Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime

When I need to interact with data from coworkers at my non-techie organization, I use Windows. Why? Because the people there barely know how to use MS Office, much less something more complex. We use Linux on servers, but not desktops. Not yet at least.

When we need to deal with video, we send it out. We can do some in-house, but it's time consuming and kind of expensive. We use Sony Vegas on Windows (which is fine), but the real pros use Macs. So we have some Mac drives around.

The same goes for printing jobs. We do most of the in-house stuff in Office, and I've been pushing Publisher (which is a POS, but is available). For dealing with the outside world, though, I need to use Adobe Illustrator, because that's the standard. (At home I use Inkscape.) At the printers, they use Macs and PCs, but do most of the real work on Macs. The UI is just better.

The next platform is going to be the iPad. It's kind of a POS for non-managerial work, but some people just use email and don't really do computer-based work. They're already using phones, or just don't do the computer thing too much.

The Linux desktop is not going to displace Windows. Windows' edge is not the OS but the ISV (independent software vendor) environment. It's the most mature low-end ISV market. The Mac's was decimated with the demise of the old OS, and they're trying to rebuild it, but it's not doing well. The iTunes app store is potentially a challenger. The Android market is not a challenger. Linux's exists only for upper-end enterprise software.

Linux could displace Windows is by having a single dominant platform, and having an app store for it that is successful enough to fund a software ecosystem and pay the programmers. Then, people would choose Linux based on the apps.

At least that's the business model that worked for the Apple II / Visicalc, the IBM PC / Lotus 123 / dBaseII, the Mac / Aldus Pagemaker, Sun / SunOS and later Java, and Linux as a datacenter node.

I agree with you that WINE is terrible, but I have Win7 running brilliantly right now on VirtualBox. Other than that, linux has all the specialized tools I need for coding and web development, I switched over to console gaming a few years back because I was tired of the hardware upgrade treadmill, and the Microsoft productivity stack, while better than Libre Office, isn't compelling enough to tie me to that platform. Also, I'm not sure what problems you had with video players. VLC has served me well on Windows and linux.

I guess the real killer app for me is sudo apt-get install [some incredibly useful open source library I really need right now, dammit]. The open source infrastructure on Windows is so anemic it drives me nuts.