Linux passes Mac as number 2 desktop
Well, that's what they'd like you to think.
Probably isn't true, and if it were, it wouldn't mean what people think it
means. Sure, a lot of people play with Linux on the desktop, even occasionally
use it for something important. But rarely is it there number one desktop. I
myself occasionally use Linux as a desktop. More often, I just display Linux
apps on my Mac desktop through X-forwarding. But there is no way I would ever
think of using the Linux desktop as my one and only computer.
I'm not in any way trying to knock Linux, which
is a wonderful operating system. Just add better hardware support and some
commercial apps like Photoshop and Dreamweaver, and it will be ready to kick
some serious Microsoft ass. But let's not jump the gun on this whole thing. It's
not ready for widespread use — not yet, anyway. Too many rough edges. But
it's getting there. The fact that HP is now going to start shipping Linux
notebooks, while certainly a welcome development, shouldn't get anyone too
excited.
Speaking of Linux, is there
anything more ridiculous than recent slanders issued by some dubious think tank
calling itself the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute that Linus Torvalds is not
really the "father" of Linux, that he must have stolen it from Minix, the system
Torvalds originally modeled linux after. Torvalds strongly questioned the
charges, pointing out that, while Linux borrowed ideas from unix-type systems
like minix, it didn't borrow any code from them. "I didn't 'write the Minix code
out of Linux,'" Torvalds said in an interview. "I was using Minix when I wrote
Linux, but that's in the same sense that you are using Windows when you write
your columns. Do your articles contain Windows source code because you use
Windows to write them?"
Posted: Wed - August 4, 2004 at 11:25 PM