Change

Tuesday October 12, 2004 - 8:08PM EDT

I installed GNU/Linux on a few computers I had lying around. The only thing that Windows really has going for it is hardware support. There is just not enough hardware vendors supporting linux. As for GUI GNU/Linux has a better GUI than Windows and it is more customizable. Software is available that will do everything you can do in Windows. With the exception of games. I feel like although GNU/Linux is ganing in popularity no one has really approached it in the right manner to unseat Windows. Partially due to the fact that there are not as many people knowledgable in GNU/Linux as there are in Windows. One could probably replace almost all business desktops with GNU/Linux through a GUI that looks like windows and the users would never even know they were not using windows. As for performance, on the computer I am running now there seems to be very little difference between it and Windows XP that was formerly on the computer. With a lot of software moving to web-based interfaces GNU/Linux can really take hold. I have this vision of all software being based on XML data and linked to the internet. Every software program would just be a specific editor for XML data grammars, with linkage to the internet managed by the OS. OS would contain basic programs but most users would use web-based programs. I guess it could be done with GNU/Linux now but there isn't a standard defined for web-based software or a group of apps to provide web-based software in a one place that is useful. If someone could provide a single service that provided a core set of web-based applications that would simplify login and interface into a single website that would be great. Something like having web-based email, presentation collaboration, word processing, search, multimedia, and specialized programs for particular industries in on service would be great. A business user would only need to be in one interface all day. An IM application linked to the web-based program would be the core for real-time notification services (email, alerts, system updates). But everything would be done in the browser.

I don't think the average computer user realizes how much more simplified a customized GNU/Linux GUI could be. Windows as easy as it is, sometimes is just to complex for some users. Particularly business users who rely on certain applications. This is such a dearth of business application out there that suck ass but companies make money off them because they are the only ones available. Someone could really clean up by providing high quality web-based applications using GNU/Linux as a suggested OS. I see most business users only use a few different applications and often they are locked into using Windows because of the one specialized application they use only runs on Windows. All other applications could be replaced by equally as good software (email, browsing, word processing). No one out there is promoting this idea. There is RedHat which is primarly promoting the OS as their attention grabber, but that is not going to sway the desktop user. I don't think the average desktop user really cares what OS they are on, they just care about the software that it runs.

Admittedly there is not as much software available for GNU/Linux as there is with Windows. Overall quality can be debated but overall the quality of software on each OS probably evens out. Unless I am misinformed there is no company avaialable that provides unified web-based application suites for the desktop user. The proliferation of Internet access is going to allow that to be possible soon. It will be hard to break the monopoly of Windows though. You have to attack vertical markets first. I would start with non-profit organizations. With these statements I wouldn't even advocate one OS over the other,the OS wouldn't be the battleground anymore.