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What Lies Ahead For Linux
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.
I still favor Linux over Windows when it comes to stability, but there are several other facets of the Windows operation system and Microsoft philosophy that turn me (and likely other Slashdotters) off. First, security. I don't like my browser or mail client doing things I'm not explicitly aware of. I cannot use Windows with a clear conscience because of IE's and Outlook's persistent security failures. Add in IIS for Windows incarnations with IIS installed an running. This is compounded by the fact that these pieces of software cannot be uninstalled. I don't really care about the monopoly angle with the bundling of IE/Outlook. Linux distros "bundle" similar items if not more which I like. The difference is that if someone finds a bug in Mozilla that puts me or my network at risk, I can wipe it clean from my hard drive and fall back on alternative software packages.
Cost is another obvious difference, but one that I think will eventually catch up to Microsoft more than any antitrust case or business practice. It's evolution, baby. The personal computer is still a wonderful, versatile thing. I use it to write, program, listen to music, watch movies, capture/edit/burn digital video, and game. But it isn't a new concept on which a business can build on and dominate market share any more. There are a growing number of open source software projects that meet or even exceed their commercial competitors capabilities. OpenOffice, Mozilla, and Apache to name a few. There's three software projects right there that are relevant to the corporate world's preoccupation with information technology.
Commercial software that meets a need or niche that open source solutions cannot fill is going the way of the dinosaurs. They had their chance, but it's not the way I see software evolving. Why depend on a single commercial source for solutions when you can support a core group of developers in producing a piece of software that everyone can benefit from?
I don't so much find Windows to be inferior. It's just that Linux and the canon of open source software built upon it make so much more sense financially, socially, and from an engineering standpoint.
There is no god
that's all I care about anyway.
I want good drivers for my hardware. open source would be nice but I'll be very happy with fully supported binaries.
let the ignorant fools have their Windows. if they don't care about getting the best then let them buy their 256MB-Intel-WinXP machines from Dell. see if I care.
didn't your parents ever teach you; "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all"
How many years before the server/desktop OS becomes irrelevant? The apps make the platform valuable, not the OS.
Yeah, right.
Oh no.
Linux has been "overtaking windows in the next 3 years" for at least the last 6 years,
probably more. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for running Linux on some non-critical servers.
But on desktop it's a freaking joke. I mean, you still can't play multiple sounds in Linux
at the same time (unless you use a laggy userland daemon that takes a second to unpause your mp3,
or buy a "supported" audio card with hardware mixing). For some reason Linus has a problem with
putting kernel audio mixer (something Windows had since Win98 (and probably '95 but I'm not too sure))
into kernel-mode, so now all "desktop linux" users are stuck with playing one audio stream at a time.
Even FreeBSD, a much less "desktop" oriented OS (at least it isn't claiming to be "the windows killer"
on the desktop every few months), has kernel audio mixing support since like 5.x-CURRENT. So this
was one tiny nitpick about audio, something people on "desktop" will probably need sooner or later.
How about video? Windows supports almost every known video card out of the box, while to get any kind
of decent graphics in Linux you need to buy a "supported" video card. How many "corporate desktops"
you know of that run on exotic "custom ordered" hardware? They all use precanned HP/Dell/Whatever
desktops with generic onboard video and audio. Unless Linux will automatically without *any* problems
installs on this class of hardware, forget using it for corporate desktops.
And to sum this up, I guess the real reason Linux isn't going to be overtaking anything "in the next
3 years", is the group mentality of Linux users in general. There are literally hundreds of half-assed
"distributions" of Linux. And new ones seem to be popping up at an amazing speed. Compare that to
the *BSD family, where there is only one "distribution" for each flavor (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD) and
once you know one, you should have no problems migrating to any other *BSD family. In Linux, every
distribution seems to want to invent their own packaging system, configuration system, etc etc.
People, this is not how you win users. You win users by creating a standard, easy to use system.
Forget the 100's of distributions. Create a single standard and make everyone use it. Then, only then
you might have some chance at a "desktop OS".
I think that's unnecessarily harsh (and the story blurb did misquote her). However, being a Linux analyst, she does have a business interest in seeing Linux flourish, and it's impossible for that not to color her judgements.
The other problem is that her background seems to be exclusively Linux. I'm not sure how you can make judgements about a whole market when you only know one product.
