2008 - Year of Linux Desktop?

rstrohmeyer writes "Over at Maximum PC, we're betting that Linux will pick up unprecedented momentum in the coming year. With phenomenal new distros, swelling international support, and a little extra momentum from Dell, we think Linux is poised to exploit the current atmosphere of doubt surrounding Vista and pick up serious traction in '08. 'For end users here in North America, Linux poses a low barrier to entry. While many still balk at an upgrade to Vista (typically centered around cost and restrictive licensing terms), those who are curious about the open-source alternative will find few of these obstacles. And an increasingly rich array of ready-to-run software (not to mention surprisingly effective utilities that let you run many Windows apps) makes it easy switch ... Ultimately, I'm not predicting that Linux will take over the market next year. Or anytime soon, for that matter. But if there's ever been a time to try out the world's leading free OS, 2008 will be that time. I am predicting that users will switch to Linux in record numbers next year. And many will never look back.'"

Comments

Nope.

[khasim]

It's all about the applications. There are too many apps that too many people use that are available on their Windows machines.

There will not be a "year of the Linux desktop".

There will only be the year when people realize that most everyone else is running Linux, too.

Re:Nope.

[Coryoth]

There will not be a "year of the Linux desktop". There will only be the year when people realize that most everyone else is running Linux, too. Exactly! Both the people expecting a "year of the the Linux desktop" and the people who mock that saying Linux won't and can't succeed on the desktop are deluding themselves. Consider that Linux is now quite successful in the server space; was there ever a "year of Linux on the server"? No, it simply became more prevalent and slowly but surely snowballed. As more people used it on the server it gained support for a wider variety of servers, and slowly but surely invaded the server space. Linux will be just the same on the desktop. There is no point when Linux is "desktop ready", since there will always be something that is lacking for some users. Instead Linux will slowly but surely become more viable as a desktop for a larger and larger userbase. As the userbase expands the application availability and user-friendliness will in turn steadily improve. There is no magic tipping point.

If you want to see that Linux will eventually gain significant desktop market share then just compare Redhat 5.2 to Windows98, and Ubuntu 7.04 to Windows Vista; the desktop gap has been slowly but steadily closing for years. More and more people are finding Linux a viable alternative desktop. It is still not viable for everyone, but little by little it will get there.

Re:Nope.

[tooyoung]

Look, this isn't meant as a troll. Linux is great. Much better than Vista. Offer me the choice between the two, and I'd take Linux hands down. However... nobody knows what Linux is.

Honestly.

Go ask 10 non-technical people if they would consider using Linux as an OS, and 9 will look at you like you just spoke Greek to them. No, it doesn't count if you ask your wife, who you constantly bore with tech-talk about how much better Linux is than Windows. No, it doesn't count if you go ask your parents, whom you've been trying to convince to make the switch for the past 5 years. Go ask people that don't work in the tech industry, and who you haven't badgered constantly about Linux.

As I mentioned above, 9 won't know what you're talking about. The 10th person will think that Linux is pure command prompt, with no UI. Why? Not because they are dumb, but because they have just never heard of it. Just like they haven't heard of Solaris, and just like they haven't heard of z/OS. They don't talk about Linux on CNN, they don't write about Linux in Cosmo or Maxim. Hell, how often do you see it mentioned in 'science' magazines, like Discover or Popular Science? It doesn't matter if Ubuntu has a nice GUI and can load DVDs like any other OS. Most people just don't know that, and they probably don't care much. The idea of spending an hour replacing XP or Vista with Ubuntu would strike most people are boring and daunting. What reason do they have? Their computer works for the most part. Most wouldn't even know where to start. Not because they are dumb, but because:
1. They wouldn't know where to get Ubuntu.
2. They assume it would be as much of a chore to install as Windows. Oh, you don't think that is a chore? Well, that is probably because you're reading a technical website.

