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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. "
right now I have openbox3 with customized gnome-panel open, a transparent aterm and firebird with 4 virtual desktops open, and I tell you, it look prettier and works faster than any other system. especially now with the preempt patches to the 2.6 kernel and the new 2.4 gnome, all linux needs is games.
The new John Carmack games will come out this year, too. Also, Michael Moore will make an authentic documentary by 2005. Finally, OSDN will be profitable by Q4 of 2006.
Yeah.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
I would love to see it, though I think it depends more on what MS is capable of delivering with Longhorn that what Linux can do. My guess is that if the economy is still in the crapper, and people are still using a decidedly client server computing model, then upgrades to a new MS OS are going to be slow on the uptake. We need a paradigm shift in IT, something new and wonderful needs to happen. Linux desktops should be going for new and wonderful, not same old same old.
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!
All these so-called 'predictions' are useless. No-one can look into the future and especially in the fast moving world of hard- and software the Next Best Thing is always just around the corner, so why do people take the time even to read predictions like this?
-- Cheers!
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?
They used Ximian Desktop because the menu interface is ordered with a more clear naming than KDE.
My 0.0002 euros
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.
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.
While the article is a bit thin on details on this, I'd be curious to know what this extends to. Is it just the look of the widgets? Questions like single vs. double click? Menu layouts of the standard applications? Did anyone make this experience before when trying to convert folks to Linux?
It's a shame that we don't have results of a survey like this from before and after the SCO storm hit. It would probably very useful when it came time to extract some damages from the pump and dump crew.
I for one am scared that the long term effect of the SCO lawsuit will be a slowing or reversal of linux's creep towards the desktop where the final battle with closed source development will be.
PornStarGuru
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.
Whatever name SCO chooses for *nix once they have sole proprietorship of it?
In addition to this statement from Siemens, I wonder if there is any company that has ever evaluated the time lost in desktop use using Windows 98/2000 on PCs in an enterprise-wide level compared to Linux, in a typical day's work, and that which is lost with linux. To be fair, this comparison ought to be with controlled environment (well set-up systems, users are only Power Users and therefore unable to install applications themselves, etc..).
This would result in something like:
Setup: Intel 500MHz/1GHz Desktop (or laptop)
Cold Boot Up
Login time
starting Lotus Notes/Outlook (viewing emails/starting new messages in Notes is historically long!)
opening word processor 1st time/next time
opening spreadsheet first time/next time
opening presentation tool first time/next time
opening web browser first time/next time
shutting down
rebooting (yes, even in linux this may happen!)
number of rebooting
etc... (applications in Enterprise environment, not home use, hence no video viewer or filesharing software for example. IM is not yet a universally accepted tool in my experience either)
If workers in a 1000-employee company were asked to monitor all these tasks for a whole week, half of them on linux, half of them on Windows, this should return an average that's actually measurable and would start making sense.
Does this exist anywhere?
There is no god
It'll reach desktop prominence just in time to play Duke Nukem Forever!
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Am I the only person who cracked up when I read this?
Yes, not quite as significant, but it paves the way for more home users. If an employee has a linux workstation at the office, and gets used to their particular interface, then they'll be much more likely to ask for Linux when they purchase their next new home computer.
:(
I doubt the 20% figure is accurate. I might be wrong, but my gut tells me otherwise.
This will NEVER happen by 2008.
As another reader put it "Oh Come On".
Even if linux were to get to 10%, MS would release a new stripped down version of windows and office for a reduced price to cut into the market that this study says is going to flock to linux because it only takes 2 days of training.
What happens when these people get sent a MS Project file and can't open it, or what happens when they call the support desk and the person tells them to open their c:\winnt folder??
Come on people, you are starter than these posts.
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.
20% of desktop computers running Linux, and SCO charges 699$ per computer, so this equals ??? I guess SCO will get a decent amount of money by then.
The IT section color scheme sucks.
Perhaps we as a community should stop trying to mimic existing applications and begin innovating instead.
If the development trend goes that way, then we'll start hearing "For Linux to be accepted in the home and enterprise it must be much more like Windows". There'll be whinging for innovation and there'll be whinging for re-implentation. Could it be that maybe developers will work on what they want to and ignore the pundits? P
I wounder if that desktop expansion will be more at the expense of Microsoft or Sun (and to a lesser extent SGI, I suppose). Replacing relatively expensive Solairs desktops with Linux is straightforward; replacing M$ generally requires a shift in how applications are delivered (e.g. a move to web-based or Java applications).
...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
Because Longhorn will work out of the box. Linux is 'free' if your time has no value and you don't pay for your own bandwidth. Do you really think Joe Sixpack is in the mood to be d/ling 1.5 gigs of OS on his 56K modem? The only other way to get it is off your friend with the cable modem but Joe Sixpack isn't friends with the type of person who uses Linux. What I'm trying to say is that Linux is a very esoteric OS to the average joe. He's simply not interested and won't be until he can buy a Compaq pre-loaded with a version of Linux that looks like Windows. Also, he has to be able to go to his local Best Buy, pick up any software package on the racks and know it will just work. I have a Windows box and I buy games like they're going out of style. I've never once had to check the system requirements because I run Windows. That's how I like it. It's all about the software people. And by software, I mean games.
