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Red Hat CEO Decries Open Source Pretenders 171

Posted by Zonk from the put-up-or-shut-up dept.
OSTalent writes "The Register has an article about Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik's recent remarks...'For all his enthusiasm about the community and sever-side Linux, Szulik provided something of a reality check on the much debated theme of a Linux desktop. According to Szulik, the huge presence of legacy infrastructure like Microsoft's Exchange and PowerPoint has prevented a lot of people making the move.'" From the article: "It's very difficult to shape the development agenda of the community... every day people comment to us on the quality of our products through Kerrnel.org. What's important is staying true to the premise of the GPL model ... It starts with the APIs now, then it moves into content. Try to put [Microsoft's] Windows Media Player into Firefox and see what it looks like. In a world where application-to-application interaction becomes the norm, where does that innovation come from and who owns it?"
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Red Hat CEO Decries Open Source Pretenders

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  • Powerpoint?? (Score:3, Funny)

    by TheBrutalTruth ( 890948 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @07:44PM (#13901759)
    Powerpoint is holding me back from having Linux on my desktop? Damn - I knew powerpoint sucked, but that's just shocking.

    I don't know what I'd do without all those time wasting presentations.

    • Depends on your priorities I guess. I must admit, for my job Powerpoint is important (and no I can't switch, because I don't make my own slides).

      • Re:Powerpoint?? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Mostly a lurker ( 634878 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @09:56PM (#13902396)
        If you are using someone else'e powerpoint presentation, install the PowerPoint Viewer under Wine. If it is your own presentation, develop it using something more portable. In my experience, the only times it gets tricky are
        • you regularly have existing PowerPoint presentations that you must modify;
        • there are complex PowerPoint presentations with hooks to Windows only features, such as VBA.
        It may be possible to use Crossover Office if you are in such a position, but that is not always a total solution and anyway always seems to me to be illogical as a long term solution. After all, the whole point of a Linux move is to escape proprietary solutions, not perpetuate them.

        Really, though, the existence of weird and wonderful Excel applications is usually a bigger obstacle to a conversion than the need to display some PowerPoint slides.

    • Re:Powerpoint?? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Muhammar ( 659468 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @08:07PM (#13901891)
      PowerPoint(TM) is an essential thought-prevention tool. Nothing else can extend a vapid piece of generalising self-important blather into 45 minutes of a dynamic + snappy prevarocation. PowerPoint helps our management to feel better about their mission, about their goals and comitment to the cutting-edge innovation. It helps them to highlight the synergies. It facilitates indentification of the go/no-go checkpoints on their flowcharts.

      http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html [wired.com]

      • Re:Powerpoint?? (Score:5, Funny)

        by dnoyeb ( 547705 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @08:21PM (#13901963) Homepage Journal
        Its always great fun making a PP presentation for management. They always come back again and again asking how much more information can be taken out. Until finally there is only 4-5 pages, and it does not say anything except basically adjectives.

        My last boss is funny though as he is an engineer and smart guy, but also a manager. So he would cause us to shrink the presentation down to a few slides, but we would have to keep making the font smaller because he wanted to be sure not to leave anything out, lol.

        Yes, PP causes some strange things :P
        • did you reach a point where you began creatively spacing the letters & words out to create ascii art on each slide, writing in things that were completely different, or even creating fake "negative" slides with totaly rediculous things writen at normal size as whitespace?

          tiny font is the best place for ascii :P
      • PowerPoint(TM) is an essential thought-prevention tool. Nothing else can extend a vapid piece of generalising self-important blather into 45 minutes of a dynamic + snappy prevarocation. PowerPoint helps our management to feel better about their mission, about their goals and comitment to the cutting-edge innovation. It helps them to highlight the synergies. It facilitates indentification of the go/no-go checkpoints on their flowcharts.

