PlexNex: The Desktop Today

Does this look queer? [click image to enlarge]

It does to Microsoft and among the helpless Microsoft feeding chain -- including customers who are hopelessly committed to those systems. It is a screenshot of a Windows XP desktop and there are no Microsoft applications in the Quick Launch bar.

It's an indicator of the direction of software markets and it explains the anxiety at Microsoft. (This link is a blog entry by an anonymous Microsoft insider clamoring for scalps, with over 500 affirmative responses from other, anonymous, citizens. For example: "MSFT shareholders need to start rolling some heads, starting with [Ballmer] the monkey-boy.")

Software applications visible include...

Firefox browser
Opera browser & email program
OpenOffice Writer
OpenOffice Calc
OpenOffice Impress
Acrobat Reader
N|VU (open source & free web page editor)
The GIMP (open source & free Photoshop-equivalent)
Apple's iTunes (music & Quicktime player)

This user can get his work done and produce work in standard formats without tithing. Also important, the programs are more elegantly built and engineered than their expensive corporate equivalents because of the user-enthusiasm which goes into their creation. This is why people like to use them.

Almost two years ago I wrote an article for LinuxWorld Magazine entitled, "The Power of Mozilla Firefox and OpenOffice on Windows." That vision is coming true.

Table 1: The operating systems people use with OpenOffice
(This table was omitted from the original article. People often expressed surprise that most OpenOffice users are running Windows. It's naturally so, and those splits have been drifting toward aggregate market-share levels, since then, as OpenOffice usage has expanded into more representative weight in the tens of millions.)

The Windows XP desktop screenshot depicted up above makes sense today. When the organization upgrades within the next 2 or 3 years, it will be to a Linux desktop (without, necessarily, a hardware upgrade) where the organization can better control its software in use as well as its software and hardware spending.

The amount of spending on Linux infrastructure and desktops is certainly lower; that's a nice one-time gain. However, the fundamental benefit is that the control of spending shifts to the consumer.

If the barrier to your organization's migration away from monopoly software has to do with your feeling of a lack of access to skilled Open Source & Free Software IT talent, then we'll fix that. I'm going to do an article series on the colleges and universities that are producing young people who are competent in administering and programming in mixed Windows/Linux environments.

They're there; you just don't want to believe it. And you're afraid to look in the right places for what you might find: a blow to your dull and frightened concept of the world.