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
Servers, on the other hand, should be linux's play ground
I used to think that, but after doing some work with Win2003, I'm not so sure.
Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings! -Feynman, maybe
While this person is certainly a moron, I think that if you judge CS-worthiness on whether it was a person's major in school, you're doing much of the free software community great discredit. The fact of the matter is, most CS-majors couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag -- much less solve a problem elegantly. CS majors are like art majors, you know: just because you studied the technique doesn't mean you have the talent. Talent is something you are born with, and is grown by love of a subject. Not by university classes and a desire to benefit financially from what you erroneously thought would be a hot field when you graduated.
Sadly, most CS majors are like this.
Further, many of the most brilliantly savvy computer people I've met studied other stuff in school. Only stupid people excel at only one thing.
This is pretty simple to sum up in my mind. Although my desktop is still running windows at work, at home I rarely see it.
But when asked the question why I have moved to Open Office from Microsoft Office, and why I have moved to Linux from Windows, what is the answer?
It's mostly about rights and freedom. I'm not yet willing to admit that I am a full out FSF supporter, though I have been a supporter of the Open Source movement. Microsoft's licensing tactics (and not just theirs but the general tactics of many other folks have led me as far away from proprietary "treat-the-custer-as-a-theif" software as I can possibly get.
Linux is great, and it has been an incredible learning experience (I've honestly never felt so dumb sitting in front of a command prompt as I did during my first Gentoo installation).
I was never a *NIX user. I never had any desire to run anything other than Windows because I was happy with the product.
But they forced me to look elsewhere, and when I did I learned what I was missing.
So IMO, what lies ahead for linux is more users...and I don't believe that is limited to the server. From the desktop side, the strides that have been made in KDE and GNOME in the last couple of revisions have made them dramatically nicer to work with. From the server side...not having to have a GUI running on a server is quite a bit more efficient.
Back in the day I remeber Microsoft recommending you change the screen saver to the black screen instead of one of those OpenGL screen savers on your Windows NT SQL server because the screen saver would bury your processor. I couldn't help but think why do I have this huge GUI running on what is supposed to resemble a somewhat powerful database server?!!
"God is dead!" - Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is dead!" - God
Let's say Windows get's overtaken. Fine. You do realize MS-Linux will come out? And people will buy it.
In droves.
MS will then have 95% of the Linux desktop market.
What will you rail against then? Distro jihad?
Or will you finally grow up?
link
Replace "NT" with "Longhorn" and change the dates and it still works!!!
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
let them buy their 256MB-Intel-WinXP machines from Dell.
Not sure what you're implying there. I would be scared to run a 'Modern Linux Desktop' on an Intel machine with a mere 256MB of RAM.
I use FVWM on Slackware 9.1 instead, on my older hardware. But I know that the 'average user' will require much more.
In addition to this: I can and do run Office 2000, on Windows 95, on an aging Toshiba 486 laptop that only has 32 megs of RAM. It works pretty darn well for writing and spreadsheets. I know for a fact that I could NEVER get acceptable performance with that machine running Linux with OpenOffice.
It would run Linux fine with FVWM (it boots NetBSD-current with FVWM instead) but not with the 'desktop' power (I prefer command-line power thankyou, and XTerms are great for running shells out of) that most people expect today. But it's good enough to run Windows 95 and MS Office quite acceptably.
I want good drivers for my aging software, and as Linux has marched ahead as a platform for closed-source drivers for bleeding edge hardware, and as a server platform, it's partially abandoned most of the 'desktop' hardware I own.
Which is almost entirely 'legacy' hardware, I will concede. But Linux used to be a cool platform to run on older hardware. Now I find myself having to pare back on what I install, as I know modern KDE or Gnome would suck on my mere PIII-500 desktop machine with only 768M of RAM.
A bunch of us used to run Linux on 486s with 16 megs of RAM. Netscape, and all that. It worked pretty good.
Sorry for seeming reactionary.
resigned
Here's why against your arguments:
... reformat. When entire chunks of companies are looking at nothing but the BIOS info they'll SERIOUSLY re-think the whole matter.
... will completely trash the system leaving you staring at nothing but ... BIOS.
