Six Great Desktop Linux Features You May Take for Granted
Jan. 13th, 2012 by Christopher Tozzi
Maybe it’s just a sign that I’m getting old, but more and more often lately I’ve found myself thinking thoughts like, “Back in my day, Linux didn’t have X, Y and Z. We did without!” With these sentiments in mind, I decided to put together a list of a few major desktop Linux technologies that millions of users now take for granted, but which didn’t exist only a few years ago. Read on for a look.
First, though, I should caution that this isn’t a paean to desktop Linux’s infallibility. There certainly remains a lot of room for improvement in the Linux experience, both on the desktop and beyond. But that said, it’s also worth recognizing the clear progress that has been made over the course of the last several years, bringing innovations that — if you’re like me — you may now simply take for granted.
Namely, these include:
- Better hardware support: Broadly speaking, hardware support has improved tremendously in just a few years. Efforts such as compat-wireless have ensured much better out-of-the-box support for wireless cards. At the same time, many distributions have introduced tools, such as Ubuntu’s “jockey” (a.k.a. Hardware Drivers) package, to make it much easier to install proprietary device drivers. Remember when you had to download Nvidia’s Unix driver source code, drop to runlevel 3, type some archaic commands to compile it and then reboot the computer? If not, you can thank jockey (or its equivalent in your distribution of choice).
- New desktop interfaces: The latest generation of Linux desktop environments — namely GNOME Shell and Unity – has not been without controversy. But regardless of whether you like the particular details of the new desktop environments, it’s clear they’ve wrought major changes for the desktop Linux experience. Ultimately, I’m optimistic their kinks will be worked out and the new interfaces will change the desktop definitively for the better.
- Kernel mode setting: It’s hard to believe that KMS has existed in Ubuntu only since 2009. And while it’s still not supported by all video drivers, it works pretty well now in many cases, bringing with it a much smoother graphical experience beginning within the first moments of booting the system.
- Desktop compositing, implemented most famously in the form of compiz, has also radically transformed the desktop experience for Linux users since the mid-2000s. Many of the “desktop effects” that it makes possible may constitute simple eye candy more than tangibly useful features, but they nonetheless make Linux much nicer to look at. And some of them, such as desktop zoom, can prove tremendously valuable at times.
- User-friendly virtualization: Virtualization technology has been around in one form or another for decades, so it’s not exactly novel. But what is new are virtualization tools simple enough for the masses to use. In particular, I give my praise to VirtualBox, which makes it trivially easy to run Windows or Linux guests on a desktop Linux system, complete with advanced features including clipboard-sharing and even 3D acceleration in the guest.
- KVM: On the virtualization note, the KVM hypervisor has also changed Linux for the better. Admittedly, KVM’s most important applications tend to be on Linux servers more than desktops, and as a tool designed for serious system administrators it is not the most user-friendly virtualization technology out there — although I have argued in the past that’s it’s getting there. All the same, I love that, as a semi-geek, I can open a terminal and fire up a virtual machine via KVM with a few simple commands — making it super-easy to test out new Linux ISOs, for example.
This list is undoubtedly not exhaustive. But it does, I hope, highlight some of the major ways in which the desktop Linux experience has indisputably changed for the better over the last several years. Take note so that someday, when you’re old and gray, you can tell your grandchildren (or great-grandchildren, or great-great-grandchildren, as the case may be) what Linux was like “back in the day” — assuming, of course, that the Mayan apocalypse prophecy does not prove true before then.
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Posted In: hardware | Open Source | Ubuntu
Tags: compat-wireless | Compiz | Desktop Linux | desktop virtualization | GNOME 3 | GNOME Shell | History | Kernel Mode Setting | KVM | Linux | Linux Desktop Environments | Linux wireless | Open Source | Ubuntu | Unity | virtualization
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Hardware support:
Disregarding legacy hardwared and also Unity/Ubuntu issues with GPU’s there are really few issues with hardware. A coupple remains: Tungsten’s propietary code is afaik not completely circumvented (early Intel GPU’s are trash anyway), and Optimus may cause some challenges as some vendors don’t provide for a choice in BIOS. (Optimus don’t switch automagically on Linux).
Wrt Nvidia we didn’t really compile the driver itself, but the interface between the driver and the kernel. I believe I’ve got the Linux driver before the Windows driver from Nvidia lately.