Look at Apple. A beautiful OS that's been around for 20 years. And yet they're stuck at 3-5% market share depending who you ask. Why is that? When it came time for me to finally upgrade my 486 two years ago I wanted a Mac but I didn't get one because none of my friends had one and there are like two games for it. A Linux box didn't even enter my mind. And why should it? By the time I got my Windows machine home I had it up and running in 10 minutes. I was surfing the web. Once the average user is at that point the furthest thing from his mind is d/ling a new OS to replace the one that's already working fine.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
According to the GNU website, "Linux" means just the kernel, so if the kernel got replaced the system is not GNU/Linux any more. It may be called GNU/Hurd, or "The GNU system" (which is also more or less usable now).
The two days of training may not seem significant. But you have to realize that most people already know how to use MS office/outlook by using it at home or school, so by the time they get in the workforce they don't need training. For Linux, they will need a day or two of training.
BTW, anyone have a link to Ximian desktop? I use Ximian evolution for email, and think it's a nice program. I tried Thunderbird, but it's still not quite there yet (I know it's only 0.1 or something, but I want something that works, not something I have to bug-test)
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.
Why does it have to be installed in large scale environnments for productivity gains? The article states that the training required is the same. If that is the case then it should be good for any size business???
Training is only part of the cost structure for any IT deployment. The cost savings of desktop Linux are due primarily to it's UNIX heritage: its security model, centralized authentication, network filesystems (both NFS and AFS), and it's inherent ability to scale from thin client to full workstation without any back-end changes to user accounts. This is all traditional 'NIX stuff going back to late '80s early '90s Workstation fare.
Why this matters is that an organization doesn't see significant cost savings along these lines until they hit a threshold deployment size, nor are the savings linear from the bottom up. Ten Linux ('NIX) workstations don't save the same percent of money in an IT budget as do one hundred. One Hundred saves less as a percentage as one thousand. I don't have numbers, but I've seen the savings first hand - the bigger your deployment gets the greater your savings due to reduced overhead (IT staff) costs.
This is why I don't think we'll see Linux take off as a desktop platform for most small businesses, but we will see it deployed throughout government and large industry players. It will likely move from foreign markets to the US as well, simply because third world industry is under heaver cost constraints compared to the US. But like all network effects, as industry uses it abroad, US players will have to follow in order to maintain some level of compatibility' most likely we'll see US players install OpenOffice and then it will mushroom from there.
JMO.
Cheers,
--Maynard
...was "different enough" to set user expectations that the experience would be less like Windows. "
Translation: You don't suffer from the cervical spine injuries and/or severe coup contra-coup brain injuries secondary to banging your head into a blue screen of death.
How to gain real marketshare for Linux on the desktop.
Standardize all hardware installation and removal in one place across all distros.
Name changes that non-it people get. Grep makes sense to IT types, but few outside IT are going to know what it means. Similiarly, I shouldn't have to explain that eth0 refers to their Network card and so on.
Improve Wine. You can give me a hundred stories about how with your uber-133t skills you get a certain archaic package to work under a certain distro and that lusers don't need graphics anyways. This is exactly the type of attitude that will keep Linux from the masses. They want to be able to use their programs, and most could care less what OS their using (how many times have you talked to someone who didn't even know which OS they had?). If they can happily use the same programs they used before, they could well not even notice the OS.
Most importantly of all, all versions of MS office must work seamlessly. This is the standard in the business world, and StarOffice, OpenOffice are poor substitutes. They don't want to learn the quirks of these packages, they just want to use MS Office. Nothing is more important for gaining marketshare than this.
Drop the attitude. The attitude that many newbies encounter is more than enough to send them back into bill's not-so loving arms. When someone is trying Linux they far too often run into someone who an elitist that thinks they should not only know *nix inside out, and be a programmer to boot. When joe-sixpack gets told to go RTFM after asking what a tarball is, he's going to get indignant and goes back to what he knows - windows.
Have a resource available to those who come from the Windows world that tells people in plain English what the Linux terminology is for equivalent ms / windows functions. Also have this resource list programs like gimp that can replace their old windows programs. A frequent complaint of those that try switching to Linux is that they can't do what they used to freely do under Windows. Slashdot types will respond, of course they can, they don't know what to use. Well, how would they know what to use?
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.
-----
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
-----
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
Either a UI should mimic windows completely and perfectly, or not at all.
If you're not going to imitate windows, you can still take good ideas from it, but that's it. You can't have users thinking that something works like windows and then it not working like windows.
If a user sits down and thinks it works like windows, then it should work like windows; if s/he doesn't think it should work like windows, then it shouldn't.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
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
The subject of this reply sounds like a troll, but considering this fact it might actually be sooner. All chinese civilians will probably be 'encouraged' to run chinese s/w as well. With 10^9 inhabitants and a growing market for personal computers, China may make a bigger dent in the statistics than Microsoft would like.
Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
Have you strolled down to a local CompUSA or any other computer superstore lately? While I find several "shrinkwrapped" Linux distributions, and even FreeBSD on the shelf, I rarely see a "shrinkwrapped" copy of Mac OS, namely due to "marketshare". I do however, find games and even some commercial applications that run on Linux. I'm lucky if i find a Mac system on the shelf. Seems that something with "marketshare" would be easily obtainable for a consumer, not having to order online, or track down a Mac vendor in the yellow pages. It's like comparing apples and ermm..penguins.
Interesting point. The differences may be just as important to user acceptance as the similarities. Reflects a point I've tried to make in management discussions: Linux is not better now because it's like Windows, Linux is better because it offers advantages over Windows on many levels. So far I've been the token open source advocate, but the interest level is definitely on the increase. It's not lost on the boss that when the virus-o-d-day comes around our RedHat servers stay online.
