Tipping points aren’t made out of technical reality. They’re made out of perceptual change. Thus, it was the legend of Torvalds, not the reality of his actions, that gave Linux the patina of political correctness needed for it to gain widespread public acceptance. Read the editorial here.
Linux Reality Outstrips Linux Myth
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Stopped reading when Torvalds “single handedly” invented Linux and open source. Looks like Myth rather outstrips reality here.
@ boilersuit – finish reading it, he said “as the legend goes” or whatever, he isnt acutally claiming that..
Furthermore, the Linux operating system itself is neither a new invention nor a stand-alone product. It consists of a Linux kernel developed by Torvalds and his colleagues by radically improving an earlier open-source Unix released by Andrew Tannenbaum in 1987,
erm.. i thought the linux kernle was written from scratch and NOT an improved minix kernel. correct me if im wrong but i believe he is wrong.
i think this guy gets quite a bit wrong. too much hype and too little facts.
stopped reading about 1/2 way through.
Yes, it’s time for bed. My mistake.
You guys should really read a little further. He was describing the myth.
—
According to the legend, Mr. Torvalds, a poor graduate student in Finland, single-handedly invented a computer operating system called Linux…
In reality, the facts around which this myth…
—
Anyway, yes, I agree that he is making wild and crazy claims about the tipping point.
I like linux and I use GNU/linux as my main desktop accept for the occasional reboot for games.
One interesting thing in the article is that they hint toward the tipping point being because IBM will release their cell CPU and linux will be running on it…thats some big speculation but would be very cool
Even if that did happen, I don’t think it would tip the market. The average joe is going to say “nah, I want windows because thats what I know and use every day.”
Sure, I can see growth in desktop linux and maybe in 10 years or so it will be an even split between longhorn/linux/osX but 2005 will not be “the year of desktop linux”
“2005 will not be “the year of desktop linux”
”
It will not be because there are too many factors involved, but if you consider that all the new technology of the last 2 years should come to maturity by the end of 2005, plus the increasing support that linux is getting from many sides, in theory it could happen. (note that I said “in theory”)
In any case we linux users should be able to recommend linux to our friends and relatives with more conviction.
“Microsoft’s software products are, in contrast, almost wholly dependent on Intel’s x86 architecture ….”
That’s not really true. While Microsoft solds software almost exclusively for x86, their products have been ported to other architectures. NT has been released for PowerPC in the past. Also the Xbox 2 will use a Power PC processor, so it’s a no brainer that there exist PowerPC ports of DirectX, XNA, etc.
Also don’t forget the C# and CLI standards.
read the whole thing. really, it’s worth it! the bomb comes in the end of the article. it’s not “just another article on desktop linux”, and also don’t be too anal about what he writes on the origins of linux. this guy has a point, so give him a chance…
regards,
christian
It really bothers me when people talk of Linux as if it’s what open source is all about. it is a good example of the potential of open source but saying that Windows based PC is more costly than a Linux one because you have to pay so much for MS Office makes no sense. Open office is available for Windows as well like many other open source applications and works as well on a Windows box as it does for a Linux.
So the availability of open source products such as open office should not be considered as an absolute advantage for Linux. What about Firefox!!? i bet there are more Firefox’s used on windows than on Linux and it help windows becoming a more secured OS!! Ironic!
Good article. I agree, you need to read the whole thing.
“i bet there are more Firefox’s used on windows than on Linux and it help windows becoming a more secured OS!! Ironic! ”
not true. while download from mozilla.org is clearly in favor of windows users the majority of actual users is by far in Linux. the large majority of distributions come with firefox by *default*
while download from mozilla.org is clearly in favor of windows users the majority of actual users is by far in Linux.
Do you have any numbers supporting your statement that “the majority of actual users is by far in Linux”?
I would still say that there are more FF windows users than linux users simply because there are more windows users. What % of all desktop users are running linux? something in the order of 3%? FF/Gecko usage is about 8%?
