Ubuntu's opportunity

[whatthefunk]

The reason why this will fail is simple. Take a look at what Valve Corporation has done with their Steam for Linux and how miserable their return on investment has been from Linux customers so far. Linux users expect everything to be free and open source. They'll find ways to circumvent digital rights management or other protection mechanisms and then they'll share it with their friends and family members and co-workers. Linux users don't want to pay for anything ever. This is why Canonical has had such a hard time trying to monetize Ubuntu for their desktop user base.

There's no money in Linux folks! When you are the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company, why would you develop software for Linux when you know damn well it's a hole in the ground.

This is it.

This is completely untrue. Some people use Linux only because its free, but others, myself included, use it by choice. If my favorite distros started charging tomorrow, I would happily pay. Have a look at Humble Indie Bundle earnings. The average that Linux users pay is always more than what Windows and Apple users pay. In many cases, they pay on average twice what Windows users pay. The all too common mentality that Linux users are poor and dont want to pay for software is one of the reasons why we dont get many programs from leading companies.

[santosh83]

The only way to get many of the big software vendors to port their flagship apps to Linux would be to increase the latter's usage base, since commercial enterprises simply go where the money is. This isn't necessarily something that MUST be done; Linux could perfectly well coexist as a smaller niche segment alongside Windows and rest, but then whoever has the majority mindshare (MS, Apple, Google) will control the ecosystem and in the end, Linux may slowly get marginalised more and more.

The real question we should ask is WHY should Linux increase its usage share? What makes it better to existing alternatives? What's wrong if Linux were to completely die out tomorrow? What would it matter if we can get the same things done under Windows/Mac? I guess answers to these questions should explain why we need diversity, and why a monoculture is not good.

[coffeecat]

Thread moved to Ubuntu, Linux and OS Chat.

[Helder_Cervantes]

I'd like to clear up a couple of things about my perspective.

1. As for Adobe's lack of interest, it's obvious they don't see a market in the current userbase. I think the idea of an Adobe PC powered by Ubuntu would be sellable because it would create a target audience, pulling users from Microsoft and Apple. Controlled environment, virus free, optimised performance, unshackled from "MicMacs".

2. It doesn't have to be Adobe really. It's just about deploying better tools for creatives, designers in particular. Adobe is the real deal, but other options can work. It's just that Adobe really could turn things on its own.

3. Why target designers? Because they rule the world. Cool is everything nowadays. Basic users own PC's but they drool at Macs because of the looks, and just don't buy them because they can't afford them. Bring designers in, if they say it's cool, others will agree. Also, if they come in, they'll make it even better, and they'll do it just for kicks.

4. Looking at Ubuntu as "it has everything normal users need, if they need more they'll dual boot", to me is plain stupid. If someone uses ubuntu and has to reboot in windows to use an app, they'll just use windows in the first place. It's too much bother. And Wine doesn't cut it too. If an app "kinda" works, the user will stay in windows. This vision is settling for less, and makes ubuntu a toy. I own 8 servers, all Linux, and I have a pendrive on my desk right now with live ubuntu and an app that requires Apache and MySQL that has to travel around and work on several computers. This is work, and linux isn't a fanboy choice, it's the best choice. But all design work has to be done in windows/mac because the tools in Ubuntu just don't cut it.

[monkeybrain20122]

You do know that Adobe CS is no more as software that you can install in your computer? It has moved to the cloud and for subscribers only. So all the people who use PS but don't really need it will have to look for alternatives anyway.

Designers use a tool not necessarily because they have to use all its feature, it can be because it is what is expected of them at work ("Industrial standard") and they may have a preference because they learned Photoshop first. It is not just the quality of software that is in question here. There are freelance designers who do everything with GIMP and Inkscape (and GIMP 2.10 is going to bring a lot of awesome features) There is also a KDE suit (Calligra?) which I heard is very good.

As for Adobe, good luck, they don't even make flash for Linux anymore.

I agree that dualboot is kind of stupid. If you need a WIndows application and it doesn't work in WIne just use VB.

[whatthefunk]

3. Why target designers? Because they rule the world. Cool is everything nowadays. Basic users own PC's but they drool at Macs because of the looks, and just don't buy them because they can't afford them. Bring designers in, if they say it's cool, others will agree. Also, if they come in, they'll make it even better, and they'll do it just for kicks.

I dont think anybody I know would drop Windows completely and move to a Linux distribution because some mysterious designer thinks its cool. What exactly do you mean by designer anyway?

[Helder_Cervantes]

You do know that Adobe CS is no more as software that you can install in your computer? It has moved to the cloud and for subscribers only.

You still download and install the apps. Users now have to revalidate their licence every month for the apps to work. But that's beyond the point.

[monkeybrain20122]

Windows is widely used not because it is cool (remember the PC guy vs the Mac guy?) It is because it is preinstalled. Most computer users don't use GIMP OR Photoshop.
For Mac it is marketing. Branding is an interesting phenomenon and it goes beyond tangible design. I have had aesthetically challenged people telling me the mac is very cool (e.g my brother) now I don't think they are impressed by any awesome design, the Mac is cool just because it is a Mac.

Edited: in a kind of strange way, Linux is very cool because it is uncommon and requires more technical knowledge to set up. Unfortunately that kind of coolness works against market share.

[Welly Wu]

Linux adoption is like the tortoise and the hare children's story in which Linux is definitely the tortoise. I haven't seen a major increase in Linux adoption since I used Ubuntu 9.04 64 bit years ago. What I've seen is more people switching to Apple Macintosh OS X or iOS rather than Microsoft Windows 8 nowadays.

The problem is that Linux doesn't have the apps that most people are familiar with to make a switch to Linux completely. Why would someone install Linux if they can get most of the FLOSS software on their existing PCs or platform? There's nothing inherently exclusive or a killer app available for Linux that can't be replicated in Windows or Mac.

The only time I see people switching to Linux is due to money concerns or security. People that switched to GNU/Linux like myself had little other choices available that had a high quality general purpose operating system that's available for free of charge and that had superior security architecture and tools that were also freely available. Most people that I have seen that made the switch to Linux did so because they got tired of Windows or Mac malware or their Windows installations got corrupted by malware and they couldn't re-install Windows from a system recovery partition.

This happened to my best friend this past week. He was forced to switch from Windows 7 to Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS 64 bit because his ASUS K50IJ got infected with the TDS malware and ransomware and his recovery partition got corrupted. He likes Ubuntu in general, but the learning curve is steep for him since he's old and retired.

That's the other problem with Linux. It's so rare to see Linux users outside of Linux chat boards that the learning curve is often very steep. Most people have friends install Linux for them because they've never installed an entire operating system by themselves. The other problem is that Linux has so many desktop environments and window managers that it's confusing for most people to learn one user interface only to have such a wide variety of choices.

I've found most people to like things that don't change too dramatically and they resist change as much as possible unless they have no other choice. Linux offers too many choices and it gets confusing for people to pick their distribution of choice among the hundreds if not thousands of distribution choices available.

Ubuntu has manage to solve most of these problems, but a lot of Ubuntu users complain that it limits their choices and restricts their freedoms. Ubuntu is transforming into a commercial operating system built upon FLOSS philosophy and it's caused a lot of havoc in this community because Linux users feel that Ubuntu has betrayed the FLOSS philosophy and community in pursuit of convergence or money making ideas.

[cariboo]

This has been discussed several times before, to the point where I'm sure I've seen almost the same content as in the original post. Moved to recurring.