Stopping Linux Desktop Adoption Sabotage 616
Mark Brunelli, News Editor writes "Outspoken IT consultant John H. Terpstra believes that Microsoft and electronics manufacturers are working together to hinder the adoption of Linux on the desktop. In a three part series, he tells a story about how two guys trying to buy Linux desktops found they were overpriced, and lacked certain tools. He then describes how Microsoft uses its considerable resources and the law to create such roadblocks. (Part 2, Part 3)"
Not Forever (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, blame someone else - typical zealots (Score:1, Insightful)
Take installation. Linux zealots are now saying "oh installing is so easy, just do apt-get install package or emerge package": Yes, because typing in "apt-get" or "emerge" makes so much more sense to new users than double-clicking an icon that says "setup".
Linux zealots are far too forgiving when judging the difficultly of Linux configuration issues and far too harsh when judging the difficulty of Windows configuration issues. Example comments:
User: "How do I get Quake 3 to run in Linux?"
Zealot: "Oh that's easy! If you have Redhat, you have to download quake_3_rh_8_i686_010203_glibc.bin, then do chmod +x on the file. Then you have to su to root, make sure you type export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5 but ONLY if you have that latest libc6 installed. If you don't, don't set that environment variable or the installer will dump core. Before you run the installer, make sure you have the GL drivers for X installed. Get them at [some obscure web address], chmod +x the binary, then run it, but make sure you have at least 10MB free in
User: "How do I get Quake 3 to run in Windows?"
Zealot: "Oh God, I had to install Quake 3 in Windoze for some lamer friend of mine! God, what a fucking mess! I put in the CD and it took about 3 minutes to copy everything, and then I had to reboot the fucking computer! Jesus Christ! What a retarded operating system!"
So, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that what seems easy and natural to Linux geeks is definitely not what regular people consider easy and natural. Hence, the preference towards Windows.
It's just 2 guys but.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Has made it? O.o (Score:5, Insightful)
Short version of this story (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Before buying hardware, especially laptops, spend an hour googling or otherwise studying what IS supported. The morons in the story buy stuff and then find out compatibility. Fuckin' DUH!
Come up with some real reasons... (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, and buy a system without ANY operating system, if it still is costing you more find someone with a 3 digit IQ to find a cheaper computer for you. Besides this is mostly Microsoft's fault because they won't give special discounts to dealers that sell computers with no OS/Linux.
The guy running SuSE 9.3 sounded like he tried Linux for a grand total of 10 minutes, of course you aren't going to know how everything works in that time frame. Sheesh.
Re:Not Forever (Score:3, Insightful)
MS won and is a monopolist and will do everything to keep people in. Until people leave software developers will only target windows. People dont care about oses and use whatever comes with their computer.
This is how ms won.
Re:So your company is being overcharged to fail? (Score:3, Insightful)
The doj tried that and no pc manufactor dared go up agaisnt MS out of fears they would be priced out of windows and office. The only thing they could go on was an email from balmer talking about cutting off netscapes air supply.
This is just business as usual.
Re:Short version of this story (Score:5, Insightful)
kashani
Taken from Murphy's (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why do we still post this garbage? (Score:5, Insightful)
The major electronic retailers function as gatekeepers. There are thousands of products out there that they don't put on their shelves, so much so that simply getting a product on the shelf at Best Buy is a huge accomplishment for a small hardware or software vendor.
The primary issue is one of space and inventory turns. Best Buy expects that every foot of shelf space bring in some amount of revenue, and they stock products that will maximize that revenue. A product that only moves 5 copies a month will always lose out to one that moves 5 a day.
Computers with preloaded software take up a lot of space. I suspect that most models don't even give you a choice of XP Home or XP Pro, and XP Pro is far more popular than Linux. But every different SKU to stock means additional inventory headaches, so only the most popular choices are going to be in stock.
Now consider some of the secondary factors. People buying a PC with Linux are going to be less likely to buy additional software. They arguably don't need things like Spyware or Virus products, and much of what they want is OSS and available for free anyway. So the chances for upsell are greatly reduced, and follow on sales are going to be less.
