Due to Adobe’s AIR, a technology that lets web applications be run on the desktop on Linux, Mac, or Windows, it seemed like Adobe was headed in the direction of platform independence. Now, Adobe has made those plans official with their Open Screen Project.

I view the project, which is intended to bring Flash and Air to everything from TVs to PCs to handheld devices and UMPCs, as an official statement from Adobe (and a number of other prominent companies that are also involved) that they believe, as I do, that cross-platform internet-connected applications are the future. Because Adobe is seeing this so early, they will likely become a great supporter of Linux, even if they don’t try to.

As cross-platform applications start to take off, thanks to AIR and other similar projects, the barrier to adopting Linux is going to shrink and quickly disappear. At that point, I think we will begin to see more and more switchers to Linux and other smaller operating systems.

Because of this, Adobe is going to play an essential part in destroying a key barrier to the adoption of Linux.

Quick Note: I am not trying to confuse Ubuntu and Linux here. I realize this could be done on almost any distro, but the recent news part is related specifically to Canonical, so I am focusing on Ubuntu.

For most geeks, the key advantages of Linux are stability, security, and Compiz Fusion, but these advantages (excluding Compiz Fusion) are not visible to the average user. How can you tell LInux is more secure or more stable just by using it for a few days. Sure it didn’t BSOD on you, but does that really tell you anything? The point is that you can talk about security and stability all you want, but, in the end, it is very unlikely to be those advantages that pull people to Linux. This is why I am such a big fan of Compiz Fusion and making everything happen smoothly. This, possibly more than anything else, not only looks cool, but also gives you a sense of the system being stable. It may not make sense technically, but if everything is smooth with no flashes of black or anything, it looks like the system is more stable. Because of this and a recent news story I am very excited about the next Ubuntu release.

Ars Technica recently reported on some development being done by Canonical’s (Canonical the company behind Ubuntu) Mirco Müller. He has created a proposal and basic example of a new login screen for Ubuntu featuring slick animations thanks to Clutter (Which is, according to the Clutter website “an open source software library for creating fast, visually rich and animated graphical user interfaces”.)

Now with this, I believe all the tools are in place for a completely smooth, animated Ubuntu experience from start to shutdown.

The Fedora project has already worked on creating a startup experience that is smooth and completely graphical. Some of this should be able to be used by Ubuntu (which is what is so great about FLOSS) to deal with startup and shutdown. Then at login, the recent login screen proposal will take over. Finally, a well configured Compiz Fusion can make the desktop slick, too.

In this way, the next version of Ubuntu should be able to be 100% smooth, slick, and polished, giving Ubuntu a much more cool and professional feel to it that should help convince even more people that Linux is the right way to go.

I was interested to read a recent post on The Open Source Advocate suggesting that all distributions sync their release dates. The idea is that every distribution would release on certain dates, allowing schedules not only for distributions, but also for upstream projects (projects that create software that is incorporated into distributions, for example Firefox) to be in sync.

I think this idea is great, because not only would this make sure that all projects are released at convenient times for other projects, but it would also be great in terms of publicity and unification. Let me explain.

If there were two days per year when hundreds of distributions were released, news sites would look stupid ignoring those two days. It is easy to ignore the release of any one distribution, but how can you ignore the release of 100s of distributions?

Additionally, rather than take away from smaller distributions’ publicity, I think it would help them. Let’s use this site as an example. When there is a major distribution release, I always mention it, but I usually ignore smaller distributions and even medium sized ones if I don’t see much interesting about the release. If all the distributions were synced, I would write a small amount about all the interesting new distributions coming out and I suspect I am not alone.

Another advantage of syncing distribution release schedules is giving Linux more of the appearance of being one unified thing. One common criticism of Linux is that there are too many distros. Syncing all the distribution releases would make it easy for new users to see that Linux distros are not chaos, but rather different people working on different goals while working together at the same time.

I really only see two potential issues with syncing release dates. First, some distributions release every 6 months while others release every couple years while still others have no set length of time between releases. For this reason, distributions should not necessarily release on every release day. Some might skip one or two between releases and others might skip an unspecified number between releases. As long as there are enough distributions that do release every release day, it will still be fine.

