There's been much fanfare about Linux replacing Windows on desktops but we've yet to see any major adoptions take place. This may have something to do with the fact that none of the major PC manufacturers have offered Linux as a pre-installed option.
Dell has been offering the Ubuntu distribution in the US for some time but we've yet to see it in any other countries.
Acer has started selling its Aspire 5710Z model with the Ubuntu and Linpus distributions through local resellers, but only in Singapore for now.
The company claims it will not sell it in the UK yet due to a lack of demand from resellers.
Toshiba is another manufacturer that claims it is not offering pre-installed Linux due to a lack of demand. The company's pre-sales technical specialist, Keith Rothsay, told ZDNet.co.uk's sister site ZDNet Australia that he has only had a handful of enquiries about desktop Linux: "Five or six [queries] across Australia and New Zealand, and that's total in the last three years from end-user customers."
Toshiba customers that plan to install Linux are offered limited support, such as power-management drivers from an information page on its Japanese website. "We believe that with Linux, in particular, it's best handled by the community, and that's the whole point of that project ... We don't have local support facilities, although we will certainly do it on an 'as best' basis," said Rothsay.
Analysts say the cost of retraining staff, along with the entrenched installed base of Windows, means it could be some time before Linux becomes a popular alternative to Microsoft's desktop OS.
Michael Warrilow from analyst firm Hydrasight, agrees that the interest from Australian businesses has been negligible — because of Microsoft's hold on the market. "There's just too much of an installed base and experience around Windows, regardless of whether you think it's a good operating system or not. No matter what people [say] about Windows, there is no great impetus to move off it in the business community. People are just satisfied with Office, or not dissatisfied enough to get off Office and Windows," he said.
He also agrees that there isn't enough demand from customers for an open-source desktop operating system. "There isn't any large demand in the business community for those products and that's why there has been such a lack of momentum to push that out as a standard offering on the hardware," he said. "You'll tend to find in the business audience that's only going to happen when a huge government department [adopts Linux]. The only reason I've seen government departments do it has been — in Australia and across the region — more of a political statement: 'We're going to go open source'. The business-case justification hasn't been there because of the cost associated with migrating users and just the [assumed] learning curve associated with that," he said.
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Migrating users to Linux would only result in a small cost savings when considering the total cost of ownership, according to Kevin McIsaac, an analyst from IBRS. "People argue that Linux is free ... but the operating system is probably less that five percent of a four-year TCO [total cost of ownership]. You really risk lowering your acquisition cost by a few percent and being very unclear about what that means to your longer-term cost and impact. Most IT managers have far bigger problems to deal with today."
However, McIsaac believes that there are situations where Linux makes sense. "I honestly believe there are a couple of places where the mix is appropriate. In developed countries, like Australia, it's great where you need a "fixed function" device [such as kiosks, ATMs, reservation counters and libraries] and not your classic knowledge-worker network. Nobody cares what OS you're using," said McIsaac.
He said the greatest potential for Linux on the desktop is in developing countries. "Their labour rates are so much lower and hardware costs have dropped so much in those countries that the cost of the operating system, and particularly the office productivity software on top of that, will become a significant part of the TCO".
Talkback
"Windows' *desktop* dominance stifles demand for Linux *desktop*" - there's a distinct difference.
But things change. Like state hegemonies, commercial monopolies come and go.
I had the opportunity to talk to a friend of mine this morning whose been with Anderson/Accenture for 10 years. Accenture is one of the few large companies migrating all their desktops to Vista (note: Steve Ballmar is on their board).
Anyhow, he admitted understanding the Microsoft paradigm from a business perspective and was comfortable with it. But I then told him about the Mass. State's recent u-turn on ODF in preference for OpenXML etc. and his immediate reaction was "That's unsustainable - no matter how big you are, if you resort to buying your own business, you're going out of business."
I would go further and suggest that if your in the protection racket business (see Linspire, Novell Suse, Xandros et al.) the writing is clearly on the wall.
It will unravel. It's inevitable.
