According to you they don’t care about the DE, so System76 won’t help anyone by making a new one. Normal people according to you don’t care about user interface or ease of use (everyone adopted to Windows 8’s tiles and applauded the end of the outdated start menu), program support (aka package managers with prepackaged binaries which don’t matter since new Linux users can install from compiling source code), themes (beautiful interfaces and clashing UI don’t matter to new Linux users only advanced users).
If package managers didn’t matter, and you think the average new user wants to install Discord through command line you’re far too disconnected from reality. https://itsfoss.com/install-discord-linux/#traditional-metho... snaps and flatpak are slower so if package managers don’t matter you’re saying new Linux users will be happy with slow launches, worst performance and forced updates.
Linux 10 years ago was simultaneously not able to do things people cared about and had tons of DE you could choose from, which is the point. More DE is not the solution. Linux fragmentation doesn’t solve the issues people care about, GIMP was just as capable as photoshop but they insisted on 3 or more separate windows for their user interface, and only recently was that changed for instance but imagine if they just made different photoshop clones instead of fixing it.
> so System76 won’t help anyone by making a new one.
This is correct. The upgrade isn't for the end-user, it's for the System76 team that was tired of being forced to comply with another desktop's standards. Windows and MacOS users don't have this liberty though, so I say more power to them. It's too early to know if they succeeded or failed, but drawing conclusions this early would probably be a mistake.
> If the average new user wants to install Discord through command line you’re far too disconnected from reality.
The average user doesn't have to install Discord through the command line, you're cherry picking an example of how they can. Any GUI package manager with support for Flatpak or Snap (see: all of them) has access to prepackaged versions of most software people could want. We could sit here and argue about who's right and which system is wrong, but Linux works perfectly fine for me and thousands of other users.
> imagine if they just made different photoshop clones instead of fixing it.
Why? Photoshop is not GIMP, they're two completely separate programs with separate goals. Photoshop wants to be a comprehensive, professional photo manipulation suite with strong DRM and lock-in for their ecosystem of products. GIMP wants to be a casual photo editing tool that's unencumbered by licensing. You can run Photoshop on Linux if you really want, but most users realized there's plenty of free software that's better suited for their use case anyways.
Your response only solidifies the points I was making earlier. The argument against Linux is one of constantly moving goalposts and subtle, Pyrrhic victories. I won't judge you for staying away from it, but if you intend to shatter the Linux ethos you're going to need a lot more than that.
I use Linux and you ignored every point that addresses your points and assume nobody cares about the UI. They could easily contribute to another project or fork, and if DE don’t matter they don’t have to make one either.
Linux 10 years ago was simultaneously not able to do things people cared about and had tons of DE you could choose from, which is the point. More DE is not the solution. Linux fragmentation doesn’t solve the issues people care about and makes problems worst.
> The average user doesn't have to install Discord through the command line
So you changed your mind that that package managers don’t matter. Either they don’t matter and you build from source or they do and you want one with binaries. Which is it?
> You can run Photoshop on Linux if you really want, but most users realized there's plenty of free software that's better suited for their use case anyways.
Name a replacement for photoshop. Most users didn’t realize there’s plenty of better free software, they are resigned to using many programs because of fragmentation and they don’t have a choice. If by plenty of free software you mean you need 12 different programs to imitate what photoshop does you’re exactly proving my point of why people don’t like Linux, it’s too fragmented, so you have a bunch of crappy apps or people making single use programs by following Unix guidelines, arguing how systemd doesn’t follow it yet contributed greatly to it’s adoption, and wondering why desktop Linux is a failure while android is a success.
> They could easily contribute to another project or fork, and if DE don’t matter they don’t have to make one either.
That's what they were doing before, and it didn't work. Pop!OS ships with an opinionated desktop called "Cosmic", which is based on GNOME and makes several breaking changes to customize the desktop for their specific use case. With GNOME 40, those customizations are no longer possible/sane, so they're deciding to write a new desktop to end their dependency on GNOME. I frankly dislike the current ownership of GNOME, but I also think they're just as bad as Microsoft and Apple (though that's a discussion for a different time and place).
