Before all you Linux fans who don't know me get into a lather, you should know that I've been using Unix as a desktop operating system when the big interface choice was between the C shell and the Bourne shell. Over the years, I've used Open Desktop, Looking Glass and OpenView, and these days I'm a KDE fan.
And you know what? None of them has ever made it as a big-time desktop operating environment and none of them ever will. It's not that Unix/Linux is hard to use. With Gnome or KDE, the average user doesn't need to know any more about the system than he would about Windows 98's foundations.
No, the problem isn't the interface. It's also not locking together the file system and the interface. Eazel's Nautilus and KDE's Konqueror file manager make playing with files as easy as Windows Explorer does.
The biggest problem is a perceived lack of end-user apps. In particular, Linux on the desktop needs Microsoft Office before it can become mainstream. Listen, I know all about Corel and Sun/StarOffice's offerings. They're great. But I'm not talking technical excellence here, I'm talking about what users want. And, like it or lump it, they want Office. They may change their tune with Microsoft's XP subscription model. But today, office managers are still saying, "Make my office, Microsoft Office."
These days, thanks to Netraverse's Win4Lin 3.0, you can run Windows apps, including Office, on a Linux system. In fact, I wrote this very column using Word 2000 on Red Hat Linux 7.1.
Win4Lin, based on an old DOS under Unix technology called Merge, installs and runs Windows 95/98 under Linux. While it won't run all programs-anything that uses DirecX is out-it does run most business applications.
I've run every DOS/Windows emulator/installer in the books, and Win4Lin is the best one around. You even can argue that Win4Lin is better than native Windows because Windows app failures no longer mean you need to do a hard reboot.
But, while I think that Win4Lin will be the desktop answer for some people, it's not going to make Linux a popular desktop operating system. Win4Lin's very nature is that it adds Windows to Linux; it doesn't make Linux a desktop operating system.
Besides, even as nifty as Win4Lin is, like all of the DOS/ Windows under Unix programs, it's always at least a step behind Microsoft's current technology. The simple truth has been, is and will continue to be that when it comes to desktop operating systems, the commercial winner is Windows. If you want a Unix desktop system that's great and popular, say "hi" to Mac OS X.
