Linux & Competition

Just look at this set of Linux screenshots brought to us kindly by The Coding Studio. The amount of Linux distros is impressive, and the quality looks much improved over the past year.

There is even a tidy little distro called KateOS that comes across as a system developed by a 12-year-old hacker-gurl but which has some very smart design parameters, principally around keeping it lightweight and runable on older hardware.

Look how Ubuntu, for one, is flourishing: the result of Debian's conservative and uncompromising philosophy means its communities are far richer than, for example, the commercial Linux distros exemplified by Red Hat or Novell/SuSE. You might imagine those two dying on the vine by comparison to the vibrant energy around Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is thriving like rabbits (click on the images)...

Ubuntu - the basic GNOME distro

Kubuntu - the basic KDE distro

Edubuntu - the special distro for education

Fluxbuntu - a lightweight distro

Nubuntu - the security distro

Xubuntu - the X-only no-frills distro

Withall this variety, Linux (Desktop Linux) still has only a small market share. While certain statistical collection points (the Market Share site by Net Applications) gather that Windows market share is somewhere over 90 percent, and Mac is almost 4 percent, they have Linux below 1 percent. A different source suggests Mac share is higher: here's an exellent article from a different vantage about the recent steady MacOSX market share gains: accordingly, OS X market share is right now between 4 and 5 percent.

Windows has the monopoly enterprise and OEM channel lock-ins. Mac is differentiating itself with the superior interface, media handling and iPod/iTunes integration. Mac should be the newly definitive choice for the student, home and for publishing & artistic use; its consistent year-on-year market share increases of 20-plus percent each month this year reflect that. Linux seems to be consolidating its dominance of the geek, hacker and hobbyist market strata, which should keep it below 2 or 3 percent into perpetuity. What looks at a glance like new competition in the OS market is not competition at all: all these beautiful colors of Ubuntu and the other choices from Alinux to ZenLive Linux are competing with themselves and not against Mac, nor against Windows.

There's a widespread belief in the Linux communities that Ease of Installation is a key requirement. It's key for individuals but completely irrelevant to enterprise. It's a myth because in the desktop software markets that matter -- the mainstream markets -- not a single customer ever, EVER installs their operating system. Linux will not be credible in the mainstream until the problems with media formats and DVD are solved (total integration) or until a distro will take the pains to certify for specific models of motherboards or fully built OEM PCs. And Linux will not break out until it is clearly differentiated from the user point of view.

There are other, orthogonal, areas by which free software interests don't even seem troubled. To break into the mainstream, we will need to focus and deliver on three important things...

1.    a viable open standard file format for documents

2.    a viable Outlook / Exchange / Sharepoint solution

3.    a viable solution for document collaboration & business process integration

On the first item, ODF is 10% to its mark; on the second, if Scalix is the answer then we're completely fucked and we'll need to fall back to Gmail Enterprise; on the third item if Alfresco or Zimbra are the answer, then we have some more sprinting to do.

These three areas need to be ten, perhaps twenty, times more tightly integrated and idiot-proofed than the value proposition of Vista.

Perhaps, lads, it's not going to be our decade after all. I'm sorry to be so negative, but do you see the winning mentality anywhere? ANYWHERE? (...present company of Robertson and Shuttleworth excluded.)