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10 Linux Predictions For 2002
Weedstock writes: "In an article on LinuxWorld, Joe Barr is once again making 10 predictions about the success of Linux for the new year." The first of many sets of predictions for 2002, no doubt. And some guy named "Robin" or "Roblimo" or something like that wrote about Linux in 2003 for Newsforge.
I think you'll see this happen more than once, in some form or fashion; someone will kick W2k or XP out of the datacenter, and it'll be a high-profile linux win.
BUT: I don't see it as a linux win. It'll be a Red Hat win, or an IBM win (or Suse, or Debian, whatever, I'm not playing favorites here). Linux will not, per se, win the day. The services and "value adds" and all that crap will be what gets written about; the pundits (read: ZDNet) will talk about how so-and-so (Red Hat, IBM, whomever) sent in armies of consultants, promised to tailor things to their hardware, etc etc. In other words they'll downplay Linux.
It'll be a win, but everyone (most of all MS) will try to convince the world that it was a different game.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
AMEN!!!
.. IBM's WebSphere for Linux fFills in many of the gaps.
although
I really don't think that Microsoft discontinuing support for old versions of Windows will make anyone switch to Linux.
When was the last time you called up MS for tech support for Windows? Most people just don't care, or are even aware MS will provide any tech support at all.
I don't anticipate a large exodus to Linux when MS stops providing support. There's no reason at all to think that people will move to and learn a new *operating system* that doesn't provide them anything new over Windows 98 with no official support.
Everyone has been predicting that Linux will explode any minute now for *years*. This won't make it happen any sooner. Fact is, Linux doesn't provide anything over Windows for the vast majority of people, and MS has massive marketing muscle. Linux isn't poised to overcome that at all. Linux will need a ton of marketing money, and do something WINDOWS DOESN'T.
As much as people make fun of MS never innovating anything, everything I see in Linux development is meant to bring its functionality in line with Windows. If I see anything in Linux that enables me to do more than Windows, and do it with more stability (sorry, in my experience, Linux with X gives a much more unstable environment than 2k or XP), I'll give it another try.
For the moment, for me, it's XP on me desktop, 2k on my laptop, and OpenBSD on my server.
Is it just me or is he (and everybody else) prediciting that linux will become a desktop os because someday (maybe) it just might come true and they don't want to miss it.
Linux is no closer to being a user-friendly, capable desktop app than it had been in the last 3 years. Try telling the 12 o'clock flashers about compiling a kernel and mounting hard drives and they will give you the "blank stare of doom".
In truth, MacOS X is what Linux needs to become if it ever wants to succed as a desktop OS for the average joe (i.e good apps, nice interface, seemless hardware support, and a good unix command line just in case).
Back in 1997 running Samba, I didn't find any problem with 'seamless integration' for my two Windows game (mostly) machines to use the Linux box as server, or for the Linux box to work perfectly well along side of the other two as a peer machine.
If I may elaborate on your point, I think you mean "seamless MS-Office integration."
It takes a serious shift of my perception to think of MS-Exchange as "email". It's an email CLIENT, one of many. So is Netscape Mail. So is elm. Elm doesn't read Netscape Mail folders (ok, maybe it does for someone who wants to take the time, but we're talking seamless here), that doesn't stop someone from using elm to "seamlessly" talk with someone in the same office using Netscape Mail.
MS-Office is a monolithic group-ware package that works (well? at all?) only with itself. As such, there never can be "seamless integration" because Microsoft doesn't want there to be.
Microsoft has won the perception battle with MS-Office. Many managers think that in order to be compatable with anyone else, they must use MS-Office, and that only runs on MS-Win.
If "we" are going to open the desktop market, "we" must change that perception. I am very, very glad to see OpenOffice, KDE-Office, and all the other suites being built. The Noosphere is being homesteaded at the office application layer, and I couldn't be happier.
