[Joeri]

Remember the netbook craze? They put linux on there, but they didn't start to sell in volume until they replaced it with windows.

When people buy something in a PC form factor they expect it to run windows. Linux on the desktop will not happen in a traditional desktop form factor because people don't want it and/or don't see the point. The one possible exception are chromebooks, because a laptop that only runs chrome and is therefore cheaper / lighter is something people see the point of.

Besides, linux as mass market OS has already happened, it's called android.

[crdoconnor]

>Remember the netbook craze? They put linux on there, but they didn't start to sell in volume until they replaced it with windows.

Not exactly how I remember it. They sold like wildfire initially when linux was first put on it. Then MS started giving away windows licenses because they freaked out over linux adoption overtaking them.

Somehow them and intel managed to prevent all the hardware manufacturers from improving their specs (each year they got progressively worse).

Something very fishy went on with that market.

[gcr]

(BTW, congrats on having a post ID of exactly 7000000! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7000000 )

[ZenoArrow]

Yes, if I remember correctly Microsoft or Intel made some sort of requirement that netbooks couldn't be sold with over 1GB RAM. There may have been some other restrictions.

[noinsight]

> Remember the netbook craze? They put linux on there, but they didn't start to sell in volume until they replaced it with windows.

Those were gimp versions (distributions) of Linux though. We haven't seen what happens with a properly supported straight-up Ubuntu or such full-featured desktop.

[Joeri]

They weren't gimped from the perspective of the desktop, just from the perspective of a programmer. They ran all the same apps, in a UI optimized for netbooks, with a simple easy store app to download additional software. A straight-up Ubuntu wouldn't be that much nicer for a "typical" user in my opinion.

[drzaiusapelord]

This is a great point. I remember people losing their shit when netbooks shipped with windows instead of "this linux thing that doesn't work with my work stuff." That's literally a quote from someone in my wife's office when she showed up with a little Windows netbook I bought her.

I think the linux desktop is farther away than ever. For the modern home user, some level of iOS or Android device will take the place of the "family" computer. Gamers and edge cases will exist, but in much smaller numbers. For a gamer, a Win8 OEM license is a trivial cost.

This is also why linux distros are stupid for chasing MS, instead of implementing their own vision and their own added value. Yet another WIMP, Open Office, Chromium box that serves no one but FOSS enthusiasts isn't going to win anyone over, especially when they can't use the Outlook/Exchange/IE/Office/Sharepoint stack they've become accustomed to. They've invented a poorer version of Windows when the demand for a Windows-like OS is at its lowest and people are shifting largely to mobile devices and keeping the big clunky desktop for work stuff that is deeply tied to proprietary MS or Adobe or Intuit software. For pros, Gnucash doesn't replace quickbooks. The gimp doesn't replace photoshop.

I'd love to see the business world standardize on some FOSS desktop solution, but that has so much politics and proprietary stuff attached to it, that its the same story we have today as we did when slashdot was telling us that Mandrake would take over windows in 2002 or 2003.

I guess you could call android a linux desktop, but that's quite a stretch. Its a linux kernel and a lot of mobile stuff Google came up with. That's a face-saving win, but in reality the linux desktop has been a massive fail in terms of adoptability and business penetration.