Maybe Apple killed it. I have been trying out two recent releases on my Intel laptop, Slackware 12 and Mandriva 7 and am driven to maddness with the differences. Configuring Apache is easy on the former, virtual hosts and hence private web directories fail on the latter, the config file is totally paranoid. Perl/Tk runs on the latter, only Tcl/Tk on the former. You have to be root on the former to mount devices, there is a totally inscrutable message from Konqueror if Joe User tries to access a device. It is lack of configuration or standards which is going to kill Linux, especially when the same things run on Mac OS X with little pain.
Or maybe Linux won't die after all. If we live in conservative times, where people's focus is on control and preserving their jobs, Linux will flourish for the same reason Java will flourish. It is because of the paranoid engineer at Mandrake who composed httpd.conf; obfiscate things enough, don't document, or create security by complexity or obscurity and you will have guarenteed your position as a developer or system admin., until, that is, someone makes all the complexity unnecessary. If Apache2's design has become too complex, it may defeat web site
hackers, but it will no longer be used, eventually getting replaced by something easier to use.
The idea that complexity is a good thing made more by obscurity and elitism is a negative attitude in a negative time where fear rather than possibility drives things, power and control win out over openness and clarity.
