…Linux will be viable on the desktop. On this day, Microsoft and Apple will actually be worried about an upwards kink in the slowly growing curve of Linux marketshare. But first, Windows Vista and Mac OS X86 will arrive with interfaces that ‘just work;’ where the computer gets out of the way and takes care of the semantics.
Linux will always be huge in the realm of IT and CS users. It fosters programmers in a way that Windows can’t really do – but the cost is a huge degree of user unfriendliness.
So with this contemporary 2006 scenario in mind, programs like NetworkManager that simply make existing technology “just work” are big deals.
I think programs like this one reveal just how technically and culturally difficult it is to create technology that “just works” for Linux. The majority ofsoftware operates within one “layer”: Userspace, daemonized, or in the kernel (modules).
