The Windows desktop will regress so much that whatever the open-source community churns out will win by default.

It is a result I suppose...

Though more and more I strongly feel that a startup specializing in brand new Windows 2000 capable hardware will do very well.

Desktop: fine. Lots of GUI options and most of them pretty good. Software? Lots available, of highly variable quality. When it comes to killer applications though, I do not need to preach that without support, users will not come. And support will not come without users.

Libreoffice > MS Office; for a lot of things yes. However, GIMP != Photoshop. Ardour != Reason (or other DAW of choice). Games support - highly variable, often unsupported. And yes, I am a that rare self-flagellating linux gamer. I fully accept a whole bunch of stuff I cannot run because of that choice.

The real killer though, above all, the enemy is Active sodding Directory. Enterprise deployment tools for MS and especially package managers are mostly crap and require third party stuff to make fly... But , AD is incredibly embedded in desktop IT. The only way to break this is either some sort of compatibility layer with AD, or building a complete replacement with equivalent capabilities.

I'd be happy to see a project try the latter; and I am not holding my breath that RHEL or SUSE are going to do it themselves. Do they seriously want to offer a full blown desktop and administration alternative to Win/Exchange/AD?

I still think a more likely scenario for mainstream linux desktop is Windows 13 becoming the bastard spawn of Canonical/MS. MS is involved in Linux distros already of it's own spin, so it is not beyond wit to see this coming.

The other possible route is web applications getting good enough to not care about local desktop. This, I am not holding my breath on for any number of reasons.

Having tried Microsoft's spin on a Linux distro, I can tell you they are trying to make it as much like the Windows experience as they can. And by that, I mean even so far as to screw up simple patching (deleing a directory it needs, then failing to apply an update because said directory is missing - and it was security related).

MS Windows as a wrapper/bridge interface providing AD services and legacy app support to a Linux desktop in the form of a much enhanced and in the foreground WSLx. WSL standing for Windows Supersystem for Linux.

We've been operating without AD perfectly well at my current place for years, and my previous job, while we had it, it was a vestigial stump of a thing and all our actual desktop management was done through puppet and powershell.

Outlook, on the other hand, is impossible to fucking kill. You will prise Outlook from an office drone's cold, dead hands. Excel too. If we used O365 as our mail provider then maybe we could get away without desktop Outlook, but we don't.

We use google as our mail provider, Macs as our primary desktop, and still we have people demanding Outlook - and then when they discover that the Mac version of outlook isn't quite the same as the Windows one, they demand a Windows VM to run Windows Outlook in on their Mac.

...they get it too, because these people include the PA's of senior executives, and they'll just order us to do whatever the PA wants for the sake of a quiet life. It doesn't matter how insane it is, until we can run the MS office suite in it's entirety on Linux it's a dead end.

There are now an entire generation of PA's, Accountants, Legal assistants, HR bods - back office staff of every kind - who have used MS office for their entire careers and they will commit cold blooded murder before they're prepared to give it up now.

That goes double for the kinds of people - and you have met them, we've all met them - who will call the helpdesk if they accidentally re-order the icons on their desktop. They have no idea how to use their computer. They've memorized a handful of tasks inside Office that they do day in, day out, and they simply will not be trained to use something else - and since that most definitely includes many of the aforementioned senior executives, good luck getting management buy in on the idea that we should try and force them to.

"There are now an entire generation of PA's, Accountants, Legal assistants, HR bods - back office staff of every kind - who have used MS office for their entire careers and they will commit cold blooded murder before they're prepared to give it up now."

More like:

"There are now an entire generation of PA's, Accountants, Legal assistants, HR bods - back office staff of every kind - who have used MS office for their entire careers and they won't, can CAN'T, worry about and give up compatibility with their saved data just to switch to an OS and matching office suite that does not guarantee any real benefits in productivity or benefits!".

FIFY.

I'm horribly sorry, but in August I just PROVED that LO is *still* not compatible with the latest MS Office .DOX formats.

https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2022/08/19/libreoffice_7_4/#c_4517657

So why should these back office staff switch both their OS *and* their office productivity suite if they can't guarantee that they'll be able to open their documents and continue with their work unimpeded?? Just to satisfy the [false] promises of the F/OSS community about some proposed "benefit"?

It's bullshaite. And, no, it is NOT MS's responsibility to create a .DOCX format that allows others a guarantee of compatibility. They don't have to - it's their format, their software, to call the shots on.

And, no, it is NOT MS's responsibility to create a .DOCX format that allows others a guarantee of compatibility. They don't have to - it's their format, their software, to call the shots on.

In this you are entirely correct. Which is why .docx format should never be used in order to remain compliant with the document standards requirements laid out in the Equality Act 2010. The UK government goes as far as to explicitly recommend .odt or html in their accessibility guidelines.

