On 19.02.2015 19:41, Chris Murphy wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 5:47 AM, Dennis Jacobfeuerborn
> <dennisml@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> I think the problem is that you simply have to draw a distinction
>> between technology and product.
>> The rise of the Linux desktop will never happen because Linux is not a
>> product but a technology and as a result has to be a jack of all trades.
>
> I'm unconvinced. True, Chromebooks uses the linux kernel, and thus it
> qualifies, sorta, as Linux desktop. But this is something analogous to
> OS X using a FOSS kernel and some other BSD stuff, but the bulk of it
> is proprietary. Maybe Chrome isn't quite that proprietary, but it's
> not free either. And Chrome OS definitely is not jack of all trades.
> What it can run is very narrow in scope right now.
>
>
>
>> The reason Apple is so successful I believe is because they understood
>> more than others that people don't care about technology but want one
>> specific consistent experience. They don't core how the harddisk is
>> partitioned.
>> So I can see the rise of the "X desktop" but only if X is willing to
>> have its own identity an eschew the desire to be compatible with
>> everything else or cater to both casual users and hard-core admin types.
>> In other words the "X Desktop" would have to be a very opinionated
>> product rather than a highly flexible technology.
>
> Hmm, well Apple as a pretty good understanding what details are and
> aren't important to most people. That is, they discriminate. People do
> care about technologies like disk encryption, but they don't care
> about the details of how to enable or manage it. Hence we see both iOS
> and Android enable it by default now. Change the screen lock password,
> and it also changes the encryption unlock password *while removing*
> the previous password all in one step. On all conventional Linux
> distributions, this is beyond confusing and is totally sysadmin
> territory. I'd call it a bad experience.
>
> OK so that's mobile vs desktop, maybe not fair. However, OS X has one
> button click full disk encryption as opt in post-install (and opt out
> after). This is done with live conversion. The user can use the
> computer normally while conversion occurs, they can put the system to
> sleep, and even reboot it, and will resume conversion when the system
> comes back up. Decrypt conversion works the same way. They are poised
> to make full disk encryption a default behavior, without having
> changed the user experience at all, in the next major release of the
> software. I don't know whether they'll do it, but there are no
> technical or usability impediments.
>
> Linux distros experience on this front is terrible. Why? Linux OS's
> don't have a good live conversion implementation (some people have
> tried this and have hacks, but no distro has adopted this); but Ok the
> installer could just enable it by default, obviating conversion. But
> there's no one really looking at the big picture, looking at dozens of
> packages, how this affects them all from the installer password
> policy, to Gnome and KDE. You'd need the add user GUI tools to be able
> to change both user login and encryption passphrase passwords, to keep
> them in sync, and remove the old one. And currently LUKS has this 8
> slot limit, which is probably not a big problem, but might be a
> sufficient barrier in enough cases that this needs extending.
I'm not sure why you seem to disagree with what I wrote ("unconvinced")
and then basically say what I was saying.
Linux with a thousand knobs is never going become popular. Instead
somebody has to go and create an opinionated system where most knobs are
removed and replaced by sane/good/useful defaults. Like Google with its
Chromebooks.
Regards,
Denis
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