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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.