“Let’s get over Linus Torvalds’ old “world domination” goal (which was a joke), stop gnashing our teeth over The Evils of Microsoft, and think rationally about what percentage of the world’s desktops we really need to switch to Linux. I figure 10% would be a minimum, and 20% would be more than enough. Enough for what? For everything we really want.” Read the editorial at NewsForge by Roblimo.
20% Linux Market Share is all we Need
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Linux desktop expansion will begin heavily in corporations and partly in governments. The corporate desktop is the perfect place for Linux right now. User’s typically can’t administer their workstations. They’re locked down by professional admins, who can easily become skilled in Linux. Linux is also easier to remotely administer (generally speaking). After it’s on enough corporate desktops, average people will see the world’s not all on Windows. Many people want computers at home with the same software as work, so if their work computer is Linux, there’s less hesitation and more demand to get it in homes. Once it’s in a fair amount of homes for work use, it’ll quickly expand to more entertaining uses in more homes. That’ll take years, during which the choices and qualities of interfaces will improve. All of this is secondary to the real motivations, since people don’t typically care what their software is running on top of, as long as it’s running and it’s pretty. But the comfort level and knowledge will grow by adoption in the workplace. That’s how Microsoft will start to lose with very little effort by opponents. They’re digging their own graves: http://msversus.webhop.net
I’ll beleive that if Linux starts to get on the desktop, you’re right, it will starts through in corporations, where the “alleged cheapness” of Linux user doesn’t really matter.
Still, profits must be hard to come for software vendors, I don’t remember exactly when but Adobe withdraw their port of FrameMaker on Linux, it wasn’t probably making enough money.
One of the weakness of Linux is its diversity: the “little” differences between Linux distributions increase the port cost and the support cost..
Of course the LSB is helping, but I’m not sure it is enough..
And somewhere along the way, Syllable, OpenBeOS, Zeta or something else user friendly will take the flag and take over the desktop…
how a fundamentally hard to use operating system that requires severe girations to have anything beyond the normal basics set up, and one that bearly anybody outside of geekdom wants, is going to get 20% market share? The thing is fundamentally a techy’s OS, with all the trappings.
The proof will be in the pudding. KDE & the like have been out for quite a few years now, and still demographically bearly anybody is using Linux on the desktop outside of professional and business environments. If free software advocates want to promote a free-software desktop, Linux is not that vehical – we’ve been looking towards Linux on the desktop since 1998, and it has had long enough time to make that happen if the people making the software were going to make that possible. Look towards something that is being designed for the end-user (such as Syllable), not just as a programmer play-thing, and not a highly intricate-to-manage-and-comprehend OS like Linux.
I think 20% is good in USA, but in many countries like Brazil Linux will surpass 20% of the legal copies of x86 operating systems still this year. The main problem are the pirated copies of Windows that make people lazzy to learn something new like linux.
Apple computers here are like Ferraris: everybody likes of it but very few can pay for it.
I found the snippet about CNET discontinueing linux downloads vaguely amusing.
Not to be flippant (much) I didn’t even notice, probably because people using linux dont go there, they go to three sources
1. Stick to their distro
2. Sourceforge etc
3. The maintainers
openbeos is what people like . Easy to use. Reliable.
but I think B.E. OS will be out sooner.
either way, both will rock to use and both will rock to develop for!!
Linux will only gain market share because the programmers (you know, the people who actually do the work to make Linux what it is) concentrate on making the best OS possible, not because random idiots keep posting the same worthless tripe about ‘Linux will be ready when….’ as editorials.
Just get on with it. If you can’t contribute directly, contribute your opinions on individual projects’ mailing lists.
What a waste of space.
Yes even though I am a great fan of Linux. Linux is not the be all and end all of operating systems. But we must wait for Linux to destroy microsofts monopoly first. Then we can again have true competition in the operating system world and innovation will run riot.
So back Linux but keep working on your own software. It is to the benefit of all.
I have not yet read the article, but I wanted to chime in and speak my opinion that there is no 20% in this market, it is impossible, it is either near 100% or near 0% there ain’t no imbetween.
Skipp
What was the OS distribution in say 1985. I bet it wasn’t 100% Microsoft or anyone else. More 15% apple 15% Amiga 13% Atari 20% Microsoft etc. When Microsoft became a monopoly in software they created this disparity and today some people cannot image that the OS market can be shared.
All of the wannaBe’s will never get anywhere because they are so fragmented that the developers will take about five years to produce something usable.
IIRC there are *six* Be clones out there. And you Be advocates complain that Linux distros are incompatible?
Simple question: why do you want other people to use an OS in particular (Linux in this case)? If you bought a Playstation 2, would you want other people to buy it too, instead of Microsoft’s Xbox?
What really matters to me, is interoperability; we can (or could) get that with any OS, not just Linux. I don’t care if my co-workers use Windows XP, Linux, MacOS X or FreeBSD, as long as I can work with them seemlessly. Major applications like OpenOffice and Mozilla lead the way.
Interoperability is just the the point
Microsoft has built and entrenched a monopoly by ensuring incompatibility not only between its own products and its competitors, but also between different versions of its own products.
This is why someone, preferably Linux IMO, needs to dig into this market.
Ummm, yeah…BeOS will surely rule the day *rolls eyes*
Just because it couldn’t compete when it had <bFULL CORPORATE BACKING, doesn’t mean it can’t compete when it’s being developed by six small groups of hobbyists. Oh I did forget about Yellow Tab.
BeOS has some niceties, but it also has a few bastard children locked in its closets. BeOS zealots, repeat after me, NO OS IS PERFECT
For instance, how was networking on your BeOS? Fonts? Multi-User?
And don’t tell me these things aren’t important. Apple and Microsoft have been concentrating on improving these things dramatically in the past few years.
If anybody’s got a shot at taking the desktop from Microsoft, I have to say it’s Linux…it’s just gonna take some more time. Technical superiority doesn’t matter in this industry, but momentum does. Momentum, which BeOS and most other upstarts continue to be losing.
Microsoft has built and entrenched a monopoly by ensuring incompatibility not only between its own products and its competitors, but also between different versions of its own products.
An Operating System just controls your hardware, and eventually provides you a User Interface. Interoperability doesn’t come with the OS (AFAIK), but with user-land software. That’s why I said that OOo and Mozilla (among others) lead the way: they can be run on a variety of OSes, including Windows. Who cares if you’re running Windows, but using Open Office and exchanging documents in standard formats?
So to me, the issue lies in the market share of such applications that use standards. We probably should better worry about that.