        Hey! Were you in Monday's meeting also? Could you believe that prese

    • Re:Powerpoint?? (Score:4, Informative)

      by nkh ( 750837 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @08:24PM (#13901979) Journal

      I don't know what it's worth because I've never used it yet but you can use some LaTeX packages like Beamer [sourceforge.net] or Prosper [colorado.edu] (tutorial here [freshmeat.net]) to create PowerPoint-like presentations. The result seems very professional for most of my needs.

      The only tool I used up to now was OpenOffice.org with some Xfig drawings for the graphs, there is no point in using Windows+PowerPoint if you generate a PDF you can use everywhere (unless you want to edit it with Microsoft Office...)

    • My ten year old is taught PP at school and is now better with it than me (getting old, but I've hacked kernel modules so this generational thing shouldn't be happening to ME!!).
      Anyway, paranoia aside, I think RH deserve credit for their stance. It's often been the case on /. and elsewhere that they've been compared to MS as the lumbering megamonster that will gobble up Linux and destroy innovation. Well, their values - an important part of their brand - suggest otherwise.
      I think he's wrong about the deskt
      • Insert card
        Switch on laptop

        yeah, it's confusing alright
        • Well, ther RT2400 works after a fashion (though if you run it for a few hours the driver will oops and take down your system). There is no other 802.11g card that even gets close to that.

  • Quite the reverse, Matthew! (Score:5, Funny)

    by DonJoe ( 888954 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @07:45PM (#13901765)
    "The desktop has become a lot like teenage sex: a lot of people are talking about it but not many people are doing it," Szulik said.

    Well, it's the reverse here on /.!

  • Powerpoint? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mateito ( 746185 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @07:47PM (#13901782) Homepage
    Powerpoint isn't the show-stopper. I've given presentations using OpenOffice and although the fonts can be a bit interesting when you change computers, it works.

    Nah - the killers for me at least are Excel, Visio and Project. The OpenOffice version of the first doesn't scale near to where I need it, and porting macros is way too much effort, and the second two still don't have any real equivalents in the Linux space.

    • Likewise for Visio (Score:2, Interesting)

      by plierhead ( 570797 )
      Same for me. Visio is a hardcore piece of technology which I rely on so much I couldn't really be arsed looking for a free replacement - I don't mind paying for it because it works so well.

      Hard as it is to admit if you love OSS, if you really are a "knowledge worker", its worth paying the MS tax for access to things like Excel and Visio. And if you exchange files with customers, you have even less choice.

      IMHO, the way to dislodge Microsoft is not by positioning linux desktop as a viable alternative for

      • Re:Likewise for Visio (Score:3, Informative)

        by lar3ry ( 10905 )
        In a word: BULLSHIT.

        OpenOffice's Present module can give a customer with PowerPoint software something they can use. Likewise, Visio can be replaced with any of a bunch of drawing programs (xfig with transfig can export to a number of formats).

        If you don't want to run Windows, you'll find that there's few business reasons really compelling you to do so.

        If your company runs Exchange, then Evolution (Linux) or Apple Mail (Mac OS X) can run as a client just fine.

        If your company requires Office, then OpenOffi

        • Re:Likewise for Visio (Score:3, Informative)

          by abigor ( 540274 )
          There is honestly no free alternative to Visio. Sorry, but a fact is a fact. It's one reason why the Codeweavers guys worked on making Visio 2000 run (though not flawlessly).

          • Re:Likewise for Visio (Score:5, Interesting)

            by MichaelSmith ( 789609 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @09:59PM (#13902410) Homepage Journal
            There is honestly no free alternative to Visio

            In my workplace we are finding out that Visio doesn't scale well enough. We have ~100MB of source code branched into say 10 different variants, with comparable amounts of documentation in visio and word.

            CVS takes care of configuration management in the code but in the doc we have to have multiple copies of everything and merges are totally manual.

            We are just unable to maintain so much documentation. I am working on a project to port the docs to xml and svg, and commit them to cvs.

            There are many free svg programs out there which will do everything we are doing with visio.

          • Re:Likewise for Visio (Score:3, Informative)

            by Jonny_eh ( 765306 )
            I've been using Umbrello [sourceforge.net] quite successfully to create all sorts of UML diagrams in Linux.