The second potential problem is making Linux seem too dictator-like. I don’t want it to look like there is some ruler of all Linux distributions, so instead of having one group that specifies when all distros must release, I say it should just be all the Linux distros that want to getting together and specifying a date. Again, as long as most of the major distros do follow the schedule, if a few little distros want to go by their own schedule, that’s fine.

I am certainly interested in seeing what you think, but right now I am thinking that syncing the distros would be great!

I don’t care what people say, if Linux ever goes mainstream, there will be real security threats to Linux. To be prepared for this, people should be encouraged to let Ubuntu automatically download and install security updates.

Now on to the promotion.

Both of these brainstorms propose something similar: an organized and focused effort to promote Ubuntu. Some projects like this exist already, but they should be better known. The question left is exactly what is the best way (or the best ways) of promoting Ubuntu. Below are some suggestions from Ubuntu Brainstorm. Feel free to discuss which ones you think are good in the comments.

The Idea: Distribute free advertising posters for Ubuntu to schools and stores.

The Idea: Start running ads online, on TVs, on the radio, etc.

The Idea: Create a screensaver that shows off the features of Ubuntu for stores to play on Ubuntu machines. (That sort of video could also be used as a general promotional video.)

If you have not already heard of it, EyeOS is an open-source online operating system. With the release of EyeOS 1.6, a new feature called eyeSync has been introduced.

Essentially what eyeSync does is sync your files between your regular computer (Linux, Mac, Windows) and EyeOS. Since eyeOS is open-source there is a huge possibility for Linux distributions to begin integrating EyeOS with the desktop.

If done correctly, distributions could be made so that it is very easy to set up your “online desktop” which you can use to access and work on your files from any web browser. Not only would this be relatively easy to implement, but it would also be an incredible selling point for the Linux desktop.

One issue that has been discussed a lot in the past few months is the need for better release notes or feature lists for distributions. With the recently released Hardy Heron (8.04), Ubuntu has taken a giant step in the right direction.

When you first go to Ubuntu.com, there is a large space dedicated to promoting Hardy Heron with three buttons to the right of it. Those buttons are “Download,” “Upgrade,” and “Find Out More.” None of this is really new, but what is behind the “Find Out More” link is.

After clicking “Find Out More” you are taken to this page. The page looks very professional and gives a nice description of some of the features of Ubuntu as well as screenshots. Additionally, to the right, is a navigation bar with links to more specifics about certain features. If you have not already seen this, you should really check it out. It looks great.

Although this is a huge step in the right direction, it could still be improved upon. My main, and really only, complaint has to do with the content. It has come a long way in becoming less technical, but it still largely focuses on the ordinary tasks that Ubuntu can do. This has to be a major part of the feature list, but more emphasis should be put on the cool or useful things that Ubuntu can do that other OSs cannot. One notable example of this is the lack on significant Compiz Fusion information. While there are some screenshots, Compiz Fusion is such a cool part of Linux that it should be heavily advertised.

Easy to understand features and advertising are very important towards promoting Linux and Ubuntu, so, although there is room for improvement, I am very happy to see Ubuntu taking a huge step towards creating a better feature list.

I recently came across a YouTube video created by Blogeee.net which shows both the Windows Eee PC and the Linux Eee PC (I assume each with the same specifications) starting up, launching Firefox, and shutting down. It is very apparent in the video that the Linux version is much faster, but, since only the startup is done at the same time for both machines, it is hard to tell just how much faster. I timed each part (starting up, launching Firefox, and shutting down) to see what the time difference really was. Here is what I found:

Startup
Linux: 30 seconds - Windows: 54 seconds
Launching Firefox
Linux: 4 seconds - Windows: 16 seconds
Shutdown
Linux: 6 seconds - Windows: 68 seconds

(Note: Numbers are approximate. Firefox start time is from clicking on the Firefox icon to the dialog about starting a new session and then from the end of that dialog to when the windows appears, or, in other words, everything but loading the web page and waiting for the user to click on new session or resume session.)

Those numbers by themselves are impressive, but they get even more impressive when you look at how many times faster the Linux version really is.

Startup: Windows takes 24 seconds longer. Linux is just less than twice as fast.
Launching Firefox: Windows takes 12 seconds longer. Linux is four times faster.
Shutdown: Windows takes 62 seconds longer. Linux is slightly more than 11 times faster.

