What is happening with Linux?

[esquio]

What is happening in the recent times with Linux?
It seems that those days of solid rock stability in the Linux desktop are falling in the past. As I see this history, the decadence started more or less, at the time when kde4 was released; being kde3.5 a very powerful and stable desktop, the 4th release was no more than a technology preview that only recently have reached a quality point just between an alpha and a beta. Even now, only for example, we have not a printer administration panel like that one in 3.5.

In the current times, it seems that overlay bars, effects, and many other visual improvements are by far more important than hardware support. But people seems to forget that the first you need to display the "pleasant" effects is a WORKING desktop and OS.
If you would have to buy a computer now, what would you buy to run Linux?
A NVIDIA laptop? Optimus not so much supported, Hybrid performance is bad, to the level that it don't works at all...
A ATI laptop? AMD and hybrid with Linux promises a full degree of experience in kernel panics, X crashes, heat, regressions, etc...
A Macbook? It seems the best or even the only one option for stability, but Sandy Bridge it's not so much supported yet...
Other options? I can only think in buy a 2nd hand minimum two years old laptop.

Then, the question again, what is happening? You want a Linux computer to work with it, not to show the superb desktop to your friends, while crossing your fingers willing that the X server don't crashes again this time, or the system doesn't hang.
I think that Desktop developer companies like ubuntu, fedora, kde or gnome and others are missing the point here, as user experience is very important, but stability is the FIRST BIG part of it, and no the effects, shadows, or where to place the buttons.

[esquio]

Sorry, Off Topic here, forum mistake...

[bwat47]

I think you may have nostalgia goggles on, because linux has always had these kinds of troubles supporting the latest hardware.

[mindfaq]

If you would have to buy a computer now, what would you buy to run Linux?

If I'm gonna need a notebook, I'd buy something like a Thinkpad X220 (well, actually I did buy it) and run it with a very recent Linux distribution. It works just fine. Even all the power management stuff (including suspend, hibernate) is doing perfect, as are the integrated devices (fingerprint reader, webcam and stuff).

Get a recent distribution like Fedora 15 and maybe use a little bit newer kernel like 2.6.39 (don't forget to enable GPU semaphores) or 3.0. SandyBridge will do just fine.

[cl333r]

On the desktop Linux never was both stable and usable. You (roughly saying) either used vi the whole day and bragged about how stable Linux is or you had to cope with extremely pathetic shortcomings of video drivers and lots of other stuff like having to mount a USB drive from the console! It had lots of pathetic features like dnotify (probably most horrible fs notification system ever), HAL (a big pile of random APIs) .. shall I continue?
Only like 3 years ago did people start aggressively beating desktop Linux into shape, which meant sacrificing different things here and there in the short (and maybe mid) term, but gaining in the long run (like i.e. the Mac OS X did). And the (needed) revolution still goes on, we're still going to move to Wayland, we'll shortly have good (great) Intel/nouveau/ati open source drivers (finally), a much needed gtk3 which removes oddities, cruft and annoying stuff from gtk2, .. I could go on and on..
So please don't give us the theory about "those golden days" of the desktop Linux - they're merely your imagination, "back in those days" Linux was a pile of cruft with amateurish decisions overrated by "Linux fans", while doing only certain stuff better than the competition which didn't really matter to non-hackers.
I started using Linux like 4 years ago mainly out of curiosity and because of the ideology, otherwise it sucked, now I'm liking it cause it looks like it's advancing really fast. In 2-3 years I might like it cause it might be a lot better than the alternatives (the new Wayland graphics stack, btrfs, a modern desktop (Unity/whatever), plus lots of other upcoming random stuff).

[Panix]

Wireless in Linux is still a joke...

[cobratbq]

Wireless in Linux is still a joke...

Hmmm... interesting. I got the impression that over the last few years it had advanced quite a lot. I don't have any troubles anymore with my notebooks. Granted, they aren't brand new anymore, but I can work without a hitch.

[kraftman]

Only like 3 years ago did people start aggressively beating desktop Linux into shape, which meant sacrificing different things here and there in the short (and maybe mid) term, but gaining in the long run (like i.e. the Mac OS X did). And the (needed) revolution still goes on, we're still going to move to Wayland, we'll shortly have good (great) Intel/nouveau/ati open source drivers (finally), a much needed gtk3 which removes oddities, cruft and annoying stuff from gtk2, .. I could go on and on.

Don't forget about superior Qt and KDE.

[Panix]

Hmmm... interesting. I got the impression that over the last few years it had advanced quite a lot. I don't have any troubles anymore with my notebooks. Granted, they aren't brand new anymore, but I can work without a hitch.

Only laptops with Intel wifi chips. Anything else, you are out of luck. There are still laptops with Broadcom (the absolute worst!), Realtek and Atheros chips and I bet most of those are major problems. Since most newer laptops are using Intel wifi chips, maybe it's not so bad now.

I have an ancient laptop with a Broadcom wifi chip and it's useless in Linux. 'Will NOT WORK. I also have a crappy laptop with an Intel wifi chip and I'm on it right now via wireless in Debian.

But, overall, I would say if it wasn't for Intel wifi support, wireless in Linux would totally suck.

[kbios]

Only laptops with Intel wifi chips. Anything else, you are out of luck. There are still laptops with Broadcom (the absolute worst!), Realtek and Atheros chips and I bet most of those are major problems. Since most newer laptops are using Intel wifi chips, maybe it's not so bad now.

I have an ancient laptop with a Broadcom wifi chip and it's useless in Linux. 'Will NOT WORK. I also have a crappy laptop with an Intel wifi chip and I'm on it right now via wireless in Debian.

But, overall, I would say if it wasn't for Intel wifi support, wireless in Linux would totally suck.

???
No problem here both with Atheros and Ralink chips. Actually, I chose Atheros for a server as it was one of the first drivers to support AP mode. And it's working rock solid 24/7 since 2008.