Red Hat has taken heat over the past few years for allegedly neglecting the personal computer in favor of more profitable enterprise servers. It's a fair critique: Red Hat is an enterprise software company, a decision it made years ago, and to good effect.
But anyone thinking that Red Hat has somehow forgotten consumer markets in its rush to win the enterprise need only try the final release of Fedora 11, its community-focused operating system for desktops and laptops. I've been evaluating Fedora 11 for the past week and find it polished and professional while meeting or beating Windows in key performance areas.
Reading through Fedora 11's feature list, the geek in you may get giddy seeing the use of ext4 as the default file system. Not me. I don't care about the underpinnings of the operating system. I just want it to work.
This is, in fact, Fedora 11's biggest selling point: it just works. And fast, too: from powering on to logging in takes 20 seconds or less. Beat that, Windows!
(Ironically, if Windows hopes to catch Linux in boot-up performance, it's going to have to turn to Linux, like DeviceVM's Splashtop, for help.)
This, however, is an experience I've been having with several Linux distributions, including Moblin Beta 2, Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix (reviewed here), and OpenSUSE 11.1. While none is perfect, the same is true of my preferred Mac OS X and Windows (Vista or XP). They all work, with little or no fiddling required.
In fact, as an experiment I've been leaving my Linux-based Netbook around the house and have given my children and wife free rein to use it whenever and however they want. My wife looks up actors on IMDB. My daughter writes a school paper. Not one of them has struggled to perform these basic tasks, set up the wireless, etc. Everything just works, and works in a way very familiar to a Mac or Windows user.
This is the state of "desktop" Linux today: it really has nothing left to prove. It took years to become user friendly, but it has arrived, helped along by the world's move to browser-based computing. At this point, the only thing that Fedora and the other Linux distributions can do is embrace and extend the Windows or Mac computing experience, because they've largely matched them (especially Windows).
Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth has targeted the Mac as the "desktop" operating system to beat, with plans to do just that.
In fact, my only real complaint with Fedora 11 is that it doesn't yet have a Netbook-focused "spin." I'm not alone in seeking a "Fedora Netbook Remix," but Fedora Mini, as it's called, is not yet ready for prime time.
In the meantime, yes, Fedora 11 provides support for cross-compiling Windows applications directly on Fedora Linux using the MinGW environment, and yes it provides the latest and greatest in open-source software like Firefox 3.1 for Web browsing.
Just don't expect it to be weird/geeky anymore. Those days for the Linux "desktop" are gone. It still needs some spit and polish but, again, so does Windows. The Mac is the closest any 'desktop' operating system gets to being both beautiful and super user friendly. Linux, however, if Fedora 11 is any indication, isn't far behind.
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I spent the weekend using Ubuntu 9.04 almost exclusively. Blame it on Apple.
Seven years ago I didn't know any better than to use Windows, but in 2002 I switched to the Mac and have never looked back. Between my Mac and my iPhone, I've lived a completely Windows-free existence for so long that I actually don't remember "the Windows way."
Which, I think, is why it has been so easy to pick up Ubuntu, Moblin, and other variants of Linux. But for the Mac, I don't think I'd be so willing to try a new operating system.
Linux has its problems: some things that should be easy still require too much user intervention. I spent far too much of my weekend just trying to get Flash to work so that I could check blog statistics and watch a video on Vimeo. I still can't get it to work.
That's the downside. The upside is that, generally speaking, the Linux user experience has been wonderful: clean, powerful, and approachable.
Though Moblin emulates much that is great about the Mac experience, Ubuntu seems to be trying to make things easy on Windows hold-outs. In both cases, however, it is the Mac and iPhone that, by example, make the switch possible.
Apple has taught an ever larger percentage of the computing public to think outside the Windows box. While many who jump from Windows to the Mac won't look back, this shift has created a heterogeneous computing environment that no longer depends upon a Windows monopoly. Users are beginning to consider and even to expect alternatives to Windows.
In fact, Windows is no longer the default computing experience for mobile. This opens up new vistas for Apple, of course, but it's also a great opportunity for the Linux vendors.
As Apple persists in resisting the Netbook urge, Linux variants like Moblin, Ubuntu Remix for Netbooks, and others will have the opportunity to serve consumers, consumers trained by Apple to "think different" and to think beyond Windows.
