Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 01:08:17 -0700 From: "Jack Velte" <jackv@earthling.net> To: <freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Linux Aims For The Mainstream Message-ID: <01bdb15a$0dfb7c00$01d0ae8c@lanfill.lanminds.COM>
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Linux Aims For The Mainstream
(07/15/98; 2:47 p.m. ET)
By John Borland, TechWeb
SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- The Linux operating system is at a turning point in
its development, poised to jump from servers and the technical community to
consumers' desktops, the software's creator and developers said at a Linux
conference Tuesday night.
Speaking at a "Future of Linux" conference sponsored by Taos Mountain, a
systems-support company in Santa Clara, Calif., Linux creator Linus Torvalds
led developers in calling for more applications that would move the
open-source operating system to end-user desktops.
"We already have the server side. All the pieces are basically there,"
Torvalds said. "Let's go after the end user. Let's go after the
[grandmothers] and the 15 year old boy who just wants to play games and look
at pretty pictures on the Internet."
The conference was evidence of a maturing Linux community, which has often
struck a prickly note toward the Microsoft-using computing mainstream.
The free OS was developed and released onto the Net by Torvalds, who still
retains final control over the system kernel's evolution. It has been
enthusiastically adopted by technically savvy open source code advocates,
and even touted as a Windows-killer by developers as prominent as Netscape's
Marc Andreessen. But most of the applications written for the Unix-based OS
have been geared toward technical users, and the system does not yet have a
widely used GUI.
But that technical focus is beginning to shift. Linux developers such as Red
Hat software are increasingly writing office-style programs, and established
developers such as Netscape and Corel are porting their products to Linux to
get around Microsoft competition in the Windows market.
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"Advancing to a non-Microsoft desktop ... will essentially
revolutionize the independent software market."
-- Larry Augustin
VA Research
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"The most exciting thing happening is the development of desktop
applications [for Linux]," said Larry Augustin, president of VA Research, a
Mountain View, Calif.-based company that makes Linux workstations.
"Advancing to a non-Microsoft desktop ... will essentially revolutionize the
independent software market."
Torvalds and several other leading Linux developers went so far as to extend
an unlikely olive branch toward Microsoft.
"I would be very happy [if] they started doing Office for Linux," Torvalds
said, in a comment that clearly surprised many of the assembled faithful.
"There is a lot to be said for the PR and marketing power of Microsoft.
Let's hope they use that to start promoting free software."
Torvalds also dismissed the effect of the Department of Justice action
against Microsoft on Internet Explorer and Windows 98. "Technology is moving
too fast for the DOJ to keep track," he said. "I really think that the thing
to decide what will happen in the computer market in the near term is the
market."
But the market won't necessarily lead to Microsoft monopoly, he added. "A
lot of companies feel really bad about being in the Windows market. Not
because they hate Microsoft, or hate Windows, but because it's really hard
to compete there."
Companies, like Corel and Netscape, looking for a profitable niche are
increasingly developing products for Linux and Unix systems, he said, in
turn creating more demand for non-Windows operating systems. "That's one of
the reasons why monopoly just doesn't work," he said.
But panelists appealed to the anarchic community of Linux developers to keep
their applications and different versions of the OS compatible. Otherwise,
the community risked fragmentation, slowing Linux's momentum, they said.
"You're in the big time now," Augustin said. "Now we've got commercial
software, we have people out there that don't have the source code to
everything. Let's try and make things a little easier for people, and keep
this compatible."
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