Yeah, I'd love to see Linux blow up this year. It is doing great in server land, but it has a ways to go before it gets on the desktop of the general public.

why not

[gEvil (beta)]

I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be...

Re:why not

[Sycraft-fu]

Especially since all these "OMG t3h year of Linux!!11" stories never seem to really look at the whole situation. Is Linux improving? Hell yes, but of course so is every other current OS. It seems all too often they examine the things that Linux is doing better and forgetting that Windows MacOS, Solaris, etc are all doing things better as well.

Also they ignore some major design decisions of Linux that run contrary to what a lot of people want on the desktop. One of the biggest is simply Linux's openess and lack of standards. To most (probably all) Linux aficionados, that's one of the main reasons to use Linux. Nobody tells you how to do it. However to many desktop users, that's a big problem. They WANT standards, they WANT one way to do things. This also manifests itself in problematic areas such as a distro including 4 media players. Users don't want 4 media players they can't figure out, they just want one good one.

Along those lines there's things like the insistence of open source drivers. Many companies aren't interested for various reasons in providing open drivers. However because of the ever changing ABI, binary drivers have to be updated all the time. This is a problem for people on the desktop. The situation with 3D acceleration is a huge pain in the ass since you have to update your driver with essentially every minor kernel update.

To brush things like this off is to really miss the point and render your overall analysis basically useless. Taking over as a desktop OS isn't a matter of just having a shiny interface or easy install process, though those things certainly help. There's a whole lot of user experience that needs to be though of from the non-tech user standpoint. Linux at its heart is still a techie OS. That's not a bad thing, and that's why it makes such a rockin' server and embedded OS but it needs to be recognised that some of those choices aren't good ones for a desktop OS. That doesn't preclude it from the desktop market, but it is something that needs to be considered and dealt with to the extent it can be.

Maximum PC should stick to coolers

[Animats]

Maximum PC should stick to what they know - fans and heat sinks.

Linux missed the window for the desktop. Now that PCs are expected to play DRM-protected media encoded with proprietary codecs, the window for consumer open source systems has closed. Linux might have made it in 2002, but now it's too late.

I used an AT&T UNIX PC, made and sold by AT&T, in 1982. 25 years later, Unix/Linux on the desktop still isn't mainstream. Sorry, guys.

Find a specialized desktop market

[athloi]

Graphic artists, musicians, writers, developers or MBAs -- pick one group and love them until they love you back. Linux Year of the Graphic Artist Desktop will be followed by more desktops. That, after all, is how the Mac stayed alive and prospered, and even how to some degree Windows did it. It all starts with one type of desktop in a nice market, and from there the sky's the limit.

Re:Find a specialized desktop market

[javilon]

Linux already has this, it is the programmers and system administrators desktop of choice.

Re:2027 - year of fusion power?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a gay man, I take positive representations where I can get them. Any time a same-gender relationship is portrayed in a positive but very real light benefits us all. The same can be said of Linux, which, much like being gay, will likely remain a minority OS in the a world that seems married to proprietary software, and never really "come out of the closet" and be truly ready for acceptance the desktop. But anytime we can get some good press, it helps us all. I'm a big fan of Ubuntu (even over Mac!) and I'm proud that Dell has taken a stand and acknowledged that some of us are different, and thats ok.

Re:if only linux had more games.

[misleb]

It's sad that theres no globally accepted library etc, that all devs use. I mean some apps are mac / windows. why not mac /windows / linux? Since mac runs on a version of *nix. And don't give me that wine / cedega bs. Sadly, until I give up gaming on PC I will have at least one windows box. I hope that Linux continues to offer more and more people an alternative though. Competition is good!

The way I see it, it doesn't matter that there aren't games on Linux (and to a lesser extent, Macs) It isn't just that I'm not a big gamer, it is that I don't mind booting into Windows to play a game. Most games have a bit of a time commitment to them. At least an hour. If I'm going to be playing for that long or more, what's 2 minutes to reboot? Of course, that mean maintaining a copy of Windows... drivers and all, which is a bit annoying in and of itself, but not a deal killer for Linux.

