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Linux will have 20% desktop market share by 2008? 351

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-thats-awfully-optimistic dept.
A user writes "Siemens Business Systems, after conducting an extensive survey on non technical workers ("secretaries and managers, not IT people") is predicting that the Linux desktop will capture 20% of the market for desktop computers in large enterprises within the next 5 years. Senior program manager Duncan McNutt, who has overseen Siemens's testing of Linux desktops with users and administrators in enterprise settings, believes that the Ximian desktop and application suite, running on either SuSE or Red Hat, requires two days of training, which is the same as what most enterprises budget for a Windows/MS Office version upgrade. Interestingly, they used Ximian Desktop, instead of KDE, because Gnome, particularly Ximian's version, was "different enough" to set user expectations that the experience would be less like Windows. "
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Linux will have 20% desktop market share by 2008? More

Linux will have 20% desktop market share by 2008?

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  • it's true (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tirel ( 692085 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @10:21AM (#6716781)
    right now I have openbox3 with customized gnome-panel open, a transparent aterm and firebird with 4 virtual desktops open, and I tell you, it look prettier and works faster than any other system. especially now with the preempt patches to the 2.6 kernel and the new 2.4 gnome, all linux needs is games.

    • Re:it's true (Score:3, Interesting)

      by the uNF cola ( 657200 )
      And there in lies the rub, eh?

      • Re:it's true (Score:5, Funny)

        by tdemark ( 512406 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @11:08AM (#6716997) Homepage
        Yeah, because we know if "secretaries and managers" need more of anything, it's games.
        • Hey, we need SOMETHING to make us look busy.

        • Re:it's true (Score:5, Funny)

          by __past__ ( 542467 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @11:38AM (#6717186)
          From my experience, managers critically depend on solitaire, at least that's the one app they always have open when I get a peek at their desktops. For secretaries, games might be less critical, as long as the platform provides them with animated wallpapers, mouse cursors, and a means to play animations with drunken singing reindeers they got as an email attachment from people they don't know around christmas. How else would they get any work done?

      • Re:it's true (Score:5, Insightful)

        by RoLi ( 141856 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @01:19PM (#6717756)
        The complete and utter lack of games for WindowsNT hasn't stopped it in evolving into Win2K and later the "home desktop" WinXP.

        Linux will go the same path.

    • More information needed. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rkz ( 667993 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @10:36AM (#6716861) Homepage Journal
      In addition to this statement from Siemens, I wonder if there is any company that has ever evaluated the time lost in desktop use using Windows 98/2000 on PCs in an enterprise-wide level compared to Linux, in a typical day's work, and that which is lost with linux. To be fair, this comparison ought to be with controlled environment (well set-up systems, users are only Power Users and therefore unable to install applications themselves, etc..).

      This would result in something like:
      Setup: Intel 500MHz/1GHz Desktop (or laptop)
      Cold Boot Up
      Login time
      starting Lotus Notes/Outlook (viewing emails/starting new messages in Notes is historically long!)
      opening word processor 1st time/next time
      opening spreadsheet first time/next time
      opening presentation tool first time/next time
      opening web browser first time/next time
      shutting down
      rebooting (yes, even in linux this may happen!)
      number of rebooting
      etc... (applications in Enterprise environment, not home use, hence no video viewer or filesharing software for example. IM is not yet a universally accepted tool in my experience either)

      If workers in a 1000-employee company were asked to monitor all these tasks for a whole week, half of them on linux, half of them on Windows, this should return an average that's actually measurable and would start making sense.

      Does this exist anywhere?

      • Re:More information needed. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by westyvw ( 653833 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @12:07PM (#6717345)
        More importantly, by that time why would a business user have anything more then a dumb terminal. X server already has proven itsself to work with this model, why would anyone have to open applications at all locally?

        Largo Florida already has done this, saving millions of dollars and is the easiest system to administer. Its users just use it, they dont care it its windows or linux (its KDE).
      • At my last job, after they finally gave me Windows 2000, I simply turned on my PC Monday morning and turned it off Friday afternoon. The rest of the days I just did a "Lock Workstation"... it turned out to be a pretty effective method as I could instantly pick up where I left off they day previous, and I experienced very little to no reliablity issues.
        • I won't be surprised if you were hit with the blaster bug last week. At my place of work, a boot everyday is expected so that the IT Minesweeper Consultants and Solitaire Experts written boot scripts drop in the updates. SM
        • I have a similar experience, but since I had to lock my hard drive in a safe at the end of the day I used the hibernate (suspend to disk) function in Win2K. I could leave my system at the end of the day, and return to it at the start of the next in exactly the same state as when I left it. If I'd had to do a full shutdown and then re-open all of the editor windows I typically had open then I would have lost a lot of time.