Retailers will offer Linux boxes if the numbers justify it. Show them a way to make a buck and they will be all over it. But at the moment they don't feel it is profitable to do so. No grand conspiracy, just economics.
Re:Has made it? O.o (Score:1, Insightful)
Software installation on Linux is often times a long, painstaking arduous task that seems to go on forever, and then - nothing happens. When it goes right, it's not too bad, but when it goes bad it goes bad in a big way. Nothing like spending hours trying to resolve dependencies, versioning, etc to get something to install - and then to find out that updating existing packages has now broken existing programs.
I'm sure it's all quite simple for the experienced Linux jockeys, but don't expect J6P to be able to jump through all those hoops and command-line gyrations just to get a program to install.
Re:Has made it? O.o (Score:3, Insightful)
If people were really serious about desktop Linux, they would have long ago standardized a bundled package format like NeXTStep's
These kinds of things, along with the lack of true standardized API foundations (see Cocoa,
The mantra of "choice" that people use to justify the incredible fragmentation in the OSS world doesn't justify the lack of a standardized, vertical solution--there should be a desktop environment with its own sound and graphics engine and APIs (built using OpenGL and OpenAL), not relying on X11 and various extensions after the fact. It should provide its own APIs that tie into its internal engines. And most importantly, it should be designed with actual aesthetics and creativity in mind--no more of this amateurish K-this and K-that crap.
Just my opinion. I think many people gave up hope for desktop Linux and moved to OS X. Seriously, some of us have been waiting for almost ten years. Windows is more dominant than ever.
Re:Why do we still post this garbage? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Is it perhaps because the most likely answer, that retail stores would lose money selling Linux systems due to higher difficulty of making the sale, higher support costs, higher return rates, and lower volume?"
Not to get all empirical on you or anything, but if history is any guide, it's likely because their OEM sales and partnership agreements require that they push MS into a place of such prominence that all other alternatives remain hopelessly unattractive.
Don't feel compelled to pay any attention to this hugely speculative hypothesis; it's only backed by legal investigators from the DoJ and signficant anecdotal evidence from commentary all over the media. Feel free to hold tight to your faith in the invisible hand as it works its wonders on the flock, sparing us from excellence at every turn.
HTH, HAND
Cheaper with Windows pre-installed because... (Score:3, Insightful)
Now consider support. If you are a Windows user -- preferably an XP user -- and you call Dell or HP for support, theoretically all of the drivers have been tested, most issues have been noted and posted to a knowledge base and chances are good that the tech at the other end of the line will have reasonable experience in helping you solve the problem.
Conversely, if you buy a barebones systems and run into problems, Dell will have fewer Linux techs who can help, these techs will be more expensive to retain and _your_ level of competency will have a huge impact on the length and outcome of the support call than if you were a lowly Windows user.
Perhaps if you could purchase with an iron-clad zero-support option, then Dell could justify dropping the price. But probably not. Dell is probably just as greedy and unwilling to pass the savings on to the customer (if they don't have to) as most other companies. This is also true of many open source vendors. Whether it's Dell, RedHat or IBM, they'll work hard to extract money out of us one way or another.
Here's another reason that the author overlooks (Score:4, Insightful)
Every time a new release of Mandrake (now Madriva...at least this week) came out, I went and bought the pro package, even though I could download it for free. I figured it was necessary to show support so they would maybe expand the selection.
Then it slowly disappeared. It has now been replaced by racks of more Windows stuff.
Not long after it disappeared, I asked him why. The basic answer was because aside from me and 4 or 5 other geeks, no one else was buying it. In fact, many people straight-up asked him "why should I buy this from you when I can get it legally and still for free on the internet?"
Stores are in business for one thing, and one thing only...to make their owners (stock holders) money. Any product that doesn't turn a certain level of sales disappears. Quickly.
