Stopping Linux Desktop Adoption Sabotage

Mark Brunelli, News Editor writes "Outspoken IT consultant John H. Terpstra believes that Microsoft and electronics manufacturers are working together to hinder the adoption of Linux on the desktop. In a three part series, he tells a story about how two guys trying to buy Linux desktops found they were overpriced, and lacked certain tools. He then describes how Microsoft uses its considerable resources and the law to create such roadblocks. (Part 2, Part 3)"

Comments

Not Forever

[gregbains]

Theres only so much you can push people. Windows XP did not deliver what people thought it would and Vista won't achieve what it set out to do, and updates take too long coming. Many people I know are or will switch to Linux in the near future because it makes more sense in the long run. Keep pushing people and they will try something else, look at Firefox or Opera. All it takes is a little piece of information to hit the public and people will begin to learn more about it, and adopt it.

Re:Not Forever

[geomon]

"Web services are the future so this OS importance issue..."

In which case, Microsoft wins by default. With the largest installed userbase, they will still benefit from a full migration to web services. You will still need an OS to get to the internet regardless of whether everything is web-based.

The push for Linux will only come from the education market. When more children grow up in a UNIX-based world, then their preference will drive their purchase. It worked for Apple and Microsoft.

Re:Not Forever

[Master of Transhuman]

I don't know where to begin - virtually everything you said is total bullshit.

"what would typically be a simple task in Windows (i.e. installing video card drivers) becomes an exercise in frustration in Linux."

Wrong - installation of Linux is easier than Windows PROVIDED the hardware is supported - which is the point of the article. If the manufacturers refuse to support Linux because they are being bribed by Microsoft (and incredibly charged by Microsoft for developing drivers, why they put up with that is insane), Linux has a problem, sure. The Chinese will solve that one in due time and put the US hardware manufacturers out of business in the process, as the article states. US IT hardware manufacturers (ARE there any who don't buy components from Asia?) are doomed. Resellers like Dell will go down as well.

Meanwhile, the only REAL hardware problems with Linux relate to stuff that is extremely new or stuff that is incredibly old. People who want to use Linux shouldn't buy a video or wireless card that came out last week, it's that simple.

Another thing that needs to be done is that the big corps who DO support Linux - like IBM - need to start leaning on the peripheral manufacturers. Here, again, I expect IBM's deep connection with the Chinese will produce results.

"how many different distros are there, and how many of those distros can you typically find easy-to-install driver/software packages for?"

Utterly irrelevant. Nine-nine percent of the existing distros are used by people (read: geeks) who happen to like installing new distros. Any NORMAL consumer will end up with Red Hat/Fedora, Mandriva, SUSE, Sun JDS, or possibly Debian (and maybe Linspire) - for all of which there are easy-to-install software package management systems and available software.

The average consumer has never HEARD of any other Linux distro and never will. In fact, the main issue with the uptake in Linux is simply the fact that ninety-nine percent of the computer buying public has STILL never heard of Linux at all.

"And for something that's supposed to be free, I find it quite amusing how many distros' developers end up devising some under-handed method to charge for their work."

Clueless. Linux is supposed to be free-as-in-freedom. It does not have to be "free-as-in-beer" - but ninety percent of the time it is if you have the bandwidth to download a few CD ISOs or you can afford twenty bucks to buy CDs on eBay. Virtually all the big distros make their money on various methods of support. Why is that underhanded? Nobody said they have to work for free even if the software is free. Is it better that Microsoft charges a minimum of $100 for their OS (and we're talking the obsolete Windows 98 here) and THEN charges a couple hundred for support?

"Insightful", my ass. There should be a mod for "clueless and arrogant" - or maybe "Windows shill."

Re:Not Forever

[Master of Transhuman]

In Linux, the problem with video drivers is simply lack of manufacturer support. If the manufacturers would spend a week porting their drivers (this isn't rocket science), there would be a very easy way to install them. I don't understand why IBM doesn't do what Microsoft does - offer financial incentives to make a driver by picking up part of the development cost (which, again, can't be that huge.)

No, Linux is not "uber-1337". There is no reason UNDER THE CURRENT CONDITIONS of lack of vendor support that it should be expected to be able to run anything. Given vendor support, the issue goes away. So what's your point? The article was about WHY it is this way, and has nothing to do with the underlying quality of the OS.

So Mandriva doesn't make it easy to find the free download page - big deal. This is hardly "under-handed", it's just lame. Compared to Microsoft's business tactics, this doesn't even show up in an electron microscope. I'm not even sure it's deliberate - it could well be simple "geek moron" behavior, as I've mentioned before. Begging you to join their Club before letting you follow the links to the download page is just that - begging.

As for $20, that's on eBay. There are plenty of places you can get entire distros for $2.50 a CD. And testing ten different distros to see which is "best" is both a waste of time and only suitable for geeks. I occasionally download a live CD to see if something is interesting, but I have no particular desire to replace my Mandriva 2005 LE until Mandriva 2006 shows up on the public mirrors in a few weeks. Ninety percent of Linux is identical between distros - the remaining ten percent has to do with configuration utilities and package management utilities, plus whatever additional packages the distro wants to include as the default. Basically of no interest, unless you want a distro optimized for some subset of interest, such as multimedia or security. And since you can install anything on anything given ability to install from source (and that difficulty is heavily overblown), it's mostly irrelevant - especially since, as I said, the average consumer has never heard of these distros and wouldn't know what to do with them if they did.

