2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?

[Daniel Staal]

On Wed, July 20, 2011 1:52 pm, David Jackson wrote:
> I do not believe that these phones or tablets will replace desktop but
> there
> is a lot of room for these two types of devices basically to communicate,
> giving people access to their data and environment from both. The reason I
> dont see the desktop going anywhere is that, basically people dont want to
> work on a spreadsheet, play a game, write a letter or do many other things
> on a 3" screen. Students wont want to use them to do their reports, etc.
> Phones and tablets are handy when on the go due to the portability, but
> their portability makes them impractical for use at home when a larger
> screen is more desirable. The growth of tablets is due to there simply not
> being the market there before and more people buying them for mobile use.
> But desktops will remain popular for home and work use. Also users want
> upgradeability, they dont want to be stuck with the same amount of hard
> disk
> space and may want to add a new camera to the system, a capture device,
> scanner, etc. Desktop systems provide much more upgrade flexibility.
> Linking
> the desktop to the tablet will be an important thing so people can access
> data and so on from their tablet.

I'll disagree, somewhat: I know several people who are using a tablet as a
desktop-replacement laptop.  They have a Bluetooth keyboard, and can use
the tablet as a full computer or not.

Most *consumers,* in my experience, also don't typically care about
upgradablity.  Either the machine works when they get it, or it doesn't
(which is a warranty issue), and after that if it breaks in few years,
well, time to get a new one.  A few will add RAM or a HD when they get it,
but that's about it.  Other additions, if any, are done as USB/Bluetooth,
etc, and can be done on a tablet just as easily as a desktop.

As for binary drivers...  They work ok *if* and *while* the company wants
to support the hardware/OS.  Once they decide they don't want to, that's
it.  This tends to cause problems down the road.  Also, they may do no
more than the minimum necessary to support a certain version of the OS,
unless that OS is a major source for their customers.  So while they *can*
make better drivers than the core team, they often *don't.*

Best is an open driver by the manufacturer.  Second is open docs, third is
binary blob.  My opinion.

Daniel T. Staal

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