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

Sun Apr 12 13:39:12 MDT 2020

I used to work with Rob closely and miss his random information dumps.

Walter

On Sun, Apr 12, 2020 at 9:12 AM Jeffrey S. Haemer <jeffrey.haemer at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Rob,
>
> This email--content + links--might be the singly most generally useful
> email I've ever seen. Mazl tov and thanks.
>
> On Sun, Apr 12, 2020 at 8:36 AM Rob Nagler <nagler at bivio.biz> wrote:
>
>> 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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>
>
>
> --
> Jeffrey Haemer <jeffrey.haemer at gmail.com>
> 720-837-8908 [cell], @goyishekop [twitter]
> *פרייהייט? דאס איז יאַנג דינען וואָרט!*
> _______________________________________________
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