"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?
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-07-05
I think your post is insightful and wanted to add that the average user will use what they are familiar with and they generally gain familiarity by using something at work.
If they use Windows at work, it will be what they want to use at home. If they use OS X at work, they'll generally have that at home. So, logically, if the Linux powers that be want to expand Linux on the desktop, the place they need to focus on is not the end user, but rather schools, universities, and businesses.
Member since:2006-01-17
Actually, that's exactly what it means. Maybe not huge, overwhelming strides, but non-negligible strides nonetheless. If Linux weren't making any strides on the desktop these deals wouldn't be happening. These aren't non-profit companies; there's a money driven reason why more vendors have been shipping desktop Linux in the last couple of years. They're not doing it because they want more people to use Linux, they're doing it because more people are using Linux.
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.
These 'small time deals' aren't meant to change anything. They are not the cause, they are the effect. The cause is the market being more open to Linux than in the past. Getting Linux into schools, universities and governments is happening now. Which is driving these 'small time deals'.
Edited 2008-04-18 19:54 UTC
Member since:2006-04-28
Just as an anecdote, I found by chance this[1] article the other day. It's from 2003 and its title says:
"Global IT firm predicts Linux will have 20% desktop market share by 2008"
Bottom line? The future is unpredictable :-)
[1]http://www.linux.com/articles/30873?tid=3
Member since:2005-07-06
"They care about familiarity and what their friend down the street has."
If they dont have special needs they will care about one thing only. Price and what it can give them in return.
Thats it.
Price and what features it gets / $. This is the mentality of most people.
Now back to special needs; this could include the followings:
1. a student who is asked to bring office 2003/2004/2007/2008 suite to produce office applications' files that are compatible with his teacher's and other students computers. (will end up buying windows or a Mac)
2. an employee who works in an office and uses special programs lets say ACT! and Quickbooks and Outlook 2007 for his work and would like to take his work to his home; this guy would need only one kind of an OS (ie the same one used at work)
3. IT worker on a repected Servers going back to home and would like to manage remotely everything. (Sun/Linux/other Unixes will help him)
4. a programmer: would buy his platform that he develops for
5. a Scientist: would buy a Unix/Mac workstation
6. a car diagnostic/ health diagnostic workstation; will also have special needs
7. others and others and others
Now average people would buy their computers based on their capabilities to run the following applications with acceptable stability/performance:
1. Browse the internet including bad web sites
2. Manage Music/ Videos and be able to create them or edit them then produce them to CD/DVDs
3. Chat like crazy with others or talk via internet calls
4. if they get nastier they will start experimenting with P2P networking and file sharing making their computers a kingdom of infestation.
5. Start gaming like crazy for 16hours on LAN parties
6. other crazy or exotic stuff
once people get the point that their systems new hardware fails to please them, they would start looking for alternative which is closest to what they do.
they will find the following:
1. Gaming cannot be corrected unless you switch back to xp or become consoly
2. others are available with least efforts if you buy a mac (but you need to steal to pay for a mac)
3. go extreme and dirty by installing Linux to find at the end the distro that suites his needs and after spending hundreds of hours to find solutions of linux problems and probably he will end up wearing a corrective lenses.
this is the computing that most people do (again if they don't have special needs)
Member since:2006-12-16
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.