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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. "
What if the kernel used year 2008 is the Hurd? Is it still "linux". We should really speak about free unix like operating systems.
"Siemens found KDE to be more "Windows-like" than Gnome, but that lead to problems when non-technical users expected a more Windows-like experience. Gnome, particularly Ximian's version, was "different enough" to set user expectations that the experience would be less like Windows, which led to fewer adoption problems."
Need more reasons to have at least two different desktops?
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.
Mark me down as flamebait, but perhaps this is truly important. Perhaps we as a community should stop trying to mimic existing applications and begin innovating instead. Certainly, a good user interface is necessary, but is Windows truly the best user experience? OF course, it's ridiculously hard to come up with a new user interface that is logical and easy to use. After all, a button is a button. It can't really get much better than that, but perhaps there is room for improvement.
I still remember the first time my girlfriend saw me running Linux and said that that looked exactly like Windows and then asked why would I bother going through the hassle of installing Linux when I could just use Windows, which was preinstalled and already worked. Keep in mind that she saw me using KDE and Gnome. (I do realize there are other window managers in this world.)
She had a good point. Windows 2000 and XP have been much less crash-prone, and I find myself increasingly using Windows XP and Mac OS X instead of *nix as my desktop OS of choice. Instead, only servers that I must work on use Linux, and I simply SSH into them, skipping all of the GUI nonsense. For me, the best user interface in Linux is the command-line - not the GUI that looks like Windows anyway.
Nobody can really predict the direction the computer industry is moving in the next 5 years. The technology is still very young and futher has a very high innovation speed. Prediction over such a long time range are rubbish.
Just remember the classical examples of such predictions getting fucked: AI, "processors beyond 300 MHz are physically impossible", "640 kB is enough for everyone", "OS/2 is the system of the future" etc.
And for Linux: there is hot stuff like Grid computing, immersive VR, Quantum computing etc. on the way and I don't see even the smallest efford to integrate this into Linux.
The only thing we can predict for the next 5 years is crackpot MBA doing academic, oops non-academic of course (we can't insult academics), circle-jerks and spewing out rubbish predictions.
Ha, outsource everyone to India.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
To me, the really puzzling thing is why people who claim to not even bother to read the predictions bother to write about them.
...but this is extremely unlikely. In the event that they pull MS's entrenched ass out of the corporate world, maybe. People would be a lot more willing to run it at home if they ran it at work. Furthermore if Linux holds 20% you're going to have compatibility problems up the wazoo(sp?) The reason everyone uses Microsoft products is because it works[sic] so well together.
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
You've hit the mark. The only way people are going to dump Windows for Linux or any other OS is if that OS has a compelling difference that makes it worth the change. While one can argue that Linux or *BSD is more stable that is hard to demostrate without prolonged use and if the system is too close to Windows yet not quite there as is the case with KDE then users will be frustrated and leave it before the realize that it is more stable and more secure. The very things that make Linux the better OS are the hardest for end users to see.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
How quickly we forget. Just a couple days ago a gent wrote to slashdot stating his company would pay, what was it, $350K to RedHat for their latest pricing scheme. That's free for very high prices of free. Oddly, it seems that the higher price tag adds some credibility. While Debian was a very popular choice for the replies, Debian lacks official support and the software vendors stamp of approval, which many (most) companies consider essential, hence was a moot point made over and over and over again.
Yesterday I put in some overtime by working in our manufacturing plant. Wore my nifty CopyLeft baseball cap with the backwards C. Several of the college kids asked me what it was. When I told them, not a one had a clue as to what I was talking about. They never heard of GNU or linux or opensource/free software in general. That didn't leave me with a warm fuzzy feeling for the future.
In our IT department, while I'm not what one would call an advocate, whenever I mention linux or anything in the free software genre, I quickly get an "oh shut up, it's junk" reply.
20% by 2008 is just a silly pipedream. The major problem seems to be mind share. Folks who aren't fanatical about Windows are seen as the bad guys who infect computers with viri and engage in other immoral activities that cause trouble. I picture a witch hunt type senario against linux et al rather than a major acceptance.
