20 years later: The rise & fall of desktop Linux

I will always love Linux. The excitement began around 1982, when I first had some Unix training for my job. A couple years later, thanks to our employee-purchase plan, I owned my first personal computer.

It ran CP/M. I hooked up a modem, and dialed in to the on-line world. I was off and running. I became a BBS sysop, and I eventually moved on to a Deskpro 286 – now I was a DOS guy. Many people say that DOS was a stolen copy of CP/M.

My first Linux desktop was a Compaq Deskpro 2000, in 1997.  I used it to run Red Hat Linux. At the time, Red Hat was still free. The main appeal for me was that it detected more hardware, correctly, than any of the alternatives. I did have several brief affairs with BSD, which was even more fun, but in a different way. (BSD is actually Unix, not Linux.) A different community for sure. After many years of Ubuntu, when it became more like Windows than Linux, I moved back to Debian around 2010 and have been there ever since.

I will always love the power of the command line. I still prefer text editors to word processors. Microsoft finally got it right around 2008 when they released the server core version of Windows, which runs entirely from the command line. Then of course there is Powershell, which I am really starting to enjoy.

Where did Linux go wrong? At the turn of the century, most people were using Windows 2000, if not Windows 98. This was the standard that Linux needed to measure up to, and it wasn’t quite there, but hey – it was free, and it was a lot more fun to play with. The community was (and is) a great thing, and we all had that “overthrow the empire” feeling. Most of us were convinced that someday, Linux would displace Windows on the desktop. Every year, until about 2010, was going to be “the year of Linux on the desktop…” Why didn’t this ever happen?

I think there were many reasons:

0.) Yes, the monopoly. Business is business. With backroom deals and offers they couldn’t refuse, Intel/Microsoft/HP/Dell made absolutely sure that new computers come with Windows. We saw a new effort every few years to sell desktops pre-loaded with Linux, but due to #2 (below) it was always too little, too late.

1.) Hardware manufacturers were never (and are still not) interested in providing drivers (let alone support) for multiple operating systems. Ubuntu was the last great hope for this problem – and it did offer what had always been missing.

1.5) “It’s the culture, stupid!” Every time I told someone about Linux, they would say “what company makes it?” “Where do I buy it?” Then I would try to explain open source, downloading, installation, and dual booting, while their eyes glazed over. Canonical finally stepped up, but by the time they did – the desktop no longer mattered (see 3 below.)

2.) The Linux community “fragmented” just as the Unix community did before it, a (human) generation earlier. Without a commercial foundation for development, basically it went in 10+ different directions. Religious freedom at it’s best, but – no good for the users.

3.) The desktop is dead. How many of us even sit at desks, let alone use a desktop (or laptop) computer while sitting there? The business culture and expectations are different. For starters, people expect to be able to talk and text with their “computer.”

I think Linux, in the form of Ubuntu, surpassed Windows for GUI quality and ease of use around 2005. Unfortunately, by then it was too late. The biggest irony is that Open Source really did win, but no one knows it – both IOS and Android started out as Linux. A lot of embedded systems, network hardware, heck – probably TV sets – run Linux.

Summary:

  • Linux was, and always will be, for do-it-yourselfers. Unfortunately, 90% of users who need it are not DIYers.
  • The One Perfect Distribution never arrived.
  • The development world was geared for Windows. That will finally change when we complete our transition to Android. Or at least Chromebooks.

History: Linux versus Windows

I love Linux, and I have stayed current with it since around 2003.

I followed lots of distributions, and also became very fond of BSD. I moved from Redhat-based to Debian-based as soon as Ubuntu came out, but my friends who knew more about it than I ever will, always tried to tell me “Debian is, and always will be, the pure play in Linux.” Meaning, as other distributions become “fragmented,” for various commercial reasons, Debian always stays true to the Open Source model.

I had seen this first-hand back in the 80’s and 90’s, when NCR was actually owned (some would say “destroyed…”) by AT&T, and I spent a few years taking care of System-V Unix installations. Did you know there was also an “AT&T Unix PC?” Both AT&T Unix and BSD Unix came from the same code, once upon a time. Basically, everyone wants their Unix to be the one and only, this is called “free enterprise.” Unfortunately, software tends to be very, uh, soft…

By 2000, there were at least 5 commercial versions of Unix. Of course, which one you got pretty much depended on what kind of hardware you bought to run it on… remind you of anything? I should also mention that I was also a big supporter of AMD, the “Avis” of processor manufacturers… until they fell so far behind that I couldn’t even find their products.

To make a long story short, the Unix wars ended because the game changed – by 2003, Windows had mostly taken the place of Unix, not to mention VMS (on VAX) – helped in no small part by the fact that the guy who invented VMS had joined Microsoft, to create Windows NT.

I also got very involved in our local Linux User Group, where I met a great bunch of guys. Of course, eventually the web made meeting in person for this reason totally unnecessary. Anyway, we would meet and evangelize for our respective favorite distributions, which as it turns out, did have a lasting effect.

So, I have spent the last 10 or so years with two computers on my desk – one Linux, one Windows. I use Linux for everything Internet/web/email related, and Windows for multimedia and gadgets, and for that pretend Active Directory domain that I need to try things for work. Lately, I have at least managed to control them both nicely with only one keyboard and mouse, using Synergy. It has always been fun to watch, as every update to Windows made it slower, until I had to start over – while every update to Linux made it faster.

However, having run them side by side for 10+ years – I gotta say, the popular idea that “Linux needs less hardware than Windows” is mostly a myth. Yes, it is possible, with a lot of work, to trim down the GUI requirements by using desktop alternatives like XFCE and so on, but the default of popular distributions like Ubuntu or Mint – need almost as much main CPU, graphics horsepower, and RAM as Windows. If you want a “Windows-like experience, that’s just how it is. But there’s hope – Windows 8 was the first OS from Microsoft to require lower-spec hardware than it’s predecessor. Linux was there already. Yep, the game has changed again, and we are on our way to tablets. In a few more years, neither will be on the desktop, because there won’t be a desktop.

hams and open source

Hams were the first on the Internet, and the first to make use of the web. (That’s right, there wasn’t always a web…) Heck, we didn’t need no stinkin Internet – back in 1985 a few of us formed a worldwide store-and-forward communication system, just like usenet newsgroups. At 300 baud! I can’t tell you how many times I ran into other hams while running Fidonet Node number 129/17, from my house in Pittsburgh, using twin modems and a pirated copy of “DoubleDOS.” Later, when those modems were dialing in to the actual Internet, I met hams at every virtual crossroads.

That brings us to Linux and radio. Real experimenters used Unix and Linux from the beginning, but historically the guys who wrote “popular” ham software, like Writelog, or Ham Radio Deluxe, pretty much never even considered Linux at the time. “Everyone” ran Windows.

Not any more. Thanks to publicity in ham magazines, and here on the web of course, Linux has claimed it’s rightful place as the OS of tinkerers and hobbyists worldwide. In fact, the ham radio operator of 2014 is much more of an experimenter (and a bit less of an appliance operator) than in recent history – thanks to better availability of stuff through the web (goodbye hamfests,) and universally-available how-to’s and documentation. When a guy in Germany manages to get his Digikeyer II working on Linux, he just puts up a page with the details and code. (Luckily, just as with contacts on the radio, English is the language of choice for International commerce and technical info.)