I remember IBM's OS warp. this was to do great things and would have beaten windows where it not for being late and then you not getting it pre-installed on systems.
linux is a good system but until more people can see what it does i think it will not make much head way, more shops etc, should show it side by side with windows and show you what they both can do, the pain in the arse is most pc come with windows on, so linux will not get a look in, this need to be changed in order for other OS to get a look in, then good advertising would help, so more people can see what it does.
there was some years ago aldi (i think) where selling pc's with linspire on or other linux, don't know how it went, but after a few years they stopped. I have used linux in different forms, its ok but still need to be made easy for the jo public, they have made it easy to install now, thats one good thing for it.
As for OSX well that is nice to use it does what you want it to, unlike windows should i do it or just stop.
OSX seems more intuitive after using a windows pc for a few hours, then moving to the mac OSX it seems more relaxing, easy to use.
I have used windows for a large number of years and only in the last few months gone to a true mac and i would not if had choice go back to windows.
Its the applications and device drivers that run on windows that cement its dominance. How many people would fork out hundreds of pounds for Vista if Linux ran all the software and kit they wanted to use. Windows is after all only an OS and not the best one of those by any stretch of the imagination.
I agree with pround.
It is completely the Drivers & applications Though Linux has most apps Windows has but in some form or other the one thing its lacking is mainstream PC Games which is due to lack of decent drivers.
Its also a catch 22 as the hardware vendors will not produce drivers for linux without a demand & software to take advantage of the drivers.
so until some brave hardware vendors & some apps cross the boundry into the linux realm then windows will always have dominance...
My laptop runs linux & i can do everything i can on my desktop machine that is running windows except on windows i can play PC Games, which i cant on my laptop.
15 years of workgroup oriented business process automation based on the MSOffice productivity environment has had an impact. Microsoft pretty much owns the "client" in "client/server" because so many of these day-to-day business processes are bound to the MSOffice productivity environment in some way.
Many governments tried to replace MSOffice with OpenOffice on Windows, thinking that over time they would eventually be able to replace Windows desktops with Linux. California, Massachusetts and Belgium launched comprehensive pilot studies to determine the feasibility of mandating the OpenDocument format as the cornerstone of this replacement strategy. It didn't work. The pilots all demonstrate the same costly and disruptive dilemma; replacing MSOffice and the MSOffice formats also means having to re-engineer the MSOffice bound business processes!
Here's another thing the pilots discovered. Conversion of documents breaks these business processes.
For instance, one might be able to convert from MSOffice binary/OOXML to ODF with a very high level of fidelity, expecting that OpenOffice/Windows and OpenOffice/Linux desktops would then be able to participate in a workflow. (Eventually taking over the workgroup). These efforts invariably fail though, (as demonstrated by the pilots), because conversion cannot capture the business process elements reflected in a complex compound document.
These elements are represented by such application and productivity environment specific settings such as macros, scripts, OLE, data and media bindings, line of business logic and security settings.
The good news is that there is a great transition underway. The world is slowly but inexorably moving from "client/server" systems to an emerging architecture one might describe as "client/ WebStack-Cloud-Ria /server.
The reason for the great transition is simple; the productivity advantages of putting the Web in the center of information systems and workflows are extraordinary.
Now the bad news. Microsoft fully understands this and has spent years preparing for a very controlled transition. They are ready. The pieces are finally falling into place for a controlled transition connecting legacy MSOffice bound business processes to the Microsoft WebStack-Cloud-RiA model (Exchange-SharePoint-SQL Server-Mesh-Silverlight).
The key to the Microsoft plan is of course that of first controlling the formats, protocols and interfaces important to the Microsoft Web. The eMail treasure trove, also known as the "Comes v. Microsoft" anti-trust case, is filled with Chairman Bill's insistence on MSOffice avoidance of Open Web stapples such as HTML and WebDav. He insisted on proprietary formats and protocols. Otherwise, the great transition would be based on connecting the MSOffice productivity environment to the Open Web and a world of Open Web based competitors with very advanced WebStack-Cloud-RiA systems.
