zelurxunil's Journal: Direction?

I wrote a comment about an upcoming schism in Linux a few days ago, and I havn't been able to shake the thought since. While I was making perhaps a slight hyperbole in calling it a "great schism" I do feel there is a lack of unity in the idea of what should be called progress in the development of linux. As I stated in the comment, we do see things like RedHat pulling their free version (all except for some limited one I've never heard of), and SuSe being bought out by Novell which raises questions about the future of its free ISO image downloads. On the other side a little while back we saw an interview with Linus Torvalds where he emphasized that the desktop and end user is where Linux is heading. While its quite possible for linux to spread to the desktop through commercial distro's, why would some average joe Windows user get linux if Windows came "free" (it seems people don't have any idea that they pay for it within the cost of their PC.) Linux, tobe quite honestly fighting to be able to get up to speed with some of the features Windows has on the desktop. But even when (notice a when not an "if and when") Linux surpasses Windows in abilities and perhaps user-friendliness or ease of use, few people are going to pay $20-$40 cause some geek told them that the OS on their system is obsolete. The Best advantage Linux has over windows has right now is that it is Free, and is better than software costing hundreds of dollars. The power comes from its roots, in open source, free software. Windows was meant to sell, Linux was meant to perform, and we need to make the distinction otherwise where is the real difference?

Related:
Linus's Interview
Novell's announcement to aquire SuSe