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You Don't Win By Being The Same
You don’t win by being the same; you win by being better – often many times better. Particularly when the competitor is well established, you have to be far better to win, so even if users are more comfortable with a desktop that looks just like Windows, Linux still has to keep innovating.
If Linux is going to get anywhere as far as the average guy is concerned, it can’t be a little stabler, a little securer, and a little easier. It has to be ten times better in every way. Constantly changing pieces of the desktop is not the way to get people comfortable with something, but it is the way to get ahead. Yes, we need distributions that stick to the tried and true, of which many exist, but we also need distributions on the bleeding edge discovering a new desktop that will be 10 times better than anything else in a few years.
Given the choice between changing too fast and not changing, changing too fast is clearly the better option, since it sets up the next move, instead of leaving you behind.
The general concensus about Google releasing the first offical developer previews of Google Chrome for Linux (and OS X) ~9 months after announcing the browser for Windows is that it seems late. The expectation has now become that Linux and OS X should be supported alongside Windows from the start.
That’s very different from a few yeras ago. Not long ago, having a Linux or OS X version at all would have been notable if not suprising. Now, though, it is simply expected that any major application that doesn’t come from Microsoft or Apple will have at least an OS X version and, very often, a Linux one, too.
We often don’t realize it, but so much has changed in only a few years. If this trend keeps up, Linux should be just as well supported as Windows in only a few more years.
In The Future, Will Our Computers Interact With Our Stuff?
RFID technology is nothing new, so a product that senses when a special tag is put on it and launches an application is not a particularly impressive technological accomplishment. It might, however, be an early peek at the future.
Imagine if your computer knew where you put your stuff. In addition to helping those of us who are less organized, it could predict our actions and respond accordingly. For example, if you left with your keys, it could recognize that you were leaving and send a shopping list to your phone or lock the door after you leave (or before you leave if your computer turns evil). Or, as you walk through the room carrying anything that was tagged, it could turn the lights on when you entered and off when you left.
A lot of the technology for this is already here, so how long will it be before our computers keep better track of where our stuff and ourselves are?
As Boot Times Fall, Are Computers On/Off Appliances
When you want to turn your toaster off, you just flip the switch. There is no concept of putting your toaster to sleep or in hibernation. Computers, though, must move around a lot and survive on batteries, so we have all sorts of fancy power-saving techniques.
Across all operating systems, perhaps especially Ubuntu, boot times are falling like a rock. Granted the test linked before was both unscientific and performed on fairly nice hardware, but the time it takes the computer to get through the BIOS is almost as long as it takes for the operating system to boot. In other words, the total time from power button to web browser/any application is becoming very small.
As all of this happens, do we still need sleep, suspend, and hibernate or are computers just on/off devices? Have computers finally become just appliances?
I don’t think that we have quite reached either stage in computing yet, but I think we are on track for both. Soon there will be little reason to put your computer to sleep when it is just as fast to hit the power switch. As far as becoming an appliance, geeks will probably always have non-appliance computers, but devices such as netbooks and the CrunchPad are essentially just appliances.
We’re not quite there yet, but sooner than we think we may arrive at a point where most computers are just another appliance.
Why VirtualBox Should Be Included In Ubuntu
VirtualBox is one of the often ignored “killer apps” of the Linux desktop. An open-source desktop virtualization tool that anyone can use easily is a great asset, particularly to people who have just switched or can’t pick one distro. (Well, mostly open-source, but we’ll just ignore that.)
Virtualization is still a somewhat alien concept to the average PC user and, to the extent most people know about it, they think of it as something they buy in a box from VMWare or Parallels. (And, if you were on a Mac, that was the only reasonable place you could get virtualization software until recently.) VirtualBox, though, opens the opportunity to have easy-to-use virtualization built right in. It seems like a missed opportunity not to make installing a Windows VM seamless.
As an example, Ubuntu, or any other distro, could set up a feature such that inserting a Windows install DVD would trigger a pop-up asking you if you would like to install it in a VM and explaining what that was. Then, if the user agreed, VirtualBox could be installed and Windows could be installed in to a VM with almost no user involvement beyond putting in the CD and pressing OK.
This sort of functionality would make it incredibly easy for new users to transition to Linux, with Windows available right there just in case something goes wrong.
We are beginning to see two interesting and related trends: quick-boot second computers within laptops and wall-wart sized, very inexpensive, Linux-based computers.
The overall trend across both of these are cheap, small Linux computers built in to various other devices. How will this go, though? If the additional cost is small enough, why not put them right in monitors (not as a replacement for the main computer, but as an additional option) or even keyboards.
