Nice to get in before the crowd :-)
 

Ok, so I was over at Linux.org reading this page about "the future of Linux". It looks like Linux is finally going to be plunging head on into the world of home computing more and more, marking this year as the starting point. At least as I read that article, that's the feeling I received from the author. It's a good read, check it out.

If Linux were to be displayed (in terms of users) on a graph chart, it would look something like this:
Ok, really bad graph, but the point where the two lines intersect are where we are now, reading from left to right.

Cool, bad graphs, Lame subject's, this must be a thread by MasterC ;)

will linux be able to make it into the market? It seems to me that many people will get too confused for it and will revert to the fisher price of Redmond. If linux gets more into the homes, wont it have to get more user friendly? And if they do that, will the better features of linux suffer?

I dont know, i just wonder if linux could still be linux if it got too big too fast. :Pengy:

Look for instance at the most unlinux like linux OS - lycoris, the setup is bliss, the conversion is as seemless as it gets with all available open source alternatives, and development doesn't stop there. Look at Mandrake - it is claimed to be the most user-friendly linux OS out here, there are of course some cavets and hurdles to overcome, but they are not as hard as they used to be a year ago. Think of linux as not a replacement for Windows - it has never meant to be - think of it as a democratic aproach to purify software computing market. The notion of linux to be a competitor of windows in my belief comes directly from its "competitor" - MS. They, MS, created that myth that Linux is a pluque to a society becasue they saw a competition threat that could render to halt its business. It is their belief that linux as desctop replacement is a desease to software development movement. Why they are confident that MacOS is not a competitor, just because it is ran on diffrent architecture? Why Mac OS doesn't see a threat in linux? I think if Mr.Jobs puts more effort on porting MacOS to intel architecture it will automatically put itself in MS dark list. Maybe not.
So to say, MS interprets free term in open source as in beer not as it is meant to be free as in speech. MS entrapped itself in their own "competition" against open source, it's dag its own grave, and it waits for its own death. How soon it'll die if it won't change its policies? I think in a couple of years. If MS would be going to enforce its dirty competition policy it'd die even sooner. We'll see.

I think the priciple problem that arises when asking The Question about Linux on the desktop is that Linux users have divided loyalties. Some would like to see Linux staying on it's past and current course, being an OS for geeks by geeks (and that is not meant in a derogatory sense... I'm a geek and I openly admit it). On the other hands, there are those of us that would like to see more and more people using Linux first and worrying about whether they are computer literate enough to understand what's going on under the hood second. I don't think that this divide will ever be solved... and I don't think that it should be! Whilst having a Linux machine that works much like a Windows box (except better) is possibly a nightmare for hackers, having a computer that needs lots of fiddling to get it to work right is a nightmare for 'the average desktop user'. I see that a happy medium would be as things are now. Hackers can code away and be happy with ground-breakingly new apps and functionality... whislt the 'average desktop user' will have to wait a little while for the developments to reach their favourite update site (RH/Mandy/SuSE)... and they'll happily click on the 'yes, update my system now' button completely unaware of what's going on. I don't see where the problem is. People say that 'Linux is not ready for the average desktop user'. I say 'Pah!' Linux is more than ready...

Wow, that looks like a pretty sturdy soapbox you are on there Thymox :D

Good speech