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David Overton's Blog » CIO Jury: The Linux desktop is dead - silicon.com
CIO Jury: The Linux desktop is dead - silicon.com

I always like to share information about how Windows or Linux is perceived on the desktop, but this little article puts it stronger than I ever would! 

Linux is unlikely ever to be a viable alternative to Microsoft's Windows on the desktop for corporate IT departments, according to leading CIOs.

Just this week new research by the National Computing Centre (NCC) found only one Linux desktop for every 300 currently running Windows XP in UK organisations. Three-quarters of silicon.com's 12-strong CIO Jury backed the view that the Linux desktop dream is dead.

Rorie Devine, IT director at Betfair.com, said Linux would have to change drastically to compete at desktop level.

He said: "There would have to be a unified vision of where the components fit together and application developers would have to be able to work to that and have a mass market. At the moment there are too many options for the Linux desktop to support mass market tools. A more likely Unix on the desktop is Mac OS X."

Source: CIO Jury: The Linux desktop is dead - silicon.com

Posted Thu, Nov 9 2006 7:00 AM by David Overton
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Comments

Vijay Singh Riyait wrote re: CIO Jury: The Linux desktop is dead - silicon.com
on Thu, Nov 9 2006 10:15 AM

You're going to have start recommending Novell's SUSE Linux after the Novell-MS Deal! What do you think of that Agreement?

David Overton wrote re: CIO Jury: The Linux desktop is dead - silicon.com
on Fri, Nov 10 2006 7:53 AM

Vijay,

1st off, this is my opinion, not a fully internal informed opinion, so it might be wrong.

I think that saying we will be recommending SUSE is a bit strong.  The basis of the deal is about trying to sort out the pigs ear of a mess that interop and application compatibility is for Linux.  Since some MS customers run Linux, rather than trying to sort out all the different versions, we will work with Novell to get SUSE working properly with Windows systems.  This has to be good for our customers - but don't expect MS to be saying "You really want to run that on Linux" :-)

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