Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 20th Sep 2007 15:31 UTC, submitted by Rahul
Hewlett-Packard, the world's Number 1 PC maker, will try selling pre-loaded Linux on PCs in several countries as it expands a test program - evaluating a market that some competitors have already entered - and moves its personal computer business into a new generation of form factors and functionality.
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Member since:
2006-11-24
Personal opinion:
While Novell and Red Hat already have a lock on the corporate Linux desktop and server, I think that Canonical will eventually have to go into that sphere as well.
In fact, I think that Desktop Linux, and FOSS in general, will find its primary audience in business/government desktop computing. The current legal protractions in desktop computing involve office document formats (ODF vs. OOXML), and everyone has their sentiments invested in either side.
But do you hear as much emotional hoopla involving DesktopLinux/FOSS and *multimedia formats*? I don't.
I have not heard that much about the promotion of formats such as SVG, SMIL, and Ogg (Theora or Vorbis) within the last year or so, compared to the volume of the office document format war.
Instead, Linux (home) users are still begging Adobe to release a full version of both Flash 9 and Shockwave. The Xiph.Org project is still working under the shadow of Thomson and Fraunhofer: http://www.news.com/2100-1023-249710.html Nevermind that we don't have an open source competitor to Adobe's or Microsoft's multimedia offerings.
So does DesktopLinux/FOSS have a chance in the home desktop computing field? Not any time soon.
Does it have a chance in the corporate desktop computing field, which doesn't demand that much multimedia? Hell yes.
So I think Canonical's pursuing a fruitless endeavor in the home desktop computer, and should instead focus on the more lucrative corporate desktop, offering a competitive alternative to Novell, Red Hat, and maybe Mandriva. Another startup in the future will probably appeal to high-end home desktop PC vendors like Alienware, Velocity Micro, and Falcon Northwest.
By that time, there will be greater, and hopefully better, efforts for multimedia on the FOSS-based home desktop. Canonical just doesn't seem to truly have their priorities in that area.
Unfortunately, neither does any recognizable Desktop Linux distro vendor at the time of writing.
Edited 2007-09-20 22:29