Of course, I've never paid for a copy of Windows in my life, so maybe things would be different if I was legit and had to shell out extra money just to play games.

Another thing is that a lot of the really cool games are coming out on console first these days, so maybe the whole Windows/game issue will be moot. GTA IV, anyone?

-matthew

Re:Every year...

[kebes]

By the way... I think the number of Linux users is probably already higher than any of the hypothetical numbers you threw out.

It's obviously impossible to know for sure how many people use a given OS... especially when that OS is distributed freely and requires no kind of registration. However we can get some vague ideas from a few sources. The Linux Counter estimated 29 million in 2005. This was in part based upon verifiable numbers from Red Hat indicating 8 million installs in 1998 (yes, this is including corporate installs, not just home users).

Another (again not totally reliable) way is to use browser stats. W3school reports ~3.4% of browsers are running in Linux. Since there are 1 billion internet users, that means 39 million Linux users.

Again, these numbers are open to massive debate. But I think the real number is somewhere in the ballpark of 10 million to 40 millions users. Alot more than most people think.

Dell is both driven and driver.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

But once this percentage gets over, say 5-6%, linux will start having more traction, and will become more difficult/risky/costly to ignore.

IMHO Dell selling a Ubuntu-preloaded machine is not just a vendor having this epiphany, but also a force to promote it with other vendors.

People wanting to sell peripherals to users of Dell products now have a wakeup call about furnishing Linux support - along with a big-name company betting significant resources on a market being big enough to chase.

Re:Every year...

[westlake]

. it's said 'is XXXX the year for the Linux Desktop'?
What would make it so? At what point would it be possible to quantify that 'yes, this IS the year!'... when there is 100,000 users? 500,000 users? 10,000,000 users?

I've seen estimates of Windows' desktop share that begin at 300 million users - equivalent to the entire population of the U.S.

Vista entered the consumer market in January.

In July, Walmart.com sells HP Pavilion Vista Premium laptops starting at $780.

15" Wide-Screen Display, Dual Core AMD CPU, 1 GB RAM, DVD burner and DX 9 GeForce Go graphics that do not suck. For $12 add 1 GB ReadyBoost Flash, for $120 a key chain USB HDTV tuner.

OEM Linux at Walmart is out. The generic Vista laptop from Dell is in.

If the Geek thinks mass-market pricing of Vista is going to be a turn-off, he is delusional. If he thinks that product activation, DRM, Windows Update, etc., concern anyone in this market, he is ready to be committed.

Re:Every year...

[PeterBrett]

(My experiences dictate that if GNOME or KDE fails, an inexperienced user is left helpless at the command line - Windows does no such thing. This needs to change and support needs to become even *more* accessible before acceptance is widespread.)

You're quite right. Windows does no such thing. My experiences indicate that if the Windows GUI fails, an inexperienced user is left helpless without a (usable) command line.

Re:2027 - year of fusion power?

[hdparm]

For millions around the world it's OS of the present. Future, too.

Re:Sadly

[ucblockhead]

How is it a troll? It's completely true. I've run Linux as my main home desktop since around '99 and while Ubuntu is very good, the OSX interface is, frankly speaking, better and since OSX is Unix, it has most of what I wanted Linux for in the first place. I bought my wife an iBook a few years back, and have been increasingly jealous. Amarok just doesn't compare with iTunes. Picasa and Google earth are klunky as Wine apps. I'm tired of having to recompile the kernel to get my KVM switch to work and I'm tired of having to be in the crappy driver ghetto.

I'll continue to use Linux at work, in preference to the other choice there, which is Windows, but for home user type stuff, I'm just tired of all the maintenance work that goes into Linux. (Admittedly, part of this is dealing with commodity hardware on the PC side.) And I will continue to screw around with Linux boxes as a hobby. But for the machine that I use to get email, browse the web, watch movies, listen to music...I'd rather have something that works without the hassles of Linux.

