Hello happy linux users!

I've been a linux user for quite some time now. Pushing for 20 year linux experience, and most of the time it has been Slackware.

Currently i run a couple of AMD Turion servers, (and laptops) with SlamD64 64-bit slackware linux, and with vmware server virtualisation, for home environment. Outstanding performance, and stability is, (if not as great as a well patched up VMS4.7 ), outstanding.

Thinking about migrating back to the main branch of Slackware now with ver.13 64-bit support. Mainstream is almost always the best. But Slamd64 has been a very positive experience this far.

I think the near future for operative systems used worldwide may well be linux and mac os taking more of the lead, (both of them well spread `unices`), and some installs of win xp hanging along somehow, as well as some installs of win 7 and solaris here and there. What makes the future OS, is compatibility, ease of use, and richness in functionality. People will choose the easiest way to run their gaming, web surfing, watching film and making their spreadsheets.

What i fear for Linux is that we will see increasing incompatibilities at driver level, as well as development branches diverging from standard by use of obscure package bundling formats like 'txz', and an exponentially growing /usr/lib of variants to different branches like the 32/64-bit versioning, and instantiation of certain versions of "essential" packets that is not so very migrateable, as well as diverging from the unix idea of not changing a released toolchains interface and behaviour.

People tend to want to set their mark on what they do, and this leads to introduction of variety at the cost of useability, compatibility and stability. If we do that to Linux we will most certainly kill it.

Regards / Johan Jansson

Hi and welcome to LQ Johan, I do not believe it will change in the near future but that a change may be on its way. In the world of servers it may happen faster but in the desktop world it will be slower.

Yes, but the MACs are on the move.

I hear several success stories of companies swapping out entire windows machine parks to MAC, and getting less expenses on support, generally more performance. Main motive for changing from MS to MAC may have been the fact that MS decided to terminate XP support and at the same time enforcing Vista as the "new and improved" replacement. Windows7 may save lots of market shares for MS. Restoring support for XP may further enhance MS market shares. Who knows? But people are getting more aware nowadays that older MS operative systems does not work so well with more than 2 GB memory in the system, and people tend to a higher degree want 4 GB+ of memory in their PCs nowadays. Maybe the enforcement of Vista on the market did MS a big misfavor in awakening people to the fact that MS does not so well support large memory banks. Also, the fact that MS does not so well support 64 bit CPUs prior to Windows7, and that many people has been using 32 bit XP on hardware that is really 64 bit dual core machines for some years now, will make people less wanting to use MS operative systems.

Now people are getting aware of that the most stable and supported platform running their office applications, (and with a higher performance than MS platforms), is the MAC. This will make new installs of Windows7 suffer.

So, unix is the way to go, and nowadays it is merely a question about if the performance and configurability of a Linux OS outweighs the administration cost, compared to the MAC.

I guess MS will have to market their own unix-based OS, or take a Munchausen grip in the proverbial own hair and lift their OSes above the performance now available in unix OSes.

Things are evolving pretty fast. Take a look at the premium OS for the late 80s, the VAX/VMS 4.7 with all its robustness and configurability. It is today suitable for embedded applications like mobile phones and ipods, looking at its capabilities.

I would certainly want VMS in my mobile phone. It would be a robust and lean platform, and i would be able to run several phones in a cluster, and seamlessly hotswap my calls to the phone currently working the best. Gee! I would even be able to swap the CPU out for a new one in the mobile without dropping any calls!

But seriously, Nokia is just about releasing their N900 mobiles now, to compete with... MS Mobile? Mmm, yes, to a degree. But rather be competing with Apples products. The Nokia N900 with its linux OS Maemo will certainly get their market shares. Because of many reasons except having something faster, more stable, and with more features and applications than any MS mobile platform.

So maybe now it is the time for UNIX to take over the market, both in small and large platforms.