ESR's Desktop Linux 2008 Deadline

jesboat noted Eric S. Raymond and Rob Landley's essay about what the Linux community must do to achieve dominance entitled "World Domination 201". It says "Idealism about open formats will not solve our multimedia problem in time; in fact, getting stuck on either belief in the technical superiority of open source or free-software purism guarantees we will lose. The remaining problems aren't technical ones, and none of the interesting patents will expire before the end of 2008. We've got to ship something that works now. If we let this be a blocking issue preventing overall Linux adoption during the transition window, we won't have the userbase to demand changes in the laws to untangle the screwed up patent system, or even prevent it from getting worse. It's a chicken and egg problem, demanding a workaround until a permanent solution can be achieved. We can't set the standards until after we take over the world."

Comments

Why do we want Linux to be popular?

[Kiba Ruby]

Why do we want the average users to use linux? Because it is better? Because it is Free softwares? What the linux community can gain from having a larger userbase? Fame? Money? If using proprietary softwares is the way to achieves linux popularity is the way to do it. But are we willing to pay the price of non-freedom? Or we simply don't care? Even if we justify it as a way to gain more freedom in the long term. I fear that we will go down the slippy slopes of being dependent on proprietary softwares. Not good. It is like the bitkeeper scenario that the linux kernel face. I ask you, slashdot audience, is popularity more important than freedom? Or you don't care about freedom?

... he's right, but:

[Lazy Jones]

Linux has only a few problems really:

• it's goddamn fugly (esp. the fonts) and the UIs of apps are a mess
• corporate desktops need a *working* replacement for MS Office including the calendar stuff and seamless PDA support (and not more broken, more expensive and with worse support than MS Office - like all those pseudo-professional Outlook placebos for $399 per seat)
• major game titles (no real progress here since IDs early attempts 10 years ago - despite all the hacked compatibility libraries)
• most good open source projects are half-arsed attempts, never finished due to lack of motivation. Half-arsed UI toolkits, half-arsed libraries of all sorts, half-arsed apps. Will this ever change?

Fix these and you've got a winner. Neglect them and it'll stay a nice product for no-lifers who are used to feeling inferior and for sysadmins whose idea of a workstation is a box with an xterm window.

(says someone who hasn't bothered with Linux on the desktop since 1997 - and no, this is not a flamebait, it's just a honest opinion - correct me if you think I'm wrong)