            There's also Dia [gnome.org], which also has a windows version, and it's not limited to just UML modelling.
            • I use Umbrello also; in fact, I was using it as I wrote my first comment! But Visio does a lot more than UML. I needed to draw some pictures of guys talking on various phones which were connected every which way to little boxes, and Umbrello can't do that.

        • Re:Likewise for Visio (Score:4, Informative)

          by silas_moeckel ( 234313 ) <silas&dsminc-corp,com> on Friday October 28, 2005 @09:26PM (#13902247) Homepage
          OK as somebody that has MS on there laptop because of visio. Visio is not a drawing program for most it's a macro / layout program. Try walking into an unknown undocumented network there are no good network mapping tools for Linux and only two for Windows and those need visio to display. Yea you can put pretty stencils in visio but for my business it's all about it's macro and API as a lot of software builds ontop on visio.

        • Re:Likewise for Visio (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Likewise, Visio can be replaced with any of a bunch of drawing programs (xfig with transfig can export to a number of formats).

          I have used both, and I hope you are not serious.

          By that same logic, I don't think Photoshop is worth the money either, since any image made with Photoshop can be made with MS Paint. It may require a teeny bit of manual labor (mmm, blend two images by averaging their RGB values), but hey, it's free! That's great!

          Sometimes people forget time is money.

        • Re:Likewise for Visio (Score:3, Interesting)

          by chill ( 34294 )
          Visio isn't easily replacable and does tons more than just simple drawings. I don't know if Kivio has gone anywhere in the last year, but the solution is CrossOver Office.

          CrossOver Office allows you to move to Linux and still keep some of the Windows apps that take longer to migrate. Linux, OpenOffice.org, Evolution, Firefox and VideoLAN are great but there are still some apps that don't have good enough equivalents on Linux. Visio and Project are two biggies that can be handled by CrossOver Office.

        • Err... AutoCAD? (Score:4, Informative)

          by digitect ( 217483 ) <(digitect) (at) (dancingpaper.com)> on Friday October 28, 2005 @11:57PM (#13902930)

          Not true, you forgot AutoCAD.

          To date, there is no CAD software for Linux that even half resembles the capability of ACAD. The best thing I've found is Cycus, but it is nowhere close. I wish everybody would stop fiddling with icon suites and desktop skins and get to work on a real GPL CAD application.

          The entire design, building, and construction industry is hinged on AutoCAD. Oh sure, there are plenty of so-called competitors, but when #2 (Microstation) decides to flip its entire file format to AutoCAD's proprietary format that's a pretty good indication of who owns the market.

          The pathetic thing is that AutoCAD is a house of cards. It is a mishmash of Lisp, VBA, C, C++, DCL, VB, dotNet, and is wildly unstable. The features are always changing and every release crushes all previous version file formats. It is the biggest assembly of bolt-on code for such a huge pile of money you can imagine.

          But AutoCAD still rules, nobody in GPL-land is really paying attention.

          • I think the trouble with replicating AutoCAD is that the "tinkerer" userbase for such an application is very small, and the normal userbase doesn't intersect with programmers.

            Think about it: most OSS programs either have a general appeal for a broad audience (internet programs, multimedia programs, desktops, office suites, etc.) or a specific appeal to the computer-technical audience (networking utilities, system administration, groupware, databases, etc.) AutoCAD doesn't fit into either category. It's no
          • Actually, Pro/Engineer and Solidworks are available for linux. 80% of Solidworks users upgraded from AutoCAD at one time.

            • Solidworks looks like a mechanical design application, and ProEngineer an industrial design CAD. Neither appear to have any effort directed at the architecture/construction industry that I could see.

      • One MS license could probably serve 5 people if it was pooled like this...

        It could, if MS licenced per concurrent user, rather than for total users.
    • For Project, what about Planner? (http://developer.imendio.com/wiki/Planner [imendio.com]) and Dia? Probably not comparable in terms of capabilities though, but it's something.

