John Dvorak, a well known PC Mag columnist and cranky geek, announced today that Ubuntu 8.10 is “a winner.” Even the cranky geek likes Linux? It must be great. It is, and that’s why we’ll be seeing a lot more of this soon.

So many people’s first experiences with Linux only a few years ago were plagued with hardware-compatibility issues. Not anymore, though. Now it is amazing how many different pieces of hardware work out of the box with Linux. Another problem has been application support, but, more and more, people do their computing “in the cloud,” otherwise known as in a web browser, which of course just about every Linux distribution has.

My prediction is that as tech journalists decide to give Linux a try, they are going to like it a lot more, largely due to the last bit of polish that has been added in the past couple of years. Dvorak’s testimonial for Linux is just the beginning. His post will probably inspire more mainstream technology writers to try Linux who will likely have similar experiences.

It is true that these sorts of “my experiences with Linux” posts have been happening in the blogosphere for a long time, but when they become more mainstream they take on a completely different nature. I am hopeful that this will be the start of a trend for Linux.

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