What killed the Linux desktop

Re:What killed the Linux desktop by DeepDuh on Thursday August 30, 2012 @12:59AM (#4453045)

OSX seems to have had this design paradigm: 'Make everything work in the most streamlined way possible for the default use case (80%). Give some limited options for a few more specific use cases (18%). Cover everything else with CLI integration / defaults system, such that the final 2% can get around with a bit of googling'

This has been highly successful, only I'm afraid that the Unix people inside Apple are loosing influence. The sandboxing in ML looks like a mess to me. Not that its a bad idea per se, but look what it did to our beautiful '~/Library/[ApplicationSupport|Preferences]'! It's tacked on and it's obvious that this has been a political decision from management rather than engineering. Makes me angry.

On a different note: I've never really used it extensively because I switched to macs in '05, but wasn't Ubuntu pretty close before they switched to Unity? I remember last time I installed it that for the first time I could have a Linux that worked out of the box, including network and graphics drivers.

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Re:What killed the Linux desktop by rahoulb on Thursday August 30, 2012 @05:04AM (#4453726)

I've actually switched to doing my work on Ubuntu (using xmonad - I can't stand unity) and iOS (iPad as SSH client) as OSX only cares about the 80% use case now.

Which is fine, it's Apple's decision to take, but it's no longer for me.

(As for Ubuntu - I'm using pretty standard hardware and never had a problem)

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