I just wanted to add a "couple of lines" to this thread, as it was a
topic of one of the meetings at Linuxworld that I figured I would like
to share information on. The meeting was a "birds of a feather"
discussion with an executive of Intel. I'm not sure how he ended up
there, maybe he got the shortest straw.
The topic was actually a discussion on advancing Linux on the desktop.
I found it really strange that some of the leaders in this area were not
present... IE Suse/Novell or Red Hat. If I walked away with any broad
feeling of the event as a whole, it is that Linux is being pushed hard
as the corporate answer to big Iron ( using Linux in clusters to create
a dynamic architecture that can be scaled based on current computing
needs ). Most of the big players were involved heavily in this although
in the not too distant 2nd were software solutions to corporate desktop
management solutions that could manage packages on all of the Linux and
Windows desktops from central locations. So there were very few people
pushing Linux on the desktop. I think that although most of us are
becoming more convinced by the month that Linux is becoming a reasonably
simple OS for home users, the Novells and Red Hats, don't really.
They did not have representatives in this meeting to hear what users
have to say or to add their views and opinions on how they feel the
corporate role in advancing this should be etc. The consensus in the
room was that Linux is not ready. Most of this seemed to be based on
the lack of hardware vendors getting involved. Such as, hardware that
is compatible with Linux is not marked that way. Hardware vendors
simply don't see the benefits to researching / publishing this
information (or have other compelling reasons not to). Since your
average user must sift through information on the net for hardware
compatibility and even then, hope to get up to date information, it is
far from reasonable for just anyone to do it. I think this is a huge
hurtle to overcome if Linux is to compete in this way.
Perhaps the growing use of Linux to provide corporate desktop solutions
is our way to push MS out of more spaces. Since the larger corporate
entities have less need to find off-the-shelf hardware that is labeled
Linux compatible, they can have IT check, then purchase ${X} thousand
units of them per department. They also benefit from having more
control over applications customized to their needs in house and do not
have such a reliance on Windows only applications either.
I also wanted to note that my impression from technical attendees that I
spoke with is that the conference is getting too fluffy. The content
for the conference seemed to be aimed at technical management employees
who are looking for solutions for business application. I think that it
is a shame that the more business involvement there is, the less our
technical attendees will attend. It is really self defeating. We want
more participation and more money spent advancing our applications etc.
but despise corporate involvement and the use of our applications by the
"evil empires". If these things don't change, I don't know how we can
edge out MS.
Anyone know how to target a solution for getting hardware vendors sold
on the idea that they can bring in more consumption by researching and
labeling their products not to mention providing more resources to help
the open source community produce drivers?
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