Stephen O'Grady wants to solve Ubuntu's biggest problem: Microsoft.
The fact that Microsoft has a majority market share in PC desktops is the biggest challenge facing the growth of Ubuntu and free software in general. In fact, the issue is actually listed as bug #1 in the Ubuntu community development site Launchpad. It's more than just a hurdle to overcome, it's a bug that needs to be fixed.
In his keynote address here at Ubuntu Live, the RedMonk principal analyst (and Ubuntu devotee) flashed a quote from Sun Tzu on the screen: "You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places which are undefended."
You can't out-Windows Windows, he says. Defining and playing to Ubuntu's strengths are what will make free software succeed on the desktop. [Stephen has posted his entire presentation on his blog]
The first is system maintenance. Debian-based Linux distros like Ubuntu have a huge asset in apt-get. The package handling utility makes finding, installing and maintaining software a breeze. Windows has nothing that even comes close to apt-get. "It's an experience," says O'Grady, "an area of functionality that Linux has pioneered."
Ubuntu's second major strength is the community. It may sound like a bit of a nebulous commodity, but O'Grady offered an anecdote to argue his point. Without being qualified to do so, he set up a LAMP production environment at his office. Since he lacked expertise, he asked a lot of questions in the Ubuntu forums and got straight, direct answers very quickly. He's kept his server going for 18 months with better uptime than the commercial provider he used previously. Most would agree with his assessment that the free software community is more centralized, friendly and open than the communities that exist for Mac OS X and Windows.
Maybe Microsoft doesn't see the importance of these two things, which is why they've left them undefended. Either way, it's by playing to these strengths and others, says O'Grady, that free software can eventually come to rule the desktop.
Photo: James Duncan Davidson via Flickr.