BTW, my last two jobs have been in shops where the one and only reason they use MS-Win is because they are entrenched into using MS-Office.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
AOL won't make any significant number of people move from Windows to Linux. 99% of the people on AOL are there because they don't know a lot about computers, and they don't care to. Sure, there are exceptions to the rule, but how many average AOL users could you see understanding "./configure, make, make install"?
Linux is still very much a geek OS, and since most geeks want broadband or real PPP dialup, I wouldn't see AOL making a huge dent if they did release software for Linux.
I was pretty sure that ALL of them had to do with LINUX, even if not directly...
#'s 1,2,3,6,7,8 and 10 are directly about LINUX
and #'s 4, 5 and 9 are about the competitive PC/ MS v LINUX marketplace...
though i suppose that you could argue that even though number 9, the Darker Image is about taking a shot at MS too, it's principally a good natured poke at some of the less "user friendly" members of our community....
after all guys, it IS LINUX WORLD magazine....
IMHO, i'd say that #'s 2,3 and 7 are serious blue sky
#'s 1,6 and 8 are mulligans
and that 4 and 7 are karma bets
9's a gag and
10 is probably the most accurate of them all
BTW, Joe, stay away from Theo for a while
Ten quid, she's so easy to blind. And not a word is spoken...
Similarly, a surprising number of online banking services, auction houses, etc are putting Windows-centric code on their sites, limiting site usability for many potential customers.
I'm looking forward to seeing if there's going to be a backlash against that in the coming year. When sites realize that a good chunk of users are being cut off, could we see "platform agnostic" and "Linux-friendly" become marketable buzzwords, causing sites to leap on the bandwagon and to start performing real Linux usability testing?
And if "Linux-friendly" logos, icons and similar start to appear on sites, could the alternative operating systems enjoy even more visibility as a result?
Nothing will change:
.. I know there's more)
Linux will improve. No one will care --
A third desktop will emerge and really confuse everything (KDE and Gnome being the other two
OSX will barely maintain Apple's market share and everyone will agree that it is the best OS ever.
Windows 10wnU will be released. Despite massive security flaws and a wicked licensing scheme will continue to rulle the desktops.
This
This will be true only in ISO-8859-1 (or ISO-8859-15 with Euro) world or at least 8bit simple encodings world.
For other billions of people (Chinese, Indian, Arab, and so on), Linux desktop (with XFree86, GNOME, and KDE) is far from usable for average people.
In other words, there are still remaining large market for such billions of people.
1 and 6 maybe mulligans, but I'd call 8 more of a "gimme" ...
I've seen screenshots of an official (and not even alpha quality) official AOL client for Linux.
Given AOHell's recent decision to join the Liberty Alliance, could it be that AOL's partnership with Sun (as in Sun is the center of the Netscape iPlanet world now) has addicted AOL-TW to the need for open standards???
utter rubbish
As for Linux on the desktop, I have to remain skeptical of its success. If MacOS X never came about, I'd say their are definite possibilities, but now there is just too much going on besides Linux. Here are reasons why Linux is not going to succeed on the desktop anytime soon:
- Software companies are currently devoting a good chunk of resources towards updating their applications for XP, and also exploring possibilities of using new XP "features".
- .NET will also consume more software company resources that could possibly be focused towards Linux desktop software.
- Apple is going to be releasing faster, more appealing hardware along with an improving OS X. Software companies are going to get distracted into doing new Mac versions of their applications.
- A high-end multimedia explosion is about to hit the computer industry. Over the past several years, multimedia has been a joke in my opinion, but now hardware and software is actually capable of doing some useful and cool stuff. When I read about wireless IEEE-1284 (Firewire), see new media features come out like DVD-RW+, and video software that does a million things in a simple package, I don't even begin to think about Linux. Sorry.
If Linux was where it is now, two years ago, I'd say it had a good chance. Now the future is looking even more bleak. I don't like saying that, but it's the current reality. A bronze medal is still not that bad though, when you think about it...I disagree. Choice is good, and the more choice the better as far as i'm concerned.
All that is needed is a new installation class. For instance, Mandrake comes with a set of preconfigured options during installation, "office", "multimedia", etc. All that needs to be done is add a new one called "newbie" or something.