Still some acceptance hurdles to cross and some technical improvements needed, but we're getting there. Amazing to me how fast it's gaining ground.
Viva la Penguinista!
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Here is the link
Evil ZEN Scientist
Duncan McNutt... Right.
"Perhaps we as a community should stop trying to mimic existing applications and begin innovating instead."
Like Apple?
I'm not sure why they say KDE is very similar to Windows.
Yes, it can be configured to look like Windows. It can also be configured as a traditional Unix desktop (activation-follows-mouse, no taskbar, CDE style alt-tabbing) or MacOS (menubar at top of screen, macos[9|X] style window decorations) or any bizzare combination you can come up with.
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?
A point is made here. GNU/Linux distributions should look and feel differently than Windows or other proprietary OSes, not radically but still enough to avoid the kind frustration that I've seen when people expect graphically equivalent desktops like GNOME or KDE to behave like Windows. They will never be perfect replacements for it, nor should they be. Interestingly, I've seen much more success when demonstrating window managers like Fluxbox. People immediately fall for their simplicity. They just love to have one simple, well organized desktop menu and no annoying icons or toolbars to push around. No nonsense user interface is what they like. They even tell me afterwards than Windows desktop is a mess compared to them! I hope that these lightweight WMs will gain grounds in the future, because frankly even if their libraries have become essential parts of many applications, GNOME and KDE do not look or feel like the right desktops for GNU/Linux (IMHO). Something about the UN!X philosophy of having one small and efficient tool for the job makes me (and a surprising amount of novices) more comfortable without them.
./configure --enable-shared --disable-static && make world clean
....[McNutt] 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.
Now I know why people call in to tech support with such rediculous problems. Perhaps M$ apps could be made more useful if the people that relied on them were better trained in the techniques of using a windows system.
So what will happen if businesses were to migrate to a linux platform that's completely different from windows? Would the average desktop user really be able to pick up the necessary skills to use linux effectively in a matter of a couple of days?
I have a feeling that insufficient knowledge and interest in learning a new system is the reason that linux hasn't already claimed a larger share of the desktop market.
Before you can have a smarter desktop, you need to make smarter users.
~Mike
Mike Rizzo
Although I may be being shortsighted, I don't think it can get much better than a wheel. However, there are other things that could use improving that people work on all the time - the placement of dials and gauges, signal controls, headlight controls, position of the shifter, environmental controls, HUDs...
So, like Windows and other desktops, for a GUI, there are certain givens (until other hardware becomes commonplace, like maybe gloves), there is a pointer, there is a graphical background, you click on things to make something happen. In that way, yes, they are all the same. But the positions of items, the labeling, the color schemes, gestures, voice interfaces, these are all things that someone could (and should) run with to make the "standard" in the future.
I guess what we are (and should be) driving towards, no pun intended, is customizablilty. That's one of the strong suits. There is something to be said for consistency across applications (like menu hot-keys), but there can be a whole world of things besides that. What we should be driving more towards (and again, you see this more with Linux and Open Source applications) is being able to assign the hot-keys yourself.
Perhaps a system wide defination to make all applications behave the same way, but make that definition customizable. I don't mean "skins", although that's part of it, but skins don't necessarily change programs functionally.
In any event, it IS worth trying. With all that said, GUI is NOT a better interface than the command line all the time. Certainly for a lot of things, and if I had to choose I'd just stick with the GUI, but I tend to have at least one shell open (in Windows or Linux). The best thing on Windows is having CYGWIN and a "Bash Here" (or "Bash This") context option when you right click on a folder.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Statistics obviously don't mean jack and statitsitcal prognostications are perhaps the only thing less reliable. I personally think that the GNU/Linux desktop numbers are way higher than what gets reported. I mean it's free and you download it from the net. If sixty million people are using P2P to download DivX, Mp3, games and apps with who knows what kind of archiving I have to assume that downloading distros is not as challenging to the masses as folks imagine.
In fact, I think it's the non-geek types who are quickest to switch. They just want something that works and the fact is that whether or not they're really the ones to blame, MS products piss ordinary users off all the time. Sure, Linux will do the same, but you know how people are, they'll turn away just out of spite. Loyalty, hah. This is the twenty-first century.
You're confusing usability and familiarity. Microsoft have beaten people over the head for so long with their brain-dead interface that people accept it as "the only way to do things" without thinking.
I find it painful to use Windows now after using KDE for so long. Right click menus don't appear when I hold down the right mouse button and move the mouse - I have to release the button first. The window decorations are just stupidly laid out. Menubars are at the top of each app rather than at the top of the screen where they are easier to use. The start menu is horrible - why is the Programs folder at the top, furthest from the mouse cursor? The WindowsXP start menu is even worse.
Unless Notes has had a major rework since I used it (96-99), putting it on the Linux desktop is one thing guaranteed to send people screaming back to Windows.
Why not standardize a desktop for your organization? Everyone will have the same l&f, tools, etc. What drivers are you referring to? Most companies don't bother with Linux drivers because the Linux community has already developed working drivers for a said piece of hardware. OpenOffice IS heavy, but OpenOffice is not the only office suite available for a Linux desktop. Maybe use an alternative office suite until OpenOffice becomes more matured in it's efficiency of execution. Then consider switching to OpenOffice at that time. The problems most helpdesks or admins have with windows machines is the OS, not the user. The user may delete a critical system file, but is that REALLY the user's fault? Wouldn't a well designed OS not allow a user to delete that system file in the first place? Preventive medicine. With proper assement, planning, and deployment, Linux coexists quite well in a windows/mac environment. The beauty of a Linux desktop is it's ability to run weeks of daily use and not require a reboot. Any hetergenous environment requires added knowledge for an admin, but it seems that would make a person a bit more indispensable. Job security. The path of least resistance leads to the least rewards.
