I work in IT. IMO, the civilian population moving to Linux is inevitable. As Linux finds itself and good ways to do things that don’t require people to know bash, or customize options by manually editing config files, things will push that way.

IMO, it will happen, but not quite yet. We’re seeing the initial push of the privacy conscious and those that want to avoid becoming a product. It’s good, but we’re not there yet. We’re also seeing some pretty major players, most notably valve, pushing for consumer goods that are unashamedly Linux under the hood. This is, slowly but surely, pushing forward compatibility for apps running on Linux.

We probably won’t see any line of business apps adopting a Linux build any time soon, and business in general actually wants the majority of what Microsoft is pushing for… Along with government institutions (for their own needs), and more. I don’t see business moving towards Linux anytime soon… Not beyond it’s current role in server operations.

As stuff like steamOS get better and better, and find ways to solve problems in consumer friendly ways, that knowledge will feed back into existing Linux tools. We’ll get to a point where Linux will be as plug and play as Windows, and that’s when we actually have a good chance of migrating a lot of personal PCs to Linux.

The Battle for the workplace is still a long way out. Well after the Linux home PC is commonplace. People at the office will simply have more experience with Linux, and push for being able to use Linux at work and eventually that’s going to start to happen… Probably not in our lifetimes.

To me, it’s only a matter of time. Unless Linux undergoes a hostile takeover and unforeseen bullshit happens, it will happen.