Tala Ko

Recently, I read some posts (1 and 2) by Larry Dignan on ZDNet. He had this to say:

The OS will never be totally irrelevant, but it will be increasingly less important. It’ll be plumbing.

He also introduced me to the idea of “the Webtop, which will deliver programs through the browser.”

Actually, the idea doesn’t surprise me. Sometime ago, I wrote that what I do in Ubuntu isn’t all that different from what I do in Windows. I consider my use of Ubuntu a show of support for computing freedoms, even though I as a non-programmer aren’t equipped to fully use those freedoms.

I could have gone further and said that what I do in Ubuntu isn’t all that different from what I do in Windows, because I can do most of what I need to do through my cross-platform browser, Firefox. Most of that work is done with Google apps, too: GMail, Google Notebook, Google Docs, etc. I also prefer the web-based version of Yahoo! Messenger because it’s nice and neat (and kind of a ripoff of Pidgin’s tabbed chat window, but hey). I just can’t use it at work because of the URL filter. :p

The point is that as long as there are browsers and browser-based applications (once I get the hang of a browser-based image editing app, I’ll be all set), it doesn’t really matter what OS I use. Except, as I said before, as a matter of principle. Principle behind the plumbing.

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The K2 theme has gotten wonky, so I changed to [ ]. Will fix the image header eventually. Any theme I try seems wonky, meaning the right-hand column appears at the bottom of the entire blog instead. Wish I could view it on the work computer to see if it’s just the home computer that has a problem. What do you see?

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I remembered this OS-becoming-less-important thing because we’ll finally be getting our own computers (which will run either XP or Vista) at the office soon. No more borrowing from the Tech department’s supply of standby laptops. No more putting my USB stick on the rack with portable apps; now it’ll be back to simply storing files. :)