2008: Linux’s year on the desktop...?

[GarethDW]

Just read this article over at ZD Net where the author thinks that this year (and moreso next year) will be the year that Microsoft's dominance of the desktop will start to really deteriorate.

A new computing platform
Thanks to Moore’s Law and evolving application needs, a new computing platform arrives every 10 years. Mainframes in the ’50s, minicomputers in the ’60s, PCs in the ’70s, microcontrollers in the ’80s, PDAs and cell phones in the ’90s and now sub-$400 - soon to be sub-$300 notebooks.

Small and light enough to be carried everywhere, these sub-notes provide Internet access, PDA functionality and basic mail and document creation functionality at a rock-bottom price. Asustek is expected to build 1,000,000 Eee sub-notes in Q1 ‘08 alone. Asustek’s competitors are just getting warmed up.

What can Microsoft do?
Microsoft has gotten fat on the $50 Windows tax it charges PC manufacturers. But on a razor-thin margin vendors can’t afford Windows.
So they’re going with Linux. If Asustek sells 5 million Eee’s, and their competitors sell another 5 million, several million consumers will be introduced to desktop Linux for the first time.

And millions of copies of Windows and Office won’t be sold.

As much as I'd like to see it happen, I don't think most people are ready for Linux on their desktops (I do think that Linux, however, is ready for them). As such, although Asus may sell 5 million Eees, I think that sadly most of those people will get Linux replaced by an install of Windows.

However, if articles like this one start to appear in mainstream newspapers and magazines, maybe this will convince the average Joe that Linux is worthy of some investigation. Maybe this, in turn, will lead to Microsoft making those five dollar versions of Windows currently only destined for the far east much more widespread. Maybe they'd eventually make Windows free (as in beer) for the home user simply to stop the advance of Linux...?

 

[GarethDW]

When Linux has advanced to the point where an advanced user can completely set up and tweak a computer without touching the terminal and be confident enough that it won't break to use it in a production environment will be the day when it is ready for the desktop, in the meantime I see it becoming quite popular in embedded applications - PDAs, phones, cash machines etc.

<off topic> It's already used in production environments in places like Google, Mercedes-Benz, Boeing, Cisco, Schlumberger, Sony Electronics Inc., etc...

As for embedded devices I think ITRON is the leading OS in the world... I think it's used in approximately 3 billion microprocessors. </off topic>