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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."
They didn't ask Linus if he paid his $699 licensing fee to SCO. It'd be a shame for him to have to stop working on their OS..
Trolling is a art,
Why would any computer-savvy person want to move to Australia? They've got some of the toughest Internet censorship laws in the free world, IIRC...
Only requirement for good karma: be pedantic as much and as often as possible.
"The server space is easier to tackle first with any operating system as it can be applied to specific tasks such as mail serving; however, the desktop is harder to sell." This may be true but it sure isn't impossible. It will just take some time. Can't run until you can first crawl.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
Linux breaks desktop barrier in 2004: Torvalds
Rodney Gedda , Computerworld
15/01/2004 15:43:16
This year will see Linux finally crack the lucrative desktop market as more commercial software vendors tool up and cash in on the operating system and kernel developers improve graphical interface integration says cult hero and Linux founder Linus Torvalds. Computerworld's Rodney Gedda cornered the penguin power supremo at the Linux.Conf.au in Adelaide.
Computerworld: How do you feel Linux on the desktop is progressing?
Linus Torvalds: Last year was good but I'm seeing a lot more noise about it this year. The server space is easier to tackle first with any operating system as it can be applied to specific tasks such as mail serving; however, the desktop is harder to sell.
Now, the kernel and other pieces are coming together including office applications, games and Web browsers. This has made the Linux desktop interesting to commercials. Commercials tend to choose one desktop, such as KDE or GNOME (GNU Network Object Model Environment), and stick with it. There has been some confusion and rivalry that has helped its development. Right now it looks like the two are closing in on each other, for example, with Red Hat's Bluecurve interface.
I don't think X is going away as it has a powerful infrastructure and throwing it away would be stupid. And its network transparency is good. It's likely that X will be the 2D interface to a lower-level graphics system that is based on OpenGL. The Linux desktop wants to have 3D as the base and X as the interface to 2D.
The fact that X and kernel development have been separate is good; one could evolve without the other but DRI (Direct Rendering Infrastructure) has made them not completely independent. As a developer, having the two separate is good, because different people are good at developing for each.
CW: Any plans for 2004?
LT: I've never had much of a plan for the direction of Linux as I react to outside pressure. This year there will be a lot of desktop users, which will impact kernel developers.
For now I will be working the stabilisation of kernel 2.6 and in a month or two I expect Fedora (the core of Red Hat Linux) to have a release with 2.6 so I expect to get more bug reports.
CW: Would adopting an integrated hardware and software system be good for Linux?
LT: There are pure technical disadvantages of having an operating system that supports a wide range of hardware. The variety of hardware makes it challenging as Linux needs thousands of drivers.
But having an operating system that is independent of the hardware is powerful for the user as it is basically the same on big and small machines. Another big advantage of a wide hardware base is an operating system that is more flexible. This is why Linux is having a lot of impact in the embedded space. An operating system is a complex beast, so it's nice to have an existing one that can be adapted to the hardware. There are a few problem spots with Linux driver support by hardware companies and wireless is one of them. With hardware getting better this problem is being solved.
CW: What about Linux in the enterprise?
LT: The direction Linux takes in the enterprise will depend on what resources enterprise companies put into it. This is the one thing that will push Linux into the high end.
IBM is the most obvious, and although it is impressive to run Linux on high-end hardware, most of the people who work on Linux don't have access to it. It's the regular desktops that get most of the attention by programmers.
CW: What about open source code bundling by commercial software companies?
LT: Quite often that's fine and it is fine with BSD (Berkely Software/Standard Distribution) code. But I like the GPL (General Public Licence), because I want people to give [code] back. If hardware appliance makers don't give back code then that's a problem, but giving it back shouldn't cause any problems. And
I'd have to agree with it being close to having a real viable desktop solution. Having LiveCD's in place, such as Knoppix, showing off the ease of running Linux will help bring it to the masses. It's much easier to try Linux if you just have to boot from CD and then "play" instead of having to commit to the install process. My Knoppix installed Debian feels solid compared to the "feel" of Mandrake and Suse which makes me more likely to recommend it to others that I see as borderline tech savy.
Or is it "Can't move back to Finland"? Has he crossed the Finnish mafia once too often? Did he wake up to find smelt heads in his bed? What's the REAL story here?
Iraq has weapons of mass destruction
Future slashdot headline:
"Linus says 2034 really, really is the Year for Desktop Linux, honest! I'm pretty damn sure this time! I swear!"
Seriously, we hear that every goddamn year since 2002. It's an annual thing, like those stupid so-called analysts saying "Apple is dying this year".
