Raiden's Realm: Boosting Linux: Maybe we're going about it the wrong way?

Boosting Linux: Maybe we're going about it the wrong way? (Page 1 of 1)

Written by Steve Lake
Posted on: Oct 21, 2009 at 12:07pm
Section: Editorials
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For years I've been one who's run up and down the halls stomping for Linux, advising people to switch to a better OS because of any of a hundred different reasons. But a recent article by Sam Varghese of ITWire may have changed my mind, and my focus, on what's needed to make Linux king of the OS's.

So what's this ground breaking change? Well, he points out that it's not the OS, but rather the Apps that drive adoption of a given OS. And he provides some pretty good examples to back up this statement. And if you think about it, he's right.

If you look back at the OS wars over the years and watch each major OS rise and fall, each time there was a changing of the guard, so to speak, it included a new killer application that was available only for the new and upcoming OS of the time. At one point that was Mac, then came Windows, and now Linux. And if you think we're both nuts, take a look around at some of the apps now showing up for Linux.

When Linux quickly rose up and took the crown for the server farm from Microsoft AND Unix, it did so on the back of several killer applications, one of which was Apache. Windows stole the desktop crown from Mac when Lotus came around. And Linux is beginning to steal that crown from Windows via Open Office, Scribus, and a number of other killer apps.

The changeover won't be quite so great for Linux as it was for its predecessors, simply because, today's market is much, much bigger than it was in the days when the last changeovers occurred, and therefore there is a lot more inertia working against Linux. But if the killer app is the one thing that will make the difference in Linux's favor, then I think those apps have arrived.

Now we just need to start showing people the better applications available to them on Linux. But as with anything, even if you have a great killer app, if the OS isn't up to the task, it won't matter how great that program is. It's a good thing that Linux is up to the task.

So in the end, I think that focusing on pushing people to use Linux strictly on the merits of the OS is the wrong way to go about this. We should instead focus on the applications and what they can offer the end user, with Linux as the bonus prize. And if we can do that, we should see a lot more people converting over.

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