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.
Look at the Linux desktop four years ago when I migrated my parents to Linux with RedHat 6.1...... And no, they are not great with computers.....
Look at the Linux desktop today where finally RedHat, SuSE, et. al. are trying to push for a Linux desktop market. This would have been unheard of 4 years ago.
We already have early adopters in Muenchen, and other places, but the large-scale deployments seem to generally be governments, while the small scale deployments tend to be smaller businesses. Here are the pro's and cons to Linux vs Windows:
Cons:
======
Lots of software available out of the box for Windows. Many well developed desktop applications.
Microsoft RAD environments have a much larger mindshare than their UNIX equivalents (TCL, Perl with GTK, etc.).
Company may have large number of legacy VB applications, and I have still had serious difficulty getting many Win32 applications to install or run on Linux using WINE.
Pro:
==========
Flexibility: This is open source's killer app, IMO. With Linux, you can download a set of ISO images from the net, roll out a pilot program on existing hardware without having to procure anything. The same holds true for the BSD's as well. Of course if you don't buy it you get no support, but you may not want to pay for the support for a 3 month pilot program since you can then buy things later when you have figured out exactly what you need.
Linux is far more admin friendly than Windows is because the "toolkit" approach that Microsoft disparages gives far more flexibility than Microsoft's "End to end solution" approach. Again, this comes down to additional flexibility for a business who can now easily use existing solutions in new environments.
In essence all the "Software for an Agile Business" ads aside, it is clear that open source gives businesses MORE agility and flexibility than any proprietary solutions, and that this is most pronounced when compared to Windows.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
One of my wife's friends wants me to install Linux on her machine just so she can play Frozen Bubble. They are all addicted to that game.
1st rule of Linux club: You must agree on a single distribution
2nd rule of Linux club: You must agree on a single packaging format
3rd rule of Linux club: You must agree on a single desktop environment
4th rule of Linux club: You musy agree on a single web browser
5th rule of Linux club: You must develop a groupware suite
6th rule of Linux club: You must NOT mimic rival OS's
7th rule of Linux club: You must lay down your holier than thou ego's
8th and final rule: if this do this, we will all bask in the glory of Linux on the desktop.
</QUOTE>
I might add the following:
9th rule of Linux club: You must not reinvent the wheel
10th rule of Linux club: You must get rid of YetAnother***
hell-spawn program derivatives
Just my 0.02 euro
Mainstream adoption is hard to predict because generally it takes a critical mass for such to start being adopted big-time. Vendors and retailers won't support it until there is enough demand, and people won't bother learning it and installing it until enough other people are. Nobody really knows where the tipping point is.
It is kind of like predicting earthquakes: you know there are stresses on the fault-lines, but you cannot tell exactly when those stresses are enough trigger a chain-reation movement, AKA quake.
Table-ized A.I.
Don't drop the soap, Tommy!
All of these discussions about desktop Linux seem to take place in a vacuum, or at least an ideal situation where office workers need no more than a suite package and a web browser and the training to go along with them. Sure, it's trivially true that if We Had To It Over Again, we'd come up with something better than Windows (even MS probably agrees on that point).
However, most organizations are tied down to the massive installed base of Windows applications. In larger corporations, the numbers of internal/vertical applications can even rival the number of employees. The OS is nearly meaningless compared to the importance of these apps to a business. The cost of porting to Unix/Java/Web would be absolutely gigantic -- if the tools were even there to do it (and it's not clear they are).
So, while incrementally lower administration costs are nice, it's simply impossible for COA considerations to overwhelm the absolutely massive transition cost of rewriting all of those apps.
We need a paradigm shift in IT, something new and wonderful needs to happen.
I think that open source *is* that paradigm shift and that it *is* happening. Buisnesses are going to open source solutions because they are finding business value in that paradigm shift.
While Ballmer yells "Developers, developers, developers," we should be saying quietly, "Flexibility, flexibility, flexibility" and know that we are talking about flexibility of business, not just the flexibility of the software.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I'm very satisfied what I have to work with. I have a very clean window manager with no crap I don't use. Everything is one right click away in a menu I create by hand with a utility I wrote to edit it. It's pretty. It uses 8 megs of ram when running. It is completely personalized for me and my tastes. I have shortcut keys all over the damn place so I hardly ever have to touch my mouse to interact with my desktop. Very very fast. Very simple. And I did my own them with aquas and blues and greens and gradients and it's soothing to look at and damn sharp. I have Office 2000 working with wine one click away. I have a ton of first person shooters. I have 6000 of my favorite songs, cd burning software, everything I need. And I haven't had to mess with it or reboot it in ages. KDE and Gnome are playing catchup with microsoft. Not all of us though microsoft had a particularly great interface to begin with. Some of us have been way way ahead of Microsoft on the desktop for a very long time.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
You are a troll but...
In 2002 Linux did overtake mac.
Linux is part of the free software movement, Linux users are disproportionately hostile to shrinkwrapped commercial packages; further Linux distributions come with tons and tons of software and you can download software for free for just about everything.
And what you can't download is available though not in retail stores.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I started using Linux for coding about a year and a half ago, and switched to using it as my main OS a year ago.
