Slashdot Mirror
Linus Torvalds: 'I Still Want the Desktop'
darthcamaro writes: Linux has clawed its way into lots of places these days. But at the LinuxCon conference in Chicago today Linus Torvalds was asked where Linux should go next. Torvalds didn't hesitate with his reply. "I still want the desktop," Torvalds said, as the audience erupted into boisterous applause. Torvalds doesn't see the desktop as being a kernel problem at this point, either, but rather one about infrastructure. While not ready to declare a "Year of the Linux Desktop" he still expects that to happen — one day.
I won't speak to your other points because I don't have a good answer, however on the point about monopolies...
The free market ensures that monopolies can't be successful with anti-competitive practices for very long. Always.
If you study historical monopolies as some economists of the austrian school have, you will see that unless a monopoly has the backing of the government, they don't last long and they pay dearly for trying to be anti-competitive.
Tom Woods has a good talk on this.
One example is M$ vs Netscape. M$ was the 800lb gorilla, netscape was a mouthy monkey and they were fighting for a banana. Microsoft spent many millions or billions of dollars fighting that battle. They killed Netscape, the company. But what they found was that in it's place, other challengers show up in ways you don't expect. Ultimately they've lost the fight many times over and it's a losing battle for them. The browsers go to those who serve them best, free software.
Liberty.