{"id":584,"date":"2007-12-11T14:34:54","date_gmt":"2007-12-11T14:34:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2007\/12\/11\/prediction-linux-will-eat-micr\/"},"modified":"2007-12-11T14:34:54","modified_gmt":"2007-12-11T14:34:54","slug":"prediction-linux-will-eat-micr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/11\/prediction-linux-will-eat-micr\/","title":{"rendered":"Prediction: Linux will Eat Microsoft on Most Desktops"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, several unrelated changes come to a head at the same time, with a result no one could have predicted. The PC market is at such a tipping point right now and the result will be millions of Linux-powered PCs in users’ hands.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Or so opines Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of DesktopLinux.com.Vaughan-Nichols sees the following changes as basic to and causal of a sea-change in the desktop world.1) The continued maturation of dektop Linux, to the point where “no one can argue with a straight face that people can’t get their work done on Linux-powered PCs2) The development of the “$100” laptop (available at stors for a little as $199.95).3) The subsequent development by others of nearly-as-cheap PC’s allowing one to build a desktop for about $200 (presumably without a monitor), as well as mid-range PC’s costing just a few hundred dollars more.4) The ease and ubiquity of broadband internet connectivity.”Four trends … Put them together and you have a revolution.”The previously entrenched pattern was to spec-out 1-2 thousand dollar desktops and run Windows on them. So let’s say you need 100 computers, each will coast 1,500, and you are going to put Windows Vista, Microsoft Office, and a few other applications on it. No, wait, you will need a 2,000 computer to do that. Let’s assume the software costs a total of $1,000. So we are up to about $3,000 per desktop, give or take. What did we need? A hundred of these? That would be about more than $200,000 conservatively estimated.Now, compare that to a $500.00 desktop running Linux and OpenSource applicaitons. That would be about $50,000. The difference? Two or three employees, a huge bonus, a couple of vehicles, whatever. Not small.Vaughan-Nichols uses different calculations and makes different comparisons than I do here, and you can have a look at his post, here<\/a>. He concludes:<\/p>\n

So, by my calculations, all those trends have joined together to make a Linux-based small business using Google applications instead of Exchange and SharePoint cost less than half its Microsoft-based twin.Worse still, if you’re Microsoft, you can’t really defend yourself. Linux desktops run just dandy on low-end, under-$500 PCs. Vista Basic, which comes the closest to being able to run on these systems, is unacceptable since it doesn’t support business networking. Office 2007 also won’t run worth a darn on these systems. And somehow, I can’t see Microsoft optimizing its applications to work with Google Apps instead of Exchange and SharePoint.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, several unrelated changes come to a head at the same time, with a result no one could have predicted. The PC market is at such a tipping point right now and the result will be millions of Linux-powered PCs in users’ hands. Or so opines Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of DesktopLinux.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[57],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-9q","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}