I've used Linux for more than 15 years now and my salary depends on how good I am with Linux.
Although I agree you learn a lot with these distros, nowadays I just want something that works out of the box. If you spend years professionally bringing up Linux boxes, you don't want to it in your free time...
Linux has been developed by paid professional developers for 20 years or more. I agree that the European university model is interesting for initial R&D, but things have to professionalize over time.
My thought is, the work required to make Linux meet all of your bullet points will be so costly that you'll need a lot of $15/yr users. But it's definitely possible to get them.
I want the user interface and experience but that's it. I need a linux kernel and I need the customization and openness afforded by a linux system. My workflow, business and more is tied up heavily in that ecosystem.
The average US school isn't a great place for open source programs still, sadly. Whether it be teachers giving out notes in .PPT or requesting that essays be sent to them in Word's format so they can leave notes and send them back. This happens at the university level too outside the known-for-computer schools like MIT, Stanford, etc.
I will say, though, if you're going into a computer-related field in the future, having a Linux box will put you ahead of a lot of your peers--at least it used to. Maybe Ubuntu is too nice now, but years ago by forcing myself to use Linux as my OS exclusively, I learned a lot of skills I still use much later in life. From SSH to manually mounting drives to xorg configurations to SSH forwarding to etc etc. The forcing yourself to use it exclusively is best for learning, but even having a small headless Debian box in the corner of your room is helpful for learning about different things.
I think there's a difference with Linux, because it's something you own and control and can dive into and see every part of. I hate investing time in proprietary technologies, because I know I can be stopped or locked out. With open source software, simple electronics, old cars, fabrication and woodworking, the time I spend learning feels worthwhile.
But Linux has a lot of contributions from developers payed to do so by many companies. Linux isn't made solely by hobby developers in their spare time.
The old adage is that Linux is free only if you don't value your time.
When I was younger, I enjoyed debugging all the weird issues on Linux. Now I value my free time way too much.
I'd rather pay a premium for a device that Just Works. I can have a separate hobby machine I can fuck around with and compile drivers and stuff, but the machine I do my work on? It needs to work and work well. Every minute I spend debugging some driver or fighting the trackpad is a minute I'm not earning money.
It like help a friend move from a Ferrari to a tractor that was put together 10 different vendors. I friend who is a mechanical engineer with 10 years experience in building cars might like it but my peers who's technological knowledge is limited would like to use a product that was put together by a professional product team. This is why I gave up trying to move my friends to Linux, it is simply not as well integrated as MacOS or Windows. They get several problems that they cannot solve alone and I much rather help them on where to change something in Windows or MacOS than in Linux. Again, I am a senior systems engineer with 18 years of experience using Linux and other unix clones, including using them as desktop.
If you were willing to take Linux admins and cross-train, sure I could see that. But a lot of companies tend to ask for x years of actual experience with the product, and there's far more people with that in Linux than Any proprietary unix.
The hardware is another factor too of course, the cheap X64 server being "good enough" inevitably moved people in that direction.
Why isn't someone grabbing the chance to take a linux distro and polish it to get that audience?
I would happily pay for that OS so I can use it with any PC/laptop I want.
It's 2012, if you make this argument then I am done with you. Linux is how old? How much of the internet runs on it?\
I guess you don't know much about either Linux or business. Let me give you an example. Red Hat pays people to work on Linux, because that increases the market for people who will buy Linux support. IBM pays people to work on Linux, because that increases the market for people who will buy servers. Linux even only has a GUI because a bunch of old Unix companies sat down and formed the X consortium and paid people to write it, which they did because a common GUI would mean more software got written for Unix in general.
So go and head and make your point but do it with a Linux made ONLY of hobbyist code. If you can even compile such a thing (don't forget Cygnus funded a lot of GCC development so they could sell embedded hardware!).
You might end up with a harder headed dev. if he starts with Linux, but there is so much to learn higher up the stack that how much does OS really matter? At least Linux is free of license cost though.
I've been lucky that with my past three jobs, I've been able to use Linux naively. One place just had custom desktops, another HP workstations and the last I got a Dell laptop. I ran openSUSE on the HP, and Gentoo on the other two.
One of the shops was an open source shop, so all 150+ of us ran some Linux distro (mostly Ubuntu/Debain, some Arch, some Mint .. I was the only Gentoo) except for the graphics people who got Windows or Macs. But I was surprised at the other two shops, there were very few Linux users. There were some here and there around the company, but I'd usually be the only one on my team who ran Linux naively with Windows in a VM.
True, but in my experience it's a worthy investment of valuable time. I spent three years using Linux distros, and though I use OSX now, I'm much more comfortable with general system administration than I would have been otherwise.
Although I agree you learn a lot with these distros, nowadays I just want something that works out of the box. If you spend years professionally bringing up Linux boxes, you don't want to it in your free time...
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