It seems likely that, in the future, we will not have “a computer,” but rather all of our devices will have computers in them. Today this would seem very inconvenient, since your files would be spread all over the place (“whoops, I left that report on the toaster”), but cloud computing will have solved that problem by the time this all arrives.
Dvorak Likes Linux Now, More Will Soon
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.
Many people who are critical about the “cloud” as a platform point out that some things can just never reach the cloud. One frequent example is a video editor.
When we are talking about hundreds of gigabytes being modified, cut, edited, and put together, how can all of that possibly be done in the cloud? Just the data transfer alone would take years, right? Well, yes. For now, that is.
Mozilla has just launched Bespin, a web-based (“cloud”) code editor for HMTL, CSS, and JavaScript. It i in very early stages, so I don’t expect anyone to be using it full time in the next few weeks, but, in the long term, it looks promising. Who would have thought that code editing could be brought to the cloud? After all, most developers have highly specialized environments based on their own personal preferences.
The point is, if we attempt to limit the possibilities of the cloud based on the technical limitations of today, you confine yourself far too much.
Imagine trying to use Flickr in the days of dial-up. It would take hours to upload the high-resolution photos and view other people’s photos. It just wouldn’t work. Today, however, uploading even the biggest photos is no problem for most people. How can you say the same will not be true of HD video in 10 years?
Limiting ourselves to the possibilities of today’s web is a mistake. Given the rapid pace of technology, the cloud appliations that might be a joke today could be the killer app in 10 years.
Turning Linux's Advantages in to Advantages
No, I didn’t write that title wrong. Linux’s key advantages, such as customizability, the repository system, hardware support, and excellent interfaces, are frequently viewed as downsides or deal-breakers to new users. How many times have you seen someone complaining that it is so much easier to install software on Windows or claiming you can’t do anything with Linux without being a hacker? The real problem is that if you make anything different in a meaningful way, many users dismiss it as “worse” than whatever they are used to. Take the example of software installation and updating systems:
This is how you install and update software on Windows:
- Open a web browser.
- Download an executable file from an (often un-verified) source.
- Press next, next, next, next, next, next, next, next, finish.
- Launch your software.
- Wait for each individual piece of software to nag you about the latest update. (“Logitech is going to look for updates…,” “Adobe PDF Reader version 8.4 is available. Please install it now,” “QuickTime needs an update (hey, mind if we sneak Safari in there, too? *wink*)”)
On Linux, on the other hand, it works something like this:
- Open Add/Remove programs.
- Press a check mark and hit apply.
- Launch your software.
- Sit back as your software is automatically updated.
The point here is that, despite the Linux method being better, a lot of people prefer the Windows way, just because that is what they are used to. What about OS X, then? Well, OS X is really just Windows plus some tweaks, all built on a better platform. I am not trying to imply that OS X is a bad system or that Apple has done nothing new, but the changes in OS X are not fundemental changes to the way things work in the OS.
Am I saying we should dumb down Linux and add a big, green start button? No! Features that are being viewed as bugs need to be carefully looked at though. The question is: what can be changed about this feature so that we retain the core advantage but make it simpler to use? For example, in an ideal world, perhaps if you needed an application that was not in the repositories, you could go to a website and press a single button (and enter your password, of course) to add a new repository and install the relevant software.
I am sure that a better solution to that particular problem can be discovered, but the point is that any feature that is sometimes viewed as a problem should have its implementation reconsidered, in an effort to keep the advantages and make the experience more intuitive.
Why Linux Must Work With The Cloud
Right now, operating systems run on your computer. Period. Sure they can access the internet, but it is not used as a core component of the OS. Here are three reasons why this must change and why it would be good for Linux:
- It is inevitable. While the people who say that cloud computing is not reliable may be right for now, I think there is little doubt that cloud computing is the future, at least eventually. That means that either operating systems become irrelevant or they adapt to work with the cloud.
- Linux could be the first. No operating system has managed really deep integration with the cloud. I am not talking about the applications that let you interact with the web application on your desktop, but rather about deep and seamless integration right into the desktop. For example, perhaps folders might be transparently stored online or just by importing photos to your computer they would be put online. This sort of integration could be the biggest new feature since the GUI. And Linux could be the only one to have it.
- Open-source has a huge advantage. People like to know that their data is safe, secure, and private. With closed-source web applications, this basically means trusting the provider. With open-source, on the other hand, you can rely on independent reviewers/programmers to verify the safety of your data.
Because of these three major reasons, I sincerely hope that there will be an effort to bring Linux to the cloud world in more than a skin-deep way