    • Re:it's true (Score:3, Interesting)

      by j3110 ( 193209 )
      It's really funny you mention games. I talked to a Lexmark employee friend of mine (in French Tech support division). He said that they ask for Linux systems because they come with more cool games, and they have to give them the new systems because they support Linux with all the new printers (at least the ones they have tech support lines for). Games are already making Linux more popular, and sysadmins generally don't have enough knowledge to remove them from Linux (RedHat I guess is what they use). I'
  • The new John Carmack games will come out this year, too. Also, Michael Moore will make an authentic documentary by 2005. Finally, OSDN will be profitable by Q4 of 2006.

    Yeah.

  • Beautiful (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 17, 2003 @10:23AM (#6716790)
    I would love to see it, though I think it depends more on what MS is capable of delivering with Longhorn that what Linux can do. My guess is that if the economy is still in the crapper, and people are still using a decidedly client server computing model, then upgrades to a new MS OS are going to be slow on the uptake. We need a paradigm shift in IT, something new and wonderful needs to happen. Linux desktops should be going for new and wonderful, not same old same old.

    • Re:Beautiful (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 17, 2003 @10:26AM (#6716808)
      first rule of online discussion:
      • - whenever someone mentions a paradigm shift, smile and slowly start walking away without attracting too much attention
    • Linux desktops should be going for new and wonderful, not same old same old.

      One very old method which is lost to many stuck in the Windows-style autonomous desktop computing 'para-dime' is to use Xterminals. Based on off-the-shelf PC components and fat, cheap 2 and 4-way Opteron servers, this old way saves the cost and support headache of many, many drive spindles and duplicated operating system maintenance. The K-12Linux [k12ltsp.org] project has shown the way for many schools. Governments and businesses can adopt the

  • Of course! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 17, 2003 @10:26AM (#6716811)
    And we'll be driving to the local electronics store in our flying cars to buy Linux, which we'll install on our personal droids in preparation for our vacation to the moon!

  • Oh come on (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tsa ( 15680 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @10:26AM (#6716813) Homepage
    All these so-called 'predictions' are useless. No-one can look into the future and especially in the fast moving world of hard- and software the Next Best Thing is always just around the corner, so why do people take the time even to read predictions like this?

    • Re:Oh come on (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dog and Pony ( 521538 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @10:33AM (#6716847)
      To me, the really puzzling thing is why people who claim to not even bother to read the predictions bother to write about them.

  • linux? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by latroM ( 652152 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @10:26AM (#6716815) Homepage Journal
    What if the kernel used year 2008 is the Hurd? Is it still "linux". We should really speak about free unix like operating systems.

    • Re:linux? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by __past__ ( 542467 )
      I think it's a save prediction that in 2008, the state of the Hurd will be "production ready in about half a year". But still, you are right, this isn't about Linux, it's about Gnome and KDE, whatever OS they are running on.

      • Re:linux? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by garett_spencley ( 193892 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @11:06AM (#6716992) Journal
        I disagree because of Linux kernel's binary loading. ELF is standard enough, but all other systems that use ELF still have their own implementations and there is no native binary compatibility... FreeBSD can emulate but that's pretty much all I know of.

        So what does this have to do with anything? Well the major thing setting Linux back (aside from sheer motivation to switch operating systems) is, arguably, mainly commercial applications. So any applications that will be ported/written for a *nix system and on the store shelves at Staples or The Future Shop will be for Linux.

        So while KDE/Gnome/XFree86 all run on most free *nix systems it's the commercial applications that will set Linux apart from the rest IMO.

        - Garett

        • Re:linux? (Score:2, Informative)

          by Arker ( 91948 )

          I think you're wrong for two reasons. OK, make that three.

          First I think you overestimate the importance of commercial applications. They're only important when they have a great advantage over their Free competitors, which is the case in a small and shrinking number of areas.

          Second, even with poorly written commercial code, it's often fairly simple to port code among similar Free systems. So the cost for a commercial supplier to offer more platforms is very low.

          Thirdly, there are more and more compati

          • Actually I think that you underestimate the importance of commercial applications, at least on the desktop.

            Most of the Windows users that I know, being regular joes who don't know or care what an operating system is, like to walk into a store and pick up any ol' game/office app/music software etc. whatever it is and they like to go home and put it in their cd-rom and it just runs.

            Very few people who aren't tech-oriented like to search the Internet for applications that suit their needs unless they already

        • Re:linux? (Score:3, Informative)

          by __past__ ( 542467 )

          I disagree because of Linux kernel's binary loading. ELF is standard enough, but all other systems that use ELF still have their own implementations and there is no native binary compatibility... FreeBSD can emulate but that's pretty much all I know of.

