Ubiquitous Linux, or, how to become a household commodity

David M Williams
Sunday, 01 June 2008 08:00

Opinion and Analysis

I cheekily referred to “Ubuntu fanboys” in the opening paragraph; I mean no disrespect by that and indeed Ubuntu have been phenomenal in raising awareness of their particular flavour of Linux.

However, even so, the best efforts of the well meaning evangelists who churn through pallets of CD-Rs to hand out Ubuntu to friends and family still need the recipient to put in work. They need to get the thing running and, unless they are buying a new computer specially for this purpose, they will also need to trash their existing, and usually working, system – or at the very least re-organise how its disk space is used, and these can be frightening experiences for the inexperienced and unfamiliar.

By contrast, hardware manufacturers are turning Linux from something which requires deliberate choice and action – and maybe pain – into something which is simply an appliance. Those who use the Elonex ONE may well understand it uses something called Linux under the hood, but they don’t really have to grasp what this means. They don’t have to care that the WiFi hardware was carefully chosen to be one of the exclusive few which has supported Linux drivers. They don’t need to tamper with the way their family computer is already set up.

One problem, I believe, that gets in the way of Linux adoption is when end users wonder just what they should do next. After all, how exciting can an operating system really be? Without applications and purpose it’s a pretty useless piece of software. Now, admittedly, Linux distributions do have a massive repository of free software to draw upon with many quality applications, games and tools – but the point still is that you need to persuade someone why they ought to use Linux and then help through its installation. Finally, when they sit down to use it what do they do after they log in? There’s nothing you “do” as such; it depends now on what they actually wish to achieve, be it surf the web, check mail, write a letter or something else.
Here’s where hardware vendors turn it on their head. Instead they fulfil a need in themselves; the hardware items are the purpose that the user has sought. Sure, they use Linux but it becomes a vehicle to achieve outcomes and gently soaks its message into the user via osmosis.

I remember 10 years ago when Java was massively hyped and people would say “show me this Java thing” and I really had no idea what they expected to see. I never thought “Look, see how I didn’t free that object? The garbage collector will handle it for me” would fly. I believe it is a similar story when our non-technical friends finally relent and ask to see Linux. “Look, you can browse the Internet using a web browser” similarly doesn’t quite hit the mark but “Look, this laptop cost me less than a hundred pounds” – now, that’s compelling.