There’s so much written about the possibilities of Linux that I’m almost afraid to clarified those polluted waters.
But since someone asked today, and I organized my thoughts for that, here’s the verdict. Linux will become adopted in niches, and this will make it important and rewarding for software packages to support both Windows and Linux.
Sadly, I don’t think BSD is going to be much of a contender, except in the areas it has already conquered. UNIX diehards and server heads will keep using it because, as I can attest, it will rock the world. The Mac hangs on as a luxury product for underpaid people who want to feel important enough to need special computers. The interface isn’t enough removed from Windows and KDE, and the machines are flaky and expensive. So BSD and OS X are out of the picture except as permanent niche computing.
Where Linux is making inroads is on the smaller, cheaper machines, in three big ways:
- Sub-notebooks and portables.
- Refurbishing old machines.
- Home appliance-style computers.
Many of you will note that the first and third categories are the same, excepting portability. That’s because the computer as appliance will be a large theme in the coming years. People have now accepted the computer like TV, stereo, sink disposal, car, phone and food processor into their lives. They don’t see as much difference between machines, and operating systems, because 90% of the users need them for the same fixed set of functions: email, chat, word processing, media storage and playback, web surfing, office applications, telephony, and games.
Linux comes standard on a number of cheap machines, none of which have really gotten their act together. The missing piece is software. OpenOffice isn’t good enough to replace Microsoft Office. Firefox is still buggy. No games of note. Getting the right codecs for your media playback software requires time and effort to research, and most people don’t have that time.
At some point, a brave entrepreneur will fix this problem by creating a standard operating system installation that uses the best of all the software available from the Open Source movement, although some of it will need modification to work in a way end users recognize. They will then trot out a machine that’s smaller, lighter, more durable and cheaper than what’s commonly out there, and people rich and poor will buy it as their desktop appliance.
In the meantime, the convergence comes closer. Many offices now have Linux for server and desktop machines because it’s better for certain tasks, or they don’t want to pay for support licenses. As this niche expands, look for opportunities for software packages that are designed to have versions that work on both systems and interoperate transparently.
[...] here is that they are machines for a highly mobile group of people who are increasingly tired of maintaining computers. They have a big one at the office, and it gets upgraded every three years. They may have an older [...]