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Linus Says 2004 is the Year for Desktop Linux
lca writes "Linuxworld Australia has an interview with Linus Torvalds about the current state of the Linux desktop and where it will go this year among other things. Also discussed are topics such as hardware support, the SCO issue, and whether or not he will be moving to Australia."
With the advent of the 2.6 series kernel, along with the efforts for compatability between KDE and GNOME, I think linux is getting very close for the desktop. I already use it as a desktop OS on my laptop with few problems. With a little bit more effort, even so -called "dummies" will be able to work with it as well.
What's his latest toy?
A Sony Electronics Inc. Vaio, Japanese edition. It's a handheld PC that has a 4-GB hard disk, 64 MB of RAM and a Pentium MMX 266-MHz processor. It weighs in at just 2.6 pounds and runs both Linux and Windows. "It's cute as hell." Oh, and it has a built-in camera.
Now imagine Billy-boy using Linux (maybe just to give it a test-run) and talking publicly about it. That would never happen because of the expected PR backlash.
Linus, on the other hand can be as frank as he wants to, without an axe hanging over his head.
Interesting, though nothing earth-shattering. Open-source also supports Freedom.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Its not being to be a 3D desktop. Its going to use 3D hardware on current graphics cards to allow for really rich 2D artwork. Current-gen 3D hardware can do Quartz-style anti-aliased, transparent 2D without breaking a sweat, and that's what developers want to take advantage of.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
What finally got me to try Linux is when I read a post on Slashdot about Mepis, which, like Knoppix, is a Linux distribution on a bootable CD. While I'd been aching to give Linux a try for years, I never had a spare box to run it, and I wasn't about to wipe XP and all my stuff off my main computer. If you haven't heard about it, Mepis is a full linux install and suite of software that you can boot off a CD and play with, without wiping your existing operating system from your hard drive.
After trying Mepis for just a couple hours, I fell in love. Everything from my optical mouse to my Nvidia drivers to my keychain drive worked without any installation. I'm going to go on using XP on my current box, but I now know that the Linux desktop is indeed ready for prime time. When I upgrade to a new system next year, Microsoft won't get a penny. I'm going to buy a whitebox system, and get myself a good Linux distribution.
I don't care how polished Linux gets; I think the only way it's ever going to get exposure to general users is on Mepis/Knoppix style CD ROMs that let people take the OS for a test drive. I really think that the best way to bring Linux to the general public is to distribute as many ten-cent CD ROMs as you can to friends and family, so they can see for themselves that there's no need to pay the Microsoft tax on their next PC purchase.
The way I see it, overcoming Microsoft's hegemony requires working on two fronts. The first is building quality distributions that work plug-and-play with everything from printers to wireless cards. And the second front is the creation of full-featured bootable CD's that let people see -- on their own machine -- how great Linux has become.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
According to The Register, Munich is finding that trying to get Linux on the city's desktop is not yet possible -- even with direct help from IBM and SuSE. They're finding that what Microsoft has said about Word is true in general: it isn't just the big things that everybody uses which are a problem, but also the little things which a very small number of people can't do without. In that case of Word, it turns out that almost everybody has a few small, exotic features that they really need, and that those small features, taken together, add up to a much greater barrier than all the big features which everybody needs.
This isn't going to be the year of Linux on the desktop if that holds true generally.
Well, I have some experience here. My mom ran windows for the last 3 years. She doesn't know computers, but that's what her DELL had on it. She has been it with virii and recently some adware that prominently displayed itself on her desktop.
Her computer runs slower and she doesn't know why. Probably unknown background processes chewing up CPU. All she does is email and surf the web, but the computer crashes and she is annoyed beyond belief with it. She is begging me to put something better on her machine, and she SPECIFICALLY asked for linux. She knows about linux as an alternative because I've mentioned that it's what I run on my machines. Her problems with windows have led her to conclude that she'd rather try something--anything--than continue running what she has. Oh yeah, she has paid "her guru" to come over and fix problems several times, and is tired of hiring someone to fix things that shouldn't be broken. So, an unstable, unreliable, virus-ridden, expensive operating system is its own incentive to switch. At least for MY mom.