Posted on 09/30/2015 4:57:21 AM PDT by ShadowAce
I love the Linux desktop. As far as I'm concerned, the Linux Mint 17.2 is the best desktop around. Heck, I was once editor-in-chief of a website called Linux Desktop. But today, I believe there's no way the Linux desktop will ever become the top desktop operating system.
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| The Linux desktop, here Mint 17.2 with Cinnamon, is great, but it will never be popular the way Windows was. |
That's right. There will be no "Year of the Linux desktop."
Oh, don't get me wrong, Linux, as Android tablets and smartphones and Chrome OS Chromebooks, will become the most popular end-user operating system of all. But, the desktop? That's another story.
Android devices and Chromebooks are great. I have a Samsung Galaxy 5 by my side. My favorite laptop is the top-of-the-line, with a price-tag to match, 2015 Chromebook Pixel. Neither are conventional desktops.
Chrome OS, just like Windows 10, can work without an Internet connection or the cloud, but both only really show to their best advantage with their respective clouds. They are both hybrid desktop/cloud operating systems.
You can see where I'm going. I think Linux can't possibly become the top desktop operating system because traditional desktops are on their way out.
It's not just simply that PC sales have been taking a beating for years, although that is true. We are entering a time when the Internet is as vital for PCs and laptops as hard drives used to be.
Indeed, look at Chromebooks: Most of them get by with mere 32 GB solid-state drives (SSD)s. Why? Because Google offers a minimum of 100GBs of free Google Drive storage for two years with each device. In the case of the Pixel, you get a Terabyte of storage for three years. On Microsoft's side, Office 365 subscribers get unlimited OneDrive storage.
Local storage? Who needs local storage?
Google and Microsoft both say you don't, and they're winning.
Apple is taking Mac OS X to the cloud, but as anyone who has suffered with iCloud knows, Apple has a way to go.
Looking ahead, I see 90 percent and more of users working with hybrid desktop/cloud operating systems. Most people are already well on their way to not using conventional desktop and laptops at all. This trend, even as tablet sales slow, will only continue.
There will be a few people who will still use conventional desktops. These are the ones who want real control over their hardware and software. They're the ones who want real security. In short, they're the same people who are already using Linux.
So, by 2020, in a very limited way, Linux may be the top "desktop" operating system. It's just that there won't be many traditional desktops left in use. Everyone else will be working with one foot in the cloud and the other in a variety of devices, some of which, like Chromebooks and Surfaces, will look like desktops.
OSx (mac) is ran from a Unix background (literally)..
x=whatever version that they are running up until now...
bmfl
No. Many of us think the cloud is a fundamentally bad idea except for stuff you want to share globally, and don't care about security for.
For instance, keeping a copy of your photos online so family can see them is a good idea. You'll notice I specified a copy. If all your photos are only in the 'cloud', and you lose access to that cloud account for any reason, you're screwed. It's as bad as not having a backup.
How does it compare to things like running Linux VMs on VMWare from a cost perspective? I realize that costs aren't really everything, as IBMs mainframe infrastructure is very mature, so things like backup, upgrades and stuff is well developed.
I remember back when IBM was first really starting to jump onto the Linux bandwagon, and they had a mainframe spin up some thousands of Linux images on one box. At the time, it was damned impressive demonstration IMO, even though there probably wasn't a whole lot of resources available for each individual instance. IBM has been doing LPARs for a long time.
That really isn't true. Before the PC came out the entire industry was gravitating to the 68000 family. IBM chose the 8086 family because Intel recognized the "family upgrade route" IBM used with their 360 series. The 68000 architecture is much cleaner and more powerful than the 8086 family. Once the PC came out decent computing died.
While the Intel device dominated the PC marketplace, the 68000 continued for years in embedded devices. Telephone equipment was almost exclusively 68000 family devices. Eventually the 68000 variants gave way to Power PC processors within the phone company.
The 68000 was always just as "open and available" as the Intel stuff. The PC dominated what the public used. To this day 68000 derivatives known as Coldfire are in use in embedded applications; however, that has yielded mostly to the ARM families.
Architecturally speaking, the 68000 family was highly superior to the 8086 family in almost every respect. It was all about the market weight of IBM.
VMWare sucks 15-20% of the system’s resources just to run.
The drop in desktop sales has a lot more to do with the speed of technology than an evolution away from local storage. The fact is we are no longer at a point where a 4 year old desktop is an antique, machines can be usable now for 6 to 8 years easy. Gone are the days when a new CPU comes out every couple of years that immediately renders all others obsolete. Heck most people probably couldn’t even tell you what their CPU is anymore. Nobody looks forward to replacing their desktop anymore, it’s now an unpleasant task as the latest and greatest isn’t much of an improvement and reinstalling all your software is a chore.
Meanwhile Linux won’t ever be the desktop king because it holds the same brain space as jazz. Jazz is music for hardcore music nerds, Linux is an OS for hardcore computer nerds. The casual audience has no interest in either.