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

      by bubulubugoth ( 896803 )
      About macros.

      The effor for migration macros, isnt derived from a bad "emulation" of the language, The OpenOffice macro language, is almos equal thant the language at Microsoft Macros, the difference is that, at OpenOffice, there are a lot of restricctions, strict typing for variables and method calling, so you are unable to create Macro Virii for OpenOffice.

      About Project management. There are also more evolved tools, phpgroupware, dotproyect, but Yes, I must say that Project is a easy and quick to modify pr

    • Re:Powerpoint? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by strcmp ( 908668 )

      Good point regarding OpenOffice.org. I can't quite say that it has reached the level of functionality that Powerpoint has but if your presentation needs Powerpoint than it is probably badly designed.

      Come to think of it, though, it would be nice if Impress had some more backgrounds.

      • ... it would be nice if Impress had some more backgrounds.

        If you google for "openoffice impress templates" you'll find a fair amount of templates created by users.

        It would be nice if Oo.org's site had an area where you could easily search/find the type of template you needed.

        But they're out there. Just scattered.

    • Visio (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Noksagt ( 69097 )
      Can someone please tell me what the big deal is with Visio? On the commercial win32 front, SmartDraw seems just as capable & usually cheaper. On the F/OSS front, Kivio and dia rock.
      • You did not just seriously suggest that Dia is a nice piece of software. You didn't just do that. I know you didn't, because if you did, I'd have to reach through your screen and punch you. /tried to do many reports for my undergrad using Dia drawings. //regretted it every time. ///actually have done much better with OpenOffice Draw.

        • Re:Visio (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Noksagt ( 69097 )
          Early versions of Dia did suck. It has gotten a lot better. I do like kivio more. But agree that OO.o Draw makes a good, basic vector graphics program (and Inkscape more so).

        • Re:Visio (Score:3, Interesting)

          by fimbulvetr ( 598306 )
          Just a few weeks ago, I had to write a proposal for management types. Network diagrams and the like. Though I've used DIA, I knew it wouldn't be up for the challenge. After some sweating over having to wine visio, I did some serious googling and came up with:

          http://www.thekompany.com/projects/kivio/ [thekompany.com]

          All I have to say is: Holy Crap. I almost knew everything about this from my visio experience (Not a lot, but I could get aroind). A lot of the symbols were the same, and it did had all the little nice things vis
      • OpenOffice Draw is about where Visio was when Microsoft bought it. It's good enough for drawings with boxes, circles, and arrows.
      • Visio's big deal is -- like a lot of market leaders -- the community and plugins and the ways the product has evolved to meet surprisingly complex demands. It deals with a lot of things beyond "drawing stick figures," as one other Slashdotter (rather stupidly) put it.

        With various incarnations of Visio or third-party addins, you can point it at a database and have it do automatic diagramming. You can point it at a network and have it do a network map, then connect that *to* a database and integrate it with y

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

      by zoloto ( 586738 ) *
      Wasn't there a "presentation" software available for the Mac that wasn't PowerPoint, but something else? I can't seem to recall what it was, but now that I have a Mac - could someone point out to me what it's called?

      Anyone?
    • the killers for me at least are Excel, Visio and Project. The OpenOffice version of the first doesn't scale near to where I need it

      What you really mean is "I'm locked in but I can't be bothered to free myself from MS". Openoffice Calc is an excellent equavalent to MS Excel.

      the second two still don't have any real equivalents in the Linux space.

      Yes they do.
      Visio -> Dia [gnome.org]
      Project -> Planner [imendio.com]

  • Embedded Windows Media in Firefox (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FredThompson ( 183335 ) <fredthompson AT mindspring DOT com> on Friday October 28, 2005 @07:47PM (#13901786)
    I've struggled with this for a long time. Firefox has the wonderful ability to be put on a disc as a kiosk which is fantastic for setting a known baseline for presentations exported from PowerPoint. It would be a wonderful way to avoid all the security/configuration issues you run into with distributed presentations in the real world, especially if something more capable than MPEG1 can be used such as Flash.