Of course, you can never really know those figures but I’m just going on the various stats out there
and to : Re: Luke,
I hope you’re right, I do want desktop linux to take of this year! Oh well, for now it does everything I want.
He suggests that Linux is technically inferior to the *BSDs and Solaris. Well, I disagree. The article is marred with hype and sensationalism. Linux is, primarily, useful to entities who can take advantage of it’s openness, flexibility and customizability. Google is a good example.
“and to : Re: Luke,
I hope you’re right, I do want desktop linux to take of this year! Oh well, for now it does everything I want.”
My feelings, exactly
Every year since 2001 has been billed as the year of desktop Linux but someone or other :-). Just ignore the hype and get on with using Linux. People will move over slowly when things slowly get better. I don’t believe we’ll ever see a large migration of users since Windows is really well entrenched.
This guy doesn’t seem to know what he’s talking about…
‘On all reasonable measures of performance, stability, and technical accessibility, Linux is well ahead of the latest Microsoft products’
What is a reasonable measure of stability? Show me the ‘reasonable measures’ that show Linux’ superiority in performance and technical accessibility.
Seems that this guy has heard a lot of hype (about Linux, Solaris, the cell processor) and wanted to fit all he’s heard into a one-page article; a miserable failure.
It’s a farily good article. I agree that it is possible that Solaris has some advantages over Linux, but the problem with Solaris is that you have to buy into the Sun product line, where as Linux is vendor neutral, and Linux is both flexible and powerful. I really think that Linux is better.
I doubted the accuracy of this article as soon as I read the words ‘invented … a free public distribution method called open source’. Anyone involved with GNU/Linux knows that Linux was under a free software licence and still is, and that Linus Torvalds did not invent free software (or open source), Richard Stallman founded the Free Software Movement. Also, the Linux kernel was written from scratch, not copied from Minix (although it was written while running the Minix kernel).
He contradicts himself in the article. First he says “Tipping points aren’t made out of technical reality” and then in the last paragraph states that everyone will move to the Cell processor because it is technically better, which makes no sense.
I would think a 20 year old veteran of the IT industry would be more knowledge about the rise of free software.
According to the legend, Mr. Torvalds, a poor graduate student in Finland, single-handedly invented a computer operating system calledLinux Latest News about Linux along with a free public distribution method called open source Latest News about open source and then used this Robin Hood combination of product and method to stand tall against the forces of evil in the form of MicrosoftRelevant Products/Services from Microsoft, Intel, IBM Latest News about IBM and other huge international corporations involved in personal computing
Hmmmm…. Did he really invent that distribution method? I heard some friend of him talked him into using the GPL, he really just wanted to post the code with no license agreement and no certain political motivations.
Then I guess there has been other contributors to the kernel, even from the very beginning, and that he really never had anything to do with the OS except for the kernel.
“Hmmmm…. Did he really invent that distribution method?”
He explains at the start that this is “According to legend” You can’t just scan the article and discuss sentences out of context. I see a serious lack of reading comprehension. Is this intentional or just lazy?
No, he didn’t invent the distribution method. In fact, that’s one of the points of the article.
@helf
What Mr. Murphy writes is essentially correct: from Wikipedia, Torvalds originally used Minix on his computer, a simplified kernel written by Andrew Tanenbaum for teaching operating system design. However, Tanenbaum did not support extensions to his operating system, leading Torvalds to write a replacement for Minix. Although a running Minix system was originally necessary in order to install and run Linux, the Linux system quickly surpassed Minix in functionality. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#History
Linux per se isn’t an operating system; it’s a kernel. The tools that make up the Linux OS are more than the kernel, which is why Richard Stallman likes to grumble every now & then that the OS should be called GNU/Linux or something like that.
@debianuser
Political correctness is real, both in academia and elsewhere. In academia, speech codes are often used as an attempt to force people not to discuss certain ideas, and sometimes even not to think in certain ways. Inclusive language is one of the few good things (in my opinion) to come from this phenomenon; speech codes that silence me for being (say) an “enemy of the poor” simply because I agree with Hayek that a welfare state creates a new serfdom, are not.
