] McBride: To quote Mark Twain, the rumors of our death are
] greatly exaggerated. I don't believe Unix is dying, I
] think it's actually going to grow.

He then added: "Hello, my name is Darl McBride, and I live in a cave."

Linux is/has marginalized the Operating System, just as cheap x86 boxes from Intel and AMD marginalized the hardware side of things. Aside from a few areas (threading, job scheduling, memory management, distributed processing), improvments to the Operating System don't matter. Thats why the My OS is better than your OS is completely pointless. Its what the OS lets you do that matters. Its a platform to run applications on. The only Unix giving Linux a run for its money, in terms of core OS functions, is Solaris, with its amazing threading (and most of that is due to the SPARC architure).

But a marginalized OS is a good thing. Tivo could do what it did because it didn't have to spend time and write an OS. The same way cheap x86 platforms have made it easier for 80's software companies to exists because they didn't have to worry about supporting all kinds of crazy chips (x86, z80, 68xxx, etc). Marginalization isn't a lack of choices. Its a gift that allows companies to focus on whats important: making cool products.

So why does this matter? Because the battle for the desktop will be based on applications. Why else do you thnk our Monkey boy danced and screamed "Developers" over and over again?

You don't hear Microsoft talking about their paging system, or scheduler. Instead, WOW! they have virtual desktops! The have pretty wizards and 32 bit icons, they have a cool new file system. None of these things are OS related things! Microsoft is simply packaging alot of applications with the OS, and marketing those as why you should upgrade to XP/2003 from 2K. Microsoft is starting to get hosed, because now their competitors (ie, OSS projects, companies), can't be bought out or sued out of existance or drowned with a lack of an API. There are just to many of them.

This is why Microsoft is losing the server market. Companies don't see a need to pay lots of monkey for a OS with a bunch of flashy bullshit, when they can get an OS that does the same thing for much much less. Because the OS no longer matters, and Microsoft lost its monopoly on software for server tasks.

The Desktop is next.