The State of Desktop Linux 2019

A snapshot of the current state of Desktop Linux at the start of2019—with comparison charts and a roundtable Q&A with the leaders of three topLinux distributions.

I've never been able to stay in one place for long—at least in terms of which Linux distribution I call home.In my time as a self-identified "Linux Person", I've bounced around between anumber of truly excellent ones. In my early days, I picked up boxed copies ofS.u.S.E. (back before they made the U uppercase and dropped the dotsentirely) and Red Hat Linux (before Fedora was a thing) from store shelves atvarious software outlets.

Side note: remember when we used to buy Operating Systems—and even mostsoftware—in actual boxes, with actual physical media and actual printedmanuals? I still have big printed manuals for a few early Linux versions, which, back then, were necessary for getting just about everything working(from X11 to networking and sound). Heck, sometimes simply gettinga successful boot required a few trips through those heavy manuals. Ah, thosewere the days.

Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE—I spent a good amount of time living inthe biggest distributions around (and many others). All of them werefantastic. Truly stellar. Yet, each had their own quirks and peculiarities.

As I bounced from distro to distro, I developed a strong attachment to justabout all of them, learning, as I went, to appreciate each for what itwas. Just the same, when asked which distribution I recommend to others,my brain begins to melt down. Offering any single recommendation feelssimply inadequate.

Choosing which one to call home, even if simply on a secondary PC, is adeeply personal choice.

Maybe you have an aging desktop computer with limited RAM and an older, butstill absolutely functional, CPU. You're going to need something light onsystem resources that runs on 32-bit processors.

Or, perhaps you work with a wide variety of hardware architectures and need asingle operating system that works well on all of them—and standardizingon a single Linux distribution would make it easier for you to administerand update all of them. But what options even are available?

To help make this process a bit easier, I've put together a handy set ofcharts and graphs to let you quickly glance and find the one that fits yourneeds (Figures 1 and 2).

Figure 1. Distribution Comparison Chart I

Figure 2. Distribution Comparison Chart II

But, let's be honest, knowing that a particular system meets your hardwareneeds (and preferences) simply is not enough. What is the community like?What's in store for the future of this new system you are investing in? Dothe ideals of its leadership match up with your own?

In the interests of helping to answer those questions, I sat down with theleaders of three of the most prominent Linux distros of the day:

• Chris Lamb: Debian Project Leader
• Daniel Fore: elementary Founder
• Matthew Miller: Fedora Project Leader

Each of these systems is unique, respected and bringssomething truly valuable to the world.

I asked all three leaders the exact same questions—and gave each the chance torespond to each other. The topics are all over the place and designed tohelp show the similarities and differences between the distributions, both in terms ofgoals and culture.

Note that the Fedora project leader, Matthew Miller, was having an unusuallybusy time (both for work and personally), but he still made time to answer asmany questions as he could. That, right there, is what I call dedication.

Bryan (LJ):

Introduce your Linux distribution (the short, elevator-pitch version—justa few sentences) and your role within it.

Daniel (elementary):

elementary is focused on growing the market for open-source software andchipping away at the share of our closed-source competitors. We believe inproviding a great user experience for both new users and pro users, andputting a strong emphasis on security and privacy. We build elementary OS: aconsumer-focused operating system for desktops and notebooks.

My role at elementary is as Founder and CEO. I work with our various teams(like design, development, web and translation teams) to put together acohesive vision, product roadmap and ensure that we're following anethical path to sustainable funding.

Chris (Debian):

TheDebian Project, which celebrated its25th birthday this year, isone of the oldest and largest GNU/Linux distributions and is run on anentirely volunteer basis.

Not only does it have stellar reputation for stability and technicalexcellence, it has a unwavering philosophical stance on free software (i.e., itcomes with no proprietary software pre-installed and themain repository isonly free software). As it underpins countless derivative distributions,such as Ubuntu, et al., it is uniquely poised and able to improve the FreeSoftware world as a whole.

