The Mandelbear's Musings

Today was marked by a surprising amount of press about Linux, leading off (at least for me) with a column by Larry Magid in the San Jose Mercury News with the title Another option to Apple/Microsoft duopoly: Linux PCs. Kind of surprising, actually. He mentions Dell, Wal-Mart's $200 Everex gPC, the ASUS Eee PC mini-laptop, and the OLPC XO. I may very well buy myself an Eee -- it's the right size and price. I'll have to see what the keyboard and display are like.

Magid didn't mention the day's other major announcement: Google's Android mobile-phone platform, but the New York Times does. Unlike Apple, whose iPhone is tied to a single carrier and locked down tight, the Google "Phone" is basically just a Linux distribution for mobile phones. Any handset maker can build it into a phone, it'll work with any carrier, and the customer can install software on it. There's a little more analysis here and here.

Say what you like about Linux not being "ready for the desktop"; it's just fine for the low-end user who only wants the web, email, music, and occasional word processing. People who want the darned thing to just plain work, and to keep working without needing an expensive upgrade every year or so.

I wonder how long it will take Linux's market share to double. Not long after Christmas, at a guess. And that's not even counting the millions of cell phone users who already have it in China and Japan, and the millions more who will get it when Android hits next year.

I can hear the screams of agony all the way from Redmond.