I love the Linux desktop, but that doesn't mean I don't see its problems all too well.

I doubt that desktop OSes will vanish. On desktop PCs and notebooks you have a big screen, big keyboard - all that is convenient and sometimes the only option when you need some kind of work done (even gaming). Mobile devices are good, but they are not so powerful and their screens are quite small. So, I accepted this and simply enjoy alternatives to Windows. The important fact is that only Linux is flexible: you can do (or get) almost everything you want it to be, that is why there are so many Linux-based distros. Of course, there are downsides of Linux world (I mean as a software), but that is great we already have alternatives. Thanks to people who spent their time of life to do and continue to do that great job.
The mobile processor has taken leaps and bounds. Apple's M1 is entirely ARM-based, yet is will destroy a 3rd gen Ryzen CPU. Intel's 12th gen CPUs are ARM/x86 hybrids (main cores are x86_64 and delegates work to ARM64 cores, thus keeping the platform and instruction set the usual x86_64). BTW, the M1's weakest chip is about 10% more powerful the intel's i9 9900 series on single-threaded, meaning it isn't just clustering, this power difference is significant.

Screen size and peripherals are irrelevant, coz as I've said in many threads, we are heading towards docking our mobiles, which will connect to a monitor and other peripherals. Connective technology already exists for this, the only hurdles would come from number of devices connected affecting and affected by performance (I think bus speeds on mobile boards will be one of the biggest challenges).
Battery life as the biggest constraint, but using power-saving technologies and with the increase of lithium-ion battery capacity, I think this will fix itself (especially as the last of the laptops with removeable batteries start shipping with built-it ones and we keep shrinking battery size).

The future may be one that we dislike, but it is inevitable. People want more and more integration. My phone's speaker is superior to my laptop's and every portable stereo I had as a kid. That's just in a couple of decades. And technological advancement speed continues to increase. Like it or not, the mobile phone is set to become the Swiss Army Knife of your lifestyle.
 


And technological advancement speed continues to increase. Like it or not, the mobile phone is set to become the Swiss Army Knife of your lifestyle.
Technology, social media and global warming will be the downfall of humanity. Scientists have already lost faith in us being able to prevent the earth from warming up above 2 degrees. Being able to manage(and your own data) your own desktop do what you want is what makes having a computer fun, once that is not an option anymore private companies will own all your personal data and there will be no privacy left of the little that we have left now.

The day there are no personal computers left and that all your personal data is owned by the companies is the day I will request my doctor for being euthanized because there is no point in being alive if you can't be a person and have stuff that other don't know about. Isn't that the point of being human us being social beings and sharing stuff with each to get to know each other, no point in that if that can just be looked up or requested by someone in some database. I might not be fully correct but I think you will get the idea, Minority Report kind of scary.
 
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Just SBTW, I think this thread's starting to veer off-topic. I don't mind, but Tolkem might (IDK) and this is starting to become "threadjacking", so Imma sign out of any more meta discussion here.

Peace
- J
 
The mobile processor has taken leaps and bounds. Apple's M1 is entirely ARM-based, yet is will destroy a 3rd gen Ryzen CPU. Intel's 12th gen CPUs are ARM/x86 hybrids (main cores are x86_64 and delegates work to ARM64 cores, thus keeping the platform and instruction set the usual x86_64). BTW, the M1's weakest chip is about 10% more powerful the intel's i9 9900 series on single-threaded, meaning it isn't just clustering, this power difference is significant.

Screen size and peripherals are irrelevant, coz as I've said in many threads, we are heading towards docking our mobiles, which will connect to a monitor and other peripherals. Connective technology already exists for this, the only hurdles would come from number of devices connected affecting and affected by performance (I think bus speeds on mobile boards will be one of the biggest challenges).
Battery life as the biggest constraint, but using power-saving technologies and with the increase of lithium-ion battery capacity, I think this will fix itself (especially as the last of the laptops with removeable batteries start shipping with built-it ones and we keep shrinking battery size).

The future may be one that we dislike, but it is inevitable. People want more and more integration. My phone's speaker is superior to my laptop's and every portable stereo I had as a kid. That's just in a couple of decades. And technological advancement speed continues to increase. Like it or not, the mobile phone is set to become the Swiss Army Knife of your lifestyle.

In 25 years, the generation by that time will have hardly used anything that's not mobile and/or touch screen and the desktop PC as we know it today will be a relic of the past.
 
