Linux on the Desktop at home - great article by Claus Futtrup!

In this new article, Claus Futtrup examines some of the key ingredients for successful Linux expansion into Home Desktop use.
DesktopLinux has finished its annual
Linux survey, OSDL has made its annual round up of strategic analysis
and Distrowatch Weekly has summarized the movement in the Linux world
among Linux distros.

The move for Linux from the dominating server environment onto the
desktop has been going on for many years, maybe even from the very
beginning. No doubt it finds popularity this way, and that more people
familiarize themselves with this alternative OS - as Linux has evolved
into a useful desktop OS.

The gained respect is not without challenges as a desktop meets much
higher variety of requirements than a traditional server OS, and it must
live up to a very diverse personal taste, sometimes taking unfair
critique from users who do not show much understanding why things have
to be different from what they are used to.
It is a valid point that although Linux based desktop systems are
nowadays easier to use and more reliable than Microsoft Windows (R) for
most common applications, users still fear the difference. Let us take a
closer look at what our Linux desktop aimed to be, and become.

Requirements for being a suitable desktop and the underlying OS

A Desktop is per definition a flexible workspace for users of various
computer end-user applications for almost any purpose. This end-user can
be located in either a private home or in a business situation.
For private users it appears as if communication with others as in
Internet browsing, Emailing, Messaging is of highest priority. At least
I recognize this from my own personal use of the computer at home and
analysis made by DesktopLinux seems to indicate this as well.
As late as December 2005 the most critical applications for a desktop
user were - and I will assume this is still true:

No 1. Email client, rated critical by 62%

No 2. Office, rated critical by 51%

No 3. Web browser, rated critical by 50%

In the past a word processor for writing letters and stuff as well as
a spread sheet software for basic budgeting and accounting has had a
high priority.

This was later superseded by office suites, which might include some
graphics software, database software, slideshow presentation software
and potentially more specific business related software. Office suites
are not a natural choice for private users, but rather a choice of a
workspace (like the small office / home office) where needs for
semi-advanced functionality and software interaction, as well as
colleagues working together appears to be a natural extension of your
personal desktop at home.

On a second thought, even private homes today appears to have
multiple computers and users nowadays, and office products could extend
the functionality for several private users within the home, but my
personal experience is not in this direction. Rather I have used office
suites at home because I could share some documents between work and
home.

Today the office suites are on their heels with applications that are
working in web browsers. We are about to experience a new era where the
office suite is competing with these online applications. The winner
depends on traditional competition parameters like ease-of-use and
flexibility / completeness, but also new factors like availability
anywhere of both the application as well as the more complex data
management issue versus security and privacy requirements.
Competing with the "online" accessible software and data
libraries we have the hardware storage that we bring with us in the
shape of USB pens, MP3 or MP4 players with Gigabytes of space, as well
as Linux distributions intended for installation on these medias for
boot and access anywhere on any computer (Linux LiveCD's as well as
compact distros like Damn Small Linux) potentially integrating into one
component with our cell phone and more (all-in-one smart devices).
We can see that the first Linux distribution has already "seen
the light" and has changed the perspective toward the online
direction (Ulteo). This move indeed explores the question; how much do
we need on the desktop computer (or whatever preferred data storage) and
how much can we leave somewhere else and rely in a more or less thin
client.

There is no safe bet here, but the desktop will survive as a platform
for our future computer usage and it requires an extreme degree of
flexibility on the underlying OS.
Besides internet browsing, emailing and messaging + the office suite,
many users find other usage of the desktop computer for purposes
like:

• Calendar features and personal information managers (address book, etc.)


• Document viewing (PDF viewers, and other formats)


• Burning DVD's and/or CD's


• Storing data like music library and photo albums


• Internet Telephony


• Internet Radio


• Internet TV (soon to become more of a hot topic)


• Gaming and other entertainment


• Software development (compilers, interpreters and tools)


• Creating and viewing graphics with art software like GIMP (bitmap
  graphics) or Inkscape (vector graphics)


• Multimedia playback as well as creation of your own, with sound
  editing and movie editing being dominant, but also sheer composing
  your own from scratch.

