What if Linux toke off

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If Macintosh's stayed an attractive computer system and Linux toke of from its beta launch in 1991. Would the computer world be what it is today or still stuck in the dark ages.

by "toke of", I'm assuming you mean "took off"?

If linux had controlled the market, there wouldn't be as many computers available to the public, since linux isn't as user-friendly as Windows or MacOS (at least back then before Ubuntu came into existence, and the only reason that happened was to create a distro of linux that windows users could use with little difficulty)...

There wouldn't be the video game market there is now either, since the commercial platforms that sped up the progress of gaming relied on proprietary systems to make money (and therefore keep their own progress going)... I'd say that at this time we would MAYBE have N64-era machines...

The world would be quite different. For one, open-source software would be more prevalent, and I think that would be a good thing. There would be a greater variety of choices in what type of computer operating system to use, which would also be good. UNIX would be dominant not just on servers, but also on the desktop, and tools would likely have been developed to allow extremely easy cross-compiling of programs across all *nix variants, meaning we would have broad cross-platform compatibility.

Alas, this did not happen. Torvalds did not even intend Linux to be a usable operating system (it was just a hobby) and GNU/Linux really was not a viable alternative until relatively recently.

And DOS and Windows 3.1 were user-friendly? I don't really buy the idea that Windows brought computing to the masses- people needed computers, so they bought them, and MS was lucky enough (and skilled enough in their business/marketing practices) to make sure a lot of the computers sold would use Windows. Had Windows not existed, people would still have needed computers and would simply have used another operating system.


There are some commercial games available to Linux (proprietary ones) and the only reason game designers don't make more of them is because the Linux market is so small... people are still willing to use proprietary games, and it could well be possible to make money off an open-source game.

I would have rather said that the "need for computers" was largely manufactured by Microsoft in an attempt to manufacture the market base they largely control now... If it wasn't commercialized, computers would still be a niche market today... and while I hate microsoft as much as anyone for their corporate greed, if it wasn't for Microsoft manufacturing that market for computers, computer lovers like me would still be outcasts in society like they were in the 60s and 70s, rather than vital to its survival...

actually, they did toke off...got the munchies, and forgot by the next day what it was...only that it was awesome...

Hm. I still think computers would have been necessary. Personal ownership of computers was growing more and more commonplace, and Microsoft was able to corner the market. I can't think how MS would have managed to manufacture such a market. Computers are a useful tool, and they would have been extremely useful even without (or especially without ) Windows being on them.

Game consoles would have pushed the trend. Consider that CD-ROMs were more common in consoles than PCs at first. The use of cartridges would have bypassed a lot of the disk drive nonsense. We would have went straight to ram based storage eventually. Consider that the Nintendo game 'Zelda: a link to the past' used on board ram for save game storage.

The computing world would have been far different with many more competitors. I don't think things would have been more open, but rather that trade secrets would be protected with hardware. Systems would be more embedded. I had a color Frogger game watch. Game systems were well on their way to becoming tiny.

The birth of Linux was due to a hobby and some geeks wanting to share, but its real flowering is due to dissatisfaction and a niche not filled by Microsoft and Apple. We very nearly ended up in a Apple based world too. I recall that when Microsoft was at dos 2.0, Apple came out with its GUI and it was hot stuff. If they had not been so expensive, they would have dominated.

Neither early Dos nor Apple were particularly good at games. They had games, but they were not often ports of arcade games.

It wasnt really until the 90s and the advent of good SVGA graphics that Microsoft became a viable gaming platform. They shot past the capabilities of the consoles, but they are on the wan again. Specialized consoles do things more cleanly and with less hassle.

In the future we can expect that monitors will grow into the television market. They already have better resolution and refresh rates. My 500 dollar 24 inch monitor at 1920x1200 beats the heck of a 1000 dollar 35 inch HDTV. Already the HDTVs are including ports for video signals from computers. Expect the markets to merge completely.

Expect Graphics cards to start concentrating on physical simulation. 72 pixels per inch has been sufficient for gamers eyes for a long time. Bigger monitors is the trend, right? In any case, games are getting more complicated with a greater sense of realism. Manufacturers will concentrate on emulating reality; colors, DPI and frame rates already exceed the needs of the human eye.

You can already see the trend mirrored in digital cameras. They have ceased focus on pixels per inch and are going for faster frame rates instead. Most digital pictures are never printed, so it makes little sense for average people to have 17 megapixel cameras. On the other hand, the surge in user generated multimedia means that more frames per second is useful. Expect cheap access to video cameras with 1000 frames per second.

Expect further adoption of open source software by the console manufacturers. They have come to terms with the fact that people will hack their boxes, and that profit margins are greater when they use things like openGL. Use of openGL further erodes Microsoft's domination in gaming as it makes it easier to port games to diverse systems, increasing profit margins.

Revenue from gamers is a huge portion of Microsoft's income. As the need to use a desktop computer for gaming shrinks(and its happening), expect them to charge more per unit of windows.

Lastly, expect an explosion of user level programming and design. The advent of things like Arduino, non-technical modular computers, and a coming wave of cheap open source gaming boxes will revolutionize the digital world like nothing before.

In the end, expect that Linux and OSX will catch windows in gaming, but both will fail to hold gamers against a surge of console madness. It will become easier for average users to create(as it already has), ushering in a new age of... well, we can hope that at least some innovation happens.

Mine never worked. And I think you mean a writeable ROM, as one of the key things about RAM is it requires a consistent flow of electricity to hold information.

I think if Linux had been the main OS, it would still be the main OS. But, the idea of open source would probably not exist as is anymore. Somewhere along the line, it would have been dismantled to allow companies to charge for their versions of *Nix. Nothing is ever truly free, not when corporate greed gets their hands on it.

Interesting statement. How could it be made unfree? That is the concern of companies like MS. Once you let the cats out of the bag and designate them as public domain, its very hard or impossible to regain proprietary control.

If you want two ancient examples of this, look up Styrofoam and aspirin. Styrofoam was a trademarked name and they failed to protect their intellectual property.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ge ... trademarks

Regarding Zelda, it required a battery to maintain the save files.. probably why yours did not work.

You were there too?

If Macintosh's stayed an attractive computer system and Linux toke of from its beta launch in 1991. Would the computer world be what it is today or still stuck in the dark ages?

Nope. Just every computer manufacturer and development company would have "$" as their first character in their name.