OS X/Linux in business
This is something I've been wandering about for a while... about OS X and Linux in the workplace. Everyone knows that PCs running under Windows are seen in like every IT company but according to this article, Macs are becoming more popular in the business world, not just for creative industries which is what most people would associate them with. Linux however, we all know that it struggles to get really popular but I'm sure a fraction of businesses adopt it, even the Open University and the London Stock Exchange make use of it as evidenced here.
Whether you think other OSes can do well in the world of work or not, let's talk all about it.
Whether you think other OSes can do well in the world of work or not, let's talk all about it.
Comments
That is a big reason why I think that anybody starting a small business, should use open source software and not pay a million dollars for office and windows licenses.
MacOS is a completely different story. Apple actually DID have good business traction in the late 80s/early 90s but they blew it by constantly changing architectures and rapidly desupporting stuff. The funny thing is, now days the desktop has pretty much stabilized on 64-bit intel/amd architecture so there is really no excuse for them to change things again. If they left well enough alone, they very well might regain some business market share.
But I don't know if they can manage that. For example, as I understand it, the Kruoflux folks no longer support the latest MacOS X update because it has something horribly, horribly broken in its USB stack. Similarly, I've been told that the latest MacOS X breaks the final desktop release of Photoshop (64-bit I presume - and on a side note, WTF Adobe?! Going to a subscription based webby thing for a fucking drawing program? Fuck Adobe.).
But usually, it's like SomeGuy said, businesses, especially big ones, love to spend money on technology. It's critical to have someone to blame when things go wrong and there's this idea stuck in their heads that if they don't pay a lot of money for it, it's not as good.
We can easily see through this sales bullshit, but businesses eat it right up and hold open their wallets. They also sometimes refuse to spend money upgrading something they think is working just fine and it's usually because they spent a ton of money on it when it was new under the promise of some salesman that it would last them years and years.
Linux is excellent in the server market and has been extremely successful over the years. But in desktop usage it just hasn't cracked it yet. And at this point I think the reality is that it never will because of two reasons;
Choice. There's so much fragmentation in the market. We have so many forks of forks, caused by disagreements, desire for different paths on features, hardware support, the list goes on. This is an absolute nightmare for anyone who works in support. I've seen so much variety in ways to accomplish simple tasks between versions of Linux, where certain configuration files are stored etc. Not to mention the hodge podge of different desktop environments, window mangers and web browsers. Windows and OSX are excellent at this because there's no variety.
Secondly, I actually think the community itself is too hostile. Problem solving with the Linux community is fucking horrific. You ask a simple question about how to fix problem and X and end up with 4 million posts telling you that X sucks and you should use Y, or what you're using X for is wrong and you need to avoid doing this or whatever. Also, I often get the feeling that there are huge swathes of users who have the Punk music mentality of "selling out". Whereby they'd be almost annoyed if their special platform was successful and enjoyed more use, many seem to almost get off in using something that no one else has even heard about let alone knows how to use.
In reality these days there's no reason WHY Linux can't be successful, large amounts of what we don computers has moved away from actual programs and onto much more web based services (e-mail, YouTube, Office 365 etc) that sticking to one platform is pointless. Most people would be perfectly fine using Linux so long as they know what button to press to open their browser, and what button to press to open a spreadsheet and then how to turn their machine off. Even the fact that MS Office has become the de-facto standard is ridiculous given that what most people use word or excel for could be achieved using the fucking DOS versions.
Add to that the progress Steam is making in Linux gaming we could see a mass shift, although given the fucking abysmal state of Linux drivers I can't see that happening any time soon either.
It's also made massive progress on phones and tablets, although that's largely because it's entirely controlled by one entity and hasn't been allowed to fragment to the same point the desktop has, and thus hasn't been held back by the issues the desktop has.
The Linux attitude towards features has always come across as somewhat annoying. It's like half their devs are 15 year olds suffering from AHAD, and will work to make a certain feature, and then sort of.. give up halfway and move onto something else.
Microsoft is very slow in adding new features. Windows 2000 was 5.0, XP was 5.1, Vista was 6.0 (and people freaked out because of it's newness), 7 was 6.1, 8 was 6.2, 8.1 was 6.3, and 10 is really 6.4.
Not to mention the rolling release distros. Good luck in finding Arch running at a business.
If the Linux developers would get rid of the "we wan n3w f3atur3s and we wanntz them nows!1!!!11!1!" attitude, maybe we would see an adoption of Linux by big business.
That's actually the reason why I prefer Slackware.
The whole issue of fragmentation isn't an issue actually. Having choice is a good thing, because one size does NOT fit all. I see the variety in software and distributions to actually be its strength, NOT weakness.
This. So much this.
However, Ubuntu has the greatest chance of actually succeeding on the desktop. Being the most popular, there are some people that potentially don't even realize there are other distros and certainly people that have never used other distros.
As far as rapid release goes, Microsoft is now switching to a more rapid release schedule. The first of which being 1511. So businesses won't have that excuse any more. Ubuntu also has their LTS releases which is what businesses will use.
They did regain business market share - in hipster cafes and beauty salons.
+1 @ BOD
I recently tried the latest Linux Mint on an older Core 2 Duo 4GB machine of mine. It wasn't too bad, though had it's moments of frustration. Had an issue with installation, followed by issues getting Steam going. Then when you search forums as to why Steam won't run, you get several different answers and becomes trial and error using Terminal. Ideally you should be able to just install via the Software Manager and any dependencies it needs are installed with it, or at the very least be informed about it.
Also, Windows in a workgroup (clients and servers) makes a lot of sense - Group Policy has no equal, Exchange is still the only groupware that's worthwhile, and Office is the de facto standard for a reason.
I have yet to ask, then again I doubt the workers will know. Going there sometime this week, so I'll see if I can get a shot.
I've seen on Youtube how somebody managed to run an ancient version of Netscape on Ubuntu 12.10.
Linux has userspace ABI compatibility, but there's no guarantee on things like libc compatibility - the 5 to 6 transition hurt a lot of commercial software. There's also no driver compatibility. Ultimately, it's not as easy as Windows for it.
look it up yourself, if you don't believe me. I could be wrong on the site, but it HAS been done.
Close enough:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/305744/h ... untu-13-04
Netscape 2 on Ubuntu 13.04
Simple 2 sec google search, first result.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ancient+netscape+ubuntu