My other desktop is…

Recently I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about desktop operating systems, and in particular Linux on the desktop.

Linux on the desktop is a popular phrase, and people keep touting $year as the year of the Linux desktop. My response is:

Which desktop?

If your talking about a corporate desktop, that used for office applications, email, web, internal applications and some basic media requirements then Linux has been ready for that particular desktop for quite some time now.

It’s even ready for the advanced home user who does all of the above and does mind getting her hands dirty (and possibly ultimately frustrated) to do more advanced things.

What it’s not ready for is the the consumer desktop. People who expect things to Just Work™. I’m talking about import, editing and printing photos; importing and editing videos; creating and burning DVDs; ripping, burning and listening to music. Whilst Linux can do all of these things, it doesn’t do them easily, and that is where effort needs to be focused if we want to see Linux on home desktops.

Anyone reading the above list of tasks will probably think of the Apple and their iLife suite of applications. Apple focus on the Just Work™ goal, and it shows. Microsoft seem to focus on “good enough (but not quite)”, whilst Linux is still focusing on incorporating the the kitchen sink (to its detriment).

Jono writes about A brief history of simplicity where he discusses how the Open Source community is starting to focus on simplicity, and cites Ubuntu as a shining example of this. He also says how more needs to be done. What he says is true, but simply limiting application choices is not enough. It all needs to Just Work™, and it needs to work together.

Apple will never make any real headway against Microsoft because a) it requires different hardware (and the associated cost) and b) people use Microsoft at work. Linux has a huge advantage here as a) is mute and b) will work in our favour as more corporate desktops migrate to Linux. We just need to make sure that when they come (and they will), we’ve already built it and it Just Works™ (OK, I’ll stop using that now).

In the mean time, Linux (Ubuntu in particular) is my desktop of choice, but for most of my media-related work my other desktop is Windows XP (until my wife lets me buy a Mac mini that is).