So, no, it's not Microsoft's responsibility to comply. But it may well be yours if you work in the UK.

We just got orders from corporate IT not to use Outlook locally and to delete any PST files.

I'm assuming somebody got caught with saved evidence of something that the Office365 version could have deleted.

All the Office365/Teams/sharepoint stuff works perfectly from Edge under Linux.

Ironically it's mostly hardware that need to keep a Windows dual-boot, there are no good CAD / FPGA / PCB tools under Linux

It's rather impressive, really.

I think this, more than anything else will have more people moving to actual Linux desktops, rather than any cloudy stuff. So,as opposed to the arguments made in this piece, it might well happen the old fashioned local installation way rather than the cloud virtual desktop subscription racket. Even a moderately comfortable family, running a desktop system, with additional laptops for both parents and kids are going to face quite a monthly cost to be able to access both desktops and office software.

This will make them far more open to the idea of a traditional standalone desktop OS and office suite, especially if they can be helped to discover that they can get it for free and it's easy to install. Of course there are still obstacles to this, the main ones I've found being the non inclusion of media playback codecs and software that supports them. However, times are tough for many people right now, and forcing an eternal subscription on them can only push more people to give Linux a try, and discover that it indeed is a much better desktop experience than bloaty greedy naggy Windows these days, as well as being a big money saver.

Just don't count on that, OK ? Windows users are going to take any imaginable abuse from Microsoft. They've proven it for more than two decades.

I've been using various flavours of Ubuntu since 2005. That's nearly how long a child born then needs to wait to vote.

In then I have repeated seen the Linux desktop kyboshed by the community.

No Exchange server client (so no Outlook equivalent).

Breaking Bluetooth.

Ignoring Miracast.

are just 3 mis steps that have killed every attempt I have made to interest my employers over that time.

One problem for many (most?) businesses and individual users is the lack of unix drivers (that actually work) for many older peripherals. Linux is good with networking, file systems, and monitors. Printers,scanners,etc? Not so much. Custom hardware? Forget it. And unix is a hell of a lot less aggravating for system administrators to work with than Windows. (No Registry for starters). But if your workflow depends on some older piece of gear, you may be stuck with Windows pretty much forever.

I will not purchase any printer that is not CUPS-capable, nor a scanner that is "not SANE". As for the rest, it is true that SOME hardware vendors play the windows-only game, but nowadays [with some exceptions] even cheap garbage from China seems to have Linux support, particularly when it comes to bluetooth and network things.

as for older gear, you are probably right. There are industrial systems out there that have Windows 98 control software (and no path for upgrade)

I've seen such industrial control systems with WIndows 98 installed on high-value instrumentation, with ethernet connections that definitely make their way onto the open internet.

"Never" been a problem so sayeth the owners. Until the day it is.

I've never had a problem with printer support in Linux, but then again I only use decent older single-function printers (My HP Laserjet 6p is still going strong!). Scanners support is very hit and miss though, and I resorted to using Windows in a Virtualbox VM just to use the flaky Epson software. (Wine coudldn't cope with it).

I had a plan to convert my entire business to Linux as they were already using cross-platform programs, but I decided that I couldn't be arsed to deal with all the "personalities" involved and got someone in to "upgrade" to Win 10 instead.

Never had a problem with printer scanner drivers with Linux. However have had to discard a couple of working devices as windows upgrades trashed the drivers.

Happened to me too. I had to discard a perfectly functional Canon scanner and a Microsoft joystick when Windows 7 refused to support them. Not to mention about a 15 year old Dell Latitude laptop that Microsoft abandoned when Windows XP reached EoL even though it worked (and still works) beautifully on each and every of the last 5 Linux Mint major versions (17 up to 21).

Well, let me give you an example of the kind of problems that I, and many others, have had. Our family doesn't do a lot of printing, but I have two printers on our network -- and Inkjet (HP1112) and a very low end LaserJet (HP1102W). The Inkjet hasn't been a problem as long as I print a test page every two weeks to keep the jets from clogging.

The LaserJet? Mechanically it's great. Reliable. Supports many network protocols. Warms up in seconds. Feeds paper even in the occasional periods of North American Summer tropical humidity. In fact, it's our standby printer and gets used not only by me, but by the whole family every time Microsoft screws up and kills their printer setups. They just email the print file to me, and I print it from Linux until someone finds the time/inclination to reinstall the printers in Windows.

Software wise? Not so good. Two problems. Initial Setup and Printer Protocol.

