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Vista Launch Good for Desktop Linux?
Sensible Clod writes "XYZ Computing has an article hypothesizing that the arrival of Windows Vista may be a big opportunity for Linux to make headway on the desktop. Massive feature cutbacks for Vista as well as huge hardware requirements are cited as major factors. From the article: 'As the time gets closer and closer to the public debut of Vista the operating system seems to be constantly losing the luster which was associated with Longhorn...Whether it's the lack of a new file system or the Monad scripting shell, the absence of innovation in this operating system is giving it a black eye'. The article then shows the need for action to be taken to get Linux onto the computers in stores (display models!), and pinpoints a few important improvements Linux distros in general need to make. Very interesting read, and timely."
Vista is not going to decrease the amount of people purchasing new computers with whatever current version of windows is pre-loaded. This is the majority of windows purchases. As for those who are going to be holding onto their current computers and using them most of them will probably not upgrade to the newest (most expensive) operating system available and will probably stick with windows xp or 2000 until they get a new computer that does come with vista.
The same people who bought windows XP at full retail will probably go ahead and buy Vista at full retail while most of us that use linux now will just keep using linux whether or not some new version of windows comes along.
I think the whole impact will be negligible.
Out of all the features meant to be in vista some since 1992, almost all of them have been dropped. Microsoft a large gigantic corporation couldn't get them in their system working.
What's funny is that every one of those features is available today in a Linux distro near you. Yet still nobody listens and switches to linux in droves, but many wait for vista
I think sometimes everyone is a sheep
People don't care about Monad or new file systems - they want nice GUIs with RSS integrated - IE with tabs etc... Vista is everything the average user wants.
As for hardware requirements - most people will get vista with their shiny new hardware from dell or whatever. It will meet the requirements and look great with lots of eye-candy.
Linux doesn't just need to be better than Vista - it needs to be MUCH better to get an average user to switch.
XYZ Computing has an article hypothesizing that the arrival of Windows Vista may be a big opportunity for Linux to make headway on the desktop.
.NET hysteria, the C#... Meanwhile, GNU/Linux is already on my desktop and I couldn't really care less what Micro$oft does. I just use it because it is the best tool for my job. Period.
A decade ago it was Windows 95 that was going to be a big opportunity for Linux to make headway on the desktop, then it was Windows 98, 2000, XP, the DRM in Media Player, Internet Explorer, the license of MS SQL Server, the flaws in ASP security model, the nonsense of
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
how many people earnestly think it is about usability and security that most people choose their software?
i agree, some of the more sophisticated desktop users might be willing to switch, but much more powerful forces for not switching are: a lot of people don't like serious changes. they know windows (though it might suck), not necessarily the OS, but the brand, so they stick with it.
a lot of companies are either bound by contracts or - more importantly - by internal applications that are broken enough only to work with windows (in that case, to be more specific, mostly word, excel and access).
these are, i think, compelling reasons why a large percentage - mark, percentage, not single individuals - will not want to switch to linux because of what the article states.
If you don't learn from history,
then you are an idiot by definition.
--- Vadim Yasinovsky
There is no absence of innovation or new features. Avalon, the new graphics subsystem, and the developer tools that will allow you to develop for it, have leapfrogged everything I have ever seen. While Linux will still be using the 2D capabilities of a graphics card (sucks!) Microsoft Vista will be using all that tremendous 3D technology already present in our machines to render your desktop. 3rd party apps will be using it too. Yes, at first it feels like it will need ebtter equipment, but when you finally get that equipment and your pathetic X-Window or other Linux windowing system looks ridiculously passé when compared to Windows Vista, you'll realize Microsoft is no longer trying to catch up to OS X, which is already a much more polished OS than any Linux flavor.
Am I the only one that thinks that article doesn't make too much sense?
I fail to see how vista, even if it weren't very convincing, will help linux getting on the desktop. All a bad windows release will lead to in the short tearm is not many people buying Vist, but staying with their curren OS, which is some kind of Windows in most cases.
And people who really care about monad not being included are people who would consider running linux anyway, but they only make a small percentage of the market.