And again, since ninety percent of distros are unknown to anybody but professional Linux-installation geeks, it's irrelevant how they charge for it. You're basically paying for the hobby of installing Linux, not the software, anyway.

None of this is relevant to why Linux isn't being used by the average consumer. Far and away, the main reason is a combination of ignorance of the existence of Linux and inertia by those who really don't particularly care what OS they run - as long as it's working for the present and for the minimal tasks for which they use the computer.

The only reason corporate America hasn't switched is less ignorance of the existence of Linux than it is ignorance of the benefits of open source over the long run, versus the inertia of sticking with the crap their people already know and to which they're wedded by bad IT decisions in the past concerning infrastructure design. That, and the lack of enterprise apps, which take time and organization to produce, so Linux doesn't have that many - yet. The latter problem will go away within ten years as OSS Java infrastructures make developing enterprise apps easier. We're already seeing that to some degree in a couple of enterprise areas such as CRM.

The only real usability problem Linux has is the same one Windows has - a lot of software is produced by what I call "geek morons": brilliant guys at writing software to do something cool, but completely incompetent at either producing a useful GUI or producing documentation or both.

I had to learn both Linux and Windows over the last three years, and as I've said numerous times before, there isn't a penny's worth of difference in usability or learnability between them. It's only hard to learn one or the other if you've already learned one.

I still use Windows most of the

Re:Has made it? O.o

[slavemowgli]

Then it must've been some time since you last checked... check out this rather glowing Ubuntu review in the Inquirer, for example. Yeah, I know, not exactly the greatest news outlet in the world, but they're probably as non-geeky as you get, so the fact that they found Ubuntu so easy and comfortable to use says a lot, IMO. :)

Short version of this story

[glomph]

1. Forced sale of MS stuff still exists. Wow, what a surprise.
2. Before buying hardware, especially laptops, spend an hour googling or otherwise studying what IS supported. The morons in the story buy stuff and then find out compatibility. Fuckin' DUH!

Re:Short version of this story

[kashani]

Fucking duh is the entire point of the story. Why as a Linux user do I have to Google for an hour and then hope I can do the proper chicken sacrifice to make the drivers work? The OSS world has shown it can make kickass databases, web servers, kernels, mail servers, languages, etc, but we still can't get drivers installed. I'm likely to agree with the author that there are roadblocks not of our making that is causing this.

kashani

Re:Short version of this story

[bladesjester]

He doesn't miss the point. In fact, he hits it on the head. You should not have to wonder wether all of the componants are going to play with your OS. I remember doing that with windows...back in the mid 90's.

I'm not placing blame for it, and, indeed it's getting a lot easier to throw it on just about everything now. I'm just saying that it shouldn't be an issue to run a modern operating system on modern comodity hardware and researching "computer stuff" is something that your average pc user is not going to do, and in many cases isn't really capable of doing especially since most people only use their computers for email and the web.

I believe Linux is ready for much more buisness use, but until my mother can deal with it easily, it won't be ready for mainstream home desktop use.

disclaimer: I am the editor of a technical and open source magazine, a software developer, and have been a network analyst. My views are my own and not necessarily those of my employers or clients (past or present). In all fairness, I use Linux and even help others switch, but I realize that there are currently some limitations for its widespread home use.

Re:Why do we still post this garbage?

[clodney]

The article was sensationalist and attributed to malice and conspiracy what is best explained by profit motive.

The major electronic retailers function as gatekeepers. There are thousands of products out there that they don't put on their shelves, so much so that simply getting a product on the shelf at Best Buy is a huge accomplishment for a small hardware or software vendor.

The primary issue is one of space and inventory turns. Best Buy expects that every foot of shelf space bring in some amount of revenue, and they stock products that will maximize that revenue. A product that only moves 5 copies a month will always lose out to one that moves 5 a day.

Computers with preloaded software take up a lot of space. I suspect that most models don't even give you a choice of XP Home or XP Pro, and XP Pro is far more popular than Linux. But every different SKU to stock means additional inventory headaches, so only the most popular choices are going to be in stock.

Now consider some of the secondary factors. People buying a PC with Linux are going to be less likely to buy additional software. They arguably don't need things like Spyware or Virus products, and much of what they want is OSS and available for free anyway. So the chances for upsell are greatly reduced, and follow on sales are going to be less.

Retailers will offer Linux boxes if the numbers justify it. Show them a way to make a buck and they will be all over it. But at the moment they don't feel it is profitable to do so. No grand conspiracy, just economics.

Re:Hardware Makers

[sqlrob]

What about the cost of releasing specs so that others can write the drivers?

Re:HP Website not all that linux-friendly

[poot_rootbeer]

By ultimately giving your money to HP anyway, you truly showed them how much it matters whether they offer custom build options for power users like yourself.

Not at all.