Opinion: Why GNU/Linux will ultimately succeed

By Hamish Taylor
Thursday, 13 November 2008 08:39

Opinion and Analysis

In the last few weeks and months, there have been some very interesting articles and discussions on iTWire about Linux, Windows and Mac OS and their relative merits. Here's my take on why I think that Linux will ultimately succeed, though don't be afraid the timeline is still pretty long!

I have been using Linux for about two and a half years now and I have noticed an interesting trend. Every time I upgrade to the latest version (as I use Ubuntu, that's every six months), I am installing and using fewer applications.

When I upgraded this week from Ubuntu 8.04 to 8.10, I had a remarkably short list of applications to install. I realised that I am using more and more applications "in the cloud" and fewer and fewer "on the Desktop".

"Cloud computing" has been around for a while now, but just in case you haven't encountered it yet, it is the concept of using your web browser as a front end for an online application, whilst configurations and your data are stored on the providers server. Some people may refer to it as "software as a service" or a variety of other names.

Many of these "cloud based" applications only require the use of an Internet connection and a browser. In some cases, such as when using Google Docs with Google Gears, you don't even need an active Internet connection! (As an aside, when in off-line mode Google Gears can't create new documents, so what I do is create some dummy documents and edit them off-line which gets around this limitation.)

As a GMail user, the convenience of having much of my email, documents and so on available from any PC is pretty compelling. This convenience is being extended to more and more applications. For instance, I no longer have a separate application to monitor my Internet connection usage; this is now taken care of by a Firefox extension.

Many companies are recognising this trend. Microsoft recently launched their own "cloud" applications. Various other commercial organisations offer access to their applications using a web browser, including Yahoo!, Salesforce and SAP.

Why is this significant for the success and adoption of Linux?