Since I posted my
predictions for 2003, I’ve received a fair amount of feedback. Most of
it has centered around the third prediction:

3. $300

Linux boxes at Walmart (and other low-end retailers) will become the standard system for

home users. I honestly think that the introduction of these boxes by mass-market retailers was

was the most significant tech news for 2002, and that the significance was mostly missed.

Walmart is

href="http://www.walmart.com/catalog/content_shops.gsp?cat=102317&path=0%3A3944%3A3951%3A10231

7">lowering costs by using Linux. And they’re producing PCs which are more than good

enough for most applications. This is huge, and along with Apple’s resurgence, signals the

re-emergence of Java on the client side.

The objections seem to fall into two main categories:

• Sure, some people will buy those boxes initially. But sales will fall off because Linux is not usable enough. Where “usable” is a combination of “user friendly” and “runs the right software.”
• Sure, some people buy those boxes. But they install (pirated copies of) Windows on them soon after.

It’s not very difficult to address these objections. There are lots of responses that could be made. For example:

• There is enough software for most tasks. For niche domains, or for power users, Windows retains an advantage. And for experienced users, Windows has a significant advantage (If someone knows how to use Word already, the cost of using a different word processor has to include the cost of retraining them). But, in general, for low-end use (simple word processing, e-mail and web-browsing), Linux has pulled even.
• People are happy with
  Linux. It hasn’t been exhaustively validated yet, and there are no statistical surveys, but the focus on usability seems to be paying off (see, for example, href="http://www.distrowatch.com/">these reviews).

• People don’t actually change their software very often, let alone install a new operating system. Consider, for example, Internet
  Explorer. href="http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/01/30/index3a.html?tw=authoring">Internet Explorer 6 was released in 2001. And yet, 45
  % of web traffic is still using Internet Explorer 5. And this is in an environment where the various security holes and warnings have actively encouraged upgrading.

• It’s much harder to pirate Windows than in years past. While href="http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/14725.html">it’s
  not foolproof, the fact is that the barrier to piracy has gone up substantially.

In short: there’s enough software, it’s usable enough, people don’t like changing software (much less changing operating systems), and pirating (or even just installing) Windows is a substantial technical hurdle.

But I don’t want to spend too much time on those arguments. Because they’re “here and now” arguments that talk about “what are people in January of 2002 doing with their Linux boxes from Walmart.” And I want to talk about the future. What I wrote was a prediction about what’s going to be true in December 2003, not a statement about what’s true now.

And there are a few interesting points which I didn’t mention in the predictions column, but which I want to bring
up here. None of these are killer arguments, but they cumulatively imply low-end Linux is awesome.

There’s a lot of vendors moving in. There are literally dozens of vendors selling Linux desktop boxes. It’s not just Microtel selling boxes at Walmart. There’s a lot of movement here, and there’s a lot of competition. That means a fair number of companies will die. But it also means that the products will quickly evolve, and that’s good for the customers.

These are not the networked computer, 2003 version.. That was a corporation-only vision, and required massive buy-in (for example, IBM’s network computer required an IBM server and only interoperated with IBM equipment). These are all full-fledged independent systems based on open standards. People can buy and use single units and those single units will work as standalone units and as part of existing networks. As part of this, there’s a very nice incremental adoption path available for corporations (it’s not an all-or-nothing decision).

China and India. They’re big. More than a billion people each. And they’re just at the beginning of the computer adoption curve. But it’s beginning to look a lot like both of these nations are going the linux route. For example, here’s href="http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/linux/story/0,24330,3395670,00.html">an article on China with some pretty good links.

On the other hand, it also looks a little like Chinese programmers might be forking linux without

sharing code. That’s interesting– it’s hard to fight piracy across international lines. But it might be equally hard to enforce open-source licenses.

Does Microsoft have any brand loyalty?
One of the ways you fight encroachment from
underneath is by having brand loyalty. I buy Del Monte tomatoes rather than the supermarket-brand tomatoes because I know Del Monte does canned tomatoes well. And I’m more
likely to buy other Del Monte vegetables as well, because I trust Del Monte to do a good job. I have never heard anyone say anything even remotely similar about Microsoft or Microsoft products.

What would Michael do? I’m not a religious guy; this isn’t about the Archangel Michael. It’s about Michael
Dell. And the question is simple: if he were an undergraduate at UT Austin today, where would he be focusing his energies? Where are the entrepreneurial opportunities for ambitious and bright entrepreneurs who have a limited budget? I think Linux has it all over Windows
here, and that means that there’s going to be more market innovation and responsiveness from
Linux PC makers over the next 12 months than from Windows PC makers. The people who make Linux PCs are just going to out-innovate everyone else in the mad-scramble to move some boxes.

It’s got the right spiral. Suppose you buy some of these arguments, but not all of them. And you say “All right. I’ll grant you that Linux desktops will get maybe 10% of the new purchases on the low end of the market by years end. Windows will still be dominant. New machines will still mostly be Windows. And all the older machines will be Windows.” That’s a reasonable proposition to make. Then I have one question: what happens in 2004?

So what do you think? And where does all this lead?