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Has the Desktop Linux Bubble Burst?

osnews.com — In 2002, both KDE and GNOME released their last major revisions. For the Linux desktop, therefore, 2002 was an important year. Since then, we have continiously been fed point releases which added bits of functionaility and speed improvements, but no major revision has yet seen the light of day. What's going on?

Who dugg this? Made popular Dec 21, 2006

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  • sirhomer, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14Not true, this reads like a major FUD piece. How much does Microsoft pay this guy?
  • schestowitz, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14Wasn't Thom the same guy who recently praised Vista (AKA XP Service Pack 3 beta)? It was. I'm sorry, but not only do I disagree with the essay, but I also cannot take the author seriously. OSNews had some Linux bashing artilces recently (including something along the lines of "Linux is dead"), so the quality is iffy. I read that site regularly BTW.
  • Ssullivan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Just because the other OS's increment their version numbers more often doesn't mean that they've conquered the market with improvements. For instance look at the Linux kernel which is only at version 2.6...If there was a marketing department for the Linux kernel they could easily be at version 10+

    My point is that incremented version numbers != improvements
  • ZaNkY, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11The way I look at it is: It's the quiet before the storm. There are some good things coming, just be patient ;)

    How's it going Thom? It's been a little while since I've actively commented on OSNews. Great to see ya Digging :)
  • SpitFire101, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8erm beryl?
  • spindle, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Nah. Not so much. Gnome 2 and GTK2 have recieved plenty of new features since they have been originally released. The main reason why you haven't seen a major bump in the release number is that the first number in the version number is generally reserved for major changes in the ABI which make old versions incompatible with newer versions. For example, if you want to use a program that is written in GTK1, you have to install the GTK1 library because it won't work with the GTK2 library. GTK2 is still called GTK2 because if I have a program I installed on my computer that was originally written for GTK 2.0, and I currently have GTK 2.14 installed, the program will still work. It just won't take advantage of some of the new features GTK2 has added along the way.

    I remember how annoying it was having to wait for many of my favorite GTK1 programs to be rewritten to take advantage of the new GTK2. Some of them were never rewritten at all (xmms comes to mind, though bmp and others eventually came along). The developers of GNOME, GTK (and perhaps KDE too. I don't follow KDE too closely.) know this, and they won't make major changes to the ABI unless they absolutely have to, and this is a good thing.

    GNOME 2 was pretty much a rewrite of GNOME 1 with the GTK2 library. It also marked a major change in the direction of the desktop environment itself. It started to focus more on ease of use, usability, and incorporating only the most popular features instead of just incorporating them all. I bet if you installed GNOME 2.0 and GTK 2.0, you'd be amazed at how much they both suck compared to current versions of GNOME and GTK.
  • commandar!, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4By this logic:

    The last major MacOS release was OS X in 2001. Since then, we have continiously been fed point releases which added bits of functionaility and speed improvements, but no major revision has yet seen the light of day.

    Seriously, I'm not as familiar with KDE, but Gnome 2.16 has evolved quite a bit from the original Gnome 2.0 release, even if they are 'only' point releases.
  • jenkins86, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9Bury this ***** as spam. Thom Holwerda is an editor at OS News.

    Thanks.
  • Smegzor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_of_virus

    Guess again.
  • sigmaman2, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4One blog entry != decline.

    However, you have just proven that one digg entry == ignorance.
  • psylence, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Wow. What's going on is a fundamental lack of understanding. MS and Apple release every couple years. Linux distributions often release every few months.

    What the hell to you expect? Compare Slackware from 1999 (~Win2k era) to Ubuntu Fiesty (~WinVista era) in a couple months. You'll see your change.

    And if you don't like it, don't use it. We'll be just fine!
  • eelco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2ToPaZ is nothing but a set of ideas. I doubt if anyone will start working at Gnome 3.0 before 2009. There's no reason really, though Vista might shake things up a bit.
  • Ademan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Scourge: actually the problem is more that so many apps are written for OSS while ALSA is kind of the accepted standard at the moment. But agreed, sound on linux is fine (generally speaking) from an end user's point of view, but from a programmer's perspective it's crap, alsa, oss, esd, and so on and so forth, of course not all of those things are the same, esd is a mixing daemon, alsa is an API/other stuff, but they all work together or rather, against each other.
  • PostedOval, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I disagree: As long as Linux distros continue to be as accessible, easy to install and use... AND AS FREE as Ubuntu, the desktop penetration may actually GROW. Now in my workplace, most developers are dual booting between Ubuntu and Windows or Mac for the first time ever. That can't be a good sign for Vista.
  • daftman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Mark as lame.
    Ask yourself this question: How long did it take M$ to innovate from XP to Vista Aero? How long did it take the Linux community to reply with something like Beryl, Xgl, Compiz, etc?
    Do Osnews.com editors rely on digg to get their story popular these days?
  • sirhomer, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Look up KDE 4 and GNOME ToPaZ (ThreePointZero). 2007 may not be the year of the Linux desktop, but it will be a very important year!
  • atdigg, on 10/12/2007, -6/+7it's "viruses" not "viri"
  • nxusername, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Great read.

