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2009, Year of the Linux Delusion
gadgetopia writes "An article has come out claiming (yet again) that 2009 will be the year of Linux, and bases this prediction on the fact that low-power ARM processors will be in netbooks which won't have enough power to run Windows, but then says these new netbooks will be geared to 'web only' applications which suits Linux perfectly. And, oh yeah, Palm might save Linux, too." The article goes on to skewer the year of Linux thing that seems to show up on pretty much every tech news site throughout December and January as lazy editors round out their year with softball trolling stories and "Year End Lists." We should compile a year-end list about this :)
ARM-based netbooks won't be powerful enough, therefore Linux will shine on them? That doesn't sound very convincing. First of all, with Moore's law this means that a few months later, netbooks *will* be powerful enough. Will that then be the end of Linux? Nonsense.
I'm a Linux fan. The main reason why "the year of Linux" never happens is that the press (and analysts) keep comparing Linux to what they know: a Windows desktop.
If we keep copying whatever Microsoft implemented 3 years ago, we'll never pass them. What we need are real killer applications in completely new spaces. For instance, look at web applications: that's hurting Microsoft 10 times more than any 3D effect in KDE ever will. The Web made a lot of Microsoft software irrelevant. Linux needs to do the same, by doing something *different*.
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"Year of delusion" sounds about right. Don't get me wrong I love linux to death, but this year just won't be different from the other years. If people really want linux to become mainstream then it needs to be more user friendly, and the elitiest attitude will need to be droped...just my two cents.
80% of people doesn't need Windows. When people acknowledge that then this year will be the year of Linux.
And, oh yeah, Palm might save Linux, too
I didn't realize that Linux was in need of being saved.
Its future might have been a bit less clear five years ago, but now it's pretty obvious that Linux is here to stay.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
Not as in "it replaces Windows and Mac OS X" but as in "more and more people are buying Linux computers", which are those small netbooks.
The general public started buying Linux machines without really being aware of it. They don't need to know about Linux, all they need is a web browser, email, IM, etc.
I think the year of the Linux Desktop has passed already.
Everybody thinks that the "Year of the Linux Desktop" will be some huge event where Microsoft goes bankrupt, MacOS is hit by a MalWare storm and Linux desktops are sold more commonly than Windows Desktops.
A single event like this is a pipe-dream. The year of the Linux desktop was the start of the revolution. There was no huge event to mark it, but we have now what "Year of the Linux Desktop" pundits predicted years ago.
Linux desktop machines sold alongside Windows Machines, Linux Laptops sold by at least one top 3 Online vendor, an area where Linux competes on an equal footing with Windows products (netbooks) and common adoption of Linux desktops by large corporations and government agencies.
In fact, we have more - MANDATED adoption of Linux or other OSS desktops.
The thing is, now the real work starts. We are out of the shadows, having stepped from relative obscurity into the public eye - and now we are being watched closely. The OSS community needs to provide more than a killer desktop OS, we have several to choose from. We now need to provide the finer things that our competition has a leg up on:
1. Good Marketing. Say what you will, the Microsoft Marketing machine is one of the best there is, OSS needs to match that somehow.
2. Good service. Things will go wrong with any Operating System, who is there to assist our clients? Do we have a "0860 CA LL MS" number that the user of his chosen environment can contact in time of need?
There are obviously more, but that is all I want to do as far as ranting goes...
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
The article is deceiving on many fronts. The author states that it is "inconceivable" that the Windows 7 release date will slip past mid 2009. Why is it inconceivable when Microsoft regulary misses its release dates? In addition to that no one is really going to know how well Windows 7 actually performs on netbooks until it is released. XP is getting old and developers are slowly moving away from it while Linux will always have the latest and greatest whether it is on a netbook or a supercomputer. I think netbooks and Android phones will improve the visibility of Linux to consumers in 2009 but it will still be a long way to garner a significant desktop share from an entrenched Microsoft.
Time makes more converts than reason
From TFA:
An article has come out claiming (yet again) that 2009 will be the year of Linux, and bases this prediction on the fact that low power ARM processors will be in netbooks which won't have enough power to run Windows, but then says these new netbooks will be geared to "web only" applications which suits Linux perfectly. And, oh yeah, Palm might save Linux, too.
In a year that saw Linux netbooks appear, and fail to excite consumers, thus handing Microsoft victory in the netbook operating system space, yet another pundit has come out claiming 2009 will be a revolutionary year for Linux.
The "year of Linux"?
Palm "might save Linux"?
A "revolutionary year for Linux"?
Does this asshat even know what Linux is? Does he even know what what he's trying to talk about is Linux on the desktop? He goes on talking as if he thinks that if Linux doesn't succeed on the desktop, that it is a failure and that something will need to come along to "save it".
