OT: Siemens sees Linux desktops at 20% of market by 2008 --recommends GNOME over KDE

[Navindra Umanee]

Kurt Pfeifle <kpfeifle at danka.de> wrote:
> Full article (with more interesting qoutes) at:
>     http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/08/13/1424212
> 
> I am asking myself: Has this thrust been prompted be the recent
> publication of the KDE <--> Windows XP usability study,
> conducted by 'relevantive AG'?

I think it is just Ximian marketing, that's all...  it sounds exactly
what GNOME/Ximian people would say.  Maybe if Siemens bad mouths KDE
they get a better deal on Ximian desktops or something.  And in any
case we know what the Ximian people are like.

>    "Siemens has no 'religious' attachment to a particular distro
>     or desktop environment. Before settling on Ximian, Siemens
>     evaluated plain vanilla Gnome and KDE as well. Siemens found
>     KDE to be more 'Windows-like' than Gnome, but that lead to
>     problems when non-technical users expected a more Windows-like
>     experience. Gnome, particularly Ximian's version, was 'different
>     enough" to set user expectations that the experience would be
>     less like Windows, which led to fewer adoption problems.'"

Incredible!  This is straight off market-speak.

>    "McNutt went on to say that Ximian's suite -- consisting of a
>     Gnome-based Linux desktop, Evolution mail and calendar app, a
>     tweaked OpenOffice suite, and Red Carpet admin tools -- can be
>     deployed in very large enterprises at lower cost and with no
>     greater disruption than a Windows upgrade, and with significant
>     savings going forward. McNutt says that Linux will save 20% to
>     30% in administration costs, 50% in hardware costs, and 80% in
>     licensing fees."

Flagrant.

Cheers,
Navin.