Was 5 Years Long Enough?

Somewhere in the ballpark of five years ago, I wrote that Linux was five years away from being a viable, mainstream, desktop operating system. I distinctly remember fighting with various driver issues at the time, from wireless NICs to display adapters, as well as being frustrated that the method of distribution and installation for even the most popular applications was inconsistent, obscure, and at times impossible.

For a life-long computer geek like myself to be overwhelmed with its complexity said a lot.

Mind you, this has nothing to do with server environments. I have been running my web, e-mail, and what-have-you servers on Linux machines for the better part of ten years now, and you'd be hard pressed to get me to switch to a Microsoft-based solution for them.

Regardless, I've not given up on Linux-based operating systems for the desktop. In fact, I just recently installed the latest Ubuntu distribution (9.04) in a virtual machine on my primary home office computer, and have spent the past week playing around with some of the newer features that I missed in the 8.x round of updates. (My current server runs 7.10.)

I decided today to take the plunge, reformatting my home theater PC (which is underutilized because the options for a home theater PC running Windows XP .. well .. suck). I had been running into driver conflict issues anyway, causing Windows lock-ups, and I wanted to begin using this PC again for software development while sitting in my cozy recliner. There's nothing quite like software development in a recliner pointed squarely at a 50" plasma, I'm here to tell you.

The installation went well enough, and with the exception of a driver issue with my ATI card, everything has gone smooth as silk. (ATI, I discovered long ago, is horrible when it comes to drivers under ANY operating system, so I can't fault the Ubuntu team for this). All of my semi-obscure hardware seems to work flawlessly, all the basic stuff flies right out of the box, and I'm pleasantly surprised to find that just about any application I've wanted to install can now be easily located in the Synaptic Package Manager.

Synaptic was the one thing Linux really needed to make a good case for itself. Locating and installing any given application or utility is infinitely more simple than ever before, and I would dare say is even easier than on a Windows box.

The selection of mature applications for Linux has grown exponentially in recent years, and with the exception of off-the-shelf game titles, can do anything your heart desires with a lot fewer headaches than in Windows. (For the brave, there are options available to get most Windows entertainment titles running as well, for a price, of course.)

Overall, I'd say the time for Linux has finally arrived. It's fast, stable, reliable, and is only as complicated as you choose to make it. I'll be taking more time to be critical in the coming weeks, but the way things stand now, I would have no reservations at all installing this on my mother's PC.