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Tech: Vista the best thing to happen to the PC industry.
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Comments (51)
31 earlier comments in the full thread.
Quoting: I see no reason why only two or three would remain.If you read my comments more carefully you would see that I in no way indicated that any distros would go away. I said most would remain status quo. Only two or three would have significant enough market penetration to displace Windows and be commercially successful on pre-installed consumer desktops, which has been my point throughout this thread.
Quoting:If MS and Windows suddenly plummeted in market shareIt won't happen that way. It would be gradual and OEM's would start replacing Windows using two or three distros. Dell is already doing it, it has already started. I know because my 71 year old father bought an Ubuntu Laptop from them on his own volition due to his dissatisfaction with Apple and refusal to go with Microsoft. (Imagine how pleasantly surprised I was when he brought it up.) The other distros would still try to compete for part of that desktop market, but their aggregate share will be insignificant on a retail level compared to the oligopoly. It will not be evenly spread. All you need to do is look at the market penetration today. I'm not talking distrowatch...that's not market penetration, that's popularity amongst Linux users. I'm talking commercial desktop Linux. How many publically-traded (or even private) companies sell commercial Desktop Linux and have market penetration against other OS vendors?
Finally, I'm not arguing that this is a bad thing. It is merely an economic prediction. Empirically , that's how free enterprise works.
Quoting:If you read my comments more carefully you would see that I in no way indicated that any distros would go away.
I didn't mean that either. I meant "remain as major players".
Well, I think our perspectives are quite different due to the cultures and economies we live in. Southern California is certainly not The Netherlands (I wish it were sometimes, except for the weather). We do have diversity in products and retail distributors, but a disproportionately large percentage of most markets is dominated by a small handful of very large companies, and that percentage grows with each passing year, it seems.
There are vendors now that will put on SLES or RHE for the purchase price, or Debian for nothing, that sort of thing.
With shelf price as cut-throat as it is, I see that sort of attempt to differentiate themselves happening _more_ with OEMs, rather than less.
With shelf price as cut-throat as it is, I see that sort of attempt to differentiate themselves happening _more_ with OEMs, rather than less.
Suse, Ubuntu and posssibly RedHat are the three I see most like to succeed in the consumer/SOHO market. They would be able to support those sales. OEM vendors aren't going to put a distro out there that doesn't have a well-established support offering, which effectively puts Debian out of the mix (who would NEVER provide widespread driver support due to the licensing, anyway).
Quoting:OEM vendors aren't going to put a distro out there that doesn't have a well-established support offering, which effectively puts Debian out of the mix
But not Mandriva.
Quoting:OEM vendors aren't going to put a distro out there that doesn't have a well-established support offering, which effectively puts Debian out of the mix
I bet that if MS marketshare plummitted and made room for Linux, that there would spring up a lot of new companies that support Debian. It's just so stable that it's hard to break. Support is relatively (to ther distros) easy.
> which effectively puts Debian out of the mix (who would NEVER provide widespread driver support due to the licensing, anyway).
With a decrease in Microsoft power, hardware makers would find the meaning behind making their hardware work with mainline kernel drivers, or providing the specs for mainline kernel drivers to be created for their hardware.
The assumption that they will try to continue the very practices that are making Microsoft fail is ... short sighted.
Keep in mind that up until now, Microsoft has been bullying the hardware makers into writing and supporting their own drivers. The hardware makers are going to learn that all that money does not need to be spent, with resulting better profits or higher sales.
And those who don't, will follow Microsoft.
With a decrease in Microsoft power, hardware makers would find the meaning behind making their hardware work with mainline kernel drivers, or providing the specs for mainline kernel drivers to be created for their hardware.
The assumption that they will try to continue the very practices that are making Microsoft fail is ... short sighted.
Keep in mind that up until now, Microsoft has been bullying the hardware makers into writing and supporting their own drivers. The hardware makers are going to learn that all that money does not need to be spent, with resulting better profits or higher sales.
And those who don't, will follow Microsoft.
Quoting:Microsoft has been bullying the hardware makers into writing and supporting their own drivers.Supply and Demand. If you can be profitable only supporting Vista drivers then why even mess with anything else? A lot of new hardware doesn't even have XP support, much less Linux. Vista is ubiquitous in new PC sales. Makes the most business sense, and is best for the shareholders. Conversely, it wouldn't necessarily hurt hardware companies to open up their specs and API's, but they aren't going to bite the hand that feeds them and jeopardize their shareholders' investment.
Quoting:there would spring up a lot of new companies that support DebianAs much as I like Debian, it will not be pre-installed on consumer equipment. A derivative will, though. Ubuntu already is. Debian (proper) widespread on new PC's is a pipe dream. Sorry, but that is the truth. They won't support enough drivers to get enough market penetration to compete. By the time the hardware is all open other distros will have the market captured.
