Year of the Linux Desktop? Not!
Let me preface this by saying that I use Linux almost exclusively as my desktop at home and at work (I have a mac too). My wife uses Linux exclusively as her desktop. Many of my friends and coworkers use Linux as their default desktop as well.
That being said, is 2009 the year of the Linux Desktop? No way, and 2010 isn’t going to be it either.
Now many people are going to say that Linux still has a way to go before it gets it’s “year of the desktop”. Opinions differ, but people point out things like hardware compatibility issues, lack of a unified desktop, ease of OS install, ease of program/utility install, windows program compatibility issues, and on and on.
What I would like to say is that none of that amounts to a hill of beans. The year of Linux on the desktop happened long ago when I was able to start using Linux full time instead of anything else. And not just I, but countless other users as well. You see, there might have been some issues along the way, things that got fixed or better as time went along, but all in all, I have been able to use Linux on my desktop and function not only in a home, but corporate environment just fine for almost 10 years.
Don’t get me wrong, things have certainly gotten easier lately. We now have distributions like Ubuntu which is practically brainless to install and looks and runs fantastic. This was not the case way back when, but I was still able to get the job done. Then again, I can remember a lot of things in other more popular operating systems that ran rather badly back then too 🙂
We have great utilities now with installers that are light years ahead of other OSes. We have almost fully Microsoft compatible office suites (or in some peoples opinions better). We have the whole gamut of media players, productivity utilities, and yes, even games, many of them really fantastic! Having so many “cloud” utilities is helping even more.
I think Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols hit the nail on the head when he wrote it’s not the year of the desktop because we’ve already had it. Most people just didn’t notice.