Is Linux a desktop operating system?

Thomas Templin lists at gnuwhv.de
Fri May 27 07:29:17 UTC 2005


On Friday 27 May 2005 08:16, Kreg Schlosser wrote:
> Ok I got to get in on this...
> Pretty much everyone who has contributed to this has had atleast
> onevalid point, so there is no reason for any argueing.
> As some one who works for a fairly high profile system integrator
> (we are an intel premier provider and microsoft managed partner)
> there are a couple major problems that hinder  linux from
> becoming a widely used desktop os.
>
> The first hinders the consumer market:
> There are practically no pre built computers that are mass
> marketed with Linux pre installed. Distros keep trying to make
> linux easier to install... but if you have ever done a Windows
> install the LARGE majoritry of users could not install Windows
> successfully. Most copies of windows (I think the number is like
> 85-90% but I could be wrong) come preinstalled.
> Untill companies like Dell, HP and Gateway start shipping and
> marketing Linux machines then the mass market will (more then
> likely) be out of the question.

AKK, 100%

>
> The Second problem hinders the corporate market:
> Accountablity and support. If it breaks, who is going to fix it?
> This is still a major problem for alot of reasons. Tech support
> from distrobutions, internal support, training and certification
> all need more work before linux can really be used as a business
> desktop.

I don't think that this will need more reccources on the long run 
than any other OS. But it is, better it brings, an overhead which 
has to be done during a migration. Which on the other hand is a 
common problem in all migration processes. Never mind from which OS 
to which other OS such a migration is done.

>
> I am just pointing out observations I have made, that is all.

But you put you finger in the wound, the biggest handicap up to now 
is the lack of preinstalled machines. 
And a better support for small computer resellers to be able to do 
an easy and efficient installation as MS Producer Preinstallation 
Kit offered in the past (Don't know the actual MS tool for this, 
MMCSE of 1999, sorry ;). 

SUSE YaST is an excellent Linux tool for this. (I even did NFS based 
NT3.5 installations with YaST at that time :)


We could see what such offers will bring in the late 80ies here in 
Germany when Vobis, at that time the biggest computer reseller, 
started to offer preinstalled OS/2 machines. This led to a massive 
increase of OS/2 systems amongst german users. Germany was one of 
the the biggest OS/2 markets at that times. But IBM wasn't able or 
willing to support this for long. AFAIR at that time the german 
chairman of IBM OS/2 was Mr Seibt who was also CEO of SUSE later on 
'till Novell got a foot on deck. :-/

Bye,
Thomas

-- 
Join the Fellowship and protect your freedom! http://www.fsfe.org/




More information about the ubuntu-users mailing list