I kinda expect us to carry around a mobile device and then it'll either dock into hardware or automatically dock over some wireless protocol. That other hardware will take different forms, from what would be considered a desktop, and perhaps to your automobile - or a public/rented automobile as individual automobile ownership stops being the norm. The device we carry will be a phone (or voice communication device) among other things.
 
Such as in-table touch displays?

That'd be an example. Maybe drop down screens, maybe things that resemble our current desktop, etc...

We've gotta keep in mind ergonomics - and not just to be trendy. The keyboard and mouse are very fortuitous, in that they're both easy and effective ways to enter and manipulate data.

Touch screens really aren't great for much data and they're not all that great for using 8 hours a day.

So, things like keyboards may (you can already get this) be projections onto a flat surface and you just type on that.

Either way, I'm looking forward to it. I'm definitely not in the sky is falling camp, nor am I a Luddite. New tech will arrive and a subset of the population will do what they've always done - which is to hack at it and change it in ways never imagined by the folks who built and designed it.

I've long since said I'd 'jack in' to the 'net. If there was a way to hook my brain up directly to the 'net, I'd volunteer to test it. I'd even let 'em install a wireless antenna that poked out of the back of my head.

I tend to run towards new tech, not away from it. (To some extent.)
 
That'd be an example. Maybe drop down screens, maybe things that resemble our current desktop, etc...

We've gotta keep in mind ergonomics - and not just to be trendy. The keyboard and mouse are very fortuitous, in that they're both easy and effective ways to enter and manipulate data.

Touch screens really aren't great for much data and they're not all that great for using 8 hours a day.

So, things like keyboards may (you can already get this) be projections onto a flat surface and you just type on that.

Either way, I'm looking forward to it. I'm definitely not in the sky is falling camp, nor am I a Luddite. New tech will arrive and a subset of the population will do what they've always done - which is to hack at it and change it in ways never imagined by the folks who built and designed it.

I've long since said I'd 'jack in' to the 'net. If there was a way to hook my brain up directly to the 'net, I'd volunteer to test it. I'd even let 'em install a wireless antenna that poked out of the back of my head.

I tend to run towards new tech, not away from it. (To some extent.)

That's what I foresee. Tabletop type displays with in display keyboards and swipe gestures replacing the mouse. Apple's Magic Trackpad is an example of how good a gesture and tap interface can be.

And even now at the credit union where I work we have to store all data on servers, so I can see these tabletop displays processing data that is stored centrally in the workplace, where desktops will be the last place to be.

And the younger generation won't have a problem working without a traditional keyboard and mouse. It's those of us who are 40+ that are the holdouts. In 25 years we'll be retired or dead.

I'd love to be able to download the interest into a chip into my head, but I'm not down with the antenna idea. I'll leave that to you. lol
 
Oh, it's simple ergonomics. Spend 8 hours with your arm held out at shoulder height to work on a touch screen - especially a vertical touch screen. Oh bodies aren't built for that and we're not gonna evolve that quickly. The tabletop idea? Maybe, but you're reaching out and across to manipulate what's on the screen - or you're using some physical device to do so. I'd expect there to be a device as, again, reaching across the visible field of data is not ergonomic and will obstruct your vision even if just momentarily.

The keyboard and mouse are brilliant and there's a reason they're still dominant in many markets.

(Obviously, the above is what I expect to happen. We have now way of knowing until said time has passed.)

And, gotta have the antenna poking out of the back of my head. How else am I supposed to fetch updates and search?!?

Man... A 'straight to/from brain' IDE would be awesome. I'd be able to program straight from the thoughts in my head. If I need software, I could just write it in my head! Malware might take an interesting turn at that point.
 
Oh, it's simple ergonomics. Spend 8 hours with your arm held out at shoulder height to work on a touch screen - especially a vertical touch screen. Oh bodies aren't built for that and we're not gonna evolve that quickly. The tabletop idea? Maybe, but you're reaching out and across to manipulate what's on the screen - or you're using some physical device to do so. I'd expect there to be a device as, again, reaching across the visible field of data is not ergonomic and will obstruct your vision even if just momentarily.

The keyboard and mouse are brilliant and there's a reason they're still dominant in many markets.

(Obviously, the above is what I expect to happen. We have now way of knowing until said time has passed.)

And, gotta have the antenna poking out of the back of my head. How else am I supposed to fetch updates and search?!?