It's not that I'm against it, in fact I am a desktop Linux user, but this is just ridiculous.
I've got weapons of math instruction!
At New York's Kennedy airport today, an individual later
discovered to be a public school teacher was arrested trying
to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a
protractor, a setsquare, a slide rule, and a calculator.
At a morning press conference, Attorney general John Ashcroft
said he believes the man is a member of the notorious
al-gebra movement. He is being charged by the FBI with
carrying weapons of math instruction.
"Al-gebra is a fearsome cult,", Ashcroft said. "They desire
average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off
on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret
code names like "x" and "y" and refer to themselves as
"unknowns", but we have determined they belong to a common
denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country.
"As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, there are 3
sides to every triangle," Ashcroft declared.
When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "If
God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction,
He would have given us more fingers and toes.
"I am gratified that our government has given us a sine that
it is intent on protracting us from these math-dogs who are
willing to disintegrate us with calculus disregard. Murky
statisticians love to inflict plane on every sphere of
influence," the President said, adding: "Under the
circumferences, we must differentiate their root, make our
point, and draw the line."
President Bush warned, "These weapons of math instruction
have the potential to decimal everything in their math on a
scalene never before seen unless we become exponents of a
Higher Power and begin to factor-in random facts of vertex."
Attorney General Ashcroft said, "As our Great Leader would
say, read my ellipse. Here is one principle he is uncertainty
of: though they continue to multiply, their days are numbered
as the hypotenuse tightens around their necks."
This year will see Linux finally crack the lucrative desktop market as more commercial software vendors tool up and cash in on the operating system and kernel developers improve graphical interface integration says cult hero and Linux founder Linus Torvalds.
Yes, Linux is a suitable desktop replacement. I still don't see a significant number of people making the switch. What is the motivation for the average user who has invested time in learning Windows to switch?
Aside from impoverished goverments in third world countries (California anyone?) are the masses going to bother learning something new when what they have tends to meet their needs?
contrary to some of the other responses to your post - i agree with you wholeheartedly. success and penetration of the desktop will have very little to do with performance from 2.6 kernel - but rather with good usability practices within the community.
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
Why would any year for Linux be make or break? That makes no sense at all when one considers the strides that have been made in just the last few years.
I personally think Linux is popular because of X,OpenOffice,Gimp,Apache,TuxRacer, etc etc, and ETC and there is nothing but more software coming out for the OS. I cannot imagine everyone throwing in the towel after 2004 if Linux doesn't take over the desktop: "Oh hell, forget it, this was to be THE year, but wasn't so let's shut the doors."
Also, a lot of people are already using Linux as a desktop and feel the "make" much more than the "break" already. If mass appeal picks up, great, but considering the effort that goes into the OS and the software that runs on Linux, to simplify one year as THE defining year for an operating system misses the point.
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?
Not that I'm complaining, but wasn't 2003 supposed to be the year of desktop linux?
He's more than a kernel hacker, he's an open source leader. Part of his role in the community is to set direction, identify problem areas, and do all of those other things that leaders do.
By Linus coming out and focusing on the desktop (even if just in words) he's effectively pointing the collective effort of the open source community more and more to that end.
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
I think you mean GNU/Christ, brother.
Erlang.org: wow
This is what XPDE is trying to do (clone the Windows XP interface). Except for the applications part...it provides a shell that looks like the Windows XP one along with a control panel and some other stuff (at least I seem to remember it having that stuff).
Personally, you can pry Window Maker out of my cold dead fingers...but I've been using GNU/Linux on the desktop full time for nearly four years. All the software I use works fine on GNU/Linux so I have no need for Windows. I just need a few games (Frozen-Bubble, LBreakout2, Legacy Doom, Quake2), Emacs, a web browser, and a simple DAW for my occasional audio work (Ardour is awesome for this). I'm not a "desktop user" I guess.
