I read this post this morning and it got me to thinking about the future of Linux and how this all should have played out with all the Vista stumbles and frustration, not to mention the mass exodus away from Windows.

Since Vista is causing so many headaches, people are moving on to other operating systems en-mass. Now I guess I should say "other operating systems" kinda tongue-in-cheek as really if you're not a geek per-se your only other choice is Mac.

Because of this I think the Linux crowd missed the boat, they had the prime opportunity to become a major player capable of grabbing market share of the Vista abandonment group. People are looking for alternatives to Windows Vista, they want an OS that they can use, easily. Now I think Ubuntu is probably the best suited and was/is in prime position to grab this market share, but they would need some advertising and to get rid of the geek speak surrounding ANY Linux distro. Surely it can't be that difficult?

Don't get me wrong here, I'm a big fan of Linux. I've installed Linux at customer sites and regularly recommend it to anyone starting a small business that has a need for a file server, web server and/or email server, among other things. It does these things really well, and once configured you never have to mess with it again unless there is a hardware failure. I've seen this fact in large companies doing server consolidation and no one knows what the monitorless, keyboardless, mouseless computer over in the corner is doing. Once some digging is done it was found out that it was a Linux box being a DNS server for years and years with no failures or hiccups. Who can say that about any other type of server OS?

But all I'm saying is if the Linux distros would make Linux easier to use and customize without having to worry about going to a terminal window to do something it would go a lot farther. Design the GUI so that it is painfully obvious how to do these things and Linux would surely be an OS ready for the masses. Sure, it's getting better, but I don't think it's ready quite yet and the window of available time to step in and become more of a mainstream OS is closing.