... Sure, the need for better GUI based configuration routines are being worked on and coming. I will say there is nothing like coding for Linux sitting in front of OS X. :)
... while Windows will sometimes work, sometimes won't. Some Windows applications won't work right, or at all. Heck, some Windows patches require you to run around manually rebooting problem systems -- I've seen 1/10th the headaches dealing with NBM systems.
... and watch as business WILL roll with Linux ... and care to bet what the home users follow with? I can't count how many Linux distro CD's I've sent home with people who's 95 or Me box did this or that and won't work right anymore... One of the reasons Microsoft made it to the top was BECAUSE of the pirating going on. Ssshhhh, here, take it. It'll be OK. Well ... we, the geeks, FUCKED IT UP. We, the geeks, WILL fix it. The best part? It's not illegal this time...as Microsoft is pinching their users with activation keys and phoning home.
1. One of these Blaster type worms will come along. AV software won't catch it while it migrates through web servers (and then clients using IE), also via Outlook, and of course the direct connections. Login
1b. Another real option (based on Microsoft's history of code writing) is that one of these updates that comes along -- which EVERYBODY is trying to install quick and fast
2. OO or WordPerfect (for Linux) sure don't seem cryptic to any of my users. Click File, Open,
3. Have you deployed large scale software roll outs for Linux? Or patched hundreds of systems that needed it due to, oh my gosh, a flaw that was found (and typically fixed if it is serious within 24 hours)? I've done it for Windows, Linux, and OS X. OS X wins hands down (GUI or command line is trivial to deal with), Linux can easily be made to work "magic"
May you be modded up
That problem is self solving. If Linux had 90% market share everything would work with linux, while Windows users would complain that nothing supports there system. In other words the situation Macs re in today. (they support nearly everything, but the exceptions are common enough and very annoying.
Best would be the situation like the early 80s when all the good programs had versions for the APPLE II, Atari, C=64, and IBM PC. Or at least some combonation of the above, supporting all was rare, but most companies supported more than one. And that in the days when we didn't have a single command to re-compile, the source was re-written for each. (often in assembly) There were exceptions of course, but they just prove the rule.
We will take some random people in the following magnitudes and administer an OS test to see who's really king. Now I agree that Windows has a greater advantage because of market share, HOWEVER that's the real world and the one we play in.
30, 9th graders selected at random
30, Fresh high school grads
60, members of the general population
30, persons age 30-60
30, persons age 60+
30 small business _owners_ not in IT
FYI this is 210 people.
We will have them attempt the following tasks Using the latest versions of
WindowsXP,
RedHat,
Linspire
OS X
Participants will be timed and rewarded with a prize if they succeed in their tasks, say a candy bar (to simulate a work environment where they would get money)
There will be two tasks to do 1/2 of each group will do each
The first half will have to complete the tasks without any documentation other than what is provided standard ON SCREEN.
The second half with a full printed manual including screen shots and detailed step by step instructions
Our tests will be
Install the OS (I realize this isn't realistic cause every Mac already comes with it but it'll have to do)
Create 5 users
Log in as one of the users and complete the following tasks
Write a complex document with some formatting and colors and save it as a HTML document
configure e-mail and send that HTML document to someone
make a spread sheet and save it to a location and upload it to a website
Users will have to find and install all the software to do these things either durring the OS install or from the Internet, they can make 2 phone calls durring the test
Then we'll see what OS is really easiest and fastest and cheapest, we'll assume these people all cost $0.002 per second... Meaning that the commercial OSes already start with quite an expensive handicap.
I'm sure with some more time and thought one could make this more fair but I personally expect OSX (Followed by Linspire) to win the on screen only event by a wide margin even considering the heavy price tag of the OS (we'll just assume a PC that costs as much G4 to level the feild) Most of us have seen a newbie use OS X and it's almost like they know what their doing..... For the well documented test I would expect Linspire to win followed by RedHat.
Now test could be expanded to setting up a small office network typical to a small business, I once again expect OS X to clean up
Linux is killing proprietary Unix and people cheer it on. Just look at the Sun article from today.
It's also strong in webspace, at least the webspace that represents throwaway home pages on the Internet. Linux and Apache aren't making that much headway for corporate Intranets. And that's the space where money is spent, at least for web servers.
Linux is commodifying the Unix-like software market in ways that will drive it into becoming a captive semi-proprietary OS in the places where there is funding. So it'll the same as a Solaris or AIX box in a few years.