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
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.
ok, so maybe linux itself is nearing readyness to take on windows. gnome/kde have come a long way as have the kernel and indeed linux PR in general.
however, i still do not feel that 2004 is "year of the linux desktop" because the market will not be ready for it. i will come back to my regular example - my mother. not only is she an occasional home user, but my mother runs a business of about 40 people strong who do medical aid claims processing. like many companies her size, she runs:
* Windows on Desktop
* Windows on Server
* Office on Desktop
* Exchange on Server
* ACCESS APPLICATION THAT WAS WRITTEN FOR HER
ok. so the first 3 you can pretty much wipe out with linux. the exchange thing, i still believe is a problem. i have been babblin on about good groupware capabilities in Linux for years and quite frankly i'm still shocked at the lack of a good alternative to exchange. although i am impressed by ximian's exchange connector - how ironic is running MS Exchange for your server and Linux on the desktop...
anyway. lets get back to the BIG PROBLEM - her access database package. in fact, when i go to my dentist - they've got some custom built access application. as does my physio. as do many small sized businesses.
the thing that will make it the year for the linux desktop will be a big "SWITCH"-like campaign. although all the pieces of the puzzle (ximian, 2.6 kernel, KDE, GNOME, CrossOver etc...) are available - they still need to be assembled to create the correct picture - and this will continue to take time. but i feel that a big assistant to this could come from some clever people like VMWare or Citrix. "ok, so you have this, this and that running on Windows - and there is no Linux version. ok, lets just run them in a thin-client/emulator". that will need a lot more knowledge from the small outsourced IT company my mother currently uses, and a bit more technical innovation. the long and the short: still more time.
You know, I hear that argument quite a bit. But Windows 9x -> XP had a learning curve. Mac OS 9 -> Mac OS X had a learning curve. The same goes for applications. Every now and then the interface changes, and users learn how to use it. With OS, the vast majority just go with what's already installed when they buy it. Once Gnome and KDE are deemed useable enough to ship pre-installed on consumer PC lines by the likes of Dell, Sony, and HP, people will buy them as long as they can access all their files. They don't need to know that every widget will look the same. When people buy a new replacement computer, they say "Will I be able to view all my photos and listen to all my songs? Will I be able to access all my favorite web sites? Will I be able access my documents and spreadsheets?" If applications have full file compatibility, and the system mime types are set correctly, they won't care. They'll see right away that it's a little different, and they'll take the time to learn it, as long as the files open and the data is still correct.
None of KDE, GNOME, Gimp, mplayer or OpenOffice come out for Linux. They just come out. They'll be available in BSD ports systems, for Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, SCO UnixWare, and in the case of KDE, mplayer and Gimp, native Mac OS X. Yes, this software is available for Linux. But it's not Linux software. A "Linux PC", such as this one, contains a whole mishmash of software, which is running atop a Linux kernel. That could so easily be a FreeBSD kernel, a Darwin kernel, a SunOS 5 kernel, Windows running SFU, WIndows running Cygwin, whatever. The source is available and people will build it on their own platforms.
Slashdot... Stuff that Matters ;)
(kidding!)
Windows is about choice.
I find it surprising that more businesses aren't aware of the benefits of switching to Linux desktops that are X thin clients. I use an LTSP-style setup at home and it really works well. There aren't low-cost clients available in the shops though, so I have to make my own using VIA mini-ITX kit for about 150ukp (~$250).
With the commoditisation of gigabit networking and 64-bit machines (i.e. Opteron), it must be fairly easy for one server to support more than 40 desktops.
- Brain.
First of all, winters aren't insanely cold. For example, this winter in Helsinki we only had 3 days at -15 degrees C so far, the rest has been between 0 and -6.
But the reason to live here are many: excellent education, health and public transport and beautiful living conditions: the whole city is embedded in parks. We actually don't have something you can call parks, the buildings and streets are actually connected together with large green areas. Basically, you can go anywhere through parks and woods.
Finns like to live close to nature, and somehow, wild animals feel comfortable in the presence of people. So it's easy to meet, even here, in the capital area, with squirrels, wild rabbits, pheasants, and sometimes even bears and wolfs (a bit more to the north, but still metropolitan area). I find this wonderful!
And then, there's the mentailty of the people, which I like so very much: Finnland have extremely low crime rate, and Finns in general don't lie (in any case, much less than any other nation I have seen, and I've traveled a lot), which makes life very simple. As a consequence, the administrative overhead to do anything, is very low. You can do most things by way of internet or just telephone.
So, it might not be your cup of tea, but for me it's paradise.
Sigged!
"Every year we had been hearing that this year was to be the year of the LAN. Allsorts of hype, and eventually it died down, and when it did, LANs were everywhere."
I highly suspect that it is going to be like this for linux :)
That may be as far as
When 2.4 was stable and he started working on 2.6, Linus said he wanted to put in more features for desktop. Now, I don't know if you noticed, but Linux on servers has been working out pretty well during that time period. Now, it's desktop's turn (according to Linus) and we'll see what happens; even Linus admits that it's harder on the desktop:
The server space is easier to tackle first with any operating system as it can be applied to specific tasks such as mail serving; however, the desktop is harder to sell.