Desktop Linux Survey Results Published

An anonymous reader writes "The Open Source Development Labs has published preliminary results from its desktop Linux survey, which had 3,300 responses. The month-long online survey focused on determining the key issues driving Linux on the desktop, as well as the major barriers to Linux desktop adoption. 'What was most surprising to us was probably the top two reasons given for deploying Linux on the desktop,' OSDL's Principal Analyst Dave Rosenberg said. 'It's not TCO (total cost of ownership), or security, or lack of license fees. It was 'employees requesting Linux (user demand)' and because 'my competitors have successfully deployed Linux,' he added."

Comments

tax software

[bogaboga]

As the year steams to an end, I wonder when we shall have a free Java/QT/Mono/GTK application to handle income tax filing. Is it too late for the OSS community to cook up one?

If this software were availed, it'd significantly boost the status of Linux getting looked at seriously on the desktop. I would not want to spend any money on the so called tax software again.

Re:tax software

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that the tax code is huge and enormously complex. Keeping it up-to-date would be a gigantic task that would probably make Firefox and OpenOffice look like hello-world.

And even if you found some way to motivate people to do it for free, at the end of the day what assurances do you have that any of it is correct? Are you willing to stake your credit directly on whether somebody interpreted the tax code the same way as the IRS?

HTML and CSS are relatively simple and well-documented. And if something is wrong, it tends to be very wrong, and (due to their visual nature) easy to spot. And yet web browsers still have trouble rendering valid HTML. Are you going to sign your name on a tax form printed out by somebody's hard-to-see-if-it-is-correct-or-horribly-wrong interpretation of the very-complex, not-very-well-understood, tax code?

I understand some (all?) of the filing services offer guarantees; a free program couldn't offer this -- so at best you'd have to settle for something not as good (in one dimension) as the other offerings.

If you really want to be able to file your taxes quickly and easily under Linux, I suggest:
(a) get your government to put everything online, so you can just fill out some HTML forms and click "Submit", and/or:
(b) get your government to simplify the fucking tax code by a few orders of magnitude

Re:tax software

[aichpvee]

I can only speak for the UK, but its already Java software, but its a web app. Sure you can buy Quicken UK etc, which will talk directly to the government gateway, but you can also just point any browser at government website and you can calculate and file your tax there too.

In the United States the tax prep software industry bought legislation making it illegal for the government to directly provide such a service. Makes me so proud to be an american when I know how vastly superior our government is by protecting us from useful services it makes me want to go wave a flag right now.

Re:Built for Linux

[log2.0]

Linux (or should I say GNU/Linux?? ;)) is a totally different landscape to windows. Everything is done differently. When I switched a few years ago, I saw the large number of changes and it feels weird using a windows box now.

Software for Win98 will probably work in XP. This is not the case in Linux. We know this, but average Joe doesn't. I can personally see this as a barrier to desktop linux adoption.

Either way, it has come very far in the last decade and I see it gearing up to be competitive (I use it all the time...). Time will tell and this is a very interesting time to live.

Cabbage Patch Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Put a pile of Linux CDs in a display in a store that has a "Grand Opening".
2) Invite news media to the opening.
3) Pay group of people to go charging into the store to fight over the Linux CDs.
4) Profi... oh wait. They're free. And you have to pay those people. Soooo ... Loss!

Gamers

[DigiShaman]

What about games? THe only reason I'm staying with WinXP is to play the latest games due to DirectX/Open GL support and the always updated driver base. Seriously, why is the entertainment aspect always left out? For fucks sake, gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry. I would THINK it would be a huge factor for home PC users.

Re:Gamers

[Chaffar]

I would THINK it would be a huge factor for home PC users.

I'll tell you why I stopped using WinXP even though I have been playing PC games for 20 years now... The 2 factors that drove me away from XP are:

- I was completely fed up of CONSTANTLY maintaining the Anti-virus/spyware/malware software up-to-date, and STILL get a dozen of so of them every month - I have an computer illiterate family :'(

- IMHO, the quality of PC Games has dropped substantially in the past , oh say 5 years. I used to play PC games because I felt they were usually far more creative and intelligent than any console game: god games (CIV!!!), 1st person shooters (they used to be PC-only before...), simulators ( Apache Longbow, Hind, whatever). But ever since EA has turned its evil eye towards PCs, I came to realize that PCs have started producing games that are fundamentally the same ones as the ones you get on consoles... So the PC as a gaming machine had just become, in my eyes, an expensive console. At the same time, you can see how much better consoles have become in the same period of time, which made my shift even easier.

- Oh and 3- Computer games have become obscenely ressource-hungry, usually with no graphical justification *cough*C&C Generals*cough*. I don't know if this is due to lazy coding and rushed jobs, or malice due to collusion between hardware manufacturers and software producers *cough*EAINTELWINDOWS*cough*. I'm betting on the former, but I have come to expect anything in this industry...

