windows - a good enough desktop?

In the area of servers and host main frame computers, IT decision makers often avoid using Windows because Windows is perceived to lack need levels of reliability and scalability; especially in mission critical situations. For important application situations, downtime is not easily tolerated and IT personnel will elect ot use Linux or for especially sensative situations Unix (e.g. HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, etc.) or IBM MVS . In production, commercial, mission critical environments, downtime (even being down once a month or once a year) is unacceptable because of the high cost of application unavailability. If capacity becomes an issue, adding more resources or upgrading to a larger machine can entail a large expenditure of time and money and raises the risk of service interuption.

The desktop user, usually does not have reliability or scalability hight on their list of critical performance factors. If an office productivity tool user needs to reboot their computer once or twice in a day, it costs only a few minutes of time and is at most a minor inconvience. If more horse power is needed, a desktop user adds more memory, disks, etc. or even gets a new computer without a major expenditure of time or money.

The desktop user is more interested in ease of use, application data interchange, and large application selection. Linux has reached a level of ease of use nearly equal to that of Windows. KDE is a prime example. For most persons used to Windows, the switch to KDE is very easy as both have a similar user interface and set of functionality.

For major desktop applications such as word processingl, spreadsheet, data base, graphics, etc. the ability to exchange data files between applications has reached the good enough level of Linux interacting with Windows. OpenOffice.org is a good example as is the Gimp. While the situation is not fully good enough, Linux is nearly there, and for major office applications it is at the good enough level.

The principal area where Linux falls way short in comparison to Windows is in application selection or availablility. In the general office productivity area, Linux has an adequate selection of software such as accounting, desktop publishing, word processing, spreadsheet, database, communications, etc. In niche, hobbiest, entertainment or speacialized areas Linux often has few or no applications to select from. For example there is little software to enable the analog capture of video from camcorders, or for video editing; no greeting card generation software, few games, etc. In this regard Linux is not yet good enough.

As Linux use spreads in offices (commercial, governmental, and educational) beasue of reliability, scalability, and cost; many users will bring Linux into home use because of a desire to have a home system compatible with their work system. The spread of Linux in offices will make Linux more acceptable to home users. When home users begin adopting Linux in large numbers, applications for niche, hobbiest, entertainment areas will spread and then Linux will achieve world domination.