> More importantly for the future success of Linux was that the X11 system was ported to it, making 1992 the year of the Linux desktop.
Currently, OSS (etc) OSes are synonymous with Linux; I don't think I will ever see eye to eye with the Linux design philosophy; too many compromises which prioritize servers, multi-user IT systems; embraces scattered state across the FS etc.
https://easyos.org/about/how-and-why-easyos-is-different.htm...
Note the remarks about sudo, folders, and GUIs.
15.1 (due out next week) is their first big laptop focused release from the recent grant money. They have a list of current laptops that they test with for you to buy.
Barring that, Devuan Linux is not bad either, and is still a cohesive system.
*macos26 introduced a multitude of accessibility regressions that have real-world impact on humans with disabilities, let alone AI
Which is a really strong argument for most people just buying chromebooks, which run linux.
I also don't care about "OS-maxxing", either--quibbling over 'Wayland', or which OS has the best window manager, arguing about 'gaming', etc.
What I do care about? Freedom and control. Linux gives me that.
So my desktop? It's Linux. The Year of Linux on the Desktop arrived for me years ago. And it can be that year for anyone, anytime. Today.
Of course, this did turn out to be true... in the form of Android, which is maybe the most monkeys-paw-curling way YotLD could possibly happen.
I think a lot of this comes down to what we're looking for out of an OS. For example, it is orthogonal to what I care about most: "Provides a low friction interface between my body and arbitrary software"
Relevant: I do think about the freedom and control aspect about computing; I (personally) tie it to the software or hardware design instead of the interface. Or in some cases, the use of creative software. (DAW, CAD, document writers etc)
Why would agents want GUIs made for humans? It's already the case that, like everyone who's good at computers, agents want a terminal and good APIs, not some ad-ridden crap.
If anything, AI is a reason why it will never be the year of the linux desktop but also it doesn't matter anymore, because if the higher-order bit of productivity is defined by AI, then my tmux+vim is as good as your Visual Studio.
> tmux+vim is as good as your Visual Studio.
Your terminal should split panes for and do tabs. Ghostty is my preferred but use whatever. And fwiw, even if your terminal sucks vim can do this all for you too (:term), so you don't even need to leave vim.
> vim is better than your Visual Studio.
Side note: just because you can live in the terminal on Linux doesn't mean GUIs can't exist or are even second class citizens. The real beauty is being able to have both. You can have a platform that is usable for most people while not fucking over power users. Wild concept, I know
Everybody needs tmux, especially locally.
My terminal splits panes (which I don't use), but what if I want to open two terminals that share the same set of splits? Can't. But tmux can!
What if I want to SSH back into my desktop (because I'm on a laptop or whatever) and grab something from my desktop terminal? Can't. But tmux can!
Vim splits and the vim terminal are poorly implemented. Technically, yes, they work. But you'll run into a lot of issues. I know, because a few years ago I went down the same path: Why do I need tmux, when I have vim!? ... I quickly learned why I needed tmux.
I agree with your side note: plasma+kitty+tmux and a few support scripts:
(please don't criticize my scripts; these were never meant to be shared, and it's a disaster, but it works for me)
I have this script (https://doc.xn0.org/tmuxedkitty-newwindow.sh) bound to WIN+T; it opens kitty, and either creates a new tmux session if there isn't one or attaches to the existing session and creates a new pane.
Then, I have my insane (I understand I am insane, but it works for me!) tmux config file: https://doc.xn0.org/.tmux.conf
Then, I have my insane zshrc that auto-titles my tmux windows: https://doc.xn0.org/.zshrc
Using titles from: https://doc.xn0.org/tmux-window-titles
I have put way too much thought and time into this...
I don't care much about agents though, I sure see as potentially useful some desktop assistant, and that is that.
It feels nowadays that if someone genuinely puts the effort into untangling a codebase, fixing the long-standing issues and navigating the maze of legacy paths, the backlash and politics around it leaves the project deflated and unappreciated. The reaction around Xlibre shows how hostile these situations can become. Personally, I still prefer Xorg in many ways, even if Wayland is technically the newer direction.
FOSS was a powerful ideological concept in the 90s when most software was proprietary and corporate-controlled. The 2000s felt like real growth and experimentation. Today, a lot of it feels fragmented, cynical, and increasingly institutionalized. Another problem with FOSS is that projects usually end up in one of a few states, a strong “dictator” model where someone drives the direction through sheer effort and resources, a loose community model where everything gets patched together by committee or eventual corporate stewardship.
Or someone gets frustrated enough to fork a project, but then these forks are often treated socially as hostile when that was the core ideology of FOSS.
A lot of modern “FOSS” infrastructure are effectively: corporate-funded, corporate-prioritized or community-accessible rather than community-directed. It's free in the sense of that you can download the source, compile it yourself but for yourself to contribute unless you have the resources, is hard and time consuming. So you end up following the path it's taking.
If the corporations benefiting from these ecosystems consistently reinvested back into the communities maintaining them the FOSS landscape would look very different if not more healthier, more sustainable, and far less bitter.