Buzzword complaint companies love it. Most of the rest don’t. We had a visit with one of our big customers and the person from the cloud portion of our suite tagged along. When she asked about their opinion of cloud he went on a bit of a rant, declaring the cloud only useful for fly-by-nights, startups, and non-serious businesses.
#8 Use Linux in a virtual window. You can download the free Oracle VirtualBox https://www.virtualbox.org
Install any OS you want and you can run it in any size window or full screen.
How to with screenshots
http://www.everydaylinuxuser.com/2014/05/how-to-install-linux-mint-as-virtual.html
Video - start around 2 mins in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmBjqjqCawc
For home though I don't want to run through a virtual box. Maybe want to try out some gaming.
No, there are at least two of us.
The last thing I want is my stuff floating around in the cloud before I get it published and copyrighted.
Meanwhile Linux won’t ever be the desktop king because it holds the same brain space as jazz. Jazz is music for hardcore music nerds, Linux is an OS for hardcore computer nerds. The casual audience has no interest in either.
I don't game, nor Photo shop, and I am not a power user nerd.
My use these days is about 95% on line requiring only a RJ45 connection or wifi and a password for those sites. I want to be safely online in seconds not wasting minutes watching some damn blue circle evolving. Also, I don't want to waste 30 minutes each morning downloading bs from MS/IE, forcing me buy a bigger hard disk, and making my PC slower each day.
I don't want so waste a lot of money, time and effort to just get safely on line.
Now with my new View Sonic monitor, HDMI connector cable, and USB wireless keyboard/monitor, my Acer Chromebook 15 is my super fast Chrome Desktop for not that much money.
For my 5-10% time re word processing/personal spreadsheets, my Toshiba 15.6" Win 10 laptop can work in a stand alone Desk Top mode with the same USB keyboard/mouse set up as with my Acer Chromebook by just changing the HDMI cable from the Acer to my Toshiba. If I need to go to the internet, I can access Comcast or Google via my Norton Protected Search and my RJ45 connection, find, read and copy what I need and go back to my archaic MS Works stand alone.
Windows for Workgroups 3.11 kicked ass! WAY more usable than clunky WinNT 3.1! First ‘consumer’ Windows with 32-bit disk access...
No, you are not.
Yes, though I would recommend playing with it on a test machine before committing to your real install... Been a while since I did multi-boot, but in the installation dialog in any Linux there is an option for advanced installation - the thing you are interested in in the advanced dialog is how Grub is installed, and you want it to install to the partition rather than to the Master Boot Record (MBR)...
Then, after installation, you'll want to adjust Grub to point to the Linux installation by default, and the timer set to a low number (I always used 3 secs to allow me to stop the process and enter different aspects of the Linux boot scenario if I wanted to). This isn't necessary, but it resolves the time/wait of going through two boot loaders (WIN and Grub), which is what you will be doing every time you enter Linux...
As to whether Win boot loader will see Linux, you are on your own (I haven't messed with modern Win Boot Loader much [Since Vista]), with the exception that you would point it to the partition holding the grub boot loader (usually root).
Do what you want, but I would highly recommend using separate hard drives for each operating system, and using an after-market boot loader... Much easier to maintain, and 'system' sized drives, say 150-250g are a dime a dozen (I can routinely pick them up for 10-20 bucks)... I used to use a FAT32 partitioned hard drive as my initial drive with the boot loader residing there... Most are compatible with FAT32... And it's a great place to store system images for all the OS's on the machine...
Then just load each OS normally on it's own drive (with only that drive 'live' in the box)... Once they are all made, set the drive with the boot loader in it to boot first, and set up the boot loader to access each OS... Piece of cake to maintain, as each OS is installed without any stupid pet tricks... And if any OS craps out or needs to be updated/re-installed, just unplug everything else, reinstall the system normally, plug the rest back in, and make any adjustment to the boot loader. Easy, and way better than multi-boot parts on a single drive or VMs. Then just keep all your data on a monster drive out back, and each system drive can be rubbed without regret.
I’ve setup another partition just for Linux (70 gBytes) [...]
Better to leave that space raw, and let 'nix set up what it wants in that space. You will find that it likes at least 3 parts - root, swap, and home. It will run in a single partition, but standard is better.
It seems that I just found my long lost brother. Microsoft has so much bloatware these days that I'm shocked that the system can be used for useful work. It also seems that the young-uns didn't learn about contact bounce. On WIN7 my mouse double clicks upon a single click. Same mouse works fine on XP box.
A little bird told me that MS sold tons and tons of WFWG 3.11 to people who were not part of any network and (of course) had no clue about the Internet.
Networking was pretty new at that time. Yours is a surprising revelation just the same.
It works great for what we use them for (WebSphere apps). It’s cheaper than buying a bunch of commodity servers. And yes dynamic WLM is awesome...
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