MI-80

I know I know. This has been said repeatedly by media outlets and "professional analysts" for at least the past half decade, so why bother reading this? Well simply put, I've never said it before. I've been following Linux for awhile now and while I switched in February 2005 I still didn't recommend it to others until the past few months. What's changed my mind and why have I suddenly felt Linux's time has come? Read on. First off I do want to clarify a bit. I don't see Linux on the desktop has a revolution suddenly entering everyones home. That's where I've always felt predictions come up short. Rather Linux has been slowly entering the desktop market for years, and the evolution will continue but at a more critical-mass pace this year. First off are the obvious signs. Open source has gone mainstream. My little sister uses Firefox. Several of my friends use Gaim. These aren't technical people much less open-source advocates, they're just average users who felt they've found a better tool for the job. My sister finds Firefox's Google bar handy and loves the drastic drop in pop-ups. My friends love the simplicity and extendibility of Gaim. The fact that it has hundreds of great plug-in's and no ads is a huge attraction over the official client. Beyond that main-stream focused corporations have taken notice of the Linux desktop. Wal-Mart sells Linux based computers. Dell offers Linux on the extremely low and high end systems, and it's hard to imagine it not slowly working its way together onto their mid-grade systems. Wal-Mart and Dell are not what I consider high-tech companies, they want to sell computers to your Grandma. They really couldn't be less concerned about a kernel programmer. If these companies and others are starting to see that not offering Linux is affecting their bottom line, then how hurt are companies going to be which haven't taken notice yet? And with Wal-Mart, Dell, and others leading the way, how much longer could it be before Linux PC's grace Best Buy and Circuit City? A major factor in my thinking came with a recent report for Evans Data Corporation. This report analyzed data collected from every type of Linux developer you could imagine. While the report was mainly aimed at Linux developers, some of the information it contained would peak any amateur's interest. While I can't divulge too much since Evans' plans to sell the report, I will touch on a few facts. The single most stunning bit came when the respondents named Linux as the best operating system for personal desktop productivity. That's right, they voted it as easier to use than Windows just to get your work done. While you may be thinking of course Linux developers would say that, there's actually a lot less bias here than you may think. Just because they develop for Linux doesn't mean they have to use Linux. Just as many of the Microsoft programmers I know work under Linux, it's just as easy to code for Linux while running Windows on your machine. Now in all fairness Windows did rate a very close second, in fact falling within the margin of error. But this remains a big deal, as when a similar survey was conducted last year Linux barely registered at all. That means not only has the Linux desktop gained ground within the past year, it's gone from virtually unknown to on par with Windows in the eyes of many developers. While Linux was rated highly in every other category, it's always shown a terrible weakness in the desktop category by these same respondents...until now. So now not only is Linux in on the high end (super computers, clusters, servers, etc.) and the low end (cell phones, anti-lock brakes, Sony appliances, etc.), but it's rapidly closing that gap from both ends. On on the low end it's attacking the ultra-cheap PCs, and on the higher end it's gaining ground on workstations and by developers at all levels. Now a real shocker, for the first time in history developers are writing more applications for Linux than for Windows. More importantly however is the fact that a large number of these applications are GUI based aimed at desktops. In the past a vast majority of Linux targeted development was server only, and frankly no one cared or saw money in Linux desktop applications. For the first time, people are seeing real money in the Linux desktop, and as the old saying goes, money talks. You can see this across the board as well, as book publisher O'Reilly, whose traditionally had a keen eye on what the market wants, has begun publishing Linux desktop oriented books. Further more, and most simply, what's stopping Linux desktop adoption? KDE, my favorite windows manager, has features Microsoft wouldn't dare touch. I can pop a CD in, right click on it, and rip the music to DRMless MP3's (or better yet, open source .ogg files) and add it to my play list all with one swift motion of the mouse. Microsoft however retains their attempts to use their own formats (.wma in this case) which isn't as wide-spread in its compatibility, and they continue to push harder and harder for DRM limitations at all levels. Thanks to the MPAA and RIAA Microsoft is actually working very hard to prevent that from happening in Windows. Beyond KDE every day I use Gaim for instant messaging, Firefox and Thunderbird for web browsing and e-mail, KMplayer to listen to music and watch movies, K3B to burn CDs, and OpenOffice to write articles just like this one. And the best part? You don't have to use any of that. If you don't want to use anything I've listed, no worries, none of it is locked into the OS. If you like an alternative, use it, it's free. If you don't like Gaim, try Kopete. If you don't like OpenOffice, try KOffice. The list goes on and on. If you want to do photo editing, grab GIMP, if you want to do 3D modeling, grab Blender. If there's something Windows only you can't live without, grab WINE (or Cedega for games). Also the fact that hardware has progressed to the point where you plug it in and it just works, means the long running hardware issues are a thing of the past. There's just nothing stopping a vast majority of users, like my little sister, from switching to Linux. Community support has also grown by leaps and bounds in the past few years. Projects like Gentoo are known world wide for having incredible documentation. Also forums, IRC channels, and websites just like this one are full of helpful information and people who enjoy dedicating their time to helping new comers out. While this may seem a minor thing, it means a world of difference between paying Geek Squad $180 to do something and doing it yourself with a little help. Finally the mode damning piece of evidence I've come across convincing me Linux's time has come for the desktop is those who have approached me about Linux. Over the past year I've personally converted over a dozen long time Windows users to Linux. These range from office workers to gamers and desktop artists. I never pressured any of them, they simply heard about it on the nightly news or saw me using it and showed an interest. With a little help they were up and running, and not one has gone back. Many more, especially gamers, are just waiting for better support but have every intention of switching. The biggest shock of my life possibly came from my Father recently. Here's a quick overview. My Father hates change. In the late 1980's and early 1990's he learned Lotus Notes very well. He learned its keyboard shortcuts and macros. When he was forced to use Microsoft Office 97 and 2000, he continued using those same shortcuts. In fact that's why he keeps Office 2000 today, because XP and 2003 began phasing out Notes legacy support. In the decade he's been using Office regularly, he's refused to learn a single new keyboard shortcut. He uses Windows XP (in classic mode) only because his K6-2 350MHz machine finally dropped its power supply and harddisk (again) and he caved and bought a new box. He doesn't have any interest in Linux, open source, learning anything new, and in fact as a business man dislikes the idea of open source because he believes it'll put programmers out of work. However with the recent news of Microsoft Live, my Father came to me and said "when Microsoft Live becomes bigger and they want me to start paying monthly to use their stuff, I want to try some of that new open [source] stuff you like so much." He doesn't even know what it's called but he's so turned off by the way Microsoft is going he's ready to drop nearly two decades of Microsoft usage and learn something new. If Microsoft has alienated my Father, how is there any argument that the time of the Linux desktop has arrived? However I must mention one more thing. I talk about Linux versus Windows a lot because this is a transition period, so a lot of Windows users are looking for information. But what's the best feature of Linux for the desktop I've found? The fact that it stands up by its own merits. Just give it a run sometime and see for yourself. All you have to do is drop in a CD, and if you aren't impressed, take it out.