A huge issue in the past was the lack of a good web browser. Firefox really helped. Other annoyances were little things like Flash player. I've used Linux on the desktop as my main OS for at least a decade. Personally I'm really disappointed with the lack of noticeable progression on the desktop. There is a dearth of great desktop applications.
As the article mentions, Thunderbird as an email client is _okay_. Rewind back to the late 90s, and applications like Winamp were pretty amazing, it just needed a better user interface. There are loads of music applications on Linux, but I end up using CLI mplayer and even Foobar2k under Wine, because of some of the other shortcomings.
Even the core of Linux desktop applications like Nautilus feel like they are regressing. When a file manager in my mind should be at the heart of an OS. Mounts and copying should be very intuitive.
Much functionality exists in CLI apps, but is stripped out or lacking in desktop applications. Having something like Rsync in your file manager could be great. And better integration with something like Git. But that's after the core utility of the application is polished to the max.
It's the final 10%, and I appreciate how difficult that is, with moving targets weird Window tool-kits and other abstractions and APIs, but it's that polish that makes it.
Having said that Windows always feels like a fragmented Frankenstein's monster with UI inconsistencies not only across core applications but also with third party ones.
While some of the desktop paradigms have worn well, I don't see much radical experimentation on the desktop, and Linux could provide exactly the platform to try things out.
I remember when the only available web browser was the "Mozilla suite", which was extremely slow and basically unusable. You could not play MP3 files out of the box due to patent issues. Most graphic cards only worked in VESA mode, so we had no 3D acceleration of any kind. But the worst thing was the lack of fonts. Fonts were truly abysmal.
So I disagree that there has been no progression on the desktop front. The progression has been extraordinary. It's true that in some areas things have stalled a little or even gone backwards as of lately, mostly due to the introduction of Gnome 3 in my opinion, but all in all there's no contest between what we have now and what we had 15 years ago.
I remember when the only available web browser was the "Mozilla suite", which was extremely slow and basically unusable.
In this period, Netscape 4.x still worked pretty well and was available on Linux. Opera was also available for Linux at that time. So, it's definitely not true that the Mozilla Suite (which was indeed horrible) was the only available browser.
You could not play MP3 files out of the box due to patent issues.
I remember mpg123, xmms, etc. being available in many distributions. It was primarily Red Hat who didn't distribute MP3 support out of the box. IIRC free decoders were exempt from the decoder licensing fees.
Most graphic cards only worked in VESA mode, so we had no 3D acceleration of any kind.
Around 2000 there were not that many 3D chipsets. 3DFX was still ruling the world and there was 3D support for Linux per Glide. Many 2D accelerators did have support (e.g. Tseng Labs ET series, Matrox chipsets, ATI chipsets, most S3 chipsets). I had a 3DFX Voodoo 3 and was playing accelerated OpenGL games on Linux. I remember tinkering with NetBSD and having to go back to software rendering, which was frustrating.
But the worst thing was the lack of fonts. Fonts were truly abysmal.
Erm, Microsoft's 'Core fonts for the Web' were distributed since 1996. There has been a Sourceforge project (msttcorefont) distributing the fonts since Microsoft took them offline. Many distributions had an installer or package to get these Microsoft fonts. Then you had all the usual Windows fonts.
> Many distributions had an installer or package to get these Microsoft fonts. Then you had all the usual Windows fonts.
I think this shows the main problem with users' perception of Linux at the time. Most of the people who tried Linux expected things like that to work out of the box, and when they got the bad defaults instead they proclaimed Linux "unusable". They most likely never knew that MS Fonts package existed. I think I was using Linux for over a year before I discovered it.
I think I spent months fiddling with Linux before I got it to great looking, productive, usable OS which was in some regards even better than Windows XP at the time. For example, CD burning on Windows required 3rd party software which took over the CPU and your machine was basically unusable while it was doing that. K3B on Linux was so much better.
I used KDE in the beginning, but then I switched to IceWM, and spent days configuring it until I got it to run really fast, with USB drive icons showing up and stuff like that. And you got free stuff like CPU/hard drive/network monitors in the taskbar which Windows doesn't have to this day.
>And you got free stuff like CPU/hard drive/network monitors in the taskbar which Windows doesn't have to this day.
Yeah Linux attracts some really strange people - why, why, why do you need these monitors? Why do you need conky with your hostname? With your IP? With your kernel version?
Your workstation is not another random server you administrate, so hostname showing is absolutely not required (unless when you sit down in front of a computer you are high as hell and cannot tell it's your computer, or just too stupid to tell which computer it is)...
There are times I need to check CPU usage, but simple eye candy for 12 year olds who watched too much Hacker movies widgets won't help anyways...
It really pisses me off when I double click to run a program and there's no indication that it's starting up. Seeing CPU spike confirms that it's working. If I had a penny for every time I started a program twice on Windows...
Similar problem when I start some operation in some CPU/HDD intensive program. If the program itself has no progress bar or similar indication I have no clue if it started doing it, or maybe I misclicked.
Similar problem when a browser or another network program seems stuck on a download and I have no clue whether it's the network problem or the program itself is the culprit.
And there are some programs that eat RAM like crazy and on Windows you have no clue when it starts swapping to disk. With monitors you can clearly see that 1. you ran out of RAM and 2. you disk I/O is the cause why the system is slowing down.
I really don't care about hostname or kernel version though. But, I absolutely want to know what's happening in order to use my computer efficiently.
So, you are either using your system inefficiently or you have some beast of a machine with infinite RAM, CPU power and super fast disks.
Not infinite, of course, but with enough. Last time I checked RAM usage was, let me think, 5 years ago?
