[Lazarus] The Problem with the Linux Desktop

[Marco van de Voort]

Op 2020-03-27 om 09:27 schreef Michael Van Canneyt via lazarus:
>
>
> This is an age-old discussion. Echo of the late 90-ies last century.
>
> You're reasoning windows centric, where everything is centrally 
> controlled.
> (same for Mac) This gives a certain amount of stability, but you are 
> at the
> mercy of the controlling instance.
>
> You will therefor always be disappointed when using linux desktop, 
> which is about
> liberty, choice and variety, and which lacks this stability or unity.
>
If you have rose coloured glasses, maybe.  Linux desktop is a proving 
and experimentation ground for those same big companies that mainly care 
for linux as a server. They also govern a lot of the direction, by 
simply shifting manpower.

Their touch is less prominent, but so is their commitment, as you've 
noticed.  Moreover they don't really cultivate an eco system for other 
programmers as much as e.g. Microsoft does.

> The latter implies that when developing, you are also forced to make a 
> choice;
> what platforms to support and what not. Gnome, KDE, XFDE etc.

And preferably deliver the platform of your choice with your 
application.  The model to download applications and install on a random 
distro+version simply doesn't exist on Linux.

>
> If you don't like that, stay away from Linux desktop.
>
While I largely agree, this reply simply assumes that the culture of 
laisez faire and low backwards compatibility is an universal open source 
trait. While that is a common link, I'm not so far as to say it is 
mandatory thing.