I had various problems getting odd bits of hardware to work, etc, etc... nothing too serious. I found people were generally helpful. The one offputting thing that happened was this:
I use a chat program that I wrote under Delphi in Windows... making it pretty much impossible to port. Under Windows it binds to port 23 to let people connect to it with telnet... obviously impossible under Linux, but I didn't know that at the time :-)
Anyway. I asked how I could get around this -- and the person on IRC said, well, you could start it as root and drop priveleges. And then I said I wrote it and was running it under Wine... and the response was one of disbelief. Why I want to run anything under Wine?... it was 100% necessary to my switch to Linux, but they weren't interested.
So -- switching operating systems isn't easy, particular for a home user. The fact that I'm a compsci student, plus the fact that I was persistent, mean I made the switch okay. Much happier with what my computer can do now :-)... but you're absolutely right about the attitude of many current users. Relying on Windows doesn't mean you're stupid or weak; it's a tool like any other.
It sure lowered mine.
[...] most organizations are tied down to the massive installed base of Windows applications. In larger corporations, the numbers of internal/vertical applications can even rival the number of employees. The OS is nearly meaningless compared to the importance of these apps to a business.
This is absolutely true. Once the cost of the migration exceeds the recurring yearly gain over a five year time horizon or so (doesn't matter why; could be porting apps, hardware transition, licensing) then you've got a no-go situation. Wine might be a partial solution to that specific problem, but each app would have to be rigorously tested in house and certified with management as to functionality. That testing would certainly cost and should be factored into the migration costs.
I'm not sure a large organization with many prior internally written and platform specific apps would save significant money from a transition to Linux. It's catch as catch can. Per desktop, Linux is certainly cheaper to manage in large deployments than Windows. It gets significantly cheaper the larger one scales up. But if your apps don't run and the workforce can't work, you've lost the whole point behind a deployment. So, I would certainly agree and wouldn't recommend Linux in that situation; especially if the organization in question wasn't interested in a potential wine solution to running their apps.
Now, back to the yardwork,
Cheers,
--Maynard
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?
Duncan McNutt should take over SCO as the successor to Darl McBride. He would make a much better CEO of SCO.
Oh, come on. Things just aren't that bad anymore. Ever since IBM announced its billion dollar commitment to Linux, corporate adoption has moving forward. Sure, it started slow. Remember, though, it started from nothing and the growth rates are phenomenol. For example, IDC reported that the number of Linux servers shipped grew by 90% last year! That's a huge jump when you consider that last year Linux had about 15% of the total server market in those terms. The whole market only grew by what? 7%?
I work in IT in the banking and financial industry in the US. My company is in the top 10 in terms of assets. A more hidebound, conservative bunch you can't hope to find anywhere.
For years I've kept my Linux advocacy low key. I wanted to persuade people that it was a worthwhile option for us, not get branded as a loon. Imagine my surprise when I learned that not only are we looking seriously at Linux/Apache partitions running on our mainframe, we're also seriously looking at Lintel platforms for a variety of server related tasks.
We're also in the process of reviewing our branch environment with an eye towards Linux throughout. Many in this industry are. Unlike most of those others, we've run NT, not OS/2, in the branches for several years. We're still going to at least LOOK at Linux on all desktops in the branches.
Those many banks that still run OS/2 are looking really, really hard at Linux. If they make the move, you're talking about what? Maybe a couple of million desktops up for grabs in the US alone?
Hey I agree with you on the elitists part. To be perfectly honest, the worst ones are the Mac users - not the Linux people. I'm trying to work on the part about getting the non-elitists to move into Linux. I think the best thing some of the elitists Linux crowd could do is to keep their mouth shut when a newbie needs help. After all, isn't part of being elite to hold seperate yourself from the masses? Thus, they should seperate and stay out of the way.
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.
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
The reason that training is more successful on a very different looking distro is mode change. Apple was going after this with OS X. All the whiners that complain it looks different and acts different from OS 9 for no reason don't understand that they are trying to get people out of their old habits and fully appreciate the power of the new experience. The same is true if your Linux distro looks decidedly unlike Windows. People won't have as many "Windows" expectations.
If something should go wrong under the hood, like the internet connection drops, God help her if I'm not around. And she could not have set the system up herself. But with large organizations like the article discusses, that's not the end-user's problem.
Don't drop the soap, Tommy!
That's probably a gross understatement. When Linux breaks the desktop (like it did for servers), a couple things will happen.
First, development of the desktop will be relatively much cheaper, due to the large mass of users. More slickness and more applications (finally...)
And second, MS will be in deep trouble. They can't keep hiking the price to sustain their profit level. They'll also have trouble reducing the prices significantly, as shareholders would panic. And if they introduce a new desktop OS, it'll have to compete head on with a seriously tough enemy - the perfected (and still free) Linux desktop.
While Linux lives just fine with 5%, 10% or 20% of the desktop, Windows doesn't - a major drop MS-Windows marketshare would cause the confidence in the platform to erode, and thus create an interesting snowball effect, leading to great savings and great freedom :)
Optimist, and proud of it!
I'm in a Unix state of mind.
"is predicting that the Linux desktop will capture 20% of the market for desktop computers in large enterprises within the next 5 years."
Ok, but what is the size of "large enterprises"? This could still amount to a small portion of the entire world's desktops.
Joe Sixpack isn't friends with the type of person who uses Linux.
I'm not sure which group is being insulted here. You might be surprised by Joe Sixpack's friends (or relatives).
What I'm trying to say is that Linux is a very esoteric OS to the average joe. He's simply not interested and won't be until he can buy a Compaq pre-loaded with a version of Linux that looks like Windows.
