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From: Jesse Pollard <pollard@admin.navo.hpc.mil>
To: James Simmons <jsimmons@infradead.org>,
       Andre Hedrick <andre@linux-ide.org>
Subject: Re: [OT] Re: Linux in the News! WooHoo!
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2003 16:57:07 -0600
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On Tuesday 21 January 2003 04:26 pm, James Simmons wrote:
> > http://eastbay.bizjournals.com/eastbay/stories/2003/01/20/story1.html
> >
> > The hardcopy edition is better.
> > It has sweet little TUX snacking on a Windows Logo!
> > Go to http://eastbay.bizjournals.com/eastbay/ next saturday and see this
> > weeks print cover on the web!
>
>    Linux will NEVER move into the desktop market!!! Linux has found it
> niche in the server market and some aspects of the embedded market. Well
> it is struggling to keep alive in the embedded space. Why is this?
>    Number one reason it will never move into the desktop market is the
> free beer mentality. Alot of people expect something for nothing or
> next to it. I not just talking users. Even multi-billion dollar companies.
> I had a large company tell me "You are charging us? That is not very open
> source of you!!" As for end users the same problem exist. Plus companies
> toke note that it would cost them money to hire some to port their
> software.

Yup - just as they would have to hire programmers to port any program.

"There is no such thing as portable programs... only programs that have been 
ported"...

...
>    What is the immature? The bare basics is stable and fine but people
> want more than just to login in via a serial console. I seen alot of nice
> development of new types of GUI. Out of the few dozen vendors all but
> one decided not to go with X windows. BTW that one moved over to windows
> CE later. These companies felt X was a hinderance. So they went to other
> GUIs like microwindows or embedded Qt. Still there is a lack of apps and
> a even greater lack of comapnies wanting to write apps for linux PDAs.

Neither has anything to do with Linux itself.. only that M$ suppressed vendors 
of applications...

X is a serious load unless you are expecting to work with multiple hosts, all 
sending windows back to the same server. In which case, nothing else works as 
well, nor as portably. Any standard X application can display to any 
reasonably standard X server.

>    Now for the issue of the desktop itself. We have the basic two problems
> above. The biggest issue with X is the long developement cycle. The good
> news is since NVIDIA, which makes there own X server and drivers, is the
> dominate graphics card we don't feel it so much. If we had 20 to 30
> graphics cards with equal market space we would notice. Especially when
> the graphics cards were have 6 month cycles before they become obsolete.

And the problem is ????

The long development cycle has a lot to do with the lack of specifications for 
the hardware.

>
>     So what is my PROOF of all this. First take a look at the linux jobs
> out there. You will notices System Admin jobs. Several of those in fact.

If the job says UNIX it implies Linux.. or so the ones I have been looking at.

> Then the development jobs are iSCSI or network card or some other aspect
> of network programming. Now look for a GNOME or KDE programming job
> outside of a distro looking to hire someone. I seen only one in Austalia.

So what.. I do interfaces using Motif. Can work fine on Linux or SGI...
GNOME/KDE is not quite as portable.

> Now try a search in flipdog.com, CareerBuilder.com, or HotJobs.com for a
> GNOME or KDE jobs. Well what do you know. No jobs avaible. So no company
> is looking to either port there software to linux nor create new linux
> software.

not true:
2 for "X Window"
10 for "X Windows"
13 for Motif

And that after only three shots... 25 total (I'm assuming there aren't any 
overlaps for the moment).

>	 Mind you a few companies tried like lokigames. Now they are
> gone. Next level is graphics and multimedia programming in linux. Again
> nothing really avaiable.
>      Now the next question is what companies invest in non sever related
> matterial for linux i.e mulitmedia, GNOME, KDE, X outside of the distros.

none of the located jobs are distribution suppliers.

> I know people there are people on the list from IBM, HP etc who are
> reading this email. Speak up if this in not the case. The only one I knew
> of was VA linux. They hired several of the DRI/X windows developers. To
> my knowledge they no longer work there. So the only companies pursing non
> server related are the distros. Now the question is hwo many will be left
> soon. One of them filed for a form of bankruptcy a few days ago. Very few
> remain. Also we are seeing the strongs one move to where the money is. The
> server market. So I wouldn't count on any R&D from anyone to much to move
> linux to the desktop.

The projects currently underway for doing the desktop haven't asked for R&D 
funds, to my knowlege.

HOWEVER - there were 15000+ workstations that converted to StarOffice last
year (DISA - a government agency). Since StarOffice works on both Linux and M$
I see that as a win. And there are a LOT of OpenOffice (the free version) 
installations.

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jesse I Pollard, II
Email: pollard@navo.hpc.mil

Any opinions expressed are solely my own.
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