Linux desktops not taking off: IDC 16835
I think we both agree.
snips Larry Qualig Obscenities I can deal with. What bugs me isn't that, but rather, the folks who are *willfully* ignorant. You know, the ones who "try" something, have it fail, then refuse any...
IDC and Gartner, and many others publish a number of very valuable reports which do provide some valuable information. These reports are sold for a very good price.
On the other hand, there is a tendency for many companies and others with vested interests to report "the numbers they like best" even when it might distort the overall picture. For example, if Linux revenues are 1-20th what Windows revenues are, based on MSRP times number of units sold, and Linux costs 1-5th the price of Windows based on average MSRP of all distributions, then Linux could have 1-4th of the market.
In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Kier wrote on Thu, 23 Jun 2005 12:18:22 +0100 I'd have to look up an exact reference but there is a psychological experiment that verifies this as...
Similar distortions occurr when you compare ACTUAL revenues.
If Linux went from 3% of the installed user base in 2003 to 8% of the user base in 2004, that means that over 50 million machines were converted to Linux. If Microsoft sold 100 million Windows XP based machines during that same period, this means that Linux would have captured about 30% of the market for that year.
If the machines converted to Linux were originally Windows machines then, Windows had a net loss of 50 million machines during the same period. This means that Linux actually captured nearly 50% of the market.
These are hypothetical scenarios. The problem is that the survey quoted above does not provide enough detail to know what was counted, how it was counted, when it was counted, how many samples were counted, and what those samples represent.
If I interview 1000 companies with fewer than 100 employees, and Microsoft, I might get a very different number for Linux adoption than if I interview 1000 companies with over 1000 employees and Red Hat.
Furthermore, if I interview 1000 companies with over 10,000 employees and 40% of them say they are deploying Linux, this does not necessarily mean that 40% of those 10 million employees will be running Linux.
We are seeing a synthisis of Microsoft and Open Source technology beginning to emerge. FireFox, Thunderbird, Cygwin, and OSS based software, much if it originally targeted for Linux, has extended the capabilities and stability and security of Windows.
At the same time, cross-platform technology targeted for both Windows and Linux such as the Qt libraries, Java, and OpenGL have increased the capabilities of Linux and made applications based on this technology much more appealing to both Windows and Linux customers.
snips Larry Qualig Sure - but you're failing to include the troll contingent. In an office, you're not generally inundated with a never-ending...
Finally, Windows implementation packages such as WINE, Crossover, and Bochs have now made Linux a better version of Windows than Windows. Furthermore, emulation of older environments such as Windows 95 and Windows 98 on Windows XP combined with WINE have made it more desirable to stick with the Windows 98 APIs for Windows. It's actually easier to get older software working on both XP and Linux than most newer software.
Linux desktops are probably much more common than they appear at first glance, because many of the desktops still run Windows as the primary operating system, Linux may exist as a client in a virtual machine, as cygwin, as remote access to a Linux server using VNC, X11, or a "terminal server" compatible console. Of course, people are also using Linux servers and more and more of the smarts is sitting in that Linux "middleware".
Windows is becoming to Linux what a 3270 terminal was to the Mainframe or a VT220 terminal was to BSD 4.1 UNIX. Windows still has the face that points to the user, but the real smarts is in Linux machines ranging from the router, cablemodem and wireless hub, to google.
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