Apple reportedly considered Linux to power the iPhone. Instead, it is the iPhone (and Mac) that may well power the Linux industry. Next time you boot up your Linux machine you may want to thank Steve Jobs and the Apple crew.
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Linux has been growing in importance for years in the darkened server closets. In the server world, Linux's cost and performance benefits have trumped its early weaknesses (Ease of use, etc.), making Linux the heir apparent to the Unix throne.
But that's the server, where geeks write software for other geeks. In the consumer world of personal computers and mobile devices, however, Linux hasn't fared particularly well precisely because the developers of Linux differ so markedly from the vast majority of the user population.
Linux developers, in other words, scratch very different "itches" from those plaguing most would-be Linux users.
It seems clear to me that, as Bill Weinberg astutely argues, the way forward for Linux is not in replicating Microsoft's desktop dominance, but rather in forging a new, consumer-friendly mobile Linux experience, one focused on the youth that are growing up mobile.
This "way" is being paved by Intel, Canonical, Novell, and other companies that have significant experience writing software for normal users, and not merely the alpha geeks of Linux. I've spent the past two weeks fiddling with different variants of Linux-based Netbooks, in particular the Linux Foundation's Moblin Beta 2 (Developed by Intel and Novell) and Canonical's Ubuntu 9.04 Remix for Netbooks, and I believe they are onto something.
The first thing that struck me when using Moblin is how it breaks new ground in defining a new personal computer experience, one designed for the narrow (hardware) confines of a Netbook but offering a limitless portal to social networking and a broad Web experience beyond.
This is perhaps why Acer has committed to Moblin in a big way, and why Canonical is joining up with Moblin, as are others.
As for Ubuntu, it's an even tighter user experience (though, to be fair to Moblin, it's still in beta and so many of its rough edges will be smoothed over by general release, I assume). This isn't surprising given Ubuntu's singular focus on usability. It doesn't require any specialized knowledge of Linux though it does give the user too much information on what's happening under the hood. The lay user simply doesn't care. We just want it to work.
The experience hasn't been without its difficulties. My experience with Ubuntu, for example, was plagued by constant nagging to install yet another package to be able to play proprietary codecs. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols suggests that this problem is going away, but it can't leave fast enough. It's asking way too much to expect consumers to have to work in order to watch a YouTube video.
We are users, after all, not developers.
Slowly but surely, however, vendors are getting the Linux experience "right" for Netbooks and other mobile devices. I've been leaving my Intel-loaned Acer Aspire One Netbook around where my kids, ages four through 12, will open it up and experiment. Each one has quickly managed to find the games in Moblin and Ubuntu, and my older children were quickly browsing the Web and even typing up school reports. In minutes. With no coaching.
To me, this suggests the path forward for Linux is in new, as yet underdeveloped markets like mobile, and for an as yet under-monopolized audience: youth. My kids have grown up with Macs, but they're hardly grown up yet. Their experience with computers has been as much about mobile phones as laptops.
They are the most mobile-inclined generation the world has yet seen, making them an ideal target for new Linux-based mobile devices. As the Bible notes in Proverbs 22:6:
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Children's conceptions of what a computer must look like and feel like have yet to calcify into a Windows mold. They are the audience to win for those vendors interested in dominating the next decade of personal computing.
Old dogs strain to learn new tricks, making the Microsoft-conceived desktop a poor target for Linux vendors. The market is mobile. The market is children.
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There are companies like Intel, Canonical, Novell, etc., that are desperately trying to make Linux-based personal computers easier to use. Unfortunately, as Ubuntu fan Steven Rosenberg points out, there are often far too many decisions a lay user must make to make Linux just work for the average user.
Rosenberg was struggling to play music on his Ubuntu machine (you know, one of those obscure activities that only the geek elite do ;-), and struggled because of Canonical's efforts to balance ease of use with free-software purists' desire to have no proprietary codecs. The result is a mess:
But for a project/distro/movement that wants to preach not to the choir but instead to the unwashed, Windows-using masses, either let 'em play MP3s out of the box, make it easy to add that functionality (i.e. don't make 'em Google it, for heaven's sake) while at the same time educate them as to why MP3s, MOVs, Flash and all that other royalty-carrying, proprietary crap is bad, or just say right out front: "If you're geeky enough to figure out how to play multimedia, go ahead. But otherwise, re-install Windows and everything will be fine."
Amen. Using one's computer shouldn't be a religious experience. A computer is a tool, and it should just work. Mixing ideology with a utilitarian tool like the personal computer is an exercise in futility...for the developer and for the average end user.