To get the big box retailers to carry Linux, they are going to have to be shown there is a market there AND THEY CAN MAKE MONEY DOING IT. Thousands of people can talk the talk about wanting Linux, but in the grand scheme of actually spending money on it, its a very tiny segment of us that does so.
The moral of this story is that if you want more retailers to carry more Linux, then people need to step up with their wallets and actually buy some of the stuff that is already out there.
I still get every new release of Mandriva, but now I do it via the Mandriva Club since I can't find a retailer that carries it locally. And my club membership costs me almost as much yearly as a Windows XP Home license (and I don't have to have a new license every year). So Linux does cost me money, but I want to show support so that's okay. More people need to be showing their support with pictures of dead presidents (or what ever is on the currency in your country for non-US readers). Only then will Linux offerings and support increase.
Hardware Makers (Score:4, Insightful)
2 % use Linux.
I can write Windows drivers for my device and keep 98% of my userbase happy.
I can write Linux drivers for my device, and keep 2% of my userbase happy.
If the cost of writing that Linux driver is more than I would make back in profits, why would I ever do it?
Business decisions......
All smoke, no fire (Score:3, Insightful)
Where? I couldn't find that anywhere in the article.
Generally, support for Linux sucks in hardware retailing. There are at least three possible reasons for this:
1 There are good commercial reasons why it isn't profitable to support Linux.
2 It would be profitable, but companies lack the vision to see this
3 Big bad Microsoft is conspiring to keep it this way.
I was hoping to see evidence for number 3, but all I saw was the article questioning whether 1 could be true (but without in-depth analysis - how much would Linux support cost, and how many sales would it gain?), and the
Re Outlawing the GPL (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:It's just 2 guys but.. (Score:3, Insightful)
They could be friendlier (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if you find stable laptop distributors, it's practically IMPOSSIBLE to determine whether you can run Linux on it because they usually won't tell you what's actually inside. Like, is that a Broadcom or a Atheros 802.11 wireless in there? It makes a *huge* difference.
If you don't know what kind of chipsets a laptop has in it, you can't do the research. Easy as that. You have to wait for someone to buy the thing, try installing a flavor of Linux on it, and report back what their successes and failures were.
Even if HP or whoever doesn't support the hardware directly, it'd be nice to know what kind of hardware is in there to begin with. I don't need them to hold my hand. I just want to know what I'm buying.
Re:Hardware Makers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Has made it? O.o (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, but that's bullshit. I can't remember the last time I installed something on Windows that wasn't as easy as clicking "next" a few times. I'm not saying that installing stuff on Linux is hard, I'm just saying that in my experience it's not "easier than it's ever been on Windows".
Re:Hardware Makers (Score:2, Insightful)
All the hardware manufacturer has to do is release specs about the hardware. It would be the equivelent to a 'shop manual' in automobile terms. It's just the minimal documentation that is provided so that people know how to work on the hardware.
If they want to release Linux drivers usually it isn't that difficult and inexpensive. There are plenty of programmers that are willing to help out and such. If they get their driver introduced into the kernel proper it gets supported for automaticly by any kernel developer and it gets updated with only small amounts of effort from the manufacturer compared to trying to maintain and support binary drivers, even for windows.
And there are plenty profits.
Linux on the desktop maybe minority, but everywere else it isn't. High end movie editing, oracle databases, clustering, web server, high end 3d workstations, datacenters, etc etc Linux is very common and many times have much larger percentage of users then windows in places that would suprise most people.
There are more then enough hardware manufacturers that support linux, and continue to support linux on new hardware, to prove that it is profitable and worth it to them.
Take Intel for instance. Biggest manufacturer of cpus, biggest video card maker, etc etc. Supports Linux on it's hardware generally. Such things as wifi and video work with open source drivers... even 3d acceleration. And intel sucks! Do you think that they do this for their health? They do it because it's worth it to their business, that's why.
Intel certainly isn't the only one. AMD has very good Linux support for their chipsets and motherboards.