Further, I'm convinced that Linux will not make large inroads into the private desktop in the near future, not because Linux isn't good enough, but simply because Windows is much to entrenched in this market.
Corporate and gouvernment desktops are an other story though and we'll see a lot of things happening there in the future, I'm sure.
"Year of the Linux desktop" or whatever. Isn't that a dupe and troll in itself? It's been repeated over and over again, and yet never happened.
Honestly, I don't think Linux (as it is now anyway) is ready for the desktop. Why? Sure, you got aptitude and lot of neat stuff. Gnome may be bloated as hell, but it looks good, and that's what most consumers want.
You got lots of good stuff, but when your average linux-distro starts to break down, when stuff doesn't work automagicly, when hardware detetction fails and so on... Most users (and by most users I also mean powerusers) will have a really hard time fixing stuff, if they even manage to fix it at all. Not all of us are geeks who grew up with a keyboard.
Plus, I don't really care if linux hits the mainstream or not. I use what works for me, I'll let others use what works for them. To me, open standards are a lot more important than whatever OS people are running to get their work done.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
But isn't XP already ahead of the Linux desktop options anyway? You have to surpass the previous iteration of MS offerings before you snatch an "opportunity" with their successor.
And since when did more than 0.5% of the PC-using population ever really pay much attention to the left-out features (filesystem changes, etc).
People who were considering Vista for their current underpowered machine would go with XP or 2000 before trying Linux, I suspect.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
My company didn't use Windows 98 (or ME) at all. They stuck with 95 until the obvious benefits of Windows 2000 (and now XP) were mainstream. I haven't read about one feature in Vista that would compell them to upgrade a thousand or more PCs. They won't do it to give us more eye candy, or to raise the minimum system requirements.
Linux advocates - "No DRM in Linux!"
:(
Legally downloaded audio/video file disclaimer - "Needs DRM compatible PC"
Windows Vista box sticker - "Fully DRM compatible!"
To an average non-technical user who just wants their music and video files to play, isn't this going to make the DRM look like an additional feature that Windows has and Linux lacks? Sadly lacking DRM might end up turning people away from Linux rather than towards it
The other thing Desktop Linux needs is good fonts. I am yet to find a desktop Linux installation that is beautiful out of the box. Often times, one has to download M$ fonts or could use the script found here: http://vigna.dsi.unimi.it/webFonts4Linux/webFonts. sh to get good fonts for the web.
Next thing is multimedia and multimedia applications. Totem in the GNOME world and Amarok in the KDE world will not play mp3s out of the box, yet there are no licensing restrictions on these formats! These are so many other examples in the multimedia field.
There is a bug/feature I found in Linux that needs attention in relation to how devices are mounted. Remember that we in the Linux world are aiming at domination. So we should attract as many users as we can. The bug is here: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=111173. I was surprised that there was a wontfix mentioned. So how are we to attract users if there will always be confusion in how devices are mounted?
Last but not least, we need publicity - good publicity. Right now, Linux is being touted as very good or good enough for the average user. What happens is that folks then have to understand that Linux is just a KERNEL and that there are many implementations associated with this kernel. To many, understanding this is a challenge. So one says "I use Linux at home, it's freely available on the net...try it out..." (and they leave it at that)! What follows is confusion as newbies find tons of distros and incompatible packages. Folks what do you think?
The vast majority of computer users live in poor countries where software is either downloaded or acquired from friends. People buy PCs specifically because it is easier to get games for it than with a console - piracy is the norm rather than the exception. :)
Piracy is the killer app that made the PC king, and brought broadband to the masses.
So, if piracy is ever made impossible under windows, millions of people will flock to Linux in order to continue to enjoy software free of charge, with the additional advantage that it will also give them freedom. Watch, then, as some of those millions take an interest in the people who kindly provide them with free, legal software, and become active open source contributors.
It's happening already. The other day some rich bastard was accusing me of being an evil pirate when I told him I never pay for software. I started looking at my software and lo - its practically all open source, even under windows. Gaim, OO.o, Gimp, Firefox, Thunderbird, The Ur-Quan Masters, heck, even my mp3s are mostly legal, indie stuff. I wish I could have seen the look on his face