This newbie class would install just one option for every common app. One window manager, one office package, one image processor, and so on.
That way a newbie can have at their point and click fingertips, while having all the software on disc in case they ever want to use something different.
You may laugh at preloaded Linux-only, or dual-boot machines, but I work in a computer shop and have already sold several preloaded machines with dual-boot linux systems. Why do they want them? Most want to just learn about the OS and because many of them want to get away from Microsoft.
My prediction.
Gnome bite it?
Is this the same Gnome that Sun and HP have chosed as their next generation UI or some other Gnome?
One of linux's greatest problems is the KDE vs Gnome "issue", sadly I think it is pretty unlikely that either of these will bite it. They are both great desktops environments, but the conflict/split between them diverts efforts away from any real chance of desktop dominance.
The fact that these two groups compete is great for linux users, but not for the "linux market" and I would have thought is a major factor discouraging companies porting software to linux.
Alex
One point here, Compaq still supports Alpha, they're just phasing it out in favor of Itanium. We run Tru64 on Alpha's here for all of our enterprise level computing. Stuff like Oracle and other demented products. I'm _really_ trying to get management to let me even test Linux on x85, I'd love to run Linux on Alpha.
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
I've seen the linux box a bank in Spain gives away with accounts that runs an AOL client to allow people to do Internet banking.
Whether it will ever be released as a seperate client is highly doubtful in my mind, think of the support retraining costs AOL would have to justify.
How many consumer type people (meaning non computer weenies) do you know who say things like, "my computer has Windows 98 on it now but I want to get a new one with Linux on it soon"?
./configure make make install. Maybe it's an RPM. Maybe it's a tarball with a shell script that you have to run. Who knows?
Most people don't actually like messing with their computer; they want to use a few applications and get off of it. IM, Napster, email, Word, Excel, and a web browser are the kind of thing that make people put up with computers. They also don't like shopping for computers.
So the most recent Linux distros are marginally faster at some tasks than Win2k? Well gee, switching would make your 1.7GHz P4 run like a 1.8GHz P4! What a compelling selling point. That's worth about $30 right now based on dell.com's pricing.
On the other hand, a consumer is going to have a lot better chance finding someone to help them install Windows apps than Linux apps. Also, take a look at apps like InstallShield, and compare that to rpm or gnorpm. It's no contest, the Windows or MacOS installation experience is so much better.
AFAIK, nobody is trying to make Linux easy to use. They're trying to make one app easy to use, and there's no UI consistency. MacOS, Windows, and even Java have user interface guidelines that application developers follow. Apple and Microsoft also look at the whole system and try to make it more usable overall. Windows falls down in the "installing a new network card driver" department, for example; don't get me wrong. But with Linux, everything requires you to learn a whole new skill set. Want to install software? Maybe it's
Until Linux does something that a whole lot of people really really want, which Windows doesn't, it won't become popular. The threshold of how cool that something has to be is set by the extremely poor usability of Linux.
I dare anyone to put Windows, MacOS, and Linux (pick your distro) in a room and time a computer newbie trying to get all this done:
- install the OS from CD onto an unpartitioned brand-new 60GB IDE hard disk.
- install a CD burner, network card, digital still camera, digital videocamera, 2 monitors, USB optical mouse, USB MP3 player, low-end laser printer; perform a basic test to make sure each is working.
- install Microsoft Office or StarOffice or whatever app suite you like; launch each app to make sure it works
- connect to an existing e-mail account and download an attachment in Excel format. Print it.
- install a browser that has 128-bit crypto
- connect to an online banking site that requires 128-bit crypto, and print a current statement
- Create an MS Word formatted document and save it.
- install a chat client for AOL, MSN, and Yahoo; send the new Word document to a friend on each of AIM, MSN, and YIM.
- install a USB webcam; have a chat session with a friend on YIM.
I predict that Linux won't be the OS on which the newbie will be able to get all this done most quickly. That's the kind of benchmark that Linux needs to win in order for ordinary people to care about it.