Linked by David Adams on Fri 18th Apr 2008 16:26 UTC, submitted by sjvn
"Recently, both Novell and Red Hat went on record as dismissing the idea that the consumer Linux desktop is going to be taking off anytime soon. It's not? Has anyone told Asus and Xandros? Everex and gOS? How about Dell and Ubuntu? They're all doing great with consumer Linux desktops." The enterprise Linux leaders are not the ones making strides on the desktop. Does that mean that the Linux desktop has no future, or just that they've let their business focus let them drop the ball on that segment of the market?
Permalink for comment 310333
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Recent Original Stories
Recent Comments
Headlines
Random Comments
Random Stories
Random OS Link
Member since:
2006-02-18
Just because Dell, Asus and Everex has made deals with various Linux distros does not mean Linux is making any stride on the desktop.
Once again 2008 will not be the year of desktop Linux, because there is really no call for a desktop linux from the average consumer. To understand the real issue, you have to remove yourself from you techie mindset and put yourself in the shoes of an average consumer looking for a computer at some big box store. The fact is, they don't care what the philosophy of the OS is, they don't care that it has been more stable. They care about familiarity and what their friend down the street has.
As much as I hate to admit it, Microsoft still has the desktop market cornered. This is proven by the fact that even though there have been tons of negative reviews of Vista, sells for the OS are still sky high.
In this case, the market is the judge, jury and executioner, and they have clearly been ruling against Linux this far, and I do not see how some small time deals with a few vendors is going to change that any time soon.
How does this ever change? By getting people familiar. Start putting Linux in schools and universities, start putting it in government offices. Once people see it, use it and are familiar with it, they are much more apt to look into it for themselves.