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

[Rob Nagler]

I think there have been a few shifts that have led to the growth and demise
of Unix on the desktop. TL;DR Vagrant, Docker, and (for non-devs) SPAs have
made the desktop OS irrelevant.

I've used Desktop Linux for some time but for a decade or so, I use a Mac.
In the 80s and 90s I worked in a company where everybody used vi, LaTex,
etc. on Suns. It was a lot of work, and eventually, someone got a Mac and
an expensive printer for marketing, which really was useful, but it wasn't
a watershed. Then I worked on Windows for a while at a couple different
companies, and when I started Bivio, I used Linux and so did everybody
else. It was useful to develop and our deployment platform -- and one time,
my workstation was the deployment platform!

I owned my first Mac in 2005 or so. It is Unix, and I had bash, and could
install all GNU stuff, plus I had Photoshop, Word, etc. It was and is a
really great combination. So the first major shift was when Mach was used
at NeXT. It obviously took the reverse merger into Apple to make it what it
is today, but I know many some people (non-techies) who loved their NeXT
boxes.

Around 2013 I started playing with Vagrant. That was the dawning of the
next big shift: people using VMs for Linux development. Vagrant made it
possible to use VirtualBox headless, easily. I do all my development in
VMs, and so does everybody else. Very rarely do I need to use X apps, but
it works fine when I do.

Around 2013 I also started playing with Docker, which was a big shift for
devops (about when the term was invented, I think). Docker, like Vagrant,
enabled me to test our deployments (almost exactly) on my Mac. I do a lot
of syadmin, and I can run multiple VMs on my Mac which are running Docker,
and it all runs seamlessly. (Caveat: sometimes the VMs freeze so I mostly
do devops development on servers in the same way. I rarely develop on
native on Linux.)

Some time in the 2000s, people started building single-page web apps (SPA).
A notable SPA was IPython, developed right here at CU and released in 2001.
Over time, websites have become the desktop, and we finally have
X-terminals in the form of Chromebooks. I support several types of desktops
at home and the office, and all they are is SPA devices. Sometimes they are
actual Chromebooks, others are Windows, and some are Macs.

At work, many of the scientists spend their days in JupyterLab. They love
it. It saves them a lot of time to have everything installed already and if
it is not, to be able to compile in a Linux shell that runs on their Macs
(mostly).

At home, the only time I run into issues is if someone tries to install
something on Windows. Printer and scanner software, in particular, are
still broken on Windows. It amazes me. Sometimes stuff they are broken on
Macs, too. If they just stay in SPAs, everything works great, except for
the quality of the software itself, which is usually pretty bad, in
general, but that's software for you.

Aside. My favorite new discovery is onetimesecret.com. Brilliant. It's been
around a long time, but someone just introduced it to me.

Pandemic Aside. Here's a curious discovery:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/first-in-line/opiohdgifapfffniplgmlbfdgccmhffc?h1=en
I tried it yesterday, and it didn't work, but it is an example of something
that builds on the SPA ecosystem, which works on any OS.

The fact that almost every large SPA (GitHub, GMail, Dropbox, Slack, etc.)
has an app store is telling. Tools like ifttt.com let ordinary folks do
what programmers would have had to do but in any browser. Desktop apps are
still around, but they are becoming less important. I can get (almost)
everything I need via one SPA or another or the occasional "tiny app". (iStats
Menus <https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/> and Photo Crop Pro
<http://cfxsoftware.com/products/photo-crop-pro/> are good examples of tiny
apps I use.)

Davide: pretty does matter, but I don't think that's the reason people use
software. Rather there is some value-add that isn't in other apps. I don't
know why people started using Slack over IRC or IM (Skype, AIM, etc.), but
they did, and it now is a big. I know that the scientists at work like the
ability to embed rich media and text in their conversations. I don't use
Slack, and prefer Skype or Hangouts for chat, but these tools also allow me
to use rich media easily than IRC and IM.

Steve: It's great you are a Linux advocate Thank you.

My $.02.

Rob
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