Is Linux Desktop Dead? Let's talk about facts
After last interview to Miguel De Icaza the web sphere burn of comments about linux pros and cons, but let's talk about facts:
Success
- Raspberry Pi
- Android (vs WebOS, Meego/Maemo/Moblin, Tizen, Linpus, Openmoko..) but it is a "Mobile Linux" very diffent from a classic Linux Desktop
- Left 4 Dead 2 on Ubuntu is faster (It's a good news from Valve but a 32 vs 64bit "comparison")
Fail
- Debian moves to Xfce, Ubuntu has Unity and other minor distros develop their own forked Desktop Environment
- Linux and power consumptions
- Linux and poor/unsupported graphic drivers. I still can't run webgl with default intel or ati drivers.
- Many stories of developers who switch to mac osx [2] + brew for development. Redhat use a mac to present their open source linux platform openshift.
Unknown
- Gimp.app runs on osx without X11, but Linux user still have to wait somebody or the distro will ship Gimp 2.8 in deb or rpm
There are lights and shadows.. you judge, but for the masses it's irrelevant.