Desktop Linux: The Dream Is Dead

[Mike Kallies]

On 10/18/2010 12:19 PM, Thomas Milne wrote:
....
> 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.
> 
> That's it.
> 
> The fact is no one, not even the heaviest IT guru on the planet, has
> the slightest clue what the situation will be 3, 5, or 10 years down
> the road. Look at the history of IT predictions and see how many of
> them came true. Hell, the Mac was supposed to be done with years ago.
> 
> How do we know that 'compatibility' will even be an issue in a year or
> so? The cloud could utterly strip Windows of that advantage. When
> you're only using a browser there is very little difference between
> Win and Lin for most users.
> 
> Or it could be that the entire idea of the desktop computer is
> becoming moot. Who knows?

I agree completely and would like to add some controversy...

"Linux on the desktop" is the same as saying "NT Kernel on the desktop",
"Hurd on the desktop" or "BSD on the desktop".

Gnome, KDE and ChromeOS are attempts to use Linux as an OS underneath a
desktop marketplace.  ChromeOS might make gains in the market, but it
won't be very satisfying to people on this list because it's not a FOSS
platform.

Gnome seems to be doing well as a generic desktop environment, although
QT, being in Nokia's hands, might boost KDE in unexpected ways.

MacOS being ported to the BSD variant Darwin answered a lot of the
technical promises of "Linux on the desktop", but stopped short on the
freedom aspects.  It snapped up a lot of the technical userbase of Linux.

All that said, currently, there *is* no competitor for Gnome, KDE and
the miscelaneous alternatives on the desktop.  They're the *only* free
and open platforms.  Microsoft and Apple have 0% marketshare.  As a
platform underneath a desktop environment, Linux splits its marketshare
with BSD, Hurd and I'm sure I'm missing some others.

Using this measurement, I'd guess Linux at... 95% of the market.

-Mike
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists