1y ago

The future of Linux

I'm not proposing anything here, I'm curious what you all think of the future.

What is your vision for what you want Linux to be?

I often read about wanting a smooth desktop experience like on MacOS, or having all the hardware and applications supported like Windows, or the convenience of Google products (mail, cloud storage, docs), etc.

A few years ago people were talking about convergence of phone/desktop, i.e. you plug your phone into a big screen and keyboard and it's now your desktop computer. That's one vision. ChromeOS has its "everything is in the cloud" vision. Stallman has his vision where no matter what it is, the most important part is that it's free software.

If you could decide the future of personal computing, what would it be?

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188 comments

I want to be able to use all the software I want on Linux, officially supported by the manufacturer. No more unofficial version that's kinda working but not really. All the hardware in my new Laptop should come with official Linux drivers, so I can actually use all the things I payed for. I want to be able to contact the support if something doesn't work, and not get a "we don't support that" as an answer. And I want to be able to truly recommend a Linux OS to my non-techy friends and family, so they too can enjoy the freedom and privacy instead of having to sell it out to big corporations because they just can't use a terminal.
I don't think this "plug in your phone and use it as PC" will ever really work. Apps and games always get more fancy and demanding as computers become more powerful, and desktop PCs will always be much more powerful than phones. E.g. a couple of years ago I thought at some point I can buy a tablet and use it for heavy duty coding because it will have become powerful enough, but all the tooling just eats up the performance increase to help you be more productive.
I also don't believe in the "OS in the cloud" thing. Always connected programs and games are shitty already, just image that with your entire OS. There are physical limitations that will always make it inferiour to a good local setup imo, at least until we figure out how to connect network devices with wormholes instead of cables. What I do believe in is having a small always-on personal server in your home, that can replace most of the cloud services we rely on today.
- The first paragraph tells me you don't understand linux?
  
  Why is that?
  
  I don't know what you mean by "unofficial versions". All the hardware being supported is simply not feasible because there is no financial interest for manufacturers to do so. You as a user have to make sure you are buying hardware with a good rep. How often did you call/write to a support in terms of computer hardware in the last 10 years? Fixing the problems yourself is a much faster way of solving issues. And this never will cease to be the case for any linux distro.
  Your friends are not prioritizing freedom/privacy over comfort, so Linux will never "solve" their problem.
  
  I'm not talking about how it is today, I'm talking about how I think it should be in the future. Of course there are reasons why the things are like they are today, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't or can't change.
  Someone buying a Windows laptop or Android phone for example doesn't need to check if that OS is well supported on that hardware or whether they will get official support for it. The device comes with the OS and the manufacturer guarantees that it will work, that is what we should achieve for desktop Linux as well. E.g. those dev machines with Linux preinstalled and officially supported by the OEMs are a great step in the right direction, but we need that for the regular consumer across a wide range of devices!
  Unofficial versions are versions created by the community because the manufacturer of a software doesn't officially support it on your platform. A simple example would be Flatpaks for Discord or Teams, or running games with Proton or regular programs with Wine. If it works it works, but the original devs won't invest any time to improve it, and they might even break things in new releases because it's just not on their radar.
  And many of my friends and family do think about privacy a lot, but most of them just cannot fully migrate to Linux without extensive and continuous help from me or other techy friends/relatives. They cannot fix a broken boot or a game that won't launch unless you tweak the configs! They can use a preinstalled Windows or macOS however, and they can call/write the support of whatever they want to use if it doesn't work. There is no reason desktop Linux can't reach the same level of official consumer support, and it needs to in order to be a true alternative for regular people. They should not have to sacrifice comfort for privacy and freedom.
  
  Again, you don't understand Linux. There never will be official consumer support for Linux. Also Linux is the wrong answer if you don't want to fix problems yourself.
  
  You are free to think that, but I completely disagree! Desktop Linux is in this "you have to fix it yourself" niche by necessity right now, not because it's a good solution. And it actively prevents most people from enjoying its benefits.
  
  I mean I upvoted because you can have your opinion anyway, even though I disagree. But I really don't get how people rely on support to fix there problems. I never contacted windows support or whatever, I always researched myself how to fix something. I feel this is like an illusionary argument.
  
  I mean, do you do everything around you yourself? Do you fix all your appliances, do the plumbing in your home, do your own health check-up, complete car maintenance and repairs, all the details of your finances, and so on?! Probably some of it, but we all have things we cannot do ourselves, or where it just makes sense to let people with more knowledge and experience do it for us.
  For many computing is exactly that, I guess because the abstract logic of computers just doesn't come natural to them, and it can be very complicated if we are being honest. There is extensive customer support in that field for a reason. I'd say the majority of people couldn't fix a broken package installation if their lives depended on it, not without substantial time investment, education and training.
  You just can't expect most people to know how it all works and be able to fix everything themselves , but they should still be able to enjoy the benefits of free software imo. Just like I can keep my home warm in the winter without having intimate knowledge about how my heater works and being able to repair it myself. I can just call the landlord and get it fixed the next day.
  
  First paragraph I fully agree. But I fail to see the point why that should'nt be true for Linux machines then. If you don't have friends/colleagues which can help you do stuff, you need to get your own hands dirty. Relying on "support" is nebulous. You cannot even call anybody from Microsoft "support".
  And if you are in need of such support, there already exist solutions: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com https://system76.com/ Not sure what more you are looking for...there never will be Linux distro fixing all its problems by itself.
  
  I'm not just talking about M$, most software and hardware should support Linux officially. And support also means making the usage with Linux easy and robust, having official instructions for Linux, being able to return it if it doesn't work with Linux, and so on.
  Tuxedo and System76 are exactly what we need imo, but at a much bigger scale. I want Linux to be on almost every PC and laptop, and that would mean every major OEM supports it.
  
  Maybe the problem is that there shouldn't be a financial interest in order to motivate or enable support.
  
  And the money for that should come from where?
  
  The problem I am alluding to is the way that "financial interests" means somebody reaping the value from others' labor. There is more than enough talent, interest and time available to develop robust solutions to hardware enablement if we stop feeding the machine what it consumes today. There is simply no reason that a manufacturer shouldn't be producing hardware with open specifications to a global market that consumes its product. Additionally there is more than enough revenue that goes to paying people that contribute less than they produce for the hardware purchased by consumers. We fix this by making it illegal to create walled gardens that make us beholden to vendors.
  
  There is simply no reason that a manufacturer shouldn’t be producing hardware with open specifications to a global market that consumes its product.
  Are you aware of Intel scandal in regards to AMD? What do you think Microsoft was/is doing? Also if you criticism is aimed at hardware manufacturers, then this is the wrong topic for it? Linux cannot do anything about it, because it has no financial interest.
  
  I was talking about how the corrupt corporations are literally the reason we can't have nice things. We are on the same side here. I'm just trying to express that "financial interest" is only of interest to capitalists so they can continue to profit from the efforts of common peoples. The point was to shift the discussion from trying to interest someone financially to fostering an environment in which social interest can actually cause movement and development.

188 comments