Man... A 'straight to/from brain' IDE would be awesome. I'd be able to program straight from the thoughts in my head. If I need software, I could just write it in my head! Malware might take an interesting turn at that point.
Just don't go for a walk during a storm!

IDK, maybe keyboard and mice will still factor in. I just don't think we're still going to be using a desktop PC they way we know it today. Maybe docked laptops or tablets. Will be interesting if I'm still around then. I'll be 76 in 25 years.
 
In 25 years, the generation by that time will have hardly used anything that's not mobile and/or touch screen and the desktop PC as we know it today will be a relic of the past.
And hopefully I'll be too old to GAF. I'll just go outside and plant beans and squash.
 
Will be interesting if I'm still around then.

I kinda hope I'm not around then. I'm only 64 and I already wake up grudgingly. See, I never expected to live this long. So, I've been unkind to my body. I've squeezed several lifetimes worth of adventure into those years and man am I paying for it.

Alas, only the good die young. I'm probably gonna live forever.
 
The day there are no personal computers left and that all your personal data is owned by the companies is the day I will request my doctor for being euthanized because there is no point in being alive if you can't be a person and have stuff that other don't know about.

Same here. Don't know about the euthaninzed part. But I still have a flip phone with no internet capabilities.
I don't have a personal Google, Apple or Microsoft account. (I do have a M$ account for work).
I have no personal pictures in the cloud anywhere. No personal files in the cloud anywhere.
I stll live where there is no cell coverage, and I usually leave wifi turned off on my router.

The mobile platform may be the future for some... but...

I remember people saying the same thing about data center and servers, but they're still around.
Your cell phone has as good a screen as your TV? I have 8k, not many cell phones have that.
Your cell speaker is as good as your stereo? Not here by a long short. Bring your phone and lets see which
sounds better. Your cell phone has the same power as my 24 core, 96GB, 12Tstorage, nVidia 30x GPU?
I doubt it. Most new cell phones don't even have storage expansion. Sorry, not this guy.
 
If that's the reason, I'd just as soon leave it like it is. Freedom of choice.
Once it all becomes the same, it becomes a monoply all over again.
I don't think fragmentation has anything to do with that. Crapindows has the same thing and yet it's on all gaming computers. The problem is 8n the reluctancy of developers to write proper drivers for it. If we had all the drivers and software available for linux, not just windows, the latter OS would have died by now.
 
If we had all the drivers and software available for linux, not just windows, the latter OS would have died by now.
Other than a few RealTek/Broadcm wifi drivers. What drivers don't exist for Linux that windows has? Can you give some examples?
 
Crapindows has the same thing
No, it doesn't. Here fragmentation doesn't refer to "disk's fragmentation", which I guess is what you meant, it refers to the fact that there are many Linux distributions, with each one of them doing a different thing, in most cases. There are no different Windows distributions to choose from (at least not officially).
 
Spend 8 hours with your arm held out at shoulder height to work on a touch screen - especially a vertical touch screen.
AI? Wireless devices to do the input? If we think of all the tech advancements happening right now, either one of those should be the way.
I don't mind, but Tolkem might
No, I don't. I mean, if moderators let themselves go on with the off-topic, then I guess it's fine.
 
AI? Wireless devices to do the input? If we think of all the tech advancements happening right now, either one of those should be the way.
Within the next 20 years, commonplace for the younger crowd: Augmented reality. We already have micro displays and gesture control (still a work in progress). Combine Google Glass with Oculus, and voila.

Gone will be the days of desktop computing, with cloud storage and subscription services being the norm. No one but us oldies will have private music or p**n collections. Starlink worldwide internet service, no need for traditional ISPs or wifi any more.

* shoelaces will no longer be a thing, either, because velcro is just easier.
 
No, it doesn't. Here fragmentation doesn't refer to "disk's fragmentation", which I guess is what you meant, it refers to the fact that there are many Linux distributions, with each one of them doing a different thing, in most cases. There are no different Windows distributions to choose from (at least not officially).
To be specific, there's Windows:
- Full OS: f'ing expensive
- Features disabled: darn expensive
- More features disabled: pretty expensive
- Almost all features disabled: expensive

Basically, M$ are literally selling you an incomplete OS at a reduced price and this has been the case for years with their "Basic", "Premium", "Profession", "Enterprise", and BS marketing model. Middle finger to them there.

