InfoWorld Home / Windows / Enterprise Desktop / Will desktop Linux ever grow up?
August 18, 2009

Will desktop Linux ever grow up?

The adolescent antics of this wannabe Windows killer are getting stale

| Print | 22 comments|
885 Recommendations

Will desktop Linux ever grow up? I ask because, after years of monitoring this wannabe Windows-killer's progress, I've yet to see it emerge from its awkward adolescent stage. Despite numerous attempts by Canonical (Ubuntu's creator) and others to dress Linux up and make it more respectable, this technological paean to anti-establishmentarianism remains as unpolished as ever.

Case in point: X.org. The FOSS crowd has made much of the open source platform's graphical prowess (I still remember those cool Compiz/Beryl fan videos from YouTube's early days). But as my contemporary Thom Holwerda of OS News fame found out the hard way, the current iteration of the Linux video driver stack is more or less a house of cards. Seemingly innocuous actions, like resizing a video playback window, can trigger a catastrophic failure of the X Window System, taking any running graphical applications down with it.

[ InfoWorld's Galen Gruman shows why desktop Linux would work well as the standard OS for many business and government users | Neil McAllister shows why it may be too late for desktop Linux to gain treal traction. ]

At least some of the blame for X's instability can be laid at the feet of the video card manufacturers who, until very recently, have actively resisted opening their driver code to the FOSS community. However, the responsibility for X's reputation as an unstable windowing environment ultimately rests with the X.org Foundation. As the keeper of the X Window System in the FOSS world, X.org has to wrestle with myriad competing agendas (such as EXA/UXA, GEM/TTM, and randr) while propping up what is now a 30-plus-year-old code base. And as Holwerda's recent experience demonstrates, it's not doing a particularly good job.

By contrast, Microsoft continues to receive kudos for the robustness of its Desktop Windows Manager (DWM) and Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) architectures, both introduced with Windows Vista and since expanded and improved upon for Windows 7. By abstracting the display driver logic from the rest of the OS, Microsoft has created a more crash-resistant windowing environment, one in which a failure of the driver code almost never results in a loss of applications or data. I can't recall the last time I had the kind of catastrophic failure under Windows that plagued Holwerda's Ubuntu installation. It just isn't a problem in the post-Windows XP world.

Related Content...
additional resources
White Paper - How to Improve Delivery of Advanced Web Applications

White Paper

Virtual Workforce: The Key to Expanding The Business While Cutting Costs

Get the independent advice and expertise you need to support a virtual workforce.

Go inside:
The three-step approach to making a virtual workforce a reality.
The four flavors of client virtualization technologies.
The three key initiatives that solve IT challenges.
Download now »
White Paper: Successfully Secure Your Wireless LAN With Wi-Fi firewalls.

White Paper

Addressing Linux Threats Leveraging Fewer Resources

The increase in Linux popularity has increased the frequency and sophistication of malware attacks. Read this 2 page white paper now to learn how you can protect your Linux environment with real-time protection that is certified by all major Linux vendors.

Download now »
White Paper - The 2009 Handbook of Application Delivery

White Paper

The 2009 Handbook of Application Delivery

Ensuring acceptable application delivery will become even more difficult over the next few years. As a result, IT organizations need to ensure that the approach that they take to resolving the current application delivery challenges can scale to support the emerging challenges. This handbook elaborates on the key tasks associated with planning, optimization, management and control and provides decision criteria to help IT organizations choose appropriate solutions.

Download now »
White Paper - Is Your Backup System Outdated?

White Paper

Mid-range Storage Considerations

A common misconception is that mid-range storage requirements are dramatically different than that of a larger enterprise. Mid-range storage users may require less capacity, but they have similar functionality and management requirements. This ESG paper examines mid-range storage needs and reviews a new solution that adjusts size while retaining value, performance and functionality.

