Gaps in Microsoft’s market
Linux advocates are also excited about perceived gaps in their biggest competitor’s user base. In July, Microsoft cut off support for its ageing Windows 98 and ME operating systems, leaving tens of millions of customers who have not yet upgraded to Windows 2000 or XP without any protection in the way of updates and security patches.
Should any of these customers have been waiting for Microsoft to release Vista they might have to wait longer than first anticipated: Microsoft has delayed the new OS by up to six months. It might just be a long enough delay for Linux to come into the purchasing equation, Kangro says. “There are a lot of people out there with unsupported software that are going to need to make a choice. Any time people need to make a choice about an operating system, we have an opportunity.”
Organisations still using Windows 98 or ME are also likely to be cost-sensitive, he says. “In the education vertical, for example, there is a need to direct money toward where it is needed—applications, not operating systems.”
Early reviews of the beta of Microsoft Vista suggest that the operating system is “hungry” in terms of system resources such as memory and graphics. The Linux community is hoping that at least some of the customers using Microsoft’s unsupported software might choose to move to Linux rather than pay for a hardware refresh needed for Vista.
“I see very little Windows 98 out there among customers,” says Microsoft’s director of servers and tools, Martin Gregory. “Simply keeping up to date with security concerns was motivation enough for most users to get off Windows 98 and onto 2000 and XP.”
Microsoft’s internal research suggests that Linux does not necessarily run on old hardware any better than Windows, he says. “I would suggest that anyone using Windows 98 would be very much in need of a hardware refresh.”
An uphill battle
Regardless of its evolution, the applications being made available for it, or even gaps in the market, its not going to be an easy battle for the Linux community on the desktop.
PC manufacturers, who determine what comes pre-loaded on most desktop machines, have been burnt by trying their hand at Linux in the past and are reticent to test the waters again. No Linux operating systems, for example, appear on the list of components qualified to be used in building a HP-branded personal computer for an Australian customer, according to HP’s market development manager for business desktops, Kevin Yap.
“The question of whether to qualify an operating system pretty much comes down to whether it reached a critical mass in terms of demand,” he says. “From our own analysis, Linux-based machines make up less than one percent of the total demand for new PCs.”
Yap insists that it is purely customer demand, and not marketing lock-ins, that make these decisions for a PC vendor. “We only started working with AMD, for example, when we were certain there was enough customer demand.”
Creating new demand for Linux on the desktop will take a monumental effort. All of the desktop Linux customers Gerannikos sells to share a common trait: they have already been exposed to the software, and most commonly at the infrastructure level. “There tends to be a specific reason as to why a person wants Linux on the desktop,” he says. “For us it’s a workstation sale for those people who need an operating system that is a lot more flexible and powerful. We tend not to have to sell it: they already know that they need it.”
“Those that use Windows won’t bother switching,” he states.
That being the case, Linux’s desktop penetration may languish in the single-digit percentile for some time yet. “It seems like for the last four years there has been the talk that this year is the year of Linux on the desktop,” Microsoft’s Gregory says. “You have to ask yourself why it hasn’t happened.”
It comes down to simplicity and predictability, Gregory asserts. The desktop is a “pressure zone”, where end users won’t tolerate any level of discomfort.
“The comfort factor of support holds very true for an operating system—more so than for hardware,” Yap says. “In the corporate space, you are not accounting just for your machine but for a whole fleet. Like it or not, Microsoft is a big company and no one has a problem writing a [request for quotation] on a Windows operating system.”
Kangro believes that while some users have a “psychological attraction” to their current desktop, there are many others that “think of a computer in the same terms as they would a phone or a stapler”. That is, it simply completes the task they require.
Organisations such as call centres and retailers—which employ many users conducting simple, repeatable tasks without a great deal of need for customisation—remain great candidates for the Linux alternative.
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