This isn't to suggest that the Linux "desktop" can't work. It can, as the Linux Foundation's Moblin distribution proves: it's the most Mac-like Linux experience yet. It doesn't require me to resort to a command line to make Linux work for me. It recognizes that I have better things to do.
So, the Linux "desktop" can work. But to do so, I think we need companies involved, companies that are trying to scratch a very different itch than the one developers may be inclined to scratch themselves. That itch is usability for average end users. It's an experience that is high on ease of use and trades away choice. This is not a bad thing.
Indeed, it's the start of giving Linux a fighting chance against Windows and Mac OS X on the "desktop."
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Linux Foundation president Jim Zemlin talks up Moblin
(Credit: Matt Asay/CNET)For years, Linux enthusiasts have tried to win an unwinnable war: displacing Microsoft's hegemony in personal computers with Windows clones. Though Lindows was perhaps the first to make a serious attempt at replicating the Windows experience, all the Linux "desktop" vendors have tried it, and all with the same result:
Failure.
This isn't because Linux isn't any good as a personal computer operating system. It's because such copycat tactics have doomed Linux to always being a cheap facsimile of Microsoft's idea of what the personal computer should look like and do.
With Moblin version 2.0, the Linux-based operating system Novell and Intel designed specifically for the Netbook market, the Linux "desktop" crowd seems to finally have the right idea: change the game, not simply the price tag.
I spent Thursday working on the Moblin-based Asus Aspire One (AOD150-1165) Netbook. I am still getting used to the somewhat cramped keyboard (with a hyperactive trackpad that is hard to avoid given the lack of space), but Moblin, itself, is pretty impressive, even though it's still very much in beta.
Having used various Linux "desktops" over the years (Canonical Ubuntu- and Novell SUSE-based, primarily), the thing that most impressed me about the Moblin experience is that it's nothing like traditional Linux "desktop" experiences. In fact, it's not really much like Windows, either.
The closest it comes to being a clone of anything is in paying tribute to some of the best Mac OS X features (like Expose), which perhaps isn't surprising given that Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth has suggested Linux must outdo the Mac to win.
One of my favorite things is the concept of the M-Zone ("Me-Zone"):
Diagram of Moblin's M-Zone
(Credit: Moblin.org)You can think of it as "home base," as it offers a central place to capture your recent activities (e.g., documents you've been working on, music you were listening to, etc.). Someone that had been using the machine before me had The Pixies geared up on Last.fm, which I simply clicked on and, Voila! "Monkey Gone to Heaven" started to play. Score one for Intel for knowing my musical tastes.
If that sounds business-y and grown up, I suppose it is, but Moblin is about much more than how to get one's corporate job done. Like the Mac, Moblin takes notice that life is more than corporate drudgery, and the UI reflects this. One part that I really liked was the "People" option on the Toolbar panel:
Moblin's People panel
(Credit: Moblin.org)This is a great view into instant messaging conversations and a reflection of Moblin's nod to the real life "work" that we do, and how we do it. Again, very similar to the Mac in its emphasis on "the other work" we do.
Over the next week or two, I expect to spend more time with Moblin, and to give neighbors, co-workers, and family time on the machine to see how they fare. Stay tuned.
Some are projecting that Linux will regain 50 percent of the Netbook market. Perhaps. But if so, it won't come as a result of the clone wars Linux developers have been promoting for years. It will come from the game-changing tactics that Moblin, now under the guidance of the Linux Foundation, and others bring to the personal computer party.
At present there are arguably too many mobile open-source platforms. Based on what I've seen with Moblin, however, it may well be the Linux distribution to beat in the mobile market, at least for Netbooks.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
In open source or in product development generally, one of the biggest mistakes is to take on a deeply entrenched incumbent on its own turf. Almost inevitably, if you play someone else's game, even if you're a little cheaper/faster/better, you're going to lose. Inertia favors the incumbent, and there's a whole lot of inertia involved in switching vendors.
For this reason, I agree wholeheartedly with Bill Weinberg's suggestion that Linux's opportunity in Netbooks is to focus on the mobile side of the market, rather than bringing a traditional, personal computer bent to the market.
Weinberg writes:
...(O)ne strategic error made by purveyors of Linux Netbooks was to covet the volumes of the global mobile telephony market while following the business models and channels of the legacy notebook marketplace. Linux fans--.orgs, Linux ISVs, and device OEMS--unfortunately approached the Netbook opportunity as a downward extension of the desktop and portable PC business, with volumes of 297M units in 2008 (IDC).
