On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 12:50 AM, Rob Landley <r...@landley.net> wrote:
> On 01/24/2016 10:06 PM, dmccunney wrote:
>> One of the things I've been watching for a while is convergence, and
>> the idea that you'll run a flavor of the *same* OS on any device you
>> may have. Ironically, Windows seems closest, with Windows on the
>> server, desktop, laptop, notebook, tablet, and phone. OS/X and iOS
>> are increasingly converging, and seeing OS/X subsumed into iOS and iOS
>> running on everything Apple makes would not be a surprise.
>>
>> Linux is the odd man out, given that the Linux kernel itself runs on
>> almost everything, but there are more different and largely
>> incompatible distros than I can keep track of. Android being the
>> one-size-fits-all Linux distro that unifies the Linux space seems to
>> be the best bet for convergence there.
>
> Linux on the desktop failed, getting vendors to preinstall it didn't
> happen and getting users to reimage their machines never cracked 2%
> market share.
It's a problem with the enormous numbers of distros out there. If
you're a vendor, even if you want to pre-install one, which? (I use
Ubuntu because it does the best job I've seen short of Windows of
setting itself up and Just Working, with networking a particular win.
I started in *nix on AT&T Unix SysV R2 before Linux existed, and I can
deal with the complexities, but I'd rather spend the time using the
machine than fiddling to *make* it usable.)
Linux on the desktop failing was no surprise. Aside from anything
else, it's *different*. Most folks learn just enough about the PC to
get it to do what they want, then stop. What they grow up with and
are used to is Windows. Getting folks to use new apps (OO/LO instead
of MS Office) is hard enough. Throwing out the baby with the
bathwater and learning a whole new OS is a non-starter. If someone
wants to try Linux, I'll help. I won't waste time trying to convince
them to try it.
Meanwhile, if you already use Android on a phone/tablet and are happy,
running something similar on the desktop becomes a lot more
reasonable.
> But a billion Android phones _exist_, and get gradually more powerful
> with time.
Yes!
>> I have a good terminal app on my Android tablet (Jack Palevich's
>> Terminal Emulator),
>
> There's apparently one in the base AOSP build, which you can install
> through the app store ("Terminal") but isn't installed by default for
> reasons I don't understand at all.
I do. The vast majority of users have absolutely no need for a
terminal, so why have it installed? (On the same lines, the vast
majority of Windows and OS/X users never open a console. Nothing they
do requires it.)
>> I regularly use an external keyboard, and can use a mouse if I plug in a hub.
>>
>> Given the steadily increasing power and decreasing size of components,
>> I don't expect it to be long before your phone *is* your computing
>> device, that you carry around as a phone, and plug into a docking
>> station with KB, mouse, monitor, NAS and the like and *poof!*, it's
>> your workstation.
>
> The economies of scale tilt that way. A billion phones shipping
> annually, an installed base expected to stabilize around 6 billion,
> that's going to erode the PC niche the way the PC eroded minicomputers
> and mainframes.
It already is. PC sales are flat or declining. It used to be PCs
were the only way to do a lot of things. Now they aren't, and tasks
that folks used to do on PCs are migrating. Folks in the PC world are
blaming tablets, but that's a simplistic view. We are moving from "PC
as the only thing that can do it" to "dedicated device for doing
that". As tasks migrate, PC usage drops.
The migration of processing to the cloud means that unless you are
someone like a hard core gamer, your workstation doesn't need to be
enormously powerful. It just needs good connectivity.
I know folks whose smartphone *is* their computer. It does everything
they need good enough for them to get by. (I do wish most of them
wouldn't try to *answer* email...)
> The question is what the resulting systems will be like. That's still up
> in the air. (Apple's read-only ipad future would not be fun.)
Apple's read-only iPad future would be unusable here.
> Rob
______
Dennis
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519
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