[clue-talk] The reason MS is winning against Linux?

[Nate Duehr]

Angelo Bertolli wrote:
> rex evans wrote:
> 
>> One of the articles said that Linux is not
>> making inroads into desktop (versus server)
>> market. Is this true?
>>  
>>
> Maybe, but from what I can tell this is due more to MS Office.

Maybe, but more likely just a piece of it.  Outlook.

I've opened every document I've been sent at work in OpenOffice for the 
last year or so, just to see if there were any problems.  None.  Our 
documentation department for customer-facing documentation has been 
releasing that documentation in PDF format for at least three years now, 
too.

But... The FOSS world still can't figure out how to build a mail client 
that has any sort of reasonable integration with a shared calendar that 
can handle online and offline modes correctly, etc.

Evolution is really close, but it's clunky and even looks old-school... 
it needs some new makeup and a hair-do, at the very least.

Something will either have to perfectly mimic Outlook, down to the 
gnat's ass... or will have to have a killer feature in it that everyone 
needs and no one's thought of yet, to get most companies to switch.

I say "most" because there will start to be forward-thinking individuals 
in charge of some organizations that will say they're going forward with 
Linux on the Desktop, and they'll have contingency plans to license a 
few copies of whatever tools someone might need in Windows.

Another HUGE gaping hole is that there's nothing mimicking Visio that's 
even close to what it can do, that I've found.  Once an engineering 
group or support group is dependent on Visio, it's more pervasive than 
crack cocaine.  Blackberry devices running off of Exchange server are 
similarly addictive to corporations.  (Thus the "crackberry" nickname.)

Basically the human nature of it is:  Unless Linux does it BETTER than 
Windows, companies won't switch.  Matching Windows feature for feature, 
won't work... or will work only very slowly and in small pockets of 
"resistance".

Nate
_______________________________________________
CLUE-talk mailing list
CLUE-talk at cluedenver.org
http://cluedenver.org/mailman/listinfo/clue-talk