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On Friday 01 June 2001 10:03 am, Paul Abrahams wrote:
Jonathan Drews wrote:
Question:
How come the Linux desktop is pronounced dead when KDE 2 is nearing perfection and GNOME is not far behind? Why did they not say the Linux desktop was a fruitless quest when we ran KDE 1.1 and GNOME used Enlightenment. Now that GNOME and KDE are making significant progress there are all these articles on how the desktop is dead. I'll tell you why those articles are there; somebody stands to lose a whole lot of money. You know it's funny Mr. Gates calls one of his products hailstorm because in reality Linux is like a bad hailstorm for M$. They can't run from it, they can't hide from it and they can't make it stop.
I don't think the issue is the quality or usability of the desktop. It's the positive feedback loop that Microsoft has gotten going. The major PC vendors like Dell and Gateway get good deals from MS on pre-installed systems, which for them are just an unavoidable prerequisite to selling hardware. That creates public acceptance (or passive acquiescence) among the great masses of computer buyers, who then expect MS software because that's what they know. Add to that the software vendors like Intuit who only support Windows and the hardware vendors who sell Winmodems. And then, because Windows is so widespread, Word documents become a de facto standard. In a contest between technical excellence and cozy familiarity, cozy familiarity will win among the masses every time. That's why operating systems may be a natural monopoly, like the distribution (though not the production) of electrical power.
The reason Linux is gaining in the server market but not in the desktop market is that the server market, by and large, is driven by technical considerations. The desktop market isn't.
Paul
Very good.. excellent response :) -Steven