Linux on the desktop: does it matter?

Salt Lake City, Utah - The topic came up during a long conversation with Ross Chevalier, Novell Canada’s chief technology officer and the longtime face of the company in Canada, here at Novell’s annual user conference called BrainShare.

Linux matters in many ways - it is used to handle several types of workloads; it is growing as a server operating environment much like Windows.

The desktop, however, is a very different story. Windows is by far the dominant (client) operating system, a fact of the personal computing world that won’t change anytime soon if ever. Apple may nibble away at Microsoft’s share of Windows-powered computer shipments but Linux on the desktop will remain deep within the computing shadows save for a select group of users.

When discussing the lack of progress Linux has made on the PC, the usual reasons are brought up - a lack of applications, the fact hardware still doesn’t have the appropriate drivers or the fact command line prompts are needed in various instances. Ugh.

Most of those problems can be overcome; some would argue it’s easy to install on a computer. The real reason Linux has failed to grow significantly is apathy; there is no compelling reason to change. People don’t want to install Linux on a computer nor do they feel the need to throw out Windows (for the most part).

That’s because Windows is at the very least good enough for most users needs. It’s also affordable. Scalability and functionality are words you won’t ever hear your parents or grandparents utter, which makes a migration to Linux unnecessary for virtually every person.

There’s also very few channels an interested user can buy a desktop pre-loaded with a Linux distribution. Wal-Mart recently scrapped its in-store Linux PC sales experiment.

Perhaps users in China or other developing countries, where pirated and/or free software is the norm, will make Linux a mainstay on the desktop.

As for the Western world, there is little to no reason for users to scrap their Windows operating systems. In the enterprise, IT and line of business managers are reticent to implement Linux on the desktop for the most part because of the inevitable upheaval the operating system switch will create.

Dell’s support of systems pre-loaded with Ubuntu is a step in the right direction for the Linux community but the vendor charges more for a computer pre-loaded with Ubuntu than it does for one with Vista, presumably due to higher anticipated support costs. But the lack of available support for Linux on the desktop and the lack of available computers pre-loaded with a particular distribution will keep Linux PCs a figment of most people’s imagination for the foreseeable future.

UPDATE: Hewlett-Packard is set to ship personal computers pre-loaded with SuSE Linux, according to Novell executives here at BrainShare. SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop is already preloaded on Dell and Lenovo PCs.

“We are really excited by this deal because of the power that the HP distribution channel brings, the reach they have and their commitment to interoperability,” Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian told eWeek. “I am very enthusiastic about what this relationship could bring.” According to HP, the pre-loaded SLED machines should be available in select regions during the second quarter of this year.

March 18, 2008 | Filed Under News Items and Commentary