Larry Hengen recently posted the question Is Linux Ready for the Desktop on his TPersistent.com blog.
Though I like Linux (most of my incoming mail and web traffic is handled by a few SuSE Linux boxes), and have done so for a really long time.
I started with Linux about 15 years ago, after having uses SunOS and Minix in the early nineties, so I’d love Linux getting momentum in the desktop world.
But I don’t think it will; here is what I commented on the blog post:
Jeroen Pluimers Says:
March 7th, 2011 at 9:05 am
It won’t, and likely never will. Whereas the Linux server side is quite consistent in what you have and can use, the UI side still has way too many parties struggling to get their ‘way of doing UI’ (be it framework, theming, app suite, etc) accepted, so it is heavily fragmented.In order to gain acceptance in the Desktop market, you need momentum, not fragmentation.
Apple recognizes that (in a very stringent way), Microsoft recognizes that (in a firm, but less stringent way), the Linux community at large doesn’t.
15 years ago, on one of my first Linux presentations, when you had only few flavours of UI on Linux, I was hopeful. Now I just use a Mac, or Windows.
Do you have a different opinion on this? let me know!
-–jeroen