Instead, the Linux ecosystem needs to envision Netbooks (and MIDs and tablets) as building on the worldwide mobile handset business, with its 1.28B annual unit shipments (Gartner) the most lucrative slice of which, smartphones, constitutes 14 percent (ABI) with 20 percent annual growth rates.
Microsoft owns the traditional personal computer market, and probably will forever. But don't lose hope: the best strategies going forward are disruptive, in the Clayton Christensen sense. Microsoft is weak in mobile. This is where Linux proponents should focus their "desktop" strategies.
Apple is gaining on Microsoft in personal computers as much because of its iPhone revolution as its beautiful laptops. If Linux wants to win in Netbooks, and it can, it must do so by undermining Microsoft, not by confronting its desktop dominance directly. Netbooks must be more "Net" than "book," just as mobile phones are more about "mobile" than "phone."
If this is true, Google's Android, which is targeting smartphones first and Netbooks second, may have the upper hand on Intel's Moblin, which aims at Netbooks first, and is largely designed as a Windows replacement.
Malcolm Gladwell recently reminded the world that David beats Goliath with a sling, not a sword. Linux-based Netbooks, playing David to Microsoft's Goliath, should approach the market with a mobile bias, rather than with a personal computer bias.
"Hit 'em where they ain't," said Willie Keeler, which is as true in hitting baseballs as it is in competing with Microsoft.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Google's still-nascent efforts to dominate the mobile market, already reeling from Apple's surging iPhone platform, were dealt another blow on Thursday when Intel and Novell announced that they will collaborate to promote Intel's Moblin operating system, a rival Linux distribution for mobile devices.
Whereas Google is initially targeting smartphones with Android (though an Android-based Netbook has apparently been released), Intel is targeting Moblin at Netbooks.
Additionally, Android and Moblin aren't simply two different Linux distributions, in the way that Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server are. Android and Moblin use Linux in different ways, as Dirk Hohndel, Intel's chief Linux and open source technologist, suggested to me:
Moblin is Linux for mobile devices, (and its) first focus is on Netbooks. Android is an (operating system) for phones that uses a Linux kernel...very different.
Novell's Justin Steinman, vice president of solution and product marketing, said in a follow-up conversation:
Moblin 2.0 is the first open-source Linux software stack and technology framework designed from the ground up for the Netbook device type. Essentially, Moblin plans to start at the Netbook layer of the stack, and then work its way down to the smaller mobile devices. Given Novell's strength in delivering desktops based on Linux, it made sense for us to collaborate closely with Intel to deliver the optimal user experience on Netbooks.
Given Apple's rising dominance in smartphones and Symbian's lingering power in other mobile devices, this seems like a smart, strategic move. The Netbook market is still wide open, with Apple currently disdaining to enter it and Microsoft bleeding cash to hold its ground against Linux.
Though Ubuntu made the first forays for Linux in the Netbook market, could it be Novell and Intel that end up dominating it?
Maybe. Maybe not. The one sure thing, at least for now, is that Microsoft may win the short-term Netbook war, but it still needs a long-term, winning game plan for mobile.
The mobile market is fascinating because it is uprooting long-held beliefs about how and where to compete in software. Intel, Google, and Apple, each fiercely contending for dominance, share a common strategy: they're investing in the operating system but planning to make their money elsewhere (Atom chips, in Intel's case; advertising and revenue-sharing with application vendors, in Google's; hardware and revenue-sharing with application vendors, in Apple's).
Such strategies stand in stark contrast to Microsoft, which persists in trying to monetize its mobile Windows platform.
Small wonder, then, that Microsoft is losing the mobile battle. It's fighting with the wrong ammunition.
Back to Google. While it seems clear that Intel's Moblin initiative is an attempt to fend off Google's looming Android threat, there's probably enough time for Intel and Novell to stake out a strong position in Netbooks that Google will struggle to overcome.
Regardless, the one player left out in the cold in all this activity is Microsoft. Google, Novell, Intel, and Apple are each putting hefty resources into winning the mobile market, but doing so in a way that undermines Microsoft's traditional approach of licensing only the software. Microsoft's Xbox experience suggests that it can do hardware right, but will it be able to catch up if it starts chasing its competition?
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
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