If what is desirable here is attention from corporate users, then there
are several strategies which may lend an air of "validity" (to the
corporate bosses' eyes) to Linux:
1. "Linux Certification" Sounds dumb and trendy, but its much easier to get
employment with a CNE or MCE (or whatever they call it), than to say, "Duh,
I've been hacking Linux pretty seriously for the last few years." Seems like
some of the commercial organizations could agree on some exams (with, of
course, part of the profit from the fees going to further Linux development).
2. Benchmark comparisons in major industry periodicals. This is dangerous
insofar as the validity of these magazines may be biased by "Corporate
Subscriptions", but there ought to be someone other than Linux enthusiasts
harping its merits.
3. A bit less fanatacism and reactionism. I recall reading in Byte many
issues ago an article on Linux that compared its enthusists to Amiga
enthusists, and cited that the comparable zealousness may harm corporate
acceptance more than it helps. I think perhaps he is right: Which would
be more appealing: a room full of CS grads yelling "Linux rocks!" or
Microsoft with nice, pretty logos and a large base of usable applications?
4. More brainlessness and user-friendliness, both in use of the OS (a nicely
pre-configured window manager would do) and of installation and use of
applications. That is largely why people like MS Windows and why people
write applications for it. This may sound heretical, but, point of fact,
what do we really want? We want to be able use UN*X (preferably Linux) at
work. Jobs! That's what the people want! This will only happen if we let
less advanced users in on the game. Either way, we'll end up fixing
neophytes' systems. Would you rather it be Windows or Linux? This is
largely why Mac has managed to hold such a large percentage of market with a
closed, propriety system over DOS.
5. Applications!! Applications!! That's also partly why Windows won out
over OS/2 (despite the fact that OS/2 could run 16-bit Windows apps faster
than Windows). This is partly also why NeXT never took off, nor did the
eariler movement to market UN*X flavors for 80x86 (the price didn't help that
either). Ultimately, if the OS has no applications (and ones that look
good--unlike many of the stock X apps), then few will use it. We already
have several big applications: Netscape, Mathematica, WordPerfect, etc.
Adobe makes several products for Sun and SGI. How difficult would a port be?
Another idea is support for cross-development, perhaps supporting (or
translating) code from IDEs like Visual C++, Visual Basic, Borland stuff,
etc. Perhaps a free implementation of the Microsoft Foundation Classes,
for X/UN*X, that could be compiled with g++?
I have been following up on the NeXT buy-out, reading with some interest in
the attempt to merge the OSes. Sounds like a bad idea. Nevertheless, one of
the commentators mentioned that an improved Mac shell would incorporate
features of the NeXT OS, but drop the UN*X shell and commands. It
occurred to me what a splendid thing it would be if someone developed an
OS which had both a nice, user-friendly GUI, for the graphic designers
and secretaries, and a good command-line interface, like a UN*X shell and
commands, that's fully tweakable. Imagine--a real choice!
W. Reilly Cooley
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