One of the problems I see with Linux is how it's still a large, monolithic system that sits on a large hunk of computer iron, be it a desktop or a clamshell lap-slab. Of course Apple and Windows have this problem too. And this problem has long been a gradient that has enticed many companies to their doom as they attempted to swim out toward some "appliance" island/mirage. Sun-Oracle is the too-early-adapter that comes to mind. But now I hear about the ChromeOS and how actually Android may soon move up the food chain from smart phones into bigger stuff.
ChromeOS/Android are clearly meaning to be the basis of serious, finally arrived CAA (computer as appliance) and I can't help but think Google will succeed where the others had to eat their sled dogs. It was a huge stretch those years ago to have some sort of "Java experience" on a not-really-so-mininalistic computer, but will a minimalistic appliance (mini-slab-pad-smart-thingie) go amiss now that hardly anyone works "offline" anymore, now that workplace LANs are, well, still there but not really?
I see Ubuntu10.04 on my docked Toshiba laptop not as a "desktop" computer, but as a Unix workstation, a sort of Darwinian champion of the Unix Workstations Wars. Yeah, I've got me a 21st century Unix workstation here. And one of the prime advantages of a Unix workstation was the peer-to-peer networking where "everything is the net," or whatever Sun's motto was. Will the Internet Cloud (sponsored by Google) finally obviate actual physical peer-to-peer workstations?
The day is coming when I'll pause at the "download" button ... and just leave whatever it is where it is, not "install" it and just do/use it there -- even if I'm a serious developer. Then the only thing big I"ll covet will be screen real estate. Everything else can be, well, minimal.
So if what I'm saying is sorta true, where *does* a full-blown second-generation Unix workstation like Linux fit in as we move into the future? Your thoughts....
OlweGM, MN
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