OSNews

It's easier said than done. Moving the desktop forward to something that Apple provides requires focus and a lot of development time. It's something that can only be bought through hiring full-time employees (nobody is going to build great frameworks in little time in their spare time, or do detailed UI/usability work).

The problem with this is margins. If you are going after the consumer desktop, you'll have a problem, because the margins are very small. Very few consumers would be willing to pay more than say 50 dollars a year for a Linux distribution with support. Imagine how quickly that money is burnt on just support. And there's an inherent problem here: people who don't needs support won't buy it since the code is free, people who do need support and will probably use it are the only ones to buy.

The advantage that Microsoft and Apple have here is bundling. They get a buck of every machine where their OS is used, no matter if you are completely incompetent in using computers or if you write compilers in your spare time.

Maybe one possible road around this is to focus on the desktop in businesses. But then again, Novell and Red Hat have provided this for years, but they are probably making their lion's share off server usage.

The primary area outside the server where I can see Linux succeed in the shorter term is smartphones. Linux is open, has no vendor lockin for whoever produces or sells a phone/subscription, and usually no support is required. Besides that, the scope is much smaller, no one expects a full office suite or video editing program on their phone.