Desktop Linux "won" this week (in about 10 years)

[kjjjjshab]

I was reading about how MeeGo (Maemo/Moblin) will be able to run Android apps, and I got to thinking... with dual-core phones just around the corner, and screens getting bigger and bigger for phones, Google will absolutely have to junk their "feature-phone/java-crap" os and run MeeGo or something very similar in a very short time. After that, the game is over... just as mac owners now love the simplicity of having a product (iPhone) be seamless with their "experience", the smartphone owner of 5 to 6 years from now will surely want all their linux apps on their desktop... then it snowballs into something you could only dream about right now...

I'm pretty excited... I really think this will be the end for Microsoft and proprietary software on the desktop! But, having two young kids has really turned me into a happy-go-lucky optimist, so feel free to take me down a notch if you must. :P

[kyonides]

Re: Desktop Linux "won" this week (in about 10 years)

I wish you were right but MS is well known for suing their competitors for no real (and actually legal) issue. It could force the distributors to stop selling such products, buy / bribe other businesses so they request MS-accepted technologies only and do many other things we should be ashamed of. Besides Google now isn't the "good guy" enterprise people thought it was... Just look at how they want to control the access to the internet and the services they should provide...

[lmilano]

Re: Desktop Linux "won" this week (in about 10 years)

True (about Tiered internet access, I still think Google are less evil than others company).

Meego or not, the concept of a predictable API to write apps for is great. KDE4 was there first with the plasmoids, but the Android market place is orders of magnitude larger and more developed. I hope we can get a compatibility layer for *buntu to run android apps!

I have an android phone and I love it!

[kyonides]

Re: Desktop Linux "won" this week (in about 10 years)

Where I live it's not as easy as getting an iphone or any other (well-known company) cellphone. I hope stores will advertise more about the goodies of android some day...

[GreyGeek]

Re: Desktop Linux "won" this week (in about 10 years)

It is my suspicion that 5 years from now existing desktops and laptops will be aging dinosaurs and "PC" production will switch entirely to cellphone computers, because computers is what they are. Dialups, cable will lose market share. The key component will be the flexible hires color screen that can expand beyond the present cellphone screen sizes, say to the 75cm X 18cm or so size.

Yesterday my son showed me his 3G iPhone, inherited from his wife, who now uses a 4G iPhone. He showed me the GPS app, the Shuttle Lander App, the miniature "kindle" reader (although it wasn't kindle, it was PDF, movie viewer app, and a lot of other apps. The only thing he wouldn't use it for was clerical keyboard data entry. If PC OEMS stop making desktops and laptops what will corporate data entry operators use? Dumb terminals running as VMs on mainframes. Back to where we began. Several years ago IBM demonstrated a Z90 mainframe running over 4,000 instances of SuSE on dumb terminals.

When my cellphone contract expires next March my wife and I will probably be canceling our 12Mb/s cable connection and putting that money into two HTC EVO 4G Android cellphones. The comparison between the Apple iPhone4 and the Android is here:
http://reviews.cnet.com/htc-evo-4g-v...e-4-comparison

I like the option of being able to remove (hence replace with a fresh one) the battery. iPhone4 doesn't have that, Android does.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Re: Desktop Linux "won" this week (in about 10 years)

I, for one, will NEVER want to relinquish full size keyboards and screens. Every time I buy another monitor they're bigger than the last, because I WANT all that room for various apps running at the same time. There is no way I'll ever choose a tiny screen and keyboard over their full size counterparts.

Seriously, I can't even imagine trying to do what I do on a miniature screen. That may be a good alternative for some people, but not me!

[GreyGeek]

Re: Desktop Linux "won" this week (in about 10 years)

My son and daughter-in-law invited my wife and I out for dinner today. While waiting in the line at Fazoli's we started discussing the difference between 3G and 4G cell phones, and the future of laptops.

I mentioned my shaky thumbs and their inability to hit the right virtual keys to create a text message -- striking a space bar on a keyboard isn't a test in accuracy -- as the reason why I don't text message. She said she uses Dragon voice entry for her text messages -- the SAME Dragon voice-to-text system that IBM marketed oh so many years ago as a labor saving device for secretaries. She then proceeded to demonstrate by creating a message ordering a Chicken Alfredo. My son was thunder-struck. "THAT'S how you do it!", he exclaimed. "I'm typing like crazy on my 3G phone to produce a paragraph, of text and almost immediately you reply with a page full of error free text! I wondered how you could type so fast!"

The other thing that the 4G phone had was a wifi hot-spot with connectivity for up to 5 devices. I could browse the web or do email on a 4G phone anywhere, anytime, keep my checking account, voice guided GPS, etc.., and never turn on this laptop. IF I did turn on this laptop it would be to connect to the hot-spot I created on a 4G Andriod 2.2 cellphone.

Good bye cable.

The only question I am asking now is "when do I turn on this laptop?"

I could say "to write apps for the 4G phones using Nokia's Qt API", but I retired from programming. and haven't written a serious line of code in two years.