Quoting:But not Mandriva.I used to use Mandrake almost exclusively for many years. However, it will not be a major player in the U.S. market. They could have been, perhaps, but they made way too many mistakes. They may have success in the EU, though. I miss the name Mandrake...it reminded me of Quaaludes. ------ There could be other players that will spring up and grow as fast as Ubuntu. I hate to sound morbid, but the most likely player to get in the mix with a widespread Linux distribution very well may be Microsoft. It is their prerogative to do just that. Plus, they can afford to buy whoever they want: Novell? RedHat?, to get instant market penetration (imagine Suse or RedHat running a full, Microsoft .NET application server). They are publicly traded...and cash talks a lot louder than philosophy (except on LXer). I'm not saying I WANT this to happen, I'm only saying it is a real possibility to consider. Corporations and OEM's (Windows shops) would be much more likely to integrate and migrate to a product with the Microsoft brand.
Quoting:...and cash talks a lot louder than philosophy (except on LXer)
Thank You for the compliment.
You are right about Microsoft possibly buying or creating their own distro but the cross patent agreement they have with Novell showed them that they still have to be really careful not to let any of their IP touch the GPL, it would destrory them because the GPL is a sink with no drain for Microsoft. They cannot afford to accidentally open source a bunch of their code and even with the advantage of a ton of cash to buy market penetration in the Open Source world, it still doesn't make it easy for them to succeed at it. Besides, who here would take them at their word that something of theirs is really Open Source unless they GPL'd it?
What we in the Linux community often fail to take into consideration is that corporations are ultimately responsible to their shareholders (which could be you or I). Make them unhappy and heads start rolling. We may villanize them as greedy and uncooperative, but they are responsible to their investors, not our community.
Quoting: they still have to be really careful not to let any of their IP touch the GPLObviously Microsoft doesn't have to open source their own .NET stack or other apps just because they run on a GPL'd operating system. They could write a GPL/LGPL MFC/.NET engine, for example, that would still allow the easy migration of proprietary apps without the apps' code touching GPL/LGPL code. In this scenario they would be providing the same API as they currently do to developers. I agree they would need to be very careful and would be heavily scrutinized.
Quoting:Besides, who here would take them at their word that something of theirs is really Open Source unless they GPL'd it?It can remain closed source (the applications) and still be wildly successful in the GPL OS market.
> Plus, they can afford to buy whoever they want: Novell? RedHat?,
Novell is a distinct possibility. I expect too many shares of Red Hat are controlled by insiders that would never sell to Microsoft (well, I know that 15 of them are, at least :)).
Novell is a distinct possibility. I expect too many shares of Red Hat are controlled by insiders that would never sell to Microsoft (well, I know that 15 of them are, at least :)).
Quoting:I expect too many shares of Red Hat are controlled by insiders that would never sell to Microsoft...Good point. I was just providing hypothetical examples.
Quoting:I used to use Mandrake almost exclusively for many years. However, it will not be a major player in the U.S. market.
Spoken like a true yank. Of course I assumed your analysis was US centric in the first place. Thankfully the US market is not the sum of the computer market, and given the way Mandriva is quietly expanding into the the rest of the world, I suspect they've made the better choice.
First, agree to TA above. And now here's why:
That was outdated before you typed it. First of all, a _lot_ of French desktops run Mandriva. Dell sold Linux-laptops with Mandriva to French students even _before_ it sold laptops with Ubuntu, and pre-installed Mandriva desktops are sold at Carrefour (but I agree Southern California is far away, I doubt if you know Carrefour). The Eee uses heavily customized Xandros. The municipality of Munich chose 'Debian' for its desktops, though that's not the consumer market, but anyway, they didn't go for SuSE. The X/O laptop isn't the consumer market neither, but it uses something Fedora-like. Interesting to note is the Fedora end Xandros sold the most today are customized by the vendors. The Zonbu-boxes that ship today, run on (you probably wouldn't have guessed it:)... Gentoo (customized). gOS - sold widely - indeed is based on Ubuntu, but again is heavily customized.
Now let's look at about five years ago. Mandriva didn't exist, it was Mandrake back then. Ubuntu didn't exist either. The Eee version of Xandros didn't exist. Munix didn't exist. The Zonbu-version of Gentoo didn't exist. gOS didn't exist. Also, OpenSolaris and Asianux didn't exist five years ago. Asianux is sold a lot in Asia as far as I can tell: Today Haansoft / Miracle and Red Flag Linux are based on it. As far as I understood (but the signs were in Chinese) Linux pre-installed 'consumer' Lenovo laptops were sold in China before business-only Lenovo-Linux came to 'our' continents - with Red Flag pre-installed.