    However, Windows Media and M$ Office embedded media use a lot of M$-specific stuff to make it work properly. It's not just windows media that is a problem, it's also scaling graphics.

    Here is a sample with IE and Firefox screenshots showing both image scaling problems and embedded media problems. This is from a few months ago but the problems persist with Firefox.

    http://home.mindspring.com/~fredthompson/PowerPoin tHTMLTest.zip [mindspring.com]
    • Without having to looked at the actual HTML generated in detail, what you talk about seems to be a typical problem of "Microsoft ignores standards and uses proprietary extensions instead which IE knows about but not other browsers like Mozilla/Firefox, Opera and so on".

      I'm sympathetic to that problem, of course, but I do think that Mozilla can't really be blamed here. Kludges to support non-standard, vendor-specific, proprietary extensions are a bad idea, and that's in no small part because implementing the
      • I must admit I haven't tried OpenOffice 2.0 as a way to generate more "friendly" HTML from PowerPoint. I'll try that.

        This thread got me poking around again. FrontPage 2002 (I hate the never one and haven't learned Dreamweaver yet...) shows something very interesting. The "normal" tab display looks just like Firefox for the slides with the scaling issue. The "preview" window looks like the original slide. Having removed all the script calls, it now seems this is a CSS issue.

        Maybe, just maybe, some tweaking c
    • The VLC plugin for mozilla/firefox is fantastic. Look into it as an alternative.
      • You mean VideoLAN client?

        The main problems are lack of HTML support for embedded video and PowerPoint's reliance on the M$ Office runtime.

        MediaPlayerConnectivity works just fine for linked media. That's where VideoLan Client would function, not on embedded video.

        That's the challenge.

        I'm about ready to replace all embedded video with animated GIFs alternating between frame 1 and text (Click here to watch video) which does a direct link to the video file. Maybe that's the best option, anyhow, because it would

  • obligatory spelling gripe (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28, 2005 @07:48PM (#13901791)
    Kerrnel.org

    Talk Like A Pirate Day was last month.

  • Kerrnel.org. (Score:4, Funny)

    by RDosage ( 694318 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @07:55PM (#13901832)
    We've already /.'ed Kerrnel.org?
    I think a mirror is at http://kernel.org./ [kernel.org.]

  • Bitching doesn't help, action does. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Trigun ( 685027 ) <evil AT evilempire DOT ath DOT cx> on Friday October 28, 2005 @07:59PM (#13901850)
    Hurry up and release the Netscape-LDAP 100% free and unencumbered.
    Pick an open project for calendaring/mail and make Outlook work with it.
    Create better tools for identity management.

    The problem with people not embracing open source is not with open source, its that nobody knows what they're looking for with open source. Focus on what small business needs, and what open source can offer. Create small, turn-key packages. Create an LDAP authentication server. Create an LDAP mail server that operates as a drop-in replacement that works with the identity server. Create a Document Management System that works with OpenOffice, so that you have it part of the file-save dialog. Give business the tools it needs to work, and work efficiently!

    The tools are better. Everyone keeps saying that they are. The design is sound, the pieces are there, but nobody has stepped up to the plate and sewn it all together. Stop the development of new tools. Take the tools that we have already and put them together. Industry needs more than Google and a Howto posted on an undergrads website.

    Everybody knows that there are a million ways to authenticate a bunch of workstations to one or more server. LDAP, LDAP and Kerberos. GSSAPI, Radius, whatever, but for the love of all things sane and holy, pick one! Pick one, and build the turnkey solution to do it. /phew.
    • "Hurry up and release the Netscape-LDAP 100% free and unencumbered."

      Red Hat already did this.

      "Pick an open project for calendaring/mail and make Outlook work with it"

      Doesn't all of them work with outlook. I am trying really hard to think of one without an outlook plug in and I can't. What were you thinking about?

      It looks like your two gripes have been taken care of already.