          Actually, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Solaris, AIX and UnixWare also have Linux binary compatibiliy, at least on some platforms. The BSDs also have some more compatibility layers, usually at least for the "native" Unix on a given platform. There may be other Unixes

    • According to the GNU website, "Linux" means just the kernel, so if the kernel got replaced the system is not GNU/Linux any more. It may be called GNU/Hurd, or "The GNU system" (which is also more or less usable now).

  • From the interview (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 17, 2003 @10:27AM (#6716822)
    "Siemens found KDE to be more "Windows-like" than Gnome, but that lead to problems when non-technical users expected a more Windows-like experience. Gnome, particularly Ximian's version, was "different enough" to set user expectations that the experience would be less like Windows, which led to fewer adoption problems."

    Need more reasons to have at least two different desktops?
    • that Linux shouldn't necessarily be trying to emulate MS Windows' dekstop so much as making one that's better even though different.

      Generally too many choices for the end user (read jane secretary, or joe PHB) are BAD because it confuses them and creates IT maintenence nightmares.

      It is true that if you try to create a gui interface that is just like MS windows, except you differ in some crucial areas, the user will be put off by the "well windows doesn't do/have that" comparison. However, if the user exp

  • Size matters? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by capt.Hij ( 318203 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @10:27AM (#6716823) Homepage Journal
    Linux will grow quickly as a desktop OS because it can deliver equal productivity at significantly lower costs than Windows in very large enterprise environments -- installations of 4,000 to 40,000 desktops.
    Why does it have to be installed in large scale environnments for productivity gains? The article states that the training required is the same. If that is the case then it should be good for any size business???

    • Re:Size matters? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sholden ( 12227 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @10:45AM (#6716899) Homepage
      "equal productivity" means there are no productivity gains...

      Large enterprises get that equal productivity at significantly lower cost since, being free software, they can install Linux on as many machines as they want without paying extra for the priviledge.

      For smaller enterprises the cost savings are lower, since they require fewer Windows licenses in order to use Windows.

    • Because savings are seen only in large deployments (Score:5, Interesting)

      by maynard ( 3337 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @10:55AM (#6716958) Journal
      Why does it have to be installed in large scale environnments for productivity gains? The article states that the training required is the same. If that is the case then it should be good for any size business???

      Training is only part of the cost structure for any IT deployment. The cost savings of desktop Linux are due primarily to it's UNIX heritage: its security model, centralized authentication, network filesystems (both NFS and AFS), and it's inherent ability to scale from thin client to full workstation without any back-end changes to user accounts. This is all traditional 'NIX stuff going back to late '80s early '90s Workstation fare.

      Why this matters is that an organization doesn't see significant cost savings along these lines until they hit a threshold deployment size, nor are the savings linear from the bottom up. Ten Linux ('NIX) workstations don't save the same percent of money in an IT budget as do one hundred. One Hundred saves less as a percentage as one thousand. I don't have numbers, but I've seen the savings first hand - the bigger your deployment gets the greater your savings due to reduced overhead (IT staff) costs.

      This is why I don't think we'll see Linux take off as a desktop platform for most small businesses, but we will see it deployed throughout government and large industry players. It will likely move from foreign markets to the US as well, simply because third world industry is under heaver cost constraints compared to the US. But like all network effects, as industry uses it abroad, US players will have to follow in order to maintain some level of compatibility' most likely we'll see US players install OpenOffice and then it will mushroom from there.

      JMO.

      Cheers,
      --Maynard
    • Why does it have to be installed in large scale environnments for productivity gains? The article states that the training required is the same. If that is the case then it should be good for any size business???

      The training for end users is the same, but that doesn't mean that the costs of administration are the same. If it costs more to hire a Linux admin than a Windows admin but the Linux admin can handle more computers unassisted, for instance, then you might only see ongoing savings in large install

    • Re:Size matters? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by unoengborg ( 209251 )
      One reason is that a Linux admin can handle much more users than a windows admin. In a small installation you have one Windows admin if you run windows, but you still would need one Linux admin.

      Even though he would have far too little work to do most of the time you still want him around in case something goes wrong, so hiring a part time Linux admin wouldn't solve the problem. In a small organization Linux might even be more expensive than windows as the Linux admin may require higher salery.

      But if you i

  • Ximian Desktop versus KDE (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 17, 2003 @10:27AM (#6716824)
    They used Ximian Desktop because the menu interface is ordered with a more clear naming than KDE.

    My 0.0002 euros

    • Siemens has no "religious" attachment to a particular distro or desktop environment. Before settling on Ximian, Siemens evaluated plain vanilla Gnome and KDE as well. Siemens found KDE to be more "Windows-like" than Gnome, but that lead to problems when non-technical users expected a more Windows-like experience. Gnome, particularly Ximian's version, was "different enough" to set user expectations that the experience would be less like Windows, which led to fewer adoption problems.

