Linux World domination (was Re: [NCLUG] PC for Linux (Ubuntu))

[Paul Hummer]

Jim Hutchinson wrote:
> A while back I read a "theory" by Eric S. Raymond in which he claimed that
> the next monopoly OS would be decided this year and would be the one that
> did 64bit the best. He felt it would be Linux because Apple didn't seem to
> care and windows was too dependent on third party drivers. At least
that was
> my take on it. I'm not positive but this might be the link
>
http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/world-domination/world-domination-201.html.
> If I goofed up on my summary I'm sure I'll be corrected.
>

This is an interesting article.  It's very well thought out, and rather
convincing.  ESR has been around for much longer than I have, and has
seen more trends than I remember (I think I can BARELY remember 16-bit
computing).  He may be close to the truth here.  However, I feel the
need to be skeptical, because I've been using Linux for a long time, and
it seems that "The Year of Linux" calculations are done this way:

i=1995
while True:
    print "%s is the Year of Linux" % i
    i++

I wouldn't entirely agree about Linux being the next "monopoly" OS, for
a couple of reasons.  First and foremost, until we get someone of the
caliber of Justin Long (I'm a Mac) or Jerry Seinfeld, we're going to be
out-marketed (and face it, ESR and RMS creep regular people out).

However, I have read Linus' "World Domination 101," and I think we are a
lot closer to that world domination than many of us imagine.  The Linux
kernel supports more architectures than any other OS (I count twenty
here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_portability_and_supported_architectures)
I hadn't thought about this until just now, but on my desk right now sit
a desktop computer and laptop (both 64-bit), an OLPC, a Nokia 770, a
Chumby, a wrt54gl, and an OpenMoko FreeRunner, all of which are Linux
devices, and span at least 4 architectures.  That's at least total desk
domination here, as I don't have a single other OS here.  I bought these
devices for many reasons, but most of them were not purchased BECAUSE
they ran Linux.

So while the desktop is more about marketing, we're sneaking Linux into
people's homes in their TiVos, clock radios, their phones (and becoming
more popular with FSO and Android gaining momentum).  That's REAL world
domination.  "They" have no idea "we've" even infiltrated.

I plan on bringing many of these devices to the next meeting if anyone
is curious.

-- 
Paul Hummer

http://theironlion.net