On Sun, 20 Jan 2008 12:06:02 +0100
Philippe Landau
Did anyone ever attempt to make a systematic survey of reasons why Linux remains such a small player ? Of course corruption on a massive scale is involved in selling Windows to governments and corporations. But why is the percentage of surfers using Linux so small ? Is it mainly because of the games or are the shortcomings of Linux an important factor and which ones most ?
Marketing and timing. First, today Linux is a good desktop product, but
still needs a bit of polish for the average PC user. But the problem is
marketing. Microsoft buys big TV ads and has the clout and volume to
get the major PC vendors to bundle their products. HP, IBM, SGI market
their servers with Linux, but currently only Dell even sells consumer
PCs with Linux. Additionally, the consumer is confused. There are a
number of different Linux distros where there is 1 Windows. United
Linux was a good idea until the SCO group (eg. Caldera) started suing
everyone.
IMHO, the only was Linux will really be a major force on the desktop is
for the major distro companies (eg. Novell, Red Hat, Mandrivia, and
Canonical) form a marketing alliance. The problem here (ignoring some
anti-trust laws) is can these companies actually work together. And if
there is better market penetration, how are these companies going to
market their own distribution.
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Jerry Feldman