On Sat, Jun 10, 2006 at 07:44:48PM +0100, Mike Hearn wrote: > 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. > > 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?
As well, I think all too often these discussions of "how to get people to switch to Linux" tends to focus on the basic home user case. I guess this is because often we're thinking about getting friends and family converted. Like I mentioned before, I don't really think these simple home users are that valuable of a target (although I certainly have saved a lot of administrative time getting Mom off of spyware-ridden Windows onto Linux!) I imagine that some day, someone will find a great business niche creating a "Grandma Linux" type thing with an extremely simplified interface, and either automated or remote system admin (so I can handle management of Grandma's machine from my computer). But looking at how this class of user picked up computers originally, in many cases the decision was justified because they wanted a system at home "like I have to use at work". In other words, they want to either develop or maintain an equivalent skillset as at work. Thus, I think that the major way to get home users to use Linux, starts by getting companies to convert to Linux. This is why I think DTL and its focus on enterprise desktop deployments and related issues has such an important role. So I think that some of the fundamental things we need to get right today are to solve all the various large scale desktop issues that plague major companies today. If we can make it significantly easier to maintain vast numbers of enterprise desktop systems than other OS's, resulting in significant savings to enterprise deployers, then things should start falling into place. And I think many of these desktop deployment issues are things that the Linux architecture is extremely well suited for - distributed patch management, secured/locked down interfaces, tight user access control, provisioning applications, remote management, etc. etc. I would also bet that many of these issues are already solved by people on this list right now, and if we could just get their solutions out in the open, polished up, and promoted, it'd really help push things along. Bryce _______________________________________________ Desktop_architects mailing list [email protected] https://lists.osdl.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop_architects
