http://allthingsd.com/20120725/valves-gabe-newell-on-the-future-of-games-wearable-computers-windows-8-and-more/
The big problem that is holding back Linux is games. People don’t realize how critical games are in driving consumer purchasing behavior.
We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well. It’s a hedging strategy. I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space. I think we’ll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that’s true, then it will be good to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality.
Although games play a huge role in holding Linux back it is certainly not the primary cause. If Linux wasn't held back for other reasons it would have a market penetration that would have made the games issue go away long ago. However, Microsoft has been incrementally imposing the same mistakes Linux makes with each new release, in a different way. With Win 8 it's reasonably likely crosses that threshold for many were the mistakes Linux makes no longer matter, because MS is worse (maybe). One thing is certain, Win 8 will increase the market penetration of Linux. Add to that entire nations going strictly Linux and windows has some rough days ahead, along with some hardware vendors that have locked themselves in a copyright hole.
The most destructive assumption GUI developers make is to divide people into 2 groups. The idiot group who needs a help file to click the IE icon to get on the internet, and the advanced group who needs no GUI. The reality is that the public is fractally distributed across this entire spectrum, and all want their differing preferences catered to. I've complete replaced the entirety of windows file associations with a single app, and written a shell script, called 'q', for Linux as a backend for doing the same thing there. This would seem to put me in a reasonably advanced group. So why does Linux suck so freaking much for me? The specific reasons would take an entire book, but here are the basics and why Linux desktops will still have trouble competing with windows 8.
Linux Start Menu:
Why does Linux force a start menu configuration stuck on what the developer of the particular desktop being used decided should be shoved down my throat? Yeah, I can google and figure out where this configuration is, and spend hours making a single modification. But we are talking modifications that should have been two freaking click away for any idiot. That's how idiots progress to advanced users, disallowed in Linux because your either one or the other. Some versions of Linux has a far superior implementation of a start menu on the desktop right click. Only what Exec commands can be placed there have been filtered in weird ways.
Linux Quick Launch:
Just try to add a simple Exec to and icon on the Quick Launch. Yeah, a widget is provided for that, in a limited sort of way. Yet these widgets are themselves resource pigs that eat up your resources whether you ever click the icon or not, and have specialized APIs specific to the particular desktop you have installed. What's wrong with a basic icon with a basic Exec command associated with it? And why must I spend hours hand crafting each and every one!!? TreePad makes a better desktop GUI system than any Linux desktop does! And why must a taskbar be required to wrap onto the quick launch?
Linux File Managers:
At first glance it appears the file manager is a saving grace, a way to get GUI functionality that has been stymied on the desktop, except for a mess of shortcuts (security breaking scripts) on the desktop. You can associate different command line with different Linux file types. But nooo!! As soon as these file managers see command line switches they strip them. Apparently, as is a common claim, GUIs are not supposed to understand command line switches. So the file manager strips these switches and leaves a slew of identical commands lines without switches to reward your effort! Anybody who repeats the myth that GUIs can't understand a command line cannot count themselves outside of the idiot group. There is NO need to understand these switches, merely send them to the app/script/interpreter they are associated with. The mailman doesn't have to be able to read my mail in order to deliver it! The CLI obviously has its share of advantages, but the mailman shouldn't throw my mail away just because they can't read it!
Linux apps (mouse functions):
Take something simple like a basic picture viewer. You can map keyboard shortcuts every which way from Sunday. Yet not only only does it lack basic mouse controls, what it does have is hard coded. So just flipping through a folder of pics to show someone you have to fish that keyboard out from behind the computer. After countless downloads from the app center, I ended up running a windows picture viewer under Wine just to have a basic usable viewer.
One command verses eight clicks.
http://www.flossmanuals.net/command-line/The above link explains the superiority of one command line to eight mouse clicks. The prototype command was:
"convert -resize 300 profile.jpg profile_small.jpg"
Leaving aside the obvious question of why the GUI developer was thoughtless enough to require 8 clicks, in effect what is being claimed here is that 49 keyboard clicks is superior to 8 mouse clicks. This is not even counting the shift key. Now try and add this same command to a custom right click (or default) of the file manager, two (or one) click away. You end up with the entire command string consisting of "convert". Try again and you get two choices, "convert" and "convert". Makes you wonder who the idiot was that they were trying to make the desktop GUI idiot proof against?
Bottom line is that even windows 8 is probably not this absurd and antagonistic toward a reasonably functional GUI and mouse. The CLI must remain, and will always offer a range of options beyond what any single GUI can ever provide. However, to demand, on the grounds that the CLI has certain advantages, that GUIs not be allowed access, or admit to users that it actually does have access, to the CLI is absurd beyond belief. Oh, but the final admission, in the above article, that it does have access was just provided as another reason to click the keyboard 49 times instead of a mouse eight times, or even twice if they admitted the eight was an issue created by the developer, not the GUI.
It doesn't take an idiot to prefer click, click, done, to several hours of hand crafting config files, no matter how proficient you are at it.