Initial Setup. Presumably to get around the fact that not all PCs have floppy or CDROM capability, this thing fresh from the box pretends to be a storage device. You need to connect it to a Windows computer which can then read the Windows (but not Linux) drivers from the device, install them and reconfigure the thing as a printer. Is there a Linux program to do this? As I recall, yes. But it didn't work. No problem. We just set the printer up from Windows and once set up, it'd talk to the Network. (But USB from Linux still thinks it's a storage device. No matter. Network only is good enough for us). I attribute this design to forebrain destroying contaminants in the drinking water in Silicon Valley.

Printer Protocol. The HP-1102W uses the relatively uncommon ZJS protocol instead of PCL or Postscript to stream data to the printer. One needs a a driver to convert other representations to ZJS. For Linux HP provides a driver (which works--Yeah) and an automatic installer which in the tradition of automatic installers everywhere and always, didn't. So I had to dig out and download a copy of the #@$driver (hpijs I think) and a ppd file that I had to tune to my configuration. This took a bit of time and modest amount of cursing.

My current problem: I have a chromebook that I'd occasionally like to print from. HP, to their credit, supports printing from chrome to many of their printers. BUT, the HP1102W is one of the ones they don't seem to support. Probably can't just copy the driver from my Intel Linux machine to the chromebook and I am afraid to try. What could possibly go wrong? Don't know and don't want to find out the hard way. So I'm thinking in terms of a server on some unused port on the Linux machine that will look like a printer to the chromebook and can then print via my existing software. Can that be done with existing Unix tools plus perhaps a bit of Python? My guess is yes. How? Haven't the slightest. Maybe I'll work it out someday. Or not. In the meantime, I print to pdf on the chromebook, copy the pdf to a usb stick. Move it to the Linux machine and print the pdf. OK for once a month or so.

Why not set up a shared watched folder on the linux box? Save a PDF in there from the chromebook and it will print out automagically. Have a search for 'incron'.

For scanners. try VueScan. It supports a whole lot of scanners. It isn't free, however. My wife uses the Windows (pro) version, and I use the native linux (pro) version. I've used it for years, including with a rather industrial SCSI scanner (Epson?) and with a Canon LiDE cheapo scanner. I now use it for my reasonably modern Epson V700.

Best wishes,

Bob

I guess I have been doing it all wrong for the last 23 years...

One of the schools that I worked in had Linux on all of the student PCs and we never had a problem. Students really only need an office suite, a web browser and some disk space to store their work on.

"20xx will be the year of the Linux desktop." The punchline is, of course, it will never happen.

That's not how jokes work. That's not a punchline. It goes like this...

NEXT year will be the year of the Linux desktop! And it always will be.

There, FTFY.

(title is quote from article)

If the future for MS "services" to be online AND subscription "time sharing", then we're full circle back to the same old mainframe/mini and dumb terminal model.

There is no clear advantage to using a time-share over a local PC unless you are a mega-enterprise that wants to limit hardware costs.

And the TRUE INNOVATION from MILLIONS of independent software developers (working on their OWN stuff, much of which ended up as open source software) that has been made possible by local PC's running the OS that most people are using, can NOT be ignored. Micros~1 (particularly Ballmer) *USED* *TO* *SAY* " [1]Developers [2]Developers [3]Developers [4]Developers ", because it really DID put them at the top of the market.

WILL THERE BE THAT SAME CAPABILITY IN THE FUTURE? Or would the cloudy new "services" model lock EVERYONE in to Micros~1-only coding?

Android is by far more popular than iOS especially for developers like ME that do not want to pay "the Apple Tax". It is ExTREMELY open and the cost of starting development (other than your time) is the bandwidth to download it all and a PC (possibly running Linux) to run it on. If Micros~1 abandons developers (aside from those willing to pay for the privilege) they may be reduced to a 'niche' market, quickly.

And once again I am faced with an immediate choice: Pay out $800 for another year of "what used to be MSDN", or ABANDON MICROS~1 OS DEVELOPMENT ENTIRELY (seeing as my ability to run Windows 11 is flaky at best inside of a Vitrtual Box VM, even JUST for testing, and I can continue to target 7 indefinitely without their downloads)?

But if windows desktop is subscription only AND "in the cloud", will the applications that I write (that run just fine on 7) EVEN WORK ON THAT PLATFORM???

[1] https://www.geekwire.com/2021/developers-developers-developers-ballmer-sinofsky-talk-microsoft-memes-clubhouse/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33grif58qO8

[3] https://www.theregister.com/2011/09/14/ballmer_reprises_developers_developers_developers/

[4] https://github.com/steve-ballmer/DEVELOPERS

Ahh! There's the bombastic bob we all know and love 1 , sticky caps lock and all!

1 For various values of "love"...

I seem to be increasingly out of kilter with the rest of humanity.

I don't want to put my data on their clouds, never mind use their apps to do my work in! Nor do I want them snooping on every key stroke I make, every website I use, every file type I save etc.etc.

