For many years now people have claimed that the following year would be the year when Linux finally makes headway as a desktop operating system among non-geeks. Year after year no real revolution has happened – Why? …. My personal opinion on this is divided into two arguments…

One: It won’t be a revolution … It will be a small change, like what is happening with the Mozilla browser, that spawned from Netscape long ago and went through a lot of years, when only geeks embraced it and when non-geeks always took the safe choice that was handed over to them: Internet Explorer. Then the Mozilla Browser suite became Firefox and slowly more people started using it – and over a series of many years have grown into 10-15% market share and in some areas a lot more. The same will happen when we talk about Linux. It won’t happen from one year to the next. There might be year when Linux grows more than others, like when Microsoft releases an expensive, ressource-consuming, over-hyped operating system like Vista, but that won’t mean that Linux will be a Desktop alternative next year… It will happen in small, incrementing steps! The reason why everyone seems to think that it should happen from one year to the other is the fantastic speed of which Linux spread across the server segment of the market. It surprised even Microsoft, who simply wasn’t ready for that competition. Suddenly they had a competitor who’s method and support they couldn’t comprehend. They learned from their mistakes and now they are taking the server market back one step at a time – now it is a real competition between two sides. Naturally Microsoft is not about to let the same thing happen to their primary market, The Desktop. Does anyone think that they wouldn’t try to counter every attack the open source movement does when they have tried how it is like to suddenly see 80% of the server market in the hands of a competitor they didn’t expect? … They are ready now and you can see it in many of their counterattack, like their rushed launched of the “Open” Office XML format to combat the ODF format. They do not want an even competition – of course they won’t – would you?… Expect Linux to grow in the Desktop market, but don’t expect the revolution… It will happen slowly day by day!

Two: In some areas open source still needs the last touch of user-friendliness and professionalism. An example is video players… The only real solid open source video player is VLC, which is still leagues behind Microsoft Media Player or Crystal Player. Miro Player is slowly getting to become interesting, but it is not ready for prime time yet. Games is also a path where the open source world is far behind. Some open source projects are interesting like Planeshift, but lets face it: There is many thousand leagues until we get gamers to leave the Windows platform for good. One of the reason is that people failed to realize what Microsoft was doing with DirectX until OpenGL suddenly wasn’t the prime standard of graphics and the open source world had no combined open standard for all the game development needs like DirectX has become with both sound, media, graphics and more. OpenML is finally out, but it has a long way to go if it wants to compete for real against DirectX in the game development industry.

The worst aspect of running the number one open source operating system, Linux, is the difficulty in getting hardware to work properly – and here I don’t just mean to not crash – but really take advantage of all the ones hardware can perform. Linux works great on older hardware, but that’s not good enough for gamers or for companies that doesn’t want to pay for something they are not getting value from. In many ways Linux misses the final touch that makes it “just work” and in many areas need applications that look and feel more professional so that people really feel that they are getting something that are equal to or surpasses that of the equivalent Windows application. I know, I know… “Ubuntu – Everyone can use it – even my grandpa!”… Yeah, but boot up Ubuntu on a laptop. How much works flawlessly? Start the start-menu and open a couple of applications… Then open of a couple of the equivalent applications on Windows… Which looks most professional? It simply needs the final touches – and even better: it needs to outdo its Windows competitor! A shining example of this is amaroK – The best music player there is! Everyone who has tried it knows that the Windows platform needs this application… It is simply the best in its class – pure and simple!

When I hear people talking about open source I always hear the wonders of OpenOffice.org… Well, I am fairly impressed compared to a lot of the competition and I use it myself, even though I have Microsoft Office 2003 Prof. on CD. Still, for the average user it will do fine – but it needs those final touches! It needs speed – it needs consistency … And above all: It needs awesome features that Microsoft Office doesn’t have! Try out Microsoft Office 2003 and onward, try out Corel Office … Then try OpenOffice.org and you instantly get the feel that it is too much copy-cat, too little innovation and especially too much ineffective Java-code and a massive application that doesn’t dance very lightly. Wouldn’t it be awesome if it felt twice as fast as Microsoft Office? Then professionals would have a real argument for putting it in a company. Wouldn’t it be awesome if it had a series of features that wouldn’t hit Microsoft Office for another couple of years and everyone was just talking about? … Well, there is a long way to go yet!

Final Words: Open source has made some wonderful achievements and I use a lot of it in my home, but the revolution won’t come tumbling down on us next year, but rather slowly climb the long climb onto the fields of competition, while Microsoft do all they can to stop it – fair tricks or not… If anyone wants to hasten up the process a bit they can ensure that open source has a wonderful, best-of-breed application in all areas, giving the many interesting projects some help and especially making them archive that final touch of professionalism! Stop bad mouthing, Microsoft – Instead: Grab a keyboard and start coding, drawing, designing and especially innovating!