Linux Desktop: When is our Year?

Presented at SCALE 13x in Los Angeles, CA on February 21, 2015

We will start with some information about the current Desktop market, the status of the Linux Desktop and its different environments. First, we will list some problems I found and discuss each of them, one-by-one, while showing points where they are related to eachother. These problems vary in nature from community problems to diversity problems while including the problem of the enterprise overriding the needs of the desktop. While some of these problems are not that important, when there are multiples of them, they are problems. The community must work together to solve these problems and make sure that the people who aren't tech-savvy can use a Linux distribution and we must ensure that they enjoy it.

Transcript

1. When is our year?
   An overview of the Linux Desktop
   Presented by:
   Levente Kurusa
   Embedded Software Engineer
   JW Technologies, AG.
   SCALE 13x :: February 21, 2015
   Licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0
   

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5. Who am I?
   # 18 year old computer hacker
   # 2014 summer intern at Red Hat
   # Fedora Ambassador
   # Kernel engineer
   ... actually anything low-level!
   # AOSP developer
   

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6. Goals
   # Share my experiences as a Fedora
   Ambassador
   # Let people know why I think the
   Linux Desktop is broken
   

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7. What is the “Linux Desktop”?
   # The kernel?
   # The community?
   # Do we really mean the “Desktop” as
   in PCs and laptops?
   

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8. Statistics regarding the Desktop
   

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9. Desktop market share
   56.26% Windows 7
   18.26% Windows XP (still?)
   13.52% Windows 8
   05.26% Mac OS X
   01.34% Linux
   (data from www.netmarketshare.com)
   

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10. Distribution share
    Linux Mint
    Ubuntu
    Debian
    OpenSUSE
    Fedora
    Source: www.distrowatch.com
    

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11. Mobile market share
    84.04% Android
    11.07% iOS
    02.09% Windows Phone
    02.80% Others
    Source: www.idc.com
    

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12. What can we learn from this?
    

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13. We are doing something
    wrong on the Desktop!
    

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14. Desktop environments
    

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16. They are all different
    ... and that's good
    ... or bad?
    

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17. Configuration
    # Different configuration applications
    # Different settings!
    # (sometimes) they don't share them
    

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18. Distributions
    

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19. Distro problems
    # “yum install” on Ubuntu?
    # -dev on Fedora?
    # How do I set up my Printers?
    

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20. Distro problems
    “ The efforts to standardize on a kernel and
    a set of core libraries were undermined by
    the Distro of the Day that held the position
    of power. “
    - Miguel de Icaza
    

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22. VGA
    # We miss the “It just works” moment
    # The kernel isn't helping us either
    

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24. Backwards compatibility
    # Win32k
    ----> Win98 apps still run on Win8!
    -------------> 18 years!
    # GTK and Qt aren't BWC
    

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25. Rate of change
    # Windows updates its major version
    every 2-3 years (sometimes more)
    => No big changes in that time
    # Linux distros release more frequently
    => Possible big changes!
    

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26. But we had good things happen to
    us!
    

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27. Gaming side
    # SteamOS
    # CryTek Engine
    # Unreal Engine 4.1
    

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28. Hardware
    # nvidia is now compatible with
    bumblebee!
    # Many, many improvements to GPU
    drivers: performance, stability, etc.
    

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29. So, when is our year?
    

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30. Not soon.
    

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31. Questions?
    Licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0
    Levente Kurusa
    levex@linux.com // levex@fedoraproject.org
    @ilevex
    +LeventeKurusa
    http://ilevex.eu/
    SCALE 13x :: February 21, 2015 // Los Angeles, CA
    

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32. Want more?
    A huge list of problems: :-)
    http://tinyurl.com/LinuxProblems2015
    

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