I want control of my computing : my choice of desktop and the apps I want to use. And I want the assurance that I don't have to rely on the internet, or that their servers won't go down because it's too hot, or there's some power supply problem etc. etc.

I'm pleased to be a Linux-user, and can't see a time when I won't be.

I seem to be increasingly out of kilter with the rest of humanity big tech's marketing droids .

There, FTFY.

Humanity has nothing to do with it....

"The real problem remains that Microsoft retained its first-mover desktop operating system advantage by forcing PC companies to only offer Windows to its customers in the 1990s. Combine that with the simple fact that people don't like to change, and you have the real reason why neither Linux nor macOS has advanced beyond niche desktop roles"

NO. Stop playing Linux victim and continuing the lie that the reason that users still use Windows is because 'evil Microsoft forces PC companies to sell it to you!'.

Linux, STILL, does not have the end-user application support necessary to win the desktop . PERIOD. END OF DISCUSSION.

As earlier poster have said, "GIMP != Photoshop. Ardour != Reason", and I'll even add "[blank space here, no Linux alternative] != Adobe suite" *and* "Kdenlive != Final Cut Pro" (even though it shouldn't be relevant, Mac, but it is relative to desktop comparisons).

The F/OSS end-user desktop application landscape is generally vastly inferior to closed source alternatives except in certain fields (STEM being one of them, where it excels). This makes sense: the greatest F/OSS supporters are in the IT tech field themselves, so they develop end-user desktop applications to suit their own needs, solve their own problems. Those IT tech gurus then share their work with the world in hopes that someone will be helped by the solutions they created for themselves .

But all too often those same IT tech gurus are not very good at understanding non-tech user design, and the GUI suffers as a result. So the F/OSS desktop user experience suffers from programmers that are excellent in coding but not very good in designing great user experiences - and users who may try out a F/OSS alternative see this.

Good desktop application design is hard , a balancing of both skill and art. The F/OSS community needs concentrate more on solving desktop user problems in a skillful, "artistic" and user-friendly way - simple, pretty, easy to use, and attractive to the user who sits in front of that app screen for the first time - and stop thinking that their focus on the science of coding - "elegant and beautiful code" - matters to average users. Average users don't SEE your "beautiful and elegant" code and simply don't care that your source code is readable. They. Don't. Care. All they care about is if the application does what it is supposed to, in a way that they can use it.

@Snake said

"Good desktop application design is hard, a balancing of both skill and art. The F/OSS community needs concentrate more on solving desktop user problems in a skillful, "artistic" and user-friendly way - simple, pretty, easy to use, and attractive to the user who sits in front of that app screen for the first time "

Well, for me, The Office software, Photoshop and many other huge windows applications do not fit those criteria. They are a PITA to use as a first time user (& with Office does not improve much over time unless you use the software frequently & so get used to on-intuitive "areas" that some functionality is to be found). I speak as an occasional user of the Office suite at work (my home kit does not run the office suite as it would mean spending £ when I can do what I need with other software).

Work involves heavy use of Windows software, but, for non work use, there is no compelling reason for me to use Windows on my personal laptop (I do run it sometimes as laptop came with Windows, but its set up multiboot and so I more frequently run Linux).

.. However, as I live in the arse end of nowhere with dismal copper ADSL internet connectivity, OS in the cloud does not appeal with poor bandwidth - and I can happily use my laptop (on "local" files) anywhere I want to without needing an internet connection. A "Cloud OS" does not appeal with poor connectivity, nor does the idea of having to potentially hook up to wifi I'm not in control of when out and about with a "Cloud OS" as I like to keep MITM attack risks low.

.. Because although I'm sure the "Cloud OS" will be marketed with offline working will be fine with the occasional connectivity needed to "sync", in reality it will be a clusterf**k without near 24/7 connectivity.

So, I really don't see a "Cloud OS" being great for my personal home use ... and thats without even getting into areas such as my backups being local and quick and easy to backup and restore irrespective of connectivity (& if I want to I can back up stuff in the cloud without needing a "Cloud OS")

So why would we ever need a new local pc. All it has to do is be an RDP terminal. So having juiced the PC makers' sales with Win11, they will never sell another.

Expect this to get deep-sixed soon!

So why would we ever need a new local pc. All it has to do is be an RDP terminal.

I'm getting a flashback to 30 years ago. X terminals for the win!

to be a Linux user than a Mac or Windows user. It's got a bit better, but not that much better.

Not sure on that. When I got an M1 Mac I had to google for hours to find a command line trick that properly disabled the screen saver on the Mac. There's a GUI option to do it, but it doesn't actually work. It works through the GUI last time I did the same thing on Ubuntu.

*wipes eyes*

Ahahahahaha. Ahahah. Ah man thanks for that.