All or Nothing

David A. Harding
Monday, 12 Mar 2007

What could be better for the free software movement than a beautiful, simple, and useful desktop in a major distribution? I have an idea. A beautiful, simple, and useful desktop in every major distribution.

I started using GNU+Linux almost 5 years ago and by any comparison I can think of, today's free desktops are enormously superior to what I used then. Recent GNOME and KDE desktops on Xorg are beautiful. The graphical system configuration tools accomplish more tasks with less confusion than the linuxconf, YaST, and Mandrake Control Centers of 5 years ago. Innovative kernel, library, and userspace improvements like udev, HAL, and D-BUS allow better integration of the desktop programs with each other, the operating system, and the computer hardware. And all of these things are already in every major distribution.

Now, when I read Brian Jones's recent blog about an Ubuntu desktop, I found two interesting opinions:

Brian seems to believe a beautiful, simple, and useful free software desktop is important to increased and accelerated deployment of free software desktops, and
Brian seems to think producing a beautiful, simple, and useful free software desktop requires a major (maybe fundamental) change in the way a major distribution is designed.

I agree with the first point above. I think the continuing increased and accelerated adoption of free software is evidence hackers are creating and releasing more beautiful, simpler, and useful desktops already. I disagree that a major or fundamental change is required. I've seen a lot of progress in 5 years without any major changes in the way distributions are designed, and I don't support fixing what ain't broke.