Dual boot Macs will help Linux: 10 reasons

Stan Beer
Saturday, 15 April 2006 19:45

IT Industry - Development

Dual booting Windows on a Mac will essentially attract the same portion of technologists who presently play around with multiple OSes under the Mac or x86 systems, i.e, only a few percent of the market.

Serious or normal users don't like the idea of rebooting their PCs to gain access to another OS. Serious users would use a virtual machine, of which there are plenty available nowdays, even free ones. Alternatively, they would have a second spare machine. At $350 a PC these days, along with a $40 KVM switch, they can have both their PCs running through to their single keyboard, video and mouse. Without mess and hassle or performance problems.

Normal users don't see a need, unless the dual-booted OS (i.e Windows) has something to offer that their normal OS (i.e OSX) doesn't by way of specific software.

As for the potential increase in the Mac market, and how it might effect Linux, bring it on I say.

The notion that the Mac is either a short or long-term threat to Linux is wrong for a number of different reasons. Ten in fact. In reality, the reverse is true - a broadly successful Mac OS X platform is a great benefit to Linux. In order to see why, he says, we have to understand what the roadblocks to broader Linux desktop adoption are and why the growing Mac market helps clear these.

There are different roadblocks for different market segments. Different things block Linux adoption on a corporate desktop, from a small business desktop, from a home computer desktop, from a gamer's desktop. So, let's start counting the (ten) reasons why a growing Mac presence in the market will help Linux.

1) Web-sites.

Many web sites are Internet Explorer-only, either through design or poor practice. Now that the Mac defaults to Safari as its web browser, an increasing number of web sites will feel extra pressure to move away from supporting an IE-only policy. This will help all other browsers, most of which are on Linux, which in turn helps reduce the barriers to broader Linux adoption in all markets.

2) ISV Support.

Many ISVs target Windows-only platforms. If OS X reaches over 10% of the market, these ISVs will see that supporting non-Windows platforms is an actual market positioning advantage. And market advantages are normally pounced upon by vendors in any competitive marketplace.

This will increase the likelihood that these ISVs will use non-Microsoft-only platform application tools and frameworks, many/most of which also support Linux. Therefore, the cost to these ISVs of also supporting Linux when they broaden application support to include OS X, is minimal or nothing.

So, they might as well support Linux because it too might "do an OS X"
in the near future and become yet another rising platform that they will have to support. So, they might as well plan ahead and do a broadening support shift once only. It costs less and places them ahead of their competitors.

Thus broadening ISV support for OS X will (in most instances) also benefit Linux. It certainly wont disadvantage it. ...Page 2