2005 was the year of Linux on servers. Linux reached its tipping point a few years before that, but 2005 onwards was when Linux became ubiquitous. By demanding lower start-up investments, stability, and less bondage, Web 2.0 helped ensure this ubiquity, and proved Linux a viable platform.
Now that this area is, more or less, conquered, it’s time for Linux to turn towards the desktop market. It seems that Microsoft is already losing its fans; not the cheery, conference-loving, publicity-driven ones, but the ones who really care. Microsoft is losing—to quote Ballmer—”Developers! Developers! Developers!“.
Not only did Microsoft lose its “crown jewel“, but it’s also losing the market for tool vendors. There’s only one “official” development environment for Windows, and that’s Microsoft’s. Other vendors are doing their best to stay platform-neutral, either by developing Java-based solution, completely building their own abstraction libraries, or funding popular open-source frameworks like Eclipse.
Linux hasn’t been interesting for developers for many reasons, most of them are historical. The Linux desktop doesn’t have a unified API yet, though that’s being worked on. Environments vary in look an feel, and handling user events. It was always difficult to manipulate GNOME and KDE to the extents Windows allows. And deprecated documentation, libraries and continuously-changing API were discouraging to fresh “recruits”, the ones who were impressed by Linux, and wanted in to make a change.
Anyway, this isn’t an analysis on why Linux wasn’t attracting as many developers. I’m only happy to see Linux, and Free software as a whole, gaining even more grounds, and pushing through the enterprises. If Linux on the desktop follows similar steps to its development on the server, in 5 years time we could expect a company called Grapefruit to set the trends of computers.