The problem with Linux as a desktop is that all the money and investment goes into server use cases. There really aren’t many companies investing into the desktop. I think Valve might he the only big company with a major interest in it, but they’re mostly focusing on their own closed ecosystem. It’s the classic chicken and egg problem.
So if magically we see desktop usage go up, investment will go up, and we’ll see much more momentum.
Regarding viability though, I think that’s not going to be solved with more investment. The problem is the millions of people making trillions of documents in MS Office. Microsoft goes out of their way to make it extremely difficult for competitors to achieve 100% compatibility. Unless that changes through regulation or something (since it’s clearly anticompetitive), I don’t think the hypothetical linux desktop wave will survive very long.
Adobe, Autodesk, and a few others are also at fault for not supporting linux, but that’s a different issue. They’ll go where the money is, and if Linux usage goes up, they’ll have to support it or risk losing their strong market positions.
Didn’t some municipality in Germany run Linux on all their desktops but had to stop, not because any fault with Linux but because of compatibility? The money saved on licenses was lost on having to find ways to integrate with other municipalities and problems when others had problems with their documents etc.
Munich. Staff were happy with it, compatibility had nothing to do with it, and it definitely had nothing to do with the Mayor rubbing Microsoft’s back for moving their German headquarters back to Munich. Perish the thought.
They’re more or less in the process of rolling back the rollback, though.
Getting Berlaymont switched over would be the big get. Those people are writing memos advocating for the adoption of free software solutions and open document standards using MS Office.
I remember reading someone responsible for the project saying something along the lines of hassle to send data to others. It could be another project or I could be wrong.
If everyone swapped to Linux, how quickly do you think it’d be as viable as Windows?
The problem with Linux as a desktop is that all the money and investment goes into server use cases. There really aren’t many companies investing into the desktop. I think Valve might he the only big company with a major interest in it, but they’re mostly focusing on their own closed ecosystem. It’s the classic chicken and egg problem.
So if magically we see desktop usage go up, investment will go up, and we’ll see much more momentum.
Regarding viability though, I think that’s not going to be solved with more investment. The problem is the millions of people making trillions of documents in MS Office. Microsoft goes out of their way to make it extremely difficult for competitors to achieve 100% compatibility. Unless that changes through regulation or something (since it’s clearly anticompetitive), I don’t think the hypothetical linux desktop wave will survive very long.
Adobe, Autodesk, and a few others are also at fault for not supporting linux, but that’s a different issue. They’ll go where the money is, and if Linux usage goes up, they’ll have to support it or risk losing their strong market positions.
It’s all an annoying chicken and egg problem.
Didn’t some municipality in Germany run Linux on all their desktops but had to stop, not because any fault with Linux but because of compatibility? The money saved on licenses was lost on having to find ways to integrate with other municipalities and problems when others had problems with their documents etc.
Munich. Staff were happy with it, compatibility had nothing to do with it, and it definitely had nothing to do with the Mayor rubbing Microsoft’s back for moving their German headquarters back to Munich. Perish the thought.
They’re more or less in the process of rolling back the rollback, though.
Getting Berlaymont switched over would be the big get. Those people are writing memos advocating for the adoption of free software solutions and open document standards using MS Office.
I remember reading someone responsible for the project saying something along the lines of hassle to send data to others. It could be another project or I could be wrong.
5 years for personal, 20 years for professional
Ummm… I’m thinking more like two years for personal, and now for professional. I’m a professional, using Linux as my daily driver.
The software has to be developed and then it has to be adopted
You can find companies running XP still just to avoid upgrading their embedded system