Articles about the future of Linux are a-dime-a-dozen, but here's one that is worth a quarter all by itself [FT]. 10:16:12 AM      

I have had an old 200MHz Pentium MMX laptop sitting on a shelf at my house for nearly two years. Not thinking it was worth the time to install Linux and realizing that it was just too slow running Windows, it sat collecting dust. Finally, a couple of weeks ago I just got the bug to set it up with Linux. I'm a devout Debian user, so I created a couple of installation floppies and installed the "woody" distro over the Internet. Since then, I have been spending a bunch of my free time reacquainting myself with the various productivity tools and desktop environments that are now available for Linux.

I should point out that for years I used FreeBSD, then Linux as my primary workstation environments. It wasn't until the middle of 2001 that I switched to Windows 2000. That was primarily motivated by the externally imposed need to use Microsoft Outlook. Anyway, during the years that I was using open source operating systems on my desktop I tested every window manager and productivity suite then available; from Enlightenment to FVWM2 and WordPerfect for Linux to StarOffice. I also tried the early versions of KDE and Gnome, but gave them up since I didn't feel that they had much to offer at the time. So, I settled on Window Maker to run my desktop and Windows 98 under VMWare from which I would run Excel when I needed it.

Now, even though I betrayed Linux for a while in favor of Windows on my desktop, I had by no means abandoned Linux. As a matter of fact, I have continued to use Linux on a daily basis. Linux has never stopped being my server platform of choice. And, I probably would have found a way around my need to use Outlook had cygwin not come along to make using Windows halfway palatable. However, my familiarity with Linux GUI tools has remained stuck back in 2000.

Anyway, with my old laptop with a fresh Debian installation, I started messing around with the desktop tools that are now available for Linux and have been left amazed.

First of all, Gnome and KDE have come a long way. They are both much cleaner, much more powerful and come equipped with a more diverse and useful set of tools. OpenOffice/StarOffice, AbiWord and KOffice have also all improved to the point that I wouldn't really miss the complete feature set of Microsoft Office applications. I've always liked Microsoft Office, especially Excel, but let's face it; I've never used more than a handful of the features available in such tools as Word and PowerPoint. By switching to the open source tools I really don't miss very much.

Two years ago, I tried to stay on the fence in support of the notion that Linux could ever pull desktop users away from Windows, but I ended up falling off and using Windows myself. However, Linux has continued to improve and has begun to emerge as a serious contender for Windows on the desktop. It isn't quite there yet, but it is easy to see that in another two years it could be. Look for Linux on a desktop near you within three years. 10:14:30 AM