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?

kuneho,
@kuneho@lemmy.world avatar

I was always in and out with Linux.

My problem was always that something was always a bit off with the apps or environment than I got used to, and most of thr times I just couldn’t adapt. Things like my laptop touchpad worked differently, the mouse moved differently, apps had functions differently or lacking onebthing, others other things.

Also, most DEs was lacking functions (like dbl click on window icon to close), or were buggy. Then KDE4 came out and it was a trainwreck after 3.5 and I lost all my hope for a while.

And, on my mission to kinda solve these resulted always me bricking the system.

Now, to be fair, this was 10 years ago.

But, I know I won’t use Windows 11 for a while now and I kinda bored with Windows 10 so few weeks ago installed Debian on my PC with KDE Plasma. Tho I have nothing against Windows, it served me well in the past… 25 years. But now I’m more focused on dev work and productivity, and Windows 10 became slowly awkward for the different works I had. Most of the times I used WSL so why not just hsve the realdeal at the first place? Also, lots of Pis and some servers I have are also running Linux, so why not have it on my main machine?

It’s nice. Still have some minor annoyance or inconvenience with it, but I don’t care. Honestly, seeing what Linux became in these 10 years made me go ‘wow’.

So, I have hope in Linux in the future. Especially since OS and architectural boulders are rapidly disappearing.

I remember Wine being no more than a POC you can run Notepad or Solitaire on Linux. Now you can almost run any fucking game on a Linux system. This is awesome.

So, I’m testrunning Linux again before I invest a motherload of money into a new PC (I’m using a 2009 era server machine as my desktop atm) and if it’s good, I will continue to use Linux and probably Debian on my new machine and will format my drives and set up a partition table that is Linux-y, and not just mount all my NTFS drives and use them like they are native to the system.

jasondj,

I’m a big fan of retired systems for every day use. A 14 year old server has more function as a space heater and whitenoise generator than a desktop, though.

7th-8th gen Intel retired corporate desktops and laptops from Dell/Lenovo/HP are a dime a dozen on eBay man. Lenovos tend to run Linux very well out of the box. And Linus himself sent his daughter to college with a Dell XPS.

kuneho,
@kuneho@lemmy.world avatar

yeah, most of my machines are around 3rd or 4th gen Intel, some of those are recent buys - one for libreELEC under my TV, one for remote work, one for my mother… unbelievably cheap machines, and with an SSD and 16GB of RAM, they run happily forever. (even with Windows 10)

sergih,

recommend setting up a next cloud server with the old computer, byeto google drive photos etc

kuneho,
@kuneho@lemmy.world avatar

thanks for the tip, but I’m not that cloud storage guy. I have a homelab running, if I need to share files, I just put them there.

Maybe OneDrive is what I used more before, but I can totally live without it.

A_s_h_k_a_n,

@kuneho @pmk
I totally get it! Although I'm a few months a head of you. No more Windows for me. I used to run both using dual boot but after a while I got more and more into linux and learned to use it correctly. Then I realized there is much to control by yourself in a system rather than let windows to do it.
Just don't give up on Linux and try lot's of distros to find the best you need. I recommend Arch Or Debian 11. Debian 12 is still not a debian-standard distro in my experience.

kuneho,
@kuneho@lemmy.world avatar

I was thinking about going the Arch route, I really wanted to build up my system from scratch…

but then I was like “I’m too old for this sh*t”, and I’m not even sure what I really want from my machine, so I was looking through distros… openSUSE was my other candidate, but I used Debian based systems and APT in the past 10 years… and I like the philosophy behind Debian, so installed Bookworm.

maybe, after a while when I know what I need, what I use and how I use them, will build my own Arch installation.

flashgnash,

I like that it’s kind of the wild west, there’s no single way to do anything and you’re sort of on your own with it, which also means you’re free to do whatever you want with it.

Choose what software you do or don’t want, delete important system files if you really want to, break stuff and be allowed to fix it yourself rather than a company telling you what you can and can’t do with your own computer

As long as it stays like that it’s good how it is

More of the few games remaining that don’t run on Linux via proton making the slightest effort to support it would be nice though

broface,

I’d be happy with the destruction of copyright and patent laws.