The Debian Project Leader (DPL) is a curious beast. Far from being aBDFL—theDPL has no authoritative or deciding say in technical matters—theproject leader is elected every year to a heady mix of figurehead, spokespersonand focus/contact point, but the DPL is also responsible for the quotidian businessof keeping the project moving with respect toreducing bureaucracy andsmoothing any and all roadblocks to Debian Developers' productivity.

Matthew (Fedora):

The Fedora distribution brings all of the innovation of thousands of upstreamprojects and hundreds of thousands of upstream developers together into apolished operating system for users, with releases on a six-month cadence.We're a community project tied together through the shared project missionand through the "four Fs" of our foundations: Freedom, Friends, Featuresand First. Something like 3,000 people contribute directly to Fedora in anygiven year, with a core active group of around 400 people participating inany given week.

We just celebrated the 15th anniversary of our first release, but our historygoes back even further than that to Red Hat Linux. I'm the Fedora ProjectLeader, a role funded by Red Hat—paying people to work on the project isthe largest way Red Hat acts as a sponsor. It's not a dictatorial role;mostly, I collect good ideas and write short persuasive essays about them.Leadership responsibility is shared with the Fedora Council, which includesboth funded roles, members selected by parts of the community and at-largeelected representatives.

Bryan (LJ):

With introductions out of the way, let's start with this (perhapsdeceptively) simple question:

How many Linux distributions should there be? And why?

Daniel (elementary):

As long as there are a set of users who aren't getting their needs met byexisting options, there's a purpose for any number of distros to exist.Some come and some go, and many are very very niche, but that's okay. Ithink there's a lot of people who are obsessed with trying to have somedominant player take a total monopoly, but in every other market category,it's immediately apparent how silly that idea is. You wouldn't want asingle clothing manufacturer or a single restaurant chain or a singleinternet provider (wink hint nudge) to have total market dominance. Diversityand choice in the marketplace is good for customers, and I think it's nodifferent when it comes to operating systems.

Matthew (Fedora):

[Responding to Daniel]Yes, I agree exactly. That said, creating an entirely from scratch distro isa lot of work, and a lot of it not very interesting work. If you'vegot something innovative at the how-we-put-the-OS-together level (likeCoreOS), there's room for that, but if you're focused higher up the stack,like a new desktop environment or something else around user experience, itmakes the most sense to make a derivative of one of the big community-powereddistros. There's a lot of boring hard work, and it makes sense to reuserather than carry those same rocks to the top of a slightly different hill.

In Fedora, we're aiming to make custom distro creation as easy as possible.We have "spins", which are basically mini custom distros. This is stuff likethe Python Classroom Lab or Fedora Jam (which is focused on musicians). Wehave a framework for making thosewithin the Fedora project—I'm allabout encouraging bigger, broader sharing and collaboration in Fedora. But ifyou want to work outside the project—say, you really have different ideason free and open-source vs. proprietary software—we have Fedora Remixesthat let you do that.

Chris (Debian):

The competing choice of distributions is often cited as a reason preventingLinux from becoming mainstream as it robs the movement of a consistent and focusedmarketing push.

However, philosophical objections against monopolistic behaviour granted, thediversity and freedom that this bazaar of distributions affords is, in myview, paradoxically exactly whyit has succeeded.

That people are free—but more important, feel free—to create anew distribution as a means to try experimental or outlandish approaches toperceived problems is surely sufficient justificationfor some degree of proliferation or even duplication of effort.

In this capacity, Debian's technical excellence, flexibility and deliberatelack of a top-down direction has resulted in it becoming the baseunderpinning countless derivatives, clearly and evidently able to provide theingredients to build one's "own" distribution, often without overt credit.

Matthew wrote: "if you want to work outside the project—say, you really have differentideas on free and open source vs. proprietary software—we have FedoraRemixes that let you do that."