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The mob moves like demons possessed
Quiet in conscience, calm in their right
Confident their ways are best
The righteous rise
With burning eyes
Of hatred and ill-will
Madmen fed on fear and lies
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We've seen it over and over again, the better choice doesn't always win. The only way I see linux succeeding is by first dominating non-US markets. e.g. Company X sets up a shop in Country Y where linux is number one, they use linux there, it proves to be a good value, then is implemented in other locations. But given the Windows network design, I think that is even pretty far stretched, as incorporating non-Winodws network segments in their forest/tree thing can be a real pain. And, let us not forget, the US is basically the only place on earth that continues to reject the metric system.
Well, that's enough Sunday morning babbling :P
that Linux shouldn't necessarily be trying to emulate MS Windows' dekstop so much as making one that's better even though different.
Generally too many choices for the end user (read jane secretary, or joe PHB) are BAD because it confuses them and creates IT maintenence nightmares.
It is true that if you try to create a gui interface that is just like MS windows, except you differ in some crucial areas, the user will be put off by the "well windows doesn't do/have that" comparison. However, if the user expects it to be different (because it looks that way or obviously acts that way) then their expectation base is "Hm... this is neat, I will have to learn it" which creates a whole different set of expectations that are not driven by comparisons to MS Windows.
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
More importantly, by that time why would a business user have anything more then a dumb terminal. X server already has proven itsself to work with this model, why would anyone have to open applications at all locally?
Largo Florida already has done this, saving millions of dollars and is the easiest system to administer. Its users just use it, they dont care it its windows or linux (its KDE).
To answer a question that will probably pop up in a reply to my post, yes, I did read the article and actually printed it out. It was greater than any work of Shakespeare! :)
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.
You see, all you people who think the Linux desktop needs to be "more like Windows?" If you go the path of "like Windows" then you have to make Linux exactly the same as Windows or ex-Windows users (99% of the population) get confused.
On the other hand, as this story says, if the desktop is different enough from Windows, people automatically (because of psychological reasons) know it is not Windows so they expect things to be different, and are more open to the change.
Incidentally, they mention that training lusers on Linux takes 2 days, the same as a Windows upgrade, but I don't remember if they mentioned this: Upgrades to the Linux system (other than automatically administered bug patches for security reasons) won't need to take place as often as for Windows systems.
- Linux makes better use of the hardware.
- Open standards and open source on Linux means that nobody is forcing you to upgrade.
- Unlike in the Windows world, where you must upgrade because the rest of the world is doing it, there is no such requirement on Linux, except for security related patches which can be remotely administered by the IT department without the user even knowing it.
This means that companies will have to spend many less two days to get users acquainted with changes to their computer systems.Even if more horsepower is required for some reason (which would, in the Windows world, require all 50,000,000,000 computers in a company to be replaced with faster models and new software), the company can install one or more big huge servers running Linux or any other UNIX and use the resources on that machine, leaving all or most of the users' machines alone. Again, the users wouldn't even know anything was changed... and that means savings in cost. (If you have 45,000 employees on computers and you have to train them for two days, that's likely to cost twice as much as buying six million dollars in servers. (Figure 45,000 people making $18 an hour, 8 hours per day, for 2 days... Add to that all the taxes, insurances and benefits you have to pay and you've got two really expensive days!)
Furthermore, the free software community reduces costs for companies, not only because of licensing fees but because bugs and security problems get found and fixed quickly, and new features are added when someone needs them... I imagine that as more "enterprises" make the switch, they'll hire some folks into their IT department to do nothing but develop Linux to meet their special needs, and that means that with thousands of companies worldwide doing this, in addition to tech companies like IBM and HP, and in addition to the already existing (and growing) developer community... Linux is going to continue picking up speed and inertia, and Microsoft, with their "little team" of 30,000 programmers, soon won't be able to keep up.
It is for all the above reasons that I firmly believe that companies that don't invest in Linux now will scamper to invest in it later... or be left in the dust.
Linux will go the same path.