gmac Posted December 1, 2003 Report Share Posted December 1, 2003 http://www.guardian.co.uk/microsoft/Story/...1083676,00.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/microsoft/Story/...1085764,00.html Even if microsoft lose, unless you can walk in and buy a computer without windows most people are going to stick with it. Even with a choice most people will stick with the devil they know. It may keep breaking but you can get people to fix it and if you upgrade to the new version things will get better and the computer was obsolete anyway. (irony in case you are wondering). I've been looking at data management software. There are several companies from whom I can get the necessary software to run a paperless office ranging from £40 per month up to £100 if I want them to supply the hardware as well. That's with full support and a working database to control the documents. All I need is the multipage scanner, dvd drive and a big enough hard drive to store the info. They are all windows based and so are the scanners and concomitant software. I would love to use linux but can't find the equivalent applications. It must exist as it is becoming crucial business software. If anyone knows of anything like that please let me know. Point I'm making is that no matter how good linux may or may not be unless it is marketed more effectively it has an uphill battle. Windows is using its dominance in the desktop market to pull it in to the server market. I reckon linux needs to reciprocate and start going for the desktop market. It may upset the purists (the rtfm brigade and the if you're not prepared to spend some time looking before asking for help you shouldn't be using linux brigade) but most people don't want to spend hours with their computers learning to do something the hard way. It needs to be an out of the box easy to use rival to have a chance of succeeding. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pierre Baco Posted December 1, 2003 Report Share Posted December 1, 2003 I approve 100%. I would add that the main problem for getting Linux on desktops is the lack of vertical apps. There a plenty of nice, good and rock solid horizontal apps, utilities and services. But computing is not an objective, just a tool to get things done. Unfortunately, major software houses designing vertical apps will not go GPL for a while. May take years to switch to another economic model based on services rather than royalties and charged licences. Meanwhile, I would not mind to buy, install, and promote proprietary vertical apps as long as there are running on top of GNU/Linux. We need accounting, payroll, inventory and all this sort of not-so-funny-and-sexy stuff on our desktops NOW. That's what I get from the professional users everyday. Sure, knowing what's under the hood is important, but you don't become a mechanic overnight, and more important, some of them don't want to become mechanics as they have other things to do, like running their business. They might be impressed and convinced by GNU/Linux quality and solidity (once they've tried it), but that's not enough to deploy it everywhere. I think we're at an important step, where free software is (almost) accepted as a very good way to build a serious computing infrastructure (network, servers, horizontal services), but it may stop here or stay as a "niche market" if developers do not switch to this desktop platform for their vertical apps. We've seen pretty good OSes disappearing just for this... This was my 1 euro contribution. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roland Posted December 1, 2003 Report Share Posted December 1, 2003 It needs to be an out of the box easy to use rival to have a chance of succeeding. And/Or sold preinstalled with the box and easy to upgrade roland Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Counterspy Posted December 2, 2003 Report Share Posted December 2, 2003 See my post in MAndrakeMove. Counterspy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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