We are currently Ubuntu fans. Before I was a Mandrake/Mandriva fan and before that a RedHat fan and before that a Slackware fan…..
What have I noticed in the past 14 years of using various GNU/Linux distributions ? Three things:
- The distributions evolve best by doing better than their competition within their niche in the GNU/Linux world not competing against the Windows world. Make it simple for applications to provide equal cross-platform performance and by proxy then GNU/Linux competes with Windows.
- My children don’t actually care what distribution they can play games on. They know that certain applications run well in Windows, others are only found on Ubuntu (Linux) and that browser-based games are more or less cross-platform.
- New installations and upgrades have got easier and faster but as Familiarity breeds contempt, this means that it is trivial to wipe a machine, clean install a new distribution that you got from a Torrent if something has annoyed you with your current favourite distribution.
IBM is 100 years old this week in June 2011. Will Open Source technology such as GNU/Linux be with us in 100 years time ? You can bet your bottom fiat currency it will.