Personal Bytes

For the last 5 to 6 years I’ve heard about the year of the Linux desktop. I think the crusade towards world domination (sic) began around the year 2000, perhaps propelled by the Y2K bug. Nevertheless, from that moment on I started hearing some rumblings about Linux conquering the desktop.

As much as I’ve loved Linux, statements like those around the year 2000 (and the years to come, granted) seemed pretty much senseless and only fueled by strong emotional believers that didn’t use much of their brains by then.

Curiously, this year I haven’t heard the expression “2007 - The year of the Linux desktop”. And guess what? I truly believe Linux has now reached the maturity of a desktop operating system class. But let us be literal here: desktop only. Due to Microsoft’s pressure on %$#% ACPI implementations and other nuisances, Linux may be ready for the desktop but not for the laptop. For that reason, I own a MacBook and run Mac OS X. I’ve lost countless hours configuring wireless adapters, recovering from crashes after suspend to ram failures, waiting minutes for the laptop to recover from suspend (when it didn’t crash), etc.. But I clearly digress.

So, why is it ready then?

Well, because it has been proven that it works as a desktop for a lot of people. Perhaps it would work for even more but leveraging the path to the desktop is not that easily attainable. People are afraid of changes. So, yes, promoting strong awareness of Linux takes time. But, once again, I digress.

Linux is now

• simple enough to use and configure
• by far the simplest OS for installing and maintaining software (provided you’re using a apt-get based distribution)
• it’s rock-solid stable
• it has eye-candy
• it runs a productivity suite that, albeit not as complete as Microsoft’s Office, it still cuts to the job to a lot of people
• it’s an excellent development environment and provides great tools
• it’s simple and usability has been sharpening
• last but not least, it’s damn secure

So, I beg to label this year 2007 as the year of the Linux desktop! Now we just need more designers and usability experts to raise the parade up to Mac OS X’s level — which is still a little bit far.