Printed from www.pcpro.co.uk
Posted on March 26th, 2009 by Tim Danton
Will Linux ever hit the mainstream?
Reading today’s story about the chief exec of Red Hat admitting he was unsure if Linux had a future on the desktop reminded me of a conversation I had just two days ago, at the Samsung European Congress in Vienna. The big news here was Samsung announcing three new netbooks (all running Windows XP, including the highly unusual Samsung N310), and after the big speech five of us UK tech journalists were offered the chance for a roundtable chat with a couple of Terribly Senior People from Samsung.
As is usual with Terribly Senior People, they were quite resistant to actually giving away any information that might be considered useful, but one thing came out loud and clear: initially Samsung did seriously consider a Linux netbook, but after speaking to retailers it won’t be dabbling with Linux any time soon.
I asked why, especially when Acer had such success with its Linux-based Aspire One. Over to Terribly Senior Person Patrick Povel, senior product manager of Samsung’s European computer operations: “When the mini-notebook launched it was 100% Linux-based and that was the reason why a certain community was very happy, but… the normal user is used to this XP thing and how to install a printer and so on.”
Did Samsung every consider Linux? “[Before we released our first netbook] we even started to develop in some Linux platforms, but once we had the product almost ready it turned out there was no demand from the customer.”
Just to be clear, in this context Samsung was talking about retailers like PC World being the customer, and the reason why they weren’t demanding Linux was very simple: the likes of Dixons were hit with return rates of something close to 40% when people found they couldn’t easily hook up their camera or install a printer onto their lovely, shiny new netbook.
But, as Mr Povel pointed out, if people on the street were demanding Linux-based netbooks “the retailers would be knocking on our door. [But] it’s a niche market and the big mass consumer doesn’t ask for Linux at the moment.”
Which brings me to the main question of this post: has Linux missed its chance of ever hitting the mainstream? I think it will struggle to ever break out of the enthusiast niche, and to a large extent because that niche is so comfortable.
If the prime target of your operating system is tech enthusiasts, you’ll tend not to go that final painful mile to make it a totally hassle-free experience. Even the most consumer-friendly Linux distribution of them all, Ubuntu, has occasional hiccups when trying to connect to external devices, and if you do hit problems your only support is via forums – fine for techies, not so great for the “big mass consumer” Samsung refers to.
So where does Linux go next? Is there anywhere else for it to go on the desktop? I can’t see it – if it was going to dominate anywhere, it would be cheap devices that had little expectation from buyers, but both retailers’ and consumers’ fingers have been burnt.
To a certain extent I guess that Red Hat’s chief exec feels the same, but he inevitably puts a more positive spin on it – that he really didn’t want to be there anyway. “The concept of a desktop is kind of ridiulous in this day and age,” he said. “I’d rather think about skating to where the puck is going to be than where it is now.”
He might be proved right, but wherever that puck ends up the end-user experience needs to be a pleasant one not just for the buyer of the product (and I’m not going to argue with anyone who suggests that Ubuntu has largely done this), but for the manufacturer and the retailer. And unfortunately both are too often forgotten when extolling the undoubted virtues of Linux.
Tags: Linux, netbooks, samsung, samsung n310, ubuntu
Posted in: Random
Follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
13 Responses to “ Will Linux ever hit the mainstream? ”
Leave a Reply
Authors
- Barry Collins
- Chris Brennan
- Christine Horton
- Darien Graham-Smith
- Dave Stevenson
- Davey Winder
- David Bayon
- David Fearon
- Ewen Rankin
- Ian Devlin
- Jon Honeyball
- Jonathan Bray
- Kevin Partner
- Mike Jennings
- Nicole Kobie
- Sasha Muller
- Steve Cassidy
- Stewart Mitchell
- Stuart Turton
- Tim Danton
- Tom Arah
Categories
- About the bloggers
- Android App of the Week
- cloud computing
- Green
- Hardware
- How To
- iPhone App of the Week
- Just in
- Microsoft Office 2010
- Newsdesk
- Online business
- Random
- Rant
- Real World Computing
- Software
- View from the Labs
- Windows 7
- Windows 8
Archives
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
advertisement
March 26th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
I think it’s slowly coming. Retailers burn their fingers because they do not do it right. Linux is different than windows so there is work to be done to bring awareness of that fact. Also not using ubuntu or other big shots is a dangerous approach…. releasing a product with Xandros preinstalled is not a smart move.. *looks at ASUS -_-*. Some distributions of Linux are more ready than the others. Dell is doing very well because they built their ubuntu offer slowly and in a consistent way.
March 26th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Linux is mainstream everywhere but the desktop. It’s omly a matter of time.
March 26th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Its not going to happen is it?
I’ve installed several linux distros and I’ve finally been won over by Ubuntu, after sticking with KDE Suse for many years. However, it still remains a dual boot option for me and tbh I only use it for secure banking and that bubble burst game. Vista does everything I want and it’s cheap, why would I move?
At the weekend my mate and I tried to get his 3G dongle working on his Asus Eee. What a nightmare. There was 1 good link on Google but I couldn’t get my head around it. it’s this sort of thing thats putting people off I reckon. Plug and Play is here to stay, running console commands to proble for USB devices is not where it’s at for most people.
