GNU/Linux: the desktop that never was
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About 6 years ago, I wrote an article about why I felt that installing software in GNU/Linux was broken. It pains me to say that the situation is, sadly, exactly the same:GNU/Linux never made it to personal computers, really, and at this point it looks like it never will. If GNU/Linux had managed to establish itself in the desktop PC market, today we would live in a world where:
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1) User software (UI driven, not system software) is available in distribution-agnostic packages
2) User software packages are fully self contained, multi-architecture and installation-less; ideally, copying the package to another machine is all it's needed to "install" it 3) Printer makers always provide a functioning driver, that can always be installed regardless of the distribution 4) Latest hardware is always supported, or there is a clear, centralised path to check if or when a piece of hardware will be supported 5) A sizeable chunk of PC sales have GNU/Linux preinstalled. Since user software is distribution agnostic, it doesn't actually matter which distro is used ...and so on. You get the gist. No, we don't live in that world. While this would have been theoretically possible, in practice none of this actually happened. Full Story |
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