Download now »
22 of 22 comments
Sign In or Register to comment
KimTjik 18-Aug-09 5:19am
There's plenty of room for criticism of the article but I single out a few points. "By contrast, Microsoft continues to receive kudos for the robustness of its Desktop Windows Manager (DWM) and Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) architectures, both introduced with Windows Vista and since expanded and improved upon for Windows 7. By abstracting the display driver logic from the rest of the OS, Microsoft has created a more crash-resistant windowing environment..." To be fair and honest, Microsoft didn't receive a lot of kudos at the release of Vista. Microsoft made some critical changes close to the release which upset manufacturers. Lesson: a major overhaul is painful but might pay off in the long run. The change you describe is very *nix, isn't it! I'm a Windows admin and hence the lack of this basic functionality has annoyed me for years, but of course it's good that Microsoft has improved this part of the OS, since Windows is useless without it's GUI (oh, we have Core but that's still a parody of novel size command lines... but maybe it will improve). The article is based on erroneous premises: Linux wasn't designed to be a Windows killer, Windows was in many ways irrelevant to how Linux evolved. This "Windows killer" dogma seems to journalistic imaginary pet. Most Linux users I've come in contact with have very little interest in Windows and are like me indifferent to Microsoft. Why? Simply because Windows doesn't deliver the working tools we need. It's not because we dislike Microsoft, it's just that Microsoft doesn't offer anything that improves our productivity. I don't mind that Windows continues to have a high market share, even though it has been in constant decline since its top years, as long as Microsoft doesn't engage in silly patent claims or sabotage parts of the market. On the contrary I welcome any improvements Microsoft is able to make; it's good for the competition and it's good for their own users. If a "teenager" makes me able to do my work more effeciently and gives me tools I otherwise wouldn't have, I don't mind, even though being an old enough to be a farther to post-teenagers.
rodolico 18-Aug-09 7:51am
1 reply
You miss the whole point of Linux. While many do want it to become a "Windows Killer," the real goal is to have an alternative. I am an IT Professional, so am not representative of the "normal" user, but I do support a few hundred Windows, OSX and Linux users. The few that have moved from Windows to Linux have the same issues facing the ones who have moved from Windows to OSX. Minor changes in the UI cause them issue. It is a case of being comfortable with what you already know. As far as Linux breaking, I have used Linux as my primary workstation software since around 2000. Initially, there were many problems, but I now use it to do my accounting, create documents and spreadsheets, watch videos, surf the internet and check e-mail, in addition to my normal job of managing servers and the like. The only recent downside to using Linux exclusively is the lack of high end games. Oh, and chatting on Yahoo with video, but I have since converted to Skype, so that is no longer an issue. For the business or personal computer user, there are no reasons not to move to OSX or Linux. The stability of these two operating systems as compared to Vista (google "vista sp2 bsod av" for instance) and the massive cost savings of Linux over the other two is an important point for small business and individual computer users. With the massive UI changes, horrible hardware requirements and hardware/software requirements of Vista, I am seeing more people looking for an alternative to Microsoft. It goes without saying that the ones who move to Apple are happy, but suprisingly, the ones who adopt Linux are as happy and, in many cases happier than the ones who move to OSX simply because of the greater range of choices offered. Note that initially, hardware incompatibilities required users to be very careful when purchasing a "Linux Computer." With more manufacturers rightfully deciding to sell hardware, and opening the specifications sufficiently for third party drivers to be developed (or, delivering drivers for Linux themselves), this is no longer the case. Linux now boasts a base of hardware compatibility comparable to Windows (with the exception of the decreasing number of highly proprietary manufacturers), and the stability of the drivers under Linux has, in my professional experience, far exceeded that available for Windows. My Vista clients are currently facing a choice: Move to Windows 7 (very possible), OS X or Linux. The number moving to Linux is surprising.
cking2 18-Aug-09 8:19am
The title of the article is 'Will desktop Linux ever grow up?' and the fact of the matter is blah blah blah... Yes, Linux has its place and to be sure many of our guys use Linux as there desktop. But...just as many Unix/Linux admins have a windows machine. Get over it. I have no problem that our company website is on linux/oracle just as I don't get upset to see a Unix admin running Vista.
Regaug 18-Aug-09 8:17am
I am glad you were specific to Desktop Linux, because recent server-type Linuxes (that don't have to deal with all those video hardware headaches) are extremely robust, much more stable than the average Windows server, and exhibit better network performance. However, you are correct about Desktop (and laptop) Linuxes: These platforms still suffer greatly from arrested development and dead-end architectures. For an IT professional who just wants to get their job done (and not fiddle with GUI's all day), Desktop Linux offers just as many setbacks as it does advantages. For example, you singled out video issues, but after all these years of so many people working on it, wireless networking on Linux laptops is still a royal pain in the neck to configure, and is a long ways off from "just working."
chrisjmiller 18-Aug-09 8:25am
I agree with the broad sentiment of the article, but I think it misses the main reason why Linux desktops are rare in large corporate environments. It's true that some Windows desktop capabilities are still missing (see http://xkcd.com/619/ for an example), but the sticking point for largescale deployment is the lack of central management tools. Until you can deploy updates and configuration changes to thousands of desktops as quickly and easily as you can with the tools that are included in a Microsoft environment, Linux deployment ain't going to happen. Now, it's true that there are some tools to help manage Linux desktops (although IMHO they remain a long way behind the Microsoft ones), but they're not free and therefore immediately start to negate any cost saving argument for Linux deployment. Add on to that the additional cost of supporting multiple desktop OSs and I foresee Microsoft maintaining a stranglehold on the corporate dektop for a good while yet.
qchapter 18-Aug-09 8:59am
1 reply
Articles like these are a dime a dozen, and are quite a bore at this point. Will tech bloggers ever stop falsely creating drama when it comes to operating system choices? I doubt it. It's even more pathetic when bloggers miss the point of GNU/Linux in the first place. GNU/Linux was created to provide a community of users a free and open alternative to proprietary software, and in this it has been fabulously successful. What makes Linux unique is it's openness and it's community. I don't give a squirt of piss about "market-share." -qchapter
philosopher 18-Aug-09 9:30am