Look at it, Microsoft. Vista would barely even run on these things and Windows XP is much slower than Linux. This is very likely to be Linux’s first major success on the desktop.

Recently a diagram that depicts Microsoft’s “empire” competing or fighting its competitors, particularly open-source. The diagram (older versions), while probably mostly intended for fun, shows two important realities for Microsoft:

1. Microsoft is huge. They will never just disappear overnight or over a year. If they die, it will be very slow as they gradually lose various parts of their bussiness to competitors.
2. Microsoft is surrounded on all sides. They are facing serious competition almost everywhere they go. No longer are they the only player in anything.

Although these two points may seem simple, and to some extent they are, they are important. If Microsoft wants to continue to survive, it must remember that it does not have a free ride. Whether or not Microsoft will be able to beat back the competition remains to be seen, but so many (myself included) seem to think Microsoft will fall.

Yesterday, Tom’s Hardware posted a review of the KPC, a $200 PC that runs Foresight Linux. ($99 refers to the barebones version, which means the version with not all the parts installed.) The interesting thing about the review was the amount of time they spent on the operating system, and the conclusions they reached (spoiler: mostly positive.)

Most reviews of inexpensive Linux PCs tend to view Linux as not as good as Windows without really appearing to have investigated Linux for more than a few minutes. You would not expect Tom’s Hardware to be much different, since their main audience is Windows gamers, so I would expect them to be biased towards Windows, if anything. Surprisingly, however, they spent three pages of their review discussing the operating system. There were some weird parts of the review, such as complaining about Firefox’s compatibility with some web pages but not about Open Office being incompatible with some Office files, but overall the review seemed very reasonable and concluded that Foresight Linux was quite good.

It is not fair to judge based on only one review, but it seems like this review might be a lesson to other reviewers. Don’t assume Linux is not as good as Windows, try it out and investigate for yourself before coming to any conclusion.

Computer hardware is constantly getting  better. Intel and AMD are constantly trying to have the better, faster, cheaper chips. Graphics cards achieve higher benchmarks and lower price points every month. 2GB, or even 4GB, of RAM is becoming commonplace. Everything is getting faster and costing less at the same time and this will probably remain true forever. Microsoft and most Linux distributions view these same hardware improvements differently, though.

When Vista came out, one of the big complaints about it was that is was so resource demanding. Although perhaps not quite as extreme as with Vista, it seems quite reasonable to expect that with each new release of Windows, you will need a slightly, or perhaps not so slightly, better, faster computer than before.

This is not at all true of Linux. Phoronix recently published benchmarks comparing Ubuntu 7.10 (the current version) to Ubuntu 8.04 Beta (the beta of the version that will be out very soon.) What did they find? Ubuntu 8.04 is only very slightly slower than Ubuntu 7.10. Even more impressive, when the did comparisons with even earlier versions, 7.10 had actually improved on former versions.

What all this means is that Windows is becoming more and more resource reliant while Linux essentially maintains its requirements. Microsoft is already seeing the effects of their sloppiness in bad reviews of Vista and having to extend XP’s life, but unless they change soon, they will see it even more, and pay for it too.

In the future, it seems likely that a computer with Windows will cost far more than a computer with Linux, not because of the price of the operating system (since hardware manufacturers are constantly pretending Windows is free, when in reality it is not) but because the hardware required to run Windows is so much more expensive than the hardware required to run Linux.

Returning to the present, Linux is already well on its way to removing all the road blocks to switching. Even when there are no road blocks left, though, Linux will still not win mainstream adoption, until it gets a simple reason to use it: it’s cheaper.

Of course, Linux is cheaper right now. It’s free, while Windows costs hundreds of dollars. Well, as you probably know, most places like Dell get it for much less than that. I don’t think anyone knows for sure (and it almost undoubtedly varies for deal to deal), but a safe guess would be that places like Dell get Windows for around $40 (just a guess). In addition, we repeatedly see cases of an identical Windows and Linux machine costing exactly the same price. It is not fair to give Windows an advantage like that, but it seems to be the reality. No longer will it even matter, though, when a Linux machine costs so much less than a Windows machine, just because of the hardware.

Just by continuing to use minimal resources, Linux is constantly becoming a more and more attractive option, and eventually this may be the single most important factor in winning Linux’s mainstream adoption.