      This is an interesting p

  • Title misleading (Score:5, Informative)

    by csnydermvpsoft ( 596111 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @10:28AM (#6716825)
    The title leads one to believe that Linux will have 20% of all desktops. However, it's actually 20% of desktops in large corporations. Still very cool, but not quite as significant.

  • Perhaps it's time for more innovation? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gooru ( 592512 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @10:28AM (#6716829)
    Interestingly, they used Ximian Desktop, instead of KDE, because Gnome, particularly Ximian's version, was "different enough" to set user expectations that the experience would be less like Windows.

    Mark me down as flamebait, but perhaps this is truly important. Perhaps we as a community should stop trying to mimic existing applications and begin innovating instead. Certainly, a good user interface is necessary, but is Windows truly the best user experience? OF course, it's ridiculously hard to come up with a new user interface that is logical and easy to use. After all, a button is a button. It can't really get much better than that, but perhaps there is room for improvement.

    I still remember the first time my girlfriend saw me running Linux and said that that looked exactly like Windows and then asked why would I bother going through the hassle of installing Linux when I could just use Windows, which was preinstalled and already worked. Keep in mind that she saw me using KDE and Gnome. (I do realize there are other window managers in this world.)

    She had a good point. Windows 2000 and XP have been much less crash-prone, and I find myself increasingly using Windows XP and Mac OS X instead of *nix as my desktop OS of choice. Instead, only servers that I must work on use Linux, and I simply SSH into them, skipping all of the GUI nonsense. For me, the best user interface in Linux is the command-line - not the GUI that looks like Windows anyway.

    • I wonder if there isn't some kind of logic to using a desktop that is different from Windows, so as to not frustrate user expectations.

      Bear with my, now. If a desktop mimics Windows to too great a degree, but something short of 100%, the remaining difference could frustrate users. Non-technical types could be lulled into a kind of laziness in their approach to Linux, believing that it is "just like" what they are used to working with. Every time they use some aspect of the system that differs from Windo

    • Perhaps we as a community should stop trying to mimic existing applications and begin innovating instead.

      If the development trend goes that way, then we'll start hearing "For Linux to be accepted in the home and enterprise it must be much more like Windows". There'll be whinging for innovation and there'll be whinging for re-implentation. Could it be that maybe developers will work on what they want to and ignore the pundits? P

    • This is exactly why this survey is crap. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nlinecomputers ( 602059 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @10:54AM (#6716949)
      You've hit the mark. The only way people are going to dump Windows for Linux or any other OS is if that OS has a compelling difference that makes it worth the change. While one can argue that Linux or *BSD is more stable that is hard to demostrate without prolonged use and if the system is too close to Windows yet not quite there as is the case with KDE then users will be frustrated and leave it before the realize that it is more stable and more secure. The very things that make Linux the better OS are the hardest for end users to see.
    • Yes, and cars should stop copying each other's interface. After all, why have a steering wheel and foot pedals? Why not innovate for a change and make cars with a touchpad and buttons for steering? After all, it's probably not THE optimal driving configuration to have a gas and a brake pedal and a steering wheel?

      Also, why don't we switch to Dvorak while we are at it? QWERTY is definitely not THE best configuration, right?

      Finally, if the only thing you don't like about Windows or Mac is the interface,
    • Either a UI should mimic windows completely and perfectly, or not at all.

      If you're not going to imitate windows, you can still take good ideas from it, but that's it. You can't have users thinking that something works like windows and then it not working like windows.

      If a user sits down and thinks it works like windows, then it should work like windows; if s/he doesn't think it should work like windows, then it shouldn't.
    • For me, the best user interface in Linux is the command-line - not the GUI that looks like Windows anyway.

      This forum has been saturated for years with posts berating Linux desktops for not looking like The One True Desktop. The GUI you chose looks like Windows because you chose one that looks like Windows. Fluxbox doesn't, Enlightenment doesn't, Windowmaker doesn't, XFCe doesn't, in fact, any genuine Linux user can name a dozen popular desktops that don't. Which leads to the obvious question about the aut

    • Perhaps it's time for more innovation?-Apple (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Perhaps we as a community should stop trying to mimic existing applications and begin innovating instead."

      Like Apple?
    • People have been saying that forever, my friend. In every single article about Linux on the desktop, people wonder why the heck Linux is playing catchup instead of leader. Nobody ever answers, and nothing ever changes. Linux has the opportunity to blow away everything with a complete alternative, but instead we're relying on hacked in shells on top of libraries on top of libraries on top of window managers on top of xlib...you get the idea. It feels hacked together to emulated a desktop. It doesn't fee

  • Different enough... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gloth ( 180149 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @10:29AM (#6716830)
    it's an interesting thought/observation that adoption of Linux is made easier if it is different enough from Windows.


