Long live the laptop

I’ll be there. You should be there, too.

My good friend and former newspaper colleague Tom Dunlap wrote in a PC World blog yesterday about how many have fallen under the spell of the tablet and are drifting away from laptops and other “real” computers.

Quoting Tom: “Everywhere I go these days, my friends slam laptops. They tell me my PC of choice is a dying breed and sing the praises of their new, ‘post-PC’ Apple iPad.

“They carefully pull out their Apple device. I admire it, then ask: ‘So where do you insert the DVD, how do you bang out a long e-mail on a touch keyboard, and do you know what I paid for my little (Lenovo ThinkPad X30) laptop compared to what you paid for this iPad?’

Good one, Tom. The fact of the matter is — and Tom eloquently outlines it in his blog, so I won’t be echoing it here (except to say, “I agree!”) — there’s a big difference between the tablet which, for all its conveniences, isn’t really a computer, and the desktop or laptop you use for getting things done.

Same goes for my “smart” phone — the only thing I want it to be smart enough to do is take calls and make calls. If I need to check e-mail or text someone, I can do that from my laptop.

Thanks, Tom, for bringing that topic up.

(Fedora ambassador Larry Cafiero runs Redwood Digital Research in Felton, California, and is an associate member of the Free Software Foundation. He is also one of the founders of the Lindependence Project.)

A moment of Zen

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Back in the day — and that day was when I was a resident at the San Francisco Zen Center, robed and meditating in the early ’90s — I remember happening upon a couple of relevant descriptions regarding the nature of attaining enlightenment.

One of them I made up, and I’ll tell you about it personally because it’s too lengthy to go into here. The other one went something like this (and I’m paraphrasing here): Enlightenment is like walking in a mist and eventually finding, while you walk, that you’re soaked to the skin.

Now that you’re at the third paragraph, you’re asking yourself, “That’s . . . um . . . nice, Larry, but what does that have to do with Linux or FOSS?”

Simple: Yesterday, I wrote that 2011 was not the year of the Linux desktop, and that it would come eventually.

I was wrong about this.

The fact of the matter is that every year the Linux/FOSS community has been walking through the mist of the acceptance — arguably, approaching the embrace — of the Linux desktop until now we find ourselves soaked in it.

So the year of the Linux desktop is already here, just as it has always been here.

(Fedora ambassador Larry Cafiero runs Redwood Digital Research in Felton, California, and is an associate member of the Free Software Foundation.)

Jim Lynch nails it

The only thing I like better than saying something like this is reading — and passing on — something I wish I had written, primarily because it saves me the effort of having to write it myself.

So, thank you, Jim Lynch, and go here to read Jim’s response to the PC World article that said that the Linux Desktop is dead.

Pressitutes — I’m going to have to use that one more often.

(Fedora ambassador Larry Cafiero runs Redwood Digital Research in Felton, California, and is an associate member of the Free Software Foundation.)