Longing for Linux to become mainstream

How I really long for Linux to become a mainstream desktop OS! Linux offers so, so much more to users in terms of basically everything. It can be extremely simple and reliable for more novice users to extremely advanced and customizable for more hard core users. Linux has never been plagued with the security nightmares that Windows has.

If US business and government had switched to Linux years ago there would have been significantly fewer security headaches and much less of the incessant press that we read all the time about scary cyber-threats.

I just read last week that China is teaming up with Ubuntu to set up their national reference operating system that will be based on Ubuntu. Hooray for the intelligent people in China who made such a wise decision.

In Germany and other European Countries, Debian has made major inroads as being something like an official standard OS, alhtough there remains a lot of resistance for all the standard reasons (lack of software, drivers, etc.)

Out of curiousity I was reading some discussion threads last week which were a couple years old in which people were discussing why Adobe does not release any of its graphics software tools for Linux. The basic line seemed to be that there’s no economic incentive to do so.

There needs to be some major effort to really try and get, say, the top 20 software makers (and I’m not talking about games) to port their apps to Linux. I also think the government should require Microsoft to port its office suite to Linux. And not just some wishy-washy cloud version, but the full, actual version. It has enough of a monopoly on office software that it should be required to do so.

Here is a list of some vital software which are major blocks to switching to Linux for I’m guessing millions of people:

Office software – MS Office. Adobe Acrobat. Tools and functionality for a range of office peripherals such as printers and scanners.

Music production software – Pro Tools, Logic, Ableton, Cubase, Kontakt, Traktor, etc. Notation software including Finale and Sibelius.

Graphics software – Adobe Creative Suite, Avid video tools, etc.

Other Peripherals – Webcams and other devices.

For each one of the companies which makes products above, for them to even port say one or two of their products to Linux would be a major victory. Each one would bring probably thousands or tens of thousands of users to Linux. User who are fully ready and waiting to bail on Windows but are held back because they need it to run their critical software.

I espcially cannot understand why Linux cannot at least make headway among creative professions as being a replacement for Mac OS for graphics, audio, and video work. There are many people who would be willing to do without the office functionality that comes with Windows if only they could do their professional creative work on Linux.

Or, conversely, why can’t Linux at least become the reference standard for office functionality with its usually less-demanding requirements for business use?

There needs to be someone out there with enough concern and with enough influence and pull to mount a major effort to persuade, to convince the top software makers that they need to start porting to Linux.

Perhaps such an effort would require the help of the government in the form of punitive measures against overreaching, anti-competitive practices and strong incentives for new development.

When I read in the news day in and day out the whining from people up to very high levels of government about cyberthreats its kind of sad, given that the solution is a matter of just making wise decisions. Unfortunately, like many things, certain commercial enterprises are enjoying far too much influence and deployment of their proprietary, closed-source products in infrastructure for it to be healthy or wise.