If it wasn't for Linux then 99% of people in the server room wouldn't have a reason to give a shit about it's 64bit-ness. Linux is one of the biggest reasons why opeterons got off of the ground. Without a OS that supports 64bit-ness there realy isn't much of a reason to support Opteron over Xeon... and Linux had support for 64bit ness BEFORE amd released the stuff to the public. AMD worked with Suse and others to make sure this happenned.
It's just a matter of time before the 'big OEMs' (which don't produce the vast majority of the hardware they sell) get onboard. Most of them already do for the server-line.
Re:HP Website not all that linux-friendly (Score:5, Insightful)
By ultimately giving your money to HP anyway, you truly showed them how much it matters whether they offer custom build options for power users like yourself.
Not at all.
Re:Not Forever (Score:5, Insightful)
In which case, Microsoft wins by default. With the largest installed userbase, they will still benefit from a full migration to web services. You will still need an OS to get to the internet regardless of whether everything is web-based.
The push for Linux will only come from the education market. When more children grow up in a UNIX-based world, then their preference will drive their purchase. It worked for Apple and Microsoft.
Yeah, right. (Score:2, Insightful)
Pertinent questions like "Which of these 10,000 applications do you want", "what are the specific models and specs for every single component and piece of hardware you own", and "what permissions, groups, files, folders, and applications do you want each user to have". Sorry, but the linux install process is the most intimidating part of linux in it's entirety, even for experienced users.
Re:Another bit of FUD here... (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't believe anyone still goes through that kind of hell. There's a reason that SuSE doesn't update KDE between versions, and its to avoid that kind of inter-version breakage you experience. The full upgrade of the next SuSE revision incldues the next KDE, and it'll upgrade smoothly, too, assuming you have not tried to self-upgrade KDE in the middle.
2. Less expensive Windows Desktops: The article author is talking about preloaded linux machines. At Dell, or HP, a preloaded Linux machine costs more than a machine with exactly the same specs preloaded with Windows. Or, they'll both cost the same, and the Windows machine will come with a free monitor.
That's unreasonable, given that Dell doesn't have to pay anything to license Linux. On the other hand, what it does mean is that your MS-free system includes an MS-tax anyways.
You have to understand, from Joe Q. Public, or Mike A. Purchaser, when they want a system, they want it preloaded. Period. Preloaded Windows systems from the same vendor as exactly the same configured preloaded Linux systems are cheaper, therefore, Windows=cheaper.
Not that I agree with the viewpoint, but that's what he is refering too.
Re:Not Forever (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Short version of this story (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not placing blame for it, and, indeed it's getting a lot easier to throw it on just about everything now. I'm just saying that it shouldn't be an issue to run a modern operating system on modern comodity hardware and researching "computer stuff" is something that your average pc user is not going to do, and in many cases isn't really capable of doing especially since most people only use their computers for email and the web.
I believe Linux is ready for much more buisness use, but until my mother can deal with it easily, it won't be ready for mainstream home desktop use.
disclaimer: I am the editor of a technical and open source magazine, a software developer, and have been a network analyst. My views are my own and not necessarily those of my employers or clients (past or present). In all fairness, I use Linux and even help others switch, but I realize that there are currently some limitations for its widespread home use.
Re:Come up with some real reasons... (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry, but this sound to me as the stereotippic kind of you're-not-smart-enough-to-use-Linux-so-don't-use
If you expect a desktop OS, and don't get a GUI working (which is what happened here) it can take a VERY long time on Unices to find out what the heck is wrong, especially without knowing what in Linus name is X-window etcetcetc. I'm only a OSS user because I'm persistent. I had the same experience with X with my first Linux-install, and I took the time to find out what was the matter. Most users do not have the time, patience or knowledge to do this and as long as it is needed, Linux will not become a major player on the desktop outside the geek-community.
Think from the users perspective, then reply. Sheesh.
Re:Not Forever (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Why do people still think Linux is cheaper ??? (Score:3, Insightful)
The kind of user who buys linux on the desktop at a bestbuy isn't going to be installing a custom kernel or modifying their X-Windows config file. So yes you can support it. That's like saying if Mom and Pop buy a preinstalled linux computer then they will be instantly smart enough to find all the ways to mess it up thoroughly. I don't think so.
