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The future of Linux


I'm not proposing anything here, I'm curious what you all think of the future.

What is your vision for what you want Linux to be?

I often read about wanting a smooth desktop experience like on MacOS, or having all the hardware and applications supported like Windows, or the convenience of Google products (mail, cloud storage, docs), etc.

A few years ago people were talking about convergence of phone/desktop, i.e. you plug your phone into a big screen and keyboard and it's now your desktop computer. That's one vision. ChromeOS has its "everything is in the cloud" vision. Stallman has his vision where no matter what it is, the most important part is that it's free software.

If you could decide the future of personal computing, what would it be?

in reply to pmk

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to pmk

I hope to see Linux brought to the Web 2.0 era with proper use of Git forges. As it is, most people won't bother to go through the existing processes unless they're paid to do it. Raising the barrier to entry in order to discourage low quality submissions is a poor excuse. The existing system makes it difficult to get any changes approved or reviewed with a serious eye, regardless of their quality.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to pmk

I want it to be accessible enough that people can realistically use it as a transition from mobile to PC
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to pmk

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to pmk

Steam Deck gets more popular.

Steam console released with improved multi user experience and VR.

PlayStation sales drop in growth.

Steam OS released, PCs can use it with generic kernels.

Gaming PC manufacturers offer steam OS as a preinstalled.

PC manufacturers start to offer popular distros preinstalled.

System 76 puts their in house laptops into Best Buy shelves.

Adobe and Office no longer stuck on Windows and are distributed as wasm applications.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to pmk

I think it's already a great system, its philosophical foundation of being built around user freedom is fantastic. It just has a few things that are definitely still problems for desktop users. Namely,
- Sensible defaults
- Proprietary driver management
- Distros needing to distribute software in their repos instead of authors doing it themselves
- Too many competing application formats, each with glaring issues
- Inconsistent theming with GTK vs QT (mostly app developers' faults tho)
- Both popular display servers have huge issues
- Lack of manufacturer support for hardware (this will come with time if Linux continues to become more popular)
- Incompatibility with existing standards, especially Microsoft products
- Lacking proper professional applications for things like video editing that actually work consistently
- Gaming anti-cheat compatibility
- Generally being easy to break the whole system on accident
- Power consumption on mobile devices

I guess that's a lot, but it's still a great system ha.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

don't like this

in reply to pmk

Nothing special. Normal adoption of new standards, protocols and features and some new, easier ways to develops desktop apps for it.

For example let's say we want to add moving windows between phone and a desktop by swiping. It would be some new protocol and would be handled by DE on Linux and Android. Someone would develop the standard and different Linux app would add support for it. Exactly the same way we have bluetooth now.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to pmk

I wish distro's would combine efforts much more so we have a better desktop experience. Do we really need 15 window managers when we could have 2 or 3 much better ones.

Unify to a single package manager, they are all functionally the same.

Standardize on flatpacks and abandon snaps and appimage

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

don't like this

in reply to SapphironZA

I like the option to pick different package managers but it would behoove the community to actually settle on a package format. Making a deb or rpm are very different processes and while containers are nice for server side stuff I wish there was something easier for desktop
This entry was edited (1 year ago)