Hi,
thanks for comments.
With business applications I refer to different packages which are available in Finland. They do sales,billing,budgeting,accounting whatever. For the small business sector their are typically very cheap and run on Windows. It is difficult and almost impossible to find applications like that which would run on Linux. It is about year ago when I really tried to find those and result was almost nothing.
On the games side the only choice would be to be able to run games which are made for the Windows platform. There is not big enough ecosystem for game-houses on Linux. And because of that no games…and because of that no ecosystem … you see the point. Only way to break this circle is adapt! And without home market Linux-companies might loose the business side also - they are connected.
Well sorry not to mention Gentoo and Slackware. Debian I mentioned because of I have some experience of it and know it has very broad package collection and support for different architectures. Gentoo I haven’t tried because I don’t see much point in compiling everything just to get 5-10% performance benefit - I really must test it sometime. Slackware was my first distribution back many years. I have no idea what is it’s situation today.
Crossover Office and Cedega are doing very good job at the moment. Actually I also pondered whether they are doing better now when independent. Problem is new Linux-users typically won’t know about them - distributions don’t exactly promote them with enough ad-space - so Joe or Jane won’t know that they even exist. Second if they by accident learn to know them they must pay for them. If you just installed a new system and you really don’t know whether you are going to use it or not, would you want to spend those tools to have a look? Next if the decision is yes - then you must to find them, get them, pay them - do you have credit card and install them. This installation part surely is going to be battle.
I have personally tested Cedega on my boys machine when XP went bottoms up and I refused to fix that and instead suggested Linux with Cedega. It was not easy to install and installing games inside it took some practice for us. BUT it worked great! I have yet to test Crossover Office but all what I have heard about it says it is great. One question someone might be able to answer. Does AutoCad work with it? I think not…
No suppose all the technology in Crossover Office and Cedega would be seamlessly integrated with SuSE? It would be there from moment one. There would be selection in Yast to install Windows programs and Games. Naturally it would be integrated with every other distribution who are part of the foundation. That would mean a real power to penguin.
Who will pay? This is difficult question because of noncommercial distributions. For them I don’t have idea. But at least commercial distributions should pay. Also companies who have deep pockets and have Linux as their strategy to get power away from Microsoft. To me that sounds for example IBM, HP, SUN, Oracle, Google, Oracle, …fill you own here. The money needed for this kind of project would be peanuts for these companies compined and it would with one shift slash make Linux HOT.
The media problem is all the same. In the days situation there is no way to circumvent patents and other DRM-issues. The media codecs and programs propably have to be closed source and licensed. I don’t see free formats like Ogg taking music industry by storm. Linux must support MP3, DVD and Coming standards which are proprietary. But maybe if big companies get together they get the conditions to somewhere acceptable level.
So what’s there for the members of the foundation?
Well they all have lot at stake here. Big players like RedHat and Novell have betted their whole existence on Linux. Many companies have Linux as their staretegic business area. Linux must speed up it’s adoption rate fast or it will be back in obsolecence again. Linux-companies must learn to make cooperation and not see each other only as competitor - there must be more cooperation. With one company having 95% of the computing market is shouldn’t be very difficult to understand where the competition is…
Best Regards
Kari Laine
