The Linux desktop is already the new normal

A debate is smoldering yet again in the Linux community as prominent figures debate whether it’s time to give up hope on the “year of the Linux desktop” ever coming or whether the advent of Android is actually its fulfillment. Problem is, it came and it’s been here a while, but we haven’t even noticed. We just didn’t know what it would look like.

I realize that statement flies in the face of conventional wisdom. Last year, Miguel de Icaza’s controversial post “What killed the Linux desktop” famously claimed that the opportunity for a Linux-based desktop to dominate the market has passed and is now an unachievable dream. He pointed to what he sees as a series of problems within the culture of Linux development.

At the heart of his argument is the idea that overly frequent updates led to a lack of compatibility, which in turn put off third-party developers. This is not to say he’s surrendered to Windows; he recently explained why he uses a Mac. Now that the world has seen the example of the Apple OS X App Store, products that struggle with compatibility issues feel like a big step backward, regardless of any great features.

Chromebook to the rescue

Meanwhile, Linus Torvalds has a different avenue for hope: Google’s Chromebook. This actually is a Linux desktop computer with only one application, the Chrome browser. The hardware itself is perfectly capable of running other Linux distributions — which is what Torvalds does — but out of the box, it’s running a stripped-down, single-function Linux system that’s easily maintained and secured centrally.

I’ve been using Chromebooks personally and for my business for the last six months, and I can state firmly it’s the Linux desktop I’ve been waiting for. I tried many other approaches, but found every other Linux desktop solution required too much effort to maintain. The Chromebooks (and one Chromebox) we have in the office deliver all the functions we need, without becoming the security nightmare you expect of Windows — and without the constant patronizing lock-in that’s manifesting itself on the Mac these days and without becoming the new hobby we’d expect from a raw Linux distro.

The reason it’s worked so well may surprise you. It works for me and my business because — wait for it — Linux has already won on the desktop.

The Linux desktop is called “the browser”

While we were all waiting for the open source community to topple Microsoft’s desktop monopoly by replacing the operating system, we missed the real revolution. There’s still plenty of money in both operating systems and in desktop apps, and Microsoft will be milking that legacy monopoly for a good while. It’s certainly been the target of competitive attention from open source software; indeed, the productivity suite now epitomized by LibreOffice has over its long history done an effective job in opening up that part of Microsoft’s monopoly.

But most enterprise expenditure doesn’t happen on the desktop. Maybe it’s software Stockholm Syndrome making us all love our captor, but the focus on desktop applications, coupled with the idealistic expectation that Windows will be displaced, has led many to overlook or even dismiss the category where Linux actually has taken over the desktop.

That’s in the browser. Think about it: When did a new process or service you wanted to use last come as a Windows application download? When it did, what actually was that application? An increasing number of desktop applications are just containers for HTML5 Web apps. The real powerhouse behind those apps is usually Linux, accessed over the Internet, along with other elements of the modern LAMP stack. In a very real sense, the applications many use daily for email, documents, presentations, and more are Linux desktop applications. A fanatical obsession with replacing Windows made for interesting discussion, but while that debate was happening, all the work on the desktop moved inside the browser window.

In turn, that desktop revolution has fueled — and been fueled by — Linux in portable devices. In that space, Linux is definitely winning globally, both by powering multiple device platforms such as Android and Kindle and by powering many of the applications found on those devices. Tools like PhoneGap allow the developer to take the same Linux-powered back end and use it for both desktop/browser apps and for device-specific apps. The result? Linux is everywhere, even on iOS.

It was natural to assume the wedge to displace Microsoft’s desktop monopoly would be something that did the same thing. Futurists have long made their predictions by describing the present wearing Spandex. When it comes along, the new reality often looks different from the future we expected. So we still have no flying cars, food still doesn’t come in pill form — and the Linux desktop is actually running in your browser.

The year of the Linux desktop came long ago and we missed it. We were expecting it to displace Windows; instead, it has displaced the Windows desktop application, powered the reinvention of the mobile market, and in the process done more for us all than the revolution we expected could ever have delivered.