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Spanish Province Dist-Upgrades
Johnny Mnemonic writes "The Spanish province of Extremadura has adopted Linux for the official OS of schools and offices, largely because of price. Simply, they don't have enough money for other OSes, and they promise to handle the rollout more gracefully than a similar Linux initiative in Mexico. According to Wired, this is the first time a European school system has switched to Linux."
IMHO, it's going to be the other way around: people will first switch to open source applications, (StarOffice/OpenOffice for instance, since it works in Windows) and then to an Open Source OS. It's easier this way, and it does more economic sense. I can imagine my company switching to an open source Office suite to save $500, I don't imagine them migrating to Linux to save on a Windows license they already paid for when the bought the computer. Besides, a marketoid who can MS Office can use StarOffice/OpenOffice very easily. If a marketoid has a problem with OpenOffice, I'm sure he will find his way around. But I can't imagine the same marketoid doing a su or changing file permissions. Besides the support team in many companies is made of MCSEs very familiar with Windows and that perceive Linux like a thread to their jobs. But I don't think they view OpenOffice like a thread, since they are not so into MS Office either.
Once a companies rely on specific open source applications, it might make sense for the market and free developers to target their efforts in providing bullet proof distributions based on specific applications, that hide all complexity to the final user (a la AOL), and gives maintenance responsibilities to the administrators. By complexity I mean very simple things for technical people (file permissions, packages installation, etc...), that look very complex for regular users.
For know, it's to soon to target the non-technical desktop market. Look at Red Hat, they don't even mention the desktop market. They focus only on the server side.
Move people first to open source applications, (I convinced 5 people to move over Mozilla on Windows this month on my job). OS will come later.
Linux will be ready for the Desktop when the majority of *neophyte computer users* don't need tech support and hand-holding to use it, or when the tech support which is available is as freely and ubiquitously available as it is for the Windows platform.
Viable - Capable of living; born alive and with such form and development of organs as to be capable of living; -- said of a newborn, or a prematurely born, infant.
Viable doesn't mean that it conquers all. It means that there is something there that works.
In Linux, the customer has to understand debs, and rpms, and tarballs, minimum.
Why? Minimum, you have to understand debs or rpms, whichever is native on your system. For most major distributions, that will let you install pretty much everything you could possibly want. I have at most two or three packages installed from source hanging around, and none from RPM. You may as well claim that any Windows user must understand zips and rars and isos, minimum.
People have been using computers with DOS and different variations of Windows for quite some time. I do not think anyone could claim that those systems were consistent or easy to use. They have always been a mess. We just happen to know how to use them.
;-)
Joel addresses the issue of frustration when moving between platforms: little things that are different frustrate people.
Anyways, if you are just starting to train people (like this is the case), you might train them in Linux or Windows.
Sure, Linux could use some improvements, but those improvements will not happen in a vacuum, in a lab and then deployed to the rest of the world. Just like Windows and the MacOS they will benefit the most from direct and real life exposure.
There are a couple of very nice stories that the Linex people have witnesses over the past few days (my favorite one being a sheep sheppard in the region that fell in love with the Linux distribution they had prepared).
Professors that have offered their input and the help of themselves and their students to improve Linex: This is the kind of thing that you will not see with proprietary software.
Anyways, we are not *that* far, you are just not used to Linux on the desktop. And it will only get better
Miguel.