Twenty years ago, there were many incompatible *home computers* like Tandys, TIs, Commodores, Ataris, etc., and they sold like crazy. It wasn't all future Linux geeks buying them. They were new gadgets, and people wanted one. They didn't run Windows, believe it or not.
I have a Windows box and I buy games like they're going out of style. I've never once had to check the system requirements because I run Windows. That's how I like it. It's all about the software people. And by software, I mean games.
Games are a valid point, but if you've never had to check the system requirements, you haven't been running Windows all that long. Actually, there are users who don't use their PCs for gaming (get a PS2). The mythical Joe Sixpack may use his PC for no more than web surfing and online banking, in which case all he needs is an easily installed distro like Mandrake -- and the world would be a far safer place for all of us.
I've been interested in Linux since 1998 and I've always had at least one desktop computer with a Red Hat distribution on it and I enjoy it as an OS, though I rarely no more than word process or surf the web on that box.
What I have been always curious about, and I never see this covered: what companies, big, small, in between, have adopted Linux on the desktop? I am a teacher, so I know of schools, but what about businesses?
my kingdom for a mod point...
*sigh* back to work...
Seems like bloody slow progress to me, given that Linux has been around in a usable form since 1993 or so and that in 2008 it will be about 17 years old. Linux had a usable desktop in 1994, or at least a lot more usable than Windows back then. Still I suppose this process is social rather than technical.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
1) The $350k was for a guy running Oracle enterprise server. At that price he's probably paying a $1m for the Oracle. The price of redhat isn't that high for this crowd. Very different issue than the generic cheap desktop user
2) Copyleft is a GNU term, that is it was idealogical in nature. Most of the those college kids couldn't answer what a fiat currency was either but use it every day.
3) Your IT shop sounds like something from 5-10 years ago. Linux has won the battle for use in IT organizations in most places. If yours is lagging it will change very soon (most likely when some package they want is Linux only).
One major visible *business* success and the house of cards will tumble. The speed with which business latches onto a differentiator can be amazing, and less than 1% difference in gross costs will soon be noticed when times get tough.
I expect the starting point will be competitive transactional applications where the infrastructure is a high factor in transaction cost.
Banking/insurance/telecoms look like prime candidates to me.
The question mark can be useful for changing a statement into a question, but a little polish can be added by adjusting the word order as well.
For instance;
"Linux will have...?" becomes
"Will Linux have...?"
So much better.
All things in moderation; including moderation
I moved about a month ago. The movers spent an hour or two asking me all sorts of Linux questions once he got a look at my books. Seems like Joe Sixpack is considering Linux. Joe Sixpack is often much more politically aware than White Collar Sam since Joe belongs to a union and understands that what's best for corporate america is not best for him.
Don't tell her that there is a Java applet version of Frozen Bubble...
Big companies are already going through the portings, IBM rewriting almost everything in Java or Web services for example, SAP is being rewritten as web services, etc. All these can then be used either through a browser or other thin client, making the OS almost irrelevant.
Once that happens, companies can look at the cost of buying the next 3 year cycle of Windows+application licenses, and compare it to the cost of porting over or replacing the remaining windows only applications, and do the maths. For some it will be easy, dump windows, get in Sun or IBM to do a Linux thin-client or workstation implementation with servers doing the real work.
Ewan
You shouldn't make fun of people just because you think their names sound funny.
Sincerely,
Pat McGroyne
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Personally I think Mac OS has very compelling reasons to switch. I own one. The reason they don't switch is because of expense and a perception that the Mac lacks software. If Mac OSX was on the market for PCs I think it would blow Windows off the Map.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
I was talking with a friend yesterday about why the "Linux on the desktop" debate always strikes me as entirely moronic. I finally found the right words to express the situation. Linux can't "win" the desktop until people respond "who cares?" Relevance of the desktop is a false value. The best technologies are the ones you rarely notice.
The only hope is to have a version of WINE that is so reliable and capable that it not only will run everything, but is also usable and fast enough that it develops a solid reputation for being "the" answer to this problem. Anything short of that and businesses will not convert to Linux--why should they go through the pain and expense of converting to an OS that doesn't meet their needs, even if has a zero marginal cost and superior reliability and security?
Seriously though, this is useful in terms of raising credibility for desktop Linux. I find it very significant that this comes from a German company -- the EU in general and Germany in particular seems to have special motivation to resist the Redmond hegemony.
Which opens up an interesting possibility: North American corporations stick with Windows out of sheer inertia, while their overseas counterparts all switch to Linux. One more cultural-technology gap, to go with the metric system and GSM!
But, you say, the prediction is still not useful, because it doesn't actually predict! Well, evaluating predictions in terms of their accuracy has a certain naive charm, I suppose. But not very realistic!
Isn't KDE quite configurable about its look&feel?
You can change the fonts, styles, colors, click behaviour, widget themes, sounds, menus, panel and desktop.
I don't see why they couldn't simply use a configured KDE setup if they wanted a difference from Windows.
I'm a windows guy, and I like/run several linux desktops and servers. I want it to be as good if not better than windows as a corporate desktop because I feel that by then linux will have been so matured and reworked that it has no choice but to be rock solid, and I look forward to that.
But I dont dilude myself with visions of grandeur. Secretaries wont understand: why copy/paste doesnt work in every app and behave consistently, why they need to download other packages just to get one program to work (or why it isnt done transparently for them), why they cant eject their cdrom by pushing the button on the front of the drive when they want to, why fonts sometimes look different, why domain credentials are no longer transparent, etc.
