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Linux in 2004?
An anonymous reader writes "John Terpstra and Eric S. Raymond have started the ball rolling on LinuxWorld's poll of the community for what they think will happen in the world of Linux in 2004. Terpstra says 'I predict that during 2004 at least one significant USA government body will adopt Linux on the desktop.'" Depending on how you define "significant", this has already occurred.
I found the following intresting
"I think 2004 is going to be a big year for Fedora and Suse, and a challenge for Debian (because Fedora now offers apt for RPM)."
Well apart from the fact that apt for rpm has been around for a while and also debian packages usually come configured a lot better than fedora are aren't as buggy.
Of course with the recent Debian security breach things might not be that easy
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Maybe having Linux being "good enough for government work" isn't exactly the image we want Linux to have. Just like I think having Linux on cheap, disposable, sub-par computers from places like Wal-mart may not be the best thing either.
The real goal is to have people see Linux as a viable alternative, not a cheap Windows imitation or some eccentric thing the government uses.
The real influx of Linux is due to the hiring of university students. Push Linux in the schools, and it'll end up in businesses and the gov.
Lower-education will be the short-term future of linux in my opinion. It's already hit the corporate server level, the governmental level, the ranks of high education, now what?
I've suggested to our [poor] school district that we should switch to Linux, using the old hardware we have, and they liked they idea but said it would be "too hard to implement". Oh, come now. I think that any kid could easily circumnavigate a Linux interface, especially if it is an easy one, like Mandrake 9.x or Lycoris! I sure would want my kids to learn Linux, and this is a cheap(free, actually) solution for those school districts that just can't seem to raise any money. In addition, get a good IT guy at the helm, fire all the low-waged IT guys who don't know what they're doing, and get that network running smoother than ever with Linux!
It's a SHOCK to me that school districts haven't at least started putting in an "Operating Systems 101" class in high school for everyone to learn about alternative OS's. Linux, Macintosh OS, Solaris, FreeBSD, UNIX, just imagine how much that would open up the minds of those kids!
It seems like Linux on the desktop for the masses is always a couple years away.
In 1998, I was swearing up and down that by the beginning of 2000, some major PC manufacturer would be selling Linux-preloaded systems branded for comsumers in places like CompUSA. That obviously didn't happen.
For most of the last four years, I've been predicting that by the beginning of 2005, most people would be using open source operating systems (keeping in mind that that could be Windows, if Microsoft caught a clue in time). Doesn't look like that's going to happen.
Now it's looking to me like the first half of 2006 is when Linux use on the consumer desktop will move from the "early adopter" to the "early majority" phase. I say this because:
* It's virtually guaranteed that we'll have several more major deployments in 2004 and 2005. These might be specialized applications instead of general desktop, but that will help create demand for more general applications.
* If you read the "Roadmap to desktop Linux" posted earlier today, it's clear that several very cool and useful features will be coming to the Free desktop in the next couple years.
* OpenOffice.org 2.0 should be released in the first half of 2005, and it is planned to make development of add-ons much easier. This will hopefully help get more office-oriented vertical applications ported to OOo.
When all this happens over the next couple years, I believe desktop Linux will turn from a stream to an avalanche.
But still, we need consumer pre-loads with all hardware configured to work out of the box, and marketed well. Few people are going to buy a Windows-infested PC, then choose to replace Windows with Linux. This is probably the most iffy condition, but I think it will happen. Most PC manufacturers would do anything to break away from MSFT.
Actually, I'd like to think 2004 might be the year Linux gets a feature-for-feature equivalent to MS Exchange, that supports MS Outlook, Evolution and a few other key clients.
When such a solution appears, that will mark a major milestone for Linux in potentially replacing Windows in many organisations.