    While the article is a bit thin on details on this, I'd be curious to know what this extends to. Is it just the look of the widgets? Questions like single vs. double click? Menu layouts of the standard applications? Did anyone make this experience before when trying to convert folks to Linux?

    • I don't have any experience with this directly, but it makes sense. For example, I have two cars, and the dimmer for the dashboard lights is in the same place in both of them. However, the direction is reversed (one makes the dash lights brighter when you roll it upward, the other makes them dimmer). I can't remember which is which.

      However, in the same two cars, one has the headlight control on the turn signal lever, while the other has the headlight switch on the dashboard. I never have any problems r

  • Interesting, but.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by The_Blerg ( 698966 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @10:29AM (#6716832)
    It's a shame that we don't have results of a survey like this from before and after the SCO storm hit. It would probably very useful when it came time to extract some damages from the pump and dump crew.

    I for one am scared that the long term effect of the SCO lawsuit will be a slowing or reversal of linux's creep towards the desktop where the final battle with closed source development will be.

  • Surveys will have a 90% crap share by 2003 ? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Krapangor ( 533950 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @10:30AM (#6716833) Homepage
    Nobody can really predict the direction the computer industry is moving in the next 5 years. The technology is still very young and futher has a very high innovation speed. Prediction over such a long time range are rubbish.
    Just remember the classical examples of such predictions getting fucked: AI, "processors beyond 300 MHz are physically impossible", "640 kB is enough for everyone", "OS/2 is the system of the future" etc.
    And for Linux: there is hot stuff like Grid computing, immersive VR, Quantum computing etc. on the way and I don't see even the smallest efford to integrate this into Linux.
    The only thing we can predict for the next 5 years is crackpot MBA doing academic, oops non-academic of course (we can't insult academics), circle-jerks and spewing out rubbish predictions.
    Ha, outsource everyone to India.
    • This is very true.

      Linux as we know it today may change completely within the next 5 years. Linux may no longer exist. Microsoft may no longer be the dominant force. We all might be running Sconix by then. Who know. There's still plenty of wiggle room for new OSes to pop up. Since Linux become more widespread other little OSes have been sprouting like mushrooms. Look at QNX, plan9, et al. BeOS was meant to be the OS of the future but that turned belly up. Palladium could kill Linux off completely. Theres
      • We all might be running Sconix by then.

        One way or another those jokers are done. Nobody is going to do business with people who consider contracts weapons any longer than they have to. Assuming SCO does their job and kills Linux, Sun and MS will finish them off. SCO would just turn on them next. Do business with SCO and you'll get sued. Everybody knows it.

        Agreed lots of things could happen. I don't think SCO's survival is going to be one of them.
    • "Nobody can really predict the direction the computer industry is moving in the next 5 years."

      "Prediction over such a long time range are rubbish."

      "The only thing we can predict for the next 5 years is crackpot MBA doing academic, oops non-academic of course (we can't insult academics), circle-jerks and spewing out rubbish predictions."

      What about Moore's law ?
  • It'll reach desktop prominence just in time to play Duke Nukem Forever!

  • Senior program manager Duncan McNutt... (Score:5, Funny)

    by AntiOrganic ( 650691 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @10:41AM (#6716880) Homepage
    Am I the only person who cracked up when I read this?

  • whatever... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by cmay ( 687134 )
    This will NEVER happen by 2008.

    As another reader put it "Oh Come On".

    Even if linux were to get to 10%, MS would release a new stripped down version of windows and office for a reduced price to cut into the market that this study says is going to flock to linux because it only takes 2 days of training.

    What happens when these people get sent a MS Project file and can't open it, or what happens when they call the support desk and the person tells them to open their c:\winnt folder??

    Come on people, you are

  • 1/2 or 1/3 ? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Councilor Hart ( 673770 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @10:43AM (#6716892)
    From the article: "If you can keep a machine running at acceptable levels of performance for three years rather than two, you've just saved 50% on hardware costs," McNutt says.

    Consider a time span of 6 years. That is 2 linux computers or 3 windows computers.
    I'd say that you've just saved 1/3 on hardware costs.

  • SCO (Score:2, Funny)

    by Dreadlord ( 671979 )
    20% of desktop computers running Linux, and SCO charges 699$ per computer, so this equals ??? I guess SCO will get a decent amount of money by then.

  • Bad for M$ or Sun? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by kjs3 ( 601225 )
    I wounder if that desktop expansion will be more at the expense of Microsoft or Sun (and to a lesser extent SGI, I suppose). Replacing relatively expensive Solairs desktops with Linux is straightforward; replacing M$ generally requires a shift in how applications are delivered (e.g. a move to web-based or Java applications).
    • Replacing relatively expensive Solaris desktops with desktops running a linux-based Mad Hatter desktop on Sun-branded x86 hardware might be even more straightforward than switching to Red Hat or SuSE, since people running Solaris obviously already have business contact with Sun and are likely to have some Sparc servers in the basement. Most managers like it if they only have to deal with one supplier.