      " Pick one, and build the turnkey solution to do it. /phew."

      If you see a need here why not do it yourself? It may be an opportinity for

  • New Virtualization HW may be key (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cpu_fusion ( 705735 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @08:20PM (#13901959)
    Linux Desktop may make huge inroads when CPUs that support "Pacifica" and "Vanderpol" virtualization technology go mainstream. The choice won't be "Windows vs. Linux" anymore; it can be both. And you can bet companies will quickly be asking their employees to do all the INTERNET related activity on the Linux "side". Heck, they could probably sandbox the Windows half very heavily, if all its going to do is run Office.

    Mark my words: the biggest threat to Microsoft is having the "either-or" argument disappear. (And I acknowledge that VMWare and others can do this today, but they 1) aren't free, 2) are already growing in use.)

  • RH Get Evolution (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    According to Szulik, the huge presence of legaet PGP capabilities that infrastructure like Microsoft's Exchange

    RH should try Evolution and get off the pot. You even get PGP that Microsft does not have.

    Suse it better than RH from what I can tell, it even recognized my 54g D-Link G650 card and works great.

    Linux is ready for the desktop, and many new countries to desktop computing are NOT using the North American status quo of Microsoft. The biggest reason Microsoft has a market share at all in China is be

  • Many teenagers are doing a lot more than talking (Score:4, Funny)

    by NZheretic ( 23872 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @08:56PM (#13902136) Homepage Journal
    If the results are anything to go by [unicef-icdc.org], many teenagers are doing a lot more than just talking.

    Anyhow, Szulik tends to hang around many of the more larger conservative kids, I mean companies, and even then in the backrooms a lot of it is going on that the CEOs and CIOs would like to admit ( I'm talking about messing around with Linux desktops, geez you guys have dirty minds ).

    If Szulik were to hang around with more of the leaner mid sized less well off young companies he would find a lot more physical experimenting going on, especially with thin client Linux ( what else would they be doing ).

    And as for local, state and federal governmental bodies around the world, they are begging for it, which at least is better than them always doing it to the tax payers.

  • that's easy... (Score:5, Funny)

    by kavau ( 554682 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @08:57PM (#13902138) Homepage
    where does that innovation come from and who owns it?

    That's easy:

    Where does it come from? Apple.

    Who owns it? Microsoft.

  • Mixing oil and water (Score:4, Insightful)

    by argoff ( 142580 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @09:27PM (#13902251)
    Mixing free and closed software is like mixing oil and water. For example, you can copy share, do business with, and distribute Linux all you want. Stick a proprietary piece of software or media on the same CD, and now you are dead in the water.

    Free markets are about freedom. When people have it, they tend to use it to create wealth and prosperity where none ever existed before. Closed software is not about freedom, copy it and you can be sued or go to jail. Some people call that an "intellecutal property" right, but just because someone calls something a property right doesn't mean that it is.

    True property rights don't derive from incentive, they derive from just allocation of things that have limited supply and demand. Just property rights lead to strong incentives, but coerced incentives do not lead to just property rights.
  • Sorry, but I have no enthusiasm for sever-side anything. Cuts too close to home.

  • It boils down to Gninertia (Score:3, Insightful)

    by postbigbang ( 761081 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @10:00PM (#13902422)
    Who wants to relearn something when they don't want to. Toolmakers make the mistake of building great new tools and expect everyone to see the merits of them. But tool users just need to get work done. They care not one whit about the geegaws that go into them, so long as they don't have to learn too much, RTFM, and use their old data that took them years to make.

    It doesn't matter if it's a holy GnuWidget. People don't know (F)OSS from dog poop. They know Microsoft because that's what came on their machine. There are people that swear by Microsoft Works, perhaps the most awful 'office suite' ever written, because they finally figured out how to make it work. There's a lesson in that for the community.

    FOSS has no marketing department, and will always battle those with budgets that can spread the word, or make it part of a bundle on a newbie's PC. Fight that, and you'll win, if winning is important.
  • Yep the title says it all....
  • With a last name like that, I find it hard to believe someone takes this guy seriously!