Given that, I would be curious to learn how you protect your reputation ifyou encourage, or people otherwise use your infrastructure, tools and possiblyeven your name to create anddistribute works that are antithetical to the cause of software and userfreedom?

Bryan (LJ):

Thinking about it from a slightly different angle—how many distros wouldbe TOO many distros?

Daniel (elementary):

More than the market can sustain I guess? The thing aboutLinux is that it powers all kinds of stuff. So even for one non-technicalperson, they could still end up running a handful of distros for theirnotebook, their router, their phone someday, IoT devices, etc. So the numberof distros that could exist sustainably could easily be in the hundreds orthousands, I think.

Chris (Debian):

If I may be so bold as to interpret this more widely, whilst it might looklike we have "too many" distributions, I fear this might be misunderstandingthe reasons why people are creating these newer offerings in the first place.

Apart from the aforementioned distros created for technical experimentation,someone spinning up their own distribution might be (subconsciously!) doingit for the delight and satisfaction inbuilding something themselves and having their name attached to it—something entirely reasonable and justifiable IMHO.

To then read this creation through a lens of not being ideal for new users oreven some silly "Linux worldwide domination" metric could therefore even bemissing the point and some of the sheer delight of free software to beginwith.

Besides, the "market" for distributions seems to be doing a pretty good jobof correcting itself.

Bryan (LJ):

Okay, since you guys brought it up, let's talk about world domination.

How much of what you do (and what your teams do) is influenced by a desireto increase marketshare (either of your distribution specifically ordesktop Linux in general)?

Daniel (elementary):

When we first started out, elementary OS was something we made for fun out ofa desire to see something exist that we felt didn't yet. But as thecompany, and our user base, has grown, it's become more clear that ourmission must be about getting open-source software in the hands of morepeople. As of now, our estimated userbase is somewhere in the hundreds ofthousands with more than 75% of downloads coming from users of closed-sourceoperating systems, so I think we're making good progress toward thatgoal. Making the company mission about reaching out to people directly hasshaped the way we monetize, develop products, market and more, by ensuringwe always put users' needs and experiences first.

Chris (Debian):

I think it would be fair to say that "increasing market share" is not anovert nor overly explicit priority for Debian.

In our 25-year history, Debian has found that if we just continue to do goodwork, then good things will follow.

That is not to say that other approaches can't work or are harmful, butchasing potentially chimeric concepts such as "market share" can very easilylead to negative outcomes in the long run.

Matthew (Fedora):

A project's user base is directly tied to its ability to have an effect inthe world. If we were just doing cool stuff but no one used it, it reallywouldn't matter much. And, no one really comes into working on a distrowithout having been a user first. So I guess to answer the question directlyfor me at least, it's pretty much all of it—even things that are notimmediately related are about helping keep our community healthy and growingin the long term.

Bryan (LJ):

The three of you represent distros that are "funded" in very different ways.Fedora being sponsored (more or less) by Red Hat, elementary being its owncompany and Debian being, well, Debian.

I would love to hear your thoughts around funding the work that goes intobuilding a distribution. Is there a "right" or "ideal" way to fund that work(either from an ethical perspective or a purely practical one)?

Chris (Debian):

Clearly, melding "corporate interests" with the interests of a communitydistribution can be fraught with issues.

I am always interested to hear how other distros separate influence and powerparticularly in terms of increasing transparency using tools such as Councilswith community representation, etc. Indeed, this question of "optics" isoften highly under-appreciated; it is simply not enough to be honest, youmust be seen to be honest too.

Unfortunately, whilst I would love to be able to say that Debian isby-definition free (!) of all such problems by not having a "big sister"company sitting next to it, we have a long history of conversations regardingthe role of money in funding contributors.

For example, is it appropriate to fund developers to do work that might notnot be done otherwise? And if it is paid for, isn't this simply a feedbackloop that effectively ensures that this work will cease to within the remitof volunteers. There are no easy answers and we have no firm consensus, alas.

