Herman Bos open source guerilla

About Linux desktop adoption

The topic comes up regularly and since I just installed gutsy on my old laptop (which went pretty smooth) I'm in the mood to add something to it. I will only point out the most important thing else it will be more like writing a book instead of a blog entry.

I will focus on office use, since I believe thats where Linux can advance the most and the end users (the companies) can gain the most at the moment.

Lets say that Linux on the Desktop is possible and actually worthwhile for most companies. In fact most entrepreneurs are very positive if you tell them about the advantages and possibilities. The reason they don't jump in immediatly has more to do with timing then that they don't want to. Anyway I wanted to address the most practical issue:

• Specialized Windows only software
  

Mostly administrative software, sometimes more common, sometimes very specialized. The problem is obvious, it doesn't run natively in Linux. This makes the whole migration to Linux desktop issue much more difficult. In some situations its not just replacing operating systems, its replacing their complete software environment (from A to Z). Which makes the whole migration path much more complex or simply uninteresting.

The last reason is basicly the reason Linux adoption is slow and which doesn't make it interesting for every company. Chick-egg problem. No Linux versions if there is not much demand and no demand if its impossible to switch because you need the particular software.

Fortunately its not all that grim at the moment. Some companies solve it by moving all the specialized software to a webbased solution (either ASP or internal) or what we do most: Integrate Linux and Windows environments and use Linux where possible. Depending on the situation this can be done with things like Seemless RDP or just with several Windows workstations. The integrations we did so far are pretty sweet. The cool thing is that the more Linux advances the more Linux only we can do and phase out the last few Windows seats at existing setups.

There is already a pretty reasonable percentage of companies who can already switch to a Linux only environment and profit from the advantages. No need to be pessimistic.