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?
I want it to be accessible enough that people can realistically use it as a transition from mobile to PC
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.
-1 downvotes?
That is like a double upvote!
I just want a system that doesn’t require a software engineering degree to operate. That’s all I need.
Linux Mint is what you are looking for.
My favorite idea is Linux or Android-derived, or a completely new, Rust-based AGPL-licensed OS, running on 100% open RISC-V hardware. Same for its phone equivalent. All chips must be open, no secret code in them.
RISC-V first class support.
We have the basics down. But hopefully desktop-class RISC-V will be within our reach in a few years!
Immutable root filesystem.
Less user error from borking the root fs. And also less apps relying on the root filesystem would be good. Likely something to be achieved with portals and other XDG work.
Wayland only for all modern desktops.
Wayland will soon have the ability for a lot of cool features that X11 doesn’t have, such as storing session data to disk and relaunching into new desktop environments without relogging. This’ll make hybrid graphics a lot easier to manage as changes to the active GPU can be done dynamically without logging out and back into your system.
Greater adoption of XDG portals and XDG standards.
Linux is obviously great in many ways because it lacks a single solution to a given problem, and that it’s just a kernel, so most of your end-user system is totally configurable while still being a Linux system. However, we have a lot of overlapping work that makes said end-user systems hard to manage when standards collide. Hopefully Wayland will encourage developers to work through XDG portals and other common standards to make Linux user AND developer-friendly.
Nvidia drivers
A contentious issue, but I think the future of Nvidia drivers will be open source. The proprietary drivers have been a blocker in many ways as they’re ‘good enough’ and better than Nouveau, so no one is going to bother backing the FOSS project when the prop. project is better. However, lots of very smart devs are working on bridging the gap and leverage the newly open-sourced portions of NV’s drivers, which will hopefully manifest as the end of AMD/NV driver quality discrepancies.
WINE support improved for general desktop apps
Every few years we get a new “Photoshop WORKING on LINUX???” tutorial that has some cryptic setup instructions or github repo that eventually falls to the wayside. WINE is getting a lot more support thanks to Valve and I imagine starting to take on Windows apps for first class support will be a gamechanger for the creative industries that rely on certain Windows-only apps!
Ending the distro-specific packing systems.
Yup, the best saved til last. My boldest claim is that Flatpak is going to kill off the necessity for RPMs, Debs, APKs, etc. for most end-users. The flatpak size disadvantage is negligible in the age of terabytes, but it allows devs to ensure a consistent build environment for their apps on all platforms (something that has caused a lot of flame wars between Fedora and app devs in the past).
For people who DO need apps from reproducible, stable-based pipelines (eg. docker, sysadmins, IT professionals) we’ll see Nix becoming dominant. In fact, it’s already beginning to eat into docker/container build systems thanks to its powerful reproducibility and infra-as-code paradigms. It’s having a real boost after a relatively quiet first decade of life, likely thanks to features like Flakes that can spin up developer environments in seconds.
My boldest claim is that Flatpak is going to kill off the necessity for RPMs, Debs, APKs, etc. for most end-users.
No it isn’t, until you can build a Linux system on top of only Flatpak. And guess what you have then? Yet another distro using a different packaging system with its own opinions, just like the rest of them. And there will still be other packaging systems because not everyone will agree with how it does things. Especially once developers start including questionable code in their Flatpak packages, because nobody is there to stop them, which distro maintainers are going to strip out in distro packages because it’s harmful to users.
that’s the beauty of distros, those that want traditional package structure can still use a distro that does.
Even the current flatpak first distros like OSTree spins of Fedora (Silverblue, Kinoite et al) provide mutable containers for using any package format you like.
because nobody is there to stop them, which distro maintainers are going to strip out in distro packages because it’s harmful to users.
I doubt thats really the case? Most distro maintainers mostly want to make sure a package works with their provides libs etc. If a package is malicious, it just will not become a distro package. At the same times this esoteric part about what distro maintainers actually do is so nebulous and at the same time “overrated” (debian).
Flatpak is still not able to fully replace native apps in certain situations, sure, but that wont be the case forever. If Ubuntu believes they can replace debs with Snaps I believe someone can do the same for flatpaks given enough time.
Flatpak lets people host their own repositories, which is where I think we’ll see distros becoming distinct if they DO choose to diverge from Flathub’s selection, such as choosing to block non-free software. Over time, though, people generally all just add flathub if it isn’t already available.
And, again, if you need something more finegrained than flathub, there’s no reason why distro maintainers can’t move to a nix-based infrastructure-as-code and you’ll be free to host a repo with all of your distro’s software packaged as code.
