Desktop Linux Summit finale (NewsForge)

Posted Apr 27, 2006 1:40 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Doesn't he understand that the desktop and the applications on it are the portal to all this 'social computing' stuff?

That who controls the desktop determines what sort of interaction and communication that is done from a personal computer. So Microsoft can easily set Linux-based or open source-based 'social computing' to fail just like they did when they cause a technically inferior 'Active Desktop' to succeed over the technically superior Novell directory services.. even though AD was released a long time after Novell's stuff came out.

You can't compete with somebody when that somebody controls the only viable platform for your services. You simply can't. You exist because you got there first or figured out something new OR you exist because Microsoft allows you to exist. Even if Microsoft is years behind and comes out with a technically inferior product you still are likely to loose. It's almost impossible to compete effectively in this situation.

As proof of this just go and look at all the Internet Explorer compatability cludges that web developers are forced to put up with. IE is a vunerable, buggy, POS software that makes user's and developer's lives harder then they need to be and it also has held back development of the WWW by years. By any sane recogning IE should of be dying right now. But it's not and it's not going to and it's going to continue to be the dominate platform for delivering web-based services as long as Microsoft continues to have monopoly control on the desktop.

Linux-on-the-desktop is the lynch pin, the key stone for all this stuff to ultimately succeed. It doesn't even have to be dominate. Just breaking the monopoly by gaining between 10-20 percent of the desktop market would be enough.

Just watch. See what happens to Firefox when IE 7 comes out...

Posted Apr 27, 2006 2:02 UTC (Thu) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

Well for one thing i agree, there isn't sweetest deal like the one for Microsoft. But i'm affaid isn't reproductible, much less on the desktop.

Its polemic, but i belive that MS gained dominance by attracting the masses of computer enthusiasts all over the world, in the old days, and done that by allowing full availability of their OSes by looking the other side when people illegally installed the inferior Windows by the millions on their machines. That really cut the air out of the competition, more so, because there wasent no real alternative "available free or cheap" to the billions of potencial users.

I belive the "deal", intencional or accidental, wasent for immediate profit, but more than a market or marketing plot, it really created a *cultural choc*, that brought them profit when the enthusiasts carried their computer "toy" OSes with them to the entreprises.

Microsoft, IMO, managed this process very well, fuelling the explosion of a "White Box" bomb, that really put the "Wintel" paradigma on the top.

But cultural chocs are rare, and very very difficult to reproduce. So in my view trying to model after MS is a huge mistake.

But is evident, in my view, that the key to the desktop lay with the enthusiasts, and making things more easy for them, and the millions of wannabes around the world, will only pay divident in the future.

That cant possibly be a commercial for immediate profit strategy!... cant see how!. It can only be by accelerating the visual graphic aspect of the desktop, easier tools, and *FULL* hardware support... and cheerishing all enthusiasts wellcome with *things* they like, like in: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=home
http://pcburn.com/help-AMD_Athlon_64bit.php
... that Linux has a sure road to the domination.

** IMHO all that is what Microsoft is trying to prevent, on the Linux camp, by promoting heavely those lock-in DRM schemes **

Posted Apr 27, 2006 3:01 UTC (Thu) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

""... He sees it as a "tornado" in the server market, but never more than a fringe player on the desktop. What he recommends is that Linux ignore the desktop and beat Microsoft to the next computing phenomena, which he called "social computing" rather than "personal computing. ""

I belive that "Geoffrey Moore" is in deep contradiction, because if there is one place where Microsoft is unbeatable is in that "social computing".

The millions of zoombies machines at disposal of thounsands of crackers is a full prove of it. And i dont intent to be ironic here. The spreading of malware is "social computing" by the wikipedia definition. Crackers take advantage of the ignorance of users to their benefice, and sometimes engineer those users to belive things that are not!...Something Microsoft have never done!!... (now i'm being rightfully cinic).

This is even more so, like in the *ages old slogan*:- no possible Linux on the desktop; that i'm starting to belive that it is really M$ social engineering...

Honestly, *now* that KDE is so much better than the XP, Stardock bought, Desktop, i still ear the same old no desktop Linux crap !... Could someone do a install feast into Geoffrey Moore's TCG, please... Its very odd that most probably someone that dosent use a "product", at least not at a regular "benchmark" way otherwise the opinion were for Vista to came quickly to save MS,.. is invicted to talk about it!??...