Future of Linux

**Tommaso** · 11-13-2005

Just wondering what you all think. Will linux be moving in a more graphical interface, that will eventually abandon the terminal completely, or will it stick with text based commands, tools and programs?

**cheetahman** · 11-13-2005

It will go GUI

**bigtomrodney** · 11-13-2005

I think it will always have it's modularity, which is it's strength but we may well see distros that focus on a top-to-bottom on epiece OS. I think Ubuntu, with its suppressed root and no CLI runlevels is a forewarning of this. To be honest, Linux has become very smooth and refined over the past two-three years. At it's present rate of growth if things don't change it's likely to make OSX look clumsy. I don't mean to start a war on this, but look back at say Suse 7 or Red Hat 8. Great systems but really felt stuck together at the edges and any hardware changes or usability required technical knowledge and patience. Look at Suse now. Extreme ease of use. The difficulty for people isn't learning linux, it's forgetting Windows. People are just set in their ways. I here complaints constantly about package management but what's so hard about yast/yum/urpmi/apt etc. this is far easier than windows installs but people are just missing a silly graphical wizard ultimately confuses and complicates things.

**borromini** · 11-13-2005

Errm... Then why the heck is MS implementing a whole new shell in Vista? Are they looking back instead of looking ahead? I think they feel the need for a full terminal environment...

As for Linux, it will improve, no doubt. Maybe it will start to use a uniform package management, who knows? Let's hope Linux gets more widespread, so hardware vendors will improve hardware support.

**a thing** · 11-13-2005

That's pretty funny.

**borromini** · 11-13-2005

Originally Posted by a thing

That's pretty funny.

MS with the Vista shell? Or what do you mean?

**a thing** · 11-13-2005

At first I meant the original post, but I guess both are pretty funny

Obviously Monand will suck, and it's not even going to be ready by the time Vista's out.

**anomie** · 11-13-2005

Will linux be moving in a more graphical interface, that will eventually abandon the terminal completely, or will it stick with text based commands, tools and programs?

I seriously doubt a GUI will ever be tied to Linux in the sense you may be thinking. There have been opportunities to make it so, and I think Linus (and hopefully his successors one day) know better.

One huge strength in *nix is you can actually get work done from the CLI. This means you can control it as a true networked multi-user operating system via a nice little console, without ever firing up X. It is impossible to do much of anything strictly from Windows' CLI, for example.

**bigtomrodney** · 11-13-2005

I agree that CLI is the basis of and one of the greatest strengths of linux. I guess the point I'm making is that *distros* (not the whole linux development) will be developing a really seemless system. From bootloader to desktop completely seemless, no visibilty of the differences between QT and GTK. Suse have made their systems look pretty uniform from boot on, but I mean no flickering X server when starting, the forthcoming Xorg composite extension in more use and of course a faster boot out of the box would be nice.

Not that all distros should be doing this, but as much as the "Is linux ready for the desktop" argument is dead and buried, we could still use a whole lot of polish. It's not missing now, it just could be better as could any OS.

**Dachnaz** · 11-14-2005

Originally Posted by bigtomrodney

This is far easier than windows installs but people are just missing a silly graphical wizard ultimately confuses and complicates things.

ZOMG! But I love Merlin! I NEED MERLIN IN MY LINUX! ZOMGZOMG!

/end satyr

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