And gaming under Linux just keeps on getting better with time, now with Quake IV http://www.filecloud.com/files/file.php?file_id=22 97 binaries available, I believe this is the first step towards mainstream acceptance of Linux as a gaming machine.

Re:Gamers

[LordFnord]

I used to play PC games because I felt they were usually far more creative and intelligent than any console game: god games (CIV!!!)

Some of them still are. I have done zero hours of actual work this week because of a certain newly-released game :-)

It's like music, or films, or just about any other creatively-based industry. 90% of the stuff produced is mass-market plasticised sugar-coated crap, but there's always that 10% left over that makes the whole process worthwhile - of course, my 10% might not be the same as your 10%...

I came to realize that PCs have started producing games that are fundamentally the same ones as the ones you get on consoles

Sometimes games are technically superior on the PC than they are on the consoles. There are also many I can't play without a mouse and keyboard (and not just Quake and friends, think Baldur's Gate 2 with all its keyboard shortcuts), which isn't an option on consoles at least AFAIK.

There are also some types of games - ones that you don't just pick up and play for ten minutes, basically - that I don't think are really suited to consoles at all. Equally, there are some games - usually ones involving dance mats, light guns, or other funky hardware - that I don't think work well on PCs.

YMMV, of course, but I think to achieve gaming nirvana you still need a console *and* a computer. Hopefully in five years this statement will no longer be true, but I've been hoping that for twenty years now and it hasn't happened yet.

Oh and 3- Computer games have become obscenely ressource-hungry,

I am in violent agreement with you on this one, but then I can remember saying the same thing in 1990 when I had to upgrade the memory in my Atari ST from 512k to 1Mb so I could play Powermonger. Irritatingly this sort of "push the boundaries by releasing a game that isn't quite runnable on the hardware available today" attitude only used to be taken by luminaries like Molyneux or Carmack (who could be forgiven, as they made up for it with the games they released), whereas now everyone seems to think all PC gamers have upwards of £2,000 to spend on hardware every year.

Personally my favourite game is still the original arcade version of Defender.

Re:Linux for the people

[Anonymous Coward]

I have always found Windows network printing to be far more problematic.

i have to agree. i have found it much easier to share a printer to windows machines from samba than i have to share a printer to windows machines from a win2k pro/server machine. i don't care what permissions or lack of permissions i place on the printer from windows, it seems that every other day i have to fiddle with the fucking printer sharing again to be able to print to it from my windows xp laptop.

i have to say that for all the dicking around in text-based configuration files i've had to do to setup a NetBSD-samba pdc, it has been far less of a hassle to do and runs more reliabley than the damn win2k server w/ active directory ever did. whoever fucking said windows was easy is full of shit.

Re:How representative was the sample?

[CowboyBob500]

Red Hat and Fedora are not as popular in Europe as they are in the US. Here Mandr(ake|iva)/(Open) SuSE are the distros of choice for professional users. I've never personally met anyone who uses Red Hat or Fedora for example, and I know a lot of Linux users.

I suspect, therefore, that the survey included respondants from countries other than the US.

Bob

Re:Well, there you have it.

[pc_abuser_ohio]

That would include me. All of my customers have 'doze with a few macs but after I started toying around with linux a few years ago I got hooked on it. Linux on the desktop has improved dramatically since the days of horrible fonts and dependancy nightmares and as much as I'd like to see it succeed on the desktop, I'd hate to see it turn into a bloated "all things to all people" OS like windows. On the flip side, an increase in popularity would drive more HW/SW vendors to develop stuff for *nix.

Re:Built for Linux

[lubricated]

Well, IBD. I guess it's new, or I just missed it.

It sucks though. Their prices are MORE expensive than if you go to Dell or something. I think you are still paying the windows tax, then a middle man fee.

Agreed -- Windows very unfriendly

[Anonymous Coward]

whoever fucking said windows was easy is full of shit

Yes, the alleged "user-friendliness" of Windows is a very odd prevailing notion, and totally untrue.

What they mean of course is that the Windows desktop is full of visible icons and menus, and any computer-illiterate grannie can click on one so it must be "user friendly". What they fail to mention though is that clicking is only the first step in the process, and everything else in the O/S is a highly user-unfrendly nightmare.

The only area where Windows was more user-friendly for a while was, I think, in the one-shot installation of applications using InstallShield. However, now that we have "apt-get", "emerge", etc etc in the various distros, installation is even easier in FOSS than with InstallShield.

More importantly though, the key to user-friendliness is transparency of problems. The Unix world has always had it, whereas Windows has always HID it and thus been inherently unfriendly.

Re:Built for Linux

[mysticgoat]

This is a kind of 'me too' post.

I set up my computer as dual boot between WinXP and Mandrake more than a year ago, in hopes of migrating. But I'm still doing about 100% of my work in WinXP. (I have moved to Firefox, Thunderbird, OOo, etc-- but under WinXP).

