[Desktop_architects] Portland: How to fix this situation

[Otto Wyss]

 > as outlined by you correctly, the critical thing for Linux Desktop
 > adoption is a viable migration path. This path is, amongst other things,
 > defined by the applications users are used to use. Basically none of our
 > (StarOffice / OpenOffice.org) customers ever made a hard step to the
 > Linux desktop, nearly all are still using Windows for smaller or bigger
 > fractions. So, Windows being by far our biggest market.
 >
OpenOffice and Mozilla-Firefox are just the first applications but of 
course it needs a lot more. Beside only since OpenOffice 2.0 was 
release, it became a valuable alternative. So you have to give its 
effect more time.

The report also mentioned the most critical app is email. Unfortunately 
Thunderbird isn't good enough to give an average user a reason to switch 
from Outlook. And IMO for a power user like me ;-) it's even worse. You 
have to know that still 90% of all users have a POP3 account so all 
effort of Thunderbird development should to squeeze everything out of 
it. Therefore it should be possible to synchronize messages with 
multiple computers (desktop, laptop, PDA, handy?) without loosing other 
features. I don't know if evolution or any other mailer is better.

 > A typical migration path IMHO looks like this:
 >  IE -> Firefox
 >  MS Office -> OpenOffice.org
 >  Outlook -> Thunderbird& Evolution?
 >  ...
 >  Windows -> Linux
 >
It needs a master plan which lists the most important applications for 
this transition but it also means that these applications have to become 
better than their Windows-Only counterparts. And it also means all these 
apps have to feel like they where from the same source, their GUI has to 
match the guidelines as I outlined in wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net). 
I know not everything is perfect in wyoGuide, of course I welcome any 
suggestion and corrections, just send them to 
"mailto:wyoguide-users at lists.sourceforge.net".

O. Wyss

-- 
Application guidelines: http://freshmeat.net/projects/wyoguide/
Cross-platform Editor: http://freshmeat.net/projects/wyoeditor/
Cross-platform Filemanager http://freshmeat.net/projects/wyofiler/