I’m using an extreme example, BTW; I’ve never heard of anyone being silenced for expressing Hayek’s opinion. I’d also point out that political correctness is not a phenomenon limited to liberals, but it also takes place in some conservative circles.
Read the article slowly a couple of times and make an effort to understand his point.
Read Thorwalds’ biography. He started work on the kernel because he thought minix was seriously flawed.
Sure, I can see growth in desktop linux and maybe in 10 years or so it will be an even split between longhorn/linux/osX but 2005 will not be “the year of desktop linux”
I would say that the year of the Linux desktop was 2004. Not in the sense that there was a whole lot of people using it for desktop applications, but in the sense that it now have the usability and polish to attract early adopters in large enterprises with money to spend on applications.
Desktop Linux is today where server side Linux was 5 years ago. Just like on the serverside back then, the availbility of applications is the key to success.
In five years or so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Linux had a firm position on the Desktop.
I really think maximum 5% of the ppl who have posted here actually read the whole story. Pathetic!
— Vecchio
worth more than mere cherry picking statements that a few purists/pedants find objectionable.
“Tipping points aren’t made out of technical reality. They’re made out of perceptual change. Thus, it was the legend of Torvalds, not the reality of his actions, that gave Linux the patina of political correctness needed for it to gain widespread public acceptance. “……..
“This perceptual shift should totally reverse the previous mainstream view that Microsoft and Intel were somehow at the forefront of high technology computing — thereby pushing Linux over the magic edge of a social tipping point.”
By all reports, this new machine is an order of magnitude (10 times) faster for some key functions than the best Intel can offer.
Which reports? Which functions?
Everything I’ve read indicates that unless your application contains decent amounts of parallelism it will receive bugger all benefit from running on a cell processor.
The cell processor is fundamentally a grid-style super computer — consisting of many small computers connected in a grid pattern so they can work together — on one piece of silicon.
No. It’s not.
wow, i didnt read the whole article.. i didnt see that part. he really did very little research didnt he?
Ehhh…no, appearently.
I’ll do next time….
In five years or so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Linux had a firm position on the Desktop.
the way i see it, linux has to outstrip the pace of Windows on the desktop. linux is certainly usable, but it’s going to need to outdo Windows in both price and perfomance to really succeed. why would a typical end user spend $85 on Lindows or SuSE Professional when they can buy Windows for the same money? is the typical end user really going to learn a free geek linux like Debian or Slackware? Windows is NOT that expensive for a home user (or corp user) unless they insist on always having the latest version complete with Office, McAfee, etc. this is the case in the U.S., however other users in other countries may see this differently.
IMHO, linux needs to just do its own thing and be a good alternative desktop for geeks and power users.
folks, this article is discussing common myths and misconceptions. please bear that in mind when commenting. taking a single sentence out of context is hardly damning of the article.
“I would say that the year of the Linux desktop was 2004. ”
Me too. Thats when Ubuntu was released.
This article has errors.
It is not, however, remotely a leading edge system in the same class with the BSD family of Unix products and Sun’s Solaris.
I do not know what the author considers the BSD family. But if it includes HP-UX, AIX, and even Solaris — I may agree. But if the BSD family also includes Free/Open/Net BSD I would disagree, as GNU/Linux is better and more enterprise (if you consider that important) ready than the open-source BSD’s.
Also some people may speculate Windows NT based systems part of the BSD family, or atleast their TCP/IP stack.
I would also like to add: Why would someone not proofread or have someone competant fact check an article he is about to publish for a technical community to read?
Does he invite people to question his journalistic creadibility? Let alone his technical creadibility?
The article is actually quite good. What’s wrong with you people? Don’t they teach reading skills in high school or college anymore?
I wager that lots of people are purposely quoting things out of context and a few others just cannot bring themselves to reading a 700-word article.
While the articles can sometimes be good, the commentary on this site -with the exception of some informative posters -is just pathetic. Yeah, this will not earn me a popularity award around here, but read this thread before you judge my comments.
