Star light, star bright ;
First star I see tonight;
I wish I may ;
I wish I might ;
Have the wish I wish tonight.
The above is a childhood wish I chanted many times when I was a kid. I must not have believed enough because my wishes seldom seemed even considered. I feel a lot about Linux operating systems and I wish a lot about them also.
Let me get specific here. I tested Mandriva; it worked well, but didn’t match Windows. I tried a few Ubuntu distros; they were fine to me, but didn’t match Windows. The latest Fedora and Ubuntu Unity are both going on a machine today for testing. Actually a virtual machine that is host on my main computer. After that, I will evaluate once again how useful Linux is in general.
I don’t deny that as a simple desktop, laptop, or netbook Linux rocks. Fast, runs well, and doesn’t go bananas as often as Windows. I’ve often given my support to FOSS programs and tried many of them. Nothing can replace Microsoft Office. I tried Open Office starting right after I tried Star documents in 2002 I believe. I jumped ship on that one in a hurry. I have gone back and tried Open Office many times since then. I doesn’t work like MS Office still! I jumped on the bandwagon with IBM lotus notes in their open source format. I really liked the GUI on that one. IBM was not able to replace MS Office. I tried Libre Office a few times. I was very happy to see Libre adopted the GUI that IBM used. One window with several tabs is very nice to have. Libre does not work like MS Office.
A broken record goes from there. MS does not play well with open document formats. It’s pretty straight-forward that way; proprietary code never does well in matching open source code. It is not that I don’t use the FOSS when I can find it. I use open source programs when they work well. I swear by my Google Chrome browser. I love Ccleaner for removing the crap that builds up in Windows on a daily basis. I use 7zip as my compression and decompression program. I works very well with all the compression formats I have encountered. I use Thunderbird as my main E-mail program because I don’t want to pay Microsoft over $100 to get email their way. The list goes farther, but I doubt it will be very interesting.
Back to Linux; all the things I mentioned can be done with Linux. How do you fit a square Windows user into a round Linux operating system? A very simple answer; you can do it. When the Windows user wants to become a Linux user. Most techno-geeks and semi techno-geeks know how to go about it. The Linux family has provided many easy ways to transform. I can’t say you can run Windows programs natively on Linux. The two operating systems are night and day in comparison. The Linux user has two ways to do things. The first way to run windows on Linux is to use an emulator to get the windows program functioning. Another way to run a windows program on Linux is to use a virtual windows environment. A person can always look for a Linux program that is windows-like. Can’t get your Adobe Creative Suite to work on Linux; too bad. Try Gimp it is a lot like Photoshop.
There is the rub for most would be users of Linux. I can’t go to Adobe and ask them to pretty please release a Creative Suite for Linux. Adobe is totally invested in Windows and would see a total loss to produce a Linux version of any software. The sale point for nearly every software company to build a Linux version is miniscule. Linux, never mind the myriad of distros, is simply not dominate enough to justify development costs. There are no popular video games like MOHA or COD whatever that will play on Linux. That is a big hill to climb for Linux.
I conclude that any of the Linux distributions will not happen in a big way because no major software developers will give it a shot. Linux can play a role as an alternative operating system, but will never bring home the prize. Free Open Source Software has to develop a wide following for wide usage. These things combined define where Linux operating systems will reside. People can develop an operating system every day of their life for thousands of years. Until the operating system captures the attention of major software developers; the Linux OS will stay a very tiny portion of any market. There are many good programs that do work on Linux. You will never find major games or Microsoft products ported to Linux. You will find Linux server operating systems in business and at home. Linux is a major competitor in the server field. The desktop environment of Linux is also viable, but not on a huge scale. Everything will have to match the prevalence of Windows software to compete. This is a no win situation for Linux.
