Perhaps if Linux had 'good' enduser products
it might show up more in the public arena.
More likely these students will do things in the
backroom effectively with the GNU tools of Linux/BSD.
But they will be read and manipulated by
the prettier Microsoft products.
Industrial bread-mixers, but Alessi-designed
toasters for the breakfast toast.

Constant Reader wrote:
>read and manipulated by the prettier Microsoft products.

Prettier? I realize that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I've never heard anyone say that Microsoft products were prettier than anything. I certainly find them unattractive and counter-intuitive myself.

Linux enduser products are really fairly good. Gimp, Film-gimp, OpenOffice, Abiword, are all examples of fairly good programs that are steadily getting better. They are also more stable than many Windows products, and of course they are free. Comparing, say, Gimp to Adobe Photoshop, you will find that Photoshop is still the superior program for a professional, but for a semi-pro or a student the price differential tips STRONGLY in favor of Gimp. As students who use the Gimp (to continue this example), move into positions where they may use it in a professional environment, it should only continue strengthening the product. This can be true for all the Linux enduser products.

The main reason Microsoft products dominate in the corporate arena is the that deployment decisions are made primarily by IT people who are usually tied to Microsoft in one way or another.

Many IT professionals are trained on Microsoft products most commonly and do alot to spread FUD about alternate solutions.

Also, even though viruses and other issues cause alot of headache for IT pros, they also produce alot of work. Its a vicious cycle of job security and ignorance of management that non-Microsoft solutions might be better.

So, until this factor changes, not much will change in the corporate world.

The main reason Microsoft products dominate in the corporate arena is that Microsoft is still abusing its monopoly. Period.

Until Microsoft stop their predatory and illegal ways of doing business, not too much is going to change.

Ennis is in total denial. It is hard to understand how the Apple model automatically predicts the failure of Linux.

IBM is moving to Linux in force. Once IBM gets those PowerPC 970 based blade servers out in numbers, Microsoft will get destroyed in the server arena.

As soon as IBM gets its act together and puts a nice GUI on top of Linux running on a low cost PowerPC based machine (lower cost than anything Dell could build), both Microsoft and Intel will be in serious trouble.

Ennis, Enderle, and those that think like them are in major denial.

JH: To clarify, he was in no way saying that the Apple experience automatically predicts the failure of Linux. (I'm not sure where you're getting that from what I wrote.) As I understood it, he was simply citing the Apple experience as an example to show that the widespread popularity of Linux in universities and research institutions doesn't necessarily transfer into such widespread popularity in the corporate world. But that doesn't mean Linux couldn't do what Apple hasn't. As the post mentioned, it's an open question.

Yes, thanks for clarifying. My main point was that vendor success in the business markets often is more challenging than success in the academic and scientific/engineering research markets.

There are many reasons for that. The best technology and the lowest initial cost product don't always succeed. Sometimes there are good reasons for this, sometimes there aren't (it often is random or inertia or active stubborness or some combination of all of them).

And of course, who gets to define "best technology"?

More specifically, my point about Apple is I think they were knaive about how to penetrate the business markets. Their huge share in academia (and trust me, I was a commited apple user from 1983 - 1992 when i was a scientist)didn't get them anywhere in corporate america.

Scientists are more trendy than businesses. There is good and bad that goes along with that...it is not a compliment for scientists nor a criticism of business. And like it or not, in the 1980s apple was more trendy among scientists. The real situation was much more complex, of course, as DEC was entrenched in the 1980s, as was Sun towards the later part of the 1980s.

So, this disorganized post doesn't say much other than the future isn't written when it comes to Linux. And don't discount the SCO legal issues. While it is trendy to be angry at SCO and think they are bad guys.....look into the facts, many smart people believe they have some valid legal claims. The history of Unix goes back a long way and its an interesting twisted tale....