Is Linux the Giant-Killer?

I like to read Walter Mossberg's All Things Digital column. It shows up in The Herald every Tuesday. He and I think a lot alike on a lot of things (however I do wish I could figure out how to get technology companies to let me play with there stuff the way he does). Today I was reading his thoughts on Linux. He was reviewing a new(ish) operating system called Ubuntu, which I admit I've never heard of. But it is Linux-based and is also freeware/open-source, as is Linux.

I've always been a fence-sitter on the subject of open-source code and Linux in particular. I used to use Unix a lot in a previous job, but it was always command-line stuff (of course, this was the early 90's). I finally decided to to try Linux about ten years ago. Everyone was telling me to give it a try. It was certainly going to be the Operating System that would take Windows to the ground and rock Redmond. Well, I didn't find that to be quite true.

I bought a copy of Red Hat. I had to since I couldn't download the open-source version over the dial up line that I had. Plus it had great documentation! I loaded it up and was suitably impressed. The GUI was fairly straight-forward, although I had to dig a bit to find some of the things. But I really ran into some rough spots trying to get some of the basic devices working. the modem, the NIC, and the floppy drive all required setup and drivers that were beyond my ken. And I'm a rather techie guy. Plus my hardware was all supposedly Linux-compatible.

Since then I've pretty much shied away from open-source operating systems. I'm not against open-source by any means. I just feel that an operating system needs to be a little more tightly controlled. The benefit of the open-source model is that anyone can freely update and distribute the software. But that, in my opinion, is also the downside. Imagine your operating system is like the gasoline in your car. If gasoline were open-source, then you could get different gas at different stations. You would probably find that Fred's Fancy gas works just fine in your car, but when you gas up at Jane's Jiffy Joint you find your car doesn't run so good.

In a direct quote from the Linux Website, "There are now literally hundreds of companies and organizations and an equal number of individuals that have released their own versions of operating systems based on the Linux kernel." For Linux to go mainstream it's my personal opinion that someone is going to have to drive a stake in the ground and say "this is the Linux (or Linux-based) operating system that will compete on a global scale."

Sure there are plenty of companies that base servers and other platforms on Linux-based technology, but these are hardly mainstream systems. These are specialized devices that are running in carefully controlled environments and cared for by (usually) highly trained IT professionals. But to put the Linux system on a platform that Joe Consumer is going to take out of the box and plug into the wall is just plain crazy.

I come across people every day that can't get plug-and-play devices to work on Windows machines. And for the most part these are educated individuals that can and do read the instructions and endure hours on the phone with support agents in various parts of the world. How on earth will someone be able to get help setting up a system running some variant of a Linux-based OS. I just don't see it happening.

If and when some entrepreneur does drive a stake in the ground, I have a feeling he or she will be immediately gobbled up by the six-hundred pound gorilla in Redmond or some other big business and either squashed or shrink-wrapped.

What do you think?