[LINK] Linux poised for desktop failure: Gartner

[Saliya Wimalaratne]

On Sat, 16 Nov 2002, Malcolm Miles wrote:

> We pay little Microsoft "tax". Our PCs come with an OEM copy of the
> o/s (yes, the cost of the o/s is bundled in, but this is hidden in the
> leasing cost) and we haven't upgraded Office for some years. We could
> move to OpenOffice or StarOffice without having to change our o/s
> platform.

And it is here, that I think the 'battle' will be won or lost. 

People will put up with all kinds of crap from an OS if they need an 
application that will only run on that base. 

Many will apps run "on Linux" (under some kind of emulation, like WINE). Or you
can run them remotely (VNC or similar). But I don't see this as an acceptable 
solution for a corporate (because it sounds "too hard" to start with; and
it introduces yet another failing point (not only do you have the application
and its foibles, but now you have emulation or remote access to contend with). 

The more apps that run 'the same' under Win32/Mac/Linux/NEW_OS; the better
it is for all of us. Because if every app works the same under each OS, the 
OS can be selected freely.

Bring on OpenOffice, I say :)

> Software doesn't work like that. A bug doesn't become more serious
> over time. If the bug starts costing the business money then it will

Um; no. Supporting evidence ? Y2K. 

> be fixed in the cheapest way possible. 

And if you have thousands of lines of archaic code written by non-programmers
to suit the business model of the day, you will find that 'cheapest way' 
to be 'quite an expensive way' a lot of the time. But that's the bed that
it sounds like your organisation has made for itself; so it has to deal with
that. 

But I digress; you make a valid point. There is a significant nonzero cost
associated with removing 'software x' from a system and replacing it with
'software y' - and the recovery time of this cost of course all depends on
the actual end cost vs. the amount saved per period. And it assumes that
'software y' can do everything that 'software x' could do.

> I would love to see some case studies of large corporates with 10,000
> PCs or more that have recently converted over to Linux.

I don't think this happen, ever, in this fashion. Because yes, it would be
expensive to do it that way in the short term; and most business is focused
on short term. 

Here's a link to some Sun propaganda about StarOffice:

http://www.sun.com/executives/realitycheck/reality-101702.html

For most users; MS-Office is the biggest stumbling block (your organisation
sounds a little different to most, though).

Regards,

Saliya