The Linus view of GNOME 3.2

[Christopher A. Williams]

On Sat, 2011-12-03 at 02:50 +0100, Reindl Harald wrote:

> 
> > "Three years ago over 95 percent of the devices connected to the
> > Internet were personal computers. Three years from now that number will
> > probably be less than 20 percent. More than 80 percent of the devices
> > connected to the Internet will not be Windows-based personal computers."
> 
> this is nonsense
> 
> the percent does not matter since nearly everybody has a smartphone
> which is permanently online, but this does not mean that all these
> people are only using a smartphone or tab which will not happen
> 
> not now, not in 3 years and not in 10 years
> 
> theer are enough people working with their computers and not only
> webbrowsing and write some mails!

To the contrary, if you know the full context of Paul Maritz's quote
here, he actually makes complete sense.

I have heard him speak about this in-person and his overall points are
very convincing and well-grounded in facts. The *majority* of Internet
connected devices will definitely be in the smartphone and tablet
category in the next 3 years. That does not mean they will be the *only*
devices. Paul also clearly believes that, as a result of this change,
Windows as an operating system will continue to lose relevance in the
coming years. That's saying a lot considering he is the person who is
largely responsible for engineering the dominance of Windows 95 (whether
you'd call how he did it cheating or not).

He also believes operating systems like Linux will continue to gain in
acceptance and popularity over this time frame, but that this will still
mainly be from non-PC devices. He often refers to this as the coming
Post-PC era.

I believe he is largely correct.

The fact of the matter is we are already seeing this happen. Smartphones
are starting to displace even desktop computers in low income families
because they are cheaper (as in $200 range), constantly connected, and
do actually handle most of the basic tasks (e-mail, basic Web, etc.)
that were once solely the domain of PCs. Tablets are quickly displacing
laptops in the business world. The main barrier is that they are more
difficult to use for producing information than PCs at the moment. They
are equally as good for those who are primarily consumers of
information. Once tablet manufacturers actually decide to deal with
issues around printing and getting more effective input methods in
place, tablet acceptance will likely take off like a shot.

PCs will likely never go away, but to say that they will not be greatly
impacted by the coming age of new devices is to stick your head in the
sand and pretend that the change isn't coming. And Linux does very well
in this coming wave...

Chris

-- 

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