November 8th, 2006

Why Linux will never go mainstream on the desktop

Posted by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes @ 4:23 am

Categories: Linux, Thoughts

Tags: Desktop, PC, Linux, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, UNIX, Open Source, Software, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

I really didn’t expect the post I wrote last week about Linux (The world just isn’t ready for Linux) to generate the interest that it did.  After all, it was written by someone who’s been using Windows since DOS and who is currently sitting in front of two screens - one with Windows Vista in it, the other running XP Pro.  But the post obviously struck a chord with some people (and a nerve with others).  I also have people offering me copies of nearly every version of Linux imaginable!

I’ve read as many of the comments as time allows (currently the count stands at over 500) and watched the poll results come in (more than 10,500 of you voted - thanks for sharing your thoughts) and I think that the time is right for a follow-up post.

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Ultimately, people are willing to pay for simplicityThe first thing that struck me were the poll results.  Fully 28% of you claim to be running Linux on all your systems while another 50% are planning to increase the number of Linux systems you run.  Those are incredible numbers but I think that they have more to do with the type of audience that the post drew, rather than being representative of the kind of growth in users that Linux is going to experience over the next 12 months (although I expect that someone will use the data to say just that).  Currently the desktop Linux user base stands at about 1% (the figure varies wildly depending on what source you look at), so if 28% of you are already running Linux then that means that the readership here is made up of a large number of users that fall into that 1% user base. 

Some of the comments made in response to the post I made were very interesting too, and some of the points are worth picking up on.  The rest of this post consists of my thoughts and feeling about some of the issues raised.  Before I do that though, I just want to share with you the best TalkBack entry I read.  It was posted by Uranus65:

Dude, here’s my prediction: Now that you have decided to use Linux to some extent, you will become obsessed. Some days you will throw your arms up and say your done with it. But you will be back, spending hours trying to burn a CD or something. We’ve all been there before and we are still here, using Linux.

:-)

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