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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. "
The title leads one to believe that Linux will have 20% of all desktops. However, it's actually 20% of desktops in large corporations. Still very cool, but not quite as significant.
Consider a time span of 6 years. That is 2 linux computers or 3 windows computers.
I'd say that you've just saved 1/3 on hardware costs.
Is that few people come back to check afterwards.
Siemens is presumably positioning themselves as a Linux vendor. Whatever they say should be taken with a large pinch of salt.
The future has an amazing ability to be exactly like the past in every aspect we thought it would change, and totally different in those aspects we expected to remain the same.
So, here is my prediction of Linux in 2008:
- There will be an explosion in the development of portable computers, provoked by the appearance of OLED screens that are cheap and flexible and gentle on batteries.
- Some of these computers will be truly wierd, ranging from disposable to wall-sized.
- Most of these new devices will run Linux or another free OS with similar plasticity and easy consumption.
- By 2008, server computers will be assembled out of brick-style units (storage, CPU, devices) that let you throw together a server of any capability from standard pieces with no tools. The OS will be Linux, the principal vendors will be IBM and DELL, the technology remarkably similar to clustering. Windows will try and fail to compete.
- The concept of 'desktop' will thus be totally passe by 2008. Only poor slobs will keep a desk chained to a computer.
- The majority of 'desktop's outside the US and parts of Europe will run Linux distributions.
- Most of those distributions will be heavily customised per country, often sponsored by governments. This will start in China and India and work up through every literate and connected country.
- The US will remain the stubborn consumer of desktop Windows OS and applications.
Conclusion: Windows can only dominate a market that is static. But markets do not rest. New technologies permit and drive new platforms, and each time, it gets harder to justify Windows. In 5 years, the current landscape will have been changed by the appearance of many new platforms where Windows is a poor second choice. It is these new platforms that will finally kill Windows and Microsoft, not replacement on the desktop.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
I think you're wrong for two reasons. OK, make that three.
First I think you overestimate the importance of commercial applications. They're only important when they have a great advantage over their Free competitors, which is the case in a small and shrinking number of areas.
Second, even with poorly written commercial code, it's often fairly simple to port code among similar Free systems. So the cost for a commercial supplier to offer more platforms is very low.
Thirdly, there are more and more compatibility layers that are becoming popular anyway. Novells 'linux' client for groupware, for instance, is written in Java and will run just about anywhere. I expect this will only become more popular as well. And, as BSD (and even SCO Unix) show, Linux binary support itself is becoming a sort of compatibility layer as well - there are many systems already that aren't linux but can run linux binaries without complaint.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
So, while it may happen that the Linux ABI may serve as some kind of general compatibility layer, there's no reason for Linux itself to be around, actually. And of course, if Linux would somehow happen to become unpopular, maybe portable programming would become a little more fashionable again - after all, if you know what you are doing, porting your code to another POSIX platform can be nearly as easy as configure; make; make install - works fine for commercial applications, too.
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
I won't be surprised if you were hit with the blaster bug last week. At my place of work, a boot everyday is expected so that the IT Minesweeper Consultants and Solitaire Experts written boot scripts drop in the updates. SM
We do not have a history of profitable operations. Our future SCOsource licensing revenue is uncertain.
Here at UC Davis, almost all the math teachers (and probably other departments) use linux desktops in their offices. I was rather suprised. Does anyone else have any examples of Linux desktop (non)use in higher education?
I have a similar experience, but since I had to lock my hard drive in a safe at the end of the day I used the hibernate (suspend to disk) function in Win2K. I could leave my system at the end of the day, and return to it at the start of the next in exactly the same state as when I left it. If I'd had to do a full shutdown and then re-open all of the editor windows I typically had open then I would have lost a lot of time.
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Huh? Do you have a point?
4 1239.sh tml?tid=23
Go use one myself? Um OK, I can think of nothing better for my workplace or my house. I have been talking with the IT buyers in Florida a little bit and I like what they have done.
Are you on crack? Or are you trying to make the point that IT professionals will be put out of work by this technology? I dont give a damn about that, I want to save people money.
here is the link you want:
http://newsforge.com/newsforge/01/08/10/14
Because these systems provide a hardware abstraction layer that makes writing games for the variety of today's hardware feasible.