Linux and Innovation
no real innovation has happened on the Linux desktop in 5-10 years. the only changes have been to backend stuff that effectively works the same (sometimes a little better, sometimes a little worse) while everything you, the user, see is basically the same as it was 5 years ago. a few more things work now, but mostly just because of fixing stuff; i don't class things like proton as generic Desktop Innovation because you could already run that game on windows. i mean people trying to change the way we use computers, to make them smarter and faster to use. things like nepomuk from the kde 4 days, that were trying to make your entire desktop be structured and interoperable, with central data stores that would work with everything and enable new connections between your stuff, and make it all searchable, in real-time freedesktop were working on Zeitgeist, which let you provide data to a local activity logging daemon which could then provide insights into your frequent tasks to make all your applications come together in knowing what you're working on, when. they also had telepathy, which was a standard API that all your messaging apps could have transports for, then display all of your data in one frontend that you could choose gnome were helping with telepathy and Zeitgeist, but also making Conduit, an application that could have dedicated sync routines for every device you connect; a music CD could automatically get ripped and uploaded to a server; a camera could automatically have its files imported, deleted, and put into a queue for you to review. gvfs, one of the most magical-feeling parts of gnome, was started in 2018 kio, kde's similar universal filesystem thing that makes it capable of incredibly slick workflows like just dragging flac files out of a "mounted" music CD and having them transcode in real time, came out nearly fully-formed in kde 4 i should be clear, none of this is to discount the incredible amount of work people have put in with recent years; the Wayland transition is really, really big and does make my touch devices infinitely better to use, battery life better, and has brought a lot of extremely coherent integration. gnome, despite the shit i give them, have made the only competitor to even come close to macos' design and functionality cohesion. kde is faster, has made those under-the-hood technical changes work to make an actual impact to applications functioning well. but i can't think of anything these projects have done that is ambitious 'and creative'. if you know of any, let me know though! the point here isn't to say things are bad because... they aren't. Linux on the desktop is the best that it's been Ever. but i think people should look beyond the current paradigm for ways to make and build it better. if nothing else, it's always fun to dream.
