While I agree with you fundamentally, this is also a very subjective matter. I've used Linux on the desktop primarily since 1996, and "back in the day" it was rock solid. Netscape 3 for Linux rocked! The reality is, I think, that desktop technology in general has increased at break-neck speed, due no doubt to a great extent to the Internet, and Linux desktop developers have had trouble keeping up in their spare time. Meanwhile, well funded and profitable companies like Microsoft have kept the interface on the top of their usability and stability to-do lists, and I will even admit that MS has come out with, gasp, a reasonable stable desktop OS.To believe that any "out of the box" install of any current major distro setup as a desktop (KDE or Gnome) is more stable than an equivalent install of XP or 2000 on the same hardware is plain NUTS!
Subjective again, I think. Agreed that, left alone, eventually under normal usage a Linux desktop application will tend to stop working. However, I would argue the same with a Windows application or Windows itself. Under Linux, the solution typically sucks, you have to delete all your settings and preferences, and let the application re-create everything and it will work well again for a time. Under Windows, it sucks workse; sometimes deleting the settings works, sometimes you have to re-install the app, sometimes the OS. Once again though, I will have to admit that with Windows XP, the number of applications that have simply "broken" on me has gone down dramatically.I've never worked with an OS where so many apps crash and burn on a regular basis! Mozilla just stopped loading, don't ask why, it's Linux! Evolution crashing and burning...can't be, it's Linux.
Outlook broke on me 2 days ago in Windows ;-)Want to start doing all kinds of multimedia, better start reading and learning patience.
I can't remember that last time any major app broke on me in Windows.
I believe the end result is a perception of a faster system with Windows. I also believe that's mainly due to the optimization of Windows video drivers (not the GUI) in general.Myth #2 - Speed - Plain fact is, Windows is faster than KDE or Gnome on equivalent hardware...no way around it and there is no TWEAKING that is going to change that! Get a $200 Celeron 800 with 128 megs of ram and some 8 meg video card running Windows 2000 and it will be so much more faster than any current Linux "desktop" distro on the same hardware that it's not even a joke.
This is the part that convinced me to reply, I don't believe you can blame X for the shortcommings of the Linux desktop. The X standard and the core X code is very fast and very good, even if some number of hardware drivers within XFree86 are not so fast or stable. A portable, network-able graphics system as fast as X is an extremely elegent thing, and given adequately fast hardware drivers and a well developed desktop, the experience is extremely good. For instance, using commercial CDE with a commercial X server under Linux is strikingly responsive. As is using CDE under Slowlaris. And if there's any interface you could call big, fat, old, and crusty, it's Motif/CDE. While I'm inclined to agree that the whole Linux desktop experience isn't as snappy and overall 'fluid' as, say, Windows, I cannot see blaming it on X. That having been said....The great failing of Linux as a desktop distro (IMNSHO) is of course X. X was a bad kludge to start with, but it worked sort of to allow remote gui interaction with a host system. it's not getting any better with age.
There are (or at least were). The Berlin Project comes to mind, but there have been others. MacOS X "kinda" counts, in that they replaced the native UNIX display system (X) with their own (Quartz / Display PostScript).For Linux to really take on the desktop space I believe someone(s) going to have to write a NEW graphic layer subsystem for Linux. But there doesn't seem to even be a hint of that (that I'm aware of) going on. If so, please let me know.
I think the more exposure something gets, the more "bad coders" you're going to get to program for it. I would definitely agree, and I think Eric Raymond would agree, that the more popular open-source applications (which are almost exclusive to UNIX-esque systems at this point) do benefit from the combined eyes of many good programmers, rather than a single good programmer selling shareware for Windows.This leads to a sub myth. People who write windows code suck at it, esp. MS programmers.
This seems a *tad* extreme :-DTo my old eyes the graphic subsystem of Windows is a work of art compared to X I really HATE X - it truly sucks in every way imaginable!
The good news is, BeOS is picking up steam again! :-) Check out the OpenBeOS project (www.openbeos.org). Talk about a responsive, easy-to-use GUI... I'm curious as to how the rekindling of BeOS in the Open Source community, an almost exclusively desktop system, will affect this whole situation 2 years from now. BeOS has never been aimed at the server, really, and Linux is yet rather new to the desktop. They're both POSIX compliant UNIX-like OS's. Just a random thought.
Disclaimer, I just ate dinner and the beverages are still flowing -- I hope I made sense!
-Fred
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