Desktop Linux: The Dream Is Dead

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Thomas Milne <tbrucemilne-TcoXwbchSccMMYnvST3LeUB+6BGkLq7r at public.gmane.org>

| I've read this article a million times before, and it'll be written a
| million times more. Why? Because it gets people riled up and reading
| the article and sells ad space. It's a headline with no body.

You have a point.

| Anyone who claims to have even the vaguest idea what will happen with
| computing in the future is selling snake oil, and is most likely just
| trolling for an argument.

Someone has to make the future.  Articles like this can affect that
process.  Possibly negatively for us (preventing effort towards a
Linux desktop).  Possibly positively (preventing wasted effort towards
a Linux desktop).

I was looking for an Alan Kay quote and found other apt ones here
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Future>

	The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
		Alan Kay

pretty similar to the earlier:

	We cannot predict the future, but we can invent it.
		Dandridge M. Cole

Also relevant:

	If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
		John Galsworthy

	The future is already here – it's just not very
	evenly distributed.
		William Gibson
	(Example: many of us use a Linux desktop.)

	The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked,
	is mine.
		Nikola Tesla

My desktop and notebooks run Linux all the time.  My wife often uses
WinXP because I haven't found a good QuickBooks replacement.  My (grad
student) children use Linux desktops exclusively except when gaming.
Even gaming is mostly done on a console these days.

I ran Win7 last night on an Acer Revo that I'm using as an HTPC.  The
reason?  I wanted to watch a TV show from Global TV's web site and
Adobe Flash is much smoother on Win7 than on Linux.  Damned
closed-source.  In the event, I didn't have flash on the Win7 box and
it used some other facility (Silverlight?  It didn't tell me) that was
just as choppy as Adobe Flash on Linux.  I've since loaded Adobe Flash
on the Win7.