Tim C sorry you are wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
Point, Click to open Synaptic. Edit the word "Hoary" to replace it with the word "Breezy" in the nice GUI edit page. Point and click a couple of more times, Wait for download and install, and poof - done! A perfect upgrade. The entire operating system, and every single application on my Linux system, all upgraded simply by pointing and clicking.
You simply CANNOT do that on Windows. There is no way in Windows you can simultaneously upgrade the OS (say, move from Windows 2000 to Windows XP) and upgrade EVERY application you are using all at the same time.
You need to refamiliarize yourself with Linux. For a long time now, Linux has been better than Windows on the desktop in the following areas: (a) more control afforded to the user; and (b) much easier to install Linux from scratch on a computer than it is to install Windows from scratch.
With Ubuntu, it is time to add a THIRD area where desktop Linux has no become better - way better: program installation and upgrades. No offense, man, but you are out of touch, and you are the one spouting the bullshit, as you call it.
Exaggerations and half-truths (Score:2, Insightful)
"If companies really seek to attract the largest number of potential consumers, why are their practices so restrictive? What commercial arrangements have been made behind closed doors so as to keep Linux out of the public eye?"
Companies aren't looking to attract the largest number of potential customers, they're looking to attract the largest number of PROFITABLE customers. Customers cost money, plain and simple. Therefore it is wise to seek out customers that are going to give a return on the company's investment. There just aren't enough people looking to buy systems with Linux pre-installed right now to justify the opportunity cost associated with catering to them.
There are other problems with this article as well. A non-technical person reading it would assume that there were massive incompatibility problems with Linux, whereas in truth the problems are few and generally very minor. His first example points out that one of the users in his story had a hard time getting various wireless interfaces working. If someone didn't know any better, they might assume that this was indicative of a much larger pattern of difficulty with computers and components in general. The truth is that support for wireless cards is the biggest compatability hurdle right now, but it is an anomaly. No other catagory of device is anywhere near as plagued with problems. Laptops are also more difficult to grapple with than desktop systems. My job is to support Linux and unix for the college of engineering at the 5th largest university in the country. I do Linux installs day in and day out, and I can tell you that I'm not often faced with hardware support problems on desktop systems. Laptops can be more tricky, but even then it is usually the wireless interface and/or the video that represents the sole difficulty. In both cases there is a lot of documentation online that details how to get both working for most systems. There have been a few cases where I couldn't get Linux working, but they are very few and far between.
If I were to read these articles on a message board, I would assume that he was a troll due to the way in which he abuses language. He likes to use the term "compatible" in places where "supported" would be much more appropriate. There are not very many vendors who actually officially support Linux with their devices, but that doesn't mean those devices are necessarily incompatible with Linux. In fact I would argue that of all the myriad hardware devices that Linux supports, virtually none are officially "supported" under Linux by the vendor. I neither care nor worry about whether a device is officially "supported." The only thing that matters to me is whether it will work or not. If the drivers are there and they work then that is all the matters to me, and I support Linux for a living.
In general vendors are very willing to work with the Linux community, at least as far as the creation of drivers are concerned. Providing info on a device to someone who wants to create a driver costs these vendors nothing and may even increase their sales. Official support costs money, which is why it is so uncommon, at least on desktop systems. In the server arena things are much different. Most major server vendors both sell systems with Linux pre-installed, and support Linux on these systems. It is only a matter of time before this trickles down onto the desktop.
In all he paints a very distorted picture of where Linux is on the desktop and utilizes 'tin foil hat' logic to do it. There is no vast conspiracy. I do believe that Microsoft does work to try and prevent Linux from succeeding as a desktop OS, but Microsoft alone does not a conspiracy make.
One thing that I don't think he probably mentions is the fact that Best Buy, Circuit City, and Fry's all s
Re:Not Forever (Score:3, Insightful)
No, windows 95 will be the OS that fixes their problems.
