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ESR: 0.75 billion Linux users 5 years from now
Mike_Miller writes "In a recent interview with ESR in BusinessWeek, ESR calculates that, in 5 years, there will
be 750 million Linux users (a conservative estimate). Wouldn't that be great!?!
" I think one of my favorite parts is the title: "I want to live in a world where software doesn't stink." But this number should be fairly easy to hit-my cloning project has been doing quite well.
Best thing that could happen, would be people
starting to judge their tools by quality and suitability to the task, and ignore the rest.
Something being Linux doesn't automatically mean
it's the best thing on earth, for everybody, nor
there couldn't be something even better around
the corner.
There are good non-GPL apps, believe me. Even
commercial apps!
750 million in 5 years, that's about 1 out of every
10 people on earth. Considering that 1 out of 2 never
have made a phone call, and 2 out of 3 don't have access
to clean water, I'd say it's a bit optimistic.
--- Abigail
Oh, you'll see Linux on PDAs, but THAT's not where the growth will be.
A Pentium level machine is going to be embeddable for pocket change pretty soon, if it isn't already (StrongArm??). So let's say you can the equivalent of P166 with 24 megs a memory, a modest persistent memory and a network interface onto a $10 asembly in 2004. What could you do with that? You can make your VCRs smart enough so they can sport a really nice user interface; your home thermostat can get a lot smarter too. My pet project would be to slave all the applicance clocks in my house to a master using the power lines as a network.
Have you ever tried to figure out the temp controls on your refrigerator? How many photocopy machines are there out there that could be smarter and easier to use? If you could embed a reasonable computer for about $10 into an appliance, there's hundreds of places it would be justified on user interface issues alone, not to mention places like the automotive market where it's already done to acheive mechanical simplicity (God I hated working on my 76 Pinto -- literally dozens of tiny vacuum lines).
Think of the applications in sporting goods. Would you buy a pair of skis that adjusted their mechanical properties to snow conditions and speed, if they cost maybe 100 dollars more (mainly for exotic active materials, of course)? I could even see tennis rackets and golf clubs with computers in them. Maybe a golf club with an accelerometer and a network interface for downloading telemetry on your swing. The specific applications are farfetched, but applications _like_ these are inevitable.
Now there's things like routers that it makes no sense to run proprietary OSs on; for that matter if you're designing a printer why buy a proprietary postcript interpreterand some weird embedded OS when you can run Ghostscript and Linux with no licensing? How about alarm systems that can recognize your face or voice. Lab instruments like oscilloscopes which probably already use microprocessors to do things FFTs, but in some oddball proprietary language -- those could all be running Linux. Medical instrumentation like EEGs and robotic drug dispensers is another important nice where reliability and performance is crucial.
Home woodworking tools can get the capabilities of high end CNC milling machines, and the milling machines will probably run open sourced OSs too.
How about advertising displays? Are you going to sit a $50 license out where somebody can pick it up and walk off with it, or it can be struck by lightning? How many billboards are there in your town? How many cardboard foldout kiosks at the local book store?
Then there's the things that we don't ever think about but use all the time like avionics and telephone switching equipment.
If I sat down for an hour, I bet I can think of thousand places where linux would run, none of which are a "computer" per se.
Now, if you're paying $10 for the computer, how much do you want to pay for the OS per unit shipped? Nobody knows what MS gets for CE, but I'd be willing to bet it's north of $25, if not $50 or more.
Also, if you get into trouble in the middle of the project with an OS feature that's broken, are you going to want to wait for Microsoft to fix it?
So, I don't know about 750 million _users_, but I wouldn't be surprised if the average American or European has four or five copies of linux embedded in his home appliances and a like number in the office, and comes into contact with a huge number of anonymous Linux node through various networks he participates in.
Sooo -- Linux is a good thing to get in on the ground floor of -- kind of like becoming a LAN expert in the late 80s, only a lot more so.
I understand your point, but that doesn't really change things.
If somebody's video card is not supported, they are not going to run Linux. Whether it is the OS's fault or not is of little consequence - what matters is that it cannot support their video card, and thus they are unable to run Linux. Whose fault it is doesn't really matter - the fact that the hardware support is not there is what matters.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Consider: the "middle class" of this planet- probably numbering a billion people or more- are the people in developing third world countries earning about $3,000 USD/year. These people constitute a _huge_ market for computers and OSs- if the package costs $200 or less. That is about the equivelent of a $30K/yr person buying a $2K computer. Purchasing the standard $2,000 computer for these people would be like purchasing a $20K computer on a $30K salary.
The problem is that Microsoft is uninterested in this market- why? Because they want to charge $200 for the OS alone, sans computer. You need an OS that can sell for $10, or better yet $5 per copy, which runs well on a variariety of low-end hardware (ARM chips, low-end PPCs, 68Ks, 486's, whatever you can get on the super-cheap) and small memory foot prints, with internationalization capability, but with a decent user interface.
