Gaining acceptance in the desktop market

Now more than ever Linux seems to be gaining more acceptance in the desktop market - despite the fact that it is much more difficult to get a "boxed" edition of any Linux distribution than it use to be - at least here in southern Ontario, Canada.

The increase in desktop usage is probably a combination of the fantastic work of developers who have put a lot into making Linux very robust as a desktop Operating System (OS) and the fact that people are tiring of not being able to control more of their operating system.

Last night I was explaining to my house mate, who runs Linux at his other home, the Red Hat Package Manager (rpm). I was relating how when you install boxed Microsoft Windows-based software, you generally don't know where all the files are being stored, and finding out this fact can be difficult even for experienced Windows users because of how much the OS hides. By contrast the command rpm -ql packagename.rpm lists not only all the files in packagename.rpm but their location on installation. It was nice to see his face light up over this little tidbit of information.

He's not alone in the new Linux user segment. When I attended the December meeting of my local Linux User Group (LUG), KWLUG, I met a new Linux user who was simply tired of how basic Microsoft Windows was - this from someone who had not even touched a computer before 6 months ago.

I want to go off on a tangent for a moment. As a Linux user among a lot of Microsoft Windows users I've heard many of the problems Windows users have with Linux. What seems common to a lot of the problems is that the Windows user gives up too easily and relies on old habits. My philosophy has always been use what works best for you, so I don't fault Windows users for returning to Windows. But sometimes I think they give up far too quickly. I am reminded of Mortimer J. Adler's 1939 book How to Read a Book in which he explains that there are three types of reading: reading for information, reading for entertainment, and reading for understanding. Adler explains that you can read a book and get information from it. Perhaps you understand a little about what the information means, but you don't have real understanding, the third type of reading he suggests, until you put enough active effort into trying to understand. Adler further goes on to suggest that the real value and entertainment from a book comes from shifting from simply gleaning information to true understanding. This is one of the joys of Linux. When you understand something you previously were challenged by it's an exciting feeling.

Using Linux reminds me of the early days I attended BUG, the Barrie User's Group. Back in 1984, 1985, our Commodore computer group had some really interesting presentations that included things like how to make a light pen out of a magic marker and other parts. Cool demonstrations like the lightpen demo fell by the wayside as the group expanded into the Windows market. Linux brings much of that unexplorer-territory excitement back.

I love Linux because it is infinitely customizable and it works incredible with my hardware. In fact, my notebook sports a Designed for Microsoft Windows XP sticker, but the standard Professional edition of Windows XP fails to even get past the initial installation screen. I've run SuSE, Red Hat, and Knoppix on the same notebook without any problem. SuSE is my distribution of choice for my notebook, despite being a Red Hat and Debian GNU/Linux user for many years. I like SuSE because the updates work extremely smoothly, but that's a whole other matter.

My switch to SuSE, however, seems to be a trend. Tuxmagazine, a new Linux magazine aimed at the growing Linux desktop market, recently took a survey of what desktop Linux users were running, and the distribution of choice was SuSE! It seems to me that Novell has a golden opportunity to make inroads in the desktop market. They don't necessarily need to spend billions on marketing to push Linux on the desktop market, it's been tried before. But if Novell can get their boxed editions widely distributed enough so that anyone can order SuSE from a metropolitan city near them, then they might be able to make a go of the desktop market again.

I love the fact that there are a lot of Linux-related books available in book stores, but I miss being able to walk to a computer store and pick my favourite Linux distribution off the shelves.