The power maintainers want over users is simply too much effort to justify as more apps begin to complain about packaging issues downstream, and apps become more complex to build. Users will inevitably bypass them. Devs will inevitably become hostile to downstream repacking.
Best post so far here.
Can you elaborate why a sysadmin/IT prof. should use Nix? Or are you referring to, those people deploying Nix systems for the “masses”?
I’m no sysadmin or IT prof. myself, but here’s my take.
With Nix, you can build out an entire Linux operating system from the ground up with a few files. You can specify the exact versions of software and even dependencies of software so that every single installation of your OS is going to be identical. You can upgrade specific software and roll it back if it has problems. Dependencies are managed through Nix in a way that allows them to be shared where necessary (saving space) but diverging when necessary to prevent dependency hell.
The best part, imo, is that all software is from source. You don’t have to rely on package maintainers at RHEL or Debian to keep apps up to date and working - Your system will download binary blobs from the cache server or build apps from source when theyre not available. You get to have bleeding-edge apps (if you want them) without the pain of waiting 6+ months for them to come in from your distro updates.
It’s quite immature when it comes to tools that make it easier to pick up and learn, so there’s drawbacks in that regard since many IT pros will stick to tools that enterprise systems offer that make managing their infra MUCH easier.
However, Nix is imo the future of non-flatpak applications because it’s simply smarter, faster, and more declarative than RPM, Deb, Apk could ever be.
Thanks for the write up, for me as a sysadmin it just doesn’t hold enough attraction on why I should make a switch. We are not going to change our infrastructure to NixOS. And for workstation use, I don’t see the benefit.
The flatpak size disadvantage is negligible in the age of terabytes
the issue is overstated as most flatpaks use the flatpak platform runtimes and share their own libraries in a similar manner to the host, yes its separate libraries, but its not dozens of disparate copies like some detractors of flatpak seem to state
Yup this too. We’re basically seeing a more standardized and healthy way of managing shared dependencies in Flatpak that doesn’t sacrifice the developer or end-user for sake of a few megabytes.
There’s this project called darling which is like wine for Mac OS I hope that takes off and we can pirate them damn Adobe apps everyone needs for work.
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@pmk Future linux should take example from Tromjaro.
The future? Chrome… Chrome everywhere… Forgive me this Spongebob joke
Well okay, since it’s up to me: Let’s have free software. Fully free Linux on every phone, including all “firmware” which has gotten awfully soft lately. No more proprietary driver blobs for ethernet controllers or cellular modems. No more proprietary DRM modules. No more “smart” consumer goods that come without source code. The free software revolution has gone pretty well in some respects, but we need to finish the job and put an end to all that garbage.
I just want it to become more popular and easy to use while remaining free (like to buy, hot take I know) and libre.
I want it to be something I can endorse to all my friends, even the friends that almost never use computers and barely know what a filesystem is
my hope is that after this point of it being popular and accessable, FOSS principles will start to gain more traction in spaces like mobile phones and car head units. there will always be proprietary OS’s and software, but in my ideal world FOSS is at least an equal competitor, not just a a niche thing that only super involved computer people get into
I hope selfhosting becomes even more convenient. It already is for tech savy people, but I mean ‘buy a Pi and press a button’-easy. It would take away the power of so many big companies.
The good future includes the total and final death of Trusted Computing, which means the end of capitalism.
Better at gaming than now.
Linux isn’t inherently bad at gaming, it’s more like games are bad at Linux
I don’t like the migration to wayland when it is so woefully not ready to replace x11, terrible a11y, window embedding is still non existent, the window positioning seems like we might be getting is a watered down version that still wont be compatible with many apps.
Im not saying x11 is good, I am more then familiar with the multitude of x11 issues that are honestly a meme at this point. pretending like migrating to wayland will be this massive step forward is wrong however, it’s a step to the side, just as broken, but different issues we can pick from.
x11 is broken by design, and wayland is designed to be broken
terrible a11y
Don’t think that is up to Wayland, but UI toolkits. What specifically do you mean?
window embedding is still non existent
They have documentation on how to do this. If there’s no libraries for this yet, it’s not up to Wayland, but maybe lack of interest.
the window positioning seems like we might be getting is a watered down version that still wont be compatible with many apps
Wait and see. What I’ve seen discussed seems pretty good. Also, they have to take into account that not every compositor is a floating window manager.
Don’t think that is up to Wayland, but UI toolkits. What specifically do you mean?
a11y requires a large range of features, because of wayland most OSKs are now platform specific, we can’t have overlays (we might be able to when the layers protocol lands, but thats a privleged protocol which is kind of up in the air how it’s handled) etc. a11y requires an entire ecosystem, you cant just lay it on the tool kits, compositors handle a lot too.
