Linux should aim at Better Life, not Better Imitation

Just occurs to me that there is now a 50/50 split of Linux's focus on the future.

Half the people are trying to improve things that imitate (often necessarily!) other peoples' work, half the people are working on innovative new things that do things differently (No I can't think of an example right now), and half the people are working on stuff they really don't need to bother with.

Yes that's 3 halves, thats the way my brain works.

Strikes me that Linux should push a better paradigm, more so than pushing existing ones.

For example(s):

* Its a full-blown unix, not some toy desktop modular TSR system like MSWindows, and not a vested-interest legacy project like Apple OSX, and far, far funkier than anything Sun etc, or the BSD crowd for that matter, have.
Linux should rejoice in this. It can already, as a direct result of being so 'hardcore', offer full security and a choice of desktops, and is a killer just right there with those two!!

* You can overload a machine with running apps, absolutely drive it into the ground with open windows. It'll get slow, it'll get lumpy .... but most of the time (most of) it won't lock up or crash. It's better. Not 'as good', not 'different' - better.

* Diving straight into the commercial desktop - let's face it, really FACE it: most of it is concerned with moving around large amounts of utter CRAP more easily. Meetings you don't need to have, 'process' documents nobody will follow, presentations that just waste people's lives, and loads and loads of wankspeak that never need have been uttered to allow an enterprise to keep rolling. Let's leave that behind, let's find out what REALLY needs doing and do it, and do it in the simplest way we can so it can be expanded and is reliable!

There is the opportunity for apps that do things completely differently. For desktops with wild and strange abilities (NO, KEEP IT SIMPLE!! We DONT MEAN ADD MORE SOFTWARE BUSSES, WE MEAN _SIMPLIFY_ THE EXISTING ONES AND WORK OUT HOW TO MAKE THEM MORE EASILY USABLE BY PROGRAMMERS!!! By my CapsLock key, this needs to be driven home!!!), which could really improve the way people work and create.

Jon