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Cosmetic adjustments, better business applications--and more of them--and improved marketing will help turn the tide, according to speakers at the Desktop Linux Summit here.
While figures vary widely on worldwide Linux desktop penetration, most credible sources place it between 0.5 percent and 2 percent of the market, making the open-source operating system a slowly rising third to Windows and Apple Computer's Mac OS.
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To get there, analysts say, developers and businesspeople behind Linux will need to make some changes. The user interfaces used by most Linux distributions are a good place to start, independent analyst Amy Wohl said. Some relatively simple cosmetic changes to make Linux look prettier and more similar to dominant Windows conventions would make a big difference, she said.
"It's an issue of how you package things up and present them," she said. "These are issues that are highly fixable. Let's get them fixed."
Open-source marketers also need to change their focus in some areas, Wohl said. Instead of trying to convert Microsoft customers, think about the much bigger potential markets of people who can't afford Microsoft applications, she said, citing the software giant's Office productivity package as an example.
"The fact of the matter is, there are approximately nine workers available as a target market for every one worker using Microsoft Office," she said. "There's a huge market out there without even touching the Microsoft issue."
Linux could also learn a few tricks from Apple, panelists said, such as harvesting the education market. "Another historically successful way to build a market is to give your stuff away to schools," said John Muster, author of numerous Unix and Linux books. "Kids get used to using it there, and they keep with it."
Muster also noted Apple's success in establishing itself as the preferred creator of platforms for multimedia content. A similar niche for Linux, in which open-source products were seen as more advanced and useful than the proprietary alternatives, would do a world of good, he said. "What that ultimately would be for Linux, I'm not sure, but we ought to be working (toward) it," Muster said.
Businesspeople also need to ditch the aura of ethical superiority that often surrounds discussions of open-source software, said Louis Nauges of Microcost, a French IT services and hardware company. Nauges said he has convinced numerous companies to make large-scale desktop migrations based solely on practical considerations such as cost and improved manageability.
"Large enterprises don't care about crusades," he said. "They want people to work more efficiently."
Linux also needs a greater variety of applications. While Linux is covered for important categories such as productivity software, many niche areas remain untouched, giving buyers another reason to stay with Windows, Wohl said.
"When we can really build out the ecosystem, then it will be time to get Linux fully alive for mainstream markets," Wohl said.
And don't count on major software makers to deliver those applications, at least not as long as Linux runs a distant third in desktop market share. Instead of waiting for companies such as Adobe Systems and Intuit to produce Linux versions of popular PC applications, Linux backers need to focus on improving the open-source alternatives to those applications, said Daniel Glazman, CEO of open-source developer Disruptive Innovations.
"If you really want innovation, you have to have new actors," Glazman said, citing GIMP, an evolving open-source alternative to Adobe's dominant Photoshop graphics application. "GIMP is a good example," Glazman said. "It's very competitive with Photoshop in terms of features, but the (user interface) is terribly intimidating." Spruce up GIMP so that it's as usable as Photoshop, Glazman said, and you'll have an application that can help build Linux market share on the desktop.
Among the stickiest of those specialty areas is gaming. While games regularly dominate rankings for the best-selling Windows-based software, they've barely made a dent on Linux.
Soaring production costs for top-tier games make it futile to try to convince big game developers to produce Linux titles, said Jay Moore, evangelist for GarageGames, which publishes games and game-creation tools.
Real momentum will have to come from independent developers, who can produce reasonably sophisticated games on slim budgets if given the right tools, Moore said.
While open-source partisans have a reputation as cheapskates when it comes to actually paying for software, Moore said his company has found Linux users increasingly willing to pony up for well-made games. "Having a business model is no longer a religious faux pas in the Linux market," he said.
Game developers are also learning to see past conventional wisdom that Linux titles are difficult to support, given the spotty record for Linux drivers among some major PC hardware manufacturers.
"We've been pleasantly surprised to find that our support costs are lower for Linux than any other platform we produce for," Moore said. "The Linux users tend to fix things themselves, which helps, and the hardware support has gotten a lot better."
