Your future desktop?
For years, the story of Linux on the desktop has been all about catching up with Windows XP. Microsoft's five-year gap in updating XP has given Linux developers a huge window of opportunity and they have made the most of it.
However, the road to Linux desktops is littered with the carcasses of distributions from the likes of Mandrake, Debian, Corel, Lindows, and others that have niche followings but lack the enterprise credentials needed to hit the big time. Novell and Red Hat are clearly the only companies with the enterprise credentials to push Linux onto corporate desktops en masse -- yet even as Novell readies its Linux Desktop 10 for early-2006 release and Red Hat's Fedora distribution continues that company's desktop push, the release of Windows Vista could change the game all over again.
With a completely redesigned user interface, application structure and infrastructure, Vista could be a threat to Linux on two fronts. Firstly, since Windows XP has been the target for Linux developers for so long, Vista's new structure will send them back to the drawing boards to replicate the user experience it provides (although it must be noted that the user-interface aspect of this challenge may be easier since those developers have already taken some inspiration from Mac OS X, which Vista is copying heavily).
The second potential showstopper: with well-established versions of Linux and Mac OS X no doubt studied heavily by Microsoft during Vista's design, it is possible that that distribution could offer enough reliability and capabilities that enterprises are willing to shell out for it. Certainly, highly touted remote management features are expected to make Vista much easier to manage in enterprise environments -- an issue that is frequently cited as a shortcoming of Windows.
Linux supporters are wasting no time in working to take advantage of the coming desktop operating system inflection point. Reflecting their strength-in-numbers approach, Adobe Systems, IBM, Intel, HP, Novell, RealNetworks, and Red Hat, recently put their weight behind the Free Standards Group's Linux Standard Base project, which is seeking to keep Linux unified even as distribution developers continue working to differentiate it from Windows.
That's easier said than done, says Max McLaren, Red Hat's general manager for Australia-New Zealand, who concedes that the dizzying growth of server-side Linux has meant that desktop Linux "is not my priority. It's very difficult to make leaps and bounds by innovating on the desktop these days," he explains.
"All of that innovation happened a long time ago, and -- apart from features like voice integration and so on -- we're never going to see dramatic improvements in desktop productivity. We will slowly bite off people tired of paying the sorts of sums they pay to Microsoft for an environment where they use very few of the features, but there's inertia because people are using Windows and don't want to change."
There are some small wins: in December, for example, rental company Kennards Hire took a major step towards Linux with what could become a 400-desktop rollout of Fedora Linux, as well as a trial of Linux-based point-of-sale terminals at more than 80 outlets nationwide.
Ultimately, the decision to move to Linux desktops will be made only when early trials prove that the operating system is effective enough to service each company's current business needs. While many companies will no doubt decide that Windows Vista is still the right path for them, the coming imperative for companies to review their desktop strategy could well chisel out a few market share percentage points for Linux.
"The fact that there are alternatives means people now need to think about Linux and ask whether it's applicable to their organisation," says Paul Kangro, applied technology strategist with Novell. "If, from a due diligence standpoint, you can't say you've evaluated the options you haven't done the right thing by your company's shareholders. There are going to be some transitional stages that people go through, but at some point, Linux is going to meet all your requirements. I suspect that for most organisations, it's already there -- and has been for some time."
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The article described: "Furthermore, Linux's lower resource requirements may allow it to run on existing desktops that will need replacement for any upgrade to Windows Vista."
I believe that this is the only characteristic that Linux may get the go ahead. Most PC's (Greater than 500MHz) generally run todays business applications with little or no problems. If you get a Pentium III-500 with 256MB of RAM, you are set when it comes to Windows XP, Office 2003, Microsoft .NET 2003 etc...
When Windows Vista's requirements are beyond that of what "standard" onboard video cards provided in Motherboards (ie 32/64MB shared with RAM), and the fact that an AGP video card (starting from $80RRP), wouldn't the IT departments be having fun arguing their case that the general workstation needs a new 128MB Video Card, another stick of 512MB of RAM, just to boot Windows Vista. Take into account that Office 2005 is also completely changed (GUI wise) and there goes the 2006 ICT budget.
Although I am a linux supporter, in the business workplace, you need to be able to rely on proven technology, and Microsoft is proven, reliable technology. When Office 2003 and Windows XP Service Pack 2 came out, I really thought how good Microsoft actually is. I can't think of a more easier, more productive combination of software. To change that is only going to worsen people's views.
Anyway, Linux will NEVER dominate the PC market, Microsoft just has too many fingers in too many pies to lose their dominant position