Desktop Linux's Future

[Rainer Gutkas]

Hi John!

John Lambrechts schrieb:

>The following is a quote from timdorr on Neowin.net, 
>"
>Well, here's an interesting concept on the costs of OSS:
>
>A Small Orange runs all our servers on Linux, Apache, Pure-FTPd, PHP, MySQL 
>and a host of other freely available and open-source software. To us, this
>software is essentially not free. However, we devote a portion of our
>monthly revenue to donations to these open-source products. So, in
>essence, we've removed the "free as in beer" element of OSS. In exchange
>for our donations, we are fueling the development of the software and
>improvements. Short of devoting a developer to work on these projects,
>it's one of the best methods we can use to ensure we keep high quality
>software available for us to use.
>
>  
>
That's great!

>I don't have an arguement, or even much of point, I just think it's
>interesting that we essentially pay for this open source software, even
>when we do not have to. Honestly, I don't think an Office for Linux
>product would sell very well, since there is an ingrained desire to
>maintain only an open-source set of software on Linux machines. Also, I
>still think desktop Linux sucks (the quality, non-beta software selection
>is less than even my Mac), so it's like eating filet mignot covered in
>dung. You may have one of the best meats to eat, but it's still wrapped in
>crap.
>"
>  
>
For me I totally wiped OSX from my Powerbook Pismo. Ubuntu is a great 
Desktop OS which gives me freedom I don't have in comercial software 
products. I say this even if I work in comercial software industry. So 
one point for me is that mount FTP works great, ...Ext3 which has big 
advantages over FAT and HFS+, the next one is that you can run a desktop 
with integrated raid.
Oh and did I mention the tons of free software. So I'm a guy who uses 
different tools, each for a task. Normally tools get used to fullfill 
this task and when I don't need them I won't touch them. In comercial 
software this is highly expensive to do.....

>I would like to hear everyones point of view on this statement and what
>the future of desktop linux holds. The only thing I have yet to understand
>is what do companies and small businesses have to benefit from getting
>into the open source world? I just watched the video of Mark Shuttleworth
>talking at Debconf and he has a very interesting outlook but I still
>personally haven't seen the light in the desktop linux market.
>  
>
I've seen in the documentation "Codename GNU Linux" that China is 
betting on Linux as major Desktop OS. So in my point of view it's most 
likely that Linux will evolve to a very immportant System also on 
desktop market. Just imagine how many people live there in China ;-)
In my experience lots of people just think that Linux is something for 
Freaks and Computer Scientists. They are affraid of it, but who can 
blame them, it was like this in former days. But with distro's like 
Ubuntu I'm quite positive that this will change, people just have to see 
what linux can be like and I'm sure they love it.

>enlighten me,
>
>John
>
>
>  
>
I would like to be a bit more detailed with my answer, but I gotta get 
to work, its already getting a bit late. Have a nice day,

Rainer
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