| With rapid development and fragmentation on the Hardware side, the need for software to run the gadgets is constantly increasing. Smartphones are getting old after 6 months and only Android with its Linux heritage can keep up. Laptops and PC's go the same way and the old approach does not cut it any more. This is perfect for Linux that has had rapid cycles for ages. |
What is interesting to me is that this rapid-release "fragmented" approach to operating system updates is the very thing that Linux used to get smacked around about at the turn of the century. Indeed, the Linux Standard Base and other standardization approaches were supposed to mitigate the "problem" of fragmentation by offering developers a safe platform towards which they could code.
Nowadays, however, everywhere we look, its almost an every platform for themselves approach. Instead of unification, it seems that operating system vendors are doing what they want to do and letting the application developers sort it out amongst themselves.
There is evidence the enterprise marketplace is not ready for this approach… Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server are still updated at a slower pace. But as operating system vendors look beyond the enterprise, rapid-release seems to be the only approach.
Looks like Linux is the most suitable OS for the future
Confronted with this the Microsoft/OEM Hardware certification looks obsolete already. At least the part that is intended to exclude Linux....
