On 19.02.2015 19:41, Chris Murphy wrote: > On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 5:47 AM, Dennis Jacobfeuerborn > <dennisml at conversis.de> 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