    I would give anything for my next Linux Desktop to work like this: http://desplesdadotcom.nfshost.com/?p=75
  • Ssullivan, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5"Windows NT to Windows 2000"?
    That wasn’t that big of a change, both are NT based OS’s after all. Now Windows 95 to NT or 98 to 2k/XP were big changes. Also NT wasn’t better than 9x for its desktop environment; it was better because of what was behind the scenes.
  • simn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"The Linux desktop world will not have any answers ready to Microsoft's and Apple's big releases for at least the coming two years. Has the desktop Linux bubble burst?"

    Microsoft's next big release? Is the author talking about vista that has just been released or are there planing something new nobody has heard about until now?? -> totally ungrounded, also comparing apple and m$ is not sophisticated enough. buried.
  • kwilliam, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Actually, I think Compiz/XGL is more like a response to Mac OS X than Vista's Aero.
  • Ademan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@djauto

    Well, in my experience aoss crashes apps on close. Firefox used to do that, (i used aoss to get sound from flash), as well as doom 3, which crashes on exit.
  • xptweakerntn, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Ubuntu
  • kwilliam, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2The author is just spreading FUD.
  • Scourge, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Linux needs to work on a perfect, unified sound driver with proper mixing and then i will be truly happy.

    /spends another week trying to fix teamspeak and wine running simultaneously.
  • berkus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Bury this clueless FUD.
  • SpitFire101, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0i agree linux based distros and the software they use need work , ALSA and common as muck sound cards included ( my audigy works great ;) ) , apologies for the term viri , i never had such things in a long time and forgot the plural for them xD
  • jenkins86, on 10/12/2007, -5/+5schestowitz: I agree with you, for once. This is purely a case of spam: Thom Holwerda is an editor at OS News.

    Thanks.
  • BigBadger, on 10/12/2007, -5/+5Anti-linux MS fanboy spreading FUD about linux? Oh my stars and garters!
  • djauto23, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0All ALSA apps should mix together well with dmix built into the kernel, without the need if esd, arts, or any such crap. If you use apps wich use the old drivers OSS, there is a bridge called 'aoss' or something like that wich works fairly well. Otherwise, as I've experienced, ALSA is a quite good audio card interface.
  • tikal26, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1ok so what is the point. Realy how long it took micosoft to relase Vista and it is still only out for bundle computers(So microsoft has millions spent on vista and still took them that long).I don't know mucho about gnome, but I know that kde 3.5 was something like the jump from 200 to XP so even if the elease number was not major others would consider it a jump. KDE 4 is making eal code. Okso its not ready on the costumer end, but ther eis definetyl good things coming like the strigi and Nepomuck and the whole phonon thing there is a NMM backend and there is an actuall okular plus decilbep .01 was released. Really you can tell that the framework is there (I am not 100% sure about plasma). About your comment on the Linux desktop not having a reply about Vista for two yeas what about compiz, XGL, Beryl and all that eye candy stuff. We had that even before vista was release. The whole vista bar on the side I had superkaramba for a while now, security I got that from Linux long time ago. I agree that on the ,ultimedia side things are definetly better that why I have a windows media box connected to my entertainment system. I agree that Apple has done some nice things, but still on leopard they are bringing thns like space tha ti already have in Linux. Maybe the desktops are a little bit behind as you say, bt the amount of dektop aplication have improve alot. AMrok, katapult, Krita, Open office, etc..... Really what is your point Linux don;t need to realease major version of their desktops because is open source and things get integrated to our curent framewrok we work faster that way because we don't need to hold innovation to get more monwy out of aour users.
  • trghpy, on 10/12/2007, -6/+6In other words...
    Calling all developers, Gnome, KDE, and GTK need help!
  • BigSlacker, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0To have the bubble burst, you'd need to have the bubble started already. I think it's just and the edge of getting started, because of the hardware getting cheaper and the Microsoft license quickly becoming almost half the cost of a new system. Wide spread adoption will start on the business end when CIOs start noticing they can stock their entire company for half the price. At that point it becomes worth while to hire some gurus to do the setup and maintenance. Sun is angling toward that market too with Open Solaris.
  • nxusername, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1While I agree that new versions of software are just was to repackage the same old product and make more money from it, I still believe that the time has come for a major overhaul of both KDE and Gnome.

    Much like the change from Windows NT to Windows 2000 or Mac OS 9 to OS X, KDE and Gnome need to make the switch to a next-generation desktop environment.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1It has begun! The decline of the Open Source movement has finally begun!!!1

    At last, this ***** has longed too much already... now let's concentrate towards some serious stuff, shall we?
  • SpitFire101, on 10/12/2007, -7/+3When the first viri / exploits appear in windows vista i will be sat comfortably in front of my gnome desktop laughing at all the people who paid good money for what ammounts to a fancy coaster .I seriously doubt gnome, kde , xfce or any of the *box's will die. Linux Desktops may come and go but the CLI shall remain and people will make new desktop enviroments
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2"Not true, this reads like a major FUD piece. How much does Microsoft pay this guy?"

    How much does Stallman pay to you?
  • apsivam, on 10/12/2007, -18/+2very sad situation but absolutely true indeed.

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