I've been doing a bit of thinking about your assertion that linux simply needs 'the big OEMs behind it' to win the war, and I think that answer is a bit too simple. Red Hat has had a partnership with Dell for at least four years. You used to be able to buy a computer from Dell with linux pre-installed, but Dell has since significantly back away from that. They do still ship servers with Red Hat pre-installed, but they don't go out of their way to tell you that. HP's story is practically identical, so I don't buy the 'it just needs the big OEMs behind it' argument.
To get linux pre-installed systems into CostCo there is of course going to need to be demand. So, what would it take to get the non-technical soccer moms of the world to switch from M$ to linux?
Galen
Bryan Murdock wrote:
Let me put it too you this way, easiest desktop to use does not win you
the desktop war, otherwise Apple would have won many times over by now. Yes, people have come to expect a certain amount of ease of use, but I
think, at least with Mandrake, I haven't seriously used a new version of
Fedora or any other distro, but I think a linux desktop is just as easy
to use and at least as reliable. There are still some weird oddities,
but people put up with all kinds of weird oddities with windoze. Think
of they days when it was the Mac versus DOS. MS won with marketing and
going with the more open platform. Linux has the openness down, it just
needs the big OEM's behind it. That is all that is left and the war is
won.
Bryan
On Fri, 2004-03-26 at 15:27, Bryan Murdock wrote:
None of what has been suggested so far are going to make my sister or
dad use Redhat instead of Windoze. They don't care if KDE is broken by
Redhat. They don't care about getting exotic devices that they bought
used on ebay to work. They want to go to Costco and buy a computer that
works. It's possible they will want to plug in their printer and a
digital camera and have that work (and that does work with Mandrake
right now, if not Redhat). They want to use office, browse the web,
read email, and print pictures that they took with their camera.
If Redhat wants to beat MS on the desktop, they will partner with Dell and HP and get computers on the shelf at Costco, Best Buy, and Circuit City.
Bryan
On Fri, 2004-03-26 at 15:18, Andrew Jorgensen wrote:
On Fri, 2004-03-26 at 16:04, Jacob Albretsen wrote:
Can't resist... must fight temptation....
On Friday 26 March 2004 15:22, Galen wrote:
Hi,
I just landed a summer internship at Red Hat and am really interested to
hear from a users perspective what doesn't work.
Tell them that Gnome and KDE are two different GUIs and stop making them look the same. Also stop breaking KDE and making it unusable by snubbing its native applications in favor of the ones they think you should be using instead of giving YOU all the choices available and letting YOU decide what is best for YOU.
I've got a better idea: Drop KDE altogether, that way the KDE project can package their own RPMs and leave Red Hat alone. KDE can fend for itself on distros that use it by default.
Seriously, I'm _not_ just flaming, it's a lot of wasted effort to support KDE at all when it just makes KDE-lovers mad anyway and everyone else will just use GNOME because that's what comes up by default. And again, seriously, those who like it will package it for themselves and there will be a yum repository in no time (there probably already is).
Disclaimer: If there are grammatical or spelling errors in this post please make aware the read engrish.com have happy times conceded.
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