The next billion people getting onto the Internet won’t be using “PCs” and there is quite a bit of development going into efforts to make Linux easier to use and reduce the choices in favor of excellent user experiences. Some of the most visible efforts now are:
- Android OS for mobile devices. Android had 500 million devices activated in total.
- Unity is the Ubuntu default user interface for desktop, laptop, TV, Phone and Tablet form factors
- Chromium OS is designed for netbooks and sold bundled as Chromebooks. ZDnet’s SJVN is quite bullish about them.
- Firefox OS for phones.
Since I just voted with my wallet at Best Buy in purchasing a Samsung XE303 and enjoy using it I’m curious to hear what you think about this movement.
We hope you join us for our meeting in Berkeley Sunday at Bobby G’s Pizzeria. We meet on the second and fourth Sundays of each month.
Linus agrees! Chromebooks are interesting! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA
The power of X11 combined with a good package manager is that a computer can come with a desktop designed for a friendly new-user experience (such as Unity) while making it easy to discover, experiment with, and switch to other desktops/WMs as they become more comfortable with Linux (I love my uncluttered “no-focus-stealing” KDE4 setup, but I wouldn’t push it on a new user). So, I think a large number of choices actually improves user experience, as long as they are easy to navigate with easy to learn defaults.
The Dell XPS developer ultrabook (newly refreshed) may provide more but it will cost you. http://www.dell.com/us/soho/p/xps-13-linux/pd