People need to get it through their thick skulls that Linux is a kernel for a unix-like operating system. The primary purpose of Linux is not to become a replacement for the Windows desktop, or to become the latest gadget PDA system. It's purpose is not to be a fancy, shiny, eyecandy competitor for OSX. Its purpose is to be an extremely versatile, scalable, and portable kernel for a unix-like operating system - and when coupled with GNU it becomes a very powerful unix-like operating system capable of pretty much anything.
Linux has succeeded as the number 1 OS of choice for HPC and supercomputing applications.
Linux has succeeded as being a very popular OS for Internet-connected servers.
Linux has succeeded as being the OS of choice for many embedded systems, home entertainment applications and DVR systems.
Linux has succeeded as a powerful development environment.
Linux has succeeded in so many areas that it would be tedious to list them. Primarily, though - Linux has succeeded far beyond anyone's wildest dreams in its original goal: to be a viable monolithic kernel for x86 systems, so that x86 users can enjoy unix.
Linux is not going away, it hasn't "failed", and it certainly doesn't need to be "saved". In fact, since the day GNU/Linux has been available, it has done nothing but grow and increase in usage. And not only has it grown, it's grown wildly... from hacker OS, to mainstream OS, to a laughable nuisance to Microsoft, to a downright huge challenge to Microsoft's vitality in the server market. From where I stand, I've never even seen a dip in its growth. It's only growing more, and it will continue to grow. Linux has succeeded, and will continue to succeed. Just watch.
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
People don't realize that you don't need to *replace* yesterday's technology to succeed. There's still tons of COBOL running out there. Java, Python, Ruby do not act as *replacements*. They are layers of something new and different. If you replace something obsolete, you're just slotting yourself into a role that makes you obsolete!
People kept predicting the year of the network. It never came or it came and we didn't know it.
Networks went from being very rare to being pretty common in companies then they started selling the stuff in Walmart.
It is the ever growing creep. Linux will just keep creeping into our life.
Of course I have my list of things that are slowing it down and most of them are religious issues.
Lack of a stable binary driver interface and the difficulty in selling software are two big ones.
But full support from Adobe for for Linux for Flash, Air, and PDF Reader are a big sign that the slow march of Desktop Linux is on track.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The reason that ARM based notebooks can't run Windows has nothing to do with the "power" of the chip.
There isn't an ARM version of WindowsXP or Vista! And even if their was there is no software that would run on it!
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The Linux desktop arrived in 1998 with RedHat 6.0. (Yes, this was before all that RHEL stuff...) With that release, the GUI looked better than Windows and the system was usable by the general public. Installing it still required a fair bit of expertise, but even the Windows 95/98 setup program couldn't/wouldn't repartition or reformat your drive for you. A newbie end user with a blank, non-formatted HD couldn't install either Windows or Linux.
Some years later, Mandrake came out. It was so easy to install that my non-technical brother managed to install it on his machine by himself. I didn't like the lack of build tools, but hey, it was Linux and very user friendly.
And then Ubuntu took its place. It may sound odd, but Windows is now more difficult to install than Linux. I've never had a Linux user ask me "how do I get the activation number"...
Let's face facts: journalists have been hyping, "This is the year of Linux on the ${DEVICE}" for the past decade.
What has really changed? Nothing. Journalists are just as clueless today as they've always been.
I've been using Linux for the past decade, and I've seen the distros go from "Here's some hints on configuring X, good luck!" to "Do you want fancy GUI effects or not?". It has been a mature, solid platform for about ten years now. It has been adopted primarily by people who make informed decisions about their choice of operating system.
The reason why this will never be "The year of Linux on ${DEVICE}" is simply because Linux is already widely used where appropriate. Sure, the desktop might be a lost cause, but this demographic almost never makes a decision about their operating system. The overwhelming majority of desktop users want something which is:
To make Linux popular with the Joe-sixpack crowd, you'd have to turn it into something as brain-dead as Windows. You would have to sacrifice the security of the operating system for the sake of providing a familiar idiom - "I want to execute this code automatically when the page loads..." And you'd have to adopt some brain-dead, fischer-price lookalike interface. Is that really what people want Linux to be?
I don't think so. I don't want Linux to sacrifice its good qualities for the sake of being popular. Right now, I have an OS which is secure, stable, easy to use, free, and I'd like to keep it that way.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
... on the desktop.
There was a time when Windows had USB support, and Linux panicked within 5 minutes of inserting one of those fancy new 512k USB keys. That was a whiiiile ago.
There was a time when Windows had antialiased fonts but not Linux.
When Windows had Media Player and I struggled to play a DVD or the odd .avi in mplayer without it crashing.
When the only decent graphical browser that didn't crash was konqueror, and then it crashed quite a bit.
That was the time when IE was the best browser, although not by much. And that was a long fucking time ago.
Not so long ago, there was a time when you seriously use Linux on a laptop. Couldn't suspend, hibernate, or what have you. Wireless drivers? There was that ONE orinoco thingie or something, and if you could get lucky enough to find one ...
So that was at least 5 years ago.
