eWeek: Assessing Linux’s progress on the desktop

“Judging from the time I spent with Ximian and Eazel, two of the
major players working to making GNOME the great free hope of
desktop computing, Linux is now approaching the status of just good
enough.”

“I had the chance to spend some time with Ximian CTO and GNOME
luminary Miguel de Icaza, who took me through Ximian Setup Tools, a
set of interfaces for configuring network, user, time, and memory
settings across the various Linux, Unix and BSD platforms for which
Ximian GNOME provides a desktop environment.”

“There’s nothing Earth-shaking or particularly exciting in any
of this, but this is the sort of consistency in performing basic
configuration tasks that Linux has sorely lacked, and that has
retarded its wider adoption….”

“Desktop Linux may never rival Windows in terms of
out-of-the-box polish–Microsoft will always be hard at work
producing new features to differentiate its OS, and vastly
outspending the competition in the process. However, once the open
source OS can smooth its edges just well enough to deliver a
reasonably accessible and configurable computing experience,
Linux’s price advantages should assure it a solid place in the
desktop market.”

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