Linux is ready, but consumers are not
Monday, May 05, 2008 05:11 PM
Several experts weigh in on whether the open source operating system is ready for mainstream adoption and what it will take to make consumers embrace it.
Alongside Red Hat and Novell's recent pulling away from the consumer Linux space, some are not confident the operating system (OS) will be ready for the mainstream market anytime soon.
Both big open source vendors have in the past month expressed intentions to stay within the enterprise space.
Red Hat said in a blog post the consumer space does not pose a viable business proposition for it at present: "The desktop market suffers from having one dominant vendor, and some people still perceive that today’s Linux desktops simply don’t provide a practical alternative...building a sustainable business around the Linux desktop is tough, and history is littered with example efforts that have either failed outright, are stalled or are run as charities."
Novell's CEO, Ron Hovsepian reportedly said last month: "The market for the desktop for the next three to five years is mainly enterprise-related."
When ZDNet Asia asked Dell what its sales figures were for Linux-based PCs in Asia, the vendor reserved comment, but added: "Currently, Linux-based PCs still form a small proportion of our shipment in this region."
Gordon Haff, principal IT advisor at research firm, Illuminata, isn't optimistic about Linux going mainstream. In an interview with ZDNet Asia, Haff said proprietary applications pose a big barrier: "Where proprietary applications are married to a specific OS and are an indispensable part of most people's desktop experiences, Linux is never going to become mainstream."
Haff adds: "Although there are some high profile exceptions, desktop Linux wins mostly happen because [the OS is] a cheap alternative to Windows (and OS X)."
Haff said a window of opportunity for Linux ironically may lie in the demise of the desktop OS. "If you believe in the emergence of cloud computing, then the whole concept of running applications on the desktop starts to go away. This may well mean that Linux gets more interesting for client devices because now native applications do not matter so much," he said.
Colin Sng, a systems engineer in a Singapore-based firm, who uses Windows, Mac and Linux OSes for work and at home, said the technology is ready, but obstacles lie mostly with the consumer.
"Is Linux ready for the desktop? Yes. It works for most means, but I don't think users want a brand new way of interacting with their computers," said Sng in an interview with ZDNet Asia.
Moreover, Sng feels there are areas Linux still lacks support for the mainstream user.
"Hardware support is still a big issue, especially for laptops. Second, media codec support. There are so many closed formats that Linux has to jump through hoops to support, legally or otherwise. And sometimes users just want to be able to pop in a DVD and watch it with no fuss," said Sng, adding that the third aspect is in games support: should games developers develop as many games for the Linux platform as they do for Windows, "users will flock to Linux".
Sng said the education space may be one "perfect" way to expose users to Linux. "Ideally, all the PCs in schools should tri-boot [Windows, Mac OS and Linux] and classes have different applications that work on the different platforms so that children are exposed to all three. Then they can make their own choices eventually," said Sng.
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