Vista may be late but 2006 not the year of Linux desktop

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 30 May 2006 14:45

Your IT - Home IT

While the world waits in anticipation of the release of Windows Vista, the annual claim that 2006 is the year of the Linux desktop has once again fallen by the wayside.

A leading Linux expert has stated that the most that can be expected of Linux is that it will be deployed in certain sections of some businesses. As far as widespread use on home desktops is concerned – forget it.

No, we’re not talking about Microsoft’s Linux strategist Bill Hilf who two months ago told us that he has kept a folder for the past eight years full of headlines cut out of newspapers stating that this will be the year of the Linux desktop.

We’re talking about Open Source advocate and Linux evangelist Con Zymaris, who says: “It’s actually impossible for most businesses to simply jump across from Windows to the Linux,” he says. “They can’t do it unless they have an 18 month to three years strategy in place to achieve that. Starting now, they could expect to do a safe migration to some extent in 18 months time and a substantial migration within three years. But even after the three year period, you won’t have all your systems across to a Linux based desktop.”

The fact is, however, the vast majority of businesses don’t have the time, the planning processes, or the will to make the change. This fact alone, says Zymaris, is the reason most businesses stick with Windows.

The news isn’t any better on the home user front either, according to Zymaris.

“If you’re Joe Average who uses a computer at home as one would normally expect a computer at home to be used, Linux isn’t really for you. In that space, it’s only for the 10% of people who are curious, are technically oriented or hobbyists.

According to Zymaris, the talk of a so-called ‘window of opportunity’ for Linux because the release of Vista has been delayed a few months is nonsense.

“It wouldn’t matter if Vista was three years late. In fact the cut-off point for the release of Vista to have any substantial impact is about five years late,” says Zymaris.

“Not even three years would cause much harm because Microsoft could just bring out interim XP service packs, keep on incrementally improving it and fixing holes.”

The previously much hyped impending release of Novell’s Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) version 10.1 is supposed be no more than one month away, yet Novell has gone deathly quiet. There has been no pre-release market tension build-up, not even so much as a peep of noise.

So has Novell bitten off more than it can chew by claiming that 2006 will be the year of the Linux desktop? Has the company built too much of an expectation in the minds of consumers that SLED 10.1 with all its bells and whistles is the long awaited replacement for Windows?

Zymaris is adamant that SLED 10.1 is not a replacement for Windows but a superior system. However, he admits that it will be unlikely to gain critical mass.

“A replacement essentially delivers what you currently know and understand. This is not what this technology does. In many ways, this technology is better so it creates enough of a pressure vacuum to attract attention and interested parties and potential buyers because of the impressive wow factor that they’ve built into it. That will bring some people across as full legitimate ongoing users but not many of the people out there. The reason is because they’ll point out that they’ve got all of these little VB applications that some guy wrote for them seven years ago and they can’t run any of them on Linux.”

This does not necessarily sit well for the long suffering shareholders of a company like Novell, who want to see a return on their investment sooner rather than later.

It may come as small comfort to them, but Microsoft may well be in the same boat with Vista, according to Zymaris. “If you monitor the bulletin boards of the Microsoft watchers, you’ll note that there are substantial problems with the current Beta 2 release of Vista. It doesn’t support a lot of Windows applications. You’re not going to get a clear run to go from where you currently are with all your Windows applications to Vista and expect all those applications that you currently have to work.”

According to Zymaris, aside from anything else, a major cause of delays with Vista has been backward compatibility problems.

“It’s not like bringing out a new TV set that you can just jump over to and watch your favourite shows,” he says

“The problem is that the new TV has trouble picking up most of the stations that you’ve got along with the 300 DVDs and video tapes that you’ve made over the past 15 years. In this case, you’re brand of TV can literally take a decade to bring out the next version and like it or lump it your stuck with it.”