Aardvark Daily

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Goodbye XP, and Linux

1 July 2008

Microsoft have, as of today, withdrawn sales of Windows XP through retailers and major PC manufacturers.

So now, if you want a new PC, chances are you'll just have to accept that it will come with Windows Vista and all the issues that involves.

Although the situation is improving, quite a few bits of hardware still lack robust drivers for Vista and reports abound that Vista runs like honey on a frosty morning.

But for XP fans, all is not lost - but it will cost you more if you want to retain the OS you've come to know intimately over the past seven years.

Yep, once your flash new Vista-equipped PC arrives, you'll be able to "downgrade" it to XP, in some cases.

Clearly, with sales of Vista not living up to the company's expectations, Microsoft has decided to force people onto their newer OS and the easiest way to do that is just stop selling the old one.

But this raises a question for which I have no answer..

Where the hell is Linux?

We've just seen a very successful campaign that boosted Firefox 3 into the limelight at a time when the only real news was that the new version was out and they wanted to score 20 million downloads.

This campaign was so successful that they effectively DOS'd themselves out of business for a few hours with all the traffic that it generated.

Yet here we have a monumental watershed in the evolution and marketing of desktop OSes -- ie: the world's most popular desktop OS is being withdrawn from sale, and the Linux community has done *nothing* to capitalise on that.

Where was the "Upgrade to Linux" campaign that should have kicked into action today?

Where are all the press releases that would have spawned a tsunami of reports in the tech and mainstream media - educating the great unwashed to the fact that Vista isn't the only choice for their next PC?

Have the Linux boys simply got tired of the battle for market-share and decided to have a little snooze?

I'm really gobsmacked to think that such an opportunity has been utterly wasted.

But perhaps this shows why Linux most likely will never succeed as a desktop operating system.

Despite its many and well documented technical merits, those driving the Linux movement are still basically pizza-munching geeks and not latte-sipping marketers.

They say that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door - but that's only true if you can also tell the world what you've got and which door it's behind.

The problem is that truly good marketers tend to be driven by greed - unlike the geeks behind Linux who are driven by a desire to create something really clever and cool.

The guys cutting the Linux code will be well-satisfied if it works and they earn the respect of their peers.

The guy who makes his living from slick marketing is only well-satisfied when he can upgrade to next-year's Porsche, and that means there has to be some kind of very strong financial reward for his efforts.

The Open Source model just doesn't offer the slick marketers anything. There's no "sales" to provide healthy performance-based remuneration.

It's sad but true that Linux's fatal flaw has nothing to do with stack overflows, fencepost errors or any other design or coding mistakes. It is simply down to the fact that nobody wants to invest time or money promoting it because there's no return.

Some (like RedHat) have tried to make money out of Linux - but they've hardly become a rival to Microsoft and will forever have a marketshare that is measured in minute fractions of a percent.

Is this an accurate summary of the problem that Linux faces?

Is there an easy-fix to this problem?

Were you surprised that there wasn't a whimper from the Linux community on the day that XP died?

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