They have documentation on how to do this. If there’s no libraries for this yet, it’s not up to Wayland, but maybe lack of interest.
I’ve tried this a while ago, it’s a bloody joke, not only is it much harder to actually just do it, worse performance, and now I need to manage a bunch of additional crap. the fact that this is actually the reccomended process is a bloody joke, if you want window embedding, just use xwayland.
Wait and see. What I’ve seen discussed seems pretty good.
we shall see
Also, they have to take into account that not every compositor is a floating window manager.
I have absolutely no idea why people keep saying this. weston doesn’t support some xdg protocols, and gnome some ext protocols, so why the does this matter? clearly neither xdg nor ext protocols are mandatory, so it has nothing to do with compositors not wanting to implement it.
if it’s because tiling managers can’t do it, then simply combine both protocols into one, or use both protocols.
a11y requires a large range of features, because of wayland most OSKs are now platform specific, we can’t have overlays (we might be able to when the layers protocol lands, but thats a privleged protocol which is kind of up in the air how it’s handled) etc. a11y requires an entire ecosystem, you cant just lay it on the tool kits, compositors handle a lot too.
Ah, that makes sense. Tbf I’m not too familiar with it and mainly thought about screen readers and such, where only the toolkit knows what text is displayed since everything afterwards just gets a frame buffer. It would be great to get a portable way to do overlays and feedback like “user has focused a text input control”, yeah. How does this work on X11?
I have absolutely no idea why people keep saying this. weston doesn’t support some xdg protocols, and gnome some ext protocols, so why the does this matter? clearly neither xdg nor ext protocols are mandatory, so it has nothing to do with compositors not wanting to implement it.
As far as I know xdg protocols are supposed to be mandatory, ext ones aren’t. Weston devs just don’t care I suppose. (Though I can’t actually verify this so correct me if I’m wrong. I just know that getting a protocol included into xdg is a lot harder.)
in my opinion, Linux has an edge on pretty much everything except for adoption. It’s stable, secure, and updated very often. There are a ton of very great libraries for it that make building and running programs very easy. It’s great on resource management, and the kernel makes great use of the hardware.
However, most pitfalls in Linux comes from it having less adoption than more popular OSes like Windows or Mac OS. Ultimately, this dampens the “friendliness” of Linux to the masses. If you buy a piece of hardware from the electronics store, there will often be no Linux support. The “mom and dad” folk might enjoy it, but won’t know how to install or update things, simply because it’s different. Vendors will often deliver shoddy binary blobs for common hardware like wireless cards.
With more adoption comes more pressure for support. We’re seeing this with the Steam Deck already: if a game company wants to sell their games on the Deck, then they need to add Linux support, even if that means ensuring that it runs on Wine. I’d love to see this kind of thing for everyday use, i.e. a scanner including Linux software and instructions (and hopefully isn’t a nasty “install.run” thing).
If it becomes more common, then friends will help other friends with their computer. “Mom and dad” can look up solutions to problems on the internet, and they’ll be able to fix it themselves. Your aunt will buy an iPod and she’ll be able to run iTunes in a first-party way. With enough adoption, it will even be weird to run operating systems other than Linux because hardly anyone runs Windows or Mac OS anymore.
I don’t think Linux will ever be in the majority, but I see it climbing a bit in the next ten years. Lots of kinks have been worked out, and with the right software, it’s even easy-to-use and pretty to look at. We need more devices like the Steam Deck to help pave the way for more adoption! Then after a while, people will use it cause that’s what they know.
The “mom and dad” folk might enjoy it, but won’t know how to install or update things, simply because it’s different.
This is rapidly becoming irrelevant as the PC crowd is being reduced to professionals and hobbyists, who don’t have a problem learning things. The less computer-literate users stick to phones nowadays and they’re mostly content consumers on that platform so all they contribute is body count. They wouldn’t bring any contribution to Linux even if they tried to use it.
I don’t think Linux will ever be in the majority
But it is being dominant on every platform where it makes sense and/or there hasn’t been a concerted effort to keep it out. The PC is basically the only major holdout thanks to Microsoft and even them have adopted it to some extent.
These are great points. Ironically, most phones run Linux, too 😁
The less computer-literate users stick to phones nowadays and they’re mostly content consumers on that platform
I think this is a bad thing
I mean, they’d be consumers on any device they used. Streaming/social/email/browsing that’s pretty much it.
It’s definitely bad for kids who aren’t exposed to PCs anymore.
I wouldn’t bank on professionals being technical. The desktop has tons of use in the white collar space which is full of people all over the spectrum of technical literacy, but also specialty.
Honestly Wayland vs xorg thing keeps me from switching to it
