this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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The future of Linux (lemmy.sdf.org)
submitted 1 year ago by pmk@lemmy.sdf.org to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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I'm not proposing anything here, I'm curious what you all think of the future.

What is your vision for what you want Linux to be?

I often read about wanting a smooth desktop experience like on MacOS, or having all the hardware and applications supported like Windows, or the convenience of Google products (mail, cloud storage, docs), etc.

A few years ago people were talking about convergence of phone/desktop, i.e. you plug your phone into a big screen and keyboard and it's now your desktop computer. That's one vision. ChromeOS has its "everything is in the cloud" vision. Stallman has his vision where no matter what it is, the most important part is that it's free software.

If you could decide the future of personal computing, what would it be?

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[–] merthyr1831@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Flatpak is still not able to fully replace native apps in certain situations, sure, but that wont be the case forever. If Ubuntu believes they can replace debs with Snaps I believe someone can do the same for flatpaks given enough time.

Flatpak lets people host their own repositories, which is where I think we'll see distros becoming distinct if they DO choose to diverge from Flathub's selection, such as choosing to block non-free software. Over time, though, people generally all just add flathub if it isn't already available.

And, again, if you need something more finegrained than flathub, there's no reason why distro maintainers can't move to a nix-based infrastructure-as-code and you'll be free to host a repo with all of your distro's software packaged as code.

The power maintainers want over users is simply too much effort to justify as more apps begin to complain about packaging issues downstream, and apps become more complex to build. Users will inevitably bypass them. Devs will inevitably become hostile to downstream repacking.