Gartner Weighs In on Linux's Desktop Prospects

Yahoo! News: "Among the impediments to using open-source office software products among businesses are compatibility and fidelity issues.

"You just can't move all of your users to StarOffice/OpenOffice.org. You will have to keep some Microsoft Office. You will have to look at big swaths/large departments and groups of people relatively isolated from others and who pretty much only send documents between themselves as potential users," Silver said.

Asked whether the Macintosh might be a better choice than Linux on the desktop at the moment, Silver said it could be, as there is Office for the Mac and it has a better, more intuitive user interface.

Longhorn would also see the concept of LUA (Least User Access), where users were no longer given administrative rights and applications did not break as a result of those lesser rights. Longhorn would also bring better search, better ways of categorizing and searching documents, Silver said.


Linux on the desktop for mainstream business users has also "passed the peak of hype" and real deployments are starting, so "we'll now see what some of the holes actually are," he said.

But Silver also cautioned the audience not to believe all they hear about Linux on the desktop, listing what he sees as the 10 myths around this. These are that:


Linux is be less expensive than Windows because StarOffice/OpenOffice.org can be used instead of Microsoft Office


Linux is free


There are no forced upgrades. ("We expect there to be as little support for older versions of Linux as for older Windows," he said.)


Linux requires significantly less labor to manage


Linux has a lower TCO than Windows because of the available management tools

Applications are inexpensive or free

Skills are transferable

The hardware can be kept longer if Linux is used, or older hardware can be used;

Linux should be deployed as soon as a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement expires, and

Linux on the desktop is an all-or-nothing equation. "