2008: Not the year of the Linux desktop

By Sam Varghese
Thursday, 03 January 2008 18:00

Opinion and Analysis

The new year is less than a week old but the talk has already begun. Yes, we are hearing that hackneyed old saw again - this will be the year of the Linux desktop. Some so-called pundits say it directly, some in an indirect manner but they aren't holding back.
Those with a stake in something like this coming to fruition - the biztech media, several so-called pundits and businesses which stand to gain monetarily - are the ones behind this rash of articles.

Were Linux to gain serious marketshare in the business space, then all these people would see their bank balances start to swell. And in order to try and achieve this objective, any and every means will justify the end. The logic is the same as that employed by one venerable newspaper publisher many decades ago: "You send the stories and I will create the war."

What exactly do people mean when they say that a particular year will be the year of the Linux desktop? Do they mean that the number of people using Linux on the desktop will outnumber those using Windows? Even the most ardent Linux advocate and fanboy would say no.

Then is the year of the Linux desktop, the year when Linux becomes a mainstream operating system, the year when it is offered for sale by big computer sellers and resellers? If so, 2007 fits the bill very well with even Dell starting to sell both desktops and laptops with Linux installed.

What kind of numbers are we talking about when we think of worldwide PC usage? The best estimates I have seen are around a billion. And that figure is from 2006. It could be much more now.

And even the most ardent Linux fan would never estimate that Windows runs on anything less than 90 percent of those PCs. That, by the way, is a conservative estimate.

There are many variables which make such statistics something like axle grease. Someone may buy a PC running Windows, take it home and run Linux on it. Someone else may do the reverse. A third person, a nerd, may run Leopard, the most recent version of Mac OSX, on a PC. Take my own case - I've knocked down the number of systems running Windows in my home from three to one over the last two years. Statistics are fluid, to say the least, and they will always be so.

The recent appearance of a little laptop (the ASUS Eee PC)  and a cheap PC (the Everex Green gPC, sold by WalMart), both of which run Linux, have got a lot of people among the Linux fanboy crowd excited. Why? Simple, this crowd sees these two machines as one way by which Linux will increase its presence on the desktop.