Daniel (elementary):

I'm not sure that there's a single right way, but I think we have theopinion that there are some wrong ways. The biggest questions we'realways trying to ask about funding are where it's coming from and whatit's incentivizing. We've taken a hard stance that advertising income isnot in the interest of our users. When companies make their income fromadvertising, they tend to have to make compromises to display advertisingcontent instead of the things their users actually want to see, andoftentimes are they incentivized to invade their users' privacy in orderto target ads more effectively. We've also chosen to avoid big enterprisemarkets like server and IoT, because we believe that since companies willnaturally be incentivized to work on products that turn a profit, that makingthat our business model would result in things like the recent Red Hatacquisition or in killing products that users love, like Ubuntu's Unity.

Instead, we focus on things like individual sales of software directly to ourusers, bug bounties, Patreon, etc. We believe that doing business directlywith our users incentivizes the company to focus on features and productsthat are in the benefit of those paying customers. Whenever a discussioncomes up about how elementary is funded, we always make a point to evaluateif that funding incentivizes outcomes that are ethical and in the favor ofour users.

Regarding paying developers, I think elementary is a little different here.We believe that people writing open-source software should be able to make aliving doing it. We owe a lot to our volunteer community, and the currentproduct could not be possible without their hard work, but we also have torecognize that there's a significant portion of work that would never getdone unless someone is being paid to do it. There are important tasks thatare difficult or menial, and expecting someone to volunteer their time to themafter their full work day is a big ask, especially if the peopleknowledgeable in these domains would have to take time away from theirfamilies or personal lives to do so. Many tasks are also just more suited tosustained work and require the dedicated attention of a single person forseveral weeks or months instead of some attention from multiple people overthe span of years. So I think we're pretty firmly in the camp that notonly is it important for some work to be paid, but the eventual goal shouldbe that anyone writing open-source code should be able to get paid for theircontributions.

Chris (Debian):

Daniel wrote: "So I think we're pretty firmly in the camp that not only is itimportant for some work to be paid, but the eventual goal should be that anyonewriting open-source code should be able to get paid."

Do you worry that you could be creating a two-tier community with thisapproach?

Not only in terms of hard influence (eg. if I'm paid, I'm likely to be ableto simply spend longer on my approach) but moreover in terms of "soft"influence during discussions or by putting offso-called "drive-thru" contributions? Do you do anything to prevent theappearance of this?

Matthew (Fedora):

Chris wrote:"Do you worry that you could be creating a two-tier community with thisapproach?"

Yeah, this is a big challenge for us. We have many people who are paid by RedHat to work on Fedora either full time or as part of their job, and thatgives a freedom to just bearound a lot more, which pretty much directlytranslates to influence. Right now, many of the community-elected positionsin Fedora leadership are filled by Red Hatters, because they're people thecommunity knows and trusts. It takes a lot of time and effort to build upthat visibility when you have a different day job. But there's some importantnuances here too, because many of these Red Hatters aren't actually paid towork on Fedora at all—they're doing it just like anyone else who loves theproject.

Daniel (elementary):

Chris wrote:"Do you worry that you could be creating a two-tier community with thisapproach?"

It's possible, but I'm not sure that we've measured anything tothis effect. I think you might be right that employees at elementary can havemore influence just as a byproduct of having more time to participate in morediscussions, but I wouldn't say that volunteers' opinions arediscounted in any way or that they're underrepresented when it comes tomajor technical decisions. I think it's more that we can direct laborafter design and architecture decisions have been discussed. As an example,we recently had decided to make the switch from CMake to Meson. This was agroup discussion primarily led by volunteers, but the actual implementationwas then largely carried out by employees.

Chris (Debian):

Daniel wrote:"Do you worry that you could be creating a two-tier community withthis approach? ... It's possible, but I'm not sure that we've measured anything tothis effect."

I think it might be another one of those situations where the optics in playis perhaps as important as the reality. Do you do anything to prevent theappearance of any bias?