Some factors standing in the way of desktop Linux may be beyond the control open-source developers, however. In countries where software piracy is common, it can be hard to get people to accept open-source products when slicker proprietary applications are essentially free and offer the added thrill of defying the law, Nauges said.
"That's a key issue for the Spanish people--they like to do unlicensed copying of software," he said. "If you just give it away, where's the pleasure in that?"
decent version of Office and a few other common apps (such as
games) onto Linux and the Linux desktop will boom.
Sorry! If that was the case Apple would have done it years ago.
They have the support of Adobe, Macromedia, Symantec, a little
company called Microsoft and many many others including
games developers, yet their market share lingers around 4%.
Many many many many applications in the corporate world are
Microsoft dependent. eg VB front ends, MS SQL backends,
Windows only versions, intergration with MS Office only etc etc.
Of particular note is the Windows only versions. Many
developers of core business apps will never develop for any
other platform than Windows, simply because of the massive
cost involved in switching.
I work in local government and we have several major
applications that will never be anything but Windows based. To
convert our organization would cost the equivalent of at least 5
or more times our annual IT budget. (And if I was going to
convert, I'd go Apple anyway - Like Linux, it's Unix based, but
has the support of many major vendors, is user friendly, support
open-standards, some support for open-source etc etc )
Microsoft's grip on the desktop goes much deeper than MS
Office. And until the corporate world can be changed, the rest
of the world will not follow.
The only place Linux has any hope in the desktop is sites using
only Office productivity type apps. As soon as you get into
industry specific apps, they will struggle because almost all of
them are Windows dependent.
And even if Linux had some hope in the desktop, their greatest
threat is Apple, as witnessed by the Australian NSW RTA's
decision to buy 1200 Apple iMacs for their counters instead of
Linux boxes- even tho upfront costs would have been much
less.
All that said, there may be some parts of the world, such as
Europe, where Microsoft has never been as strong, and in these
countries there may be greater opportunity. But in the English
speaking world, Microsoft has the desktop tied down for a very
very long time.
- Desktop PC? Yes, But....
- by zeeone April 30, 2004 11:10 AM PDT
- I have been using Linux as a home pc for over 7 years now and having a lot of fun using it. But of course I fit the mold as a "Techie" and after 35 years of working with more computers systems than I care to remember.......
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(4 Comments)The story I feel only hit one small problem area of Linux, drivers, and missed two major problems Linux has to face. Drivers? How long did it take MS to realy, some what, get that to work? I still call it plug & pray. Over the years I have watched the Linux folks doing thier best to keep up with the huge data base of old and new drivers needed. When something needs a driver for Linux, it is a short time before one is made. So I feel the Linux folks are doing a darn good job in that area.
The two hurtles I see for Linux to over come, deals with USERS, the person who just wants to be able to use thier HOME PC, to do what ever they need/want to do, with the least amount of problems ( blue screen of death anybody? ).
Hurtle one: Program loading.
Belive me, this area has over the years improved by leaps and bounds, most Linux distros have more programs for them than most anybody could ever use. Long as one is using that Linux distro to load programs things will work as it should. But, users go on the internet, find what ever it is, want to download and install it, why won't it work, what do mean, I have to use the command line? Well it worked for Windows. So until the one button download/install like Windows & Apple have, users will turn away.
Hurtle two: But I have all this stuff.
Money tied up in software, years of saved data, time setting up what ever, will it work on Linux? This includes myself, remember what almost killed IBM? What made MS so strong? Remember when IBM & MS were one? User have the same concern today as then, but as myself and many others have learned, with many more to learn yet. MS is doing the same thing to themself, what worked in DOS, did not in Win 3.1, what worked in Win 3.1, did not in Win 95, what worked in Win 95, did not in Win98 and so on. Maybe it is me, but, I have had a lot of problems getting data converted onto Linux, saved data from one Linux distro to a different distro.
Most users that are trying Linux are dual booting it, and using the MS side for help to get Linux side working. I would have say that most of these users are very young people and they are swtiching to Linux, but they do not have years of stuff. I have been working at getting many of my customers changed over to Linux, but they are worried about all of thier stuff. So we need more conversion apps for all that stuff.