Most of LLM world is kind of anti-linux right now because the most popular LLMs are walled off by these huge companies and hella expensive. At some point, a nerd will realize they could hack together a surprisingly ok homebrew version of what everybody else is using, and do. Then a company realizes that they can build a brand on the anarchist, grassroots vibe of the homebrew thing, and capitalize its development (software development, but also community development, which is brand development for the company). Now, it’s much later, but the open source thing is competitive, and popular for being open-source.
At one point I got interested in why Red Hat handed over tens of millions of dollars in stock to Linus leading up to their IPO, in exchange for…nothing specific. Nominally it was a gift of appreciation, but handing out random gifts is somewhat opposed to maximizing shareholder returns. It’s because Linus controls merges to the Linux kernel and doesn’t have to care about Red Hat, and the board wanted him to care at least a little bit. They were stuck between “people trust our business because it’s built on this populist OS” and “this populist OS is mostly controlled by a guy who doesn’t work for us.” It’s hard to have one without the other.
I’m glad Apple is taking accessibility seriously, and I wish accessibility worked better on Linux, but I don’t think Linux is ever going to make developers “do their homework,” because the community wouldn’t trust a Linux like that. If the author is right, it’ll happen because “AI for the People, Inc.” builds a business on it and sponsors the work.
From the outside view, I still wouldn't make any bets with 100% certainty about the future of anything to do with computers.
If you grant that there is some chance that the trends of programming models' capabilities will continue for another few years, then there is some chance that software and its bottlenecks will be completely transformed. A rapidly overhauled accessibility tree for linux? A good-enough computer use model that doesn't require accessibility trees at all? A world of bespoke, personalized operating systems? All of these things (and many more) seem like outcomes with non-zero probabilities.
I dual booted Windows since 95, also tried Mac OSX on $job but nothing comes close to the peace of mind of using Linux.
I have lived through spotty hardware support (fixed), install editing too many files (fixed), no games (fixed) and several other problems, but even in the worst of times it is a software that respects you as a user.
Now use that Accessibility Inspector tool inside Slack (an Electron App) and you'll be welcomed to a deeply nested tree of unlabelled objects.
We have seen a bigger push to get everything using XDG config dirs in recent years, and also getting everything working on Wayland. These to me seem similar, other than that this accessibility standard would be even more niche, and if it was stated upfront to be made with AI in mind, I think there would be resistance.
Personally I do not want to let an AI tool run loose on my machine, but I do like having ways to script and automate stuff. I like Sway's IPC and that every keybind is also a command you could run. So the explanation of Apple's accessibility stuff sounds cool. I wish I had something like Unity's HUD where I could use a search to select from any depth of graphical menus in a given program instead of having to poke around by hand. If the accessibility standard were like that and allowed more stuff to be done from the CLI more easily, that would be great.
It was worse than I imagined it would be. I now deeply regret giving this article a click.
Basically, it's all about how AI can use Mac OS features.
Linux is an OS that lets me do what I want when I want it and importantly _doesn't_ do a whole lot of shit that I _don't_ want it to do, as opposed to macOS or WinDOS. That includes robots wreaking havoc on my desktop.
Being able to run the software you want to run is very important. But not being forced to run software you don't want to run is even more important. And neither Microslop nor Apple respect the wishes of their users in these regards.
So I expect that we will see more and more Linux VM’s. Maybe it will be like Sqlite, ubiquitous but hidden?
That being said, of course it will never be the year of the Linux desktop because Linux is a GPL licensed kernel.
I live in the terminal and that means I can speak the same language as agents[0], but I'm human and also enjoy GUIs and TUIs.
There is no reason a machine can't be usable by normal people AND make power users happy
But your power users are the ones who write programs, fix bugs, and do free work that makes your product more valuable. Apple/others would still make money on every app even if they were to stop taking a cut of sales and stop charging money for developer licenses. They make money by selling the fucking hardware and shipping the OS. They create the environment, they create the default base experience. But no one buys a smartphone or computer without installing new software. Being able to do that is the reason these products are do great.
That's the real reason Linux is starting to win. Because Microsoft and Apple have lost touch. They got greedy, egotistical[1], and myopic.
[0] people keep asking me if it's worth learning now with AI. Bash and terminal knowledge have only become *more* valuable, not less. Think of it this way: do you want a manager with an MBA or one that's been an engineer?
[1] Apple is famous for blaming the user and not recognizing the design is bad. "People wouldn't buy it if it was bad". Well guys what? People won't buy it if it's bad AND there's another option. That's the variable that changed: options
The last one is a huge problem for Windows as well. Its due to Microsoft discontinuing support for S3 sleep mode, which in turn, caused motherboard manufacturers to discontinue S3 support in the BIOS. Which means its no longer available even if you install Linux on the laptop since it requires firmware support to work. You can still find laptops that support S3 sleep if you really look hard enough. Or buy a Mac.
I think the author is actually on the right track at first then dismisses it with: These are "why a person did not switch to Linux last" and not "why the desktop, as an institution, will continue to belong to Apple and Microsoft". You can absolutely get to the root cause of the former and find foundational issues that explain the latter.