This article really is garbage. It basically repeats the same masturbatory fantasy uttered dozens of times in comments on geek press sites that the Cell Processor will take Linux into world domination. It regurgitates (and mixes up) a bunch of Linux History 101 and stirs it all together.
In order for this article to be worth the bandwidth it consumes, it should have discussed the technical and planning aspects for Cell. Right now, it’s all wild speculation.
Note: I use Debian Linux exclusively so it’s not that I don’t think it’s great stuff.
Some of you have you heads up your own… well. Need I say more. They guy may be right on points, he may be wrong on points. That doesn’t mean you have a right to slate the whole article.
I think either:
Linux and Power will gradually replace Wintel
_OR_
Microsoft are/were developing Longhorn for Cell all along and we linux users will all be wrong and you lot that flamed the author will all have a jolly nice celebration at our expense.
Someone won’t like this so I expect it will be “Pending review” before long.
Because you can have your desktop on a card at a workstation with Sun Ray, it is better than linux? Wow, I sure hope this guy holds a journalism degree, and not any degrees involving logic.
Interesting article, in the sense that it just reiterates the last year of typical Linux articles that don’t try at depth or intelligence but merely reiterate the last article.
I have a dream. That someday, someone who knows what they are talking about, that someone will give a real feature and stability comparison between OS’s he has had experience with. And this comparison will not miss or exaggerate things, and people will read it and be able to understand. And then, all these people will STOP REGURGITATING THE SAME STUFF.
I didn’t get the article, maybe I skimmed a little too much but it didn’t seem to say anything new to me.
Sorry if I missed the good part :/.
Phil, you miss some other possibilities:
1) A new system native to Cell comes along before either Linux or Windows is ready, and establishes itself based on some radically different approach to user design that trumps the existing software,
2) The major companies engage in a legal war over patent rights and so forth, essentially destroying both the commercial and open-source software fields,
3) Microsoft finishes moving Windows entirely to .Net, then purchases a fabbery and releases a CPU which runs IL natively, breaking them from their dependence on Intel and solidifying their monopoly position,
or most likely of all,
4) Users realize that what they have is ‘good enough’ and that further ‘progress’ can only undermine their existing user skills for no real gain, and simply hold on to the existing systems indefinitely, bringing the development of new hardware and software to a screeching halt.
This last one has already begun to appear as a trend. Windows XP did not become the dominant system in the market until late 2003*, about when most win98 systems would have been reaching the end of their operational lifespans. The rapid boost in XP market share is likely attributable to the fact that users were replacing systems which they had held onto for five years or more. It is probable that most would have continued using their older systems had they not suffered a mechanical failure of some kind. This trend of *not* upgrading until forced to by circumstances will almost certainly continue, slowing the pace of change and leading to the desktop market becoming a ‘mature’ or ‘stable’ industry, effectively ending innovation for an extended period.
* based on browser statistics from http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
>>the way i see it, linux has to outstrip the pace of Windows on the desktop. linux is certainly usable, but it’s going to need to outdo Windows in both price and perfomance to really succeed. why would a typical end user spend $85 on Lindows or SuSE Professional when they can buy Windows for the same money? is the typical end user really going to learn a free geek linux like Debian or Slackware? Windows is NOT that expensive for a home user (or corp user) unless they insist on always having the latest version complete with Office, McAfee, etc. this is the case in the U.S., however other users in other countries may see this differently.<<
In my opinion linux does a lot better than Windows both in price and performance right now.
Price? What can be cheaper than free? I know, you mention SUSE and Linspire. Linspire is not a good example, but it costs people a lot less than Windows ($49 a year) The OS itself is available for free very often.
As to SUSE, at the moment it is totally free:
http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=02238#0
(OK, the FTP-DVD iso doesn’t contain everything, but enough for most people, 3.2 Gig) Besides it is perfectly legal to share SUSE.