MayonnaiseArch,
@MayonnaiseArch@beehaw.org avatar

An immutable distro with working gpu passthrough for vms (or whatvere that’s called). That’s the dream

PR_freak,

The future of PCs in general is tied to professionals and gamers, there is no need for a pc anymore in an household who is not anything of the above

Which means that the average PC user will become more and more tech savy, this is the only thing that could raise the Linux market share

On the other hand I don’t see a single chance of linux becoming relevant in personal computing unless a big corporation decides to offer an experience that is/has:

  • A polieshed UI, something eye-pleasing like MacOs
  • Noob friendly in the sense that it offers a 100% TRUE terminal-free experience
  • Reliable across hardware of any kind, the average user doesn’t want to worry about graphic or wifi drivers. Heck the average user doesn’t even know what a driver is
  • Not buggy
  • An easy way to install any software they need, today’s program coverage in various software centers often doesn’t fulfill the needs of the average user
SapphironZA, (edited )

I wish distro’s would combine efforts much more so we have a better desktop experience. Do we really need 15 window managers when we could have 2 or 3 much better ones.

Unify to a single package manager, they are all functionally the same.

Standardize on flatpacks and abandon snaps and appimage

woelkchen,
@woelkchen@lemmy.world avatar

I wish distro’s would combine efforts much more so we have a better desktop experience. Do we really need 15 window managers when we could have 2 or 3 much better ones.

What is it when almost all window managers have moved or are moving to wlroots? KWin and Mutter are exceptions because they predate wlroots.

tar_xf,

I like the option to pick different package managers but it would behoove the community to actually settle on a package format. Making a deb or rpm are very different processes and while containers are nice for server side stuff I wish there was something easier for desktop

lloram239,

Just use Nix. Both Rpm and Deb are evolutionary dead ends and should have been disposed a decade ago.

tar_xf,

Yes, but xkcd.com/927/

lloram239,

Not really a problem with Nix, as it can happily co-exist with other package managers. The problem with Rpm and Deb is that they just dump everything into /usr, thus creating a ton of unresolvable naming conflicts.

flashgnash,

Nix might be what you want. Haven’t tried out the package manager on a non-nixos distro but it can be done

Massive package library, everything installs the same way and I believe it’ll run on any distro

I hear the aur is very good as well but I believe that’s arch only

SapphironZA,

The fact that the processes are so different, is part of the problem. Developers need to spend the same effort 3 or 4 times.

q47tx,
@q47tx@lemmy.world avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    SapphironZA,

    I get that, but in functionally they are so similar from an end user perspective, I would argue their development efforts should be combined.

    Eryn6844,

    I hope the joy and knowledge and freedom our for-bearers had is what we will continue to reap in the future. there will be challenges, but we will prevail.

    glasgitarrewelt,

    I hope selfhosting becomes even more convenient. It already is for tech savy people, but I mean ‘buy a Pi and press a button’-easy. It would take away the power of so many big companies.

    lloram239,

    It’s an old idea, see FreedomBox. That said, I think it’s solving the wrong problem. Plain old self-hosting doesn’t work, it doesn’t scale, is unreliable and requires far more maintenance than is acceptable. It also doesn’t solve the fundamental problem with the Internet: The server has far too much control.

    The only real way forward is local-first distributed data structures. Turn the server into dumb data storage that requires zero setup and can be cloned and synchronized with others automatically to provide redundancy. So far Git, somewhat unintentionally, is by far the biggest successful push into that direction, but still has some fundamental problems (e.g. no DHT to lookup Git repositories or hashes, Git repositories are separate and not part of a global namespace). IPFS also goes in that direction, but I think they are missing the forest for the trees by focusing so much on the global P2P network while completely ignoring the local-first and privacy parts of the problem.

    It’s frustrating. The problem has been known for at least 20 decades, but most of the attempts to fix it go nowhere because they fail to address the core issues and just build more complicated servers instead, which are the problem, not the solution.

    glasgitarrewelt,

    I like the idea of the FreedomBox, thanks for sharing! But I struggle to understand your criticism of home server:

    • what makes a home server/normal PC complicated to maintain, if the software continues to develop in a much more userfriendly direction? In my dream scenario everyone has a server box next to their fuse box. If blue light goes on, please change your HDD, if red light goes on, please change both HDDs, connect your backup-box and press the backup-button. Just like a water filter.
    • wouldn’t it be better to avoid big companies for storing a lot of data, even encrypted? They can burn down, take data as hostage, monitor behaviours. In my dream scenario everyone has their data at home, with parity, backups and automatic software updates as default. They also can burn down, but privatly.