Well said, qchapter!

The author of this blog ought to read:

http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

Posted from an Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Linux Desktop, by the way. And which causes my sysadmin vastly less support effort than even one Windows desktop, by the way.

rdm 18-Aug-09 10:16am
This was essentially a bug report. Apparently, resizing a video playback window causes X to crash. Unfortunately, I do not know how to reproduce the problem. The bug report did not include the necessary details. This means that if the problem was fixed I would have no way of being able to tell if it had been fixed. Similarly, I have a problem with Vista: Explorer locks up sometimes, and other programs soon follow, and when this happens I have to do a hard reboot to regain control of the machine. But unless I went into detail about patch levels and versions (and probably not even then), essentially no one would have a clue how to reproduce this problem nor how to go about fixing it.
vuulf 18-Aug-09 1:48pm
1 reply

Umm... sorry - You are talking IT world vs. user world here. Sure, a user should be pissed if their video doesn't resize, but in the IT world, if my guys were bitching about not being able to resize or view YouTube videos, or any flash media player media for that matter, their network would be scrutinized and/or they would be removed from their position or reprimanded for their habits. You started this topic with "desktops" in mind, but finalize this article with IT people. Sorry, but IT people do not need YouTube or other Flash media based creations. Desktop, yes; IT, no. Make up your mind with what you are talking about; the general populace or ITs, because from where I stand, they are an entirely different lot! And as far as YouTube and other media resizing causing X crashes, it does, on a select set of systems; IE: Those with nVidia hardware who does not, unlike every single other vendor, publish open source drivers. Everything works fine on ATI, Matrox, etc. but doesn't work on nVidia. When labeling crashes with a video concept, you should also provide the vendor specific details. I have never had any problems with vendors other than nVidia and that's on over 1,000 machines. nVidia sucks for not opening the source to their drivers, but that is a case of buyer beware, vs. IT against Linux. Your blog entry is complete hooey, as far as I am concerned. Play with all the hardware and you will discover X is just fine everywhere else, and if you let your IT guys talk you into 'requiring' Flash media, well; that's your own dumb ass fault, isn't it.

JustAUser 19-Aug-09 11:56am
So, your users don't visit vendor sites that use Flash to demonstrate their products, or use YouTube videos to either obtain market intelligence or again information on using various products? Seems a somewhat limited business view.
kingkong 18-Aug-09 3:58pm
1 reply

It has not much to do with richness of functionality or stability. Linux as a desktop is dead because users are not paying for marketing it. See explanation in http://all-things-pure.blogspot.com/2009/07/q-why-does-linux-fail-becaus....

