Desktop Linux [forever forthcoming...]

[William Muriithi]

On 11 September 2012 11:08, Christopher Browne <cbbrowne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> I'm not sure how many watched the recent back-and-forth between
> Torvalds and Icarza
> <http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2012/Aug-29.html>,
> <https://plus.google.com/115250422803614415116/posts/hMT5kW8LKJk>
>
> Michael Meeks has some interesting commentary on the matter that takes
> a different enough take to avoid being a "he said, she said", and
> which points at how systems like BeOS, NeXT, OS/2, MeeGo Netbook
> failed.

Yea, had seem it a while back. A little dull because I think I have
seen too many of those Linux desktop stories. I personally think
everything is fine, everybody can use whatever desktop they need.
Seriously, its a matter of what you have invested on and a lot of
people have invested a lot on Windows skills and they are not going to
change their desktop even if Linux desktop can cook their coffee. That
and Dell/HP etc pre-installing Windows make it near impossible this
will ever change

Thing that I found odd is, Icarza seem to think Linux desktop failed
because of luck of binary drivers.  This guy above average developer
and I can only dream of ever being that good a developer, but on this
observation, he fails flat on his face.   Seriously, how can he say
drivers are the problem despite having been in the middle of this
industry this long? Linus on the other hand come out as very broad
mind and usually have great business analysis.

Anyway, I opinion, I think a kernel level API would have been a bad
idea. Most vendors wouldn't have cared about releasing Linux specific
drivers or open source drivers. So, a pig part of the Kernel would
have remained available binary only for longer.  Heck, thats what the
windows world currently look like and its not ideal. You install OS,
then go around hunting for drivers.

Anyway, don't matter, we have the current culture and everybody should
look forward.  Its not going to change anyway, as most kernel
developers love the current situation

William
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