"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?
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GRRRR....
The browser timed out on me and lost the other part of my comments...
Here's the rest of it--
Of course the "industry leaders" are jealous! They let their eyes off the ball and now someone else is having a ball on their field and 'stealing' all of their users... Who could have seen this coming? Did they really think we'd all just give up and go back to Windows just because they no longer wanted us??
But then, that's the beauty and freedom that comes with using Open Source! Someone can always pick up whatever you leave behind and keep running the race without you. With Open Source there's always a way to continue going forward!
Too bad these 'leaders' forgot that...
--bornagainpenguin
Edited 2008-04-18 17:23 UTC
Member since:2007-02-17
That is the thing, because canonical went for the consumer market and marketed heavily to those users, they can scale up into other areas. Users who may not know anything about Linux at least have heard about Ubuntu. New Linux users whoes entry point is Ubuntu will one day be professionals in the field and just like what happened with RedHat and Suse these same users will one day recommend they use Ubuntu on their servers. Its already happening, in our offices every linux user uses ubuntu eventhough RHEL is used on our servers, they are already testing Ubuntu on a virtualized server to see if they can replace an old debian box they use heavily.
Just like Apple is doing now with the iPhone and Macs, they start by getting the users first and foremost and the professional will build an industry out of it. These consumers using the software need support, they want to take what they are familiar with and use it at work, they need IT professionals who will make that possible. Thin about it, there will be a whole generation of users who grew up using Ubuntu as their primary distro of choice. just like a dud who was packaging this a kernel and some tools and now is the huge entity that is called Redhat. Both Suse and Redhat started out with meager goals and means, and now they are huge.
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2005-08-07
I think David Adams is exactly right in this instance. The various Enterprise Linux "leaders" have dropped the ball. They started playing follow the leader, which in many cases turned out to be someone from corporations with an interest in big iron. So what happened? They started focus-shifting away from the home user, the hobbyist, the IT professional that liked their distro enough to think it could be scaled up for enterprise and willing to risk their jobs proving it....
Eventually someone saw there was a void and began to fill it.
That someone (right now) seems to be Canonical, and they've done wonders for the community by polishing the Linux desktop for the home users.
They've provided forums so they could foster an environment of power users who not only helped other users (defraying Canonical's support costs) but also allowing them the freedom to be hobbyists.
And now that Canonical is starting to be happy with how well their release