Not sure how best to frame it hypothetically, but if I turned up to yourproject tomorrow and learned that some developers were paid for their work(however fairly integrated in practice), that would perhaps put me offinvesting my energy.

Bryan (LJ):

What do you see as the single biggest challenge currently facing both yourspecific project—and desktop Linux in general?

Daniel (elementary):

Third-party apps! Our operating systems are valuable to people only if they canuse them to complete the tasks that they care about. Today, that increasinglymeans using proprietary services that tie in to closed-source and non-nativeapps that often have major usability and accessibility problems. Even majoropen-source apps like Firefox don't adhere to free desktop standards likeshipping a .desktop file or take advantage of new cross-desktop metadatastandards like AppStream. If we want to stay relevant for desktop users, weneed to encourage the development of native open-source apps and invest innon-proprietary cloud services and social networks. The next set ofindustry-disrupting apps (like DropBox, Sketch, Slack, etc.) need to be open source andLinux-first.

Chris (Debian):

Third-party apps/stores are perhaps the biggest challenge facing alldistributions within the medium- to long-term, but whilst I would concedethere are cultural issues in play here, I believe they have some element ofbeing technical challenges or at least having some technical ameliorations.

More difficult, however, is that our current paradigms of what constitutessoftware freedom are becoming difficult to square with the increased usage ofcloud services. In the years ahead we may need to revise our perspectives,ideas and possibly even our definitions of what constitutes free software.

There will be a time when the FLOSS community will have to cease the casualmocking of "cloud" and acknowledge the reality that it is, regardless ofone's view of it, here to stay.

Matthew (Fedora):

For desktop Linux, on the technical side, I'm worried about hardwareenablement—not just the work dealing with driver compatibility andproprietary hardware, but more fundamentally, just being locked out. We'vejust seen Apple come out with hardware locked so Linux won't even boot—even with signed kernels. We're going to see more of that, and more tabletsand tablet-keyboard combos with similar locked, proprietary operatingsystems.

A bigger worry I have is with bringing the next generation to opensource—a lot of Fedora core contributors have been with the project since it started15 years ago, which on the one hand is awesome, but also, we need tomake sure that we're not going to end up with no new energy. When I was akid, I got into computers through programming BASIC on an Apple ][. I couldsee commercial software and easily imagine myself making the same kind ofthing. Even the fanciest games on offer—I could see the pixels and coulduse PEEK and POKE to make those beeps and boops. But now, with kids gettinginto computers viaFortnite or whatever, that's not something one can justsit down and make an approximation of as a middle-school kid. That'sdiscouraging and makes a bigger hill to climb.

This is one reason I'm excited about Fedora IoT—you can use Linux and opensource at a tinkerer's level to make something that actually has an effect onthe world around you, and actually probably a lotbetter than a lot ofoff-the-shelf IoT stuff.

Bryan (LJ):

Where do you see your distribution in five years? What will be its place be inthe broader Linux and computing world?

Chris (Debian):

Debian naturally faces some challenges in the years ahead, but I sincerelybelieve that the Project remains as healthy as ever.

We are remarkably cherished and uniquely poised to improve the free softwareecosystem as a whole. Moreover, our stellar reputation for technicalexcellence, stability and software freedom remains highly respected wherelosing this would surely be the beginning of the end for Debian.

Daniel (elementary):

Our short-term goals are mostly about growing our third-party app ecosystem andimproving our platform. We're investing a lot of time into onlineaccounts integration and working with other organizations, like GNOME, tomake our libraries and tooling more compelling. Sandboxed packaging andWayland will give us the tools to help keep our users' data private andto keep their operating system stable and secure. We're also working withOEMs to make elementary OS more shippable and to give users a way to get anopen-source operating system when they buy a new computer. Part of that workis the new installer that we're collaborating with System76 to develop.Overall, I'd say that we're going to continue to make it easier toswitch away from closed-source operating systems, and we're working onincreasing collaborative efforts to do that.

