As a frequent reader of Linux related news, I’ve come to the conclusion the sometimes reading posts about Linux is a complete waste of time. With time I’ve noticed that there are some repeating patterns to what I skip, so I’ve compiled this list to those who want to save some time, and a reminder to myself.
1. “The year of the Linux desktop” post type – <”YEAR”> won’t be the Linux Desktop
Two many words are typed on this subject. Really, and most of them are just concluding with the fact (usually with a sad tone) that this year will not be the year of the Linux desktop. Well, who cares ? I was introduced to Linux in 2004 – that was my Linux year. And that’s what’s important. The fact is Linux is quietly and steadily growing. If someone expect a sudden massive adoption of Linux… well keep waiting it’s not gonna happen. Mountains are built very slowly, so does Linux adoption. So don’t waste your time reading that type of posts.
2. “Are there too many Linux distros\Linux Desktop is too fragmented…”
Earlier I used the mountain building example. Here’s another example from earth’s history: Evolution. Without natural mutation forking and change, we’d all still be bacteria. So in short – diversity is good ! Imagine we just had red hat – where would be the Linux community then ? We’d still be installing from floppies without KNOPPIX and UBUNTU. BSD’s are good too, just in case.
3. Is “<insert distro here>” dead ?
Pessimists are all the place man. So Gentoo has some issues with it’s management (this is why I don’t use it), but can you expect a project with ~1000 dev’s and hundreds of users to just die ?
Debian too has lot’s of dev’s and it’s full of bureaucracy, and flame wars but it’s kicking. My point is any distro which is not managed by one man, or an elitist group (for example ARCH Linux. ), and has a foundation is not supposed to die. Organizations have their own DNA and they tend to survive and adopt them selves to new situations. This is true for distro’s like SuSE, Red Hat Ubuntu and Mandriva (the biggest commercial Linux distro’s I think of). My point: No is not dead and won’t die. It might just evolve into something else (i.e gentoo-sabayon path).