Maybe some of these are already solved and I am just behind the times. But I deal with non-IT end users all the time and linux would just befuddle them to no end in some of these cases. But I also know that they could learn another office suite other than MS Office, and they can fathom the purpose of multiple desktops, and they would be happy when they dont get virii so often.
I really want to see linux work even better than it is. But take it in small steps, and lose the holier-than-thou attidude that most of you have against windows [users] and we might actually take notice.
Wow! Expressing a non-positive opinion about a software package is now considered flamebait?
I think this is taking the knee-kerk, "Microsoft bad, everything else good" reaction a little far, even for Slashdot. I'll bet that the same comment in reference to Outlook/Exchange would never have been modded down.
Just go use Notes, then tell me that it is going to help Linux gain acceptance on the desktop.
[The same Anonymous Coward]
Because Notes and Groupwise are already "embedded" in many corporations. Sure they may not be bringing home many new customers but once you've got everyone's email, calendar + X many Notes apps built, it's a big hurdle to switch to any competing Groupware product (Exchange).
Arguably, for companies, it's Groupware which locks you to vendor more strongly than your office suite (for which there are now very viable alternatives).
With Notes and Groupwise clients well supported on Linux, the barrier to entry is much lower, specially for those still on NT 4 (which often goes hand in hand with Notes)
>> 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.
Could you follow up on this please?
I just can't think of an example of when any large group of people dropped Windows for anything. I pre-date Windows myself, and my observations are that DOS users (who later became Windows users) claim that they don't need what they don't have until they get it.
Example: ten years ago, a DOS-user friend of mine ragged on Macs because they used this "mouse pointer thingy".
He's probably using one of those thingys today.
No one's going to switch from Windows based on mere merits of functionality.
--Richard
One thing I'd like to mention is Microsoft's purchase of Connectix, the maker of the Virtual PC for Mac and, well, PC.
For a long time its seemed that virtualizing machines for even a single process is inevitable. Microsoft's acquisition of Connectix makes me think they see the virtual machine as important to their future.
Apps and coding platforms are as much their core business as the Desktop/GUI they are presented in. With fairly ubiqitous [and somewhat standardized ;^)] VMs running an MS core, a person's program really wouldn't care where it started and where it ends up (e.g. from your widnows desktop to you linux pda to your java watch to your PlanIX:2-ElectricBoogaloo toaster to ... etc.).
Essentially the 'battle for the desktop' becomes moot as the program people run which don't really get that much more complex (i.e. user software typically increase their complexity along with human needs) are able to 'keep up with your busy life' on hardware that advances at a more exponential pace (e.g. "You only have 50GB in you George Foreman Lean Mean Grilling/SETI@Home Machine? Jeez!").
For me it always comes back to what people -- real people -- the nx100 millions of users not reading /. -- want or need to do with their information processing machines. Today's level of need can pretty much be handled at the Pentium II (or even 486!) level for web/email/office if it's lean and mean (like many linux-top boxen), and yet today we have Intel today pushing a non-product ("Centrino" == ??) with their annual marketing/advertising budget of $US ~200-400 Million.
I'd like to think that Linux (especially when you separate the meat of GNU) is a concept that is not at odds with MS (which itself is a group of concepts that happen to manifest as software and blue screens these days ;^}). Perhaps the trouble with all software is actually in discovering what, if any, information processing acutally requires the power and complexity that the Open Source movement and linux affords.
It's fine and jim dandy to lead a horse to water, but if its not thirsty, it just might not be interested.
I'd even say the notion of 'Battle' is a bit of a distraction. Certainly its a solidifying point programmers rally around, and yet if the energy focused by those programmers are simply to fight microsoft, maybe that's really like letting the Redmondists win...
Five or ten years out would seem a little much, when you consider that we're at just over a decade of Windows (3.1 shipped in 92, and this November we'll see the decade anniversary since WFW3.11!), that's pretty awesome considering that in that decade not only has there been the incredible changes in personal OSes, server OSes, peripherals, programming languages, and the information superhighway. jeez I still remember 300 bits per second, and now my modem is 1000 times faster at 3Mbs.
With that kind of increase what will the growth curve give us? 5 more versions of Windows in the coming decade (and who knows how many forks in the linux kernel ;^)); a trillion dollars of marketing money flowing to promote the latest thing that really isn't...
The future is always brighter than expected, and dimmer too. My biggest bet is on the children. Given the opportunity to look up answers to absolutely any question that pop's into their developming minds, and not being daunted by parent's can't conceive of 3 billion pages of information being accesible through a single google search, the kids may just turn out to find something more exciting to do with One Terahertz processors than anything the people who are fighting for the title of 'King of the WIMPs' might conceive...
Oliver's Law: Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
Did you notice their argument for using Ximian ? The fact that it is different enough from Windows means that users are not irritated by the differences, whereas with KDE the users found the difference a problem. Interesting. All the time many WMs have been trying to produce a Windowsish experience and that now looks to be a problem in adopting that WM for newbies.
Bitter and proud of it.
I have been trolled. Have a nice day.
Briefly, point one is true, mostly because windows now crashes roughly as linux always has, i.e. not very much. Point two is meaningless; how do you have a "meg" of security problems? MS have a reputation in the security field and they have it for a reason. Point three is hyperbole, with a kernel of truth. But so what? I'm sure you occasionally find two windows programs that do the same thing. At least, until MS decide to own that particular market. Point four is relevant to use of linux in large enterprises exactly how? Point five - well, you might do that. Large enterprises tend to restrict their purchasing to supported hardware.
