Linux on [Not] The Desktop

Everybody keeps asking, “When will Linux be a serious contender on the desktop?”. My answer: “Oh, yeah, I remember PC’s.”

Linux is already well entrenched in the server space, it’s starting to dominate the mobile space, with at least Motorola and Nokia going linux, and it’s showing up on every other type of device – the Kindle, Kindle’s competitors, and every-other network device on the shelf at Staples.

So, just as Windows and MacOS are doing well defending their territory, people will start to abandon the historical concept of a PC and relegate it ‘to that thing they used to hook up to those old-fashioned landline phones.’

It’s been just about a decade since I beta-tested the MacNC (code name MiB), Larry Elison’s network computer that Steve Jobs was making for him. They canned that, stuck a hard drive in it and called it an iMac. Larry was right – he just thought everybody else had a ten meg pipe into their homes when they were all still on dial-up. A couple years from now, reality is going to catch up with him.