But then you have a huge choice of totally free distros: Fedora, Ubuntu, Mepis, Kanotix, Yoper, Vector, Xandros OCE…
I wouldn’t call any of them “geek distros”
As to performance linux beats Windows hands down: just choose the right distro out of 350…
“4) Users realize that what they have is ‘good enough’ and that further ‘progress’ can only undermine their existing user skills for no real gain, and simply hold on to the existing systems indefinitely, bringing the development of new hardware and software to a screeching halt. ”
You seem to forget the new users, people who have never used a computer before: kids and so on.
And what about a 5th possibility? In 10 or 20 years time computers will be so different that we can’t even conceive them. Most likely they will be many times easier to use than now and dirty cheap. Just remember what computers were like 10 or 20 years ago.
new users most likely inherit older machines from parents and other family members. thats how i got started with a 486 running dos. and even older people have computers these days, given to them by their children. the home market for computers in the developed world is in fact saturated.
allso, more and more people go for mobility. i see a likelyness that the tablet may have come some 5 years to soon.
the increasing development in very small hardrives allso helps in this enviroment. with phones and pdas being able to store gigabytes you can bring your files with you.
what if school, library or net-cafe computers was a terminal where you could hook up any storage device you bring with you and fire it up like as if it was your personal system?
want to be able to do that on the move? get a tablet. maybe we will see a increased use of fold-up keyboards, or the tablet comes with one of these new laser keyboard so that you just have to fold out a buildt-in stand and set it on a table to do some heavy typeing?
hmm, maybe we will be buying disposable fuelcells for our laptops? or can fuelcells be used like batterys by allowing the steam to condense in a buildt in collector. so that to recharge you apply outside current and gather up the resulting hydrogen?
“In any case we linux users should be able to recommend linux to our friends and relatives with more conviction.”
Even if Linux isnt the best solution? That sounds kinda like people who blindly follow a certain religion and push others to blindly follow it too… If Mac OS or Windows works for someone then I say let them stay with it.
“If Mac OS or Windows works for someone then I say let them stay with it.”
EXACTLY
I’ve always had the philosphpy “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” If folks are alright with their current computers, Let them stay with it. I’m an avid linux user & advocate, but I’ll only advocate it to some one IF they’re having problems with their current OS. If they aren’t, I say let ’em be.
“Even if Linux isnt the best solution?”
That remains to be seen. In this country the majority of people buy PCs assembled by a single individual or by a small factory. So they have full choice regarding their OS.
Why pay the MS tax (or use a pirated version, which is even worse, and is alas very common) and put up with activations, viruses, spyware, cleaning the registry, defragmenting, pop-ups of any sort, you name it, when they can have the double freedom (as in speech and as free beer) of linux.
And then a great many are still using Win 98 or ME: it is very difficult to convince me that SUSE 9.2, for instance, isn’t light years ahead. The whole point of my sentence that was quoted is that by the end of this year linux should be a very mature OS.
But then yes, for professionals who need some particular program which hasn’t a linux equivalent, then you are right: I am not so dogmatic and in any case they are a small minority among the people I know.
Er, didn’t we just have this discussion last year in which a) Linus claimed that linux was NOT based on minix and b) than A. Tanenbaum supported this supposition? (End of story)
Beyond that, not exactly an award winning, complete, or even useful editorial.
BTW: you guys also forgot to mention cygnus/mingw for a “free” development system to go along with the “free” office software OOo, and “free” browser Firefox(or Mozilla or etc. or any of the other tons of “free” windows software available. Just mentioned for completeness.)
The evidence of the Linux myth is proven by the number of responses claiming/disclaiming everything from inventing definitions of open source and kernels, to intimate details of the development cycle. The author posed an interesting prognostication. Unfortunately finatics whince at the idea that their hero may be human afterall, or perhaps just a myth.
OSNews introduces this article as an editorial, and that turns out to be a very accurate description. I’ll agree that there are popular misconceptions about Linux (i.e., open source is Linux), but Murphy is really blowing this up to be more significant than the reality. As more and more people become familiar with Linux, any ignorance that exists will be vanquished. If you read any slashdot thread where Linux or the GPL is mentioned (and there are plenty of them) you see a couple posts from people who don’t yet “get it” and then a number of replies that explain.
