Linux for all and all for Linux

I remember when Linux appeared in the early nineties and it was this new thing after BSD Unix had been established and we had many flavors of corporate Unix incarnations that were extremely proprietary and expensive. This was before the Internet and one could get such things through BBS systems and the installation was from diskettes. The timing could not have been better with the Internet proliferation and the growing need for servers and networks. Linux became quickly popular in these areas. I remember having arguments with colleagues on how Linux would penetrate everywhere including the desktop arena. And here we are, about 25 years later and yes it did penetrate in most areas, but not quite the desktops, which still predominantly stay with Windows and MacOS.

Linux is everywhere, but not on the desktop or laptop.

It is in the cars, the mobile devices, the drones, the toys, in the industry. It will most likely be in the robots that will be created in the next decade in all sectors. With the Internet of things, depending on how big the thing is, if it has a decent processor it can run Linux and since Linux and its infrastructure come for free it is almost a guaranteed choice.

Linux is the land of opportunity for developers, not so much for regular users.

It is a great and rich environment, but there is a caveat. There are a lot of powerful tools, but some come with a steep learning curve making it a no go for people who are just users and do not want or have no time to invest in getting skills in this area. It is unlikely that somebody's grandma is going to whip a Python or shell script in order to automate her recipes while waiting for the meal to be cooked. It is also unlikely that somebody's grandpa will spend time installing the right driver for Linux and reading the endless forums while watching the Sunday game. People want quick and working "out of the box" solutions. I still see issues in Linux where certain things do not work right away with certain versions and hardware where one may need to spend time researching the issue and finally find a solution, which may not be a straightforward one. It really depends on how one uses a computer and the OS, applications, etc. I find the Linux installations to be much easier today compared to 20 years ago and the support, combined with the information on the Internet extremely comprehensive. If a user can install a Windows or MAcOS then most likely they can manage an Ubuntu or a Mint installation. This is provided that everything goes well... If it does not go well then it is probably harder to figure the Linux issue compared to Windows, especially if you need to use the command line. After many years of deliberate weaning the Windows users from the command line for many of them this is an unknown territory. I find it natural and useful, but I doubt this opinion is shared by the majority of users. So maybe if Linux wants to conquer the desktop then it needs to invest in interfaces of the future that can obviate the need of command line experimentation. There seems to be two ways in solving this. One if Linux came up with an easier an intuitive interface and the other one if users invested time in learning how Linux worked. But I doubt that the second approach is a likely one, even if Linux is free, the only place it has not penetrated fully is where it needs to interact with humans - the desktop.

What do we need from a desktop or a laptop.

If we look at the average corporate user and what do they do on a typical day for almost any profession then we can easily see the common ground. The applications that seem to be used by all of us are: email, office (editor,spreadsheet,presentation), browser. I am going to discuss these separately:

• email - The email client is something that people can choose for themselves. In fact most of us just need to read emails, respond and search in their previous emails. Then why do we need Outlook? Is there something more that it has compared to many other email clients that are just free in Linux? The email protocols are standardized and even for corporations even if their server has certain requirements, email clients can vary and all can use their email client of choice.
• office - The Ubuntu distribution has LibreOffice which is compatible with the Windows office. Once I had to create a presentation in Power Point for Windows and then presented it on a Linux laptop and all worked fine. Not sure I see why using Microsoft Office is the only choice. It is not.
• browser - All the browsers behave pretty much similarly independently of the OS, when we browse the Internet we should not even notice that we are running Linux. There are even more browsers that one can find on Linux in case they have specific requirements.

If the most used applications are available in Linux then why do we need to run Windows or MacOS and to pay for them too. Is it because we just don't want to learn another interface? There was time when we had only DOS and Windows looked like a nice addition to every 32 bit computer, but today it is different. Functionally, there is very little that we have on Windows or MacOS, that does not exist for Linux. It is just the knowledge gap of the user base that stops Linux from conquering the hearts of all users in the desktop world.

The argument of uniform installations in organizations.

Yes, but we need to restrict users to use certain apps and to have certain user privileges, some will argue. We also want to force updates, others will add. All of these can be done in Linux. If the users are using the applications mentioned earlier then we can restrict the environment and if they use these apps will not know or care what is the underlying OS. Do you care that your Android phone runs Linux? Maybe, but most likely not so much. People identify their work by the applications they use on their phones, their laptops, etc. Imagine how much companies can save if they had their operations achieve the same with just running Linux and the software already available for it. Is it the users, or is it inertia from the corporations who do not quite trust Linux? For some applications that companies absolutely need they can pay for Linux versions, so even companies like Microsoft can keep their niche apps and offer them for Linux (How do I dare to offer a separation of an application from its native OS?).

Linux for the masses, will it happen ?

Not sure if I can say that Linux is ready for the masses or the masses are ready for Linux. Not even saying that Linux is a better desktop choice than Windows or MacOS, just good enough to serve this purpose relatively well. On the other hand I am kind of glad that Linux is still this free, Unix based environment appreciated mostly by hackers and scientists alike. Maybe it needs to be this way to serve these users well and be applied where it shines in servers, machines and gadgets. I wonder what people think about the possibility of it being able to conquer the desktop environment some day. Are we still going to have Windows and MacOS 20 years from now? What do you think? Found this article on wikipedia: "Criticism of desktop Linux", which complements what I wrote in this post: