According to the author's opinion, the answer is yes (he's a lawyer, from what I can tell).

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/17/triumph_of_linux/

The article also contains some interesting facts about the devious ways in which Microsoft is trying to derail Linux, most recently through vague legal threats to enforce patents against Linux distributors that it does not partner with.

Personally I think Linux could become the dominant OS, but many, many years from now.

Well, I wouldn't want that Linux would become the dominant OS, I would rather see a really great competition between them, for example 4 big OS'es in the market, three commercial and say one open source, every company owning them would want to sell more and to have more users, they would eventually need to make it better, safer, so would update it, would make it cheaper or etc. well they would be competing each other, of course this kind of a situation would be harder for an open source OS if prices of Operating System and Software would drop a lot of times, but still, I think most of people got the idea, I don't think that if somebody is dominating the market is good "it almost works, people still buy it, no rushing to fix that and etc."

I couldn't agree more with Quatrux, the competition in OSes would be a good thing, it would force programmers to improve the software, and continue to improve it. And, the price tag of eg. Vista wouldn't be so insane. In my opinion, prices that high are just opening the door to more pirated OSes out there, because not all pc users have the money to spend on a simple upgrade, in addition to better hardware. But that is for another topic, I believe.

All in all, I love Linux, yet I use Windows. I hope that one day, BOTH are mainstream and direct competitors. If more software (read Adobe suites, games and the likes) were to exist for Linux as well, I would most likely not use Windows anymore to be frank. But at this point, it's a dream.

I totally agree, and Ubuntu is undoubtedly a step in the right direction - if they could focus on the media side of things (games, music, graphic design) then Linux would be a very strong contender.
But at the end of the day, Linux is for people who enjoy playing with computers. There isn't a big Linux "switch" campaign, and no one's trying to sell Linux as an OS that your average Windows user is just going to pick up, install, and enjoy.
This is exactly what is needed, a buzz campaign. Hopefully the companies are catching on and will respond with driver support.

Update: According to DesktopLinux.com's just completed survey, the number of Desktop Linux users has more than doubled in the past year, and Ubuntu remains their Linux distribution of choice. Of significance, Ubuntu's growing prominence has made GNOME surpass KDE as the most popular desktop environment.

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8454912761.html

Even after all the noise about the Microsoft deal, OpenSuSe still has a large cut. Most people I know weren't really expecting that much really (20%).
Ubuntu's wild success is probably a factor in GNOME taking the lead on KDE, but that isn't likely to change because KDE4 will be extremely buggy until 4.1 or 4.2 release. No other big surprises, although I didn't think Opera and Konqueror would have as many users as they do. I love Konqeuror, but I thought I was alone.
Text-based browsers got 4.3% of the vote - that's more than Epiphany and Seamonkey combined. True, they are fast and they have their place, but how can 4.3% use a text-based browser as their most common one? This is 2007. Images, flash, javascript, and all those other goodies are here to stay. I have the feeling that those 4.3% are probably Gentoo, compiled source, CLI, and optimization freaks or those who want to prove how "1337" they are by doing things in a console.
It was dumb for not including "Swiftfox" in the browser comparision, and why don't more people use XFCE?
Ubuntu is a fine distro but their users spam the crap out of everything. No surprise that Ubuntu did so well.
Frankly i think most other distros' user base just didn't really care about this.
apt-get is the best thing ever. Say you want GAIM. Instead of going to the site, choosing your OS, finding the right version, getting it, installing it ... all you do "sudo apt-get install gaim" enter your password, BAM! You have GAIM installed.

Microsoft has finally killed off it's old anti-Linux "Get the facts" website that had been spreading lies about Linux for years. However, don't think that anything has changed, the site is being replaced with another, more insidious site called "Windows Server Compare".

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=670

Evidently, Linux is a big enough threat for Microsoft to start spending resources to try to counter it; now that their lapdog SCO is out of the game, MS needs to step it up on their own.

Let's see:
Corporations using Red Hat: Merrill Lynch, DreamWorks, Charles Schwab ... etc..etc
Corporations using Microsoft: Autozone, AMD and Jelly Belly's
Wait, wait ... Jelly Belly ?????? =))

How competitive does a company have to be before they start to degrade someone/thing else to make themselves better - as a strategic marketing method?

But the site is poorly designed, the 'comparison' is difficult to find.

"Our [Microsoft] solution is saving us $10.5 million over five years in software costs alone."

LOL Software costs?? Linux = free, while Microsoft stuff = not free. Hmm ... which one would you choose?

Microsoft seem to think the way to secure a system is to encrypt the hard drive.
Now, what percentage of data theft involves physically removing the disk from the machine?

But a lot of people still equate open source with free. Enterprise level Linux solutions are far from free.
Both Linux and Windows have their places in the data center; anybody actually in the IT industry understands this.

All they keep repeating on this site is, see we are just as good a unix. We've improved our product so much that we are just as good. See. For real. See these people we gave huge discounts to, they say so too!
But the truth is ... Windows Server has always been and will always be playing catchup. Any money anybody saves with Microsoft, is simply Microsoft cutting them a deal because they are like long term investors and they cut you a deal for the first year or two. They know once you go Microsoft, you can't go back! No literally, it's in some people's contracts. Also there is no way Microsoft is cheaper in the long run with their licensing scheme. For example, sure company X may have saved 2.4 million dollars switching to Windows Server 2003, but the contract says that they are forced to upgrade to the next server package that Microsoft releases, and when the next release of Windows comes out, you have to upgrade all your desktops to it too. *Boom* there goes the 2.4 million dollars. Because the companies older machines weren't fast enough to run Vista, oh and all those new Vista machines are going to need Windows Server licenses! And if you want them to remote desktop in, they are gonna need Terminal Server licenses on top of just their normal ones.
I'm sure there is a reason for some people to run Microsoft, but to say they are cheaper, is a short term gimmick and nothing more.

