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Is This the Death of the Client Operating System?

"The new connected desktop needs to become both a network client and a host for virtual machines"
By Mark R. Hinkle
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November 17, 2006 02:30 PM EST
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 19,848
Today I read Andy McCue's post on,"Why the Linux desktop dream is over" and "Stephen O'Grady's "Do Operating Systems Matter: Part 1 " and Jonathan Schwartz's post on  Network Clients   and it becomes clear to me the eventual direction of desktop computing.  

How do all three thoughts fit together? The Linux desktop replacing the Windows desktop in its current incarnation is both silly and impractical. As our applications move to the network the need to replicate the Windows  desktop computing environment on Linux  is unnecessary.

What needs to happen is that the new connected desktop needs to become both a network client and a host for virtual machines. Effort once spent on developing productivity applications that are targeted by platform is now being spent on hosted applications like those at 37 Signals which works on all platforms right out of the box. Right now virtualization for servers are hot, look at the VMware Network which is distributing software applications and rPath who's generating software appliances on the server. This will  eventually start spilling over on the desktop. If you have ever used Klik on Ubuntu you will get the idea.

More to come on this later... 

Published November 17, 2006 – Reads 19,848
Copyright © 2006 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
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More Stories By Mark R. Hinkle

Mark Hinkle is the Vice President of Community at Zenoss Inc. the maker of the open source application, server, and network management software. He also is along-time open source expert and advocate. He is a co-founder of both the Open Source Management Consortium and the Desktop Linux Consortium. He has served as Editor-in-Chief for both LinuxWorld Magazine and Enterprise Open Source Magazine. Hinkle is also the author of the book, "Windows to Linux Business Desktop Migration" (Thomson, 2006). His blog on open source, technology, and new media can be found at http://www.socializedsoftware.com.

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