The competitive advantage of the Microsoft WebStack-Cloud-RiA model is the proprietary integration into legacy MSOffice bound business processes. This binding is protected by proprietary formats, protocols and interfaces wrapped in platform specific API's and easy to implement components.
This is complicated stuff, and it will take years for Microsoft to get it right. With the "format-protocol-interface-application specific process" barriers in place though, they have years at their disposal. For instance, take the MSOffice document conversion chain that sits at the heart of this great transition. The first step is installing the "Microsoft Compatibility Pack". This enables a number of format-protocol-interface changes to MSOffice, without breaking existing business processes and workflows. The "format change" sets up the round-trip sequence of MS binary OOXML XAML "fixed/flow". An important "protocol enhancement" activates the SharePoint-Office collaboration protocol. Perhaps the most important "interface enhancement" is that of the XML panel model enabling such things as Web direct data and media binding, collaboration sessioning, and Web enhanced workflow-routing.
The December 2007 MSOffice SDK beta featured a nifty round-trip conversion component for flipping an ISO 29500 document (the XML encoded binary otherwise known as OOXML) to the proprietary XAML "fixed/flow" Web ready format. Notice that there isn't a nifty "round-trip" ready conversion component for flipping an ISO 29500 to the ever ubiquitous and always advancing Open Web format; "HTML-CSS-SVG-JS". And if there was such an Open Web conversion component, does anyone think Microsoft would be considerate enough to include the "in-process" elements so important to the great transition?
Some people think that Microsoft's ambition has long been to carve out a proprietary "Web within the Web". I would argue though that the numbers are such that what we're really looking at is a breaking of the Web. We may be looking at a "consumer Web", dominated by Open Web Google. And a "business Web", dominated by Microsoft.
It comes down to this; there are perhaps 4 billion Open Web documents and 4 billion MSOffice bound "in-process" documents. As MSOffice bound business processes make their way to the MS WebStack-Cloud-RiA model, these "in-process" documents also transition. Microsoft owns the "client" in "client/server", which means near 100% of business desktops protected by the impenetrable barrier of MSOffice bound business processes.
So what can defenders of the Open Web do? How can Google, Cisco, SalesForce.com, and Amazon EC2 intercept the great transition, and direct these business processes to Open Web systems?
One thing the pilot studies showed us is that "replacement" of MSOffice is costly and disruptive because of the bound business processes. But what about "re-purposing" MSOffice?
The exhaustive pilot study conducted by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is instructive here. They studied the problems of "replacing" MSOffice and determined the disruptive and process re-engineering costs to be too much. This lead to the ODF plug-in effort where Massachusetts IT was basically looking at the Microsoft Compatibility Pack, and asking if the same approach could be used to produce ODF instead of OOXML. They realized that the compatibility Pack was a non disruptive "re-purposing" of legacy MSOffice bound systems, and thought the approach could be cloned to produce ODF.
The problem was not in "cloning" the Compatibility Pack. That actually could be done. The problem was the inescapable truth we now affectionately refer to as "Reuter's Rule"; conversion breaks "in-process" documents.
(Unless of course you own the entire application chain from desktop to WebStack to device).
In 2005, when the events in Massachusetts drove all things ODF, few people understood how impossibly difficult the "in-process" barrier would prove to be. Even more tragic, there wasn't a vision of how important the Web would be to the future of these bound business processes and the documents that framed them.
This is hard to believe, but true. Anyone with a pulse knows that the Web is the future. Yet, look at how much time and effort has been spent on formats, protocols and interfaces that at best would "break" the Web, and at worst, determine to refight the 1995 office desktop wars. In Massachusetts, while the war between ODF and OOXML raged, Exchange and SharePoint servers were showing up everywhere. It was as if the outcome of the desktop office format decision didn't matter to the Web future.
Unfortunately, the forces behind ODF and OOXML were hardly alone in their efforts to either reinvent or ignore of the Web. The W3C also turned away from the core of the Web, the HTML-CSS-SVG-JS document model, to focus on an XML future. Perhaps back in 1998-99, when the shift to XML began, the complexity of an "in-process" workflow-loaded compound document was thought to be beyond the reach of HTML-CSS? Personally i came to work with XML documents because of the extraordinary impact XML had on data. I thought lightning would strike twice.
