CIW Community - Get caught in the Web!

I'm a big Linux and open source advocate. I've been using a Linux as my main system on both a standard computer and on my notebook computer since 2000. I was tempted to write "since it was truly painful to use it on the desktop. I use Firefox, Firefox add-ons, OpenOffice, Thunderbird, xmms (the old-style MP3 player), vlc (a nice dvd/mp player), Audacity, Nessus, Nmap, wink (a screen capture and video tool), tsclient (to access Windows terminal servers), Samba, the Gimp, Kompozer, and any number of text editors. I've got years with these things.

You'll notice that I mention Firefox first, even though I do a prodigious amount of writing. Why? Because a good Web browser will get you more places than Linux. I'm flirting with heresy, you say? Hardly.

Why? Because it's not about Linux anymore. It's all about cloud computing. I use a lot of Google stuff. iGoogle is my friend. GoogleDocs and GoogleApps are essential.

Well, let me take that back. Now that I think about it, I use Linux all the time - on the server side. What runs most of Google's systems? Linux. What do the programmers create their wonderful little gadgets on? Linux. Many argue that anyone who's for Linux on the desktop is in the clouds. They're right to a certain extent: Until manufacturers and retailers really embed Linux in their notebooks, desktops or netbook devices, it'll never happen. And until companies such as Red Hat, Novell and Canonical/Ubuntu get off their respective high horses and make Linux truly easy (trust me, it ain't ready for the end user), then Linux adoption will always remain in the clouds.

But is that such a bad thing? I mean, Linux is always going to be in the cloud - the Google computing cloud. Maybe that's really where things are in the first place. And that suits me just fine. Why? Because with CIW, we've been all about cloud computing before that term became hip.

So, who needs an OS anymore? It's all going to be someone - Google, most likely - putting stuff up on the Web. And that suits CIW just fine, because we've been creating the Web for years!

-- Tangent