Yea, yea, yea - Desktop Windows isn't perfect. The steaming pile that is Vista or was Windows 98 ME proves that.
But if Linux was so good (as many of you slashdotters claim) then gee, people would use it in mass - not on the fringes. You guys can't even complete against something you claim is crap using something you claim is awesome.
Really, you guys are giving away tons of stuff for FREE and you cannot gain market share? That's just pathetic.
Even in the server market where Linux actually competes with Microsoft, your spiffy free OS doesn't dominate. If it was so super awesome then MSFT wouldn't stand a chance against LAMP. The entire Internet would be run by Linux servers - it isn't.
Of course, all kinds of whining fan boys will jump in and say Microsoft isn't being fair. I love this quote from the Slashdot article:
"Once again Microsoft's monopoly means windows is swallowing up another market"
Give me a break - How can Apple have 20+% of the market and MSFT have a monopoly in desktop operating systems? How can a monopoly exist in the face of a free competing product (that would be Linux boys and girls).
Now, I like Linux - I think its super cool in the geeky I-love-cool-technology kind of way. I expect that the major contributors are supper smart developers (Linus for example). I install all the cutesy Ubuntu releases and mess around with them. Its all great fun.
But you Linux fan boys just don't get it. You don't need to build an operating system - you need to build a product that can ship to 100's of millions of people. Linux isn't that. You need one or more companies that can make sure the OEM's can successfully ship Linux on 100's of millions of computers. That doesn't exist either.
Most importantly, enough money must be made to pay all the people to make this happen. This isn't kernel developers - its all the other people (not core product developers) you need to build, ship, and service an operating system product. Those don't exist. Revenue has to come from somewhere to pay these people - if the chief product is free, then the only other place this can come from is charging for people's time - like for support. This doesn't scale - at all. Red Hat has been the working to make money off of Linux for a long time and even they are avoiding the desktop market.
But most importantly, you need to build a product that people want to use. This means a few things:
- It has to be better than Windows; not as good, not sucks less. People are not going to switch from something that works to something else unless that something is way better. Guess what, your competition isn't Vista, or XP. Its Windows-7. W7 for sure doesn't suck. That's the min-bar. Since W7 will ship pretty soon, its really W7 Service Pack 1.
- The applications people will use have to be every bit as good as those on Windows. I don't think better than applies here, the constraint is a little looser. There is goodness here, like FireFox. But the 100's of millions of people using Windows don't care a bit about FOSS - they just want to read their mail, get their homework done, browse the web, fiddle with their pictures, play games, and all the gazzilion other things people want to do with their computers.
The OEM's are also key:
- The OEM's need to be able to put Linux and applications on systems easily, quickly, cheaply. There also must be an engineering staff to debug and fix problems with the system before it ships. If you think Linux is better here than Windows, you are sadly delusional. Windows is not hard for OEM's to ship (yes, it can be a pain in the ass, but its not that hard). This means that Linux has to be cheaper for OEM's to ship in terms of time to market and people's time. The fact that Linux is free and there is no OS derived revenue stream makes this all the harder.
- The OEM's cannot loose money on Linux because of support costs. Linux does not have the maturity that Windows has. People know how to make Windows work, there are tons of people that can help other people. The ability to do this is baked into windows - nobody ever has to go to the command line to do stuff, heck lots of things cannot even be done from he command line.
Ok, so know you've labeled me a Windows fan-boy. Whatever.... But I don't hate Linux - its cool as cool can be an there are some smart capable delvers working on it. But until its better than Windows, the Linux applications are really good, and the OEM's can ship it at scale, then Linux will never be anything but a curiosity on the desktop.
Also remember this; while you may hate MSFT and believe they suck. They also have a lot of really smart people, a really, really mature core OS, and most of all, a big fat revenue stream. They are not going to sit still. So, shoot ahead of the duck.