Let us go through a couple of options that are less obvious as
well:
Educational software. Most often we think about children that can be
challenged by intriguing software, but watch out for the next generation
of educational software, for adults (why not improve your skills in
programming or graphics art etc. this way), supplementing the
conventional book.

Desktop Publishing no longer has our attention as it did in the old
days and therefore is not as flexible or versatile because most users
have settled with Word Processor functionality (which also did grow to
embrace what most users needed).

Computer Aided Design (CAD) is still too heavy for a thin client.
This entirely depends on how much data we can transfer. Some things will
always lend itself to a wired solution, which would be anything that
demands 100% - either because it in itself is very resource intensive or
because its service is to be utilized by several users. For example, why
put a file server on a wireless setup - a file server will always
experience periods of major access from multiple users in a home or
business environment.

Besides CAD there's other specific software for technical tasks or
for social science tasks, religious tasks or other specific needs, but
CAD along side with 3D graphics (like Blender) puts specific extra
demands on your computer and the underlying OS, like fast graphics and
e.g. OpenGL features for rendering.

Creating an overview of what data you have is a most difficult task
and search engines etc. that provides not just overview of the files (by
their names) but also content is evolving (e.g. Beagle).
For a while the versatility of desktop computers has given us the
computer based media centers in our homes, something that could hook up
to the internet as well as our TV in various ways. I do believe that
desktop versus media centers is not a conflicting situation and that the
desktop will not disappear in favor of a TV thing. Instead I see a
future where you add a box to your TV and it supplies a link between
your TV and your computer (as well as functioning on a stand-alone
basis).

Possibly this TV add-on will take over our gaming, as we have seen it
with the Sony Playstation and the Microsoft XBOX. These concepts might
expand into what we really need by the TV, including the DVD drive for
watching movies, the hard drive recorders for saving TV shows, but also
handling the game and entertainment in general with on-demand TV,
pay-per-view, reading (or hearing/seeing) news from the world.
In a similar (or completely same) way we will find micro-servers in
the home. One for the house alter (the TV) as mentioned and one for
file-sharing (including music and video/movie library). Admittedly these
other micro-servers can be integrated into the media center for a more
compact setup. We might have another server taking care of telephony,
necessary surveillance etc. This has nothing to do with Desktop
Computing, but the desktop computer has to be able to interact with the
rest of the universe at home.

Media centers as well as the desktop computer will continue to
co-exist. Where as the media centers will become entertainment centers
and take care of entertaining people, the desktop will maintain its
position as a workspace for people's creativity.
As long as we're talking about hardware, the desktop computer is
valid for handling hardware of several different kinds, like:

• Your telephone (cell phone, IP phone, whatever phone)


• Your music player (MP3 - or MP4 video player)


• Your printer, scanner and maybe a fax machine (or a multi purpose
  small office device)


• Your digital camera or camcorder


• Whatever device you'd like it to interact with

No doubt that desktop computers are becoming diversified, and maybe
will continue to diversify. The only way a desktop OS can maintain a
leading position is readiness for the unknown. Luckily the hardware
interfaces already available seems to cover any need we might have with
wireless network connection and hotplug devices that do not necessarily
require additional drivers to work.

We have talked a lot about user expectations to the applications and
what they can handle and do with the desktop computer. Today's computers
also requires maintenance, which seems a specialist job and I wonder if
the maintenance will continue to be an issue, but for now I see that a
good desktop computer must provide nice graphical interface for easy
setup and update of a wide variety of hardware and software.

It can be debated whether the desktop computer as we know it will
disappear (size wise) and be replaced by small handheld power packs. I
doubt it since the convenience of a large screen and keyboard in itself
speaks for the desktop (including laptop) computers, but I realize that
this observation is highly subjective and it is too early to conclude on
this development, but for now the desktop appears to be in a competitive
state.
The requirements for a desktop are therefore highly liquid and highly
individual.
By Claus Futtrup from Zenwalk
You can read this article also here!

Subscriptions also include free Linux DVDs with many extras!

Fundacja Rozwoju Regionu Gołdap webmaster, web designer grafik portfolio Zygfryd Słapik Lublin dj warszawa Smycze reklamowe Ford Transit CV var1at