Linux fits this bill with flying colors. 80% of that 750 million people will probably be people who've never owned a computer before- and who aren't living in America or Europe.
Everything I've said here also applies to BSD, BTW.
You are certainly right, but as usual, it's pretty different with Linux. :) Just try to count someone who bought ten CD's and made five of his friends use Linux; also those who bought 3 different Red Hat distributions, and installed it on 50 PC's in a student lab, and made 50 more to netboot from one server; and someone who didn't even buy a single CD since a few years, only downloads updates/different packages, and installed a bunch of Linux webservers throughout the country.
"Ten years from now, they could do it in a few seconds." -- The Racketeer of the Hellfire Club, 1993, Phrack 42
India's population will hit the 1 billion mark soon. China's already has. In both countries, computer usage is growing tremendoushly, so don't discount ESR's figure entirely.
You know, I am sick to death of reading this. This very argument, or strains of it, keep popping up in message-places around the web (most prevalent on ZD*). "Linux isn't done yet, it won't support my foo card!"
:P
Why does everyone assume this is Linux's fault!??!?!? ARRRRRGH!!! Get a freakin' clue, people!! Does Microsoft write every single device driver for every piece of hardware for every version of Windows? NO! The hardware vendors do it! But they don't do it for Linux, because Linux doesn't have enough market share (or market presence) for them to feel it's worth their time to do so.
To date, the majority of the device drivers for Linux have been written by users who thought, "How the heck can I get this stupid thing to work!?!?" FYI, that is a lot harder than a company saying, "Here is the Microsoft driver for our foo card. We now have supplied drivers for 90% of the home computer users. That's Good Enough for us."
Did you ever stop to think at the sheer NUMBER of different cards their are for the Intel platform? It's mind numbing! Now YOU go try to keep up with every Soundblaster rip-off, every bleeding edge graphics card, without any support from the manufacturers (except 3dfx)! Daunting, ain't it?
For those of you prone to misread things, I am NOT arguing that people are stupid because the drivers DO exist. A lot of drivers are missing from the Linux Computing Experience. I'm saying people are stupid because they assume the OS is responsible for providing their drivers. Don't blame the OS, and do not blame the fine folks that have taken the trouble to write the drivers that you already have access to! These people have coded their asses off, and as a result non-coding clods like me (and a lot of other current Linux users) can actually use an OS that works. For them, I have nothing but thanks and heartfelt gratitude.
Blame the hardware vendors, Microsoft, the market, or your grandma's dog. Whatever. Just realize (now say it with me, kids) it's not the fault of the OS.
*whew*
There's that peeve vented.
--
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
That's why ESR has the job he has. Whenever you want to say something "sucks," you have to translate it to "stinks" for the press. :-)
Maybe ESR hasn't noticed that lately Apple has been making major changes to the ROM architecture in their machines.
The Toolbox ROM is practically a thing of the past at this point. Mac OS 8 shipped with a full image of the ROM on the CD, beginning Apple's strategy of "ROM-in-RAM". Mac OS 8 (and later) will boot on some late-model IBM Power Series (800-series) machines.
Apple's latest version of this strategy is known as the "New World ROM", which is a ROM that only contains the essential boot information. The new G3's all read the Toolbox from the boot drive. Most of Apple's new PCI machines are fully Open Firmware compliant.
Should Apple open the Mac OS source, it will be useless without the Toolbox, since for all intents and purposes the Toolbox *is* the Mac OS.
Personally, I find it highly unlikely that Apple will open Mac OS. The primary indicator is Apple's Darwin strategy. Apple is not opening the source for the UI or other higher-order functions; these things represent Apple's technology advantage.
The point of this is that Apple has, for many years now, been steadily moving toward a more open hardware platform. The prevailing opinion in the Mac community is that we will soon see new efforts by Apple to support compatible hardware platforms under conditions that are far less detrimental to Apple as a company than their previous attempts at cloning.
Remember, Apple isn't a software company, nor are they truly a hardware company. What Apple *is* is a *design* company. The fact that Apple frequently has to invent new technologies to support its design vision is the proof of this statement.
Not that we wouldn't all like to see numbers like that, but come on. That's 13% of everybody on the planet, give or take. I don't think even Windows has managed to get that far.
Unless, of course, ESR is counting in this total:
Anyone who is running Linux on their desktop
Anyone who is connecting to a network with a Linux server
Anyone who is on the Internet (sooner or later they'll hit a Linux server)
Anyone who knows somebody connected to the Internet
20 million, I might believe. 30 million would be fantastic. But ~3 times the population of the United States? Sorry, but I think not.
caw caw