| The Linux desktop is dead. Face it. Accept it. How do I know this? Go to a developers' or tech conference, and what is the prevailing OS? 9/10 times these days, it's MacOS. As much as Apple may be control freaks, they did desktop UNIX right and developers have flocked to them. Meanwhile, the Linux desktop community is still having the same debates, the same difficulties it had back in the mid-90's. Dependency issues. Lack of compelling use case software; and that which does exist is versions behind current. Fragmentation. The only areas in which the Linux desktop has moved forward is UI and user-oriented management, and Ubuntu deserves much of the credit for the latter. Add to this the gradual movement away from the desktop paradigm to mobile. The desktop paradigm will still be around for several years (especially for creators--developers, media folks, etc), but the end-user is moving more and more towards smartphones and tablets for consumption. Extend those with external keyboards and monitors (think docks) for light
creation work (documents, spreadsheets, etc), and you've the future. Nope. The Linux desktop is dead. |
This is really premature because there are major flaws with the other options. Apple is a closed-down walled garden (and it's expensive), for example.
The Linux ecosystem is extremely diverse, so maybe somebody will come up with something that can compete well with these other flawed models.
For example, maybe Ingo Molnar's post will inspire people to take things in new directions.
The desktop paradigm will still be around for several years
That's a ridiculous understatement. You can't do serious work on smartphones and tablets and that's not going to change until we're going around plugging them into projectors and keyboards, at which point they're just serving as desktops anyway.