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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.
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
Am I the only person who cracked up when I read this?
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.
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
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).
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
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.
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
"Perhaps we as a community should stop trying to mimic existing applications and begin innovating instead."
Like Apple?
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.
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
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.
[...] 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?
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.
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.
In 2002 Linux did overtake mac.
;) For the most part, I agree.
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.
Adding to your comment: You can't buy Photoshop for Linux, but you can install GIMP free for Linux. (ok, won't be doing any CMYK work) You can't buy Norton AntiVirus for Linux yet (although eventually, it will be needed even if Norton has to write the viruses themselves
So few commercial packages are purchased for Linux, because so few packages are available. The real key is when they start porting over business software for Linux. If Peachtree had a Linux port, we would have it in ONE day. ACT is another example. And yes, I know, there are free alternative, but for most of us, the alternatives are not alternative.
MOST applications do have alternatives in Linux, and many are better. Its just these larger applications that need to be developed. Ironically, it would appear that if you DID port Peachtree for Linux, it would be then be trivial to port to OSX.
20% in large enterprises by 08? IF the big apps catch up, I can see this. If Open Office can keep pace. If Gimp makes another leap. The smaller applications are already there, and it already is easier to maintain Linux if you know how.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
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
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
If Linux companies want to make quick progress, they are going to have to go into companies and individual homes and offer to run a parallel desktop for one (1) user and go back to the drawing board on an on-going basis for each and every question, complaint, and frustration of that one (1) user vis-a-vis that experience alongside the Windows machine. Nothing like the real world to settle the issue.
Once the one (1) user is wildly enthusiastic about the Linux box over against the Windows box, word of mouth will do its job.
Until some sort of real-world experience like this is forced to be played out, and reacted to with radical ease-of-use design changes, it's going to be slow-going for Linux generally.
I've tried several implementations of Linux, and ended up making fun of them all. Why spend my time hassling with driver compatibility and convoluted install/config logic, when I am productive already with 2000 and XP Pro, even 98SE? That's the bottom line: I don't want to repeat the DOS/XT/286/386 years with Linux, regardless of how much such activities are glorified by individuals with great technical skills.
Sure, I'd love to run a Linux implementation that I could just either install and configure myself as easy as Windows, or just buy a Linux machine from Wal-Mart and not have to fret over my already-existing files, how to do this and that with the new machine, network connectivity, Web-based Outlook needs for work, etc.
People can argue all they want about what is "better", because "better" is in the eye of the user, whether in a megacorp, a small business, or an individual home. And those users do not think like Linux evangelists: they think like the users they are, even in the largest corporations.
If Linux developers would concentrate on ease of installation, configuration, and use, and really listen to all the complaints people have about Windows, they would not have to argue their case, because the market would make their case for them---intuitively, user by user, and user *to* user. After all, I began using DOS and Windows because someone *showed* me them, not because of arguments about how much "better" they were than my typewriter.