The Linux road to heaven

One article by Ed Bott on Zdnet made me think of how Linux enthusiast often underestimate the complexity of the scenario regarding Linux based systems market share and penetration.
Bott reported MSI concerns about their Linux based machines which, they state, suffer from a higher return rate (up to 4 times) from end users than windows based machines. They say they will stick to their effort to manufacture and sell Linux laptops but disclose the problems they must face in offering such machines to the desktop public (e.g. higher costs for software development and support, especially when we speak of low price sub notebooks like those of their Wind line). I can accept this complaint as a general one but in the specific I wonder why the huge success of similar products (Asus EEE PC for one) occurred despite the problems MSI disclosed.
Bott admits he writes about Windows for a living and though we can judge his opinion as biased and MSI example as poorly relevant one, but this is not the point and not certainly the object of my thought.
Up to today there’s no competition in the OS market shares, except for an ongoing insurrection from the part of OSX. With OSX we’d better speak of system ascent, but I bet the share of Linux distros altogether is nothing more than a tiny biodiversity in the personal computers world ecosystem. I say this without a solid statistic base given that I haven’t really found any statistics I’m comfortable with on the web.
Focusing on the desktop environment and considering the most spread distros I am more than conscious that Linux is a valuable alternative to Microsoft Windows. From the day I migrated to Ubuntu I’ve always done my best to convert friends and colleagues to a Linux distro. Sometimes I even got close to it. I never succeeded though.

I share Bott’s opinion when he talks about habits. Men stick to their habits and they’re not prone to invest time end energy in trying different things, especially when these things aren’t always full interchangeable. From the many problems which prevent Linux to penetrate the mainstream market I think this is the most relevant one. Microsoft is a colossus and despite all the attacks it suffers from geeks it has indeed been able to create and promote a system in such a massive way that nowadays the mass of people just consider Windows as a standard. More of that, they believe it’s a standard! For those people it’s just inconceivable to have a PC running an operating system different to the one they’re used to see and use. Sometimes when I enthusiastically speak of all the wonders and advantages (which are far from few and irrelevant) of a Linux system to people, they just listen to me with that attitude which says “yes, they also say you can receive broadcast tv with your screw driver”… That’s enervating but it’s just a normal reaction.
So, how could Linux improve its market share?

Well, I’m no business guru but I have some points about this issue. There are three marketing tricks which I think might give the market a little shake.

First: Focus the target.
Many distros have made (and are constantly making) giant leaps as desktop environment solutions. This is precisely why I took the decision to wipe out XP from my laptop and install Ubuntu. Despite these improvements Linux needs to strike those places where people are obliged to use a system which had been already chosen for them. With this I mean the work places. Let’s take Canonical as reference for our example. Say that Canonical propels LUGS or member of LUGS to start an activity to promote Ubuntu distro. Activities could be scheduled to propose small, medium sized and even large companies (in particular those belonging to the public administration) to consider the Linux distro when the desktop stations renewal is scheduled.

Second: Strike carefully
When carefully proposed, with a rational set of elements -an assertive mood and a clear presentation- there are strong reasons for such target companies to switch partially or fully to one Linux based distro. A partially switch is especially advisable as target because it permits to focus on a specific business sector more prone to be converted to Linux. Thinking of the company where I work, I found it difficult to imagine a sudden switch to say Ubuntu in the engineering department where there are mass investments on software running under XP. On the contrary it could be more convenient to convert the machines running in other departments such as administration, planning, warehouse, production, quality, to Linux. In my company the main problem would certainly be the management tool which is commonly used by all these departments and run under XP. Nevertheless a long time schedule conversion to Linux to such kind of departments can indeed offer strong advantages which are so much relevant for an organization to result in money saving and work flow improvement. Let aside the money aspect, two of the basic problems affecting the average company computer network are instability issues and system damages caused by viruses. Many people are illiterate when concerning even the basic aspects of information technology. I personally assisted to a warehouse man who wrongly typed DHL URL and when a nice gurl showed up with the sentence “click me” on her boobs, guess what he did?

Third: Development and development
Big things come out of small things. How can we seriously expect a big company involved in big projects requiring huge investments spread on a pipeline of hundreds of people to release a version of their best seller software for a platform which is to their eyes sterile? In this I strongly agree with those who say that commercial software isn’t necessarily evil. Some forms of exploitation of commercial software or some commercial practices are. For this reason the promotion to those small workshops which can produce and release innovative and quality software for Linux is much important. Take games for example. I’m motivated to think that a strongly engaged and highly skilled team of independent people can realise games that are at least for some aspect comparable to the million dollars productions that bust the market nowadays. Don’t forget that such a small team would work under completely different organisational and money constraints, especially when the team represent a start up entity for the members. Linux game scenario is today rich of high quality and completely free and open source games being developed by communities of enthusiasts whose main aim is no other than to see their game to grow and flourish. Free tools are also there to help this process. We have Blender which is a 3D modelling tool comparable to the professional ones used in “serious” game productions. Blender is also equipped with an integrated game engine, and we even have more powerful engines like Ogre3D, Crystal Space, and Panda3D which is maintained and used in Disney’s commercial game products.