Bryan (LJ):

When you go to a FOSS or Linux conference and see folks using Mac and WindowsPCs, what's your reaction? Is it a good thing or a bad thing whendevelopers of Linux software primarily use another platform?

Chris (Debian):

Rushing to label this as a "good" or "bad" thing can make it easy to miss theunderlying and more interesting lessons we can learn here.

Clearly, if everyone was using a Linux-based operating system, that would be abetter state of affairs, but if we are overly quick to dismiss the usage ofMac systems as "bad", then we can often fail to understand why people havechosen to adopt the trade-offs of these platforms in the first place.

By not demonstrating sufficient empathy for such users as well as newcomersor those without our experience, we alienate potential users and contributorsand tragically fail to communicate our truemessage. Basically, we can be our own worst enemy sometimes.

Daniel (elementary):

Within elementary, we strongly believe in dogfood, but I think when we seesomeone at a conference using a closed-source operating system, it's alearning opportunity. Instead of being upset about it or blaming them, weshould be asking why we haven't been able to make a conversion. We needto identify if the problem is a missing product, feature, or just withoutreach and then address that.

Bryan (LJ):

How often do you interact with the leaders of other distributions? And isthat the right amount?

Chris (Debian):

Whilst there are a few meta-community discussion groups around, they tend tohave a wider focus, so yes, I think we could probably talk a little more, evenjust as a support group or a place to rant!

More seriously though, this conversation itself has been fairly insightful,and I've learned a few things that I think I "should" have known already,hinting that we could be doing a better job here.

Daniel (elementary):

With other distros, not too often. I think we're a bit more active withour partners, upstreams and downstreams. It's always interesting to hearabout how someone else tackles a problem, so I would be interested ininteracting more with others, but in a lot of cases, I think there arephilosophical or technical differences that mean our solutions might not berelevant for other distros.

Bryan (LJ):

Is there value in the major distributions standardizing on package managementsystems? Should that be done? Can that be done?

Chris (Debian):

I think I would prefer to see effort go toward consistent philosophicaloutlooks and messaging on third-party apps and related issues before I sawenergy being invested into having a single package management format.

I mean, is this really the thing that is holding us all back? I would grantthere is some duplication of effort, but I'm not sure it is the most egregiousexample and—as you suggest—it is not even really technicallyfeasible or is at least subject to severe diminishing returns.

Daniel (elementary):

For users, there's a lot of value in being able to sideloadcross-platform, closed-source apps that they rely on. But outside of this usecase, I'm not sure that packaging is much more than an implementationdetail as far as our users are concerned. I do think though that developerscan benefit from having more examples and more documentation available, andthe packaging formats can benefit from having a diverse set ofimplementations. Having something like Flatpak or Snap become as wellaccepted as SystemD would probably be good in the long run, but our usersprobably never noticed when we switched from Upstart, and they probablywon't notice when we switch from Debian packages.

Bryan (LJ):

Big thanks to Daniel, Matthew and Chris for taking time out to answerquestions and engage in this discussion with each other. Seeing theleadership of such excellent projects talking together about the things theydiffer on—and the things they align on completely—warms my littleheart.

• Debian Project
• Debian's UnwaveringPhilosophical Stance on Free Software
• Debian's 25thBirthday
• BenevolentDictator for Life (Wikipedia)
• Debian Project LeaderElections 2017
• Debian Project LeaderElections 2018
• Bitsfrom the DPL (October 2018)
• Get Fedora
• Fedora's Missionand Foundations
• Celebrate15 Years of Fedora
• elementary OS
• Publish on AppCenter

Bryan Lunduke is a former Software Tester, former Programmer, former VP of Technology, former Linux Marketing Guy (tm), former openSUSE Board Member... and current Deputy Editor ofLinux Journal, Marketing Director for Purism, as well as host of the popularLunduke Show. More details:http://lunduke.com.