<story><title>What killed the Linux desktop</title><url>http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2012/Aug-29.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>diminish</author><text>To stress out again; OS/X has the poorest hardware support for 3rd parties; even compared to Linux. Just &quot;think different&quot; and buy some hardware and you ll see what I mean..</text></item><item><author>wheels</author><text>&amp;#62; &lt;i&gt;I have two monitors on my Linux desktop. A month ago full screen on video stopped working. [...] In this regard, both Windows and OSX just work.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just because it&apos;s never happened to &lt;i&gt;you&lt;/i&gt; on OS X or Windows doesn&apos;t mean it doesn&apos;t happen.  OS X 10.6.7 broke the output on my 13&quot; Macbook for &lt;i&gt;either&lt;/i&gt; of the two external displays I own.  &lt;i&gt;Both&lt;/i&gt; worked fine previously, when booted from the install CDs, &lt;i&gt;or&lt;/i&gt; from Linux on the same machine.&lt;p&gt;Plugging in my Firewire audio interface on the same machine spun the CPU up to 100% and kept it pegged there.  A lot of good having a nice mic pre-amp does when you get a high pitched fan whir added gratis to all of your recordings.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s silly to pretend that Mac is somehow perfect in these matters.  In my experience it&apos;s only been marginally better than Linux, if at all.  And with Linux you have some hope of finding a solution, whereas for OS X you&apos;re pretty much hosed.</text></item><item><author>cletus</author><text>This is the money quote:&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62; The second dimension to the problem is that no two Linux distributions agreed on which core components the system should use.&lt;p&gt;Linux on the desktop suffered from a lack of coherent, strategic vision, consistency and &lt;i&gt;philosophy&lt;/i&gt;. Every engineer I know likes to do things a particular way. They also have a distorted view on the level of customization that people want and need.&lt;p&gt;I like OSX. Out of the box it&apos;s fine. That&apos;s what I want. I don&apos;t want to dick around with Windows managers or the like. Some do and that&apos;s fine but almost no one really does.&lt;p&gt;Whereas Windows and OSX can (and do) dictate a topdown vision for the desktop experience, Linux can&apos;t do this. Or maybe there&apos;s been no one with the drive, conviction and gravitas to pull it off? Who knows? Whatever the case, this really matters for a desktop experience.&lt;p&gt;I have two monitors on my Linux desktop. A month ago full screen on video stopped working. Or I guess I should say it moved to the center of the two screens so is unusable. I have no idea why. It could be an update gone awry. It could be corp-specific modifications. It could be anything. But the point is: &lt;i&gt;I don&apos;t care what the problem is, I just want it to work&lt;/i&gt;. In this regard, both Windows and OSX just work. In many others too.&lt;p&gt;I can&apos;t describe to you how much torture it always seems to be to get anything desktop-related to work on Linux. I loathe it with a passion. I&apos;ve long since given up any idea that Linux will ever get anywhere on the desktop. It won&apos;t. That takes a topdown approach, the kind that anarchies can&apos;t solve.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bpatrianakos</author><text>Oh well now that you said it the argument is settled. You can&apos;t just say OS X has the poorest hardware support ever and not back it up with anything except &quot;go buy some hardware and see what works and what doesn&apos;t&quot;. Is there maybe a table online that lists these incompatibilities you can link to? Please don&apos;t say &quot;do some research&quot; because the onus is on you to prove yourrself right, not on me to prove you right.&lt;p&gt;You also said &quot;even compared to Linux&quot;. That&apos;s interesting. That statement there gives the impression that you&apos;re more interested in defending your own beliefs and/or choices rather than being truly interested in explaining to us what OS has objectively terrible hardware support. &quot;even compared to Linux&quot; sounds like something an apologist would say. Then when you added in the &quot;think different&quot; line you made it seem even more like your comment was based off some kind of blind loyalty to Linux rather than loyalty to facts.&lt;p&gt;Me? I&apos;ve used Mac, a handful of Linux distros, and Windows for a long time. I don&apos;t know which has the best or worse hardware support but I do know when someone says something based on what camp they&apos;re in rather than what the facts are.</text></comment>
<story><title>What killed the Linux desktop</title><url>http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2012/Aug-29.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>diminish</author><text>To stress out again; OS/X has the poorest hardware support for 3rd parties; even compared to Linux. Just &quot;think different&quot; and buy some hardware and you ll see what I mean..</text></item><item><author>wheels</author><text>&amp;#62; &lt;i&gt;I have two monitors on my Linux desktop. A month ago full screen on video stopped working. [...] In this regard, both Windows and OSX just work.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just because it&apos;s never happened to &lt;i&gt;you&lt;/i&gt; on OS X or Windows doesn&apos;t mean it doesn&apos;t happen.  OS X 10.6.7 broke the output on my 13&quot; Macbook for &lt;i&gt;either&lt;/i&gt; of the two external displays I own.  &lt;i&gt;Both&lt;/i&gt; worked fine previously, when booted from the install CDs, &lt;i&gt;or&lt;/i&gt; from Linux on the same machine.&lt;p&gt;Plugging in my Firewire audio interface on the same machine spun the CPU up to 100% and kept it pegged there.  A lot of good having a nice mic pre-amp does when you get a high pitched fan whir added gratis to all of your recordings.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s silly to pretend that Mac is somehow perfect in these matters.  In my experience it&apos;s only been marginally better than Linux, if at all.  And with Linux you have some hope of finding a solution, whereas for OS X you&apos;re pretty much hosed.</text></item><item><author>cletus</author><text>This is the money quote:&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62; The second dimension to the problem is that no two Linux distributions agreed on which core components the system should use.&lt;p&gt;Linux on the desktop suffered from a lack of coherent, strategic vision, consistency and &lt;i&gt;philosophy&lt;/i&gt;. Every engineer I know likes to do things a particular way. They also have a distorted view on the level of customization that people want and need.&lt;p&gt;I like OSX. Out of the box it&apos;s fine. That&apos;s what I want. I don&apos;t want to dick around with Windows managers or the like. Some do and that&apos;s fine but almost no one really does.&lt;p&gt;Whereas Windows and OSX can (and do) dictate a topdown vision for the desktop experience, Linux can&apos;t do this. Or maybe there&apos;s been no one with the drive, conviction and gravitas to pull it off? Who knows? Whatever the case, this really matters for a desktop experience.&lt;p&gt;I have two monitors on my Linux desktop. A month ago full screen on video stopped working. Or I guess I should say it moved to the center of the two screens so is unusable. I have no idea why. It could be an update gone awry. It could be corp-specific modifications. It could be anything. But the point is: &lt;i&gt;I don&apos;t care what the problem is, I just want it to work&lt;/i&gt;. In this regard, both Windows and OSX just work. In many others too.&lt;p&gt;I can&apos;t describe to you how much torture it always seems to be to get anything desktop-related to work on Linux. I loathe it with a passion. I&apos;ve long since given up any idea that Linux will ever get anywhere on the desktop. It won&apos;t. That takes a topdown approach, the kind that anarchies can&apos;t solve.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rahoulb</author><text>The real difference is that on OSX is if something doesn&apos;t work it doesn&apos;t work. Under Linux it may work, or work badly, or you can probably hack it to make it work well. I used to think I liked the latter but there&apos;s something appealing about the binary clarity of OSX.</text></comment>