The stumbling block is that I use a Canon i9900 printer in large format photorealistic mode, and a Wacom graphics tablet in Paint Shop Pro, for a very small percentage of my work, and there are no Linux equivalents. So I'm stuck with one toe in the Windows world. I can move more than 97% of my work to Linux at any time, but I'll have to go to WinXP to print the 11x17" photos and to do some of the photo touch-ups. I spend perhaps 4 hours a month on these activities-- it really is a small but important part of my work.

And it turns out that while I am prepared for the disruptions in habits that would go with a total conversion to Linux, I dread the thought of all the broken habit patterns that would result if I try to straddle both OSs. I don't want to surprise myself by trying to use Linux shortcuts in Windows-- that is the worst kind of interruption; it would definitely make it harder to stay in the creative sweet spot.

I expect that I'm not the only guy around who feels stuck in a slow migration pattern. I expect that there are lots of individuals and small businesses who continue to use Windows because less than 2% of their work requires templates, or macros or something like that which they can't duplicate in Linux (yet)-- and that, combined with realistic concerns about unsupported straddling of both systems, is sufficient to keep them in Windows.

Re:Linux for the people

[Kamiza Ikioi]

Exactly. I dumped a recent Linux install in favor of Windows just for USB Webcam support. The system was for a small media center + teleconferencing with family. My distro was requiring me to recompile the kernel for Webcam support. Not exactly "plug-and-play". While compiling a kernel may not be difficult, I compare having to do this with rebuilding your car's engine just to change the radio station. It also had problems supporting the TV output on the system, and problems with several wireless cards.

Linux must become fully plug-and-play, or it will never ever become a desktop of choice for the average user. Whether it is coding more generic drivers, or forcing vendors to support Linux, or both, it must be done.

I've found Linux to be the best choice in servers. I've also found it to be the choice for desktops if that desktop happens to be a system that only connects to generic hardware, a generic lan card, and you aren't sharing that desktop with anyone computer illiterate. Anything else, and its pot luck.

I've heard it over and over... someone has their mother using linux and loving it. Well, your mother is a rocket scientest compared to mine and all the other ones I know who still don't know what a right click is. Recompiling a kernel is a taaaaaad out of their league.

Re:Well, there you have it.

[fitten]

Don't forget the bloat in applications as well. Is OpenOffice 2.0 named that because of the relative size of the tarball compared to 1.2 or because of the relative startup time for the application compared to 1.2? ;) The average Linux disto has used a lot more than the average Windows with equivalent software (Office suite and development suite) for some time for me. Heck, my Windows box with those plus WoW is smaller than this Linux box with just the distribution stuff.

Number Crunching for Linux Deployment

[queenb**ch]

This is a real-life case from one of my consulting clients. They are a small construction company with 3 servers (2 file and one email) and about 10 workstations. They chose to convert to Linux based servers and workstations for a variety of reasons. The cost savings on the software purchases were plowed into a one-time expense of employee training and they've been quite happy with the results.

$189 per seat vs. $50 per seat for the Codeweaver's Plugin
Microsoft Office = Same price regardless
($700 + $35 per CAL) x 2 = $1750 vs. $0 and $0 CAL's for Server
($700 + $35 per CAL) x 1 = $1050 vs $0 and $0 for CAL's for mail server

That's well in excess of $4000 in savings. The employer wisely chose to invest this in training and sent a couple of his people off to class. This cost him about $2000 for the both of them at a local community college. He then had those two train the rest of the staff. After some initial pain, he's enjoyed a $2000 savings just in his first year on the software alone.

What's not included in this is that they will be able to use the same hardware for at least one additional year. Had they upgraded their operating systems to the current Microsoft releases, they would have had to upgrade their server hardware as well. Some of their workstations would also have required new hardware. Another expense that's not included in this is not having to purchase antivirus or anitspyware products for the workstations. Since 99%+ of these things are Microsoft-targeted, they simply fail to execute in a Linux environment.

2 cents,

Queen B

Re:Well, there you have it.

[AstroDrabb]

Is OpenOffice 2.0 named that because of the relative size of the tarball compared to 1.2 or because of the relative startup time for the application compared to 1.2?

OO.org 2 is has a very fast startup time for me. I have a FULL OO.org 2 install on XP SP2 and the OO.org 2 directory is only 201 MB. I also have a full MS Office 2003 install. Talk about bloat. A few hundred megs more than OO.org 2.

The average Linux disto has used a lot more than the average Windows with equivalent software (Office suite and development suite) for some time for me

Probably because you have tons of unneeded development libraries and docs installed. I stopped using Fedora Core because how big the base install is. I now use Ubuntu and only install what I need and the whole distro comes on just one CD. As far as MS development tools go, what are you using? Because I have MS Visual Studio .Net 2003 Enterprise and it is pretty big:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003
Size: 0.98 GB (1,053,724,672 bytes)
Contains: 17,984 files 3,248 folders

C:\Program Files\MSDN
Size: 1.68 GB (1,810,624,512 bytes)
Contains: 1,834 files 2 folders

Just these two folders are bigger than my entire Linux install.