Except you'll be able to get the source code of the particular kernel fork you're running. Except the layers people interact with, similar to the situation with MacOS X.
To the degree that 'desktop Linux' can become a success, it will be to the degree that it can be made proprietary, highly designed, polished and sold by a single vendor. The traditional Unix vendors did the same thing a deacade ago. Nothing new here.
resigned
Because analysts tend to play the role of pundit they can come across as insightful or just plain idiotic. [note: fixed typo on "plain"]
:-)
Best quote ever. Darn, it's refreshing to find an honest, non-pompous analyst.
Yes, one thing. I go to a lot of events where I can be the only woman in the room with a bunch of guys, and that's fine. I have no issues with that, really, except that I just think that more diversity in the Linux ecosystem is always good. I think it is great that Pamela Jones created Groklaw. It would be great to see more women developers involved too- there are a few, but seeing more of them would actually be better. The growth of Linux in India, Brazil, China and other countries may foster an increase of women in the community. I think that's probably one of the things that, if I could effect any change, it would be to encourage more women to enter the Linux ecosystem.
That is actually a facinating point.
I've tended to find that as a very rough, general rule, women tend to do a better job of getting along with people than men, and take longer to get angry. If I had a choice between a male or female manager, and was choosing only based on ability to get people to work together and only with knowledge of the gender, I'd probably pick the female manager.
This is especially true for the open-source world, where nobody is *made* to work together. Communities form around how well people deal with each other and work together.
My guess as to why there are few female developers comes down to drive. This isn't that there aren't driven females, but there is a difference in the psychology here. I was reading an article (listed on fark and Metafilter) on why many fields of science generally have breakthroughs done by relatively young people -- developments and interest in work for the sake of work and glory fall off after a certain point. The article drew a link between drive to impress females and the attempt to rack up accomplishments under ones name. (I got a kick out of this, and it stuck in my head -- apparently, my subconscious has been trying hard to improve my sex life by convincing me to code up new algorithms). Anyway, point is that there's at least some research evidence for the male personality being an easier fit for OSS.
Linus' claim for support of "a law to get geeks laid" could have been OSS's undoing.
May we never see th
Knowledgeable users will choose the best software for a specific job they need to do and the best knowledgeable users are those that take the time to investigate both Windows, Linux & other OSes as providing the possible solutions to computing problems that they need to overcome.
It is more important to focus our attention on Open Source software to ensure that the scourge of proprietary formats is wiped from the face of our planet. There is nothing wrong with using commercial software as long as there is an interoperability with Open Source software such that everyone can exchange the data they want to with any people that they need to.
I fully accept that there are security issues in Windows just as much as there are learning curve concerns with Linux.
But the Windows community should embrace Open Source software much more readily than it currently does - for example, Mozilla/Firefox should now be the number one browser because it is free, available on most platforms, and conforms to the HTML standard much more than IE has ever done and will do.
Furthermore, we should all stop being hypocrites. If we are not prepared to pay the going rates for commercial software then we should all actively seek to use (and better) the Open Source alternatives. It is wrong to sit back and wait for OpenOffice.org (for example) to reach 100% compatibility with MS Office while using an illegal copy of MS Office - instead, we should use OOO with equal passion and give our opinions (and time) to the OOO developers to ensure that the product (and others) go in the direction that we need them to go.
It's now the time where we should all grow up a little and take some responsibility for ourselves and how run our computers. MS exists because there is a demand for their products and, if you don't like their products or the way they do things, the best way to get them to change is not give them your money... it's that simple.
I still use Windows 2000 and MS Office because I quite like both as products and because my place of work provides both as tools to me - however, I use Linux more because I've worked hard to learn it and am fortunate to work in a company that embraces Linux also. Going forwards, I will strive to migrate fully to Linux because I personally loathe MS's business strategy and will never pay them (or anyone else) money to access the data and information I already own due to proprietary format licenses.
But in the mean time, I have both work and leisure activities to do on my computers and I am not going to make either harder purely because media pundits believe every computer user is on one or the other side of a non-existent Windows v Linux war.
Be aware of some of the dangers of commercial software, sure, but otherwise use what's best for the job you need to do - as a result, you will be more efficient and find your computing experiences much more fun.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.