Enterprises used Linux servers because they have been sold into paying $10,000 for implementation instead of $500 for a Windows Server license.

Everybody is out to make a living. If I can't beat Microsoft at their game or succeed in their eco-system, I think of something else, like telling IT departments that their core competency is not information technology and offering them a free Linux license but pay me $$$ to install it. This is the real world.

KimTjik 19-Aug-09 12:35am
Right, "Enterprise" equals a SMB solution without any CALs for $ 500. You're correct that some have invested a lot of money into Linux, but since when are investments in technology that will pay off viewed as bad practise? If a company can't deliver what you need, should you then just give up on the whole idea? To me that sounds very anti-technology and anti-competitive. Microsoft is already beaten in the top levels and the trend is eating its way down to the SMB solutions, proving that investments have paid off. Your reasoning is unproductive. Even for small business you ought to be more pragmatic. Maybe a mixed environment is the best option, both economically and practically. We have endorsed both Linux, BSD and Windows. A last remark: in my experience you get a lot more extra value in paying for example Red Hat for a support license than to buy a Windows license and then only get support if you pay some Golden partner money on top of that. However, every business have to make a well founded and responsible decision based on their needs, knowledge-in-house, dependency on software and so on.
Orion 19-Aug-09 1:13am
The comments made here are overly strong and generalized based on another person's seemingly one-time experience with Ubuntu. I am a new user of Ubuntu and as a desktop solution it is working fine for me, so much so that the only time I boot back into XP is when I need to do video capture or use IE for some governmental website that supports only IE. I have no problems with banks and I have not been able to replicate the video problems mentioned in the article. By the way, I get to use some really nice eye-candy effects a la Vista with my 8-year-old 1GB ram PC taking up only about 215MB of ram at startup (never exceeded 500MB with heavy use - video rendering 10% to 15% faster than XP, browsing the Internet, copying files across my home network with Windows machines, sending e-mail) on my old Nvidia 128MB display with no lag whatsoever. At the moment, I'm only using 372MB of ram and zero swap space. Several of my teenage students who have used Ubuntu on my laptop have installed Ubuntu in their computers. For Internet access, they never use XP except for certain games. One of them says he has completely stopped using XP because Ubuntu is so much faster on the Internet through his ISP. He can get the full 10Mb bandwidth with Ubuntu but a measly 60k to 70k using XP. If teenagers are beginning to like Ubuntu, hmmm ...
as901 19-Aug-09 5:12am
The worst version of Linux is many times more stable than the Best version of Windows. Not all companies support Linux, because Microsoft has strong armed many companies into only supporting Windows. A lack of drivers for that reason is a problem. A few more anti trust rulings may well fix this! I use Ubuntu Linux. I have helped my friends install Ubuntu. All of those who installed Ubuntu Linux stated that they would never go back to Windows!
motie38 20-Aug-09 7:07am
Well, I've been watching a lot of Hulu on my Fedora 10 64bit desktop on an HP with AMD Phenom quad core, 8GB Ram, 750GB HD, and I don't know what video card(but I think it's ATI), and Adobe Flash 10. I've switched back and forth between full screen, and also split the video out into a separate screen and resized it with no problems, all while running Windows XP in a virtual machine via SUN Virtualbox, and playing solitaire. My computer came with Vista home premium 64bit, but I never booted it. When I pulled the computer out of the box new, I installed Fedora 10 on it straght away, and had no issues with drivers, including video and wireless card. It took a little bit of effort to get Flash 10 and Virtualbox installed, but it wasn't near as much trouble as I go through to set up a Windows XP installation from scratch. I have avoided Vista like the plague because of all the scathing reports I've heard from early adopters. It's nice that Microsoft got the gui working so well, but it seems they had plenty of problems with the underlying core of the operating system, including major problems with networking and hardware drivers early on. They may have grown up with Windows 7, but I've already moved on. At work, I'm a little excited about Windows 7, since the products we sell run on XP, and W7 will offer XP compatibility via an XP virtual machine. But at home, Fedora's my main squeeze, and Ubuntu my mistress. I no longer worry about viruses, I have all the productivity apps I need. What's not to love? Granted, I'm not a hard core gamer trying to get 90fps out of the latest 3D shoot 'em up, but I've had no trouble catching up on the latest episode of America's Got Talent, or The Listener. So I picked up a new laptop. Guess what's going on it? Fedora 11. I already know the wireless card's not going to work out of the box, but 10 minutes with a google search, and I found the answer. It's going to be a pretty easy fix. But on a positive note for Microsoft, I will say this. Windows 2003 Server is probably the best and most reliable "Desktop" operating system from Microsoft I've ever seen. If I were sticking with Windows, I'd probably be hunting for bargains on that product. I haven't tried 2008 yet, so I can't comment on it.
JTB2468 21-Aug-09 7:17am
Personally, I've been using Ubuntu heavily for the past 5 or 6 years and I haven't had any of the graphical problems that people seem to rant about. All my flash stuff works (in 32 and 64 bit) across all 9 machines I have it on, media works fine, I can watch DVDs, .avi, whatever just fine, windows resize just fine. I don't have any problems, I don't know anyone that has problems either. However at work, we are plagued with a plethora of graphics related BSoDs with Vista and our NVidia Quadro cards. I actually just finished formatting one of our CAD machines on Tuesday. I use a Ubuntu desktop at work (I'm the network admin) and the only thing I use a Windows machine for is our timeclock software.