Honestly, the thing about Murphy’s editorial that irritated me the most this statement:
“Thus both the BSD and Solaris groups offer technical advantages Linux doesn’t yet match, but that doesn’t matter: Technology advantages don’t lead to social revolutions.”
I’m sorry, but, what technical advantage does BSD have over Linux, and which BSD is it? All of them? FreeBSD? Murphy seems to implicitly use Mac OS X as his BSD example. That’s kind of funny, because it’s actually a sort of Mac OS X myth that Apple is using a BSD kernel in there. Though some BSD code is in there, Darwin uses a Mach kernel, _not_ a BSD kernel. For more info: http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/osx/arch_xnu.html
Mac OS X is a good OS, but just because it’s Mac OS X doesn’t automatically make it better than Linux, at least give one technical reason. As for Solaris, it has some nifty features (DTrace, for one) that Linux does not have, but Linux will always implement features from other OSes that are important. Murphy uses a bad example, smart card logins with persistent sessions, to base his claim that Solaris is more advanced than Linux. Both can be done on a Linux-based OS. I don’t know of any prepackaged solutions, but there is info on setting up smart card logins on linux ( http://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=smart+card+linux+login&ie=UTF… ) as well as persistent X11 sessions ( http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~wooters/persistentX.html ).
There is nothing about Solaris, the BSDs, or Mac OS X that, from a technical perspective, blows Linux out of the water. Please take Murphy’s article with a grain of salt – Linux is not a good OS due to a fairytale story, it’s a good OS, period.
if you use windows, and are running servers off it, you are most definately not using the right tool for the job. windows has been built as a desktop os, which has completely different requirements from a server os. you will be much better suited with something where the priorities are, and alwas have been, in the area that you are using it.
as for mac osxs technical superiority over linux, how about the technology in the rendoring of the desktop being a few years ahead of anything linux has to offer? or the vastly improved learnability from having the most consistant interface on the planet? once again, mac has alwas been designed from a desktop users perspective, and it shows.
lets say you are running a financial firm, and need to roll out a good 200 desktops. businesses being what they are, the requirements will be cheap and productive. currently, windows is the best bang for your buck, and has achieved market dominance by undercutting the price point of its competition. its kind of unwieldy, but low cost is more important then pleasurable user experience in a corporate environment. microsoft has been meeting the needs of the business sector since it began, and is quite adept at it.
if it “works for you”, and you are “happy with it”, that means next to nothing. users are totally incapable of judging effincy, all that your subjective opinion on your own work habits mean is that you have learned the system you are on. if that system requires you to jump through more mental hoops to perform a task then another alternative, that alternative will be better. if money is the bottom line, then all that is irrelivent, you are looking for the cheapest product that is “good enough”. and if your requirement is highly technical in nature (such as uptime, real-time operation, or security), then usability goes out the window, and you judge on totally technical merits.
“And what about a 5th possibility? In 10 or 20 years time computers will be so different that we can’t even conceive them. Most likely they will be many times easier to use than now and dirty cheap.”
This more or less rephrases what I implied in my possibility #1, and it is certainly what I would prefer to see happen.
However, I don’t believe it will; the economics of the market are driven more by compatibility and cost than by usability or technical merit – indeed, purchasing patterns would almost lead one to believe that technical efficiency is a *negative* in the market (though this actually reflects other factors such as price).
The majority of users ask for very little from their computers, most of which (except for hardware intensive tasks such as web browsing and full-motion video) could have been satisfied just as well by an Apple II as by a modern system. Also, most users only learn as much about thier computer systems as they immediately need, and don’t want to have to do is re-learn anything, even if the new software is measurably better. Sad though it may be, the majority of users appear to be willing to simply settle for what they already have, no matter how poor it is, if it does what they want and doesn’t cost too much in either money or effort.