To be specific about Linux OSes, only some big/notable distros are doing different things:
- RHEL & Ubuntu are basically targeting the professional market, but Ubuntu is trying to have its cake and eat it, making them a less reliable OS, yet their ubiquity as the "face of Linux" remains (despite that Red Hat had a solid foundation first and leads the only big innovations*).
- Debian is being Debian: The universal Linux. It will always be the best and most reliable Linux OS, albeit less popular than many of its derivs.
- Arch is focused on simplifying the whole thing by removing abstract at the cost of so-called "user-friendliness" (a lot of modern stuff can further obfuscate using software and Arch's goal was to eliminate that). I think Arch's goals have broadened now to become a "people's OS" in that the line between users and contributors isn't too solid.
- Puppy's goal is to provide a portable, lightweight OS. It's safe to say AntiX supersedes it.
- TinyCore was designed for embedded systems, though it was the first distro that I played with and installed to bare metal (a laptop, despite it being an "embedded" system) over a decade back. I think we can safely say that it's superseded by other *nix OSes for embedded systems.
- Kali, Tails, LFS, and other hobbyist stuff, etc. do not count because they are not truly OSes. Eg: Bedrock Linux is a bootstrap experiment (AFAIK); Kali is for pentestesting/forensics; Tails is was for anonymity; LFS is just documentation... and so on. These aren't exactly proper OSes, they're utilities and meta.

The others are all just reinventing the wheel, trying to make "user-friendly" spins of other distros, making aplication-specific distros, and doing experimental stuff. Arguably, Void should maybe be up there on the main list, but just having a traditional init and having a great package manager puts them on the experimenting or reinventing the wheel level with the rest.
So it's not that these distros have different goals so much as different dev/maintainer attitudes. Some want more unaltered upstream packages, others want modified & sterilised packages that'll be stable with each component of that specific distro release.
But when it comes down to it, I'm estimating that 80% or more of distros are just makeovers.

Wanna escape fragmentation?
FreeBSD. Or OpenBSD, or, big maybe, NetBSD -- neither of which I've played with much beyond time-wasting in a VM, but neither feel as Desktop-ish. Consequently, of them, FreeBSD is really the best-suited desktop OS. While there are other *BSDs, they tend to always crash and burn. Even PC-BSD (which got rebranded to <I'm too lazy to use Google to check>) tried to be Pop_BSD! ended up failing, much like ZorinOS on Linux.
FreeBSD is (or was -- I last used it quite a while back) a nuisance to install (I personally find Arch easier and have never understood the "installing Arch is for super advance users" mentality). The installation has probably improved. I know the hardware support has since I stay up to date -ish with its development as I would abandon Linux for BSD if ever that time came where FreeBSD could satisfy all my needs -- and with improved performance of Linux compatibility layer and growing hardware support, what seemed like it would never happen may just do so, though not on my daily driver unless Debian ever goes in directions I really really really dislike, directions worse than systemd (which I'll admit that I overreacted to at the time). The main reason I would actually change to FreeBSD is that it is consistent and does not change to and implement the first idea someone has (which can have downsides, too, so use-case is a big one here). I think drivers/software are the biggest factor for not changing, though, especially with Linux on the eve of been recognised as a "mainstream desktop OS". I know this sounds a lot like the Windows to Linux story; the irony did not escape me.

* I say this coz people use XFS on Linux and Systemd has taken over as the de facto init for major distros. OTOH: Mir just never took off, like Ubuntu Touch and anything else they cooked for mobile. RHEL is influencing Linux more than Ubuntu, just in less visible ways.

PS: These are all based on my personal experiences. I'm sure everyone's experiences and opinions differ, so I'm not saying "Yaaay! Distro hop again!" or "Your distro sucks, no matter what."
 
Other than a few RealTek/Broadcm wifi drivers. What drivers don't exist for Linux that windows has? Can you give some examples?
The first thing that comes to mind is the nvidia driver. The Windows driver is 500MB when packed, the linux driver is 50MB when installed. You do the math what we DON'T have that the Windows users do. Our driver is literally naked regarding features, whereas the only thing they don't have (yet) is direct access to Fascistbook through GeForce Experience.
Also, drivers for steering wheels, drivers for keyboards (perfect example is A4Tech G800V, altough it's not exactly a driver, it's a software to program the special keys), drivers for ALL USB Bluetooth adapters, drivers AND software for CCTV and for regular user cameras...
 

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