I guess some people have graphical problems with linux, but out of the multiple people I know that run Ubuntu and my personal experiences with it, I haven't heard of any such problems. I have yet to format a Ubuntu installation, I have yet to have an unrecoverable crash, I just don't have any problems with it. However my home Server 2008 install is stuck in an infinite "configuring updates" loop after just 6 months, I've been through 4 vista installs before bailing, 20+ XP installs, and who knows how many reinstalls at work.

For some people, linux isn't the answer, but for me, I'll take a system I can 100% rely on.
Maude 22-Aug-09 4:55am
I do volunteer legacy tech at a non-profit that, at times, can't afford ink for the printer. I found Ubuntu 7.10 when there was no XP install disk available. I installed it on some machines and it was great. One nVidia machine had conflicts with Xp. It was about to be tossed out. It would crash and I used up four Xp installs on it. With Ubuntu it is now the print server for the MACs. The room has Windows, mini MACs and Ubuntu. The main use of the room is teenagers and there is a video game set up. There is security on the Windows machines because they are public access. The Ubuntu machines have desktop user which allows the end users a bit more freedom. The users are using the Ubuntu machines freely and do install apps with Wine. I had a time convincing the head guy to allow me to use Ubuntu. When I first installed Ubuntu on one machine, the end users were fine. There were no problems. I have problems with Windows on a regular basis that I don't have with Ubuntu. Perhaps the Windows desktop will grow up when my end users do, or perhaps not.
TedRoll 23-Aug-09 8:23am
"it'll never be taken seriously by IT"

