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Linux, product and the art of essence
Quoting: Linux, product and the art of essence —
Perhaps one day I will be able to turn on my Linux-powered machine, everything will work as it should, and then, it will continue working, for years and years and years. My experience will be complete and unchanged. My needs will be met. There will be tight integration, forethought and care in between every and any two interfaces. The system will not be a badly glued assembly of disparate parts, each doing its own thing in isolation. It will be a living, breathing, well-orchestrated WHOLE.
Will that day ever come? I don't know. I used to think so. I sure hoped so. But with every year of Linux not happening, my hope waned a bit. Right now, I'm mighty skeptical. The reason is, I see a bunch of brand new attempts to make Linux "happen". At the same time, I see this brilliant self-sabotage. It's embedded in this almost simulation-like approach, whereby you can simply reset and start afresh. Hence, no support for "old" hardware, hence Wayland-only story, hence even the proposal to deprecate Gtk2. These are unrealistic attempts to reset the world to an arbitrary date, as if the users are simply going to abandon their work and habits and obey happily, because developers can't be bothered with this wee thing called backward compatibility.
This "let's ignore the past and start fresh" approach is the anti-thesis of good user experience. It's fundamentally wrong. There cannot be a good product that ignores what people - the users - need. And people don't care about software frameworks and versions and silly details like that. They want consistency and predictability. And this is something Linux has never been able to do. Never. And the situation is only getting worse. Hopefully, we will see the "eureka" moment in the Linux desktop space, and product will be product. But after some 20+ years of waiting, even my hope has a limit. Farewell, dear Tuxies.