It's Simple; Build A Better Desktop

khess 0 307 Views

Mark Shuttleworth, founder and financial backer of Ubuntu, urges the Linux Community to "build a better desktop than Apple." Shuttleworth made this statement this week at OSCON (O'Reilly's Open Source Convention). He added that interoperability with Windows is of very high importance.

Sounds easy enough. Let me get right on that.

Shuttleworth is actually correct. We should focus on a better Linux desktop--better than Apple's Mac OS X--better than Windows--and better than current Linux offerings. If you're not a billionaire like Mark Shuttleworth, how do you go about building a better desktop and then offer it for free?

I'm all for free software. I love free software but someone, somewhere has to pay for all this free software--in time, in salaries, in legal fees, in marketing, in hosting, and in maintenance. I think Mark Shuttleworth should pay for it--seriously. He has the money. It's his idea. Let him shell out the bucks for it.

I'm not being nasty here; I'm being realistic.

The question is: Can a great desktop operating system that people will embrace and use be built and offered for free? The answer, sadly, is no. To create a better anything requires talent. Recruiting and maintaining that talent requires money. So, yes, let's build a better desktop than Apple. Let's build a better desktop than Microsoft. Let them use volunteer labor for 5 years and we'll hire great developers to create the ultimate desktop operating system.

Microsoft and Apple have had years to create, market, and perfect a desktop OS and they did it by investing a great deal of money, time, people, and grey matter to the cause. Right now, there is no company with a Linux desktop as its singular focus. A few have tried, met with varying degrees of failure, and perished in the wake of litigation and disinterest.

Like any good large company manager, I shall delegate 100% of the responsibility of carrying out the deed to the person who thought of it: Mark Shuttleworth, build us a better Linux desktop.

Dani AI

Generated

A short, practical companion to the thread: the “desktop” in this conversation isn’t just icons on a screen — it’s a stack (shell + compositor/window manager + toolkit + core apps + update/store + hardware support). That’s the gap behind ’s question and ’s joke: a modern desktop is an experience built from many moving parts, not one file on disk. (gnome.org)

“Build a better desktop” usually means measurable user wins: faster start, consistent app behavior, predictable updates, reliable graphics, and easy access to the apps people need. A pragmatic roadmap is: 1) define UX goals and HIG; 2) pick/modernize a compositor (Wayland is the current architecture to target); 3) standardize packaging and sandboxing so apps behave the same everywhere (Flatpak/Flathub are the cross-distro answer many projects use); 4) partner with hardware vendors for drivers and testing; 5) measure and iterate. (wayland.freedesktop.org)

Funding and sustainability — the heart of ’s point — are solvable with mixed models, not a single cheque. Volunteer work plus donations, foundation grants, corporate sponsorship, hardware vendors shipping the OS, and paid support or app ecosystems all contribute. KDE and GNOME show how communities combine donations, events, and sponsored contributors; vendors like System76 invest directly in a desktop (Pop!_OS / COSMIC) when they ship hardware. That combination pays salaries, sprints, and QA. (kde.org)

Practical next steps for anyone who wants to help build or evaluate a desktop: focus on one visible win (boot speed, display scaling, high-DPI app fidelity). Keep scope small, write acceptance tests, and ship stable packages via Flatpak/Flathub. Quick check you can run on a Linux PC to see which session you’re on:

echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE

If it prints “wayland”, you’re running a Wayland compositor; if “x11” you’re on X. Small, measurable wins and diverse funding beat one-off grand gestures. (gnome.org)

Member Avatar for Aia
Aia 1,977 Nearly a Posting Maven

>Sounds easy enough. Let me get right on that.
Sarcasm statement that sets the note of the rest of the blog article.

>I think Mark Shuttleworth should pay for it--seriously. He has the money. It's his idea. Let him shell out the bucks for it.
Very typical of leeches' philosophy.
Nevertheless, I would like to ask. Hasn't he been doing that all along?
The man is trying to set an example, to show the possibilities, to set a vision. He has put his money where he has put his word.

Member Avatar for vinothguru
vinothguru 0 Newbie Poster

what is a desktop?

Member Avatar for crunchie
crunchie 990 Most Valuable Poster

what is a desktop?

Somewhere to put objects on.

Member Avatar for donkey_pasta
donkey_pasta 7 Junior Poster in Training

The past couple years have been a step in the right direction. I think Ubuntu is addressing issues that have been in question for a long time.

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