Picture by jimieye Some rights reserved.

So apparently once again this is the year that Linux will make it’s breakthrough and start to get control of the desktop.

Hmm. Not so fast buddy.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the various flavours of Linux that I’ve used are pretty good and a hell of a lot more stable than Windows (at least the non-XP variants¹). For Linux to make its breakthrough on the desktop I think it needs something that surprisingly Windows tends to have – decent, solid and reliable office applications. Right now I’m not sure that situation exists for Linux.

Case in point. I’ve been using Ubuntu on my main development machine at work for the last few months. It’s great and while I’ve never had a problem with the OS itself the same can’t be said for the applications that I run on it. I’m having three problems:

• I (sometimes) do Java development and Eclipse is my IDE of choice. Periodically it just dies silently. I go to use it and it’s crashed, or worse I’m in the middle of coding and it disappears. Eclipse has a different problem on Windows with an apparent memory leak but all that happens is that it gets sluggish and needs a restart. On Ubuntu (and I’ve seen the same thing happen on Enterprise Red Hat) it’ll just vanish.
• Evolution has developed an intense dislike of meetings. I’m no great fan of them myself but I would at least like to see a meeting request without it freaking out and going off into space.
• The same goes for OpenOffice. It may just be the document that I’m editing but it’s developed a disturbing tendency to have a panic attack if I hit the backspace more than a few times. I kid you not.

In fairness to both OpenOffice and Evolution the issue is probably around interoperability with MS Word documents and Exchange respectively. The office environment I currently work in is pretty mixed. There’s about 30 staff and while most of the engineers are using various flavours of Linux on the desktop, quite a few are using Windows either on their main PC or alongside on their laptop if they have two machines. The document in question that has been giving me the most grief in OpenOffice is a functional spec that has version tracking enabled and is being saved in MS Word format. OpenOffice’s support of that might be a bit flakey due to Microsoft’s legendary sneakiness around formats. Similarly Evolution could well be having some kind of problem with Exchange Server.

Some people would argue that the beauty of all of these open-source applications is that if you find a bug you can go fix it yourself. Yes. If you’re a developer. I realise that you gets what you pays for² but you also want something to work as advertised. Unless you’re prepared to push it out to everyone’s desktop at the same time you could be facing a support nightmare.

Don’t misunderstand me. I much prefer working on Linux than Windows. Although XP rarely BSODd on me (and when it did it was hardware related) Linux is, by it’s very nature, a lot more stable and robust than Windows. My gripe is with some of the applications.

Occasionally I wish there was an alternative and that brings me to the Mac. One big factor that I believe will keep it off the desktop in most enterprises is the cost. Even for most mainstream home users cost will be an issue. Apple are gaining market share rapidly when it comes to laptops but not so quickly when it comes to desktops (see this article on MacWorld).

Yes I love my Mac and try to evangelise it as much as I can but it’s hard to argue with someone who will point out a higher spec Dell for half the price. Having owned a MacBook for about 6 months now I’m beginning to realise that the benefits of using one are somewhat intangible. It’s not a Transformer that’s suddenly going to do something really amazing when people ask to see it, as they frequently do. Sure it has some cool toys (PhotoBooth, GarageBand etc.) but these are really just toys and to be honest I rarely use any of the iLife apps with the exception of iPhoto. What it does have is stability. And applications, office applications. With Microsoft Office available for the Mac there is a real alternative for people who want to get away from Windows and yet work in a mixed office environment. For me, currently working as a Java developer, the one big downside to the Mac is the lack of a 1.6 JDK which we’re using. 1.6 has been around for long enough now that it should be available for the Mac – the beta JDK which I’ve downloaded but so far been afraid to install has been around since November of last year.

So where do I stand? I will continue to use Linux at work as my main development box despite the headaches with sharing documents. If I wasn’t doing Java development using 1.6 I’d be using my Mac instead³. It’s more stable than Windows and its applications play better with others. At home I still have Windows XP installed on my desktop machine. I pretty much only use it these days for World of Warcrack and that’s only because I’ve been too cheap/lazy to go out and buy a mouse for my MacBook. My wife uses the PC for Word and Web so either a Mac with NeoOffice or Pages or a Linux box with OpenOffice would be fine for her. I would incline towards an iMac because I love them but we get back to the cost issue. Would I go with Linux instead? Probably but stability issues around the software would prevent me. Not because I wouldn’t be inclined to do something to fix any problems I found but because I’d end up having to become tech-support for my wife.

The reality, for now at least, is that Windows will continue to dominate the desktop largely because the applications are already there and work well and the boxes that Windows typically ships on are cheap. Linux will, I suspect always have a strong following among the power users and developers. But as for making a breakthrough on the desktop? Not in the mass-market, at least not until some of the issues are addressed.

But what do you think? Will Linux finally make into mainstream desktop use or will it remain a niche OS?

– Fintan