Today Linux's USB support is vastly superior to any Windows, performance was and so on. Linux doesn't require dodgy third-party drivers. Suspend/hibernate/energy saving features work on 99% of laptops. Wifi works out of the box on most distribs, or at worst requires the DLL compatibility thingie because some vendors still suck (proprietary) cock. We have the best built-in full disk encryption, built-in virtualization, and there's SELinux, which is much better than what Windows has to offer.
Soo, hm yeah, there is this applications thing, or the lack thereof. Really? Most apps now run in a browser window. And what is the situation today, in the browser war? Internet Explorer 8 BETA sucks as much, compared to modern browsers, as early, crashy Mozilla sucked compared to IE 5. And here at the office today, someone had to watch a video sent by the communications dept. Windows couldn't play it. They ended up downloading VLC with Firefox, and it worked great.
So in the end, what's left is games. I'll give you that.
"Yeah, Windows; gotta admit it's better for videogames."
...but not because of the reasons you think.
It will be because "the desktop" all the prognosticators refer to will go extinct before MSFT will even come close to losing its market dominance in that area. Like the typewriter, it will never go away totally, but it will be a niche. More and more, I notice people doing computing tasks on non-traditional hardware. I know facebook junkies who continually keep their status up-to-date and people who reply to emails in seconds, yet don't turn on their home PC for days (and are blocked on their work PCs). I know people with NAS devices in their basements that play music on various receivers in the house...and they aren't even nerds...and not one of the gadgets runs Windows (nor do they care). People visit internet services on their game consoles..most of which don't run Windows. My television has a network port and can connect to the 'net all on its own...and it doesn't run Windows.
Who needs a "year of the desktop" when the desktop has peaked and is facing eventual decline?
The general population wants what they know and until a Linux distribution is pulled together in a nice, neat, familiar (to mainstream users, meaning Windows) package, they will not buy it.
How come personal computing seems to be the only place where people make this argument? It's not like there is one company that makes 90 percent of all vehicles and it is justified because peole want a "familiar driving experience". Sure, cars all have 4 wheels, a steering wheel and some other basic common elements but every different model puts the wiper controls in a different place, have completely different climate control layouts, some put the shifter on the floor and others on the steering column, they all have different wheel sizes and so on.
Same goes for restaurants. McDonalds is big and successful, and their dining experience is certainly familiar, but it is FAR from being dominant in its industry like MSFT is. In fact, in much of the world McDo is not even the leader in the market (for example, in Canada Tim Horton's is more than double the size of McDonalds). Nobody argues that no other company will succeed anywhere in the world against McDo because people want a "familiar dining experience" and it needs to be the closest restaurant to any given residence.
People are fundamentally the same regarding behaviour and tastes across industries. Familiarity is indeed a competitive advantage, but there are other concerns consumers have. In fact, the argument that Windows is familiar is not even really valid anymore. Vista and Office 2007 are different enough that people have to adjust to them just as much as if they did in switching to a Mac or to Linux. It's like buying a new car--they all have mice, icons, windows, menus and such, and people can adjust. In fact, that unfamiliarity was probably a GOOD thing, because people sometimes DO want a change, if it s a good change.
Notably, performance and reliability are proving to be the challenge to MSFT. Vista was a step backwards on both fronts. XP was honed and tuned for years, and Vista comes out and for all its flashy features, you need twice the computer to do the same basic tasks, and some very fundamental operations were next to useless until SP1 was released. Linux and MacOS offer a modernized experience and in the case of Linux it can be had on inexpensive hardware, as I can attest to in running some pretty Compiz effects on a Sempron PC with 512M of system RAM (a configuration that is just barely practical with Vista Basic and no aero glass interface). Hey...Jaguar autos have always been very pretty but were extremely poor sellers in N America as they were unreliable and didn't preform any better than some less costly alternatives.
It will also need to be packaged with their shiny new HP/Dell/Gateway/whatever.
Well, HP and Dell and Lenovo have made factory installed Linux relatively easy to get. MSFT seems to have lost its tight gr
Just a quick comment on usability: most (MS) programs are written for what you might call the "perpetual beginner."
For instance, studies have shown that people who are long-term users of menu-based interfaces memorize the "location" of menu items, rather than reading them when the menu opens. For instance, if the "Font" menu item is the third one down in the "Format" menu, which is second from the left, experienced users find it by going two over and three down, not reading the menu tree: 1) file 2) format, then 1) borders 2) numbers 3) font Oh there it is! But Microsoft's flagship products (Windows and Office) ship by default with "custom menus" turned on, which irritatingly moves menu items based on usage.
This is one of the greatest difficulties with good UI design--making an interface that is simple and intuitive enough for beginners to learn and become comfortable with, but that still is efficient for those who have mastered the basics and are becoming "power users"
In other words, there is no "normal" user--each individual's use of software changes over time. Designing for this is what makes UI work so tough.
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