The best thing about the Linux desktop is the customization. You can tweak all sorts of things: icons, color schemes, fonts, everything. You can customize the system settings. You can even do color selection with your display device. Here’s an example: You can easily set a background for Windows. You can easily set a background for Mac. You can easily set a wallpaper or change color palettes. You can even customize the appearance of your desktop wallpaper.
Whether it’s Linux’s GNOME 3, KDE 5, Cinnamon or Unity, your desktop is going to look and feel just fine. It is not going to change the thing that makes my day going to work. I don’t understand why people try to change this. I have a lot of people calling me with questions. The Linux community doesn’t have such a thing. They don’t listen to questions. They look at things when it is most likely to get answered.
How do you explain the fact that KDE developers have a great understanding of Ubuntu’s hardware and software, and have created their own solution? You guys look at Ubuntu in three pieces and talk about the Linux desktop. KDE is not a project that we are competing with it anymore. It used to be. But now, when I look at Ubuntu’s software and hardware I think, I know that this is the Linux experience and I am happy. The Ubuntu ecosystem seems like it is working and people want it. I am not a KDE guy, no disrespect to that — but I know better, for the first time, the Linux desktop experience that Linux has to do with the hardware. It is a beautiful thing.
It’s a whole different world to have to deal with, the Linux desktop is not just a window manager. As a system administrator you are often dealing with user space drivers, drivers for applications, network interfaces, printers, audio, and video drivers. You have applications that interact with each other and the operating system. If Linux is to succeed it must come down to a number of key decisions as to what software you use and what services you rely on when you use your computer over the Internet. One of the biggest problems with the Linux desktop is the variety of operating system you find available on the market. If you use Windows, Linux or Mac it is going to be a huge pain, if your desktop has been a Mac computer for the last twenty years you have to find a different style.
While the standard desktop that many are familiar with is an Ubuntu based desktop you can also find other flavors of Linux, there are also multiple versions of Windows that also run natively on servers. All of these operating systems have different approaches to running applications and what their interfaces look like, one method can be far more efficient to run than the other and the resulting software is more up to date, there is more of it on the market, and you can use newer features and capabilities such as graphics chips as a result of the changes made to the kernel.
Even as I’ve grown attached to my desktop, I like the diversity in the hardware that makes up it. I can find the right keyboard for every purpose, and there are literally thousands of different styles of touch screens. Linux desktop hardware is not limited to one genre of hardware — it includes lots of styles of touch monitors.
It might be tempting to write articles on Linux distros and how to make them great, but that is something you want to learn from your own experiences. In this case, it helps to think of the Linux desktop as an art piece. It is designed to evoke a unique kind of reaction in one’s eyes.
One of the ways you learn to appreciate it is through watching movies on Netflix or playing games on YouTube. It is like the canvas your painting takes shape on. The experience is a lot like a painting, like when you turn to a good artist you want to feel it in your flesh for a few days. In terms of Linux distros, Linux distros are more than just their physical configuration of hardware.
I think most users will want to understand how Linux hardware is designed when they begin. They will want to understand how the Linux kernel works and what the philosophy behind hardware in general has to do with the way that the Linux operating system is implemented. I don’t think that just using the desktop and browsing Youtube will do that.