      So it might not be that bad for Sun, after all. At the end of the day, the chances for them to be consider

    • ....replacing M$ generally requires a shift in how applications are delivered (e.g. a move to web-based or Java applications).

      Why?

  • I hate to be a naysayer (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jacer ( 574383 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @10:49AM (#6716927) Homepage
    ...but this is extremely unlikely. In the event that they pull MS's entrenched ass out of the corporate world, maybe. People would be a lot more willing to run it at home if they ran it at work. Furthermore if Linux holds 20% you're going to have compatibility problems up the wazoo(sp?) The reason everyone uses Microsoft products is because it works[sic] so well together.
    • The reason everyone uses Microsoft products is because everyone uses Microsoft products. Once Linux gets 20% I'm sure most of the compatibility problems will disappear. And we're talking like 4 years.. Where was Linux 4 years ago?
    • "Furthermore if Linux holds 20% you're going to have compatibility problems up the wazoo(sp?) The reason everyone uses Microsoft products is because it works[sic] so well together."

      Ever tried the Knoppix Linux CD? Compatibility is no problem for Linux most of the time. I don't know this as a fact, but it seems as if Linux is gaining support (hardware, vendor, corporate, programmer, user) faster than any other OS ever has. Factor this with open source and well, you know the story.

      MS's developers + compa
    • Furthermore if Linux holds 20% you're going to have compatibility problems up the wazoo(sp?) The reason everyone uses Microsoft products is because it works[sic] so well together.

      Look at the Linux desktop four years ago when I migrated my parents to Linux with RedHat 6.1...... And no, they are not great with computers.....

      Look at the Linux desktop today where finally RedHat, SuSE, et. al. are trying to push for a Linux desktop market. This would have been unheard of 4 years ago.

      We already have early
  • The two days of training may not seem significant. But you have to realize that most people already know how to use MS office/outlook by using it at home or school, so by the time they get in the workforce they don't need training. For Linux, they will need a day or two of training.

    BTW, anyone have a link to Ximian desktop? I use Ximian evolution for email, and think it's a nice program. I tried Thunderbird, but it's still not quite there yet (I know it's only 0.1 or something, but I want something tha
    • Here [ximian.com] is the link

    • You said:

      The two days of training may not seem significant. But you have to realize that most people already know how to use MS office/outlook by using it at home or school, so by the time they get in the workforce they don't need training. For Linux, they will need a day or two of training.

      From the article (my emphasis):

      That's why testing was conducted with "secretaries and managers, not IT people." McNutt believes that the Ximian desktop and application suite, running on either SuSE or Red Hat, require

  • Traumatic Brain Injury (Score:3, Funny)

    by niko9 ( 315647 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @10:57AM (#6716968)
    ...was "different enough" to set user expectations that the experience would be less like Windows. "

    Translation: You don't suffer from the cervical spine injuries and/or severe coup contra-coup brain injuries secondary to banging your head into a blue screen of death.

  • Linux on the desktop marketshare howto (Score:5, Interesting)

    by onyxruby ( 118189 ) <onyxruby&comcast,net> on Sunday August 17, 2003 @11:08AM (#6717000)
    How to gain real marketshare for Linux on the desktop.

    Standardize all hardware installation and removal in one place across all distros.

    Name changes that non-it people get. Grep makes sense to IT types, but few outside IT are going to know what it means. Similiarly, I shouldn't have to explain that eth0 refers to their Network card and so on.

    Improve Wine. You can give me a hundred stories about how with your uber-133t skills you get a certain archaic package to work under a certain distro and that lusers don't need graphics anyways. This is exactly the type of attitude that will keep Linux from the masses. They want to be able to use their programs, and most could care less what OS their using (how many times have you talked to someone who didn't even know which OS they had?). If they can happily use the same programs they used before, they could well not even notice the OS.

    Most importantly of all, all versions of MS office must work seamlessly. This is the standard in the business world, and StarOffice, OpenOffice are poor substitutes. They don't want to learn the quirks of these packages, they just want to use MS Office. Nothing is more important for gaining marketshare than this.

    Drop the attitude. The attitude that many newbies encounter is more than enough to send them back into bill's not-so loving arms. When someone is trying Linux they far too often run into someone who an elitist that thinks they should not only know *nix inside out, and be a programmer to boot. When joe-sixpack gets told to go RTFM after asking what a tarball is, he's going to get indignant and goes back to what he knows - windows.

