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The Near-Term Future Of Open Source Desktops
securitas writes "eWEEK has two related articles on the growth of open source software. The first article is about the growth of desktop Linux, featuring Lotus and the Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF) founder Mitch Kapor, who says (among other things) that call centers will be where the next wave of growth for desktop Linux happens and that 10 percent of global desktops will be Linux in a few years. He bases his statements on a report by Eazel and GNOME Foundation co-founder Bart Decrem entitled 'Desktop Linux Technology and Market Overview' (PDF) mentioned last week. The second story is about open source software growth in the government sector where government agencies like the U.S. Census Bureau have embraced OS software for projects like the State and County QuickFacts site. Based on Perl, Apache, MySQL and Linux, the site gets 200,000 page views a day."
Call centers just need something for their monkeys to use that works, and the cheaper, the better. Linux fits that nicely. Doesn't need to play the newest games, or run the newest Windows software, just deal with callers.
Once Linux is the main OS sold with new computers and Windows is the "optional extra" - then I'll regard it as a success. At the moment the market share of Microsoft means that most people know of one OS - Windows - and that is what they ask for with new computers....
Video Game cheats, hints a
Another place that could use this might be places like public libraries, where pretty much all you need is a working browser. Plus, a place like that could give some nice exposure to Linux.
and that 10 percent of global desktops will be Linux in a few years.
In a few years. We know the revolution is just round the corner. But how many corners do we have to revolve around?
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
Just as long as my internet works, I don't care. Where I work, we use LINUX, Windows, and Mac OS X (the latter being used only on my machine). There is no liberation of the masses for the masses. They don't care. Two of us are LINUX fans, and the other 10 use windows because they just want to check their email. They don't want to ever touch anything in the command line, and I can't wholly blame them.
LINUX makes sense for the corporate IT infrastructure. The UNIX of old is expensive, and Windows is buggy and (also) expensive. As long as people can get sub-$600 PCs running Windows ME, they will buy them because they simply don't care. And their job and their life has nothing to do with computers other than that everything happens to need computers today. The end all is "If ain't broke, don't fix it." My computer checks my email. And lets me read slashdot.
on what the call center does. I'm sure it would work fine for dealing with customer accounts. However, many call centers are software support. It wouldn't make a lot of sense to put linux on a machine when you are supporting Windows or a Windows application. Credit card, insurance, and similiar industries probably could move to linux easily with the exception of required office applications. OpenOffice might be able to fill in that role though, and it would significantly reduce overall cost.
Although Linux is a good solution for call centre workstations that doesn't take into consideration corporate workstation standards. In a help desk type of environment, I would hazard a guess that most call centres are simply departments within a larger company. They probably don't have any say whatsoever in what kind of desktop OS - the internal corporate IT department does.
Most people in developing countries don't really give a fuck about pirating windows, as their main concern is food, water, and education.
Sometimes I think that everyone is going about this in the wrong way. Yes... the Linux desktop needs some work before my 70-year-old Aunt can use it... but the tools are all there. Its not like the desktop WON"T do what she wants, she just doesn't know how to make it work.
.WMV for video, .PPT for presentations and .DOC for documents.
.MPEG or .HTML. I create presentations in .PPT all the time (crossover office)... but I save them as .HTML. Same goes for just about any other office document.
For Linux to succeed on the desktop, I think two things need to happen... somebody like HP, IBM, or Dell needs to step up and sell systems that are pre-configured so that people don't have to mess with them. Just turn them on and away they go.
Secondly, its the DOCUMENTS. The world needs to start using something other than
The only reason MS has a stranglehold on the desktop is because people have been convinced they need to use those formats. Everytime I turn around I see a website or some CD that is forcing people to use these documents.
The next time you are creating a document or file format.... even if its using Windows... force yourself to use
If anyone sends me a proprietary document format, I ask them to please re-save it in a format that I can use and send it again. Nobody has ever refused yet.
Just a thought,
-Kevin
-K.
particularly as the breadth of applications available on Linux today is lacking
It can't be *that* lacking, since Munich is switching 14,000 desktops whole-hog to Linux.
Personally, I find "10% market share in a few years" to be extremely pessimistic. If it has less than 30% share by, say, 2008, I'll be very disappointed.
And I think that will happen. Once you get the critical mass, there will be virtually NO reason for ANYONE to stick with Windows, except for pure legacy apps.
I think MySQL is more popular because it is easier to set up and start working with. Many people claim that this is not the case and Postgres is just as easy, but these people don't look at it from the point of a newbie.
MySQL installation: Grab the RPM's, rpm -Uvh *, or use InstallShield on Windows. That's it. There is nothing else to set up, there isn't even a default password anymore when connecting from localhost. It's literally a 2 minute process.
Contrast this with PostgreSQL where you got to bootstrap the damn database as the user running the daemon process. Then you've got to set up some users for the database etc. MySQL, being a much simpler system than Postgres, also allows you to do radical things to your databases, you can drop and alter everything, don't worry about details like what indexes you've got, you can slap those on later. Postgres on the other hand enforces some limits, often you have to create a new table and move the data over just to make some bigger changes. Postgres also includes the notion of database maintenance. People who know Postgres might be shocked to learn that DB maintenance is a completely unknown concept for most MySQL users, there's no vacuuming to be done.
Finally, one must not forget the MySQL website, the documentation and even the names of the projects. All these things matter. You might not like it, databases shouldn't be chosen by how their websites look, but the truth is far stranger.
From the article at e-week -
putting pressure on Microsoft Corp Is this guy nuts or what?
Nathan Hanks, managing director of technology for Continental Airlines Inc., said his concern is making sure that he can turn the Houston company's airplanes around as quickly as possible. As such, the open-source-community concept is not as appealing to him. When the SQL Slammer worm hit earlier this year, Microsoft responded immediately and addressed the issue. Its executives also visited him to discuss the matter. This would not be possible in the open-source world, Hanks said.
Open Source allows you direct access to the developers not some suit in an anonymous department in Redmond.
Remember the SSL bug in IE5 and Konqueror? MS were still denying it was a problem weeks after the KDE team had patched the bug out. The slammer worm was also the result of another bit of crap coding.
For christ sake remind me not to fly Continental if I visit the states. If all their staff had their heads that far up their arses their pilots wouldn't be able to see where they're going and remember that 2k was built on NT and XP is built on 2k and Server 2003 probably has been in development since long before Microsoft's "Born again" security review. The software you are using is based on a 20 year legacy of piss-poor programming that will take a damn site more than a 3 month security training course to cure.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.