Nothing to fix and no-one wants to talk to you anyway. What a shame.
What...how is it that my post was modded -1 as a troll? If your going to mod me down, then at least make a case for it.
Although I am very much a fan of free software and ideas, I am also in touch with reality within the terms of this industry.
-Slashdot Junky
.
Landfill Mining Co.
Managing the (Un)natural Resources of Tomorrow
I know some folks will dismiss me as way off base here, but I've come to believe these types of "efficiency studies" are total B.S.
Here's why: Even if someones does accurately measure the time spent opening/using/saving files in a Windows environment vs. a Linux environment (ensuring equivalent hardware for both tests), factors in number of reboots, and everything else - the results will mean little to nothing in the real corporate environment.
While a computer might be executing code non-stop, as fast as its given new tasks to process, people don't function that way. When someone has to stop what they're doing/thinking about doing due to something like a system reboot, their train of thought gets temporarily lost. They tend to use this time as an opportunity to "switch gears" and do other tasks that need doing. (Maybe it's as basic as going to the restroom or grabbing a drink of water? Maybe it's a matter of getting some RMA shipments ready for the UPS driver to pick up? Whatever....)
My point is, management shouldn't be making decisions on which OS to run based on these time/efficieny studies, because it's a flawed concept. Computers *should* perform quickly enough that using the software doesn't feel like a fight of "user vs. sluggish PC", but beyond that - counting seconds saved doing basic file operations is too nit-picky. You might as well make rules forcing employees to always walk the shortest path back from any printer or copier to their desk, or supervise everyone to ensure they're using every possible keyboard shortcut, rather than waste "precious time" finding options on pull-down menus and clicking them!
Wow, I did my nightly visit to Slashdot and then my nightly visit to news.google.com and was surprised to see this very article posted on Google's new site. Weird.
According to Google zeitgeist, its been 1% for the last three years.
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.
Come on now, that 350K is for the support contract, not the software. Microsoft support isn't free either.
The only way I see linux succeeding is by first dominating non-US markets.
If you mean on the desktop, I think you're right so far as the primary sites where adoption would happen. However, I don't think it needs to dominate, it just needs to be legitimized for the corporate desktop. I think Sun's "Mad Hatter" project is going to do a lot to move this forward.
Crystal ball predictions aside, the only thing that's certain is that it's a very interesting time for the PC platform.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Why did you choose PhProjekt? Did you compare it to PhPGroupware? Can you give some more details? Groupware is one of the sticking points for deployment of Linux in the workplace. If we can get over this hurdle and accounting software, we will be mostly home.
Put identity in the browser.
And watch them struggle to dial out on the modem in order to get on the web the second time.
Dull show!
Go on, find one clue in the Mandrake 9.1 distro that you need to use kddd.
Getting onto the Internet should be a single click on the desktop or at worst two menus down in the "start" menu. Anything else is just plain silly. IMO.
However here are a few things worth considering:
1: Reboots can mean data loss (if a project was not saved before the BSOD, etc.)
2: Reboots can mean higher support costs, more helpdesk personnel, etc.
So management has valid reasons for using this as a factor, but rapid application development is more of a business driver than stability
Actually I know of one company that ran Windows 98 inside of VMWare (on Linux) on all their workstations. People's documents were saved on fileservers. Then, when an update needed to be made, they would make the change to the master VMWare image and use good-ol' *nix stype automation to push it out to everybody....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I have always said that MS is more vunerable than, say, Oracle. Replacing desktops and productivity apps occurs in 18 to 36 month cycles anyway.
On the other hand, databases, and the other critical enterprise applications which rely on them, take 18 to 36 months _to_ replace.
Your MIS is going to cast a much more critical eye over the decision to replace the enterprise layer of the business than the access-points (i.e. the computers on the worker's desks) to that enterprise layer. And that access layer is frequently nowadays nothing but a web browser over a secured network. Such as the project I am currently working on for a client, 'Business transformation project', taking the mission-critical apps - the core business - off an OS/390 mainframe onto a n-Tier J2EE based architecture using Websphere, DB2, and Webmethods. It is very much in the front of the client's minds, has been for quite a while, and will be for quite a while more. The success or otherwise is totally critical to the enterprise in a way that 'the desktop' never will be.
Oracle (and SAP, and J2EE, etc) is far more 'mission critical' than Windows. That's why MS wants to get their dirty fingers into a piece of that pie - harder to dislodge from it.
-A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed-
I'm reminded of that quotation, I don't remember by whom, which went, "The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed."
...I might have thought Linux stood a chance on the desktop.
But once NT4 came out, Windows became "good enough."
Not "the best", not "great", but good enough.
So on the desks it went, where it is firmly entrenched. That's all she wrote.
Windows seems to be getting better and better. Still not great, still not the best (but neither is Lunix). Now if they could/would only fix those pesky security holes...
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
N/T
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I work for a fairly large IT company, and at a guess, I would say that out of the 40(ish) developers in my group, we are at about 10% Linux (me being one of them), 40% OS X and 50% Windows. That beings said, it's a trend that's on an up slope. A year ago it was more like 0% Linux, 25% OS X and the rest was Windows. The fact is people (especially developers) are getting sick of Windows. Therefore, while Linux may never have a full 20% of the desktop market share, the numbers are going to continue to grow as people are looking for alternatives to Windows.
-- [Sig] Rome did not create a great empire by negotiation; They did it by killing everyone who opposed them.