So those monitors are required if you have 2GB RAM, no SSD and use poorly designed software - seems about right for a linux user, which cannot afford and OS.
I have 16GB of RAM and I need to check usage 2-3 times per week because I run a lot of resource hungry apps. Computers can be used for other stuff, not just running a web browser.
CPU monitor is needed to see if some app is running or not. It's killing me not having that on Windows on a daily basic. For example, starting up Steam takes 5-10 seconds before you get any visual clue that your double-click on the Steam icon was acknowledged. On Linux and Mac I get feedback right away because I can see the CPU and I/O spike.
My recollection is very different. Netscape 4.7 seemed to be falling apart all the time at the point when Mozilla reached 0.9.x and started to be usable which made me very happy to promptly switch to it. I don't remember when Mozilla got tabs but possibly they were already in at that point. Of course things got even better once Phoenix/Firebird later to be known as Firefox got started.
The 4.x line of Netscape was really, really bad, on every platforms, not just Linux. I distinctly remember a small period of time, between the time when Netscape 4 came out and the time when I learned about Opera being available on Linux, when I was routinely using lynx, non-ironically, locally. It crashed all the time and had all sorts of weird bugs.
I'm impressed with better fonts. Only my hardware still lacks, my display is 1280x800 pixels. And however I seem to muck about with settings it never feels entirely comfortable. Aliased bitmap fonts in a terminal are probably easier on my eyes. Web sites are quite horrid to look at. Which seems counter intuitive. I don't really miss my CRT and low display resolutions, but I think for a 12 inch monitor more resolution helps, especially with anti-aliasing. But this stuff is superficial compared with actual functionality.
I think the articles comments about poor calendar and contact applications really highlight missing functionality. Outlook did well I think because of the calendar integration. Even the most architecturally stunning systems aren't worth much without a great application eco-system. That's no slant on Linux.
I remember being overjoyed that xmms would run and take Winamp skins.
I struggled with Flash on Linux for years.
I too am disappointed by the lack of desktop applications. The advent of the microcomputer has meant that we shouldn't need to connect to a server the other side of the world to do tasks - we can do 99% of them locally (unless collaboration is involved).
Whilst I agree that Windows has 20+ years of history to maintain (and it does this very well) and suffers from inconsistencies (particularly apparent in Windows 10 as they push out apps like System Settings which doesn't adhere to UI standards, I can't double-click the icon top-left to close a window like since 1990 because it doesn't exist...), I would prefer Linux did not experiment with desktop paradigms - look at the Unity and GNOME3 weirdness. It seems apparent that the normal "windows and taskbar" system has worked well for decades. You can take a Mac from the early 90s and find your way around it. Experimentation of this paradigm would be for experimentation's sake.
I have road driven Gnome 3, and in the most part it buys me nothing. Unity gives me the creeps. So I run a normal windows and taskbar desktop (bit like win 95), but I must say it's still pretty sucky. Partly because of inconsistencies across the platform.
Applications end up doing their own file management for example.
There are alternative innovative ways to access menus and trigger actions. Context tasks etc. But people are stuck in the past it's like they can't imagine anything different.
Linux also has inconsistencies between windowing tool-kits.
Mobile gets a little more attention these days. But that seems to also be stuck in a rut.
I meant experimental forks. Ubuntu foisting unity upon people was pretty damaging. Again if only they'd concentrated on the last 10%. Instead of creating a mess.
With age some tasks have become harder for me. I used to be quite a whizz at dragging and dropping, and fine pointer precision. Now I'm a bit of a fat handed twat, and my eyes aren't that great. I really do need a 10ft display with simple controls.
A lot of this is stuff is usability and ergonomics 101.
I ended up just going Blackbox or WindowMaker! (And yes, there are likely some who will look with disdain on my choice as if it prevents me from having valid opinions on the other DEs or UIs. I use OSX at home mostly, and Windows at work).
Experimental forks would be a safer way to go. I suppose if they don't have massive development teams/effort, it would be difficult to do. It would satisfy everyone who wants to go and invent the future and do exciting new things (which will likely revert to how they should be when real use of them occurs). I imagine the "let's maintain the existing" team would shrink.
Do you use a mouse or touchpad? As resolutions increase, we have to be more precise for UI or just scale everything 200% (like everyone does on 4K screens or Microsoft Surface Pro 4) thereby defeating having a high resolution in the first place......
My current window manager is pretty basic. But that's because I haven't been arsed to script up something, that would help me with window tasks. I tried double monitor for a while, but the main OSs sucked with the way they dealt with more than one. I gave up in the end, so just use a couple of workspaces and window cycle mainly. Main drive is mostly a laptop. Pointer (nub) is too stiff, touchpad is okay - nothing fancy.
As the article mentions, Thunderbird as an email client is _okay_. Rewind back to the late 90s, and applications like Winamp were pretty amazing, it just needed a better user interface. There are loads of music applications on Linux, but I end up using CLI mplayer and even Foobar2k under Wine, because of some of the other shortcomings.
Even the core of Linux desktop applications like Nautilus feel like they are regressing. When a file manager in my mind should be at the heart of an OS. Mounts and copying should be very intuitive.
Much functionality exists in CLI apps, but is stripped out or lacking in desktop applications. Having something like Rsync in your file manager could be great. And better integration with something like Git. But that's after the core utility of the application is polished to the max.
It's the final 10%, and I appreciate how difficult that is, with moving targets weird Window tool-kits and other abstractions and APIs, but it's that polish that makes it.
Having said that Windows always feels like a fragmented Frankenstein's monster with UI inconsistencies not only across core applications but also with third party ones.
While some of the desktop paradigms have worn well, I don't see much radical experimentation on the desktop, and Linux could provide exactly the platform to try things out.