    Have a resource available to those who come from the Windows world that tells people in plain English what the Linux terminology is for equivalent ms / windows functions. Also have this resource list programs like gimp that can replace their old windows programs. A frequent complaint of those that try switching to Linux is that they can't do what they used to freely do under Windows. Slashdot types will respond, of course they can, they don't know what to use. Well, how would they know what to use?

    • Re:Linux on the desktop marketshare howto (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Here's a hint. The large businesses don't care what you think about "the right way to gain marketshare". If a business' IT department decides that it wants to cut costs and switch to Linux, you're going to have to accept it. This article isn't talking about home desktop computers. It's about business computers. Why is it unlikely that companies won't switch to free software that is perfectly capable of being used for email, writing, R&D, etc.?

      It doesn't matter how easy it is for YOU to install, be
      • Funny, when I was working in a rather large government agency, they also had pretty similiar views to what I wrote. I flat out asked about why Linux wasn't getting adopted in any kind of manner considering that the IT people almost all personally used it at home. It didn't get deployed, and wasn't even being considered because it's not ready for the desktop, and won't be for years. Compare this to servers where serious testing was active and it's widespread use was going to unquestionably grow.

        Guess what

    • I started using Linux for coding about a year and a half ago, and switched to using it as my main OS a year ago.

      I had various problems getting odd bits of hardware to work, etc, etc... nothing too serious. I found people were generally helpful. The one offputting thing that happened was this:

      I use a chat program that I wrote under Delphi in Windows... making it pretty much impossible to port. Under Windows it binds to port 23 to let people connect to it with telnet... obviously impossible under Linux, b

  • Is that few people come back to check afterwards.

    Siemens is presumably positioning themselves as a Linux vendor. Whatever they say should be taken with a large pinch of salt.

    The future has an amazing ability to be exactly like the past in every aspect we thought it would change, and totally different in those aspects we expected to remain the same.

    So, here is my prediction of Linux in 2008:

    - There will be an explosion in the development of portable computers, provoked by the appearance of OLED screens that are cheap and flexible and gentle on batteries.

    - Some of these computers will be truly wierd, ranging from disposable to wall-sized.

    - Most of these new devices will run Linux or another free OS with similar plasticity and easy consumption.

    - By 2008, server computers will be assembled out of brick-style units (storage, CPU, devices) that let you throw together a server of any capability from standard pieces with no tools. The OS will be Linux, the principal vendors will be IBM and DELL, the technology remarkably similar to clustering. Windows will try and fail to compete.

    - The concept of 'desktop' will thus be totally passe by 2008. Only poor slobs will keep a desk chained to a computer.

    - The majority of 'desktop's outside the US and parts of Europe will run Linux distributions.

    - Most of those distributions will be heavily customised per country, often sponsored by governments. This will start in China and India and work up through every literate and connected country.

    - The US will remain the stubborn consumer of desktop Windows OS and applications.

    Conclusion: Windows can only dominate a market that is static. But markets do not rest. New technologies permit and drive new platforms, and each time, it gets harder to justify Windows. In 5 years, the current landscape will have been changed by the appearance of many new platforms where Windows is a poor second choice. It is these new platforms that will finally kill Windows and Microsoft, not replacement on the desktop.

  • Only by 2008? Not earlier? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by leomekenkamp ( 566309 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @11:17AM (#6717063)

    The subject of this reply sounds like a troll, but considering this fact [cnet.com] it might actually be sooner. All chinese civilians will probably be 'encouraged' to run chinese s/w as well. With 10^9 inhabitants and a growing market for personal computers, China may make a bigger dent in the statistics than Microsoft would like.

  • Interesting Quote (Score:2, Interesting)

    by HangingChad ( 677530 )
    ...Ximian's version, was "different enough" to set user expectations that the experience would be less like Windows, which led to fewer adoption problems.

    Interesting point. The differences may be just as important to user acceptance as the similarities. Reflects a point I've tried to make in management discussions: Linux is not better now because it's like Windows, Linux is better because it offers advantages over Windows on many levels. So far I've been the token open source advocate, but the interest

  • I'm not sure why they say KDE is very similar to Windows.

    Yes, it can be configured to look like Windows. It can also be configured as a traditional Unix desktop (activation-follows-mouse, no taskbar, CDE style alt-tabbing) or MacOS (menubar at top of screen, macos[9|X] style window decorations) or any bizzare combination you can come up with.

  • Different look & feel (Score:2, Insightful)

    by I3ogo ( 694267 )
    A point is made here. GNU/Linux distributions should look and feel differently than Windows or other proprietary OSes, not radically but still enough to avoid the kind frustration that I've seen when people expect graphically equivalent desktops like GNOME or KDE to behave like Windows. They will never be perfect replacements for it, nor should they be. Interestingly, I've seen much more success when demonstrating window managers like Fluxbox. People immediately fall for their simplicity. They just love t

  • Well no wonder! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Mike556 ( 88243 )
    ....[McNutt] believes that the Ximian desktop and application suite, running on either SuSE or Red Hat, requires two days of training, which is the same as what most enterprises budget for a Windows/MS Office version upgrade.

