[lug] Why use a Linux desktop? Was: Re: (Virtual)

[Davide Del Vento]

I liked reading your thoughts on this and I agree. At work I "gave up" and
switched to a company-provided Mac (I could have "pushed" and have a
company-provided empty slate to fill with distro of my choice). I regretted
for exactly the reason Steve mentioned: I am not in control.

However there is one thing that appeals the regular users which does so
less to many of us, which Steve only marginally mentioned: pretty. For
reason beyond my understanding, people are overly concerned with things
being pretty BEFORE they are with functional. I was shocked to learn this
for the first time when I bought my house (my first): the previous owner
had made a series of improvements to make it look "pretty" that were quite
dysfunctional if not almost unsafe (e.g. with plumbing and electricity).
Well, I though, maybe the guy just wanted a quick fix to hide the problems
from the buyer... But when I hired contractors to fix the issues (and I
stress the plural: SEVERAL, DIFFERENT contractors, from all walk of life
and for different skills), they all suggested PRETTY before sturdy,
reliable, long lived, not needing maintenance. I was totally shocked by
this finding.

Back to computing, I always struggle to find what I need for which I think
an app on the phone could be the solution. Fair enough, Android development
ain't awk scripting. Yet, having extensively used java in another life (20
years ago....) I embarked into writing by myself the two things which I
wanted the most. The first was effectively more time consuming than I had
time, so I gave up. The second, I am almost done to the point where I could
release it publicly, so I am mulling if I should do that. Besides mulling
I've spent a bit of time researching what others say in this regard and
again, to my shocking find most developers report spending 80+% of time,
money, developing efforts on LOOK alone. Let me say it another way, it
seems to be that no much more than 15% of the success of an app depend on
its functionality.

On Sat, Apr 11, 2020 at 10:25 PM D. Stimits <stimits at comcast.net> wrote:

>
> On April 11, 2020 at 9:46 PM Maxwell Spangler <lists at maxwellspangler.com>
> wrote:
>
> ..
> 1. I've seen a large exodus of Linux advocate-users away from Linux
> desktops in favor of Mac (and perhaps some Windows?).
>
> 2. I don't see the Linux desktop market share as growing significantly. *It
> has no killer app on the desktop*.
>
> ...
>
> Just a thought on this. As Vulkan comes out and matures applications
> previously written only for Windows or Mac or Linux/X11 will start having
> some compatibility. Many commercial products won't care about Linux even
> then, but some games might. To some minor extent any transition from OpenGL
> or DirectX (or whatever Mac has) will probably lead to more "killer app"
> (for some niche) progress under Linux.
>
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