Is Linux a desktop operating system?

[hagen van rissenbeck]

Hi, everybody,

I am running linux distris since winter 2001/2002.

I am teaching business and economics, some of my audiences are it - 
specialists. Therefore I started to think about operating systems as a 
market.

In the beginning I thought that the competition between linux and m$ is 
mainly a question of usability or comfort or everything that seems to be 
managed for the typical user who only wants to write texts, surfs the 
net, corresponds to friends via email or downloads mp3s, videos or any 
other stuff.

Today I am in the start up phase of my own business. And I've realised, 
that being the operating system on a users pc is first a question of so 
called "first mover advantages".

General Customers buy what they get (customers especially in the 
industrial belts on the planet), and what they get is a m$ - os. 
Sometimes they don't buy it, because they use cracked versions ;-(

The problem is: the growth of the market share is limited by the offer 
of preinstalled linuxsystems. Only a minority of users is curious enough 
to try an individual linux install at home. They fear crashing their 
systems.

They use m$ NOT because it is the better desktop os, they use it, 
because it is preinstalled.

And you know, that a lot of your windows friends are not happy with the 
problems they have with the m$-os ;-)  ;-)

On the other side, when Linux is installed, everything works the same 
way than m$.

Mouseclicks are nearly the same, additionally (an advantage of linux) 
everything what the typicall user needs is preinstalled.

And if a user has got a problem with his/her pc , he/she needs support 
by a friend. One other lack of linux compared to m$.

...and then, the drivers for new hardware (o.K, I stop here)

Just wait until longhorn is coming, or the next wave of viruses....

I think that pc-users change to linux when they have realised, how they 
benefit from tux-technology...and there should be linux-pcs on the 
market place.

Linux, especially ubuntu is of course ready for the desktop, but the 
pc-sellers and hardware-producers are mainly not ready for linux (they 
don't want to?).

Hagen