This Slashdot story about a Dan Gilmore article was the second story I’ve read today about Linux on the desktop appearing more viable. Earlier I’d seen a Chad Dickerson column in InfoWorld. Both were about the ease with which they had installed and used the Xandros Linux distribution. Come to think of it, a few days back I’d read this story about ZeroInstall on top of a Linux desktop/filer named ROX. ROX seems to have application bundles done right and used that to create an outstanding simple method of installing software. All of these stories are impressing me with how functional Linux is becoming on the desktop. It kind of makes me want to install Linux on an old laptop some time and see what it is like. I love my MacOS X machine, but I also like the idea of strong software on our existing Intel hardware base in the Libraries. I wonder how far we are from a viable choice to move our public and staff machines to Linux?
