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IDC Proclaims Linux Is Now Mainstream
robyannetta writes "Eweek has an
interesting article
quoting IDC analyst Al Gillen saying "Linux is no longer a fringe player. Linux is now mainstream." He made that observation because IDC's research predicts that Linux's overall revenue for desktops, servers and packaged software running on Linux will exceed $35 billion by 2008."
Mainstream what?
Last company I worked for shifted all sun->linux + Intel, potentially most of the web pages your granny accesses will be running Apache on Linux, what about grannies DVD player, or phone or settop box or PVR, don't they run linux too?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
It's already there. I did that for my father more than a year ago. No problems.
This is way too soon to say it's mainstream.
Hell, people don't even think netscape/mozilla/firefox is mainstream and it have 20% or more of the market.
My mother (of grandmother age but I'm not budging on the 'no kids' thing) uses Linux (Gentoo with KDE Desktop) with no problems.
OK, so I set it all up for her (the way a vendor would pre-install Windoze) but once set up it runs smoothly and stays configured the way it was when set up. I simplified everything for her as she is not a power-user, removed lots of menu options and extraneous buttons and it's now so much easier for her to find her way around and actually do stuff than it was with Windows.
And that's on a hacked-together PII-300 running Gentoo, if she'd bought a pre-installed state-of-the-art Linux box it would be even smoother.
She has gone from calling me twice a day for tech support to once a fortnight since the switch from Windoze to Linux. I can fix any problem that does occur remotely. So now instead of talking exclusively about Blue Screens of Death, anti-virus software and automated updates we talk about me not providing any grandchildren.
~ Better a freak than a sheep. ~
well for all those that claim that linux is not that user friendly I have just a couple of words , Linksys, embeded devices (i.e. mp3 players and other pocket media players).
The article is very right that linux makes sence to a lot of companies however I disagree with the statement that linux is not going to take over the desktop market. Linux was and is built as a desktop system and just because people use it on servers means nothing. As a matter of fact certain unix distributions and bsd will probably work better for things like clusters and other large servers. Anyway, I think that linux distros like Novell's Linux Desktop will eventually become a common view in corporate offices and I compleatelly disagree that OSS will be a common part of Windows desktops. The people that have to port OSS to windows often dislike the process and software does not get ported very fast. Just because Mozilla does not follow the same rules does not mean that the rest of the OSS doesn't also. Mozilla was started as a cross platform software and has never been anything less. However, projects like gimp and xchat are based on open GUIs and that does not fit very well in the windows world. Xchat's maintainer already started charging for the windows version. The reason given was that it's a major pain to port the software (for him). Gimp on the other hand is ported by 3rd parties and some of the ports also charge for the work done. Windows is build so that the system is *shielded* from the user as much as possible. This leads to very few points of entry and a very nasty OS for tweaking.
There are a couple of other things that the article misses like that on embeded devices linux has a pretty good presence and that latelly companies like Cisco (they own Linksys) have started puting on routers.
Oh yeah and if you think that linux is hard or weird or whatever you should probably recal the time when you started using Windows. I bet you it was weird and hard too. Why should you expect Linux to be easier to learn than Windows?
Viruses? Hah, that's why I run Linux!!
Republicans are stupid? So are Democrats? Hah! I'm a Libertarian!
Popular music is lame? Hah! That's why I only listen to my next door neighbor's garage band who NOBODY knows!
It's a fluff piece but it has been sorely needed for a while.
It has long been said that before Linux will be the order of the day, CEOs and their underlings need to read about Linux more and more before they'll start to ask "what is this thing and why aren't we running it?" It had brief exposure on CNN and some other sources, but it still needs more lip service.
It has long been felt "no one has ever been fired for going with Microsoft..." and that might change too when reliability is compared. I was tickled when I first noticed the RedHat8 server we use at my site has an uptime of greater than a year. No kernel updates or anything else has required a reboot and we've got a damned nice UPS in place. It serves its functions and does it nicely. I just can't get that from a Microsoft server...especially when every security update requires a reboot... especially when end of life means no more security updates and forces an upgrade. Most people have been droned into thinking that's just 'normal' but I just can't see it that way.
The more Fluff we get, the more the uneducated starts asking about it and making it happen.
I like where I work though... we're already on a roadmap that dumps Microsoft entirely... my condolences to those who are still stuck in MS-land.
The meaning isn't clear. Is server hardware being intertwined with sales of software and services? Is this an estimate of annual revenues in 2008 or simply an estimate of the total for 1998-2008? What are the numbers for Windows?
So, the tables have turned for me, and now I'm *not* telling them to switch to linux, becuase THEY WOULD!
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
If you can move over the Calendar appointments I think businesses would be willing to change that app.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
The next "last straw" for some people may be this prediction from Microsoft-Watch:
Microsoft's biggest announcement of the year won't be Yukon (SQL Server 2005) or Whidbey (Visual Studio 2005). Instead, it will be an as-yet-unannounced anti-virus/anti-spyware subscription service for which Microsoft will charge.
Source: http://tinyurl.com/3sht4
More likely MSFT will quietly offer this to their bigger customers to keep them from switching to OSS while the great sea of consumer users will have to pay. Or maybe they'll be smart and give it away, but that's a little like hoping dubya will really be a uniter and not a divider.
I think IDC's estimates are conservative. Now that the ball is rolling down hill it will only continue to accelerate. Aided by MSFT's almost uncanny ability to treat their customers like criminals.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Personally I think it's a good thing that tons of the Killer Linux apps are going over to windows. In five years from now maybe people will realize that all their apps (firefox, gimp, gaim, open office, etc) are available on linux too, and without half the crap to deal with maybe they'll make the switch. I think for most people the number one reason they wont use linux is because of the 'killer windows apps (and games)' they can't use in linux. So what do the linux users do, bitch and complain that linux support should be provided. The OSS community has a better plan, come up with even better apps for linux, and release them for windows too, so that people can get comfortable with them before they make the switch. Having windows ports of Linux apps is not a bad thing at all, you are just looking at it the wrong way.
The house where I rent a room (in El Paso) is owned by the grandparents of my housemate. His grandmother's computer was pretty much infected with Windows spyware, to the point that it was unusable. Bootup took forever, lots of error messages, millions of spyware / adware pustules errupting everywhere ...
a) I used Mepis to rescue her documents
b) I showed her the machine working with Linux (Mepis and Ubuntu, both of which work fine with her hardware), and *didn't* take forever like Windows does for her. [Old Windows - ME, oldish hardware by current standards] She likes it, and except that I'm out of town until next month, I would install it (her request) on her machine. That's still the plan.
Partly, Linux has gotten better, Partly Windows is just a big pain in the butt. (Some people say otherwise, and more power to 'em. YMMV, etc.)
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5