    Now I know why people call in to tech support with such rediculous problems. Perhaps M$ apps could be made more useful if the people that relied on them were better trained in the techniques of using a windows system.

    So what will happen if businesses were to migrate to a linux platf
  • Statistics obviously don't mean jack and statitsitcal prognostications are perhaps the only thing less reliable. I personally think that the GNU/Linux desktop numbers are way higher than what gets reported. I mean it's free and you download it from the net. If sixty million people are using P2P to download DivX, Mp3, games and apps with who knows what kind of archiving I have to assume that downloading distros is not as challenging to the masses as folks imagine.
    In fact, I think it's the non-geek types

  • Actually, sooner than that. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by suso ( 153703 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @11:53AM (#6717268) Journal
    One of my wife's friends wants me to install Linux on her machine just so she can play Frozen Bubble. They are all addicted to that game.

  • Linux... How much profit do you want today? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rice_burners_suck ( 243660 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @01:09PM (#6717701)

    To answer a question that will probably pop up in a reply to my post, yes, I did read the article and actually printed it out. It was greater than any work of Shakespeare! :)

    Interestingly, they used Ximian Desktop, instead of KDE, because Gnome, particularly Ximian's version, was "different enough" to set user expectations that the experience would be less like Windows.

    You see, all you people who think the Linux desktop needs to be "more like Windows?" If you go the path of "like Windows" then you have to make Linux exactly the same as Windows or ex-Windows users (99% of the population) get confused.

    On the other hand, as this story says, if the desktop is different enough from Windows, people automatically (because of psychological reasons) know it is not Windows so they expect things to be different, and are more open to the change.

    Incidentally, they mention that training lusers on Linux takes 2 days, the same as a Windows upgrade, but I don't remember if they mentioned this: Upgrades to the Linux system (other than automatically administered bug patches for security reasons) won't need to take place as often as for Windows systems.

    • Linux makes better use of the hardware.
    • Open standards and open source on Linux means that nobody is forcing you to upgrade.
    • Unlike in the Windows world, where you must upgrade because the rest of the world is doing it, there is no such requirement on Linux, except for security related patches which can be remotely administered by the IT department without the user even knowing it.
    This means that companies will have to spend many less two days to get users acquainted with changes to their computer systems.

    Even if more horsepower is required for some reason (which would, in the Windows world, require all 50,000,000,000 computers in a company to be replaced with faster models and new software), the company can install one or more big huge servers running Linux or any other UNIX and use the resources on that machine, leaving all or most of the users' machines alone. Again, the users wouldn't even know anything was changed... and that means savings in cost. (If you have 45,000 employees on computers and you have to train them for two days, that's likely to cost twice as much as buying six million dollars in servers. (Figure 45,000 people making $18 an hour, 8 hours per day, for 2 days... Add to that all the taxes, insurances and benefits you have to pay and you've got two really expensive days!)

    Furthermore, the free software community reduces costs for companies, not only because of licensing fees but because bugs and security problems get found and fixed quickly, and new features are added when someone needs them... I imagine that as more "enterprises" make the switch, they'll hire some folks into their IT department to do nothing but develop Linux to meet their special needs, and that means that with thousands of companies worldwide doing this, in addition to tech companies like IBM and HP, and in addition to the already existing (and growing) developer community... Linux is going to continue picking up speed and inertia, and Microsoft, with their "little team" of 30,000 programmers, soon won't be able to keep up.

    It is for all the above reasons that I firmly believe that companies that don't invest in Linux now will scamper to invest in it later... or be left in the dust.

  • My experience switching a non-technical person (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rsheridan6 ( 600425 ) on Sunday August 17, 2003 @01:31PM (#6717828)
    When I switched to Linux (KDE), it was simply not a problem to switch my non-technical girlfriend. I had to show her that you use OpenOffice.org instead of MS Office and Mozilla instead of IE. Otherwise it's fairly obvious and intuitive.

    If something should go wrong under the hood, like the internet connection drops, God help her if I'm not around. And she could not have set the system up herself. But with large organizations like the article discusses, that's not the end-user's problem.

  • Not so great (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ed Avis ( 5917 ) <ed@membled.com> on Sunday August 17, 2003 @03:08PM (#6718273) Homepage
    Seems like bloody slow progress to me, given that Linux has been around in a usable form since 1993 or so and that in 2008 it will be about 17 years old. Linux had a usable desktop in 1994, or at least a lot more usable than Windows back then. Still I suppose this process is social rather than technical.

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