[Desktop_architects] Applications and pre-installed machines

Aaron J. Seigo aseigo at kde.org
Tue Jan 17 17:30:21 PST 2006


On Tuesday 17 January 2006 16:08, John Cherry wrote:
> The feedback we have received clearly states that (1) Linux on the
> desktop will be a non-starter without some of the key applications that
> are being used on Windows (i.e. the Adobe products and Autodesk) and (2)


on the other hand, there are a non-negligible number of people using the linux 
desktop now. apparently they number in the millions if the 1-5% market share 
numbers are to be believed.

so one could ask: what are we doing right for them? who are these people? have 
we saturated that segment of the market? if not, how much additional growth 
is there in that segment? are there similar segments that we haven't reached 
yet but would be a simple jump across to?

in other words: instead of focusing on the people who won't move because of 
proprietary app availability let's see if we can build up the market who can 
live without them to reach "big enough numbers" that either we stop caring 
about this particular problem or the problem goes away because there are now 
enough people using linux desktops to create a market for commodity 
proprietary apps.

to be honest, i'm not holding my breath. by the time Adobe, et al, wake up 
Krita, Inscape, Scribus, KPDF, etc... may be so good that people will laugh 
at purchasing Adobe products on linux. that's something that Adobe and 
friends really ought to be thinking about.

if the linux desktop is growing inexorably, not getting on now may mean never 
getting on.

> Linux on the desktop will be a non-starter without Linux being
> pre-installed on PC products (i.e. a Linux Multimedia Computer).

these are increasingly available. WalMart, a couple years on, is still selling 
these items on their website AFAIK. the problem is not getting pre-installed 
PC products, the problem is getting Dell/HP/Lenovo to do so and Red 
Hat/Novell ok with selling to the unwashed masses. in other words, stop 
obsessing on the typical enterprise focused companies and strategize around 
those with a commodity consumer focus.

i dunno .... perhaps we need to stop hoping that Red Hat, Novell, etc. will 
step up and be the real players here and instead get behind those who are 
already pushing pre-installed PC products *today* such as Linspire and 
Mandriva.

i have the increasingly sneaking suspicion that the enterprise companies will 
get hot on the desktop when the desktop gets hot in more commodity market 
type areas. sort of like how it happened on the server.

then again, i'm not a technology marketing strategist so what do i know.

btw, apologies for being 1.5 weeks late on the HTML-ization of the position 
paper drafts... i'm stupidly busy here with 2 multi-day events on my schedule 
this month =/ i'll be getting to them on the airplane to new zealand at the 
end of the week unless someone beats me to it.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

Full time KDE developer sponsored by Trolltech (http://www.trolltech.com)
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