Buy any HP or Lexmark printer and it will work flawlessly. Buy a Creative webcam – the box is penguin equipped. I’ve tested and used a lot of 3g modems – it’s easier to get up and running in Linux than in OSX or any version of Windows.
For my laptop I have a W7 64 pro retail disk. With Linux I get all drivers, flash, java, browsers ++ during installation. My W7 retail are missing 5-6 drivers. Even though Microsoft has copied the principal of installation which Ubuntu made popular – it is still faster to install my preferred manual intevention linux distribution than W7.
Composite:
Compiz made Ubuntu. Some of it was for fun – some of it useful. But can anyone imagine iOS, WP, Android, Blackberry, WebOS and Meego without effects that could be traced back to Compiz? Unity still uses Compiz (Gnome don’t) and Unity, KDE and Compiz cooperates well.
Desktop Environments:
I believe KDE is really worth mentioning – it’s extremely sophisticated and scaleable (formfactors).
@Jack: minor quibble upon quibble; yes you compile the shim and link it with a binary blob from nvidia, producing a .ko. But recall that the modern use of ‘compile’ is really a misnomer, and the original statement is not as wrong as it looks…
Sure Jon – agree.
Used to do that thing rather frequently, but it’s abt 10 years ago. For any “mainstream pc user” compiling anything to get hardware work is fairly unusual, and apart from the Nvidia stuff it wasn’t very usual for “mainstream pc users” then either. Unless one wanted to off course.
Some years back I had to replace the Ubuntu kernel with the Debian one because Ubuntu had done a few “funny things” but again – odd stuff.
Jack: as regards not actually compiling the Nvidia driver source, you’re certainly right. I thought about that before publishing but didn’t think anyone would be diligent enough to call me out
In retrospect I probably should have used a more ambiguous word like “build” instead of compile.
It’s also true that even five years ago users didn’t have to compile stuff frequently, but I recall doing it a lot more then than I do now. I used to have to build my Ralink wireless drivers from source with each kernel upgrade, for example, and I remember compiling alsa a few times because of issues with my audio hardware.
Christopher:
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I do agree that it doesn’t really matter that much.
There’s one exemption: People with no Linux experience wrongfully connects the dots between Linux desktop and Compiling.
Wrt hardware I am of the opinion that Ubuntu does a lot of custom work on their kernel/system. Most of the time these customizations are for the good, but I have also experienced that the changes have resulted in trouble with other hardware.
Wrt sound, Ubuntu’s implementation of pulseaudio was troublesome and received quite severe critisism from users and devs.
It was Ubuntu who popularised easy install (copied/adapted by e.g opensuse and Windows) and made compiz easily available.
That combo (with Gnome that was easy to handle for fresh users) made Linux accessible for everyone who wanted to use it. I believe Linux owes Ubuntu a lot.
One caveat is that Ubuntu is presented as THE solution for everybody running any pc disregarding the user’s needs and hardware. That is wrong, and has left quite a few aspiring Linux users shivering with disgust and rage when Linux and Ubuntu is mentioned.
Linux and Ubuntu (LTS) will work for most people, but not everybody.
That’s my opinion anyway ;o)
I remember finally getting a Broadcom working in Fedora 1 or 2, but only on wide open wireless networks. What a ruckus… Glad things have come a ways.
We take Firefox for granted. Having a good modern browser on your desktop is more than feature
The most obvious feature to me is virtual desktops. When talking about “features taken for granted” I also think of package management (or ports), something that other users only relatively recently got with their ‘app stores’.
Rarely the need to reboot when doing system administration also comes to mind. Having Yakuake to get access to a meaningful CLI without actually leaving the desktop environment is also something I too easily take for granted.
Compared to Windows there are a few small things that my window manager (KDE) does better. Scrolling what’s under the mouse and not what’s activated is the most important one. A very personal issue (I think): KDE gives me the context sensitive menu when I click the right mouse button, not when I click AND release the button. (In fact it’s possible to click & hold the button, select the action, release the button and have the action executed.)
My mouse isn’t supported by the manufacturer for Linux and is somehow not recognized by Lomoco. That’s limiting but on the other hand changing the polling rate turned out to be trivial.