On Sun, 20 Jan 2008 12:06:02 +0100 Philippe Landau <lists@user-land.org> wrote:
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. -- -- Jerry Feldman <gaf@blu.org> Boston Linux and Unix PGP key id: 537C5846 PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846