On Saturday 10 June 2006 17:09, you wrote: > > 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. > > Sure but this doesn't really answer the question of why bother? :) > > The flip side of the argument is that it's much easier for home users > to use alternative systems than business as their Windows > compatibility requirements are much lower (as Apple have shown). Most
if we want to address these things effectively, versus spitting into the wind
in traditional "year of the desktop" fashion, let's try and conjecture less.
first off, enterprise desktops are not where we are right now. we can't
service them properly and won't be able to for at least a few years
(optimistically speaking). if we focus on that we'll be beating our heads
into a brick wall.
but it's not home users either. apple didn't show that home users have lower
windows compat requirements because apple isn't exactly taking the market by
storm with their 2% share of desktop sales. apple has shown that you can
market to niche groups and be successful; in apple's case it's been people
with more money than sense (have you -seen- the price of apple ipod
accessories?) that want to believe they're cool and people who want to create
media content (yes, it also helps if you have a consumer electronics gadget,
but let's keep focussed on the desktop..).
moreover, the home user's "ms compatibility" is not particularly low.
they "need" to run the stuff they use at work, random crap they download off
the 'net (think "google earth", "greeting card maker pro v2" or "yahoo
toolbar"), use their cheap consumer peripherals with zero hassle and play
games. for the vast majority of home users we've just begun to hit enough
usability (this is mostly a distro thing, btw, since it comes down to proper
software and hardware integration and good system management tools) but we
lack a lot of what many of them need. and where we don't lack, they don't
know that we don't because it requires some changes in their approach to
using their computer ("instead of going to download.com to find a greeting
card maker, fire up your software installer and find one right there!")
in the other hand, we do a great job of handling the needs of the home user
who uses their computer for email, web and that sort of thing as well as the
home user who is a computer enthusiast. those are our "apple-niches" if you
will right now (not that we do a good job marketing to those people).
but the real sweet spots for us right now tend to be found in small and medium
size business, certain educational scenarios and government. good news is
that these markets represent a lot more than a "niche": they are a huge % of
the market.
and again, in case it got lost in the above text: forget about the enterprise
desktop right now. concentrate on the SMB type deployments. for every one
1000+ desktop deployment there are dozens upon dozen (hundreds even) of <1000
deployments. and they tend to be happier and more successful deployments IME.
so we ought to ask ourselves: what do those people need, and how can we
deliver that without alienating and destroying our current base that is
valuable to us?
indeed, what added value do we actually provide them on the desktop? why
should they bother at all?
this has been a question we've been asking ourselves very hard in the kde
project for kde4. our workspace apps will not be portable to windows or
macos, whilst many of our apps will be due to the libraries being ported
there by well-meaning people. hopefully we'll get more developers out of
that. but this leaves the workspace for us to build value in.
unfortunately i think it may be a bit out of scope for the desktop-architects
list to figure this strategy out. for me i'm looking to this group to figure
out the details of the "boring" stuff that simply -has- to work right for us
to be able to add all that "reason to use linux on the desktop" on top of.
this group, for me, is about the nuts and bolts and ensuring we're not all
working at odds with each other.
but the innovation we require will probably happen elsewhere. i'm not even
interested in trying to tackle that issue in this venue. we have enough more
realistic ends to meet within this group IMHO.
--
Aaron J. Seigo
Undulate Your Wantonness
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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