K
March 26th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Linux needs to be on the curve then. It needs to be able to plug and play with the kit consumers want it to – cameras, both digital and video, it has to be able to work with iPods, iPhones, Windows Mobile devices, and other obiel OSes. It has to be able to handle the commonly used media transport systems – Windows Media, QuickTime, Real Player.
Linux also needs far better documentation – to the level of Microsoft and Apple. The Linux community has to be prepared, and willing to support consumers and not just the propellor heads it currently attracts.
Until these are addressed, Linux will always be the Liberal Democrats of the OS universe.
March 26th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
It is all down to the initial install and the user.
For its general purpose – a mobile internet platform – a pre-configured Linux is fine.
For a pre-configured desktop, Linux is fine. The biggest problem is non-enthusiasts trying to install it on random hardware. There it is very hit and miss.
My last desktop and laptop were 100% supported (purely by chance) by openSUSE. Re-installing Windows, it refused to believe that there was a hard drive, or ethernet or wireless or sound and that the 1280×800 display was only capable of 800×600 and there was no graphics chip installed.
openSUSE, on the other hand, booted into 1280×800, offered me a list of wireless networks in my area and setting up my JetDirect connected HP printer was a doddle! Only OS X made things a tad easier on my iMac.
Likewise, my mother came over to visit and I gave her my older laptop to use while she was there. That evening, she told me “your Windows is much better than my Windows” (my “Windows” was openSUSE 10.0). She ended up taking the laptop back with her and instead of support calls about crashes or the printer not working, I get reports on her new Tetris high scores!
For a lot of users, if the machine was correctly configured and included web browser, e-mail and Open Office, they probably wouldn’t spot a difference – assuming their printer and camera connect smoothly.
Some users will have problems, the same as they have moving to Vista, it doesn’t look the same as XP and some things have moved (sometimes to more logical positions). But because it doesn’t look and work exactly like XP, it is BAD! Microsoft has enough problems with this bunch, let alone getting them to use Linux or OS X!
If the manufacturers worked with the community, like Intel, and to a lesser extent AMD/ATi and nVidia have done, then the switching to Linux for the average user would be much less painful.
Pre-configured machines are essential though. Linux is, often, a lot easier to install than Windows, but for over 90% of users, they never get anywhere near installing Windows, let alone something “different”. Get them to install Windows or Linux and they will be equally stuck…
March 26th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Quite a few of my customers use Linux netbooks as do I. These just ‘work’ in the same way that other appliances, e.g. mobile phones, do.
March 26th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
I think there are two very strong items holding back Linux desktop adoption. First, the workplaces have to start switching, and second the retailers have to.
When the workplaces installed the first MS-DOS, then every office worker had to have one for home, despite having Apples and Commodores and other hardware/operating system combinations. If Microsoft continues to screw up their relationships with their corporate end users (by licence audits and changes to the operating system that break custom applications), they’ll find more and more Linux operating system-run desktops.
And as the employees at these firms find themselves working in a Linux environment, they’ll find themselves wanting the same software as they’re used to at work. Then they’ll go into the store and ask for it – and eventually the storeowner will have to realize how dumb “Like I told the 50 people before you today, there’s just NO DEMAND!” really sounds.
March 27th, 2009 at 10:01 am
lordshipmayhem – We moved from Office 2000 to 2007 recently at work and you’d have thought that the word was ending from the fuss made by the average user. That was still recognisably office and most people could just about get their head round it, eventually. Based on that experience anyone suggesting that they’d like to migrate 20,000+ desktops away from the familiarity of MS Windows is far, far braver than me.
March 30th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
[...] esteemed editor, Tim Danton, recently ran a thought piece wondering whether Linux would ever hit the mainstream, his ten cents worth clattering down on the side that says “probably [...]
June 19th, 2009 at 10:20 am
[...] that consumers would be glad to see a Windows OS rather than Linux, which inspired a spate of unfamiliarity-driven returns when it was included with the first netbooks, and that XP isn’t a natural fit for these machines, [...]
August 24th, 2009 at 1:51 am
[...] Will Linux ever hit the mainstream? | PC Pro blog http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2009/03/26/will-linux-ever-hit-the-mainstream – view page – cached Reading today’s story about the chief exec of Red Hat admitting he was unsure if Linux had a future on the desktop reminded me of a conversation I had just — From the page [...]
August 28th, 2009 at 5:54 am
The death of Windows is of course inevitable now, and with it will go the customer ‘lock-in’ that Microsoft have (often illegally) used to strangled the market. To blame comsumer demand is simply untrue. What happens is MIcrosoft traditionally respond to competition by threatening retailers with price-hikes if they stock competing products. No customer choice involved. It’s really up to the manufactures themselves to give the consumer a choice.
Notice there is no mention by the M$washed ‘reviewer’ of Google Chrome which is exactly what customers need. Expect M$ to spend millions spreading mis-informnation and threatening developers and retailers that get involved with it, but Google will win because they do something that M$ can never ever manage – they employ smart people who are interesting in computers and softare (to be fair so do Apple, probably why these 2 companies are so closely linked). M$ have gotten away with pushing os’s that are not only 5 years behind the curve, they are not even fully internet compatible!!! Then again why bother to innovate when you can simply remove choice from the shitminchers?
Anyone claims windows is somehow ‘better’ than a real os should go away and learn some basics of what a pc actually is.
August 28th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
It’s simple – if it comes pre-installed on units that sell peripherals will support it.