, XMotif, Etc. Some FOSS apps try to 'adapt' depending on which desktop you are using, many just punt and look like what ever their 'birth' desktop looked like, and many suck in that other desktop as a function of being installed. My Ubuntu 16 deskop has XFCE on it (Xubuntu) but other apps have sucked in both versions of GTK, and all of Qt and the KDE libs.
While it lets people complain if you force a single desktop metaphor down their virtual throats, at least it has a good shot of the Apps all working, in a general way, the same way. And that is what separates (in my opinion) more general adoption of the Linux desktop from the specialize adoption we have now.