No, windows 98 will be the OS that fixes their problems.
No, windows NT 3.5 will be the OS that fixes their problems.
No, windows NT 4 will be the OS that fixes their problems.
No, windows 98 second edition will be the OS that fixes their problems.
No windows ME will be the OS that fixes their problems (I gagged when I typed that ;-)).
No, windows 2000 will be the OS that fixes their problems.
No, windows XP will be the OS that fixes their problems.
No, windows Vista etc., willie GFY.
What I can't understand is why you would think that going back to the same manufacturer that has created the problems for years and years, spending even more money with them will some how this time work. I mean really, rewarding a dishonest obviuosly incompetant manufacturer with even more of your money makes absolutely no sence at all.
If you have not figured it out yet "Windows what ever" has always been the problem and Linux is the solution.
Re:Not Forever (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know where to begin - virtually everything you said is total bullshit.
"what would typically be a simple task in Windows (i.e. installing video card drivers) becomes an exercise in frustration in Linux."
Wrong - installation of Linux is easier than Windows PROVIDED the hardware is supported - which is the point of the article. If the manufacturers refuse to support Linux because they are being bribed by Microsoft (and incredibly charged by Microsoft for developing drivers, why they put up with that is insane), Linux has a problem, sure. The Chinese will solve that one in due time and put the US hardware manufacturers out of business in the process, as the article states. US IT hardware manufacturers (ARE there any who don't buy components from Asia?) are doomed. Resellers like Dell will go down as well.
Meanwhile, the only REAL hardware problems with Linux relate to stuff that is extremely new or stuff that is incredibly old. People who want to use Linux shouldn't buy a video or wireless card that came out last week, it's that simple.
Another thing that needs to be done is that the big corps who DO support Linux - like IBM - need to start leaning on the peripheral manufacturers. Here, again, I expect IBM's deep connection with the Chinese will produce results.
"how many different distros are there, and how many of those distros can you typically find easy-to-install driver/software packages for?"
Utterly irrelevant. Nine-nine percent of the existing distros are used by people (read: geeks) who happen to like installing new distros. Any NORMAL consumer will end up with Red Hat/Fedora, Mandriva, SUSE, Sun JDS, or possibly Debian (and maybe Linspire) - for all of which there are easy-to-install software package management systems and available software.
The average consumer has never HEARD of any other Linux distro and never will. In fact, the main issue with the uptake in Linux is simply the fact that ninety-nine percent of the computer buying public has STILL never heard of Linux at all.
"And for something that's supposed to be free, I find it quite amusing how many distros' developers end up devising some under-handed method to charge for their work."
Clueless. Linux is supposed to be free-as-in-freedom. It does not have to be "free-as-in-beer" - but ninety percent of the time it is if you have the bandwidth to download a few CD ISOs or you can afford twenty bucks to buy CDs on eBay. Virtually all the big distros make their money on various methods of support. Why is that underhanded? Nobody said they have to work for free even if the software is free. Is it better that Microsoft charges a minimum of $100 for their OS (and we're talking the obsolete Windows 98 here) and THEN charges a couple hundred for support?
"Insightful", my ass. There should be a mod for "clueless and arrogant" - or maybe "Windows shill."
Re:Taken from Murphy's (Score:2, Insightful)
http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/h/HanlonsRazor.h
Re:Not Forever (Score:3, Insightful)
My niece began with XP at age four. Windows is in her home and in her hand every day. Something she can touch.
Re:Not Forever (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not Forever (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Not Forever (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Not Forever (Score:5, Insightful)
In Linux, the problem with video drivers is simply lack of manufacturer support. If the manufacturers would spend a week porting their drivers (this isn't rocket science), there would be a very easy way to install them. I don't understand why IBM doesn't do what Microsoft does - offer financial incentives to make a driver by picking up part of the development cost (which, again, can't be that huge.)
No, Linux is not "uber-1337". There is no reason UNDER THE CURRENT CONDITIONS of lack of vendor support that it should be expected to be able to run anything. Given vendor support, the issue goes away. So what's your point? The article was about WHY it is this way, and has nothing to do with the underlying quality of the OS.