Thirty two years ago I bought the first Apple PC sold in the state of Nebraska, serial #1276. Today, I believe I am witnessing the decline of the PC as we know it, something that is big and sets on your desk, and of various OSs that run them. How many will be willing to risk bricking a 4G cellphone by putting on it a GPL or BSD licensed OS that the vendor doesn't recognize and would, no doubt, be a violation of their license agreement to USE the phone (not buy it). A 4G cell phone is worthless if the towers won't respond to it.

The 4G cellphone represents a serious threat to the personal computer laptop. The only reason that could keep me from jumping on that band wagon is what my son pointed out -- he doesn't "buy" books or apps for his 3G phone, he only rents them. At any time the vendor could pull them off of his phone and the only way he could get them back is to repurchase them. That amounts to nothing less than a subscription service, and subscription fees always seem to increase, never decline. When you download a GPL app you can keep it as long as you want it. The thing that could FORCE me to leave the personal computer laptop is if they are no longer made and my Sony wears out before my brain does.

[dibl]

Re: Desktop Linux "won" this week (in about 10 years)

Those things are fine for browsing, e-mailing, and text messaging -- my wife is a big Blackberry user and keeps evangelizing me to trade in my 6-year old Motorola Razr phone.

But, if you are running a database application, or even a terminal to one, or doing image processing with gimp, or developing a web site, I just don't see the "mobile" thing being of any help. I can't even do a decent job of those things on my Asus EeePC 4G/701 -- that keyboard is even too small for my average-size hands. The best product I ever got from Microsoft was my ComfortCurveTM keyboard!

[Snowhog]

Re: Desktop Linux "won" this week (in about 10 years)

I don't see the PC disappearing any time soon. Evolve (or devolve if you prefer) to something 'else' maybe, but disappear, no.

The user base of PCs is just to large to ignore. A PC has it's place in the electronic universe, and I think, always will. Put it this way: Will a 4G phone replace a Mainframe PC? Obviously not! And as long as large mainframes exist, there will always be a need for PCs to connect to them.

[kyonides]

Re: Desktop Linux "won" this week (in about 10 years)

But they could just be some kind of embedded devices like the one that costs $200... or maybe they start making "PC glasses" or PC helmets or some other weird stuff...

[vinnywright]

Re: Desktop Linux "won" this week (in about 10 years)

The other thing that the 4G phone had was a wifi hot-spot with connectivity for up to 5 devices. I could browse the web or do email on a 4G phone anywhere, anytime, keep my checking account, voice guided GPS, etc.., and never turn on this laptop. IF I did turn on this laptop it would be to connect to the hot-spot I created on a 4G Andriod 2.2 cellphone.

Good bye cable.

dont say by by cable just yet.............if you look at the data plans for Internet access the largest seame to be a 5Gig data DL limit per month with the next largest being 250Mib ......OK that's not even 1 Kubuntu.ISO ...........if I wear to try and use my new android as a AP for my desktop/laptop I would quickley find my self with extra charges on my bill >

VINNY

estimates taken from hear http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/m...nd/?page=plans

[Snowhog]

Re: Desktop Linux "won" this week (in about 10 years)

That crossed my mind when I saw the advertisements about your phone being a WAP for up to five devices. Wonder how many users understand just how much that 'feature' is going to cost them. They will certainly discover just how much when they get their next phone bill!! You can bet the provider is counting on users not figuring it out right away, and reaping the 'rewards' of the users naivety. :P

[kjjjjshab]

Re: Desktop Linux "won" this week (in about 10 years)

I don't see the PC disappearing any time soon. Evolve (or devolve if you prefer) to something 'else' maybe, but disappear, no...

My point wasn't that a smartphone will replace a PC, but rather users will be so accustomed to using a full linux distro on their phone, that making the leap to linux on the desktop will be natural, even for the non-geek.

[Snowhog]

Re: Desktop Linux "won" this week (in about 10 years)

I'd be inclined to accept that.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Desktop Linux "won" this week (in about 10 years)

....
And as long as large mainframes exist, there will always be a need for PCs to connect to them.

The use of mainframes is making a big circle and industry is coming back to them for economic reasons. it is a LOT more economical in large office complexes to have a central mainframe running VM's connected to dumb terminals on the desktop. Really dumb -- keyboard, mouse, screen. Turn it on and it connects to one of many VMs running on a mainframe. IBM is already selling them. The Dept of Revenue, from which I retired two years ago, has been using mainframes running COBOL since the early 1960s. They still are! 13,000 citizens out of 1.8 Million work for the State, nearly 500 in the main office bldg where I worked. They are considering moving their Oracle DB ( 5 TB ) to a mainframe and running it on ONE processor in virtual drives using Linux as the OS. Right now there are over 350 Windows workstations. I can see a process where the desktop is virtualized as well and in a gradual process more and more workstations are converted to dumb terminals running virtual KDE4 desktops on another, multi-core mainframe.