Just like you, Randall?
wynman 24-Aug-09 11:44am
Ubuntu works until it DOESN'T. As much and as many things I've done to avoid using Vista, my sad conclusion is that Linux desktop will never make it to the enterprise. It's not any faster, has lots of device incompatibilities, has crazy crazy error messages, updates can destroy whole system, and that GRUB loader... what can I say.
rainman21 24-Aug-09 1:07pm
I'm a diehard Windows fan / developer, but I was recently introduced to Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex and now Jaunty Jackelope. I now have about 9 systems that are either dual boot, or Ubuntu boot with XP/Server or Vista as VM under VirtualBox. My kids are using Ubuntu on old legacy hardware and it is robust and runs well with no video issues on any of these machines. From my experience, the one nagging issue is an inability to interface easily with other desktops and network shares. For example, using a Western Digital MyBookWorld (a slow, home NAS running embedded Linux), I could create various shares with different logins and permissions, and easily create persistent shares in Windows with a few mouse clicks as I navigated the network. Under Ubuntu, this is not easy. I've tried various combinations of the SMB clients and administrator apps, as well as Nautilus and Dolphin, and you still cannot _easily_ create persistent shares to network resources using cached creds. Most blogs point toward sudo command line edits of fstab with a bunch of different suggested settings (all for the same WD NAS). Some times I can get it to work, but on some machines, nothing works. Based on all the web blogs I've read on this subject, I'm not alone. Similar problems mapping to networked Windows and OSX shares. Network interop with OSX and Windows needs to be better, easier and graphical, out of the box before I think it is ready as an equal partner in a mixed desktop environment. That said, some things are insanely easy on Ubuntu -- such as locating and installing network printers. Every time I need to do this in Windows, I have to go to vendor sites, install drivers, reboot, enter IP addresses or execute lengthy network searches that usually fail to find the network resource. Under Ubuntu, it finds the printers, locates drivers and gets them up and running in seconds. I will agree with the author that it may not be there yet, but it is very close and could (or should) be there soon...
whitemice 26-Aug-09 5:01am
What a stupid article; it says nothing about desktop LINUX. Let me tell you about desktop LINUX: * Evolution : E-Mail, Calendar, etc... * F-Spot : Photo management * Banshee : Music & library management with iPod support * OpenOffice * Tomboy : On the fly note taking & automatic wiki maker * GNOME Do : Make Mac users cry * PDFMod : edit, combine, & export PDFs * Mistilix : Make DVDs * MonoDevelop : Write code is a SWEET IDE * gedit : Edit text files Seriously - this app stack is flat-out awesome. These are all, every single one, excellent applications. I use a LINUX desktop 100% of the time, am very production, and never feel restrained by my suite of applications.
ragnok 3-Sep-09 10:46am
Yes, is is true video drivers are an issue. That's only an issue if you're using some obscure video card. The major manufacturers of video cards, nVidia and ATI, offer manufacturer supported drivers. nVidia has been developing Linux X11 drivers for a long time now and I've had zero issues with nVidia cards using native drivers. Even in the event X11 crashes, Linux is still working. You can still reach it via ssh. Windows? It completely crashes. Also, NSA (The National Security Administration of the United States) wrote the IP stack and other code that drives the networking protocols in Linux (while Windows uses code from Berkley). The NSA has made many other contributions to the Linux system as well. The only issue is lack of driver support for Linux, beyond that, it is an extremely stable operating system. About the only issue the community is having is with WiFi driver support. There are a number of chipset manufacturers that are beginning to release Linux drivers, but that has only been in the last 2 years. Intel has been the longest supporter, and is one of the more popular WiFi cards pre-installed in notebook computers. Atheros, the second most popular, began releasing Linux drivers in the past year. Broadcom also has been offering manufacturer support for Linux for it's wifi chipset for a number of years as well. Broadcom wifi chips are used in some notebooks, as well as wifi cards manufactured by a number of parties including Gigabyte. Linksys still hasn't seen the light, but there are some nifty tricks to get cards that do not have native linux support (it involves some voodoo which allows you to use Windows drivers in Linux... Ubunutu automates this process). So, for the best Linux experience, use a Ubuntu and make sure you have an (ideally) nVidia or ATI graphics card installed (a lot of motherboards now use onboard nVidia graphics so you may have an nVidia card and not even know it!) As for X11, a lesser known fact: It has had remote desktop capability built in since it's creation. You can launch a remote X11 application and have it appear on your computer as if you were sitting at your PC. This isn't VNC or remote desktop, it's just one application window like all the others, the only difference is your keyboard and video commands are being routed over a network instead of inside you're computer. Ever wonder what "ssh -X" was all about? Try it, but run the program "xeyes" in your new ssh session (you need to be running ssh from within an X11 session, either Linux, or via Apple's X11's xterm) Randal Kennedy, you're an idiot. You bought a crappy computer. Next time buy one from a professional, and steer clear Dell, HP, and Toshiba ;) Linux is not Windows, just like Mac OS X is not Windows (though it's heart may be Unix with it's soul removed, it is definitely not Linux). Trying to compare Linux to Windows is like trying to compare a tank to a bicycle with training wheels.

Sign up to receive InfoWorld Resource Alerts

Subscribe to the Today's Headlines: First Look Newsletter

Find out what will be news for the day, with our first-thing-in-the-morning briefing.

©1994-2010 Infoworld, Inc.