Please do not misinterpret this. No one needs to lecture me about advocacy; I am a former op on a linux irc channel, I am prolific on several *nix mailing lists, and I have a web site that is devoted to a *nix windowmanager and resources for same. It's just that I have never understood this mentality about wanting to put linux on every desktop. I think this represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the future of unix as a desktop os. I don't think everyone is capable of administering a unix system. This becomes especially evident when I read some of the posts on the mailing lists and discussion groups I participate in. I doubt some of these people are capable of using windows well, much less linux. Linux is a very trendy os right now. There are a _lot_ of new users out there, and this is great for people who make their living selling linux products, and I wish them all continued financial success. I hope they realize that this exponential growth is not something they should plan their future strategy around, because linux may not be a buzz word on cnn in 6 months the way it is today. I could be wrong, and continued efforts by groups like kde and gnome may very well make possible a linux distribution that your mother could run, but even so, I doubt that 100 million happy windows users have much reason to seek an alternate solution when they already have everything they want. I really don't think the average pc user is that sophisticated about it. They need a pc to perform certain tasks, and if it does so, and does so in a manner that allows them to spend more time _not_ using the pc, then that's all they can ask for. Linux and the free bsd's are going to start showing up in all the places that BSDi, SCO, Digital Unix, Solaris, and the other commercial unices have traditionally been entrenched in. Commercial unices aren't going away anytime soon, but I do see open source unices filling holes that people would have filled with a commercial unix in the past. More and more isps are running free unices. Just before I got cable, my old dial up isp switched from BSDi to FreeBSD. With a commercial unix, you get support, and you get someone to blame if something goes horribly wrong. These are attractive features to someone in management. However, what I see occuring in the free unices, is that since there is such a massive development community, I mean really phenomenal, this cyber-woodstock of people around the globe taking part in helping these os'es mature, writing apps for their favorite free unix, etc.., is that eventually, and _now_ in many cases, there are simply better tools available on the open source platforms then there are for the commercial platforms. I see this as being the area where linux can continue to grow and assert itself. I think Linus himself said he thought that if linux had 100f the desktop pc's he would consider that phenomenal. Well, I imagine linux will surpass 10%, but I just don't see the type of numbers people enthusiastically talk about on mailing lists. But I certainly see linux being one of the viable choices for anyone that needs to get some work done and needs a powerful, stable os to run things. As for the desktop, well, I always said the right people will find the free unices and flourish on them. It's not necessarily for everyone and no one ever said it had to be. Steven T. Hatton wrote:
Root,
I wouldn't go so far as to say Linux has beaten M$, but we are making headway. I believe Linux (and open source) is the future. I'm not sure how the economy is going to adjust to this, but there seems to be no stopping it. I'm sure some people will still be making software that is neither free nor GPL'ed. They will be able to make a profit for as long as the open source community doesn't have a good clone or substitute for it. That's fine by me. They deserve the reward for their hard work and initiative.
The one thing that all of us out here in the free world should never do is become complacent. Never say we have won against M$ until Mom is using Linux. And even then, as Andy Grove said: Only the Paranoid Survive. (Good book BTW)
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