Every so often, somebody (or organisation) proclaims that this year is the year of Linux on the desktop. Given the number of times this has occurred, you would have thought that the Cassandras of the Linux world would stop trying to predict it. In fact I am not entirely sure what it is supposed to be – everyone using Linux on the desktop, or just some? And if it is just some people, how many?
It is essentially nonsense – if you use Linux on the desktop, every year is the year of Linux on the desktop; and if you do not, it isn’t.
Assuming you are someone who has more than two brain cells to rub together and are prepared to do some learning, it is perfectly possible to run Linux on the desktop. You can do pretty much everything with Linux that you can do with Windows. In fact the one area that Linux is traditionally weak – upgrading firmware of third party devices (such as media players, wireless mice – is beginning to change with LVMS and fwupd.
To give an example, I was recently upgrading some Logitech wireless mice to eliminate a serious security flaw, and I tried with Windows, OSX, and finally Linux. Both the Windows and OSX methods failed, whereas the Linux method just worked.
In fact even if the Windows method had worked, it would have been a lot more complex. I had to download the Logitech software (admittedly this step would probably be unnecessary if I was used to using the wireless mouse under Windows), know that a firmware upgrade was necessary, download the firmware upgrade, and finally load it into the upgrade tool.
Under Linux? Assuming I had been using some gooey tool like GNOME Software, it would have notified me that an upgrade was available and after a request would have upgraded it for me. I (of course) chose to do it the geeky way from the command-line, but even so running :-
# fwupmgr refresh # fwupmgr update
… is a great deal simpler than the Windows way. And that is before you consider that with Windows, you need to download a firmware update tool for every device whereas the Linux way it is just one tool.
Of course in practice, the Linux method only works for a handful of devices – of the innumerable Linux machines I run only one has available updates for the desktop computer’s firmware (the Dell at work), and of the peripheral (or not so peripheral) devices only a tiny handful can be upgraded today.
But it is not inconceivable that in the not too distant future, the sensible way to upgrade the firmware of various devices will be to install Linux, and let it do it for you. Particularly if device manufacturers realise that by adopting Linux as the firmware upgrade delivery method, they can save time and effort.
“But I know Windows” – actually you know Windows 7, or Windows XP, or Windows 10; each of which is very different from each other. And whilst Linux has even more variability at first glance, there is actually more commonality between different versions of Linux. Or in other words, the effort of learning Linux in the first place is rewarded by less of a need to completely re-educate yourself every time you upgrade.
This is not intended as encouragement for you to switch to Linux (although if you are involved in IT you should at least be familiar with Linux), but intended as a criticism of the concept of a year of the Linux desktop. It isn’t useful, and what is worse it leads to the false impression of failure – if everyone is not using Linux on the desktop, then Linux has failed.
Linux on the desktop has not failed because I use it on the desktop.
