Desktop Linux: The Dream Is Dead

[Thomas Milne]

On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 11:04 PM, Howard Gibson <hgibson-MwcKTmeKVNQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Oct 2010 10:40:50 -0400
> Fabio FZero <fabio.fzero-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>
>> ...
>>
>> But I would worry too much, since the desktop itself is kind of dying
>> too. Things are changing, people. That's not necessarily bad.
>>
>> - Fabio
>
> Fabio,
>
>   Is the desktop really dying?
>
>   I accept you can do email on a Blackberry, but can you do serious work on one.  For any kind of documentation, I go looking for the largest screen I can.  This is absolutely necessary for CAD and for spreadsheets.  It is less critical for word processing, although I love having two documents side by side up on my screen.
>
>   How secure is the cloud?  If I want something secure, it goes on _my_ computer, and it stays there.  The application is contained within my computer too.  When I see free stuff offered by servers, I want to know where their revenue stream comes from.
>

The cloud is not an all or nothing proposition. Of course everyone
will have files that they store at home, but these days that is moving
toward home NAS setups, away from the desktop PC. There are so many
advantages to the cloud that have nothing to do with storage of your
files, like greater processing power than you could ever contain in a
home PC, and of course the collaborative and sharing aspects.

No one is saying you have to upload your entire life to the web, but
the desktop PC is quickly becoming unnecessary. All you really need at
home is storage, an internet connection and a web browser. There is no
logical reason at all to trust an application running on your home PC
more than one running from the cloud, unless I suppose you wrote and
built it yourself from the ground up.

The way I see it, the desktop PC is slowly having most of its
traditional roles replaced by more specialized devices, which is very
desirable in a lot of ways, particularly when it comes to mobility
obviously. Not to predict the future (ha), but it's possible we may be
headed for a return to the 'dumb terminal' days, or something
resembling that. The desktop PC, remember, came about when networks
were barely off the ground in terms of availability. You had to have
everything on your desktop because it was prohibitively expensive to
get connected. Now the network is everywhere and it is almost free, so
the desktop PC starts to make far less sense.

-- 
TBM
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