    Can you describe the princible of local-first distributed data structures in a more beginner-friendly way?

    Maybe those questions make me part of the problem you describe and why it wasn’t solved in the last 20 years. Curious to learn more!

    lloram239,

    what makes a home server/normal PC complicated to maintain

    Every bit of new functionality you want needs new software on the server. That software wants to be configured, maintained and updated. You don’t have monitor and keyboard connected when something goes wrong. You have to register and pay for DNS. It’s a whole mountain of work that your average person has zero interest in or knowledge about. And it’s brittle as hell. Your data will be stuck in random proprietary data formats. Backup is difficult. Every time your Internet goes down, your complete online presence disappears.

    You’d be much better of with a server infrastructure that is as dumb as possible, easy to replicate and leave the client to do the actual work.

    wouldn’t it be better to avoid big companies for storing a lot of data, even encrypted?

    No. Big companies do a way better job at storing and managing data than any home user could ever hope for. The issue is that they don’t just host your data, but also want to control it, by making it hard to move data to other companies, only allowing proprietary APIs instead of open protocols, etc. Something seemingly trivial like a service that just hosts your files is surprisingly hard to come by, as everybody adds special features and restrictions on top of just doing the job and open standards for synchronizing large directories don’t exist either.

    Caboose12000,

    I just want it to become more popular and easy to use while remaining free (like to buy, hot take I know) and libre.

    I want it to be something I can endorse to all my friends, even the friends that almost never use computers and barely know what a filesystem is

    my hope is that after this point of it being popular and accessable, FOSS principles will start to gain more traction in spaces like mobile phones and car head units. there will always be proprietary OS’s and software, but in my ideal world FOSS is at least an equal competitor, not just a a niche thing that only super involved computer people get into

    eugenia,
    @eugenia@lemmy.ml avatar

    My favorite idea is Linux or Android-derived, or a completely new, Rust-based AGPL-licensed OS, running on 100% open RISC-V hardware. Same for its phone equivalent. All chips must be open, no secret code in them.

    helenslunch,

    I just want a system that doesn’t require a software engineering degree to operate. That’s all I need.

    liberatedGuy,
    @liberatedGuy@lemmy.ml avatar

    Linux Mint is what you are looking for.

    csolisr,

    I expect to see distros that use Flatpak as its exclusive package manager, even for the bare-metal, in the near future. Also, Linux as a remote desktop on the cloud will probably be attempted at a larger scale, given that Windows 12 is rumored to try that route.

    intrepid,

    I really don’t want Linux to be a remote desktop on the cloud. That’s already possible easily with Linux. But OS as a service is another attempt by companies like MS to pry the control of the system and data away from their customers. Worst of all, we have to pay a monthly subscription even after we buy hardware. To put it simply, it’s rent seeking. Linux on the other hand, is good at making the best of even mediocre or low-end hardware.

    samuelc,
    @samuelc@lemmy.world avatar

    Flatpak are still not designed to run clis so that’s a long way to go at least

    (would love to be proven wring because I’d love to not have to ship deb and rpm for the OSS projects I take care of)

    AdrianTheFrog,
    @AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world avatar

    I couldn’t find a single gui resource monitor on xcfe that I wouldn’t have to build from source.

    Killercat103,
    @Killercat103@infosec.pub avatar

    To be more mainstream granted it isn’t because of a shitty locked down distro incompatible with the others.

    What I love most abou Linux is its freedom. It doesn’t try screwing me over for their own benefit, gives me full control of the system and is broken down into components. Having the underlying system foss for many is great to provide and make it easier to adopt more ethical software for computing.

    jadelord,

    Accessible for everyone.

    If the desktop UX has very good screen readers, keyboard navigation, voice to text etc., I believe its benefits would automatically spill over to all.

    Also it would retain the UI / UX experts who become forced to abandon Linux for macOS which maintains a niche in this.

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