> > Bottom line: I think *all* of the main desktop distros have > > gotten better in the past three years. But are they at the > > level of OS/X yet? Or even Windows? Uh uh. The gap is > > narrowing, though. > > I disagree with this. My family and I moved from Windows to Slackware > in 1996, and today, the family finds working with Windows and Aqua to be > extremely limiting, difficult and time consuming.
This is all extremely ironic, of course, because *I'm* the guy who works for the company selling Linux migration products, and yet *I'm* the one saying, "It just ain't there yet!" ;-) But I'm sorry, in terms of "perceived slickness," Windows XP ain't really so bad, and OS/X just has it hands down over everybody else. All the Wine hackers at my ranch want an iMac. Now, some of that is certainly driven by the fact that we're pushing to get a Mac version of CrossOver out the door, and it's hard to fix Mac-related bugs in Wine 'less you've got yourself a Mac to hack on. But the *other* part of the equation is that iMacs are just pure sex, and who wouldn't want one? Even geeks like to be stylish (at least, sometimes). > GNU desktops repeatedly out perform in nearly every fair minded > condition. First, they are far more customizable. With six kids in the > house, they would accept nothing less. They have far more security, > greater network connectivity, interconnectivity and there are far more > useful programming in SuSE than XP home edition. I agree with all of that. But "out perform" is only one part of the equation. There's a switching cost to make that happen, and the truth is that most larger organizations aren't willing to make that transition (yet), because either 1) the transition cost is still perceived as being too high and/or 2) the long-term benefits of the transition are perceived as being too low. Microsoft, of course, spends big money in PR and advertising to feed both of those perceptions. But at least in the case of the North American market, and to a lesser extent in Europe, you don't tend to see a lot of interest in the Linux desktop yet. That interest *is* developing, but it's coming on slowly, organically. We haven't yet reached a market tipping point where suddenly everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon. In my opinion, the real action on the Linux desktop these days is in places like Brazil, South Africa, India, and China. *Those* are places that 1) have a crying need for innovation, 2) view Microsoft (and American OS hegemony in general) with great alarm, and 3) tend to have many more smart young people than they have money. For them, investing the human capital into making the transition to Linux is more of an easy sell. They'll cheerfully take whatever they can get that's verging on zero software licensing cost, and they'll readily bend it to their wishes be sticking an army of homegrown developers on it. That's a great solution, because it takes advantage of the openness of the underlying tools. But for someone like, I dunno, Owens Corning or Rubbermaid, it's a whole different equation. For them, openness and licensing costs (while both important) probably rank well below risk management--"If it ain't really, *really* broke; don't fix it." Windows XP is probably working... okay... for them. Yeah, they may have more sys admins running around than they'd like. And they're sick to death of applying OS patches. But they also know that if they put in a new desktop solution that causes too much pain among the thousands of (mostly) docile cube warriors that they tend to, then hey, they get their butts fired. It's all very simple. It takes a *very* persuasive and/or powerful CTO/CIO type to push something like that through. Now, some of those folks *are* serious about making a move. Many of them have rage issues with Software Assurance (and that's right and proper). So, some of them will eventually go, or at least *start* going, because if nothing else they want to have a credible option to leverage back against MS and Software Assurance licensing costs. But thus far, those organizations remain in the minority in the domestic market. And hey, I oughta know! ;-) > I personally work with wmaker on about 5 virtual desktops, with > gtk-nautilus running as a desktop manager when I think I need to (which > is rare). And see, I'm sorry, no offense, but you've just revealed yourself as an archetypal power-user ubergeek. You portray a desktop manager is something optional. That's great; I'm glad you've got the moxie to pull that off, because I sure don't. Even after 4 years of working with Linux, I can't even conceive of a time when I'd want to just work on a command line all day. I live in my window manager. And frankly, for 99.9378% (approximately) of your average "knowledge workers," the idea of living without a desktop manager would be unthinkable. I don't need to "out perform." I need to do my work. > While devices will ALWAYS be a problem due to manufactures > dreams of world domination and secrecy, in truth, devices that are > supported, which is a hell of a lot of them, are better supported than > the proprietary drivers in commercial operating systems. What more can > we want? We have access to TV, Radio, Security Cameras, video > production, image manipulation, we have a dozen or so scanners, digital > cameras, video recorders and more. Yeah, but not many of them simply plug and play. In many cases, you have to fiddle to make them go. And my personal kitbag of "Linux installation tricks" is rather limited, and for most real human beings it's even smaller. Hardware detection is still slicker in the other OS environments. At least that's my perception. > And we run almost exclusively AMD 850 Durons in the house. > > Every time I have to deal with a non GNU system it is stifling. Those > desktops are completely brain dead. Yeah, but so are the majority of the corporate users using them. ;-) They wouldn't know they they had "greater network connectivity" if you hit them in the head with it. To them "Change = bad. Change = scary. I want what I already know." Who can blame them? If you're Joe-Average cube warrior in a U.S. company, you're already being asked to do more work than ever before, because you're covering for Tony and Jill (who got downsized last year) and you know that you might be next. You want a new desktop OS so that you can "out perform" like you want a hole in the head. What you want is for your apps to work. And until we truly have the ability to make Linux a Windows compatible OS, making that leap is going to continue to present challenges. Now, we're making that happen here at the ranch, and slowly but surely we're succeeding, but it takes time to make Wine good enough to be a nearly-bulletproof compatability tool. All of this is *not* to say, don't go to Linux on the desktop. For many people and organizations it can make sense. Particularly for those organizations that have a handful of apps that comprise the "working" of the majority of their day-to-day doings, moving to Linux can be a great move, by bringing in the cost, maintenance, and other benefits that you rightly mention above. Not to mention finally having *control* again (as a customer) over the software you buy (what a novel concept). Call centers are a perfect example of the sort of business that can benefit from Linux--*lots* of people using essentially *one* application all day long. Obviously, CPRS is an example of a similar sort of application (we hope), which is why we're very interested in making it run under CrossOver. But I'm not going to say "Linux is axiomatically better and slicker and easier for everyone everywhere all the time." Because it just ain't so (at least not yet.) Interesting discussion. Cheers, -jon parshall- COO CodeWeavers ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by xPML, a groundbreaking scripting language that extends applications into web and mobile media. Attend the live webcast and join the prime developer group breaking into this new coding territory! http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=110944&bid=241720&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list Hardhats-members@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
