Linux will Dominate the Desktop
InformationWeek writes “Why Linux Will Succeed on the Desktop,” outlining its strategic position and anticipating its future market domination.
Nicholas Petreley begins:
“I believe Linux will become the de-facto standard desktop operating system. Though it’ll take a while for many users to break free from ties to Windows, there is good reason to believe that this day will come… The global community is already beginning to rally behind standard document formats.”
Petreley is surprisingly anti-GNOME, which I personally think is an excellent desktop environment. Aside from my disagreement with him there, I think he raises a number of important points and I certainly agree with his overall conclusion that Linux use will grow until it displaces Windows as the default desktop operating system for most users.
November 16th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
I would argue that it is a bit of a nonsense situation. On the one hand, the adoption of GNU/Linux as a desktop operating system is the aim, giving the end users “freedom” from vendor lock-in..and all that jazz. However, the Desktop is becoming more and more a “thin-client” for web usage. The low cost of memory, ever increasing bandwidth, and most of all universal availability, means that the average end-users desktop is becoming a _less_ important place.
However, that’s just one side of the argument, as there are lots of end-users that will continue to utilize and actually _take responsibility_ for their own documents and media. It is therefore the size of this second group that will define the success of GNU.. but maybe not the success of Linux.
It’s a really interesting topic (and far to complex to discuss in a comment box) – but the end of a single-vendor dominance is eagerly anticipated and should be celebrated. I’m just pleased it’s because that GNU/Linux is usurping it naturally – rather than through artificial and unsustainable means,
November 16th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
Andy, that is an important point. Fighting over the desktop is fighting to control the previous battleground!
Maybe Microsoft chooses to fight there because it’s where their entire business model lives–and they have shown little to no success in adapting to the web, so they don’t have much choice but to hang on to what they’ve got now. Meanwhile, FOSS has the luxury of taking over the web client marketplace and fighting very competitively for fat client desktops at the same time, simply because the community is now so big and broad-based.
Look how well Linux has done in other new categories–consumer electronics, mobile devices, web servers, etc. Thin clients will certainly flock to Linux, too. We’re blocking MS from taking over new markets now, and ready to assault their home territory to push them out of that, too.
November 25th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
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March 15th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
This may not be revelant but i figured i’d post this anyway. If you’re using ubuntu 8.10 you may be in for some issues with the network manager. For some unknown reason it stops functioning. You will need to manually set you’re resolv.conf with your ISP’s DNS servers. That file is located in /etc/network/resolv.conf