Today the world looks different. The browser guys stayed with the Open Web, pushing the HTML-CSS-SVG-JS document model to the edge of interactive, intelligent, compound and complex, highly collaborative computing. The WebKit crowd in particular waits for no one. There is no barrier to difficult or frontier to far that these guys will shy away from.
The future of the Open Web continues to be an open question because of the browser push of HTML-CSS-SVG-JS. Sure, it's easy today to see where Microsoft is heading. And sure, they do seem to have an iron grip on the great transition. Encouraged by the browser guys, and the WebKit crowd in particular, i do believe we will soon enough see another round of "re-purposing" MSOffice. This time however, the Open Web will be front and center, competing on an equal footing with the MS WebStack-Cloud-RiA model; with HTML-CSS-SVG-JS the document target, and "in-process" round-tripping intact.
And if we don't successfully re-purpose MSOffice to the Open Web? (And for that matter, OpenOffice). The Web will break. The great transition will be directed to the MS WebStack-Cloud-RiA model. Web enhanced business processes will be entangled with proprietary formats, protocols and interfaces. The barriers to this emerging desktop-Web-device platform of business processes and systems will prove even more impenetrable than the 1995 desktop productivity environment. Linux will not penetrate the business desktop arena. And we will all wonder what it was that we were doing as this unfolded before our eyes.
Hope this helps,
~ge~
There is no doubt that MSOffice bound business processes will be rewritten or enhanced to take advantage of the Web. Web enhancement greatly reduces maintenance and administration costs while exploding productivity through universal access to information, Web services, and collaborative computing. The great transition is going to happen.
If these MSOffice bound business processes are enhanced by integration into the proprietary MS WebStack-Cloud-RiA model, all bets are off on the Linux Desktop for business uses.
If these MSOffice bound business processes are rewritten to the Open Web, the Linux Desktop and MAC OS will come to rule the business workgroup as the primary interface into business information systems.
In this way, the future of the Linux Desktop is as tied to the success of Open Web as that of Linux Server systems. To get there though, the focus of Linux Open Source communities and providers has to shift towards the re-purposing of MSOffice. When it comes to MSOffice bound business processes and systems, "replacement" has failed.
Yes, there are some prominent Open Web - Linux Desktop supporters like IBM who have no other choice but to seek the "replacement" of MSOffice on those business workgroup desktops. But this is due to IBM's situation with Lotus Notes and the crushing MS Office-WebStack-Cloud juggernaut rolling over those many Notes installations. To put it bluntly, Lotus Notes can not survive the juggernaut if they have to rely on Microsoft's good will and willingness to share the desktop client environment. Anti-trust inspired though that "good will" and "willingness" may be.
Oracle walks a similar tightrope, wanting to open up the "client" side of their "client/server" equation without offending their host.
Google's approach to the "replacement" or "re-purpose" question is a bit more interesting. They are in a position to play it both ways. Applications and services like Google Docs, gMail, and Chrome are alternative "replacements" to Microsoft applications and services. For anyone not involved or connected to an MSOffice bound workgroup, the Google price is right, the service features fantastic, and the future Open Web all the way.
The Google problem is that of cracking into those bound business processes and systems. Google search is a great feature, but it's not integrated into the bound business processes in ways that will compete with workflow documents organized through the proprietary LINQ and Smart Tag technologies. And Google never did care much for Open Web metadata alternatives, RDF and SPARQL.
Google Docs provides easy to use collaboration, sharing and publishing. It's great. But try collaborating on an MSOffice "in-process" document, and the hapless conversion mechanism will "break" that document beyond the point of productive return. With the SharePoint protocol, Microsoft brings the collaborative value to "in-process" documents while their still "in-process". The MSOffice editors never disengage, the process remains intact, and the full value of collaboration is simply added to an existing workflow.
For these reasons, i think at some point Google will have to consider "re-purposing" MSOffice. Otherwise, they will have to concede the business Web to Microsoft, and settle for consumer activities.
Just some thoughts,
~ge~