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LinuxHaxor recently wrote a blog post discussing how every year hundreds of writers come out of the woodwork to discuss how “this is the year for Linux” or that Linux is finally ready for the masses.
Every year, every major Linux development, every major distribution release sparks a volley of so-called expert opinion of this being finally the year of the Linux. As they provide arguments and counter-arguments over certain news of Dell/HP/IBM/Asus releasing pre-installed Linux computer; and how this will single-handedly fix every problems and finally allow Linux to take over the world.
I agree that these “expert opinions” do always contain the suggestion that this could finally be the year Linux launches into a much higher stratosphere and knocks out major competition. However, most of these “expert opinion” articles that I read every year, or every major release, mainly focus on how Linux is getting closer to becoming a much better operating system than the competition has to offer. Isn’t that all that really matters?
As another year is coming to an end, and another major distribution is around the corner; this might be a good time to remind everyone how next year will not be much different from this year. It took years and years of dedication and innovation for MacOS to finally reach 8% market share. Depending on your level of cynicism, Linux Desktop market share is at somewhere around 1%-5% (being generous).
Sure, lets stop looking at every single Linux advancement or breakthrough with the “this is it! we’ve done it” mentality, I can agree with that. But really, if you look at the facts, 2008 was a great year for Linux. In fact, the past five years have been “the year of the Linux“. Linux will continue to grow over time. After all, Linux is an open source operating system. Anyone can contribute, anytime, and the number of contributors continues to grow every year. Eventually these developers will have worked out all the pesky kinks that stop most users from switching to Linux. It’s really only a matter of time before the mainstream users decide to make the switch to the Linux operating system they keep hearing more and more about.
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Are we there yet? Actually, depending upon needs, the answer is yes.
If we look at the home market, Linux is there, and has been for at least 2 years.
If we look at the business market (Microsoft), I am sure that MS is gaining ground on Linux for the enterprise. How? by providing a multitude of enterprise packages and having to require XP or Vista as the GUI interface.
However, these two user streams may overlap, so that in the end, some people will have both systems on their machine.
Or… Web applications here we come, and it matters not what operating system you have.