Desktop Linux distros blooming

UP UNTIL RECENTLY conventional opinion held that Linux was better suited to back office roles than deployment on end-user desktops. Linux boxes were regarded as low-cost, secure, and reliable alternatives to expensive proprietary platforms... for firewalls, load-balancers, small routers, and servers for web, email, file and print, and even database functions. But almost everyone dismissed the thought that Linux could compete with the dominant desktop software vendor. Well, times change, and we now have evidence that Desktop Linux looks to become a player.

Background The Mandrake Linux distribution ("distro") did important pioneering work by integrating KDE ("K Desktop Environment") with the Red Hat Linux code base. At the time, Red Hat bundled the then less than mature Gnome desktop, partly because KDE had a serious GPL licensing issue with its Qt graphics library. Flame wars raged between the KDE and Gnome camps, but Mandrake persevered with a user-friendly desktop strategy.

Now, fast-forward a year or so. Mandrake has grown significant market share and user loyalty (they still rate first for desktop support, have gone public, and are partly supported by user subscriptions). KDE (or more properly TrollTech, which writes the Qt C++ widgets) resolved its licensing issue. Red Hat's even bunged in KDE for a while now, too.

Newcomers There are 90+ Linux distros available to anyone with a network connection (or a few shekels for mail-order CDs), as a look at DistroWatch will confirm. If you want printed manuals and supplementary software CDs -- or just want to support the vendors and retailers -- a few major Linux distros are in retail stores. And... new end-user Desktop Linux distros are coming.

We are not talking about Slackware here, let alone Gentoo, Sorcerer, or even Debian. Such Linux distros have their advantages but easy install and configuration aren't among them. You have to want to use these, or perhaps you don't have a life or enjoy compiling and hacking Linux. On the other hand, some few Linux distros are targeted at Desktop users.

Beyond Mandrake, there's Lindows, Lycoris, Xandros, and... Red Hat. In addition, at least one vendor of big-iron servers will join the fun.

There's Lindows, a plucky startup that's battling Microsoft in court to reclaim the English word "Windows" from the clutches of the Great Vole (imagine manufacturers of physical glass-paned windows paying royalties to Redmond). Lindows is available in preloads on inexpensive MicroTel PCs from WalMart (but only at their online store), as well as by download and on CDs.

Lindows business model differs from some other vendors' practices -- sure, those WalMart PCs are low cost, but Lindows then extracts $100 more for access to its "Click-N-Run" online software warehouse of updates and applications. Perhaps this will work for Lindows long term and I wish them success, but one can't help but note that most competing Linux distributions can be downloaded free (in case you didn't know).

Just recently, Lindows hooked up with Earthlink to offer an easier dial-up network experience for punters who can't find KPPP or call their ISP for local access numbers. But hey! Perhaps this is what it will take to capture the consumers.

There's also Lycoris, which some former Windows users find easy to install and use. Lycoris' next release is favorably reviewed by Personal Computer World here.

Xandros is another Linux contender for business and consumer desktops. An OS News review of the Xandros beta is here. Xandros comprises what used to be Corel Linux, so it's a resurrection of that formerly well received distro rather than an entirely new effort, and maybe it's worth a look. It's still in beta, so wait for the final code before trying it out.

Red Hat (See this first, from Reuters via Yahoo). In this sour IT economy, Red Hat has to scratch for revenues. While they're doing pretty well, they lost a little this quarter. One might also imagine that Red Hat isn't very thrilled at seeing Mandrake use Red Hat's own code to take market share. Lately Red Hat's realized that two can build desktops.

Now Red Hat's suddenly in the Desktop Linux business. That's a surprise because they've always hewn to a "Servers-R-Us" strategy, to court their enterprise market. But now... one imagines they need a little bit more revenue to leverage into the black, so... Desktop Linux, by Red Hat!

What Red Hat has done, though, has been somewhat traumatic for at least one of it's desktop suppliers. They've banged together the two KDE and Gnome desktop environments and imposed a (more or less) common "look and feel" on both of them. The KDE developers have been much more upset by this than the Gnome people (naturally, as Red Hat is a Gnome-centric shop, see above). This triggered some controversy even before someone from Red Hat stated their case here. (If you want to read a knock-down-drag-out Slashdot discussion about this, see this.) We'll see what happens, but Red Hat does have impressive mindshare -- perhaps even enough clout to fork one or both of these two desktops.

Sun also rises? A review of emerging Desktop Linux alternatives wouldn't be complete without mention of Sun's promise to sell one soon, as reported yesterday in the New York Times (free registration).

No doubt Sun can do this. After some early muddling about, they've even gotten the hang of managing Open Source software well. They offer both (basic) GPL'd and (enhanced) commercial versions of their well regarded office productivity suite -- OpenOffice and StarOffice respectively.

Sun claims their Desktop Linux initiative is an assault on Microsoft in retaliation for the Vole's encroachments into the lower tiers of Sun's data center server markets. But one has to be at least a bit skeptical about Sun's motives, if only because Sun is primarily a hardware vendor that commands high margins only from its lines of big Unix servers.

The telling clue here is that Sun projects it will begin marketing its version of Desktop Linux "within nine months" based on Red Hat Linux. However, give me some commodity PC parts and half a day, and I'll build a desktop PC that runs Linux. Sun doesn't need months to figure out how to do this -- unless they're thinking about how they can do it in such a way as to make their Desktop Linux systems dependent on their big-iron server systems. Sun's entry into the Desktop Linux market will likely extend their obsession with "The Network is the Computer" to flog some diskless PC running a stripped-down variant of Linux, another version of the SunRay terminal, designed to pump up demand for huge Sun servers.

Thus, I don't see Sun Desktop Linux having any impact in the PC software market beyond low-function tethered terminals -- help desks, data entry, kiosks and such. However, if Sun's Linux terminals can help break down the Vole's monopolies in PC desktops and office productivity suites... well, fair competition is a Good Thing. Hopefully we'll see some of it soon in the desktop PC software market. It's far past time for it.µ