Which Desktop Distro Will Die First?

Over at NewsForge, Roblimo asks the musical question of which of the several recently released "desktop oriented" Linux distributions won't survive the coming year. It's nice to see user-centric distributions at all, but it really is a niche market for now. Apropos that, psykocrime writes "The fine folks at UnitedLinux have issued a Press Release announcing UnitedLinux 1.0. Should be interesting to see whether this sinks or swims, considering the general ambivalence (at best) or even outright hostility (at worst) that most of the talk about United Linux has met, from the Linux community. Questions about GPL compliance, per-set licensing terms, etc... is this the future or Linux or just another albatross?" And J. J. Ramsey writes "BeyondUnreal reviews not only Xandros Desktop's installation, but also shows what this distro's $99 price tag actually gets you. Read more here. LinuxPlanet also has an in-depth review of its own."

Comments

The small will die

[spinlocked]

Of the 'real' companies, I'm afraid the small will die first.

Redhat (possibly et. al.) have the best chance of success in the business world because the have:

a) Industry credibility

b) A half decent support organisation

No serious business customer is going to invest any money without those...

Who will succeed: Lindows

[HoserHead]

I've seen Michael Robertson, CEO of Lindows.com, speak (at Debconf 2) - and I can tell you that I am certain that Lindows.com will not be yet another dropout of the Desktop Linux business.

How am I sure?

Michael's a salesman, pure and simple. He speaks with passion and he makes you love him and his company - and I've heard that he succeeded in convincing a lot of people who attended Debconf. You should be aware this is coming from a group of people who are probably a lot less friendly to corporate (particularly proprietary corporate) involvement in the free software world.

Michael's ability to make the connections, to sell his company and his vision - that's what's going to make the difference. I've interviewed for a job at Xandros, and I'm sure they've got good people technically (I'm saying this sight unseen), but there's one thing Lycoris, Xandros and all the rest don't have - Michael Robertson. He will make Lindows.com succeed, I guarantee you.

(Of course, this is discounting the huge war chest of money he got from the sale of mp3.com. I'll bet he could fund Lindows.com for a lot of years even if he never sold a single product.)

Okay....

[cookiepus]

I'll take the plunge and post for the first time in my life.

No one will pay for desktop linux. Why? Because people who pay for OSs are generally businesses, and businesses want productivity. There's just not enough of that in Linux desktop apps. If you're going to pay, you may as well pay for what's going to give you the most bang for your buck. And that's Windows.

I am not anti-Linux, at all. I cringe at Windows-based servers, and I fully realize Unix-based server power and flexibility, and encourage my clients to consider it. One of my clients moved to Red Hat and they pay RH some nominal fee for every RH server they ship out. Not even for that RH Network thing. They just pay some ammount to ensure that RH continues its development.

And yet, these guys use Windows on the desktops in the office. They are all Unix professionals. But for shit they need to do on the workstation, Windows can't be beat.

Re:Okay....

[Phroggy]

No one will pay for desktop linux. Why? Because people who pay for OSs are generally businesses, and businesses want productivity. There's just not enough of that in Linux desktop apps. If you're going to pay, you may as well pay for what's going to give you the most bang for your buck. And that's Windows.

WRONG. More and more businesses (and government agencies, and schools) are switching to Linux, precisely BECAUSE it gives them more bang for their buck. Yes, even on the desktop.

Besides, I bought Slackware, after I'd already downloaded and burned the ISO, because I appreciate that Patrick et al have done and I want to support them.

Re:Dumb...

[garcia]

this is not Insightful.

I don't believe that they should merge. If they did I would have to put up w/the tons of shit from Mandrake and RedHat while all I want is Debian.

What's wrong w/Mandrake? What isn't? That's my opinion and that's yours... That's why I don't want Linux distributions to merge.

Why is UL crap? b/c they are trying to band against what they believe is an attempt by one distribution to gain too much power.

I don't think that UL will gain much ground but that doesn't mean it's crap.

Re:Red Hat is "de facto" standard Linux

[__aadkms7016]

2003 could be an interesting year if Sun
bought RedHat. The numbers work: at 862M
market cap, RHAT is 10% of Sun's market
cap. Plus, Sun has 5B+ of cash in the bank.

It may be worth it, just for the transient
effect of having all of the hardware vendors
who partner with Redhat scurry to find a new
Linux vendor. That's six months of FUD, during
which Sun can launch their new Linux hardware
as a safe choice against Dell and IBM and HP.
The long-term value of RedHat is an extra.

Re:Probably Most of Them..

[quantaman]

I too am a compsci major and I have found that I cannot code in windows anymore. The linux environment is simply too well equiped for programming not to mention how much I use ssh to use labs remotely. That being said I still find myself constantly wondering how to do task X, what do I use to uncompress this (yeah I know man pages and the gui acn do it also), how do I install this, and why I haven't I had sound for over a week:)

But I often have the "Ah shit I am in Linux, now I need to reboot to windows before I can do this" moment."

Other than some games or having to talk to someone on MSN (not for a few months) I pretty much have this urge finally kicked unless I want to print something...

Red Hat will be the desktop Linux

[bkontr]

I know some people will be upset at this, but Red Hat has more staying power than all of the other Linuxes combined (other than Debian and Mandrake). I don't have anything against the other linuxes, but let's face it what easily sets RH apart is that they have the most clout with major businesses here in the US and abroad. I think even Linus still uses RH! No other Linux has that kind of credibility factor going for it. With RH 8.0, the look and feel of the desktop seems professional and appears to be striving towards some type of consistent feel, look etc....and this is where linux IMHO is really lacking. A business linux on the on the server and even more importantly on desktops has to have some level of consistency. I hope RH understands this concept. What I think the linux distributors really need to do is to get together and finally decide on a standard configuration for /etc and init scripts....the resulting linuxes then can be called standard linux. That doesn't mean there can't be non standard linuxes, but I think it would go a long way in getting linux accepted. It's clear to me that RH knows they are on the way to being the standards leader for linux and they don't have much competition.