Was It Worth The Effort?

Was it really worth all the considerable effort that went into developing KDE, GNOME, and the other less well known desktops environments?

Considering that Linux desktop usage has grown very slowly despite all the desktop environments becoming reasonably useable, it does seem likely that it is not the DE that is the problem. No matter how good the Linux desktop becomes, they are never going to be as familiar as Windows.

There are probably more people using Linux on mobile devices (without even realizing it) than there are Linux desktop users. Which only strengthens the question: why waste valuable developer resources on desktop environments?

Since I don't use any desktop environment, you may take my opinion with a liberal amount of salt.

Long Live Desktop Computing

Even as people are declaring that Linux on desktop is dead, Linux still runs fine on my desktop computer system. Of course, now some people are saying that it doesn't matter that Linux isn't taking over on the desktop, because desktop computing itself is dead.

Supposedly, people will be using their tiny little hand held computers to access their computers in the cloud, where they will do all the same things they did on their desks systems. On their tiny little hand held devices? Seems a bit optimistic to me.

Anyway, there should choices. And I choose to stick with a my archaic desktop computer, thank you very much. Now get off my lawn!

Goodbye Gwibber

Yesterday, I played with Gwibber 2.31.94 from the Debian experimental repository, and found that it uses the GNOME keyring to store authentication data. Since I don't use GNOME (or any desktop environment, for that matter), it's goodbye Gwibber for me. I downgraded to the version in Debian sid while I look for an alternative.

To be fair, I didn't investigate whether Gwibber can use some other means to store user data, but frankly, I have better things to do. Digging into an open source application can be fun, but it is also a tar pit in which you will waste a lot of time, possibly with no results.

This kind of thing makes me feel like a grumpy old codger who doesn't quite understand why we need everything to be so complicated. ^__^

Linux Desktop Saga

If I see another pointless, stupid article about why the Linux desktop is not taking off, I'm going to scream. Wait, this is an article about why the Linux desktop isn't taking off... NOOOOOOoooooooo......!!

Skype Voice Tap

The trojan that taps Skype VoIP conversations is old news by now. However, the most interesting part of the interview was how the programmer, Ruben Unteregger, envisions making a trojan work on a Linux system using Flash or Moonlight. As the Linux desktop systems try to provide the same functionality as Windows, the barriers that made Linux more secure are slowly being lowered. At the moment the number of Linux desktop users is very small so it is not yet worthwhile to take that next step to develop a crossplatform trojan. Emphasis on "yet."

Desktop Environments

There's an on going thread on the Debian user mailing list which underscores why I avoid desktop environments altogether. This thread discusses KDE 4.2.2 which has just entered Debian testing. The problem is the latest KDE depends on MySQL server. Of course, many KDE users are questioning the necessity for for installing a full RDBMS on a desktop system at all. But for me the broader question is why are Linux desktop environments becoming so complex at all?

My theory is that the Linux desktop developers are trying very hard to make the Linux desktop more comfortable for Windows’ users. There nothing wrong with that goal but I feel that it will inevitably lead to the same bloat that infests the Windows’ desktop. From what I can tell, the MySQL dependency is the result of adding MS Exchange-like functionality to KDE's PIM and email applications. Again, that's OK but SQLite might have been a better default for such a simple database, especially on a desktop system.

And please don't think that GNOME is any less immune to this type of thinking. Desktop environments are becoming ever more complex and I see no reversal in that trend.

“New” Computer

I finally got around to setting up the AMD Athlon 64 3200+ system I acquired about a month ago. I was going to install 64-bit Debian sid on the system but just wasn't finding the time to do it. Today, I changed my mind and just moved the hard drives and graphics card from my current desktop system into the new box. I actually prefer not to move drives in Linux systems any more because I found it can cause some minor annoyances.

I should have swapped the NIC too which would have avoided one inconvenience, but I knew what to expect when I used the K8T's on board NIC instead. The problem arises because the new NIC becomes eth1 but the network configuration is for eth0, so you have no network access. This is easily fixed, however, by editing the udev rule in /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules and changing the eth1 to eth0.

Actually, physically installing the hard drives in the new case wasted more time than anything else. The system came in one of those funky transparent Plexiglas cases, which I had to take in order to get the system. These cases may look interesting but this one is not well designed. For example the Plexiglas hard drive mounts are too far apart so the drive does not fit snugly. In fact the gap is so big, you can only put screws on one side of the drive because the provided screws won't reach on the other side. I already decided the case has got to go.

Transferring the graphics card saved a lot of effort. The AMD system had a Nvidia card which would have required the proprietary drivers to get accelerated video. Not something I want to tackle right now. I'm very happy with my older ATI 9250 card which uses free drivers for accelerated graphics. The only other problem was getting sound to work again, since both systems had on board audio so moving the card was not an option. As usual, it was the microphone input which which took the longest to figure out. Nothing serious but annoying none the less.

The MSI K8T motherboard is about 4 years old now. The previous Intel system was about 8 years old. The only reason for this “upgrade” was for 720p video which the new system plays without any effort at all. Frankly, I see no need for anything faster at this time. I haven't bought a complete computer system since 1998, and with all these retired older systems up for grabs, there's a good chance I may never buy another system again.