What's the conclusion? ALL distro's which are at this moment successful at the consumer markets (and that's definitely not RedHat and Suse) didn't exist five years ago. So now you want to make predictions about who will have a big market share once Windows loses its monopoly? I do support the opinion life will be different after the Windows monopoly is gone, looking at the pace of changes in distro-development. I'd say chaos theory applies to it.
Quoting:Suse, Ubuntu and posssibly RedHat are the three I see most like to succeed in the consumer/SOHO market.
That was outdated before you typed it. First of all, a _lot_ of French desktops run Mandriva. Dell sold Linux-laptops with Mandriva to French students even _before_ it sold laptops with Ubuntu, and pre-installed Mandriva desktops are sold at Carrefour (but I agree Southern California is far away, I doubt if you know Carrefour). The Eee uses heavily customized Xandros. The municipality of Munich chose 'Debian' for its desktops, though that's not the consumer market, but anyway, they didn't go for SuSE. The X/O laptop isn't the consumer market neither, but it uses something Fedora-like. Interesting to note is the Fedora end Xandros sold the most today are customized by the vendors. The Zonbu-boxes that ship today, run on (you probably wouldn't have guessed it:)... Gentoo (customized). gOS - sold widely - indeed is based on Ubuntu, but again is heavily customized.
Now let's look at about five years ago. Mandriva didn't exist, it was Mandrake back then. Ubuntu didn't exist either. The Eee version of Xandros didn't exist. Munix didn't exist. The Zonbu-version of Gentoo didn't exist. gOS didn't exist. Also, OpenSolaris and Asianux didn't exist five years ago. Asianux is sold a lot in Asia as far as I can tell: Today Haansoft / Miracle and Red Flag Linux are based on it. As far as I understood (but the signs were in Chinese) Linux pre-installed 'consumer' Lenovo laptops were sold in China before business-only Lenovo-Linux came to 'our' continents - with Red Flag pre-installed.
What's the conclusion? ALL distro's which are at this moment successful at the consumer markets (and that's definitely not RedHat and Suse) didn't exist five years ago. So now you want to make predictions about who will have a big market share once Windows loses its monopoly? I do support the opinion life will be different after the Windows monopoly is gone, looking at the pace of changes in distro-development. I'd say chaos theory applies to it.
Quoting:Spoken like a true yank.Born and raised. It's sad to see so little true yank spirit left. Plenty of xenophobia, but very little character of the type that built this country. A cursory study of George Washington would make that readily apparent.
Quoting:...given the way Mandriva is quietly expanding into the the rest of the world, I suspect they've made the better choice.I'm not sure who you mean by they. The rest of the world? Well, Mandriva is a major player, but I suspect they won't make huge inroads in the US or even recapture what Mandrake had. EU/AUS might be a different story. I'd still place my bets on Ubuntu for the "world", though.
Like I said, Mandrake was my OS of choice for many years, and were the corporate Linux production servers at the company I was at during the DotCom boom, per my recommendation (and never let us down). I certainly didn't mean to slam it. They did go thorough quite some turmoil during the transition to Mandriva (I still hate that name) and I was making the switch to Debian-based systems around the same time. Such is life.
Quoting:They did go thorough quite some turmoil during the transition to Mandriva (I still hate that name) and I was making the switch to Debian-based systems around the same time. Such is life.
Actually they went very quiet pror to Mandriva. Mandrake filed for Bankruptcy protection, due to really stupid decisions by management when they became a public company. Mandriva is part of what the Reborn Mandrake became, as when they were in a position to reinvest they purchased Connectiva, and Lycoris, the name change was in part because King Comics had a stupid claim that Mandrake is theirs and that having a computer company called Mandrake was confusing to the King Comics readership - in the end it was cheaper to rename the company.
Quoting:...in the end it was cheaper to rename the company.I was around LXer when we were all thinking of a new name for the merger. Not everyone was pleased with the final decision. 8^)
Quoting:I do support the opinion life will be different after the Windows monopoly is gone, looking at the pace of changes in distro-development. I'd say chaos theory applies to it.That has precisely been my entire point this entire thread. Things are going to be much different than they are today, and there are going to growing pains and bumps in the road and market forces that will render each of our current perspectives obsolete.
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If it follows the trend of most consumer products there will be 2-3 major distributions, 1-2 regional distributions for each area, and as many as a dozen or more minor distributions vying for the market. Think coffee/tea, milk, cereal, sodas, etc. You usually wind up with 2-3 national brands everywhere, a couple of local regional brands, and a whole bunch of minor brands that can be gotten at various places. There will probably also be an equivalent to "organic" products and specialty distributions for specific purposes (the specialty distributions already exist, but expect a number of changes in that area).