"Many people are looking to Ubuntu to be something that it is not: A mass market ready operating system designed to work with the same level of compatibility as Microsoft Windows. Where people get confused is in believing that if Ubuntu, king of the Linux distros, is not able to take the marketplace by storm, then something must be broken with desktop Linux. In this article, I'll explain what it will take to dethrone the mighty Ubuntu and gain a market share so large that it will eclipse anything seen by Ubuntu to date." More here.
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Member since:2006-06-21
And, if I may:
3. If there's a throne, do Linux distro's want it?
I say this because the article was mixing different concepts. For one, it was mixing community projects like Fedora with commercial projects like Ubuntu.
Where Ubuntu, via Canonical, has clear commercial interests to pursue, Fedora or other community distro does not. There's no point in talking about "marketplace" where they are concerned. There's no advertising, no customers to win over, no marketshare. There are only people who use Fedora and contribute to it because it scratches their itch best.
Some of those people may be concerned about what the average non-geek user wants, but most of them don't care. I'm not saying there's a complete disregard for usability; after all, the geeks are humans too. But I'm saying that there's no drive to actively push one distro in front of another, unless you're a zealot.
Competition between open community distro's is simple and practical: the people use the one they like best. They don't fight with artificial means of promotion because they're not selling anything.
Therefore I submit that the article is null, because it discusses a non-subject. Not to mention it's downright ignorant in places. For example, what do Nautilus supposed shortcomings have to do with Fedora? Gnome is a different project, and Nautilus is a separate team inside it. The fact that the author chastizes Fedora for it just goes to show that he doesn't get it; Fedora is not a commercial company like Microsoft, where a central entity controls features in every component. A free distro is a combination of thousands of ready-made components made by third parties.
Edited 2007-12-08 05:58
Member since:
2006-02-04
I have two points to consider.
1. Is Ubuntu king?
2. Is there a throne?