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Linux will have 20% desktop market share by 2008?
unmadindu writes "Siemens Business Systems, after conducting an extensive survey on non technical workers ("secretaries and managers, not IT people") is predicting that the Linux desktop will capture 20% of the market for desktop computers in large enterprises within the next 5 years. Senior program manager Duncan McNutt, who has overseen Siemens's testing of Linux desktops with users and administrators in enterprise settings, believes that the Ximian desktop and application suite, running on either SuSE or Red Hat, requires two days of training, which is the same as what most enterprises budget for a Windows/MS Office version upgrade. Interestingly, they used Ximian Desktop, instead of KDE, because Gnome, particularly Ximian's version, was "different enough" to set user expectations that the experience would be less like Windows. "
And we'll be driving to the local electronics store in our flying cars to buy Linux, which we'll install on our personal droids in preparation for our vacation to the moon!
Am I the only person who cracked up when I read this?
Yeah, because we know if "secretaries and managers" need more of anything, it's games.
From my experience, managers critically depend on solitaire, at least that's the one app they always have open when I get a peek at their desktops. For secretaries, games might be less critical, as long as the platform provides them with animated wallpapers, mouse cursors, and a means to play animations with drunken singing reindeers they got as an email attachment from people they don't know around christmas. How else would they get any work done?
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.