To me its apparent that trying to develop the Linux desktop marketplace using traditional ideas and avenues simply hasn't and isn't going to work. We've been waiting for a decade for the year of the Linux Desktop to happen. I think thats proof enough that using proprietary ideas to drive the Linux desktop market forward is not working.

Last week I made a summary of the current state of the Linux netbook market. Today I will show you that Linux netbooks are at a crossroad. They can reach a bright future and a significant market presence through 3 different paths: the smartbook path, the cheap path and the power path. I will explain how each path will lead the Linux netbook to market dominance in a specific niche.

There was a time when I thought the Linux desktop was going to take a market share at least equal to Apple’s. Maybe even 5% or 10% of the total desktop market. I had high hopes that the One Laptop Per Child Initiative would put Linux laptops in the hands of impressionable young minds who would never have the chance to become dependent on Windows. Though that plan has fallen through the cracks.

The devil they say is in details, even the simple Bash path variable can open some security problems on your box. Every Bash documentation out there warns us not leave '.' in the path (it matches current directory). They however don't seems to mention that leaving a dangling ':' (colon) at the beginning or the end of Bash $PATH does create the same security vulnerability.

Did you know that 55% of statistics are made up on the spot? (or maybe it was 68% I don't recall) If you have ever taken a statistics class you know that data is everything, but it's not just about the data itself.

These are testing times: if you want to experience the latest advances on the Linux desktop, you have to be prepared to test things and accept that stability is a secondary feature. The continued development of KDE 4 is the perfect example.

It is one thing to recognise a problem, quite another to fix it. Although the Globalisation Institute is quite correct in saying that Microsoft's effective monopoly of the desktop is unfair to competitors and holds back the market, its proposed solution is no solution at all.

I’ve penned a few blogs about Linux on the desktop, and the fact that various statistics I’ve uncovered suggest it has less than a 1% market share.

Using VNC to remotely access your desktop, applications, and documents sounds like a great solution when you are out and about, but it has a few significant drawbacks: you have to leave your machine turned on, the VNC protocol is not secure, and often you need a dedicated VNC client to access your desktop. Ulteo, the company started by Gaël Duval of Mandriva fame, is set to offer an alternative solution.