In any case, writing a DE isn't hard work these days. They can still bundle other software to complete the experience the same way Microsoft and Apple do, and they can even steal system components like the GNOME Settings manager wholecloth. They're transitioning from a bloated set of patches to a much smaller, faster codebase. I fail to see how this is a downgrade.
> More DE is not the solution
Well, neither is less DE. GNOME has already tried that, by pretending like other desktops don't matter and introducing asinine, breaking changes that completely destroy the workflow of it's users and developers. Care to guess how that turned out? Recent GNOME releases are both unstable and feature-incomplete, with gaping security flaws and only a modicum of functionality to show for it.
> So you changed your mind that that package managers don’t matter. Either they don’t matter and you build from source or they do and you want one with binaries. Which is it?
You're driving a false equivalency. On my distro (and most distros marketed towards new users), you can just use your built-in software manager to grab the package from official repos. In just about every distribution I've ever used, there was a GUI that allowed you to interface with your package manager, no command line required.
TL:DR - Linux has a lot of problems, but fragmentation is not one of them, nor can it ever be fixed. You should look into how SystemD tried to 'fix' this issue, and only ended up bastardizing the Unix philosophy while degrading the experience across the board.
>Pop!OS ships with an opinionated desktop called "Cosmic", which is based on GNOME and makes several breaking changes to customize the desktop for their specific use case.
That doesn't mean a new DE is the solution and if the idea you floated was that DE don't matter, its irrelevant to anything that would help linux adaption.
>They're transitioning from a bloated set of patches to a much smaller, faster codebase. I fail to see how this is a downgrade.
They could also contribute to another DE. Its going to be better in some ways, inferior in others, have less features than existing DE, some distros will support it and it'll be another DE in the sea of DE that aren't as popular as GNOME/KDE that needs its own community to support it. What is this an upgrade from? They could rewrite GTK2 in rust, use something stable like MATE, rewrite that in rust, but they want to make a new DE, for what benefit over a fork or rewriting and contributing to a project that could use more help over redoing what others have done?
>Well, neither is less DE.
There is no shortage of DE that need contributors and help, imagine if this was still the attitude of Android, to fragment it by flooding it with UIs and custom skins that that didn't work with others. You therefore get zombie phones with features nobody supports. Do you actually think that more DE with less functions versus a few DE with more functions is better? Becuse that is the current state and its a failure and deterrrant to desktop linux. Nobody wants to switch to linux, get less features and need several programs to do what one would do. Again, what program replaces photoshop? Do you think people needing several programs with less features is not a fragmentation problem and its the best approach?
>You're driving a false equivalency. On my distro (and most distros marketed towards new users), you can just use your built-in software manager to grab the package from official repos. In just about every distribution I've ever used, there was a GUI that allowed you to interface with your package manager, no command line required.
The binaries would have to be compiled for it, which is why package managers matters, unless you are saying that all package managers have all the packages and there is no difference with support.
>TL:DR - Linux has a lot of problems, but fragmentation is not one of them, nor can it ever be fixed.
Fragmentation is a huge issue and why theres a million distros that people freeze on switching, the most successful linux is Android and they fixed it, and its the most successful. I don't know why you keep ignoring this point.
If package managers didn’t matter, and you think the average new user wants to install Discord through command line you’re far too disconnected from reality. https://itsfoss.com/install-discord-linux/#traditional-metho... snaps and flatpak are slower so if package managers don’t matter you’re saying new Linux users will be happy with slow launches, worst performance and forced updates.
Linux 10 years ago was simultaneously not able to do things people cared about and had tons of DE you could choose from, which is the point. More DE is not the solution. Linux fragmentation doesn’t solve the issues people care about, GIMP was just as capable as photoshop but they insisted on 3 or more separate windows for their user interface, and only recently was that changed for instance but imagine if they just made different photoshop clones instead of fixing it.