Also, is it just me, or did he do everything on Linux the hard way and then show just how hard tasks are to do in powershell without writing complicated scripts? Why show off a feature when that feature absolutely sucks in comparison to the competition? It's a bad move that will backfire on them big time, just because this is poor marketing at its finest.

This post has been edited by dserban: Aug 24 2007, 12:20 PM

Competition is great. However, just like the video game crash of 1984, you can accidentally have too many companies competing for the same market. If Linux was a bit more streamlined, it could happen. The biggest problem is that there are too many versions of Linux, too many installer tools, no standardization. It's a problem, especially when all the resources are to duplicate the same task. Thing is, Linux developers need to ALL agree on one thing and go with it. Also, we need to somehow merge KDE and GNOME so that there's a unification of desktop GUIs, so it won't be confusing for most consumers. For example, continue the look & feel of Windows from KDE, use the QT engine (as it's faster than GTK anyways) but add the concepts which makes GNOME successful, like it's theme system.

Also, Linux needs more hardware support. Especially from big hardware companies. Companies like ATi (AMD) need to create better drivers for the operating system so that consumers can actually run their games on Linux properly. Also, laptop manufacturers need to also build around and install Linux or else no one really wants it as the major trend currently is everybody going mobile. Linux currently has a huge problem with power-saving mechanisms. A battery that lasts for 2 hours on Windows will last only 1 hour on Linux due to the power-saving options.

Another thing that's been hindering Linux is the over-obsessiveness of open-source. The idea is great, but you can go too far with it. For example, Richard Stallman's call to ban ATi drivers just because they weren't opensourced is a stupid call. There are reasons why it can't be opensourced, and it's a good thing why it's closed or else companies can't remain competitive.

Also, contrary to popular belief, Ubuntu isn't that easy to use. Especially if you want to dig a little deeper into the system, it gets a lot more complicated than it actually needs to be. Ubuntu is only easy on the top (GUI wise) but underneath it's messy. Try installing the NVIDIA driver manually, you'll find problems, minor to those who understand Linux, but you won't find that on OpenSuSE.

This is my opinion. Unless these things happen, I don't see Linux being dominant among the desktops.

xboxrulz

Well, you're right again.

I have an ATi x800 GTO and if I am not mistaken, Mandrake refuses to start a GUI, Fedora now won't install either (unless I wipe my HDD) due to a partition table issue which was caused by the Mandrake attempt. Not everything is "easy" in Linux.

With the power savings I beg to differ, I have an OLD IBM Thinkpad 390e with a broken battery, the battery will last tops 15min on Windows 2000 Pro, on Fedora 3 or 4 (can't remember) it lasted 30 minutes. I was quite impressed by that. That said, it's probably not a conclusive test, it might have been an odd fluke or just luck, I can't be certain since the pc now only runs win 2k pro (mom uses it).

Ubuntu, the Linux flavor which is confusing (not in use or install but in other things.) I hate the install of Ubuntu, I miss the options that eg. Fedora offers, though it may have changed now, I haven't used it for a while. My main issue was, it installed DVD stuff by default, yet I didn't own a dvd-rom/-rw at that time, which was odd to say the least, BUT for a user who hasn't done this before it may be handier. As far as the messy-under-the-hood, I sadly have to agree, several applications I learned to love in Fedora (Red Hat even) I couldn't install in Ubuntu, not even after meeting every single possible dependency. It was rather horrid in that way, I loathed the lack of su- Little things like that, made me decide to not use Ubuntu again, even though it shines out of the box, the Fedora shine was better. I still want to try Gentoo as well, fully compile it for my system, but it scares me still.

i cant see linux ever becoming the dominant os. i cant see it actually known by everyone and being popular.
linux seems to be something (no offence) that nerds just like to have a little fun with.

its not known enough to ever become dominant.

sure theres those people serious about linux and use it all the time (yep i used to for a while too) but ive gone off it and i and most people will probably stick to windows. except them lucky mac users, lol

The Dell-Ubuntu deal has certainly cannibalized Vista sales, and another phaenomenon might have been people who wanted to save themselves the cost of a Windows license by buying Ubuntu laptops, wiping the drive and installing a pirated copy of Windows - who knows.
But Dell definitely started a trend, and it looks like other companies, most notably Lenovo (formerly the PC division of IBM) are beginning to see the light.

http://www.dailytech.com/PC+Manufacturers+...article8326.htm

And while we're on the topic, here's a blog post titled "Linux Hardware Support Better Than Windows":

http://changelog.complete.org/posts/644-Li...an-Windows.html

This post has been edited by dserban: Aug 19 2007, 12:19 PM

Depends on the market. In the server market I would say Yes as Linux has replaced just about all the former *iux systems for that type of platform.

Desktop is a different monster. I've been hearing that Linux is the next great thing for almost 10 years now. And that it would become the desktop of choice for the last 6 - 8 years, and yet it never seems to get there. I saw a few companies offering machines with RH preinstalled back in the day, but that went no where. I kept waiting and then OSX happened. And like most Linux desktop users, or should I say former Linux desktop users, switched to OSX and havn't looked back. Now I get my cake and eat it too as in all the freebie OSS goodies, a *iux development platform, and the support of commercial software including Office and Adobe products.

I do think that Linux is becoming a major player, but perhaps it is not up to the programming CAPABILITY of Windows. However, at the moment all the developers seem to like doing are re-skins and networking features, so, Microsoft could be up for a fight in the next few years.