    (If you feel confused, Look up wat Szulik means in Russian (?????).)
  • "The desktop has become a lot like teenage sex: a lot of people are talking about it but not many people are doing it," Szulik said.

    o.0

    he sounds disappointed.

  • What the VCs are saying about desktop Linux. (Score:5, Informative)

    by russbutton ( 675993 ) <russ@@@russbutton...com> on Saturday October 29, 2005 @02:26AM (#13903445) Homepage
    I've been in some serious conversations over the past year with a number of VC's, investors and IT managers about Linux as a business desktop. As much as I have the Religion and consider myself to be a True Believer, it is clear to me that the problem Linux has is much, much more than compatibility issues between MS Office and Open Office.

    I sat down with the Directory of IT Security for Kaiser Permanente, a major HMO here in California. He liked the Linux desktop concept I put in front of him, but then stated that they have over 2000 home grown Windows applications that they built in-house upon which they are dependent to run their business. Other people have told me about how they can much more easily develop useful applications with Visual Basic than you can with Gtk and other standard 'IX tools.

    We may sit here and go on about the shortcomings of Windows and Visual Basic, but in the world where you're actually trying to sell product, the perception of your market is also their Reality. Is there another tool, similar in ease of use to Visual Basic, that is available for people to quickly and easily create applications on Linux?

    For some time I've believed that the first place that desktop Linux would get into would be those shops where the users are production workers who spend their day doing repetitive tasks such as data entry, medical transcriptions, or work at call centers. As I've been researching call center operations, I've come to find that dialing and "Computer Telephony Integration" software are the mission critical applications. Of course they're all written for Windows. So how does Linux break into that market?

    What keeps kicking around in my brain is that the early adopters of Linux on the desktop are governments - China, South Korea, Japan, Brazil, Israel. All are moving to Linux.

    When I talk to college IT directors, the idea of using Linux desktops gets met with that "deer in the headlights" look when they anticipate the mass revolt they'd experience from the faculty and student body.

    The $64 billion question is, who's going to use desktop Linux and how are they going to use it? If y'all could suggest some industries and/or markets you feel that Linux could easily be adopted into, I'd love to hear it, because if it's really there, I'm gonna go get it!

    • Wine should eventually be able to take care of older Win32 stuff. New stuff should just be written cross-platform. For apps and situations that Wine can't handle -- well, you probably have a lot of Windows lisences, so just don't upgrade, and run those legacy Windows apps under Xen 3.0.

      But I believe Wine will become an integral part of the Linux desktop, once it hits version 1.0. It'll possibly make a bigger impact than Firefox did.
      • Wine is always going to be a day late and a dollar short when it comes to running windows applications properly. It has its use, but as a broad, comprehensive solution it's always going to fall short. The windows world is moving to .NET and eventually Longhorn anyway.

        The whole question of the linux desktop is much more than compatibility. The whole concept of "choice" that "enthusiasts" like to banter around when talking about the linux desktop is pretty much antagonstic to linux on the desktop really ta
        • Wine is always going to be late with the latest Windows APIs, true ... but many corporations have a lot of stuff running that was coded for Win98, Win2k. Wine will be great for these apps.

          If people want to write new applications in Windows, then they're committing to Windows for longer and aren't migrating. If migrating, then Wine can cover their old apps and new apps will be for Linux or whatever.

          The Mono Project is to .NET what Wine is to the Win32 api. Wine is not "Windows Compatibility" as you seem t
  • There are MS Exchange replacements [open-xchange.org] that even MS Outlook users can use without even realizing they're not on "Exchange". The MS desktop monopoly can work against Microsoft when their servers don't compete well with others, and a single compatible server can then reach 90% of desktops. Once the MS Office formats no longer lock desktops to each other, because other apps can process them, the MS legacy can rapidly fade, except where it really is superior. Exactly where that is remains to be seen.

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