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What Lies Ahead For Linux

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the eye-to-the-future dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Here's an interview with Stacey Quandt, a Linux and open source industry analyst. She explains why she feels Linux will overtake Windows as the number one operating system within the next three years." There's some interesting tidbits on what it takes to be an industry analyst as well, and some looking back to when most analysts were unaware of Linux.

8 of 456 comments (clear)

  1. What she really said by tverbeek · · Score: 5, Informative
    She explains why she feels Linux will overtake Windows as the number one operating system within the next three years.

    Nice out-of-context hyperbole. She was referring to shipments of new boxes in the server market. In terms of desktop market share, she says that mere parity would take "a long time", and she's looking forward to a modest 10% share (essentially changing from a "fringe" player to a commonly-supported niche player) as a significant milestone.

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    http://alternatives.rzero.com/
    1. Re:What she really said by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Eh? You proved his point! "Gentoo... 600 MHz... 196MB RAM... works just fine". Of course it does!

      But he was talking about a 486. Yes, a 486 that can still run Office 2000. Try running Linux + OOo + Mozilla on such a thing -- utterly unusable.

      I'm a huge Linux fan, but it's getting way too bloated now. Modern Linux desktop distros such as Fedora are even more resource-hungry and bloated than Windows XP. Sure, you can cut out GNOME/KDE, OOo, Mozilla etc. to get more speed, but why should you have to?

      Microsoft improved stability with Win2k. They improved boot time with WinXP. If they improve performance with Longhorn, us Linux users will be left with the most slow and bloated OS around.

      Some people see this as a serious problem. I wish others would too...

  2. Servers - maybe, Desktop - not ready by Uninen · · Score: 2, Informative

    She's saying that for desktop "the timeframe is more like the next two years". I just don't see this happening. There's too many usability issues with Linux desktop today.

    I really would like to see some serious co-operation with KDE and GNOME teams, for example, to get their software working more uniform way, and more importantly - to get OS developers realize that they need to focus more on usability and some common interface guidelines instead of just adding new features on every new release.

  3. Re:Slashdot editors are stupid by NiceGeek · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ok...I'm calling it either flamebait or ignorance. You do realize that the stuff in quotes is from the submitter right?

  4. Re:What Lies Ahead for Linux... by 13Echo · · Score: 2, Informative

    Linux has "kernel audio mixing support" if your hardware supports it. Stop buying cheapo DirectX audio chips that rely on software mixers and you won't have a problem. Your crappy integrated i810 has problems for a reason.

    Also, I can't think of any video chips these days that aren't supported. Everything from ATI/nVidia/PowerVR/S3/Intel/etc., has some 3D support through either opensource or closed drivers. Hell, even the SGI Volari chips have Linux drivers. Talk about obscure.

  5. Re:What Lies Ahead for Linux... by Brandybuck · · Score: 5, Informative

    Windows supports almost every known video card out of the box

    Actually, Windows supports very little video hardware out of the box. The last three video cards I had required me to install the manufacturer provided drivers in order to get out of VGA mode.

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    Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
  6. Re:depends. by Frizzle+Fry · · Score: 2, Informative
    Longhorn's interface pisses people off too much, and they crave a more traditional interface

    Do you really think there's any chance that longhorn won't give you the option of using the traditional interface? XP not only has the "classic" theme to look like older versions of windows, but still has progman.exe (the program manager from win 3.1).
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    I'd rather be lucky than good.
  7. Re:Nobody but Slashdotters care about that by dtfinch · · Score: 3, Informative

    Just to test that, today I plugged one of my digital cameras (Concord EasyToo) into my pc running Suse Linux 9.0 for the first time, having never used a camera with Linux ever before. It detected the camera immediately, and automatically placed a camera icon on my desktop for me to browse the photos.