[ Thanks to Niki
Scevak for this link. ]
“There’s been a bunch of stories and opinion columns appearing
in the online media over the past few months hammering out a simple
line. It goes something like this: Linux has a bright future in the
web server space; it may even scale up a little and there’s a great
window of opportunity for the Linux camp in the sub-PC handheld
palmtop-cum-mobile phone market. But the open source operating
system is never going to make it in the desktop space.”
“Overwhelming strength on the desktop is the only reason
Microsoft could ever get away with server operating systems as
shoddy and incomplete as early versions of Windows NT. For a start,
run of the mill technical guys working in large corporations like
Windows NT because they grew up with Dos and Windows. … Linux
has to take the battle to the desktop. I’m not saying Linux has to
be dominant on the desktop. An Apple-like market share of 5 to 10%
will be enough to fly the flag and push Microsoft’s focus back on
to its home turf.”
“If this all seems a little crazy, think of this way. In the
late 1980s the hot spot in the IT market was the so-called desktop
Unix workstations from companies like Sun Microsystems, Apollo and
Hewlett Packard. The best of that breed was Silicon Graphics. What
happened to them? They were absorbed by the desktop mainstream.
Today’s desktops are way more powerful than those workstations and
therefore more than capable of running the same software – yet they
don’t. Windows captured that market from its secure desktop
base.”