Linux is a great operating system with big capabilities and a vast community of supporters. I do believe that Linux in general is really one tool that can help improve the world we are living in. We just need to be more focused and less dispersive. I know that dispersion is one of the main characteristics of Linux, as highlighted by the multitude of distros, but I’m truly convinced that the success of our cause will pass through unity.

Ubuntu success in achieving a vast public knowledge is there just to witness this concept.

Pictures by:

phauly licensed under this creative commons license

tripu licensed under this creative commons license

….Tim licensed under this creative commons license

Google: step by step we’ll rule the world

Yesterday a friend of mine sent me a link. He didn’t specified the subject; he just wrote “have a look here”. Trusting my friend wasn’t a spammer I did follow the link he proposed.

I know that this isn’t new at all but I wasn’t aware of it and the mere seeing this new brick in Google’s day by day struggle to dominate the world just struck me.

Google Checkout is basically a PayPal’s competitor, thus there’s a service for customers and one for merchants.

First thing I noticed by reading the Terms of Service page is that Google Checkout is owned by Google Payment Corp. a wholly-owned subsidiary of Google Inc.

To customers Google offers basically:

1. the uniqueness of the account. It’s something like “use also this service from us and you can keep your account and password for everything”. This is what I call integration and I must admit it has its advantages
2. a solid fraud protection system
3. the possibility to flag as spam the e-mails coming from the stores you buy from. This seems to me both a weak as customer advantage and absurd with respect to the merchants freed to create a marketing relation with their customer. Taken for grant that a legitimate merchant isn’t a spammer, then it seems to me it’s not Google’s business to promote the “flag as spam” of a merchant marketing communication towards its customers, especially when well often merchants ask their customers an agreement to receive promotional communications and provide them instruments to cancel from that agreement.

To sellers the service offers an integration with Google AdWords providing:

1. a Google Checkout badge aside the merchant’s AdWords Ads. They say this grant an average of 10% more clicks on the merchant Ad which result in a 40% more conversions (click-and-buy) with respect to shops that don’t display Google Checkout badge.
2. a free transaction fee for sales up to 10 times the seller’s monthly AdWords amount spent. I have to say that compared with PayPal this is quite convenient for a shop freshly open, even if it implies having AdWords advertisement which is not always the best or more convenient solution to promote products.
3. they guarantee that at least 98% of the Google Checkout orders are valid. They also say that when an order is evaluated as guaranteed by them, the seller is paid even if the order turns out as a chargeback

As I said Google Checkout is not a new feature as Google launched it on 2006. Furthermore, given that I haven’t heard of an earthquake inside the online payment market, I presume thise service it’s not that though competitor to PayPal. Despite that it’s really fascinating the way Google business strategy is tentacle-spreading throughout our economics and social stage, especially on a world-wide scale. Google doesn’t contempt with making money out of something, they wanna do it by establish their way. During one of the last episodes of TWIT, Leo Laporte made a point by saying that the wonder about Google is that despite all what they do, they’re an Ad company; they go from search engine through maps and geography services to creating an open source mobile phone platform and their core business is still that of an Ad Co.

I’m not one of those hard core Google’s fans but there’s a wonder in what they do and how they do. In the same way I don’t subscribe to the claim that Google’s evil because it collects all our personal information. Ok they do it, it’s true. Anyway first of all I don’t see anything different in their behaviour from what’s probably done by many other subjects on the net even before Google appearance on the stage. Second, until I’m told otherwise I don’t buy the theories of Google’s aming to become a big brother in the sense this term is meant by Orwell’s 1984. Third I think that Google has well contributed to the idea of modern, efficient, solid and free services in a way that has given the net (and maybe beyond the net) society a very important benefit. They set a precedent and are a spur for other companies to produce and offer to the market a similar standard of products. In this sense I buy the theory that part of the reason behind the release of Chrome is to encourage the other browser manufacturers to improve their product. I know that out there there are other and more fitting examples of benefactors in the sense I mean, but Google’s huge, rich and very well known: they’re a flag ship in what they do.

Now I can’t wait the G1 to be released and to hear the first impressions. Mobile phones is another field where I’m flipping hoping Google will bring a revolutionary storm. Not just with a phone device platform but especially as an operator. It seems that in this field Google’s request for a patent, which I will discuss later, can bring hope for a new and more customer oriented mobile communication world.