Linux Struggles for Desktop Acceptance
One of the birds of a feather evening sessions at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo was called Year of the Linux Desktop ... Again. And the consensus among the handful of nighthawks at the session was that this still won't be desktop Linux's year.
Vendors such as Red Hat, Novell and Xandros have high hopes for their desktop Linux offerings. But they can't point to many user success stories -- certainly none on the scale of Linux server installations.
There is a lot of interest [among users] in switching to Linux," said Stephen Harris, director of marketing at New York-based Xandros. "But are there a lot of examples of where they've gone out and done it? No."
Of more than 40 IT managers who were interviewed at LinuxWorld or who responded to a random e-mail and telephone poll during the past two weeks, none has plans to deploy desktop Linux on a large scale.
Only respondents from two universities indicated that they have more than a handful or isolated pockets of Linux desktops: Notre Dame University, at about 10% of its user population, and Oregon State University, at 5%.
Some companies said they have examined the prospect of moving to desktop Linux to assist in their contract negotiations with Microsoft. Others are trying Linux in kiosks or for limited-function desktop systems.
