Problems Linux Enthusiasts Refuse to Address

[David Gerard]

On 5 April 2011 18:16, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> So, price was actually enough at that time - we didn't win the
> desktop, but we gave it a damn good shake. What other thing could
> Linux do ridiculously better to beat Windows?
[...]
> People don't seem to realise just how good Wine is these days. The
> apps that don't Just Work tend to be (a) large (b) recent. But the
> thing keeping someone on Windows is more often that Just One App that
> they can't do without - and that app will usually work flawlessly in
> Wine. YMMV, of course, but it's *always* worth a try.


It occurs to me that a frontal assault on their mainstay might be fun.

Businesses still run on XP. Approximately no-one has moved to Vista or
7. Even on new machines, which MS credits as shipped copies of 7,
downgrading to XP is de rigeur.

They also run on MS Office. Your desktop in most offices will be XP
with MS Office. Many will give you Firefox as well, due to user
clamour for something that works.

Office, Outlook and Firefox on XP = standard business desktop for the
past several years.

So the suggestion is: how can Linux be a better upgrade from XP than 7 is?

This is trickier than it looks. LibreOffice is slightly nicer to use
than OpenOffice, but has a long way to go. MS Office is really very
usable indeed, for all its instability and bugginess, and experienced
MS Office users tend to *hate* OOo. Serious usability and
compatibility work will be needed to knock over the incumbent here.

Outlook and Excel are the two applications that need drop-in
replacements that are better in some important way. The reason for
these two is that they are apps actually used by the people who sign
the cheques, not bought by them and inflicted on minions. They need
disruptive replacements that do better on more than price in some
important way.

(We would *ideally* need a drop-in replacement for Outlook (that will
work flawlessly with Exchange) *and* a drop-in replacement for
Exchange (that will work flawlessly with Outlook). Many companies have
dashed themselves to death against those two rocks in the last decade;
if we can work around this replacement, it would be good to do so.)

Anything I've missed?