On Tuesday 17 January 2006 16:08, John Cherry wrote: > The feedback we have received clearly states that (1) Linux on the > desktop will be a non-starter without some of the key applications that > are being used on Windows (i.e. the Adobe products and Autodesk) and (2)
on the other hand, there are a non-negligible number of people using the linux desktop now. apparently they number in the millions if the 1-5% market share numbers are to be believed. so one could ask: what are we doing right for them? who are these people? have we saturated that segment of the market? if not, how much additional growth is there in that segment? are there similar segments that we haven't reached yet but would be a simple jump across to? in other words: instead of focusing on the people who won't move because of proprietary app availability let's see if we can build up the market who can live without them to reach "big enough numbers" that either we stop caring about this particular problem or the problem goes away because there are now enough people using linux desktops to create a market for commodity proprietary apps. to be honest, i'm not holding my breath. by the time Adobe, et al, wake up Krita, Inscape, Scribus, KPDF, etc... may be so good that people will laugh at purchasing Adobe products on linux. that's something that Adobe and friends really ought to be thinking about. if the linux desktop is growing inexorably, not getting on now may mean never getting on. > Linux on the desktop will be a non-starter without Linux being > pre-installed on PC products (i.e. a Linux Multimedia Computer). these are increasingly available. WalMart, a couple years on, is still selling these items on their website AFAIK. the problem is not getting pre-installed PC products, the problem is getting Dell/HP/Lenovo to do so and Red Hat/Novell ok with selling to the unwashed masses. in other words, stop obsessing on the typical enterprise focused companies and strategize around those with a commodity consumer focus. i dunno .... perhaps we need to stop hoping that Red Hat, Novell, etc. will step up and be the real players here and instead get behind those who are already pushing pre-installed PC products *today* such as Linspire and Mandriva. i have the increasingly sneaking suspicion that the enterprise companies will get hot on the desktop when the desktop gets hot in more commodity market type areas. sort of like how it happened on the server. then again, i'm not a technology marketing strategist so what do i know. btw, apologies for being 1.5 weeks late on the HTML-ization of the position paper drafts... i'm stupidly busy here with 2 multi-day events on my schedule this month =/ i'll be getting to them on the airplane to new zealand at the end of the week unless someone beats me to it. -- Aaron J. Seigo GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43 Full time KDE developer sponsored by Trolltech (http://www.trolltech.com)
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