The gap to a successful corporate desktop system.

Magnus Therning magnus at therning.org
Wed May 18 23:17:51 UTC 2005


On Wed, May 18, 2005 at 01:47:53PM +0100, James Wilkinson wrote:
>Magnus Therning wrote:
>> - Why this obsession with corporate desktops? If we just get the average
>>   users interested in running Linux at home it'll end up on the
>>   corporate desks sooner or later anyway.
>
>Corporate desktops are a better fit for current Linux than the home
>desktop.

Yes. You know that, I know that. I'd argue everyone knows that. But I
don't think it'll happen. Corporations are conservative, getting them to
take a chance won't happen unless M$ plays their cards horribly. Now,
they have been making some blunders with their licensing, but they won't
sit idly by and watch their dominance in corporate computing disappear.

The way to go is to take the back door into the corporate world. Get
home users to install and use Linux for all their non-gaming activities,
sooner or later people will want to use the same system at work, since
that's what they know. This is already happening to some extent, since
Linux is the choice of most CS students for their home computing. I've
installed Linux on a computer on the first day of work at every employer
I've had (only two so far), and I see the same behaviour from many
others, all are under 30. Just wait until they work their way up the
food chain of corporations and you'll see.

>> - What operating system IS ready for the corporate desktop? (Personally
>>   I have to do more tinkering with Windows to use it at work than I have
>>   to with my Linux boxen.)
>
>The question is whether you can get it to do what you want it to do for
>a reasonable cost. If there's a corporate need to run externally
>produced software over which you have little control, then this might
>mean that you have to run Windows somewhere.
>
>On the other hand, with the sheer amount of malware around, I'm
>increasingly convinced that Windows is no longer ready for the Internet
>unless it's looked after by a competent administrator. In other words,
>it really isn't ready for the home desktop...

I don't quite see how Window's inability to deal with malware is more
acceptable in corporate settings. It might even be a worse fit there.
But as you said, it all comes down to applications and if you depend on
an application that is available only on Windows you are stuck... unless
it runs on Wine of course :-)

/M

-- 
Magnus Therning                    (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4)
magnus at therning.org
http://magnus.therning.org/

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