Will Desktop Linux Be Successful Due to Web 2.0?

The tech publisher Tim O’Reilly has famously asked a question of audiences during talks about open source. “How many of you use Linux?” and a show of hands and only a few are raised. Next he asks, “How many of you use Google?” virtually all hands shoot up as O’Reilly then launches into an explanation of the fact that they’re using the world’s largest Linux application, Google, every time they perform a search.

Whether or not Google’s Linux purity is still 100% true or not is a guess. What is true is that hosted Web applications are so amazingly desktop operating system agnostic that most of them are accessible through a Linux desktop.

As I read this blog post about the Linux-friendliness of the just launched Google Doc’s and Spreadsheets (as their salvo into the hosted office application suite game), it made me realize that the onrush of Web 2.0 applications; open or ubiquitous standards like PDF and Flash (the latter, for instance, with its use in video delivery is a game-changer and there’s a fabulous article here worth a read);  and super-simple Linux distributions like Ubuntu are all combining to make Linux increasingly a strong option for desktop operating system use.

I’m almost ready to predict that we’ll see an upsurge in Linux desktop adoption in 2007 and 2008 due primarily to Web 2.0 applications reaching critical mass coupled with a continued increase in online functionality making the desktop operating system increasingly moot.