If you want to call all this "troll", that's fine...but I know a little of people who used to use Linux and now use Powerbooks. A "troll" is when someone says something inflammatory that they do not believe to get a reaction. I'm saying this because it's true, though it makes me feel a bit melancholy to say it.

If it makes you feel any better, this is also the year I'm discarding my Windows game machine entirely.

State of the union

[Vexorian]

For me this was the definitive year of Ubuntu on the desktop. The rest I don't really care. It worked totally fine in my computer, and unlike windows XP I didn't require any driver CD to make my hardware work. All the apps are good enough for my needs, and since I was very used to programming on light weight IDES (that means no bloat or the need to have funny features beyond code completion) code::blocks is doing fine for me.

The reason I switched is that it is is far easier to customize and make it do what I want. Very few people might notice that MS hates when you customize windows, and Apple won't even let you do more than changing the wallpaper.

Games? Well... what happened is that I... grew up. I don't really need those flashy 3d accelerated games out there that now sound so expensive, I guess I am getting old already, but can survive with just Sudoku, I am afraid I don't think anymore my computer should be somekind of game station, consoles would do that job better anyways.

Look? I think I made my gnome look absolutely gorgeous, It is MY computer thus I don't really care about how much people think OS/X is the prettiest thing ever invented.

Show off value? I tried compiz-fusion and emerald and It makes the desktop absolutely awesome, I made it a toggle button so if somebody is gonna look and my desktop I enable those effects.

App compability? My emergency plan is using a virtual machine, but what's fun Is that I don't really need any windows app anymore... Yes, it is a different story for everybody, I know

Easy of use? I use this ubuntu OS and it hasn't really given me issues yet, I don't spend 3 hours trying to make everything work like some guys out there say they do when they use Linux.

Multimedia? Totem tells me when I have to download

Applications? I just use firefox , gedit , code::blocks , brazero, nautilus and the terminal. For odd reasons I don't need more things, I was surprised I can have a totally usable (for me) computer without any cost besides of hardware (This is country almost have no OEMs)

The winner: Organization has made me more productive, I like emblems and workspaces, those are features I now find essential.

All in one to me Ubuntu was complete and does the job correctly for me, and I switched.

Go ahead, and post all the reasons you think Linux is not ready for the desktop, all of them are wrong. People will switch once they like it, and this is a war that is not going to be won instantly, it is the satisfaction it can give to each person.

I've seen it since 3 years ago and I know how fast it can improve, I think i evolves faster than OS/X and windows, in fact Vista always copies Mac OS/X features and I found recently that Linux got so good, that apple is now stealing its ideas! so I think we are gonna do fine.

On alternative situations, like OLPC, education, servers , even Bolivarian PCs, etc. Linux has already won. And we just got to wait

And then we have KDE4, it is getting that Mac OS/X look that so much people like, yet it is implemented in a cleaner way and also getting some very outstanding features, and it gets the advantage of being free. KDE4 might just need some luck to give the world a great surprise.

I think even MS is noticing it, that's the reason they are being much more aggressive towards the open source world.

So go ahead and say "NO 2008 IS NO LINUXYEAR AND NEVER WILL HAPPEN " or "2008 is OS/X year because 2 guys and I decided to SWITCH!" I don't care, I think Linux is doing fine, I also don't think getting a good market share is any important, I think Linux is improving faster than the rest and will eventually surpass the rest (although for me it already has)

The rest is sipmply chicken-egg paradox with cycles like "Nobody will use linux until it has good apps and nobody will make good apps for linux until it gets a lot of users" (cliche also works with "games", and "hardware support")

Re:Every year...

[bit01]

If the Geek thinks mass-market pricing of Vista is going to be a turn-off, he is delusional.

You're delusional if you think the US experience applies to the 95% of the world's population that don't live in the US.

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Windows and closed source software. The US intelligence agencies' back door to every network connected country and business on earth.