On 6/9/06, Bryce Harrington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > But for general users, like mentioned above, having the apps (or their > equivalent) on Linux is necessary but not sufficient. Honestly, most > users don't care, or even fear change at the OS level. So some > additional motivation is required.
The whole "what can we do to make people switch to Linux" thing is bogus IMHO - if there's no compelling reason for end users to change then perhaps we need to consider why not. The thinking should be "what useful new things can we do with all this code" not "how do we make this useful so people will use it?" .... that's putting the cart before the horse. To get significant market share I'd say you have to take a step back and say, what might computing look like in 10 years? 20? What fundamental things do we get wrong today that we could get right tomorrow? I'm thinking BIG things that are mostly still just research areas. New user interface designs (perhaps chucking the mouse/keyboard). Streamable software. Programs that don't ever crash. Completely rethought security model. All four. With a bit of luck you'd end up with a new product that was a large enough leap that it's actually worth moving away from Windows (really, the "PC"). It might be based on Linux, it might re-use code developed for Linux but it wouldn't bear much resemblence to todays desktop systems. Working on Wine commercially, I've seen several Linux migrations that started enthusiastically, faltered, and stopped simply because switching away from Windows is so truly, hugely difficult. It'd be like us all deciding to abandon the car as a means of transport. Possible? Yes. But there has to be a damn good reason. Today nobody - not us, not Apple, nobody - offers a damn good reason. thanks -mike _______________________________________________ Desktop_architects mailing list [email protected] https://lists.osdl.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop_architects
