Bob Cringely's Predictions For 2005

An anonymous reader writes "Bob Cringley publishes his predictions for developments in the world of IT every year. His latest column contains his predictions for 2005 and a brief look back at his predictions for 2004."

Comments

Re:This one too:

[Datasage]

Hardware is only a part of the reason. The real reason is more fundmental. Linux is spending too much time competeing with itself to have time to compete with windows. So windows will continue to rule the desktop market. Linux is and will be for the near future, A programmers operating system for programmers. It succeeds in the server market because the only people working with those servers know whats happening behind the scenes and are willing to put up with text config files and no gui as they should.

There is such thing as too many choices. Especially when your dealing with users who dont know how the magic box works, just that it can check thier email and visit websites. They dont need choices between Gnome and KDE. They dont know or care what the diffrence is. Its a choice that would turn them away.

Gnome and KDE are two projects attempting to meet the same goal. So that begs the question. Why are thier two? The same goes for distributions. How many desktop linux distributions are there? When i go and buy windows i get microsoft windows. I dont need to chose between debian windows, mandrake windows, etc. You get my point. The free software/open source market relies on voleneers to write the software. So why are all those man hours being wasted to create competeing products? Is it that hard to let go of your ego? I have heard a few people complain about software developement complain about reinventing the wheel.

Kernel developement is one project. Some people custimize it for thier own purposes. Sometimes those changes make it back into the main kernel. But my point is, there are not competeing kernel projects. We need to as a community, choose KDE or Gnome. NOT BOTH. We need to develop one desktop distribtion that our development efforts can be focused on. (Server and Embeded distrubtions can be many as the audience is not your average user) We need to let someone or a group of people make the decsions for the direction of the project. If you disagree with the descion voice your opinion, but swollow your pride and dont fork the project as that will only dilute the power of linux.

I hope im taking the common sense position. You can flame if you wish. But linux will never compete with windows, unless it can stop competeing with itself.