On 06/17/10 06:02 PM, Erik Trimble wrote:
Yes, plenty of "good" business people deny (i.e. avoid) the desktop
market. It *sucks* for revenue for everyone except Microsoft.
While it's certainly a worthy goal to support concepts like the SunRay
and other corporate-style super-managed thin clients, going after the
traditional home user/corporate desktop market is a Massive effort.
And one which pays very, very, very little dividend.
Right now, both Linux and Windows make reasonably good desktop OSes.
From the OpenSolaris standpoint, what good does it bring the project
to attempt to compete with them? Having a modestly-usable system for
development is good, which is what we currently have by simply
recompiling apps from Linux and *BSD land. What benefit would we gain
by spending a whole lot of effort trying to improve the "business/home
user" experience? Right now, OpenSolaris is targeted at the
Enterprise and Technical User communities. What reason is sufficient
for OpenSolaris to try to move beyond those communities?
Erik,
I think you are understating the usefulness of the the OpenSolaris
desktop. I have been testing an OpenSolaris box with a friend who has a
real computer phobia and keeps messing up her windows box. Everything
she wants to do either just works, or is quickly available via the
package manager. Even her printer just worked (which as a long term
Solaris user still surprises me!).
I think there are a lot of users out there who just want to access the
internet (and don't understand anti-virus software) and work with
documents. Yes a Mac would do all that's required and more, but at a
price. OpenSolaris is an ideal and safe solution for them and it has
one really useful desktop feature other desktop OSs lack - the time slider.
--
Ian.
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