David Heath
Sunday, 19 July 2009 19:51
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 3
Based on the Linux kernel, Google Chrome OS attempts to reposition Linux a long way from being a Windows competitor.
Let's face it; Linux is really nothing more than “Windows for Nerds.”
Sure the goodies under the hood are more amenable to tinkering – in fact we're actually *allowed* to tinker. Further, it's a general-purpose windowing (note: lowercase 'w') operating system capable of use in a variety of 'office' and other corporate applications. The full range of general-purpose tools are readily available – office productivity, graphical manipulation, file management
To the best of my knowledge, there is no category of application that runs on (any variety of) Linux and not on Windows.
So, this suggests that current incarnations of Linux are functionally no different than Windows itself. “Why bother” springs readily to mind.
Let's come at this from a different direction.
For more years than I care to remember, organisations have oscillated between desktop-hosted and remote-hosted applications. Obviously “in the beginning” we only had remote-hosted applications – running on mainframes; but since then, we have drifted toward the desktop with the rise of personal computers; then back again with the advent of local area networks.
All the while, mainframes never quite seemed to go away.
The world wide web, while initially a mostly read-only technology, has certainly evolved from there. Quickly adding both a two-way files environment (sharing of content) and also an interactive service (web-mail for instance) followed later by more interactive technologies such as chat and business-focussed tools, such as customer-focussed eCommerce.
Aside from some specialised applications, business-centric applications were relatively late to the party.
Sponsored Announcements
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
You may have missed
Advertisement
- sponsored feature -
How to Make Business Discovery Work for Your Business 
Business Discovery takes its cues from consumer apps. Like Google, it encourages us- ers to hunt for and explore data without worrying about or even noticing the underly- ing technology. Their entire experience is working within an intuitive interface to get real-time, self-service results with only minimal training. ...more