So Mandriva doesn't make it easy to find the free download page - big deal. This is hardly "under-handed", it's just lame. Compared to Microsoft's business tactics, this doesn't even show up in an electron microscope. I'm not even sure it's deliberate - it could well be simple "geek moron" behavior, as I've mentioned before. Begging you to join their Club before letting you follow the links to the download page is just that - begging.
As for $20, that's on eBay. There are plenty of places you can get entire distros for $2.50 a CD. And testing ten different distros to see which is "best" is both a waste of time and only suitable for geeks. I occasionally download a live CD to see if something is interesting, but I have no particular desire to replace my Mandriva 2005 LE until Mandriva 2006 shows up on the public mirrors in a few weeks. Ninety percent of Linux is identical between distros - the remaining ten percent has to do with configuration utilities and package management utilities, plus whatever additional packages the distro wants to include as the default. Basically of no interest, unless you want a distro optimized for some subset of interest, such as multimedia or security. And since you can install anything on anything given ability to install from source (and that difficulty is heavily overblown), it's mostly irrelevant - especially since, as I said, the average consumer has never heard of these distros and wouldn't know what to do with them if they did.
And again, since ninety percent of distros are unknown to anybody but professional Linux-installation geeks, it's irrelevant how they charge for it. You're basically paying for the hobby of installing Linux, not the software, anyway.
None of this is relevant to why Linux isn't being used by the average consumer. Far and away, the main reason is a combination of ignorance of the existence of Linux and inertia by those who really don't particularly care what OS they run - as long as it's working for the present and for the minimal tasks for which they use the computer.
The only reason corporate America hasn't switched is less ignorance of the existence of Linux than it is ignorance of the benefits of open source over the long run, versus the inertia of sticking with the crap their people already know and to which they're wedded by bad IT decisions in the past concerning infrastructure design. That, and the lack of enterprise apps, which take time and organization to produce, so Linux doesn't have that many - yet. The latter problem will go away within ten years as OSS Java infrastructures make developing enterprise apps easier. We're already seeing that to some degree in a couple of enterprise areas such as CRM.
The only real usability problem Linux has is the same one Windows has - a lot of software is produced by what I call "geek morons": brilliant guys at writing software to do something cool, but completely incompetent at either producing a useful GUI or producing documentation or both.
I had to learn both Linux and Windows over the last three years, and as I've said numerous times before, there isn't a penny's worth of difference in usability or learnability between them. It's only hard to learn one or the other if you've already learned one.
I still use Windows most of the
Re:Has made it? O.o (Score:3, Insightful)
There is an immense library of UNIX software, too. The difference is that Windows software is available in brick and mortar stores, and UNIX software largely isn't. It is a chicken-and-egg problem. Stores won't stock and developers won't develop until there is market, and there can't be market if nobody is selling.
Re:Not Forever (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that there are no "acurate" number on plain users using linux as a desktop. Most server applications require specific software wich have thier own dependencies and issues. Unless Dell or HP (IBM doesn't count) starts selling server solutions like a linux webserver or application server or Setupfor your apps requirments systems, it won't change much. Dell has the resources to basicaly come out with thier own distro and customize it to use Dell fee based webservices but they won't because MS would take discounts away and they would have to buy OEM software at regular OEM prices Just like they won't support AMD processors and lose thier intel dicounted prices.
Another problem is that the (most) linux based PCs being sold are all low end low cost machine unless specificaly spec'd out for some purpose. Walmart sold cheap linux computer who for some were thier first computers and even if windows was installed, the user would have had a bad experience. Try upgrading a $300 Emachine and you get the idea. Mayeb If some manufactuer just used quality parts, any distro could install with the greatest of ease and it wouldn't be a problem. As it is now, it doesn't look like they will target decent computers with decent parts for linux, just low cost machines. Maybe it is the low end results making them not want to commit but i think it would be mor eto the discounts they get form other vendors liek MS